330 THE BIRD WATCHER 
with two or three ugge the rocks around. Another 
was in the water, and I was much interested in 
watching the persistent but ineffectual efforts which 
this one made to get out upon a certain large rock, on 
which he had evidently set his fancy in a very un- 
removable manner. To look at this rock, no one 
would ever have thought of it as one on which a seal, 
or anything else, could lie. Its top was a sharp ridge, 
whilst its sides presented, every way, so steep a slope 
as to be quite unscalable. But there was a little pro- 
jecting point, or chin—as sharp as Alice’s Duchesse’s 
chin—in which the central ridge ended, and behind 
which the mass was cleft, for some way, longitudinally, 
making a narrow ledge just large enough for one seal 
to lie-on. This little spike of rock was a foot or so 
above the water, even when the sea swelled up towards 
it—it being not yet high tide—and as it projected out 
like a bowsprit, there was nothing underneath it for 
the seal’s hind feet to get a hold on, so that every- 
thing had to be done by a first leap up from the sea. 
This leap the seal made over and over again, shooting 
up sometimes almost like a salmon—his hind feet 
alone remaining in the water—and grasping the hard 
little triangle between his fore-arms, or flippers, so as 
to assist the impetus by hoisting himself upon it. But 
he always had to fall back again, after clinging con- 
vulsively, and pressing tightly with his chin against the 
rough surface of the rock, which, just at this one little 
point only, had shell-fish upon it. He tried to time 
his efforts with the swell of the wave, but in this he 
