AN ALL-DAY SITTING
A
ANOTHER all-day sitting with the seals. From the edge of the cliffs in the morning, and in the same pool by which I had sat all yesterday, I saw a creature which I at first thought was a seal of the common kind, then—for it began to look larger—that it was the bottle-nosed one, but which soon proved to be neither the one nor the other. In size it looked equal to Bottle-nose, if not even larger, but it had a magnificent skin, the whole of the undersurface, as well as the sides, being blotched and spotted black and white, like a leopard's or jaguar's, except that the markings are larger. In heaven's name, now, what creature is this? Can it be the sea-leopard that I have often read about, but of whose habitat, etc., I know nothing till I can look it up again?—the state of many a naturalist in regard to many a species, sometimes, perhaps, but shortly before he writes a treatise upon it. Upon coming down, now, and watching it closely, I see that in shape and general appearance—except for its wonderful skin—it is very like the bottle-nosed seal. Its body, however, is not so cylindrical, but bulges out into a greater roundness below the neck and shoulders, so that its weight may be somewhat greater. Its nose looks broader, and nearly, if not quite, as long. I think, indeed, it is the larger animal of the two. I can make these comparisons, for both are here together now, and they continue for hour after hour to haunt the pool; but whilst he of the bottle-nose rises always at his long intervals and soon goes down, the knight of the leopard comes up at as short, or even shorter ones than the common seal does, and sometimes stays for a longer time, as witness these twelve successive appearances, with their corresponding disappearances, which I timed, partly to know, and partly to feel scientific: from 11.44 to 11.48; from 11.50¼ to 11.53¾; from 11.55 to 12; from 12.1¼ to 12.5½; from 12.7¾ to 12.11; from 12.14 to 12.17¾; from 12.20 to 12.24; from 12.25¾ to 12.30¼; from 12.32 to 12.37½; from 12.44 to 12.49; from 12.50¾ to 12.55.
Also, though he often pegtops it, he has never yet pointed his nose straight up into the sky, which my bottle-nosed seal invariably does. Generally he soon adopts the horizontal attitude, and continues in it for the rest of the time he is up. When he goes down, he rolls round, as well as over—by which I mean both like a porpoise and like a barrel—and then his spotted, or rather blotched, belly makes a splendid mosaic under the water, for it is not only itself, which were enough of beauty, but the most lovely glaucous green is flung upon it, through which, all glorified, the pattern appears. A magnificent sight! "The very phenix!" Poor Bottle-nose is quite eclipsed.
This great beauty of the skin—which, strange to say, instead of being invisible was most conspicuously apparent—can only, I think, have been gained through sexual selection, and its being confined to the belly and sides may bear some relation to the habits of the animal. Suppose that this one is the male, then does his leopardess look up at him as he rolls in blubberly grace and barrel-like symmetry above her, or, since he swims with equal ease upon his back or belly, has the fair, portly expanse of the latter made it the principal area of decoration? Does he offer it as a carpet to her when she goes abroad, saying "Swim upon me," or display it over her as a banner, crying "Be these thy colours!" or, in swift circumvolution, does he enmesh and entwine her with it, playing about her like a stout coruscation, as the two swim together through grots, and caves, and pebbled halls, and cool groves of golden-brown seaweed? All this is the secret of the deep; but there is the belly, and it fires the imagination.
I am now sure that it was this great and glorious sea-leopard, and not the other large seal, that I first saw lying on the seaweed, and I had hoped it might have done so again as the tide went out. But I was again disappointed. As before, little of this deep-growing seaweed was exposed by the tide, nor did either of the two lie on the rock itself, or on any other one. Neither did the common seal come this time, whereas, in the adjoining cove, there was the accustomed complement. This one seems the haunt par excellence of these two superior creatures, but, very unlike the common seal, they are always in the water.
I have now satisfied myself that the young guillemot is petted, sometimes, by birds that are not its parents. The facts are as follows: having watched the seals till past five, I determined to explore a little, and walked out along the promontory which forms the opposite side of this little Shetland fiord, and the end of which, except for the outlying stacks, must be about the most northern point of that portion of the British Empire which imperialists care least about—I mean the British Isles. Here I found some more guillemot and kittiwake ledges, and on one of these were some half a dozen of the former birds, one being a young one. The latter was with its parents, on a place which, though it seemed to project but a hair's breadth, was yet the safest part of the ledge, which was very narrow and dangerous-looking. Here I left him for a very short time, to get further down the rocks, but on my return I found he had left this comparatively secure place and was now right away, on what, but for a very slight slanting slope, with a giddy projection here and there, looked like the sheer face of the precipice. No bird was with it: the chick was evidently in distress, and now, for the first time, I heard a little sharp note proceeding from it, which really did sound something like the word "guill," or "guilly." Some feet above where the chick was, but separated from it by a fearfully steep and dangerous face of rock, another guillemot sat on a ridge, which it almost covered. The chick made several efforts to scale this mauvais pas, failed as many times, but at last, with manifest danger to its poor little life, got up it, and stood by this bird, on the tiny ridge. The latter immediately stood up also, and bent over it, jodel-ing, and cossetting it with its beak. Here, then, it seemed evident, was one of the parents. But now there appeared, pressing forward amongst others, on that part of the cliff where the chick had been, an eye-marked bird who seemed to be much excited. She made her way along to near the place from which the chick had scrambled up, and, as one may say, called it down to her, though I heard no cry, for it followed her back along that fearfully steep and dangerous place, having now always to climb down instead of up, until, at last, it was back on the ledge where it had, at first, been sitting, and which, compared to where it had strayed to, looked almost safe.
A PERILOUS JOURNEY