IN THE SHETLANDS 137 
the great skua, or the herring or black-backed gull, 
may be the authors of these tragic occurrences, but 
I have not seen any of them kill anything yet—not 
even young birds. However it be, many a scene 
of ruthless rapine is enacted on these black rocks, 
beneath these great cliffs, by the surge of the sullen 
sea. None see it; most, I verily believe, forget it. 
But it is there, and always there ; and so, in ghastly 
and horrible multiplication, through the whole wide 
world. How unpitying, how godless is nature, when 
man, with his disguising smiles and honey-out-of- 
vinegar extractions, is not there to gloze and apologise, 
to strew his “smooth comforts false, worse than true 
wrongs”! 
