ng the early part of the season after
the cows have started to haul up. There's not nearly as much of it now,
though, as there used to be."

"Could I see a fight?" the boy asked eagerly.

"Hardly help seeing one," was the reply. "Watch now. We're just at the
rookery. Immediately!"

Turning sharply to the left, the older man led the way between two piles
of stones heaped up so as to form a sort of wall, and shut off at the
sea end.

"What's this for?" asked Colin.

"Path through the rookery. Want to count the seals every once in a
while," the agent said. "Must have some sort of gangway. Obviously!
Couldn't get near enough, otherwise."

"Why not?" queried Colin. "Would the beachmasters attack you?"

"They won't start it," was the reply. "Sea-catch keeps quiet unless he
thinks you're going to attack his harem. About two weeks ago, I only
just escaped. Narrow squeeze. Wanted to get a photograph of one of the
biggest sea-catches I had ever seen. Took a heavy camera. The sea-catch
didn't seem excited. Not particularly. So, I came up quite close to
him."

"How close, Mr. Nagge?"

"Ten or twelve feet. Just about. I got under the cloth. Focused him all
right. Then slipped in my plate. Just going to press the bulb when he
charged. Straight for me. No warning. I squeezed the bulb, anyhow;
grabbed the camera and ran. Promptly!"

"Did he chase you far?"

"A few yards. I knew there was no real danger. Best of it was that the
plate caught the bull right in the act of charging! I've got a print up
at the house. Show you when we get home!"

"I'd like to see it, ever so much," the boy answered.

As they came to a gap in the wall, the agent halted.

"There!" he said. "That's a rookery."

In spite of all that he had heard before of the numbers of seals, and
although the deafening noise was in a sense a preparation, Colin was
dazed at his first sight of a big seal rookery. For a moment he could
not take it in. He seemed to be overlooking a wonderful beach of rounded
boulders, smooth and glistening like polished steel; here and there
pieces of gaunt gray rock projected above and at intervals of about
every fifteen to forty feet towered a huge figure like a walrus with a
mane of grizzled over-hair on the shoulders and long bristly
yellowish-white whiskers. For a moment the boy stood bewildered, then
suddenly it flashed upon him that this wonderful carpet of seeming
boulders, this gleaming, moving pageantry of gray, was com