As I halted and looked back, this afternoon, in the midst of my ascent, I was struck by the figure of a shag, or smaller cormorant, standing in the exact centre of the highest ridge of one of those great isolated piles of rock that the sea has cut off from their parent precipice, and which are called here "stacks." It had the wings spread out, after its fashion, and looked thus, and in its "pride of place," absurdly like the heraldic eagle of some cock-crowing nationality or other: American, Austrian, Russian, or any of them--for they all crow and will all, one day, "yield the crow a pudding."
What month in the year was it that King Lear was turned out into the storm? This is August, but what a night! I can see no farther than a few paces outside the hut. All is mist, with spit-fire storms of rain, and a wind that seems as though it would blow the ness into the sea. "A brave night to cool a courtesan in," and so it was, last night; nor did it greatly differ the night before.
The wind is not so pleasant to hear at night-time here as it is in England. I cannot lie and listen to it with the same feelings. It has not the same poetry, for there are no trees for it to sigh and moan through, and therefore it cannot produce those sad, weird, mysterious sounds which appeal so powerfully to the imagination. Instead, it strikes the hut with sudden bangs and blows which upset one's nerves and have an irritating effect upon one. There is noise, racket, and bluster, but no mystery, no haunting mournfulness. It plays no "eolian harps amongst the trees." No, the wind here is "the fierce Kabibonokka" that--
"Shouted down into the smoke-flue, Shook the lodge-poles in his fury, Flapped the curtain of the doorway,"
but not the wind that one knows so well in England and hears for ever in those lines of _Maud_--
"And out he walked when the wind like a broken worldling wailed, And the flying gold of the ruined woodlands flew through the air."
There can never be a wind like that here, where there are no leaves when "summer woods are leafy" and no trees "when winter storms sing i' the tree."
Plague take the wind! It is like a bombardment.
The ledges are thinning. There are only thirty-seven birds now where I counted more than a hundred the other day; but some may be coming back. My special young one is lying on the ledge with its face to the cliff, and the white-eyed bird standing over it; but very soon it turns, and is under the wing, as usual. The left wing seems the favoured one. Always, except once, it has been that. The other young one is also lying under the wing, just as it was yesterday, and here, too, as always before, it is the left one. All these guillemots keep constantly uttering exclamations, as they may be called--different intonations of a deep "ur!" or "oor!" with an occasional much louder "ara!" or "hara!" of which last I have spoken. This has been the case since I came here. There is a great deal of expression in these sounds--quite as much so, it seems to me, as in some of our own exclamations. Any emotion which rises above the ordinary level of feeling, be it to do with fighting, feeding, loving, may give rise to the prolonged, deep _jodel_. The plain parent now flies in with a fish for the young one, and there is exactly the same scene as the last time, all the birds near, as well as the father and mother, _jodel_-ing excitedly. The fish is then laid on the ledge before the chick, who, getting it head downwards, swallows it voraciously. Directly afterwards the white-eyed bird, for the first time that I have yet seen, flies from the ledge into the sea, but too far off for me to watch. The other one remains, but he does not seem ready with his wing. The chick makes several attempts to take sanctuary, but they are not responded to, so he is reduced to standing and preening himself, the father standing just behind him, between him and the sea. At last, however, he forces himself under the wing, but it hangs over him awkwardly, not clasping him at all, and very shortly--in less than a minute--he comes out again.