t of the sea, and it is creeping up
to the tent as fast as it can!"

"Yes," chorussed Florry, "and it's like the seals we saw in the
Zoological Gardens; only it's twice as big and has a long trunk like an
elephant!"

"Jeehosophat!" exclaimed Mr Lathrope, feeling for his revolver. "It
must be a rum outlandish animile, if it's like that!"

"Zee-oliphant," said Karl Ericksen, the Norwegian sailor, in his broken
English. "He is not harmful:-- he good for man eat."

"Snakes and alligators! that's prime anyhow, I reckon," put in Mr
Lathrope. "I guess this air animile'll save your old stores, mister,
hey?"

"I hope so," answered Mr Meldrum. "Although I've never tasted seal
beef myself, I have heard it's very fair when you can't get the genuine
article; the whalers generally use it, at all events, some of them even
thinking it a dainty. But, let us go and see this sea-elephant that the
children have discovered!"

They did not have to go far; for, the queer-looking amphibious creature
had by this time crawled up on to the rocks close outside the tent, and
was quite near to where they were standing--the Norwegian sailor having
already seen and recognised its species before he spoke.

The animal was a gigantic sort of seal, some twenty-five feet in length
and quite five high. If big, it was certainly also most unwieldy, for
it appeared to waddle up from the shore with the greatest difficulty.
Its body was covered with a short brown fur, with lighter hair of a dun
colour under the throat; and, what gave it the singular appearance
whence its name of "sea-elephant" was probably more derived than from
its size, was the pendulous nostrils, which hung down over its mouth,
just like the proboscis or long trunk of the children's old friend,
"Jumbo."

Karl Ericksen had managed to rummage out a harpoon one day amongst the
odds and ends in the forecastle of the _Nancy Bell_, and the sailor
having been familiar with its use from long whaling experience, had not
forgotten to bring it ashore when they abandoned the wreck--looking upon
the weapon with almost as much veneration as Mr Lathrope regarded the
rifle he had inherited from the celebrated Colonel Crockett.

This harpoon Karl now brought forth, approaching the seal with the
obvious intention of despatching it summarily; when another evidence of
its elephantine character was displayed, well justifying its title.

As the sailor came up to it and raised the harpoon to strik