low water early the next day. But a surprise was in store, for when the crew
turned up at the point of Hanglon next morning, there was a wild cheer and
sundry manifestations of joy on the part of the usually phlegmatic Hebrideans, for
there was the grypus lying in the bottom of the boat. ‘ Where on earth did you
get him?’ we queried. ‘We found him close by lying amongst the rocks. The
tide sets straight in here from Langasgeir,’ answered Shaggy McQuorcadale. The
him ‘ was a her,’ a very large female 6 ft. 1 in. to the end of the tail and 7 ft. 2 in.
to the flippers, and a cart arrived and bore the remains to Balranald, where the
skin was preserved and is now in my museum.
I paid altogether seven visits to Haskeir in two seasons, but only once with
success. This was in 1899, when accompanied by my friend Mr. Hesketh Prichard
we crept slowly along against the wind over the top of Big Haskeir, scanning
every likely-looking ‘ bight’ and shelf where a grypus might lie up. Near the
centre of the island and lying on the edge of a pinnacle, fully twenty feet above
the water, I suddenly noticed what looked like a large black slug. My glass at
once revealed a six-foot grypus as black as a sloe, the very type of skin I most
wanted. For some reason or other the Seal seemed in a state of nerves; every
second it kept jerking up its head and wriggling uneasily, then straining its neck
down towards the water into which it evidently feared to leap. Now and again
it would move its body till it seemed to quiver on the very edge of the rock.
Not a moment was to be lost, as we were still two hundred and fifty yards away;
so hurrying as rapidly as possible through the rotten puffin holes we diminished
the distance to a hundred yards. It was rather a difficult shot, for I dared not
approach nearer, and the Seal would hardly keep still for a second, but it was
absolutely essential to kill the beast stone-dead on the spot where it lay. Sighting
very carefully and leaning on the shoulder of the big man of Patagonia, I pressed
the trigger slowly and had the satisfaction of seeing the black head drop to move
no more.
On examining the body of this Seal, the cause of his extreme restlessness
was at once apparent, for the poor creature must have been suffering the tortures
of the damned. On each side of the vertebrae and about a foot from the tail
were a series of the most frightful wounds made by the teeth of a jealous old
Grey Seal, into whose harem this youngster must unwittingly have strayed. The
wounds themselves were several inches deep and were of a nature impossible to
describe. It certainly looked as if a tiger had had hold of the poor beast and
severely mauled it.