Guillemot Rock
This is the season for guillemots.
From April until the end of May, before the bathers arrive from Paris, one may observe, at the little watering-place called Étretat, the sudden appearance of certain old gentlemen in top-boots and tight shooting-coats. They spend four or five days at the Hôtel Hanville, disappear, come again three weeks later; then, after a second stay, depart for good.
The following spring, they appear again.
They are the last hunters of the guillemot, the survivors of those of the old days; for thirty or forty years ago there were some twenty of these fanatics, but now they are but a few fanatical sportsmen.
The guillemot is a rare migrant whose habits are strange. For almost the whole of the year it lives in the neighbourhood of Newfoundland, and of the islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon; but at the nesting-season a band of emigrants crosses the Atlantic and, every year, comes to lay its eggs and hatch them out on the same spot, the rock called Guillemot Rock, near Étretat. They are never to be found in any other spot than this. They have always come thither, they have always been shot, and they still keep coming back; they always will come back. As soon as the young birds have been raised, they go away again, and disappear for a year.
Why do they never go elsewhere, choose some other point in the long white cliff, which runs unchanged from the Pas de Calais to Le Havre? What force, what unconquerable instinct, what age-long custom impels these birds to return to this spot? What was the manner of their first emigration, or the nature of the tempest which may long since have cast their sires upon this rock? And why have the children, the grandchildren, all the descendants of the first comers always returned thither?
They are not numerous; a hundred at the most, as though a solitary family possessed this tradition, performed this annual pilgrimage.
And every spring, as soon as the little wandering tribe is reinstalled upon its rock, the same hunters reappear in the village. Once, as young men, they were familiar to the inhabitants; today they are old, but still faithful to the regular meeting-place that for the past thirty or forty years they have appointed for their gathering.
For nothing in the world would they fail to keep the appointment.
It was an April evening in one of the last years. Three of the old guillemot-shooters had just arrived; one of them was missing, Monsieur d’Arnelles.
He had written to no one, given no news! But he was not dead, like so many others; it would have been known. At last, weary of waiting, the first comers sat down to table; dinner was nearly over when a carriage rolled into the yard of the hostelry; and soon the late arrival entered.
He sat down, in excellent spirits, rubbing his hands, ate with a good appetite, and, as one of his companions expressed surprise at his wearing a frock-coat, replied calmly:
“Yes, I had not time to change.”
They went to bed as soon as they rose from the table, for, in order to surprise the birds, it is necessary to start well before daybreak.
Nothing is pleasanter than this sport, this early morning expedition.
At three in the morning the sailors wake the sportsmen by throwing gravel at their window panes. In a few minutes all are ready and down on the shingle beach. Although no twilight is yet visible, the stars have paled a little; the sea screams over the pebbles, the breeze is so cold that they shiver a little, despite their thick clothes.
Soon the two boats, pushed out by the men, rush down the slope of rounded pebbles, with a noise as of tearing canvas; then they are swaying upon the first waves. The brown sails are hoisted up the masts, swell slightly, tremble, hesitate, and, bulging once more, round-bellied, sweep the tarred hulls away towards the wide opening down the river, dimly visible in the gloom.
The sky grows clear; the darkness seems to melt away; the coastline appears, still veiled in mist, the long white coastline, straight as a wall. They pass the Manne-Porte, an enormous arch through which a ship could go, double the point of La Courtine, run past the vale of Antifer and the cape of the same name; and suddenly there rushes into sight a beach on which are hundreds of gulls. It is Guillemot Rock.
It is merely a small hump of cliff, and on the narrow ledges of rock the heads of birds are visible, watching the boats.
They are there, motionless, waiting, not daring as yet to fly away. Some, settled upon the extreme edges, look as though they are sitting on their hind parts, upright like bottles, for their legs are so short that, when they walk, they appear to be gliding on wheels, and, when they want to fly away, they are unable to start with a run, and are obliged to let themselves fall like stones, almost on top of the men spying upon them.
They are aware of their weakness and the danger it entails, and do not readily decide to fly.
But the sailors begin to shout and beat the gunwales with the wooden tholepins, and the birds, terrified, one by one launch out into the void, and drop to the very level of the waves; then, their wings beating with swift strokes, they gather way, dart off, and reach the open spaces, unless a hail of shot casts them into the water.
For an hour they are slaughtered thus, one after another being forced to make off; and sometimes the females on their nests, utterly devoted to the business of hatching, refuse to leave, and ever
