aved his arms and danced from sheer joy in living, and
with Kobuk at his heels, ran down off the trail through the damp grass
toward the lake.

About a hundred yards from the cabin, hidden in a clump of alder
bushes, he came upon a low hut built of drift logs. Half the roof was
gone and pieces of decaying seal-hide and a ragged red shawl embedded
in the dirt floor hinted of the visits of long-ago Indian otter-hunters.

Interested in his discovery, the little fellow was peering cautiously
in, when, with a sudden bound, Kobuk dashed by him nearly knocking him
over. There was a whirr of wings overhead, sounds of bird alarm, and
half a dozen swallows circled wildly about the frantic Kobuk before
finding a place of escape through the hole in the roof.

"Gosh, Kobuk, I was pretty near scared," admitted the youthful
explorer, looking up at the rafters under which several nests made
clay-grey splotches.

Swallowing hard a time or two he buttoned up the neck of his nightgown.
Outside the hut again he slanted a discreet glance back in the
direction of the cabin to assure himself that everyone still slept, and
then with a whispered whoop of invitation to the dog, skipped down
toward the beach.

The cabin stood well back on the bank off the center of a small
crescent cove, flanked on the north by the bluff around which the party
had come the day before. Toward the south the beach curved to what was
marked "Sunset Point" on Add-'em-up's map. Loll tucked his nightgown
up under his arm and headed for that unexplored territory, talking to
Kobuk as he skipped along.

The tide was falling and screaming gulls rose and fell over the rocks
feeding on the shellfish among the seaweed. Far out on the water great
flocks of black sea-parrots floated, and overhead these stocky little
birds flew in hundreds, their huge, crimson beaks thrust determinedly
out before them, their round, white-ringed eyes showing plainly, and
their wings, seemingly too small for their pudgy bodies, beating the
air in a hurried manner, as they attended strictly to the business of
feeding their young. Unlike the lazy gulls they took no time to loiter
along the way.

The boy, looking up at the busy black workers, little dreamed of the
vital and spectacular part both he and they were to play later in the
struggle for existence on the Island of Kon Klayu.

The weed-covered boulders of Sunset Point drew him, but though he felt
strongly the fascination of the