heavily into the sea. Wade and Kit fired as
the waters buried him; Guard rushed past, and Donovan bounded down the
rocks, butcher-knife in hand.

"Too late!" exclaimed Raed.

We ran down to the spot. The water went off deep from the ice on which
it had lain. It was nowhere in sight. Dirt and gravel had been
scattered out on to the ice, and its ordure lay about. Evidently this
was one of its permanent sunning-places.

"Get back among the rocks, and watch for him!" exclaimed Kit. "Only
thing we can do now."

"I suppose so," said Raed.

We secreted ourselves a little back from the water behind different
rocks and in little hollows, and, with guns rested ready to fire,
waited for the re-appearance of the big seal. Five, ten, fifteen
minutes passed; but he didn't re-appear much.

"I say," Wade whispered: "this is getting a little played!"

We were all beginning to think so, when a horrible noise--a sound as
much like the sudden bellow of a mad bull as anything I can compare it
with--resounded from the other side of the island.

"What, for Heaven's sake, is that?" Kit exclaimed.

"Must be another of these sea-horses calling to the one over here,"
said Raed, after listening a moment.

"Let's work round there, then," I said.

The noise seemed to have been four or five hundred yards off. Keeping
the dog behind us, we hurried round by the east shore to avoid
climbing the higher ledges, which rose sixty or seventy feet along the
middle of the islet. These bare, flinty ledges, when not encumbered by
bowlders, are grand things to run on. One can get over them at an
astonishing pace. Once, as we ran on, we heard the bellow repeated,
and, on coming within twenty or thirty rods of where it had seemed to
be, stopped to reconnoitre.

"Bet you, he's right under that high ledge that juts out over the
water there," said Kit.

"Wait a moment," whispered Wade: "we may hear him again." And, in
fact, before his words were well out, the same deep, harsh sound
grumbled up from the shore.

"Under that ledge, as I guessed!" exclaimed Kit.

"Sounds like an enormous bull-frog intensified," Raed muttered.

We crept down toward the brink of the ledge, Kit and Wade a little
ahead. Arriving at the crest, they peered over cautiously, and with
muskets cocked.

"Here he is!" Kit whispered back of his hand.

We stole up. There, on a little bunch of ice not yet thawed off the
shore, lay the unsuspecting monster,--a great brown-black, u