ocean bed now becoming uncovered by the
tide, for some indefinable childish reason he hesitated to go down
among the rocks in his nightgown. So, whistling with moist
tunelessness, he rounded the Point, Kobuk trotting on ahead.

Here the character of the beach changed, and the high-tide line, where
the rice-grass began, was piled with a criss-cross confusion of
bleached drift-logs thrown up by the mighty surf of storms. Mounds of
old kelp lay drying in the sun, and the unforgettable odor of decaying
sea-things mingled with the freshness of the morning.

Absorbed in the delights of discovery, Lollie poked about in the
tangled masses finding strange, beautiful shells and sea-flowers
fragile and delicately colored as the heart of a rose. He gathered his
nightgown up into a pocket in front of him in which to carry home some
of the damp and none too fresh treasures of the beach.

Sea figs in tan and orange and vermilion made splashes of color among
the wet piles of shiny brown kelp brought up by the last tide, and
small dead starfish turned pale stomachs to the sun. Grotesque,
bulging seaweeds stirred him to laughter, and after untangling one--a
head-like growth that seemed to grin sociably at him from a tail twenty
feet long, he tied the thin end about his waist. The bulb wriggled
along behind him on the sand, alternately piquing and repelling the
curiosity of the sniffing Kobuk.

Another point ahead lured him on. Clouds of sand fleas rose in
rustling hops as he ran along. Here and there monster jelly-fish
glistened in the sun. With his mouth in a continual O of admiration
and wonder, the little fellow squatted repeatedly to gaze at the
exquisite geometrical designs in their crystal depths; but after one or
two half-hearted attempts to pry them apart to see how they were made
he contented himself with adding one to his already overburdened
nightgown. Even in the thrill of discovery he had an instinctive
antipathy against marring a beautiful thing.

Kobuk, running on ahead, had found something which interested him. He
stood looking back, woofing impatiently as if urging the boy to hasten
and see what it was. As Loll came nearer he shouted in astonishment,
increasing his gait with difficulty because of the impeding pocket in
front of him. What he saw was a head of some great sea monster,
perhaps twelve feet long. The dark skin was streaked with dull red and
purple, and where the head had been severed from the