The Way of the Wild

by F. St. Mars

All the same, the nose blow was bad enough. It was like being hit by the beak of a torpedo at full speed, fit almost to bash a boat in.

The seal was quite evidently looking for the bird, and, equally quite evidently, seemed bound to find him. To know why it did not at once see him is to know that the seal's view, from below the surface, of the world above is about a twelve-foot circle of white-gold light, that is all; and the skua, floating limp and floppy, had been, by chance, till then always carried hither and yon by the waves just outside that circle. But that chance could not last.

Then came the other seal. Came she easily and gracefully, as a seal should in her element, effortlessly gliding along, her head from time to time up like a dog's—some gentle dog's, say a mild-eyed spaniel's—looking about. She was just a female seal. She knew nothing of the bird or her companion, who were at sea-level, and more often than not hidden in the trough, till she came sliding down the slope of a round-barreled swell, practically on top of them. Then it was too late to avoid mutual recognition.

Quick as sound she had seen, had realized, had spun on her apology for a tail, and had gone, leaving a little trail of foam behind her to prove her speed and her coyness. But, quick as light, the magnificent male seal had sunk from sight, leaving a little chain of bursting bubbles behind to mark his speed. And the last that was seen of that lady seal was a speck far on the horizon, going like a masterless torpedo, alternately leaping forward through the air and shooting along on, or just under, the surface—switchbacking, they call it; and that, I dare to fancy, if it proves anything, proves that the coyness was only make-believe, and that she had allowed the daring admirer to catch her up and force her to act as if she were already vanquished and using the last arts of swift swimming she knew.

It left the skua, however; left him still floating, floating, floating up one long breaker's side, and sliding down its other side to its fellow behind, towards the shore—always towards the shore. It is true that the tide was falling offshore, but that made no difference to the currents of those parts, which were independent currents and of a great force. They were shouldering the skua steadily to land, and if you had dropped a line overboard there, with an ordinary lead on, you would have felt them pulling at it, and taking the lead along like a live thing. And the currents were Fate, so far as that bird was concerned.

There was a little inlet, and a little bay in the inlet no larger than a good-sized dining-table, and seaweed, green and red, upon the rock-bowlders that encircled it, and old-gold patches of sand between the rock-bowlders, and green grass behind the rock-bowlders, and brown-plush furze behind the green grass, and a patch of blue sky over all. And in the middle of the little bay in the inlet, bob-bobbing on the lap-lapping of the littlest waves, that—sifted out by then, as it were—had found their way so far, floated the skua, the Richardson's or Arctic skua, dead, to all appearances, as the proverbial door-nail. But that was not the rub. The rub was in the—ah!

"He-oh!" pealed down the clear, ringing bugle-cry from above, and a shadow floated upon the reflections a-dance on the surface in the little bay in the little inlet—floated and hung, so that it exactly covered the skua like a funeral pall; floated, and hung, and came down. As its claws scraped a bowlder, and it furled its long, narrow vans, it was revealed as the big herring-gull—him we left out upon the face of the waters, watching and waiting on chance.

His spotless expanse of head and neck alone marked him, gave him away, a speck you could see for a mile. His size—just on two feet—proved what his snowy hood proclaimed, in case there were any doubts. A smaller gull, an uncommon common gull—of eighteen inches—came and looked, to make quite sure—and went away again. The herring-gull, in spite of his silly name, has a reputation, and a "plug ugly" one.

And the herring-gull, he—did nothing. That is the strength of the herring-gull—doing nothing. He can do it for an hour, half a morning, or most of a day. His battle-cry might well have been, "Wait and see," but he must be one of the few living, breathing things on this earth who have made the game pay, and—lived. He might have been a lump of chalk, or a marble carving, or a stuffed specimen, or asleep, or dead, for all the signs of living that he gave. One began to wonder if he ever would move again. He had been a bird, but was now the life-size model of one cut in alabaster, with clear pebbles for eyes—they were quite as hard and cold as that, his eyes.

And all the time the body of the skua floated, and danced, and drifted, and lifted in, making an inch on one wavelet, to lose three-quarters of it on the next, but still, unnoticeably perhaps, but undoubtedly, gradually, surely, for all that, drifting in.