he had never been allowed before.

Eagerly as he loved the sight of the waves, and the salty savor of
them, when the first thin crest splashed up and soused him he shrank
back daunted. It was colder, too, that first slap in his face, than he
had expected. He turned, intending to retreat a little way up the
rocks and consider the question, in spite of the fact that there was
his little mother in the water, swimming gayly a few feet out from
shore and coaxing him with soft cries. He was anxious to join her--but
not just yet. Then, all at once the question was decided for him. His
real mother, who was just behind him, suddenly thrust her muzzle under
his flank, and sent him rolling into deep water.

He came up at once, much startled. Straightway he found that he could
move in the water much more easily and naturally than on shore--and he
applied the discovery to getting ashore again with all possible
haste. But his mother, awaiting him at the edge, shoved him off
relentlessly.

Feeling much injured, he turned and swam out to his other mother. Here
the first one joined him; and in a few minutes amazement and
resentment alike were lost in delight, as he began to realize that
this, at last, was life. Here, and not sprawling half helplessly on
the rocks, was where he belonged. He swam, and dived, and darted like
a fish, and went wild with childish ecstasy. He had come to his own
element. After this, he hardly ever returned to the cave, but slept
close at the side of one or the other of his mothers, on the open
rocks just a few feet above the edge of tide.

A little later came a period of mad weather, ushering in the autumn
storms. Snow and sleet drove down out of the north, and lay in great
patches over the more level portions of the islets above tide. The
wind seemed as if it would lift the islets bodily and sweep them away.
The vast seas, green and black and lead-color, thundered down upon the
rocks as if they would batter them to fragments. The ledges shuddered
under the incessant crashing. When the snow stopped, on its heels came
the vanguard of the arctic cold. The ice formed instantly in all the
pools left by the tide. Along the edges of the tide it was ground to a
bitter slush by the perpetual churning of the waves.

After a week or two of this violence, the seals--who, unlike their
polar cousins, the "Harps" and the "Hoods," were no great lovers of
storm and the fiercer cold--began to feel discontented. Presently