"It looks exactly like your grandfather," said Anna; "look at his
eyebrows! You would not kill your grandfather!"

"Wouldn't I just--for a hundred pounds!" said Simeon briskly, looking
for a larger stone.

"Don't let us kill him at all. We have seen the last Great Auk! That is
enough. None shall be so great as we."

The grey and ancient fowl seemed to wake to a sense of his danger, just
at the time when in fact the danger was over. He hitched himself out of
the pool like an ungainly old man using a stick, and solemnly waddled
over the little bank of sand till he came to his jumping-off place.
Then, without a pause, he went souse into the water.

Simeon and Anna ran round the pool to the shingle-bank and looked after
him.

The Great Auk was there, swimming with wonderful agility. He was heading
right for the North and the Iceland skerries--where, it may be, he
abides in peace to this day, happier than he lived in the cave of the
island of Suliscanna.

The children reached home very late that night, and were received with
varying gladness; but neither of them told the ignorant grown-up people
of Suliscanna that theirs were the eyes that had seen the last Great Auk
swim out into the bleak North to find, like Moses, an unknown grave.