HALIC-The Story of a Gray Seal/Time and Time Again/Six-Horse Hitch/Bomber/A Woman in the House [antikvár]

the beginningMe was born on the running tide. The sea and the rain cleaned him, the wind dried him, and the sun-hot stones warmed his body. He was an Atlantic gray seal, and his name was Haljc.It was October, and the dying breath of summer hung warm and fragrant over land and sea. To the east lay the mainland of Wales, and westward the island of Ramsey. Ali around were small islands and outcrops of eroded rock, mere skeletons of stone.Earlier in the afternoon, as the tide ran north through Ramsey Sound, boiling and foaming over the ragged knives of Half Tide Rock, something had roused his mother from slumber. Perhaps it was the urgent quickening of life that caused her to hang Up-right in the clear water, head and shoulders exposed to the air.Then the cow seal half-roUed on the surface, dived, and swam purposefully, her fore flippers pressed to her sides, toward a smäll stony beach on the landward side of Ramsey Island. As she sur-faced twenty yards from shore, her arrivai was marked by the bëachmaster, a bull seal ten summers old, whose massive head and strong muscular neck were scarred by many fights.The bull had won and claimed this beach, along with the two cows that now lay sunning themselves near their calves. Cease-lessly he patrolled offshore, lest some other male usurp his beach