There were just four families left. The island off the coast of Scotland had no harbor. Most of the time it was impossible to leave the island or get to it. Great waves lashed its iron black cliffs. The people of the island had lived for centuries on a diet of sea birds and their eggs. There was little money to order the tea and tobacco that they craved. They learned to make the smallest pleasures last.
The three children on the island had no school. They climbed on the cliffs to gather eggs. They ran races and played wild battle games among the rocks and heather.
``I am ThorFinn the Skull Splitter!'' shouted a boy.
``I am King Magnus!'' yelled the girl Margaret.
One thing they liked to do was to put letters in a bottle and hurl it out into the sea at the turn of the high tide. Such letters often reached the mainland. There was rarely a bottle to spare so this was a special event. They addressed their letters to Prime Ministers and Kings, many of whom did not exist or had been dead for centuries.
One day a stranger arrived on the island. He came with great boxes wrapped in oil skin which he clung to tenaciously as he struggled along the line guiding him the last few paces to the shore.
The stranger stayed at Hector's house, and the people gathered in the kitchen and looked in wonder at the cameras and tripod the stranger unpacked. The precious glass plates. Above all they wondered at the kinematoscope - a camera that recorded moving pictures! In the tiny, crowded kitchen there was no room to demonstrate, but the stranger promised a show in the old school or ruined church perhaps, if it could be arranged.
He had come to photograph the birds of the island. He hoped to be able to set up his cameras on the cliffs. He would need help, he said. The children volunteered. In the morning the children took the man to the cliffs and showed him where he could get good views of the birds.
He was a dedicated scientist, an obsessed photographer, but the perpendicular black rock, the boiling surf below took his breath away. He found himself clinging to the icy rock, sick with fear, his eyes closed as the children leaped nimbly up, down and around him.
``Here!'' they called above the howling wind, the roaring sea,''Here's a good place!'' He rigged up a pulley system to get his equipment up and down the cliffs. On the first long freezing day he crouched on a precarious rock and saw no birds. His clattering oil skins flapping crazily in the wind were more than any bird could tolerate. The second day he took five photographs and he had great hopes for them.
On the fifth day he saw Hector's wife go out to the drystone wall and pull something from a crack. It was a long dead sea bird. He realized the family was dipping into the emergency food supply. He packed his cameras. ``Next time it clears I must go,'' he said. He had not thought to bring food with him.
Next day there was no possibility of leaving. One more chance to set up his moving picture camera. The children had become his skilled assistants. Together they set up the camera on a sheltered ledge. As he watched through the view finder a scene of astonishing beauty unfolded. A mother bird preening and feeding her fledgling young. Frantically he wound his machine- ``Look, Margaret!'' He beckoned to the girl. She edged forward to look through the view finder then started back, her freckled face almost terror struck. Then girl and camera were caught by a gust of changing wind.
No one knows how close the photographer came to grabbing his camera and letting the child slip away. But his hands let go the camera and held the child. The precious camera, smashed and ruined, danced on the rocks far below.
``Margaret, Margaret!'' the man said.
Next day he left with high hopes for his photographs. He did not think to take pictures of the people or their homes. As he was leaving Margaret brought him a gift. A round glass fishing float. Perhaps from Japan! She'd found it dancing in the surf. It was her treasure.