THE HARBOR SEAL 



plex and hold on for dear life with their heads 

 and fore-flippers. It is fine sport, but the tide 

 always wins in the end, and the '^ back-to- 

 the-land movement " on the part of the seal 

 is soon forgotten in his modern life on the 

 ocean wave. 



In an easterly storm on an August day, 

 when the rain and the mist and the spray were 

 driving over the bar, a herd of twenty-nine 

 seals Avas gathered at the highest point, for 

 it is not merely to sun themselves that they 

 haul out thus. A long, low-lying, grayish- 

 yellow sand-bar, a steel-colored sullen sea, a 

 dirty gray sky and a seething mass of angry 

 white breakers fringing the reef and extend- 

 ing in long lines on either side, formed fitting 

 surroundings for these strange beasts. On a 

 near-by point of the bar was a flock of per- 

 haps a thousand herring gulls, among w^hom 

 one or two great black-backed gulls could 

 easily be distinguished by their large size, 

 their snowy w^hite heads and tails, and their 

 jet-black backs and wings, while in a compact 

 group apart were two or three hundred com- 

 mon terns. The deep voices of the gulls and 

 the shrill cries of the terns sounded above the 

 storm as the birds rose from time to time and 



171 



