Fear came over Ken as he studied it. Its body was perhaps ten feet long, and sleek and fat under a brown-colored hide. But its flippers were not those of a seal; they were too long and slender, especially the hind ones. They unquestionably bore a remote resemblance to human arms and legs. "Yet it can't be anything but some kind of seal," Ken whispered to himself. "It must be!" But then, too, it did not have the ordinary seal's bullet head, set squat between smoothly tapering shoulders, but rather something bulbous, half like that of a man, in spite of the layers of fat that stream-lined from it to the broad shoulders. It did have, however, two large, staring eyes, and slitted holes inches below them for nostrils--which showed that it breathed air and was therefore warm-blooded. Quite motionless, each stared at the other, while minutes passed. Then the creature moved slowly up and forward, impelled by a graceful and hardly perceptible roll of its queer flippers. Very gradually it came towards Kenneth Torrance; and he, peering with fear-tinged curiosity at the animal's bold advance, saw two creases of fat that must have been lips slide open in the smooth brown face, baring strong, pointed teeth. Not knowing whether it was an attack or merely inquisitiveness, he unsheathed his knife. At this the figure stopped and poised motionless again, perhaps fifty feet away, and after a moment turned its sleek head first to the left and then to the right. Automatically, Ken gazed around likewise. He drew in his breath with a sharp hiss. Like shadows, additional figures had appeared in the distant murk. Silently they had come; he could see eleven--twelve--even more. He was surrounded! No longer doubting their purpose, he gripped his knife firmly. He knew he could never get down to the torpoon in time. And then the circle began to close. There was little he could do to resist them, he realized, for what he had seen of their movements told him that they were swift, effortless swimmers. But he braced himself as best he could against the dead whale, to protect his back. He would at least go down fighting. As their spectral shapes slid slowly closer he noted something that had escaped his eyes before. Four or five of them were holding dim objects in their arm-like flippers. Spears, he made them out to be, rudely fashioned from bone. And others held dark-colored loops, which they were slowly forming into nooses. "They're intelligent, all right," Ken muttered. "Spears--of whalebone, I guess. And ropes--probably seaweed. Weapons! Good Lord, what kind of seals are these?"