Chapter XII: “let There Be Peace”

Once the next fall Sitka again met the Eskimo, who again pursued him with his spear. This time the little bear made a great dive into the sea and swam to safety under water.

But apparently the little brown boy was determined to have his hide,--as determined as the little white bear was to keep it. For Unga had boasted in his village that he meant to get that bear. He had vowed to have Sitka’s great fur coat.

The next year, when Sitka had grown larger still, and Mother White Bear was too busy with his new little brother to pay him any attention, the Eskimo nicked his ear with his bone-pointed spear. After that he knew him by that nicked ear. The year after he grazed Sitka’s side, and Sitka turned and pursued him angrily, as determined now to get the boy as the boy was to get the bear.

Year after year went by, while Sitka grew into a huge white monster, and Unga developed into a lithe little brown-faced man clad in the fur of his kill. And it came to pass that the Eskimo’s one great desire was to carry Sitka’s pelt to his igloo and deliver his boast to the admiring eyes of his village. And Sitka knew that the Eskimo youth would never leave him in peace while they both should live.

One autumn when Sitka was ten years old and the Eskimo twenty, they had both gone far inland over the Arctic barrens, and both for the same reason, in the hope of securing some reindeer meat. As it happened, a hoard of the great, white Arctic wolves had also followed the deer.

One night Sitka stood gazing at the most wonderful Aurora he had ever seen. Brilliant bars of light colored like the rainbow marched across the Northern sky-line,--always from West to East. Suddenly across the glowing North stalked a row of seven of the great white wolves. Failing to find the reindeer, and seeing Sitka so far from his native seas, they began circling toward him; and though the lone bear knew better than to hope to fight off so many foes, and though he took to his heels with all swiftness, the wolves were swifter, and soon he was baring fang and claw to a circle of famished green eyes and slavering jaws. Sitka reared himself on his great haunches, towering tall above them, that he might sell his life dearly.

But Unga had also seen the seven wolves, white against the ruddy sky. And he had seen the great white bear prints, and knew that his old-time foe was near. Now, he told himself with chagrin, the wolves would get the bear, not he,--and he could never bring the great white pelt to his village in the pride of his long-time boast.

Like the flight of a falling star a bright idea shot into his head. He, armed as he was with the musket the white men had given his father, would fight the wolves off the bear! Then he would still have a chance, some day, of getting the bear himself.

With the fire-arm that spoke death from afar, he came running to meet the wolves. With his musket that out-marvelled the sharpest spear he brought down the foremost wolf. But the shot only wounded that great beast, so white against the surrounding whiteness,--it did not stop him long. The surprise of that gave the little brown man pause. A new thought appalled him. Should his gun fail too often, might he not find himself in danger?

On came the ravening wolf pack, and back fell the Eskimo with his weapon that here broke a leg and there caused the red blood to flow, but did not stop the wolves. Soon Unga was standing back to back with the great white bear, within the narrowing circle of their foes, aware that not the bear’s life alone, but his own, lay largely in Sitka’s fighting powers.

But though the great bear unaided could not have felled so many foes, who darted now on this side, now on that, under his guard in intent to ham-string him, nor could the Eskimo alone have handled so many with even the best of weapons, between them they put first one, then another of the attacking hoard to rout. Where the great bear was taken at a disadvantage, the Eskimo came to the rescue. Where the little brown man would have been overwhelmed, the mailed white forearm of his furry foe sent one more of their common foes to writhing in an agony of deep-cut wounds. Now the leader wolf had turned the brunt of his ferocity on the weaker animal, which was the man. But Unga’s musket, pointed close, blew the old wolf’s head off. Then the next in leadership of the wolf pack approached the bear, keen to dart under his mailed fist, that guarded his vitals, and out again before punishment descended. But the lightning swiftness of that mailed fist was aided by the roar of the man-made weapon close at his head, and he was done for.

All this while the little brown man recognized with amazement that for himself as well as the bear it had become a matter of life and death. They two stood back to back, comrades of battle, with Sitka, red-eyed and furious, turning the tide of battle in his favor. And twin to the thought, he also recognized that, were it not for his musket, the bear would soon have been laid low on the snow instead of the mangled wolves.

The bear also was bleeding, as was the little brown man, but both would heal quickly, as the wounds were not deep. But the wolves lay dead at their feet.

The bear stood licking his wounds, while the Auroral curtain shot beauty across the frozen sky, as if nothing but beauty could exist in all the white Arctic world. Sitka was too blinded with blood to see his remaining enemy,--his life-long enemy, more feared by far than the wolves had ever been. Unga could have got him then. But he didn’t!

He had fought side by side with this great furry fellow, with their two lives in the balance. He had fought to save the bear, and the bear’s good fight had saved his own life. They were fellow fighters! They had fought together,--and won!

It came to him then that he no longer wanted the pelt of the plucky brute. He no longer cared to make it his boast in the village nor wear it before his igloo. Why, he owed a debt of gratitude to that bear, and the bear was already his in the sense that he had saved him. Besides, the great white beast, whom he had watched from the days of his wee, fat cub-hood,--this dumb brute who would now be so helpless against the pointing of the man-made musket,--had he not fairly won his life and freedom?

“Do you go your way, and I will go mine,” he said in his heart, and by some strange telepathy, Sitka in his heart understood. “Henceforth, let there be peace between us!”

The little brown man sped away into the Arctic night, to the East where the reindeer herded, and Sitka shambled off toward the West, where the fish of the sea never failed him.

FINNY-FOOT

I. THE WATER PUPPY

Finny-Foot first opened his round, wondering eyes on a world of sun-kissed waves, deep blue beneath a deep blue sky.

The waves slapped in white foam against the rocks, and the sky foamed with white wind clouds. The rocks were slippery with sea-weed, and shone as sleek as the wet brown fur of the seals. Finny-Foot’s woolly white coat, which is what Harbor Seal babies always wear their first spring, made him look like just another of the fat white balls of foam that the April wind tossed up and down the yellow sand of the beach. But the gray gulls flying over-head knew, and called to one another to see the new water puppy.

His parents, like the aunts and uncles and grandfather of the little colony, wore gray, like the ocean on a dull day, with spots of darker gray. But the new young cousins were all white like Finny-Foot.

In the beginning, while Mother Nature was still trying first one kind of animal, and then another, to see which made the best pattern, these water puppies had lived on land, and had outside ears like any other dog, and four short legs on which to carry their fat, furry bodies. Then their great-great-ever-so-great grand-parents had decided to live on the rocks of the harbors up and down the sea-shore, where it would be easier to catch the fish on which they lived. Of course then Mother Nature changed their legs to “flippers” or fin-feet, so that it would be easier for them to swim. That is why seals look so much like fish, with their fore flippers for fins and their hind ones held together like a tail.

They bark like dogs, though, and those finny-looking fore-feet help them to crawl about on land, as well as swim. Of course now that they have become water animals, their ears are all covered with fur, so that you might think they didn’t have any ears at all. But they can hear a fish swim by, for all that.

At first Finny-Foot cried when he was hungry, in a voice almost like that of a human baby, and was nursed like any other puppy. Then he learned to eat the tender young sea salmon that his mother caught for him,--and the clams and scallops that she found and shelled for him. It was a pleasant life. He had nothing to do but tumble about with the other seal babies, or lie watching the gulls that circled back and forth with the big, salt-smelling waves, singing in their hoarse voices that sounded so like rusty hinges, and watching for fish they might grab.

One day, too, the whole sky seemed covered with a mammoth flock of ducks, (Surf Scoters), who were going to Alaska for the summer, where they would not find it so crowded when their young were hatched. For hours the V-shaped flocks swept Northward in a gray-black cloud, while the air rang with their musical whistle. Finny-Foot stared, his puppy-like eyes round with wonder, but at last they all disappeared into the blue distance. There must have been hundreds and thousands and millions of them. How he wished he, too, might travel and see the world beyond those rocks! He little dreamed how soon his wish was to come true, nor in what an amazing fashion.

His mother kept his oily fur sleek and shining, so that he could slide through the water easily, and he had no trouble at all about learning to swim. Soon he could catch a tiny fish in his jaws, if he swam after it fast enough, and his fur turned gray in leopard-like spots.

One day, though, these happy, quiet times came to a sudden end. At first the only thing he noticed was a row of half a dozen long black fins cutting through the waves, far out at sea. Swiftly the black fins came nearer, then an up-toss of their heads showed the circling gulls a row of mammoth jaws, armed with the most murderous-looking teeth. It was a band of killer whales, and at the sight, every seal on the rocks started swimming for shore as fast as he could go.

Finny-Foot’s mother towed him with her when his strength gave out, and so great was her fright that she never stopped till she had him far up on the sandy beach, where the whales could not follow. Those of their colony who were not swift enough got caught, and were devoured by the fish-shaped monsters who were not fish, and whose ugly black sides bore white patches that glistened in the sun. Each one had a fin on the middle of his back that stuck straight up, so that you could see it a long way off. It was that that had given them warning.

All afternoon they waited on the beach. Then at last the row of black fins headed out to sea, and it was deemed safe by Grandfather Seal to return to the rocks and fish for supper. And to hear them barking under the moon that night, watching the white foam blowing down the beach in the wind, no one would have known the bloody fate that they had so narrowly escaped.

But the killer whales came back next day, and this time took them so nearly by surprise that there was not time to swim to shore, and those who could not scramble to the highest point of the highest rock were swallowed whole. How they huddled together upon that high rock, while the killers swam around and around them watching to see if one of them would not fall off into the water where they could reach them! Finny-Foot’s mother tucked him into a crevice and stood over him. No use for his father, and the other fathers, even to put up a fight against the killers. They wouldn’t have had a chance in the world. But once more the whales swam back to sea, and this time they did not return; for they, too, were on their way to Alaska, where they hoped to catch the fur seals as they migrated Southward.

One day that summer, when Finny-Foot’s mother and her neighbors felt quite sure there were no killers about, (Grandfather had been watching the sea all day with his big, round eyes), they decided to have a picnic, and explore some rocks further out in Monterey Harbor, where the painted boats of the fishermen pass.

It proved to be a wonderful fishing-ground. Finny-Foot, forgetting his mother’s command to stay close by her side, swam out to the dories, his round eyes bulging with wonder at the way they pulled up their netfuls of fish. Then he saw a big salmon that he wanted to catch.

The fish made a sudden dive, and Finny-Foot, taking a deep breath, dove after him. The next thing he knew, he was all tangled up in something. Then he was lifted straight into the air, in the midst of a netful of wriggling, flapping fish.

“Father!” cried a black-eyed little boy. “See what I’ve caught! Oo!--May I have it?”

II. PIETRO’S[2] PET

When Finny-Foot, the seal baby, found himself in the fisherman’s net, he never once thought how easy it would be to catch one of the fish wriggling all about him.

[2] Note--Pronounce Pya tro.

His first thought was surprise that he should be rising out of the water against his will. Then he was afraid. He had never seen a human being so close before. Sometimes he had barked, with the family group on seal rocks, as people came to watch them from the beach. Then he would swim to the other side of the rocks to wait till all was safe once more.

It was a boy of nine whose black eyes first spied Finny-Foot as the net was emptied. “Pietro” his father called him. His cheeks were flushed with the kiss of the California sun, and his black curls blew in the breeze, as he stood bare-footed in the fishing-boat. This boy spoke words that Finny-Foot, of course, could not understand. But he read the kindness in his tones, and he felt the gentleness with which the boy stroked his furry head, and he was no longer quite so frightened.

The boy must have asked his father if he might have the seal for a pet, because in another moment he was hugging him joyously, both arms tight around him, while the fish squirmed at their feet, and the man and his partner set sail for home.

But though Finny-Foot was no longer so afraid of being killed and eaten, as the killer whales would have eaten him, swallowing the little fellow whole, he suddenly realized that he was a long way from home and mother. Putting his fore flippers on Pietro’s shoulder, he began to cry, and you would never believe how much it sounded like a human baby crying for its mother.

Pietro stroked his wet, oily, fishy-smelling fur, which was as soft as a kitten’s, and tried to comfort him, but still the seal baby wailed his loneliness.

His mother heard him, too, and came swimming after the boat, her great eyes questioning his round, frightened eyes, as he peered over Pietro’s shoulder. But when he struggled to get free, the boy only held him the tighter, and Pietro and the men had their eyes on the course ahead, for the stiffening wind was carrying them along at a great rate. But she followed as far as she could, then sadly gave it up and went back to tell the colony what had happened.

By and by it occurred to Pietro that his pet might be hungry, and he offered him a little fish. Finny-Foot ate it eagerly, and the boy laughed at his round, puppy-like head, and kitten-like whiskers, and the clever fore fins that he had instead of arms. He looked like a fish, in one way, too, with his hind flippers held back close together like a tail.

When they had landed at Fisherman’s Wharf and Pietro had carried the pale, spotty-coated little fellow to the shack where the nets hung drying, young Finny-Foot surprised the boy by walking across the porch. It was a funny walk, but we will have to call it that, because it certainly was not swimming. First the seal would raise himself on his fore nippers, then draw himself forward, with a hump of his back. Sometimes he used his hind flippers, and sometimes he kicked them together straight up in the air. The other fishermen’s children greeted this performance with shrieks of laughter; and they offered him fish till Pietro had to put a stop to it, for fear Finny-Foot would over-eat.

He got his mother’s wash-tub and filled it with sea water for his strange visitor; then, with the help of some of his young neighbors, he rolled a great rock up on the porch beside it, in the sunshine. There, he felt, the little seal might feel at home. Then he hooked the screen door on the inside, so that no one could get in to tease him.

Finny-Foot was a tiny fellow. His mother had been only five feet long, for she was a harbor or leopard seal, not a fur seal. Her tribe, an old sailorman told Pietro, are found everywhere, from the Arctic Ocean to South Carolina on the Atlantic side and Southern California on the Pacific. All up and down the coast, this old sailor had seen harbor seals, barking on the rocks and fishing on the sandy bars. He had heard they even swam away up some of the big rivers and into the Great Lakes. They have been seen off the coast of the British Isles, and as far away as Japan.

Finny-Foot soon learned to know the boy as his friend, and inside of a week was genuinely fond of him. He loved to have Pietro stroke his silky fur. He would come humping himself along to where the boy sat in the sunshine, mending his father’s nets, and lay his round, white head against his arm, and make a funny puppy-like sound that the boy came to understand meant: “Please come and play with me!”

Then Pietro would teach him to fetch and carry a stick, or some other simple trick. He longed to try throwing the stick in the water for Finny-Foot to retrieve, but he never felt quite sure that his odd pet would swim back to him.

An old seaman used to watch the seal at his antics. One day he offered the boy a dollar for his pet. He said he wanted to take Finny-Foot on board the whaling vessel for a mascot, to bring them luck. But the boy would not part with him.

The next day the old sailor offered him five dollars, but still Pietro would not listen. His ship was to sail the next day at dawn, and the boy heaved a sigh of relief when, with a final offer of seven dollars, the old man said goodbye. The money would have meant needed clothes to the fisherman’s boy, but he would not part with his pet.

Then as Pietro was looking at a newspaper that someone had left on the wharf, his eyes caught the picture of a troupe of trained seals rolling barrels. They were to be in next week’s vaudeville show, and Pietro resolved to find a way to see it.

III. THE TRAINED SEALS

“I’ve got a trained seal,” Pietro told the man at the ticket window, as he stood on tip-toe to buy his seat. He had earned the quarter mending a net for a neighbor on Fisherman’s Wharf.

“What’s that?” demanded a sharp-eyed man behind him, who happened to be the owner of the show.

Pietro told him about Finny-Foot.

“Where do you live?” the man asked, with a peculiar gleam in his eye. But the boy was too over-awed by the mirrored magnificence of the theatre to wonder at the question.

The whole program, the usual vaudeville, entranced him. But when the trained seals appeared, his heart thrilled with delight. The curtain rose on a row of the clumsy fellows seated in a circle on up-turned barrels, barking in chorus.

First came a barrel-rolling contest, at which the audience applauded mightily, as it is rare to see trained seals. Pietro assured himself Finny-Foot did as well as the best of them. There was a trick seal who was always hiding from the showman. There was a mother seal in trailing skirts and plumed hat, holding her baby in her flappers. (The little seal looked too cunning in his white bonnet and long dress). There were other tricks, and every move the animals made, with their awkward flappers, sent the audience into gales of laughter. There was even a seal orchestra, which set Pietro wondering how they could hold their violins. He could not see that both instrument and bow were tied in place. The showman rewarded each performer with a fish, just as Pietro did Finny-Foot. The big bull seal at the kettle drums would hammer away with all his might till he saw the man approach, then he would open his jaws for his fish and eat it, before again taking part in the symphony.

But the thing everyone enjoyed the most was when a large glass tank was drawn on the stage. On an up-standing rock in the middle lay three seals, barking just as they might have off the shore of Monterey. The showman threw in a fish, and all three dove for it. He threw them another, and another, then a whole handful of small, silver-shining fingerlings, and the seals dove again and again for them, bringing them up in their jaws and holding them down with one flapper while they ate, if they were too large to swallow whole.

Pietro went home as proud as a peacock to think that his seal could do tricks as good as those people paid to see.

That evening, just as he had seated himself on the porch in the sunset glow, with Finny-Foot scrambling awkwardly for his supper, the showman appeared.

“Now where is that seal?” he asked briskly.

Finny-Foot was put through his paces, the boy proud and flattered by the showman’s interest.

“What will you take for him?” the man asked at last. “I need another seal for my pyramid act.”

“What’s that?” Pietro’s father called through the window.

“I’ll give you five dollars for that seal,” said the showman, holding out a green-back.

“But I don’t want to sell him,” said Pietro promptly.

“Better take it,” advised his father. “It will buy a new coat for school.”

“Do I have to, Father?”

“As you please. It is your seal.”

The showman added a dollar to the five in his hand. Pietro looked at the money, then at his ragged jacket. Six dollars would mean a lot to him. Then he looked down at Finny-Foot, whose round, puppy-like eyes were fastened on his trustingly. He wondered if the showman was kind to his seals. Then he remembered the whip he had snapped at them when they were slow to obey a command. Besides, how could a seal be happy so far from the ocean he loved? He remembered the old seal who lay all day on the side-walk of the Cliff House beach.

“No!” decided the fisherman’s boy. Nor did the offer of more money change his mind. He only hugged his pet to his ragged coat and shook his curly head. Nor could the showman persuade Pietro’s father to interfere.

After that the boy fell to thinking. Soon school would begin, and he must have shoes. One bright morning he took Finny-Foot in his arms, and made his way to the Ferry Building, where he sometimes earned a dime carrying someone’s suitcase. He was followed by a troupe of small boys and a dozen older people, who closed in about him in a circle when he set the seal on the ground. Borrowing an empty barrel from a man he knew at a fruit-stand, he began putting the seal through his barrel-rolling trick. Then he passed his hat. Nickels, dimes and pennies came pouring in,--mostly from the grown-up portion of his audience. When the next ferry-boat landed, pouring a new audience into the facade, he repeated his show. A third time he put Finny-Foot through his paces, and then passed the hat.

A policeman stopped him. It seemed that there were several reasons why he could not give another show. But he had already earned enough money to buy the new shoes.

After that Pietro had to leave Finny-Foot shut up all day while he went to school, and the young seal did not thrive. No longer would he caper joyously after the fish that were thrown him. No longer did his fur gleam velvety and his brown eyes shine. Pietro realized that a seal does not belong on dry land. He needs to live on the rocks off-shore, where he can dive for his dinner. Finny-Foot might even be homesick for the other seals. The boy’s heart ached with pity.

Then he had an idea! When Saturday came, he went with his father in the fishing dory, and with them went Finny-Foot.

They were not heading toward where Pietro had found his pet, but he waited till he had scanned the water in every direction to make sure there were no sharks, then he gave Finny-Foot one last pat on his puppy-like head, and hugged him, and let him slip into the water.

The young seal, joyous with the feel of the salt tide, and never once thinking that he was leaving his friend, struck out for a point of rock he could just see above the wave tops. His muscles were soft from disuse,--but just let him reach those rocks, and rest awhile, and he would see if he could not find his way home!

IV. FLAPPER THE FUR SEAL

It was “sink or swim” for Finny-Foot,--and it was a long swim to the point of rock he had seen.

He had almost given up, when the tide turned and carried him right toward it. But where was his mother, and the others he had left? Here was no sound of barking seals, though over on the yellow ribbon of beach sand the wee sandpipers ran up and down with the waves, just as they had at Monterey, and the gulls creaked and curveted overhead.

“I want to go home!” wept Finny-Foot, in his voice like a human baby’s wail. But the only answer he received was the slap of the waves against his rock and the creak of gulls overhead.

He caught a fish and ate it before he hid himself in a cranny of the rocks to take a nap. He awoke to an ocean deep blue under the California sun, and a cloudless sky that seemed to bend down to meet it everywhere except where the beach met the never-ending waves with its yellow sand dunes. He caught another fish, and took another nap, and when he awoke this time he felt much better.

He was just wondering if he could find Seal Rocks if he were to swim along close to shore, when he spied the up-standing fins of a band of killer whales. They were far out at sea, but he remembered what had happened to the seal colony when the killers had pursued them, and for days afterward he dared not make the venture.

Then one morning, when the sea was calm, he sighted a big rock shining black and wet, further down the coast, and swam for it. This rock was even better for basking in the sunshine and diving for passing fish. But it was not home, and Finny-Foot was even lonelier now than he had been with Pietro. Again and again he started swimming further South, where he seemed to feel that home ought to be. But always he saw sharks, and had to hide himself behind the nearest rock. Sometimes, too, after a long, tiring swim, he failed to find a good fishing ground and had to go hungry to sleep. Then he came to another town, where he was afraid to go too close to shore, and waited long days on a point of rock that looked far out to sea. There were always plenty of fish, but would he have to live all his life alone?

One day he saw a sleek dark form swimming just off shore. Now Finny-Foot’s own family, like all harbor seals the world over, were gray spotted when full grown. But the newcomer was a rich dark brown and ever so much larger. Still, Finny knew he was a seal by the way he swam, and himself swam out to greet him.

The visitor proved to be an Alaska fur seal, a young fellow who had migrated South with the other fur seals, but who had been wounded by a shark and had to go ashore till his wound was healed. He told Finny-Foot of that land of ice and snow where his own colony made its home. Finny-Foot decided that it must be the need of keeping warm so near the North Pole that gave him such wonderful fur, for he would need it there to keep him from freezing.

There were millions of them where Flapper the Fur Seal came from. Every spring, he said, they started North, after a winter along the coast of Canada and as far South as Northern California. Often for days and weeks at a time they had to swim through a sea that was beaten into giant waves by the storm winds. Often rain and snow and sleet pommeled the sea all about them, and the sky hung low and gray with clouds, and they could hardly see for the gray fog that hung over everything. Sometimes they had to dodge between drifting ice-bergs that roared and cracked in the most terrific manner. Sometimes a storm would raise the waves so high that they were nearly drowned.

But at last, just in time for the short Alaskan summer, they would reach the small, fog-hidden Pribilof Islands, where the mother seals, hundreds of them together, would raise their babies. The fish are so plentiful that the season is one long feast.

The fur seal babies are a woolly black. And here the seal youngsters would play like puppies, racing and tumbling about together with their funny, awkward flappers, diving and swimming and leaping from the water, all in the merriest way imaginable.

But even there the killer whales pursued them. Then, too, there were men who killed them for their fur, (Flapper said). There were great white polar bears who tried to catch them, and Eskimos and Indians, who kill them both for food and fur, so that a fur seal has to be continually on the alert.

But all this danger and hardship had made Flapper unusually well able to take care of himself, and he thought that if Finny-Foot wanted to come along, they ought to be able to keep out of harm’s way until they found the little colony off Monterey. He himself, thought Flapper, ought now to wait until he saw some band of migrants returning to Alaska, and join them for the two thousand mile journey home.

Finny-Foot invited him to join the colony at Monterey, but Flapper said the warm climate was beginning to make him feel itchy in his heavy furs, and if he did not find his people within a few days more, he was going to swim back North by himself, at least as far as Canada.

One curious thing he told Finny-Foot. Instead of each family having just one mother, as harbor seals did, there in Alaska a family might have a hundred mothers all bringing up their children on the same rocky islet. But that was because of several reasons. First, so many things happened to the more adventurous father seals, who had to fight off intruders, that often there weren’t enough to go around. Then the bull seal is so large, (four or five times as large as his mates), that he can easily protect a whole colony of mothers and babies.

Finny-Foot thought he would much prefer to have the kind of families his own colony believed in. But then, of course, everything is so different in Alaska, where it means a struggle just to keep alive, that he supposed it must be necessary.

One day he and Flapper had been playing together, Flapper leaping high above the water in great, glistening curves that Finny-Foot could not begin to imitate, when Flapper gave a bark of amazement. There, on a cluster of rocks in a curving harbor, above which the gulls creaked and curveted as they watched for fish, he could see a number of gray objects moving awkwardly about or diving into the tide.

“Look!” he urged Finny-Foot. “I’ll bet that’s your colony!” But the little seal could not see. “Come on, let’s find out!” Flapper urged, almost as glad as if it had been his own people that he had found. And sure enough, there on the very rock on which Finny-Foot had spent his babyhood, a snow white pup, he saw his gray spotted mother, all alone.

Just at first she did not recognize him, for he had grown so large and had turned gray spotted like herself. When she did realize that it was her son, whom she had given up for gone, she barked so joyously that every member of the colony came crowding around them, barking their welcome to him.

(THE END.)

GLOSSARY

Aurora Borealis--Northern Lights.

Bidarka--Eskimo canoe.

Cache--A hiding-place for food supplies.

Fiord--A narrow inlet of the sea between steep cliffs.

Glacier--A river of slow-flowing ice.

“Husky”--Alaskan wolf-dog.

Ice Berg--A huge chunk of ice that has broken off a glacier and floats in the sea.

Ice Floe--A smaller chunk of ice.

Ice Pan--The ice where the sea has frozen over.

Igloo--Eskimo house.

Lava--Molten rock from a volcano.

Samlet--A young salmon.

Tundra--Alaskan bog.

Volcano--A mountain that spouts fire and lava.

Zenith--The region of the North pole.

Transcriber's Notes:

Italics are shown thus: _sloping_.

Variations in spelling and hyphenation are retained.

Perceived typographical errors have been changed.