226 THE BIRD WATCHER 
high, dark walls of jis their boudoir, falling back 
from it again with a deep-sucked gurgle that ravishes 
the ear! What a snug sea-chamber, formed and 
fashioned by the waves! How the cormorants dive 
and fish in it, how the gull tears at the drifted carcase 
of its kind, how the puffins, in ceaseless flight between 
ocean and their myriad burrows, arch and dome it in ! 
Oh, it is a fine apartment! Its portals on either side 
are columns of spouting foam, and beyond lies the 
wild, houseless sea. A seal’s dormitory !—how well 
do the wild things choose! So here, at once, one 
learns something different to what one is told. Seals 
care nothing about tides when they can get great 
slanting slabs that lie high and dry above them. At 
high tide, or low tide, or middle tide, they are equally 
ready to sleep. 
I came down the steep descent in a way which 
made me and everything I had on, or carried with me 
—which was everything I have here to keep me warm 
and dry—both wet and dirty. At the bottom there 
was a mass of nasty, brown, wet discomfort ; but it 
had successfully stalked the seals. They lay now 
right before me, so near as to make the glasses almost 
a superfluity. Yet how splendidly they showed them 
up—every mark, turn, and expression, their whiskers, 
- wrinkles, and their fine eyes. And now, still more 
markedly than yesterday, I note that the favourite 
attitude of a seal, when lying asleep or dozing, is 
either on its back or half or three-quarters rolled over 
towards it. Out of all these twelve, only one lies in 
