The sea rolled in and deposited the dead Thing almost at the feet of the two little girls. Prince could not restrain himself any longer, and he leaped upon the body and held it down so it could not slide back with the tide. At that moment a voice startled the little girls, and there was Captain Ozias Littlefield, with a short handled clam hoe in a basket on his arm, stumping along the hard sand toward them. The staff of his wooden leg made strange holes in the beach beside his shoe print, as though some prehistoric monster had passed that way. "Hullo, little girls--and little dog!" he said jovially. "How fare ye?" "Oh, Mr. Cap'n Littlefield!" cried Carolyn almost in tears. "Come and look at this poor little dead merbaby." "Dead _what_?" gasped the old sailor. "Merbaby." "Er--_mer_--Oh, my soul and body! Ye mean a mermaid's young 'un?" "Yes, sir. And the poor thing's dead. Don't worry it, Princey. It's _half_ human, anyway, even if it has got a tail and such short arms." "Them arms is flippers. That's a fur seal," said the wooden-legged captain. "Got his foolish head battered on the rocks somehow. Or mebbe he was hit by a propeller. Them critters air awful cur'ous. Don't seem to know enough to keep out of trouble. If seals had any sense at all they wouldn't go year after year to the same rookery to sit and wait for the sealers to come and knock 'em over the head with iron clubs." "Oh, Mr. Cap'n Littlefield!" exclaimed Carolyn, yet much relieved to learn that the dead Thing was not even "half human," "do wicked men do that to the poor seals?" "I dunno how wicked they be. A livin's a livin' wherever and however you make it. And I bet your marm's got a sealskin coat or cape or muff or somethin'." "A coat?" cried Carolyn in wonder. "Oh! Is that what they make sealskin coats out of?" "Takes more'n one skin to make a proper coat for a lady as big as your marm." "Oh, I'm sure she doesn't know that sealskins come from things that look so like dead babies. I'm sure she doesn't." "_My_ mamma," said Edna virtuously, "hasn't got a sealskin coat. She's got a ponyskin." "Well!" ejaculated Carolyn quickly, "don't you s'pose it hurts a pony to be skinned just as much as it does a seal?" She then proceeded to introduce Edna to the captain. He told them that as the fire had relieved him of his job at the Truefelt House, he and "Cousin Oly" had come across the island, as they did every spring and fall, to catch and cure fish for the winter. "We're stopping in old Beppo's shack down by Dorris Cove," he said. "It's rigged kind of Portugoosy; but it's all right in fair weather or foul. Course, Oly kicks. He'd kick if his feet was tied--Hi cracky! he ain't got but one foot _to_ tie, has he?" and the captain stubbed away, chuckling. The little girls did not immediately lose their interest in the dead seal. "It looks _so_ much like humans," Carolyn said. "See its poor eyes! Aren't they beautiful, Edna? And so sad."