Most of the cries seem to resolve themselves into the one note or syllable "ow," out of which, through varied tone and inflection, a language has been evolved. "Ow-_ow_, ow-_ow_, ow-_ow_!" sadly prolonged and most disconsolately upturned upon the last, saddest syllable--a despair, a dirge in "ow." Then a series of shrieking "ows," disjoined, but each the echo of the last, so that when the last has sounded, the memory hears but one. Then again a wail, intoned a little differently, but as mournful as the other. And now a laugh--discordant, mirthless, but a laugh, and with even a chuckle in it--"ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!" the syllables huddling one another like the "_petit glou-glou_" of water out of a bottle. All "ow" or variants of "ow," till the great black-backed (the bulk are herring-gulls) swooping upon you, almost like the great skua itself, breaks the spell with a "gugga, gugga, gugga!" or, right over your head, says "er" with a stress and feeling that amounts almost to solemnity.
How lonely and yet how populous! Does life, other than human life, around one, in any way diminish the sense of solitude? I do not think it does myself, except through human association, and for this, human surroundings are more or less requisite. Thus woodland birds seem homely and companionable in woods near which one has a home, and gulls upon the roofs of houses take the place of pigeons or poultry in the feelings they arouse. So, too, as long as a natural alacrity of the spirits prevails over that dead, void feeling which prolonged solitude brings to the most solitary, the wildest creatures in the wildest and loneliest places may seem to cheer us with their presence. But the feeling is a false one, dependent on that very condition, and treacherously forsaking us--even to the extent of making what seemed a relief, an accentuation--when it fails. How often, as I have wandered over this little, noisy, thickly crowded retreat, has all the fellowship around me served but to remind me of my own exclusion from it--as from that of fairies, ghosts, elementals--but what all this life could not do, the cheerful firelight on the bare stone walls of the solitary shepherd's hut did at once for me, and with bacon in the frying-pan I had all the companionship I wanted. A dog--one's own or that knew one--or even a cat, might do more by its own personality than such inanimate objects by association merely, to relieve the sense of solitude; but no quite indifferent creature could do as much, I believe, or indeed anything.
