"I went to Ipswich yesterday to spend the day with my uncle," he began, as he lay, breast downward, gazing reflectively into his fire. "In the afternoon we walked over to the Sugarloaf Sand-Dunes and lounged about there on the white beach, watching the tide go out. We didn't see many birds, only a few herring gulls. But I'll tell you what we did see: two big harbor seals and a young one, lying out on a sand-spit which the tide had just left bare. They were sunning themselves an' having a dandy time! One was a monster, a male, or big old dog-seal, my uncle said; he must have been nearly six feet long, and weighed about half a ton." "More or less?" threw in the scoutmaster, laughing at Kenjo's jesting imagination. "Generally a big male weighs almost two hundred pounds, occasionally something over. Hereabouts, he is indifferently called the 'dog-seal' or 'bull-seal,' according to the speaker's taste; his head is shaped rather like a setter dog's, with the ears laid flat back,--for the seal has no ears to speak of,--but the eyes are bovine," he explained to Nixon, who knew less about this sea mammal than did his brother scouts, and who had never seen him at close quarters. "Isn't it unusual to find seals high and dry at this time of year?" asked Coombsie. "In the spring and summer one sees plenty of them down near the mouth of the river, sprawling in the sun on a reef or sandbar. But in the late fall and winter they mostly stay in the water." "Not when the river is frozen over--or partially frozen," threw in Leon. "They love to take a ride on a drifting ice-cake, so Captain Andy says! Is there any bounty on their heads now, Mr. Scoutmaster?" he addressed the troop commander. "No, that has been removed. The marbled harbor seal, so called because of his spots, was being wiped out, as he was wiping out the fish many years ago, before the Government put a price on his head. Now that he is no longer severely persecuted the mottled dotard, as he is sometimes called,--I'm sure I don't know why, for I see no signs of senility about him,--is becoming tamer and more prevalent again. Still, he's wilder and shyer than he used to be." "Yes, there's an old fisherman's shack on one corner of the Sugarloaf Dunes, where a clam-digger keeps his pails and a boat," said Kenjo. "He let my uncle take the boat and we rowed across to the sand-spit. The seals let us come within thirty yards of them: then they stirred themselves lazily, with that funny wabble they have--just like a person whose hands are tied together, and his feet tied more tightly still--lifting the head and short fore-flippers first and swinging them to one side, then the back part of the body and long hind-flippers, giving them a swing to the other side. Say! but it was funny. So they flopped off into the water."