"Not when the river is frozen over--or partially frozen," threw in Leon. "They love to take a ride on a drifting ice-cake, so Captain Andy says! Is there any bounty on their heads now, Mr. Scoutmaster?" he addressed the troop commander.
"No, that has been removed. The marbled harbor seal, so called because of his spots, was being wiped out, as he was wiping out the fish many years ago, before the Government put a price on his head. Now that he is no longer severely persecuted the mottled dotard, as he is sometimes called,--I'm sure I don't know why, for I see no signs of senility about him,--is becoming tamer and more prevalent again. Still, he's wilder and shyer than he used to be."
"Yes, there's an old fisherman's shack on one corner of the Sugarloaf Dunes, where a clam-digger keeps his pails and a boat," said Kenjo. "He let my uncle take the boat and we rowed across to the sand-spit. The seals let us come within thirty yards of them: then they stirred themselves lazily, with that funny wabble they have--just like a person whose hands are tied together, and his feet tied more tightly still--lifting the head and short fore-flippers first and swinging them to one side, then the back part of the body and long hind-flippers, giving them a swing to the other side. Say! but it was funny. So they flopped off into the water."
"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.