s the rocks.
She wheeled like a flash and scrambled frantically up the steep. But
she was too late. She saw the other mothers near by throw their bodies
over those of their young, and lift their faces skyward with bared,
defiant fangs. She saw her own little one, alone in the bright open,
gaze around in helpless bewilderment and alarm. He saw her coming, and
lifting himself on his weak flippers, started towards her with a
little cry. Then came a terrible hissing of wings in the air above,
and he cowered, trembling. The next instant, with a huge buffet of
wind in all the upturned faces, a pair of vast, dark pinions were
outspread above the trembler; great clutching talons reached down and
seized him by neck and back; and his tiny life went out in a throttled
whimper. The nearest seal, the mother of the Pup, reared on her
flippers and lunged savagely at the marauder. But all she got was a
blinding slash of rigid wing-tips across her face. Then, launching
himself from the brink of the slope, the eagle flapped scornfully away
across the water toward the black cliffs, his victim hanging limply
from his claws. And all along the ledges the seals barked furiously
after him.

The Pup, whom death had brushed so closely, could not be persuaded for
hours to leave the shelter of his mother's side, even after she had
led him back to the cave. But now he found himself the exclusive
proprietor of two mothers; for the bereaved dam, thenceforth, was no
less assiduously devoted to him than his own parent. With such care,
and with so abundant nourishment, he throve amazingly, outstripping in
growth all the other youngsters of his age along the ledges. His
terror quickly passed away from him; but the results of the lesson
long remained, in the vigilance with which his glance would sweep the
sky, and question every approach of wings more wide than those of gull
or gannet.

It was not long after this grim chance that the Pup's woolly coat
began to change. A straight, close-lying under-fur pushed swiftly into
view, and the wool dropped out--a process which a certain sense of
irritation in his skin led him to hasten by rubbing his back and
sides against the rock. In an astonishingly short time his coat grew
like his mother's--a yellowish gray, dotted irregularly with blackish
spots, and running to a creamy tone under the belly. As soon as this
change was completed to his mother's satisfaction, he was led down
close to the water's edge, where