The Whispering Land

The ones that seemed to lead the most carefree and pleasant lives were the young, but fully adult bulls, who had only succeeded in getting themselves one wife, they generally lay a little apart from the main colony, their wife and cub alongside them, and spent a lot of time sleeping. They could afford to do this, as it was obviously easier to control one of these high-spirited female seals than to try and cope with the vagaries of six or seven.

I have not as yet mentioned the fur seal pups which were such an important and amusing part of the colony. There were hundreds of them, and they moved continuously through the mass of sleeping, love-making, bickering adults, looking like animated black inkblots. They would lie sleeping on the shingle in the most extraordinary abandoned attitudes, as though they were really balloon animals* that had suddenly been half deflated. Then, suddenly, one would wake up and discover that its mother was not there, and it would hoist itself on to its flippers and move sturdily down the beach, employing the strange rumba-like movement of the adult seal. Planting its flippers in the shingle with great determination, it would pause every few yards to open wide its pink mouth and bleat forlornly, like a lamb. Then, after it had wandered some distance in search of its parents, its bravado and strength would desert it, and it would give one more despairing bleat and then flop down on its tummy and sink almost immediately into a deep and refreshing sleep.

There appeared to be a rather vague crèche* system in operation for some of the pups, for in places there would be groups of them, perhaps ten or twenty together, looking like heaps of curiously shaped coal. There would be a young bull or a couple of females sleeping nearby who were apparently in charge of these crèches, for if one of the babies wandered outside the invisible area that formed the crèche, one of the adults would rouse itself, undulate after it, catch it up in its vast mouth, give it a good shaking and throw it back into the nursery again. In spite of careful watching I was never able to decide satisfactorily whether these groups of babies were the progeny from one family of seals, or whether they were a mixture from several families. If they came from several families then these groups of babies would be, in effect, a sort of nursery school or kindergarten where the babies were dumped* while the parents went down to the sea to swim or feed. I wanted to film the daily behaviour of the pups, but in order to do this one had to pick out one particular baby, and as they were all identical in size and colour this was difficult. Then, just when I had begun to despair, I saw a pup that was recognisable. He had obviously been born later than the others, for he was only half their size, but what he lacked in inches he more than made up for in determination and personality.*

When I first noticed Oswald (as we christened him) he was busily engaged in stalking a long ribbon of glittering green seaweed that lay on the shingle, and which he was obviously under the impression was some sort of monstrous sea-serpent which was threatening the colony. He shambled towards it, bleary-eyed, and stopped a yard or so away to sniff. A slight wind twitched the end of the seaweed, and at this obviously threatening display Oswald turned and lollopped off* as fast as his flippers would carry him.* He stopped a safe distance away and peered over his shoulder, but the wind had died now and the seaweed lay still. Carefully he approached it again, stopping some six feet away to sniff, his fat little body taut and trembling, ready to run should he see the slightest movement. But the seaweed lay quiet in the sun, shining like a ribbon of jade. He approached it slowly and carefully, giving the impression that he was almost tiptoeing on his great flat flippers, and holding his breath in case of accidents. Still the seaweed made no movement. Cheered by this display of cowardice, Oswald decided that it was his duty to save the colony from this obviously dangerous enemy, which was liable to take them unawares. He shuffled his bottom to and fro ridiculously, so that his hind flippers got a good grip in the shingle, and then launched himself at the seaweed. In his enthusiasm he rather overshot the mark, and ended up on his nose in a fountain of shingle, but with a large section of the seaweed firmly grasped in his mouth. He sat up, the seaweed dangling from either side of his mouth like a green moustache, looking very pleased that his first bite had apparently disabled the enemy completely. He shook his head from side to side, making the weed flap to and fro, and then, shambling to his flippers, he galloped off along the beach trailing the weed on each side of him, occasionally shaking his head vigorously, as if to make sure his victim was really dead.