to the heather, the cloud of witnesses disperse themselves, and, as with us each day, each hour, things smooth themselves again over the high-placed acts of successful villainy. Who troubles over a robbed gull? What moral Nemesis concerns itself with the wrongs of some cheated, done-to-death savage or tribe of savages? Over both there is some shrieking, some eloquence at the time, but both are soon lost in oblivion, the waves close over, the world jogs on its way. Retribution, retributive justice—such fine things may exist, perhaps, but, if so, it is for showier matters. Had the skuas robbed an albatross, something, perhaps, would have happened. Their sin might have found them out—then. A gull is like an Armenian, or . . . but there are so many.
Thus closes one of nature's wild dramas. The gulls are circling again now, and all is as before.
"Es pfeift der Wind, die Möven schrein
Die Wellen, die wandern und schäumen."
Such a scene as the above may often be witnessed as one lies on the heather and watches, but for one actual robbery that one sees there will be a dozen or so unsuccessful attempts at it. Yet, if one believes those who have the best opportunities of knowing, neither the great nor the Arctic skua—the latter is the bird to which attention has just been called—ever eat a fish that has not first been swallowed by a gull or tern. They say, moreover—at least, this assertion is made in regard to the great skua—that if the booty is not secured in mid-air, but falls either on the sea or land, no further attention is paid to it by the
