It took me a week to perfect my arrangements for transporting the
great auks, by water, to Port-of-Waves, where a lumber schooner was to
be sent from Petite Sainte Isole, chartered by me for a voyage to New
York.

I had constructed a cage made of osiers, in which my auks were to
squat until they arrived at Bronx Park. My telegrams to Professor
Farrago were brief. One merely said "Victory!" Another explained that
I wanted no assistance; and a third read: "Schooner chartered. Arrive
New York July 1st. Send furniture-van to foot of Bluff Street."

My week as a guest of Mr. Halyard proved interesting. I wrangled with
that invalid to his heart's content, I worked all day on my osier
cage, I hunted the thimble in the moonlight with the pretty nurse. We
sometimes found it.

As for the thing they called the harbor-master, I saw it a dozen
times, but always either at night or so far away and so close to the
sea that of course no trace of it remained when I reached the spot,
rifle in hand.

I had quite made up my mind that the so-called harbor-master was a
demented darky--wandered from, Heaven knows where--perhaps shipwrecked
and gone mad from his sufferings. Still, it was far from pleasant to
know that the creature was strongly attracted by the pretty nurse.

She, however, persisted in regarding the harbor-master as a
sea-creature; she earnestly affirmed that it had gills, like a fish's
gills, that it had a soft, fleshy hole for a mouth, and its eyes were
luminous and lidless and fixed.