IN THE SHETLANDS 83 
they came from the cavern itself or only from about 
its frowning portals. Wondrous noises the sea is 
making now, as, with the heaves of a dead calm, even 
—heaves that in their very quietude suggest a terrible 
reserve of power—it laps into and out of this awesome 
cavern—moans, rumblings, sullen sounds that want 
and seem to crave a name. 
It is now near three, and the first gull yet—of its 
own free will, and not unsettled by me—has flown by. 
Just before, some very large fish—for I think it must 
be a shark, and not a cetacean—has passed on its 
silent way along the silent sea. It came several times 
to the surface, and showed each time a very long back, 
with one small pointed fin, very much out of propor- 
tion to its bulk, rising sharply and straightly from it, 
just as a shark’s dorsal fin does. Each time it made 
that same sort of roll that a porpoise does, only more 
slowly and in a much greater space. This, indeed, 
does not suggest a shark—indeed, it can’t be one— 
but one of the smaller cetaceans that is yet much 
larger than the common porpoise. Every time it 
comes up it makes a sort of grunting snort or blow. 
On account of this—for it gives itself more leisure to 
do it—and that its roll describes a longer curve, I 
doubt if it be the porpoise—the one we know so well. 
It must be a larger sort, nor should I ever have sup- 
posed it to be a shark had I not been assured that 
sharks of some size are common round the shores of 
these islands. This must be true, I think, for my in- 
formants could hardly have been mistaken. 
