206 THE MOOR AND THE LOCH. 



Sound of Mull, the angry freak of the leviathan would have 

 been characteristic enough ; but as the present monster of the 

 deep was only a bottle-nose or " black-fish," it was evident 

 that the boatmen had made the lad swallow a story " very 

 like the fierce fish," whose startling entrfo had whetted his ap- 

 petite for the terrible. 



On questioning the fishers next day, they laughed heartily, 

 saying it was true that a black-fish had broken a net some 

 miles below, and that the one we saw had begun to blow and 

 lash the water with its tail, but these vagaries were only signs 

 of anxiety lest its young one, which no doubt was near, might 

 get among the boats and nets. In place of dreading these 

 small whales, the fishers were always glad of their company, 

 as harbingers of a successful night's fishing ; and about the 

 same time last year I watched an old female bottle-nose and 

 two young ones gamboling among the fleet of " scows," while 

 the crews looked kindly at them as the jackals of their trade. 



Prodigious droves of porpoises also hang upon the herring- 

 shoals. The smaller kind, called " pelluchs," often spring sev- 

 eral yards out of the water, and come down with a thump that 

 may be heard in calm weather more than a mile off, while the 

 white foam caused by their fall in the sea can be distin- 

 guished at double that distance. Frequently, in my walks or 

 shooting excursions along the shores of the island, I have seen 

 more than a hundred of these creatures rolling, splashing, or 

 springing clear of the sea like fresh-run salmon. 



A solitary grey seal for some years frequented the rocks 

 above Ettrick Bay. The old hermit showed himself when the 

 bag-nets proclaimed the annual influx of salmon to the bay, 

 and he cruised about the coast as long as the fish remained. 

 One year " the grey sealch " was seldom out of the shallow 

 water, and my watcher was always reminding me to bring my 

 rifle-barrels especially when the weather was warm and 

 calm. Once, when shooting on Glenmore and Ettrick side, 

 he would fain have changed my gun into a rifle, for the seal 



