ss,
so lashed forever by the long, sullen rollers of the North Atlantic,
so tormented by the shifting and treacherous currents of the tide
between its chains of outlying rocky islets, that no ship ever
ventured willingly within miles of its uncompromising menace. A coast
so little favored by summer that even in glowing August the sun could
reach it seldom through its cold and drenching fogs.

Perhaps half a mile off shore lay the islands--some of them, indeed,
mere ledges, deathtraps for ships, invisible except at low tide, but
others naked hills of upthrust rock, which the highest tides and
wildest hurricanes could not overwhelm. Even on the loftiest of them
there was neither grass, bush, nor tree to break the jagged outlines,
but day and night, summer and winter long, the sea-birds clamored
over them, and brooded by the myriad on their upper ledges.

These islands were fretted, on both their landward and their seaward
sides, by innumerable caves. In one of these caves, above the reach of
the highest tide, and facing landward, so that even in the wildest
storms no waves could invade it, the pup of the seal first opened his
mild eyes upon the misty northern daylight.

Of all the younglings of the wild, he was perhaps the most winsome,
with his soft, whitish, shadowy-toned, close, woolly coat, his round,
babyish head, his dark, gentle eyes wide with wonder at everything to
be seen from the cave mouth. He lay usually very near the entrance,
but partly hidden from view by a ragged horn of rock. While
alone--which was a good part of the time, indeed, like most
fishermen's children--he would lie so still that his woolly little
form was hardly to be distinguished from the rock that formed his
couch. He had no desire to attract public attention--for the only
public that might have been attracted to attend consisted of the pair
of great sea eagles whose shadows sometimes swooped aross the ledge,
or of an occasional southward-wandering white bear. As for the
innumerable gulls, and gannets, and terns, and lesser auks, which
made the air forever loud about these lonely islets, nothing could
have induced them to pay him any attention whatever. They knew him,
and his people, to be harmless; and that was all their winged and
garrulous companies were concerned to know.

But to the little seal, on the other hand, the noisy birds were
incessantly interesting. Filled with insatiable curiosity, his mild
eyes gazed out upon the world.