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118 asleep, despite the incessant cries of the seals and the ceaseless roar of the waves. They did not awake till the last rays of the sun illumined the surf at the cave's mouth; but when the shags came flying in to roost, they bestirred themselves, and presently sallied out to fish on the edge of the tide-race and gambol in the swirls of the boiling eddies.

They used the cave for nearly a week, until tempted by the very fine weather to lie out. Then for three days they hovered in the basin at the summit of the Pillar Rock, about a furlong from the cliffs, their presence known only to the gulls and gannets that sailed overhead. On resuming their round, they came, after four hours' journeying, to the beach of the Gulf Stream fronting the west, and there they fished and frolicked amongst the waves that broke on the shelly strand, and sought couches amongst the sea-rushes that tuft the dunes. They lingered there week after week till the weather changed, but on the night of a lurid sunset, rounded the grim promontory which marks the end of all the land, and set their faces towards the marsh. On the way thither the female otter kept biting off the rushes and carrying them in her mouth, and when she reached the mere she at once chose a