The Whispering Land - Durrell Gerald. Страница 14

For a quarter of an hour he played with the weed, until there was nothing left but a few tattered remnants. Then he flung himself down on the shingle, exhausted, the remains of the weed wound round his tummy like a cummerbund,* and sank into a deep sleep.

Presently, when he woke up, he remembered that originally he had been looking for his mother, before his attention was distracted by the weed. So he shambled to his feet and made off down the beach, bleating soulfully. Suddenly in the middle of his grief he noticed a seagull squatting on the shingle near him. Forgetting about his mother he decided that the seagull should be taught a lesson, so he humped himself up indignantly and rumbaed towards it* ferociously. The gull watched his approach from the corner of one cold, inimical eye. Oswald undulated across the shingle, panting a little, a look of grim determination on his face, while the gull watched him sardonically. Each time Oswald charged it side-stepped neatly, pattering a few paces on its webbed feet, with the air of a professional matador eluding a very inexperienced bull. Four times this happened, and then the gull grew bored. At the next charge he opened his wings, gave a couple of lazy flaps, and glided off down the beach to a more restful spot.

Oswald, the object of his wrath having vanished, suddenly remembered his mother and started out to search for her, bleating loudly. He made his way towards the most crowded part of the colony, a jumbled mass of cows and bulls all enjoying a siesta.* Oswald ploughed his way through them,* treading with complete impartiality on cows and bulls alike, scrambling over their backs, treading on their tails, and planting his flippers in their eyes. He left behind him a wake of infuriated adults who had been woken from a refreshing sleep by a large flipper covered with shingle being planted in the most vulnerable portion of their anatomy.* At one point he discovered a cow lying on her back, exposing her teats to the rays of the sun, and he decided that it would be a suitable opportunity to stop for a snack. He had just taken a firm hold of one of the teats, and was preparing to imbibe life-giving nourishment,* when the cow woke up and looked down at him. For a second she gazed at him fondly, for she was still half asleep, but then she suddenly realised that he was not her son, but some dastardly interloper helping himself to a free drink.* With a grunt of wrath she bent down, pushed her nose under his fat tummy, and, with a quick flip of her head, sent Oswald somersaulting through the air to land on the head of a sleeping bull. The bull was not amused, and Oswald had to be pretty nifty on his flippers to escape punishment. He plodded on over the mountain ranges of sleeping seals with grim determination. Then, at last, he slipped while negotiating* a particularly rotund female, and fell on top of a young bull who was sleeping next door to her. The bull sat up, snorted indignantly, and then bent down and seized Oswald in his great mouth before the pup could get away. Oswald dangled there by the scruff of his neck, without movement, while the bull decided what was the best thing to be done with him. At last he decided that a little swimming lesson would do Oswald no harm, and so he flopped his way down to the sea, Oswald dangling from his mouth as limp as a glove.

I had often watched the bulls giving the pups swimming lessons, and it was a frightening sight. I felt quite sorry for Oswald. The bull paused at the edge of the surf and started to shake Oswald to and fro, until one felt certain that the pup's neck was broken, and then hurled him some twenty feet out into the waves. After a prolonged submersion Oswald surfaced, flapping his flippers desperately, spluttering, and coughing, and struck out towards the shore. But the bull lumbered into the water and caught him by the neck again, long before he was in his depth,* and then proceeded to hold him under the water for five or ten seconds at a time, eventually releasing his hold so that Oswald popped up like a cork, gasping for breath. After this had happened three or four times Oswald was so frightened and exhausted that he tried to attack the bull's great bulk with open mouth, uttering spluttering jarring cries. This, of course, had about as much effect as a pekinese* attacking an elephant. The bull simply picked Oswald up, shook him well and flung him out to sea again, and repeated the whole process. Eventually, when it was obvious that Oswald was so exhausted that he could hardly swim, the bull took him into the shallows and let him rest for a little while, but standing guard over him so that he could not escape. When he was rested Oswald was picked up and thrown out to sea again, and the whole lesson was repeated. This went on for half an hour and would have gone on longer, but another bull came and picked a quarrel with Oswald's instructor, and while they were fighting it out in the shallows Oswald made his escape, scrambling back to shore as fast as he could, wet, bedraggled and thoroughly chastened.

These swimming lessons, as I say, were to be seen very frequently, and were agony to watch, for not only was the terror of the pups so piteous, but I was always convinced that the bulls might go too far and actually drown one of them. But the babies appeared to have the elasticity of mind and body that allowed them to survive these savage swimming lessons, and none of them seemed any the worse.*

The adults spent ninety per cent of the day sleeping, and only occasionally the young bulls and cows would venture into the water, but it was not until evening that the colony as a whole went swimming. As the sun sank lower and lower, a restlessness would prevail throughout the colony, and presently the females would hump themselves down* to the water's edge, and the water ballet would begin. First two or three cows would enter the shallows and start swimming up and down, slowly and methodically. For some time the bull would watch them in a lordly manner, and then he would lift his huge bulk and shoulder his way into the surf with the air of a heavyweight boxer entering the ring. There he would pause and survey the sinuous shapes of his wives before him, while the foam made an Elizabethan ruff* of white round his fat neck. His wives, desperately trying to get him to join in their game, would tumble and curve in the water ahead, their coats now gleaming and black with sea-water. Then, suddenly, the bull would submerge, his portly form disappearing beneath the water with a speed and grace that was startling. His blunt, snub-nosed head would appear between the bodies of his wives, and the entire picture would change. Whereas before the females' movements had been slow, gentle curvings of the body on the surface and beneath the water, now the tempo of their play quickened, and they would close in round the bull, making him the focal point of their game. Their movements as smooth as a flow of oil, they would curve over and under him, so that he was like a stocky maypole* with the slim, swift ribbons of female seals drifting and fluttering around him. He would sit there with his massive head and neck out of the water, peering with supreme smugness into the sky, while his wives formed a whirlpool around him, weaving and gliding faster and faster, demanding his attention. Suddenly he would yield and, bending his head, he would open his mouth and bite playfully at a passing body. This was the signal for the ballet proper to begin.

The females' arrow-swift bodies and the bulk of the male would entwine like a gleaming black plait, curving and twisting through the water, assuming the most graceful and complicated shapes like a pennant whipped by the wind.

Occasionally one of the young, unattached bulls would attempt to join one of these family groups in their play, and immediately the old bull would forget his game. He would submerge and suddenly reappear at the young bull's side in a crumple of foam, uttering a sort of gurgling roar that had started beneath the surface. If the young bull was quick he would hurl himself sideways in the water, and the old bull's leap would be abortive and he would land on the water surface with a crack like a cannon going off, and the noise would roll and echo down the coast. Then it would be a question of who recovered first, the young bull from his awkward sideways leap, or the old bull from his belly-splitting charge.* If the old bull recovered first he would seize the younger one by the neck and they would roll and thrash in the water, roaring and biting in a tidal wave of foam, while the females glided round them watching lovingly the progress of the battle. Eventually the young bull would break free from the savage grip of his adversary and plunge beneath the waves with the old bull in hot pursuit. But in swimming under water the young bull would have the slight advantage that he was not so bulky and therefore slightly faster, and he would generally escape. The old bull would swim pompously back to his wives and squat in the water, staring grandly up into the sky while they swam round him, reaching their pointed faces out of the water to kiss him, gazing at him with their huge melting eyes in an ecstasy of admiration and love.