Kings in Exile

by Sir Charles G. D. Roberts

Perhaps half a mile off shore lay the islands—some of them, indeed, mere ledges, deathtraps for ships, invisible except at low tide, but others naked hills of upthrust rock, which the highest tides and wildest hurricanes could not overwhelm. Even on the loftiest of them there was neither grass, bush, nor tree to break the jagged outlines, but day and night, summer and 194 winter long, the sea-birds clamored over them, and brooded by the myriad on their upper ledges.

These islands were fretted, on both their landward and their seaward sides, by innumerable caves. In one of these caves, above the reach of the highest tide, and facing landward, so that even in the wildest storms no waves could invade it, the pup of the seal first opened his mild eyes upon the misty northern daylight.

Of all the younglings of the wild, he was perhaps the most winsome, with his soft, whitish, shadowy-toned, close, woolly coat, his round, babyish head, his dark, gentle eyes wide with wonder at everything to be seen from the cave mouth. He lay usually very near the entrance, but partly hidden from view by a ragged horn of rock. While alone—which was a good part of the time, indeed, like most fishermen’s children—he would lie so still that his woolly little form was hardly to be distinguished from the rock that formed his couch. He had no desire to attract public attention—for the only public that might have been attracted to attend consisted of the pair of great sea eagles whose shadows sometimes swooped aross the ledge, or of an occasional southward-wandering white bear. As for the innumerable gulls, and gannets, 195 and terns, and lesser auks, which made the air forever loud about these lonely islets, nothing could have induced them to pay him any attention whatever. They knew him, and his people, to be harmless; and that was all their winged and garrulous companies were concerned to know.

But to the little seal, on the other hand, the noisy birds were incessantly interesting. Filled with insatiable curiosity, his mild eyes gazed out upon the world. The sea just below the cave was, of course, below his line of vision; but at a distance of some hundred yards or so—a distance which varied hugely with the rising and falling of the tide—he caught sight of the waves, and felt himself strangely drawn to them. Whether leaden and menacing under the drift of rain and the brooding of gray clouds, or green-glinting under the sheen of too rare sunshine, he loved them and found them always absorbing. The sky, too, was worth watching, especially when white fleeces chased each other across a patch of blue, or wonderful colors, pallid yet intense, shot up into it at dawn from behind a far-off line of saw-toothed rocks.

The absences of the mother seal were sometimes long, for it required many fish to satisfy 196 her appetite and keep warm her red blood in those ice-cold arctic currents. Fish were abundant, to be sure, along that coast, where the invisible fruitfulness of the sea made compensation for the blank barrenness of the land; but they were swift and wary, and had to be caught, one at a time, outwitted and outspeeded in their own element. The woolly cub, therefore, was often hungry before his mother returned. But when, at last, she came, flopping awkwardly up the rocky slope, and pausing for an instant to reconnoitre, as her round, glistening head appeared over the brink of the ledge, the youngster’s delight was not all in the satisfying of his hunger and in the mothering of his loneliness. As he snuggled under her caress, the salty drip from her wet, sleek sides thrilled him with a dim sense of anticipation. He connected it vaguely with that endless, alluring dance of the waves beyond his threshold.

When he had grown a few days older, the little seal began to turn his attention from the brighter world outside to the shadows that surrounded him in his cave. His interest was caught at once by a woolly gray creature like himself, only somewhat smaller, which lay perhaps seven or eight feet away, at the other side of the cave, and farther back. He had not 197 realized before that his narrow retreat was the home of two families. Being of a companionable disposition, he eyed his newly discovered neighbor with immense good-will. Finding no discouragement in the mild gaze that answered his, he presently raised himself on his flippers, and with laborious, ungainly effort flopped himself over to make acquaintance. Both youngsters were too unsophisticated for ceremony, too trusting for shyness, so in a very few minutes they were sprawling over each other in great content.

In this baby comradeship the stranger’s mother, returning to her household duties, found them. She was smaller and younger than our Pup’s dam, but with the same kindly eyes and the same salty-dripping coat. So, when her own baby fell to nursing, the Pup insisted confidently on sharing the entertainment. The young mother protested, and drew herself away uneasily, with little threatening grunts; but the Pup, refusing to believe she was in earnest, pressed his point so pertinaciously that at length he got his way. When, half an hour later, the other mother returned to her charge, well filled with fish and well disposed toward all the world, she showed no discontent at the situation. She belonged to the tribe of 198 the “Harbor Seals,” and, unlike her pugnacious cousins, the big “Hoods,” she was always inclined towards peace and a good understanding. There was probably nothing that could have brought the flame of wrath into her confiding eyes, except an attack upon her young, on whose behalf she would have faced the sea-serpent himself. Without a moment’s question, she joined the group; and henceforth the cave was the seat of a convenient partnership in mothers.

It was perhaps a week or two later, when the islands were visited by a wonderful spell of sun and calm. It was what would have been called, farther south, Indian summer. All along the ledges, just above the mark of the diminished surf, the seals lay basking in the glow. The gulls and mews clamored rapturously, and squabbled with gay zest over the choicer prizes of their fishing. It appeared to be generally known that the bears, displeased at the warmth, had withdrawn farther north. The sea took on strange hues of opal and lilac and thrice-diluted sapphire. Even the high black cliffs across the charmed water veiled their harshness in a skyey haze. It was a time for delicious indolence, for the slackening of vigilance, for the forgetfulness of peril. And it was just at this 199 very time that it came the young seal’s way to get his first lesson in fear.

He was lying beside his mother, about a dozen feet out from the mouth of the cave. A few steps away basked his little cave-mate—alone for the moment, because its mother had flung herself vehemently down the slope to capture a wounded fish which had just been washed ashore. As she reached the water’s edge, a wide shadow floated across the rocks. She wheeled like a flash and scrambled frantically up the steep. But she was too late. She saw the other mothers near by throw their bodies over those of their young, and lift their faces skyward with bared, defiant fangs. She saw her own little one, alone in the bright open, gaze around in helpless bewilderment and alarm. He saw her coming, and lifting himself on his weak flippers, started towards her with a little cry. Then came a terrible hissing of wings in the air above, and he cowered, trembling. The next instant, with a huge buffet of wind in all the upturned faces, a pair of vast, dark pinions were outspread above the trembler; great clutching talons reached down and seized him by neck and back; and his tiny life went out in a throttled whimper. The nearest seal, the mother of the Pup, reared on her flippers and 200 lunged savagely at the marauder. But all she got was a blinding slash of rigid wing-tips across her face. Then, launching himself from the brink of the slope, the eagle flapped scornfully away across the water toward the black cliffs, his victim hanging limply from his claws. And all along the ledges the seals barked furiously after him.

The Pup, whom death had brushed so closely, could not be persuaded for hours to leave the shelter of his mother’s side, even after she had led him back to the cave. But now he found himself the exclusive proprietor of two mothers; for the bereaved dam, thenceforth, was no less assiduously devoted to him than his own parent. With such care, and with so abundant nourishment, he throve amazingly, outstripping in growth all the other youngsters of his age along the ledges. His terror quickly passed away from him; but the results of the lesson long remained, in the vigilance with which his glance would sweep the sky, and question every approach of wings more wide than those of gull or gannet.