"Goodness! I wish that I'd been with you, Kenjo," exclaimed Scout Warren. "I haven't seen a harbor seal yet, except just his head as he swam round in the water, when Captain Andy took me down the river in his power-boat, the Aviator. We rowed ashore in the Aviator's Pill," laughingly, "in that funny little tub of a rowboat which dances attendance on the gasolene launch, but though we landed on the white sand-dunes and stayed round there for quite a while, not a seal did we see sprawling out on any reef." "I'll see heem _gros seal_ on reever," broke in Toiney gutturally. "I'll see heem six mont' past on reever _au printemps_--in spring--w'en, he go for kill todder gros seal; he'll hit heem en mak' heem go deaded--engh?" "Yes, the males have bad duels between themselves occasionally. But they're mild enough toward human beings. However, my father had a strange experience with them once," said the scoutmaster, pushing back his broad hat, so that the sevenfold glow from the fires danced upon his strong face. "He's told me about it ever since I was a little boy, and Colin too. When he was a very young man he rowed down to the mouth of the river one day with some sportsmen who went off to shoot ducks, leaving him to dig clams and get a clambake ready for them on the white dunes. Well, sir! left alone, he pulled off to the clam-flats, drew up his boat, stepped out, and the tide being at a low ebb, set to work to dig up the clams which were here and there thrusting their long necks up from the wet sand, to feed on the infusoria--their favorite feeding-time being when it is nearly, but not quite, low water. "The tide had receded altogether from the other side of the sand-flats, so that they joined the marshy mainland, and as my father landed he saw that there was a big herd of twenty or thirty seals lying out on those flats. It was before a bounty was set upon their heads, when they were very plentiful and tame. My father was not in the least afraid of them and was proceeding to dig his clams peacefully, when he suddenly saw that the whole herd was thrown into a wild panic by the discovery that _he_ was between them and the water. They broke into a floundering stampede and came straight for him--or rather for the water behind him--at a fast clip, half sliding, half throwing themselves along. A funny sight they must have been! Father says one big fellow came at him with his mouth wide open: the four sharp white teeth in front, two upper and two lower, shining. So Dad just turned tail and ran for the water as he had never run before; not waiting to jump into his boat, he plunged into the channel up to his waist!" "But the seals wouldn't have attacked him, would they?" incredulously from Nixon.