SEALS GKEAT AND SMALL 77 



do so very well. I handed him my driver and invited 

 him to try. He balanced the ball on the summit of a 

 huge molehill of sand, grasped the club with both 

 hands with an air of grim determination, and after 

 flourishing it round his head, made a mighty but in- 

 effectual swipe. The ball still maintained its position 

 on the tee. After one or two more failures he gave 

 in and admitted that he could not drive, but his 

 opinion of the poor merits of golf as a game was only 

 confirmed by the incident. 



Our game was as enjoyable as ever ; we lost the 

 usual number of balls in rabbit holes, and Ben, my 

 black spaniel, caught three or four of the little pests 

 which honeycomb the sandy turf with their bottomless 

 residences. Without crying " fore," we drove straight 

 into the middle of big flocks of gulls, plovers, and 

 oyster-catchers. We watched a pair of sheldrakes 

 feeding at the mouth of the little burn just below the 

 spring. Eider-duck, teal, and widgeon dotted the 

 clear surface of the two little bays where numerous 

 seals also swam round, unterrified and confiding, 

 turning their big lustrous eyes with a curious stare 

 at their odd -looking visitors. It would have been 

 easy enough to accomplish the object of our expedition 

 without going any further, to select the best out of 

 more than a dozen, and shoot him with the certainty 

 of recovering his body as soon as the tide had ebbed a 

 short distance ; but it never even occurred to us thus 

 to betray their confidence. As there would be no 

 difficulty in shooting them, so also there would be no 

 sport. The veriest cockney who had even practised at 

 floating bottles in a pond could not have missed such 

 a mark as the round heads presented, as the poor 



