Sam, waiting above, heard a whistle, curiously prolonged by its reverberations from the walls. He threw down the hammer, and gave an involuntary start when he heard it thud upon the bottom. The ladder followed, and the unkindled torches; then, without lighting a candle for his own hat, he stepped over the brink, muttering to himself: "S’pose I fall! But I won’t. S’pose I do though. But Maister Dick didn’t. S’pose _I_ do. Well, if ’tis to be, ’tis, so I med as well go cheerful." In reality he descended more quickly than Dick had done. They gathered up their burdens, and made their way by the light of Dick’s candle along the passage until they came to the ledge overlooking the cave. Here they stopped and peered over. The tide was rather lower than they had expected. Their eyes ranged the cave for a time without discovering any sign of the seals. Then Dick lit a torch, and holding it over the dark space beneath, he suddenly saw two orbs of light, like the eyes of a monstrous cat, in a far corner to the right of him. Moving along the ledge in that direction, he descried two seals, greyish in colour, and much larger than he had supposed them to be, lying on a rock, with the two young ones between them. "We will only kill one, Sam," he whispered, "and I hope ’twill be the father." The seals were apparently fascinated by the glare of the torch, for they made no movement, their eight eyes glowing like balls of fire. In order to obtain more light upon his task, Dick kindled two more torches, and stuck all three into crevices of rock in such a way that they illuminated the whole corner of the cave where the seals lay. But now the animals had caught sight of him, and as if instinctively realising that the intruder was an enemy, they scrambled with clumsy movements off the rocks into the water. "They be goin’ out to sea, scrounch ’em!" whispered Sam, whose attitude to all prospective victims was an indignant surprise that they did not wait meekly for their doom. But the seals, after swimming a yard or two, took up their position behind a larger boulder, above which the tops of their sleek, massive heads could just be seen. "We shall have to go down to them, Sam," said Dick. "They be great big creatures," said Sam dubiously. "Wi’ those terrible big flappers they could smite us flat as flounders." "You had better take the hammer in case I miss and they attack us. We must at any rate prevent one of them from getting away."