THE MOOR AND THE LOCH. 



failed in his aim, she would most likely have toppled him over 

 the narrow ledge, and drowned him in the deep water. He 

 said that if he had known his risk, he would in all proba- 

 bility have missed. 



Glass, the boatman who attended my wild-fowl excursions 

 on the Firth of Forth, at North Berwick, had an enormous 

 blue Eussian water-dog. He was a very ferocious brute, and 

 the most resolute dog in the water I ever saw. I have often 

 admired his thirty-feet leap off the pier into the sea. He 

 came as near to be amphibious as a dog well could. Point 

 to any floating object, however distant, and he bounded out 

 of the boat, and made for it like a shark. One of the smaller 

 species of seal, called by fishermen the sea-dog, was watching 

 the boat ; Glass pointed to it, and out bounced rough Blue, 

 determined on making a capture. Instead of sheering off or 

 diving, the enemy met him half-way, when the dog seized 

 like a vice. For a second or two the battle was fierce on 

 the top of the water, but when the seal dived, nothing was to 

 be seen but the stream of bubbles where the combat was 

 raging below. This lasted so long that poor Jack Kuss was 

 given over for drowned. At last he came to the surface in 

 so forlorn a plight, that he had to be lifted into the boat. 

 So high was the courage of this dog, that he would have gone 

 at another seal as readily the next day, and fought him as 

 fiercely too. Glass offered to sell him to me for 2, but as 

 he was only a machine to fetch fowl out of the water, and 

 not otherwise well trained as a retriever, I declined him. He 

 was soon after sold as a watch for a wood-yard. 



The old male seals fight as savagely as deer for the females, 

 and cut and mangle each other fearfully in their encounters. 



