its name of "sea elephant"--to the hind flappers; while it
must have been pretty nearly ten feet in girth.

"Ah, here are eight barrels of oil at least!" shouted Fritz when he had
given the monster his death-blow. "Fancy all that quantity from one sea
elephant!"

"You don't say you've caught one of those fellows?" cried Eric, who was
kneeling down and trying to detach a little cub seal from its dead
mother. "I wish I had killed him, instead of my victim here. I wonder
what this poor little baby thing will do without its parent?"

"You'd better knock it on the head," said Fritz. "It is safe to pine
away, if left alone to take care of itself, now that its mother is
dead."

"I'm sure I can't do that," replied the lad, turning away from the
pitiful sight. "It would seem to me exactly like committing a murder in
cold blood!"

"You are too tender-hearted for a sealer," said Fritz in his matter-of-
fact way; and then, with one tap from the butt end of his harpoon on its
nose, he settled the fate of the poor little beast.

The result of this day's sport was, some thirteen sealskins, in addition
to that of the sea elephant, which, although much larger of course than
the others, did not appear to be of the same quality of fur. From the
number of animals they bagged, it was apparent that the bullets from
their rifles must have penetrated more than one seal at a time, passing
through the one aimed at and hitting some of those behind. This would
be quite feasible if the leaden messenger of death did not come in
contact with the bone, for the bodies of the mammals were very soft and
yielding from the amount of adipose tissue they contained.

These sealskins, with those which they had previously obtained, made up
their quota to thirty. The oil, likewise, extracted from the blubber
filled up their remaining empty casks, so that they had now no
receptacle wherein to stow any more should they succeed in killing more
seals. But, the brothers need not have troubled themselves on this
account, for their last onslaught on the breeding-ground had the effect
of the final straw on the camel's back, not one of the cat-faced
animals--as Eric called them, from their fancied resemblance to old
Mouser--being to be seen in the neighbourhood of the coast for months
afterwards, albeit the young crusoes were constantly on the watch for
them!

Boiling down the blubber was, certainly, a tedious operation.

The brothers had made a rock