SEALS GREAT AND SMALL 67 



raise my head cautiously above the rocky boundary 

 which separates the smooth close turf of the links 

 from the water, I can see more than twenty coasting 

 about within a range of a hundred yards ; the nearest, 

 a big grey fellow, has just risen after a dive and is 

 standing head and shoulders out of the water, his 

 head thrown aback and his mouth wide open as if 

 he was submitting his glistening fangs to a dentist's 

 inspection. I suspect that he has been after the 

 prawns and shrimps which abound here, the former 

 in the rock pools at low water, the latter all over the 

 smooth shell sand. Others swim quietly round, turning 

 their bright intelligent dog's eyes to right and left, 

 sometimes plunging forward, raising the body out of 

 the water above the head as they turn their somersault, 

 sometimes gradually sinking backwards with a slow 

 almost imperceptible motion till the extreme tip of 

 the muzzle at last disappears below the surface. Some- 

 times they pass within ten yards of the place where I 

 am sitting, but take no notice of my presence. I can 

 even see them when swimming under water, grey 

 ghostlike forms shooting along, followed by their 

 shadows on the sand ; sometimes they swim on their 

 backs, sometimes with a breast-stroke, for it is all one 

 to them which way they move, as they twist and turn 

 hither and thither with a scarcely perceptible motion 

 of the flippers. But all their movements are leisurely, 

 very different from the mad exulting gambols with 

 which they pass through the narrows when the flood 

 tide is making strongly in the Strand. Then they shoot 

 along like arrows, or leap like salmon out of the rush- 

 ing stream, darting along in a succession of bounds and 

 splashes like a shoal of travelling porpoises or dolphins. 



