At low tide the shore would be lined with these birds vainly trying to fill themselves with shellfish and such carrion as the waters had left. It couldn’t be called feeding; a Pacific-coast gull does not feed, it seeks simply to fill up the vast, unfathomable space within. Eternity is, of course, without end, but the nearest approach to eternity must be the inside of a gull; I would say stomach, but a stomach implies metes and bounds, and there is no proof that there are any metes and bounds inside of a gull. It was good entertainment to see the coyotes come down and manœuvre to catch the gulls. There was a plain hard beach, perhaps a quarter of a mile wide, between coyote and gull. Of course coyote couldn’t walk across this and eat gull up. So he went to work to create an impression in gull’s mind that he was thereon other business, and was quite indifferent, if not oblivious, to all gulls. He would commence making long straight laps of half a mile on the beach. At the end of each lap he would turn and run back a few feet nearer gull; back another lap, another turn, and so on. But he wasn’t looking for a gull. He didn’t know there was a gull in the world. He had some business straight ahead of him which banished all the gulls in the world from his mind. He kept forgetting something and had to run back for it. And the gull on the water’s edge, trying to fill its void where men imagined a stomach to be, had no fears of that coyote. It realized the momentous and all-absorbing character of coyote’s business. There was no danger. So coyote, getting a little nearer and a little nearer at each turn, suddenly shot out of his lap at a tangent, and another gull was forever relieved of the impossible task of trying to fill itself. CHAPTER VIII. WHALING IN MARGUERITA BAY.