rriving swiftly at
full speed over the spot, snatched up off the surface, and by clumsily
attempting to plunge, two more of the sprats, before the skua could
intervene.

Then it was that a terrible and a totally unexpected thing happened,
and yet, if one comes to think about it and study the matter more, the
most natural in the world; probably, also, on those wild seas, even
common-place. Only, you see, there was no interval at all between the
skua sitting placidly on the lap of the waves, eyeing the gull
vengefully, and that same skua shooting straight upwards, all doubled
up, on the top of what appeared to have been a submarine mine in a mild
form in active demonstration.

[Illustration: "Shooting straight upwards on the top of what appeared
to have been a submarine mine in a mild form"]

This submarine mine, however, in addition to the burst and heave of
torn and upflung falling waters and foam, had a visible heart, a great,
shining, wet, torpedo-shaped body, which rose on end beneath the
stricken bird, and fell again with a splintering crash that shot up the
heads of the diving birds half a mile away. It might have been a
thresher-shark, or some other northern shark, or it might have been a
dolphin, which is bad, or a killer whale, which is a good deal worse,
if it had not been a great gray seal seeking dinner; and its effect on
the luckless skua was the effect of a battering ram, and the skua that
fell back again with the fall of snarling water was to all intents and
purposes a corpse.

But it was a good thing that he was so. Had it been otherwise, had he
tried to get away or fluttered, there would have been no more of him.
That is to say, the head of the seal came up--or its wet and suggestive
big nose did--and poked about, trying to find the bird. It had
evidently meant to grab him, to engulf him utterly and forever in the
first rush; but something--some unlooked-for lift of a wave or turn of
the bird--had made the shot miss, or nearly miss, so that the bird had
been hit by the bloated six-footer's nose, instead of being crushed in
its teeth--its terrible long and glistening array of murderous teeth.

All the same, the nose blow was bad enough. It was like being hit by
the beak of a torpedo at full speed, fit almost to bash a boat in.

The seal was quite evidently looking for the bird, and, equally quite
evidently, seemed bound to find him. To know why it did not at once
see him is to know that the s