id Menie. "Let's go hunting just the way father
does! You do the shooting and I'll do the spearing! Won't everybody be
surprised to see us bring home a great load of game? I shall give
everything I get to my mother."

"I'm going to hunt birds and seal-holes too," Koko answered.

Kesshoo was very busy fixing the fastening of his harpoon, and he did
not hear what they said.

The two boys went to their homes for their weapons, and then ran out on
the ice. Nobody knew where they were. Of course, Nip and Tup went along.

II.

All the way over the ice they looked for seal-holes. It takes sharp
eyes to find them, for seal-holes are very small.

You see, the mother seals try to find the safest place they can to hide
their babies, and this is the way they do it:

As soon as the ice begins to freeze in the autumn, the seals gnaw holes
in it to reach the air, and they keep these holes open all winter. It
freezes so fast in that cold country that they have to be busy almost
every minute all through the winter breaking away the ice there. They
get their sleep in snatches of a minute or so at a time, and between
their naps they clear the ice from their breathing holes.

There is usually a deep layer of snow over the ice. Each mother seal
hollows out a little igloo under the snow, around her breathing hole,
and leaves a tiny hole in the top of it, so her baby can have plenty of
fresh air and be hidden from sight at the same time.

The mother seal leaves the baby in the snow house, and she herself
dives through the hole and swims away. Every few minutes she comes back
to breathe, and to see that her baby is safe.

It was the tiny hole in the top of the seal's snow house that Menie and
Koko hoped to find.

The days had grown quite long by this time and there was fog in the
air. Once in a while there would be a loud crackling noise.

"The ice is beginning to break," Koko said. "Don't you hear it pop? My
father says he thinks the warm weather will begin early this year."

They had gone some distance out on the ice, when suddenly Menie said,
"Look! Look there!" He pointed toward the north. There not far from
shore was a flock of sea-birds, resting on the ice.

"Just let me get a shot at them!" cried Koko. "You stay here and hold
on to the dogs! Nip and Tup haven't any sense at all about game!
They'll only scare them."

III.

Koko ran swiftly and quietly towards the birds. Menie sat on the ice
and watched him and hel