a 
IN THE SHETLANDS 231 
the tide has sufficiently gone down to let it lie upon 
it. It plays about the rock, fawns upon it, caresses 
it, woos it, one might say, dives down and circum- 
navigates it, tries or pretends to try to lie upon it, 
even under the water, swims away and returns, and 
does the same thing several times; and as soon as 
the water is sufficiently shallow to allow of it, it 
reclines, sea-washed and gently heaving, till the 
receding tide leaves it high and dry. A pretty thing 
it is—very—to see a seal thus waiting for its chosen 
rock to appear. 
I was at the ledges about twelve, and found my 
particular one a blank—not a bird there. Mother 
and child—father too, and every other bird besides— 
was off ; the cupboard was bare. A bitter disappoint- 
ment seized hold upon me, sunk into my very soul. 
Yet what else could I have expected? They may 
have gone in the night ; and, in any case, how, except 
by actually bivouacking above that ledge, could I have 
hoped to be there at the exact moment when the 
departure took place? This I might have managed, 
or at least have managed better, had my little black 
sentry-box been a cottage, with some one in it to 
cook for me. Then I could have got to bed by eight, 
or at least nine, and been up by three or four ; but 
without this it was impossible. I can do—and I do 
do now—with as little as most men, but porridge 
here is like charity, and oh, the time that it takes 
to make! They talked to me of ten minutes or 
a quarter of an hour at the outside, spoke even of 
