body, the sea had
whitened it to sand-encrusted tatters. The huge mouth lay open and
twisted, and from the lower jaw protruded two rounded tusks, nearly a
foot long.

There was a contemplative moment while Loll's eyes opened wide.

"Golly, Kobuk--" reverent awe was in his tones--"I bet-cha that's the
whale that swallowed old Jonah!"

There was a singular fascination about the battered remnant, far gone
in decay, but the stench from it finally proved so overpowering that,
despite his intense desire to linger near his discovery, Loll was
obliged to move on.

He turned to the upper beachline for further explorations. Across a
narrow strip of tundra-like land lay the small lake visible from the
cabin porch. On the edge of the rice-grass he stumbled against a
boulder that was as remarkably round as if it had been shaped by human
hands. He stopped in delight at the great stone ball and tried to move
it with his one free hand. Farther on he saw more of the curious
spheres. Some were two feet and more in diameter.

"Maybe--giants played ball with 'em once!" he whispered to himself,
with a cautious glance about him.

He headed for the tundra and was startled by coming suddenly upon the
skeleton of a whale whitening in the sand where an extra high tide had
thrown the creature long ago. Purple wild peas and blue beach
forget-me-nots blossomed between the monster ribs, and the huge
vertebrae, scattered here and there, were half hidden by the grass. It
was from this relic, no doubt, that the Point opposite derived its
name--Skeleton Rib.

Afterward Louie's father utilized several of these vertebrae for
stools, but seeing them for the first time, the little fellow looked
down at them respectfully, hushed into silence by vague, sea-born
feelings. Far down the beach to the southward rose the cliff's where
thousands of sea-birds swarmed in the sunshine. Their screaming,
softened by the distance, came to his ears with an eerie wildness. All
at once he felt very small and alone among alien creatures. Kobuk had
turned back without him and was bounding out of sight around Skeleton
Rib. The giant balls of stone suddenly took on fearsome suggestions
from the realms of fairy tales.

The dog had disappeared now. The plaint of a high-flying gull drifted
down to the boy. A breath of wind whispered in the grass about the
whitening bones. . . . Suddenly he was flooded with a very panic of
loneliness. Grasping the folds