less, the Seals had other “ fish to fry ” ; escape, not combat, was their object, for
they never attack man but when opposed in their retreat to the water, and this
our hero was railwise facilitating rather than obstructing. A curious anecdote was
related to me in Faroe of a native Waterton assailing on the rocks a male of the
Great Seal, but, not being able to detain him, he actually got astride on his back,
endeavouring to behead him at the gallop, and slipped out of the stirrups hardly
in time to allow his Bart, mortally wounded, to take his leap, all alone, into the
water.’
After the breeding season the immatures keep together in small parties and
live on or near exposed skerries, but many come into more sheltered sounds and
bays to fish, going back frequently to the outer rocks or dwelling with the herds of
mtulina: Most of the adults, too, leave their home and spend the winter at sea,
and are seldom seen on the rocks until late in the following spring.
The Grey Seal delights in the wildest and most exposed situations of the
northern coasts. Nowhere is the sea too rough or the breakers too wild, but he
loves to calmly survey the striving elements with philosophic calmness. His
home is
Where the northern Ocean in vast whirls
Boils round the naked, melancholy Isles
O f farthest T h u le ; and the Atlantic surge
Pours in among the stormy Hebrides.
He does not like a great wave to smash on his head, but sinks at once just as
it is about to overwhelm him, only to reappear again in the same spot without
concern. A favourite place for a grypus is always the apex or point of an outlying
skerry where two tides meet in a swirling ‘ Jabble.’ 1
Here in the same spot he will pass hours, rising and sinking to the bottom
where he rests and rolls on his back, sometimes staying below for as long as
fifteen minutes. Except when actually on feed and cruising against the tide or
round the rocks for food he will thus remain stationary at a fixed point, and
under such circumstances will permit the close approach of man. It is, however,
quite useless as well as unsportsmanlike to shoot one in such a position, as he
is almost certain to be lost— the broken water causing his heavy body to sink at
once.
It is only after a prolonged gale that the large grypus will leave their chosen
resorts and come into comparative shelter. This, I fancy., is not so much for the
1 An expressive Orcadian word,' used to denote the meeting of cross currents in a lumpy sea.