So, with two companions--my sisters--I set off the next morning for Pentargon Cove. We climbed down the face of the cliff by the aid of the much-needed ropes and found ourselves on the shore, the tide being low. We hoped that we should be able to get a view of the "seal-cave" and some of its inhabitants swimming in its neighbourhood. We were disappointed in this, and my companions hastened down to the water's edge, in order to get as near as possible to the rocky sides of the cove. I was about to follow them when I saw, lying in the open, on the pebbles above high-tide mark, what I took at first for a white fur cloak left there by some previous visitor. I walked up to it, when, to my extreme astonishment, it turned round and displayed to my incredulous gaze a pair of very large black eyes and a threatening array of teeth, from which a defiant hiss was aimed at me. It was a baby seal, covered all over with a splendid growth of white fur, three inches deep. He was twice as big as the fur-covered young of the common seal--more than two feet long--his black eyes were as big as pennies, and he was lying there on the upper beach, far from the water, in the full blaze of the sun, as dry and as "fluffy" as a well-dressed robe of Polar bear's skin. We were indeed well rewarded for our excursion in search of the seal's cave of Pentargon Cove! For this was a new-born pup of the Great Grey Seal, entirely unconnected with the inferior population of the inaccessible cave, laid here in the open by his mother at birth (as is the habit of her species), little suspecting that the long-secluded shore of Pentargon Cove had that year been rendered accessible to marauding land-beasts for the first time. Not knowing the peculiarities of the grey seal and the refusal of its young to enter the water until six weeks after birth, when it sheds its coat of long white hair, we cautiously rolled the little seal on to my outspread coat and carried him to the water's edge. After the hissing with which he had greeted my first approach he was not unfriendly or alarmed, and for my part I must say that I have never yet stumbled upon any free gift of Nature which excited my admiration and regard in an equal degree. His eyes were beautiful beyond compare. We placed him close to the water and expected him to wriggle into it and swim off, but, on the contrary, he wriggled in the opposite direction, and slowly made his way, by successive heaves, up the beach. He was not more than a day or two old, as was shown by the unshrunken condition of the umbilical cord. We did not like to leave him exposed to the attacks of vagrant boys, who might climb down into the cove, so we carried him on my coat to the shelter of some large rocks, a hundred yards along the shore. There, with much regret, we left him.