“It is an opening in the rocks about a hundred and twenty feet deep; and the principal entrance is by a bold, rugged arch about thirty feet high. It has a very curious effect when you look through this arch, as it is just like a church-window; and, when the tide is in, the water looks very beautiful, from the manner in which it seems to tremble in the irregular gleams of light which penetrate through the projections of the rocks. Then, there is Scratchell’s Bay, with the grand arch three hundred feet high; and the Wedge Rock, where there is a great mass of rock detached from the cliff, which looks as though it had lodged between the rocks, just as it was falling down. It is the shape of a wedge; and, when you look at it, you can’t help thinking every moment that it will fall.” “But the waiter at Freshwater talked of Lord Holmes’s Parlour and Kitchen: what can they be?” “The first is a cavern in which a certain Lord Holmes, who lived in the island about eighty or a hundred years ago, used to bring his friends to drink their wine in summer; and his kitchen is another cavern, where, it is said, his wine was kept, to cool it; but I did not pay much attention to the caverns as my object was to find Razor-bills and Willocks; which I wanted to shoot, that I might stuff some of them for my father’s museum.” “I suppose you saw a good many birds near the caverns,” said Agnes. “A good many,” returned he; “but the most were between the highest cliff,—which is marked by a long streak of red ochre, from a stratum of that earth, I suppose,—and a place called Sun Corner, where the cliff overhangs the sea. Here there were hundreds and thousands of Guillemots and Razor-bills, which were flying about in parties of tens or twenties; and, far above them, the great grey Sea-mews were wheeling round and round, and uttering their loud and piercing cries; while, in the distance, the Needle rocks were covered with hundreds of Black-headed gulls. When we approached this place, the fisherman pulled right in for the cliff; and, as we drew near it, I never saw such a scene before in my life. The whole surface of the cliff was in ledges, like shelves, one above another; and these ledges were perforated, like honey-combs, by the Puffins and Razor-bills. Every ledge was crowded with birds, so thickly, that the only wonder was, how they could all find room to sit; and yet every now and then some fresh birds came popping up through the holes in the ledges, and knocked off those that were sitting on them.” “How droll!” cried Agnes, laughing.