THREE MURDERERS
Gone they are. The ledges are quite bare--not a bird to be seen
there--nothing but the spray and the wild winds to love them now. It
was what I had expected, had been sure of; but again I felt bitter
disappointment. It is more than disappointment--a sadness and emptiness
of heart at finding these accustomed tenants, that have for days
given life and beauty and domestic happiness to the desolate frowning
precipice, gone, and their known places void. How I miss them! I retract
now what I said before about wild creatures giving no relief to the sense
of solitude. These guillemots did, I believe, and I feel lonelier now
without them. And so, whilst I lay warm under the bedclothes, were you,
you little mite of a guillemot--but stay, I have apostrophised you once
already, and am not going to do it again.
There was rain, mist, and wind extraordinary to-day, but the sea dashed
finely over the rocks. The pool, though a haven, was often seething,
yet I saw Bottle-nose, and, later, a common seal, in it. The latter was
the only one I watched. He came up at intervals of a few minutes only,
and, as on former occasions, always rose perpendicularly in the water,
with his nose pointed to the sky. In this position he remained all
the while he was up--which was never more than a minute--and then sank
without altering it, differing in this last respect from the two larger
seals, which always went down with a porpoise-like roll. His eyes were
shut all the while, even when he went down, but still I supposed that,
once beneath the surface, he was accustomed to swim away and enter upon
some active employment "under the glassy, cool, translucent wave": the
line, indeed--which, by the way, with its exquisite context, is not to
be found in that overpraised pert piece of _ex cathedra_ dictation, The
Golden Treasury--for the gold _non olet_, but out on its many omissions
and at least one vile, prudish mutilation!--hardly suits such a pot-boil
as this haven now is; but it is always untroubled in the deeps. But I
was deceived in this supposition, for once he came sufficiently near
to the great bulk of rock where I was lying for me to see him for some
time before he rose; and, to my surprise, I saw that he was floating
in just the same attitude, and just as quiescently. As he came up his
eyes were fast closed, so that I think he must have been dozing, or
sleeping, like this, under the water, all the while, yet rising--perhaps
automatically--at the requisite intervals. The common seal, if it be
not as nocturnal as the cat tribe, from which it may have descended, is
certainly a very great sleeper.
The eye of the puffin is, by virtue of its setting, almost as marked a
feature as the beak itself. First it is surrounded by a ring of naked
skin, much resembling the feet in colour--of an orange-red, that is to
say--and just within this ring there is a dot at one point of the iris,
and a straight line at the other, both of which are really of a bluish
or slaty hue, but have the appearance of being black. This line and dot
form the base and apex respectively of a sort of little triangle, the
sides of which are formed by a deep depression in the skin, and within it
the eye is framed like a little miniature, and, as is sometimes the case
with pictures, partly encroached upon by the frame, so that its circular
shape is interfered with. The effect of the whole--for all these details
blend together, and can only be distinguished with the glasses--is that
the bird seems to have a triangular eye, and this bizarre appearance is
heightened by another, and much deeper, line, or fold, in the feathers,
which runs back from the base of the triangle till it meets, or tries
to meet, the black feathers of the head and neck, in a little delta
between the two. Hardly less wonderful than the eye are the cheeks--if
one may call them so--those two sharply defined oval surfaces of light,
shining grey, so smooth and polished that they do not suggest feathers at
all, but look much more like little veneered panels of fancy woodwork,
let into a framework of ebony. To all this the beak has been added, to
give full and crowning effect to the idea that governed at the puffin's
making, which was that it should be "as remarkable a figure of a bird as
any in our country," or elsewhere.
I have sometimes wondered if the fish which the puffin catches so deftly,
and then carries home, a dozen at a time, are paralysed at the sight of
it. If a shoal of sand-eels fainted, and lay strewed about the bottom
of the sea, it would then be easy for their enemy to pick them up one
after the other, pack them securely, and get a firm grip on all of them
before they began to revive and wriggle. At least, it ought to be easier;
but how the bird chases and catches each in succession, without losing
those it has already caught, and which lie in a row across its beak, it
is not so easy to see. I have sometimes, I believe, made out a dozen,
at the least--all sand-eels--closely wedged together along the cleft
of the mandibles, their heads and tails hanging down on either side of
the lower one. Perhaps, however, the difficulty is not so great as it
seems to be--of understanding it, of course, I mean; it is no doubt
easy enough for the bird to do. My theory, at any rate, of its _modus
operandi_ is this. The first sand-eel is, no doubt, passed to the base of
the mandibles, and being firmly wedged against the membrane that unites
them, I suppose that they are finally closed upon it. Were they opened
again, at all widely, to catch the next and subsequent ones, there would
be a danger of as many as were already there either escaping by their
own efforts, or being floated out owing to the pressure of the water.
But the beak of the puffin, though broad and leaf-like in its shape,
is sharply tipped, and by opening it but a little, and pressing the
fish against the bottom, the bird could no doubt pinch up the skin so
as to get a secure hold of it. The various little tactile movements of
the mandibles upon the fish, by which the latter would be first grasped
between, and then passed carefully down them, to lie against the one last
caught, can be pretty well imagined, and they could be very effectively
aided by the rubbing or pressing of it, on either side, against the sand,
rocks, stones, etc., of the bottom. It must be remembered, too, that the
mandibles open like a scissors, so as to be wider apart at the tips than
at the base, which would diminish the difficulty; and moreover, each fish
is so deeply indented by the sharp, cutting blades--which, however, do
not seem to pierce the skin--that, although alive--reflecting possibly
on the beauty of maternal affection--they would be likely to "cleave
to their mould" like putty, for a little while after the pressure were
relaxed.
I think that the broad, blade-like bill of the puffin has to do with this
power that the bird possesses of holding many fish at a time, and that
the razorbill, whose beak is of the same type, and who bites the fish
across in just the same way, is in the habit of doing so also. Be this as
it may, the guillemot, whose bill is quite differently shaped, holds the
fish, as a rule, in a different manner, longitudinally, namely, with the
head towards the throat, and the tail drooping over to one side. This is
not invariable; but I have never myself seen a bird bring in more than
one fish at a time. It is the same, I think, with the black guillemot,
at least in this latter respect, but I have seen much less of it than the
other. Unless, however, it be supposed more difficult to catch and hold
many fish than many insects, there is no reason why the puffin should be
singled out for wonder in this respect. The water wagtail, when feeding
its young, fills its bill with insects, which it catches, not only on the
ground, but flying also--a great feat, surely--and the lesser spotted
woodpecker brings a similar assortment to the nesting-tree. I believe
myself that most insect-eating birds do the same whilst feeding their
family, unless when they catch an insect sufficiently large to be a host
in itself.
What a whirr of pinions, and fine wild chase beneath the beetling
precipice, and out to sea! It was the Arctic skua, pursuing, this time,
a black guillemot, no doubt _en route_ for its young. They went so
fast--the skua with the swoop of a peregrine falcon--that I could only
just follow the smaller bird, but I caught its white wing-patches, so am
sure it was not a puffin. Half-way out of the cove the guillemot must
have dropped its fish, for its pursuer descended, and hung hovering over
the water, seemingly embarrassed, and without alighting upon it. This, at
first sight, seems evidence in favour of the theory that the skua, unless
it succeeds in catching the spoil before it touches the sea, will have
nothing to do with it; but as a herring-gull now flew up, and behaved
in the same way, the more legitimate inference is that both birds were
looking for what neither of them could see, and that the fish, being
alive, as it probably would be, had, by a remarkable conjunction of two
lucky accidents, escaped. But, on the other hand, would the herring-gull
have dared to interfere with the skua?--which it would have been doing,
were the latter in the habit of picking up the fish from the water. On
other occasions I have seen the skua fly off as soon as he had missed
his swoop, and I have once seen a herring-gull following the chase,
with a view, as seemed obvious, to such a contingency. This happened on
the island, so that I remember it quite plainly, though, what with one
thing and another, it got crowded out of my notes. I was, however, much
interested at the time, for it pointed to a possibility of a further
and more complex development of these curious parasitic relations; for
why should not gulls become, in time, the constant attendants of such
chases as these, on the off-chance merely of the skua failing to get the
fish that he had forced the bird he was chasing to drop? Here would be a
secondary act of piracy grown out of the first and more direct one.
Herring-gulls--they are much the commonest species here--seem now to feed
a good deal on the floating carcases of young kittiwakes, so I think
it likely that the bird I twice saw doing this before, and took each
time for a grown kittiwake, was really a herring-gull. It was at some
distance, and I jumped to a conclusion without taking the trouble to
verify it. But are these young kittiwakes first killed by the gulls, or
found dead by them merely? As to this I can say nothing, except that I
have not yet seen such an attack made--which is not much.
In the last two or three days I have pretty well demonstrated that
seals, when they lie on the rocks, in company, do not post sentinels.
In descending the cliffs, I have several times alarmed one or more out
of the ten or a dozen that have lain on the great, slanting slab where
they rendezvous; but their retreat, more or less precipitate, has not
induced the others to a like course. Some have looked about a little,
but remained where they were, whilst the greater number have lain in
fancied--and this time real--security. It may be said that the seals
which took to the water need not have been the sentinels, but this is
an _argumentum ad absurdum_, since a sentinel that neither saw danger
itself, nor gave the signal when it saw others in a state of alarm, would
be no good.
For me, therefore, seals do not post sentries, at least not in these
seas, but it does not necessarily follow that they may not do so
in others where they are more persecuted by man, and preyed on by
polar-bears. Whether this has been asserted, or not, I do not know, but
I dare swear it has been, for sportsmen, besides that they draw very
hasty inferences, like to get full credit for their miserable triumphs
over brute intelligence. Take this very matter of sentinel-posting. It
has been lightly made, and far too lightly credited. If you have a herd,
or flock, of animals--say some geese browsing--some _must_ stand on
the outside, which is where _we_ would post sentinels. That is enough
for the sportsman. Such individuals _are_ sentinels, and his skill,
consequently, in outwitting them, something extraordinary. But let him
bring some evidence of this--I mean of the first proposition; as for the
other--the corollary--we will take it for granted, sentinels or not.
No doubt of the man's capabilities. He can set his wit to a goose's,
and shame, or cry quits, with it--but was the goose really so extremely
clever? Was it anything more than a wary, vigilant bird, that a man of
parts might be expected, sometimes, to get the better of? I doubt it
extremely--at any rate, I doubt the sentry-go. When one comes to think
of it, the systematic tailing off of one, or some, particular members of
a band of animals, to warn the others in the event of danger, is a very
high act of collective intelligence; and nothing short of this amounts
to anything. That the first animal who takes alarm should utter a cry,
and thus warn the rest, is a very different matter. These seals did not
even do this, though the ones who saw me, and took to the water, must
have associated my presence with danger. Of this I have now had another
example, for in ascending the cliff, one out of two seals lying close
together on a small rock saw me and went off. The other had not seen me,
but evidently felt uneasy, owing to the haste and abrupt motions of his
companion. Nevertheless, he took some time to make up his mind, and was
on the rock, I should say, about two minutes after the other had left:
whereas, had this latter communicated his alarm to him by any recognised
signal, he would have been in the water almost at the same time. On the
great slab itself ten seals were lying as I began to go up, but one
went off whilst I sat quiet, without observing me. This left nine, and,
of these, two saw me as I scrambled up an exposed ridge, and went off,
whilst the other seven slumbered on.
As far as I can see, therefore, there was no communication of
intelligence between these seals. Each acted for himself, and without
thought of the others. I have noticed the same thing often with birds,
and on the whole I cannot help thinking that, in a loose sort of way,
wild animals are often credited with acting in a more highly organised
manner than they really do, and that a too intelligent interpretation is
often put upon their actions. When, for example, a bird, scenting danger,
flies off, with a cry that warns all the others (though it frequently
does so in silence), it does not follow that it was thinking of those
others, nor can the cry be shown to be a special one until it has been
heard, over and over again, in the same, or similar, circumstances, but
not upon other occasions. Even then it will often be found to be due to
excitement, merely, so that instead of expressing any definite idea, it
but reflects the emotional state of the individual uttering it--it is
the difference between thinking and feeling. The familiar alarm-note,
as it is called, of the blackbird, is an example of this, for I have
often heard the bird utter it when there has been neither fear nor
danger--only excitement. Its organism reacts in this way to a certain
state, which may be caused by a variety of incidents, so that no special,
circumstantially limited meaning can attach, in its mind, to the cry.
I do not say that there are no cries, amongst animals, which have a
certain definite meaning, and no other. Very possibly there are, and one
may, perhaps, perceive the origin of them; for if such cries--at first
general--were, in a large majority of cases, consequent upon a particular
state of things, such state of things would come to be more and more
associated with the cry, though from this to a definite and purposed
signal, given by one and received by many, is a very considerable step.
But the fact--if it really is one--ought to be better made out than
it is. A sportsman has only to talk about the leader, a signal, or
sentinels, in regard to any bird or beast, and no one pauses upon it. It
is accepted as though it had dropped from heaven instead of from the lips
of a man whose main interest lies in killing animals, who is generally
most hasty in drawing inferences about them, and whose belief in their
intelligence pays a compliment to his own.
The minds of some people must be in a strange state about animals, I
think. They will not allow that they have reasoning powers, yet find no
difficulty in crediting them with all sorts of actions, schemes, plans,
and arrangements, that seem to demand a quite human understanding.
Perhaps I, who admit the one, make too much difficulty over the other;
but I like evidence (and plenty of it), and do not take conviction as
proof. More, perhaps, than any other subject, natural history abounds
with statements, the evidence for which there is often no getting at, or,
if one does get at it, it amounts to very little.
Oh, thou villain gull! What have I not just seen thee do? But heroics
are out of place with animals, so I will just recount the incident in a
staid, sober way. As, in my ascent of the cliff, I came over the crest of
a green peak, a herring-gull flew up from the ground with something in
its bill, which, as it mounted aloft, I saw to be a young puffin. It hung
by the nape of the neck from the very tip of the gull's beak, the legs
dangling pitifully down--a pathetic spectacle--though I could not make
out any movement in it, indicating that it was alive. The gull made for
the sea, and, crossing to one of the great "stacks" that stands frowning
a little off the shore, mounted high above it, and then let the puffin
fall. Down, down, down, and down it came, a horrible descent; and I
seemed to hear the far-off thud, as it struck that cruel rock. Then, in a
second or two afterwards, the gull came circling down upon it, and began
to feed upon the body, dragging it from this place to that, and seeming
to fear a shag, which came up the stack towards it. I can hardly think it
coveted the morsel, but I am reminded that I certainly saw another one
with its beak at a dead kittiwake. No doubt, therefore, it did, and thus,
once again, the fact is driven home to me that there is no such thing as
"always" or "never" in animal life. As Darwin has most truly said, every
creature is ready to alter its habits, as the opportunity arises, and the
greater number of them are, in some way or another, always in process of
doing so.
[Illustration: "ONE MORE UNFORTUNATE"]
Was the puffin dead when the gull flew up with it? If it was, then had it
found it so, or killed it itself? Did it drop it on purpose, to kill it,
or let it fall by accident? These questions I am unable to answer; but in
regard to the two last, gulls are credited here with letting crabs fall
on the rocks, in order to break their shells. Even if the puffin were
dead before, such a fall, by bursting or bruising the body, might make it
easier to tear open--an operation which the gull, I believe, had not yet
had time to perform.
The whole ground where this gull went up with its victim--for I have
little doubt myself as to what had taken place--was honeycombed with
puffin-burrows, and troops of puffins stood everywhere about. I sat down
where I had halted, and before long two other herring-gulls came and
stood in the same locality, close to several of these poor little birds,
who, I thought, seemed embarrassed by their presence, but powerless to
resent it, and perhaps not sufficiently intelligent to divine its true
purport.
The gulls, I thought, had a sort of unpleasant, evil-boding look; a
sullen, brazen, criminal appearance, like the two murderers in that scene
with Clarence, just before the duke awakes--but this may have been partly
due to imagination, after what I had just seen, with a late reading of
_Richard III_. I love that play; almost more than ambition, perhaps, the
keynote to its hero-villain's character is to be sought in his tremendous
energy and intellectual activity. These are so great that they, to a
large extent, guard him against the intolerable anguish of remorse--that
constant attendant on the undiseased evil-doer--so that he fares better
than Macbeth, who is inferior to Richard in both these respects, and
whose more poetic and sensitive nature is much against him. Not that
Macbeth is not an energetic and able man, but he is only normally so,
while Richard's working qualities are abnormal. His energy, especially,
is more like that of a Napoleon or Julius Cæsar. It is such a mighty and
rapidly-moving stream, that, hurried along by it, he has no leisure to
repine. It floats his crimes easily, one may say, making little dancing
boats of them, whereas those of Macbeth are like huge vessels in a stream
that has hardly volume enough to bear them. Is it not, in fact, almost
impossible to feel mental depression, so long as the brain is very
actively employed? It is in the calms and lulls of this activity that
disagreeable reflections force themselves upon us, just as rain that has
been kept from falling by a violent wind, falls as soon as it subsides.
Accordingly, though Richard's robuster nature goes almost scot free by
day--at least, for a considerable time--it becomes the prey of conscience
by night, when the huge energy of his disposition is in abeyance; when,
in Tennyson's language, "to sleep he gives his powers away." This we
learn first through his wife Anne, who has been constantly "wakèd by his
timorous dreams"--how strangely sounds the word "timorous" used of such
a character!--and later--almost at the end--from himself, in that one
terrifying outburst which gives the first and only clear view into the
mental torments which this strong villain has to suffer, as soon as that
daytime energy, which is to him as an armour, is laid aside. Is it not
very striking--is it not the character-touch of this scene, how--when
Richard is once fairly awake again, when the things of waking life have
returned, with Ratcliff at the tent-door--how quickly this great load of
suffering is shifted off?
_A fortiori_ Macbeth suffers at night, too, but _his_ life is all
suffering. We never get the idea of his enjoying life, which, with
Richard, we really do; for he is humorous--jocular even--in fact, in
tiptop spirits often, but all by day, during the bustle and action of
an energetic career. Later, the wound of guilt begins to show itself,
and here, too, we may make an instructive comparison between these
two practitioners in crime, so alike in their motive and careers, so
different in their fibre and temperament, and yet yielding to the
same law. Macbeth, indeed, suffers so much that his mind becomes, at
last, almost unhinged, and, in the very end, conscience, perhaps,
ceases to afflict him. The machine, too delicate for such rough work,
has been broken by repeated blows--the nerve has throbbed itself out.
Shakespearean parallels are, I think, very interesting and instructive,
but they are seldom dwelt upon.
Thus far out of the path of what I am pledged to deal in, a fanciful
comparison has led me; but I will go no further. _Ne ultra crepidam
sutor_, etc., though, to be sure, I am no more altogether naturalist
than King Lear's fool was "altogether fool." So as, from king or emperor
downwards, I have no respect for titles, it is not much wonder if I
forget now and again to be subservient to that of my own book.[16] Yet
to do so is fiddle-de-dee, for books and people both, in this world, are
judged of as they are labelled--often getting labelled by accident--and
though, in this little excursion into other realms, I have talked no
more nonsense than any literary critic may, without at all committing
himself--except _to_ nonsense, which doesn't at all matter--yet I talk
it where it will not be thought sense. To return then--for your reviewer
bites the thumb at a digression--I noticed many other herring-gulls
hovering over these puffin-haunted slopes, and that they live largely
upon the young of these birds, as well as on young kittiwakes, I do not
now doubt. I can see no reason why they should not lie in wait, and
drag the former from their holes. I must watch for this. This reminds
me of how often I have found the newly-picked remains of puffins on the
cliffs and shore; but these were all of full-grown birds. What bird, in
especial, is responsible for this? Surely not gulls! And never having
seen a peregrine falcon here, I have got to not much believe in him.
I have seen no sign of such a thing on the part of the great skuas.
The others, I think, are only robbers, or at least could hardly kill a
puffin, whose beak should be more powerful than their own. It is somewhat
of a mystery to me.
[Footnote 16: But I needn't have forgotten my own afterthought "--_and
Digressions_." Hurrah! That frees me.]
One more word upon the puffin. He is strongly ritualistic, if not
actually a papist. I find it, as is so often the case, difficult to be
sure which. See the whole series of pretty little genuflexions that he
makes after coming down upon a rock, and then consider his vestments, his
surplice--if that is the proper thing--"his rich dalmatic and maniple
fine," his "rochet and pall," and so on--they are all there, I feel
certain, for not otherwise could he look so extraordinary. His beak,
too, if he only open it the least little bit in the world, is a bishop's
mitre, and, for the ring, he wears it round his eye. "Pope," indeed, is
one of his local names, but, on the whole, I class him as a ritualist,
for he "out-herods Herod." Whether he secedes to Rome ever, or as near
there as the mouth of the Tiber, I don't quite know; but if he does 'tis
no matter, for he is sure to come back again.