me. But his limbs seemed soft and boneless; he had no
nails, no teeth, and he bounced and thumped and flapped and splashed
like a fish, while I rained blows on him with the boat-hook that
sounded like blows on a football. And all the while his gills were
blowing out and frothing, and purring, and his lidless eyes looked
into mine, until, nauseated and trembling, I dragged myself back to
the beach, where already the pretty nurse alternately wrung her hands
and her petticoats in ornamental despair.

Beyond the cove, Halyard was bobbing up and down, afloat in his
invalid's chair, trying to steer shoreward. He was the maddest man I
ever saw.

"Have you killed that rubber-headed thing yet?" he roared.

"I can't kill it," I shouted, breathlessly. "I might as well try to
kill a football!"

"Can't you punch a hole in it?" he bawled. "If I can only get at
him--"

His words were drowned in a thunderous splashing, a roar of great,
broad flippers beating the sea, and I saw the gigantic forms of my two
great auks, followed by their chicks, blundering past in a shower of
spray, driving headlong out into the ocean.

"Oh, Lord!" I said. "I can't stand that," and, for the first time in
my life, I fainted peacefully--and appropriately--at the feet of the
pretty nurse.

* * * * *

It is within the range of possibility that this story may be doubted.
It doesn't matter; nothing can add to the despair of a man who has
lost two great auks.

As for Halyard, nothing affects him--except his involuntary sea-bath,
and that did him so much good that he writes me from the South that
he's going on a walking-tour through Switzerland--if I'll join him. I
might have joined him if he had not married the pretty nurse. I wonder
whether--But, of course, this is no place for speculation.

In regard to the harbor-master, you may believe it or not, as you
choose. But if you hear of any great auks being found, kindly throw a
table-cloth over their heads and notify the authorities at the new
Zoological Gardens in Bronx Park, New York. The reward is ten thousand
dollars.

VI

Before I proceed any further, common decency requires me to reassure
my readers concerning my intentions, which, Heaven knows, are far from
flippant.

To separate fact from fancy has always been difficult for me, but now
that I have had the honor to be chosen secretary of the Zoological
Gardens in Bronx Park, I realize keenly that unl