"The other sand-hills look like a row of tall, snowy breakers at this distance. Whew! aren't they splendid--with that bright blue sky-line behind them? I expect we'll just have the 'time of our lives' when we camp out there!" came in blissful accents from the patrol leader.

"Well! we're not going to land on the dunes to-day," said Captain Andy, who was standing up forward, steering the gasolene launch, his keen eyes scanning the plains of water from under his visored cap, in search of Spotty Seal's sleek dog-like head cleaving the ripples as he swam, with his strong hind-flippers propelling him along.

"Whoo'! Whoo'! she threw the water a bit that time; didn't she, lads?"

alluding to his motor-boat, as the April breeze plucked a crisp sheet of spray from the breast of the high tide, like a white leaf from a book, and laughingly threw it at the occupants of the launch. "But that's nothing!" went on the old skipper. "Bless ye, boys, I've been down this river in a rowboat when the seas would come tumbling in on me from the bay, each looking big as a house as it shoved its white comb along!

'Twould rear itself like a gla.s.sy roof over the boat and I'd think it meant 'day, day!' to me, but I'd crawl out somehow. An' I've lived to tell the tale.

"But I'm gettin' too old for such sc.r.a.pes now," went on the old sea-fighter. "I'm going to turn 'Hayseed!' You mayn't believe it, but I am!" glowering at the laughing, incredulous scouts. "I'm about buying a piece o' land that's only half cleared o' timber yet, up Exmouth way; going to start a farm. But, great sailor! how'll I ever get along with a cow. That's what stumps me."

"We'll come out an' milk her for you, Captain Andy," volunteered with one breath the boy scouts, their merry voices ringing out over the mother-of-pearl plains of water, bounded on one side by the headlands of a bold sh.o.r.e, on the other by green peninsulas of salt-marsh, insulated at high water by the winding creeks that burrowed among them, and farther on by the radiant dunes.

"I'll t'ink he no lak' for be tie to cow, me!" Toiney nodded mischievously at the sea-captain. Then, all of a sudden, his voice exploded gutturally like a bomb: "_Gard' donc! Gard' donc_, de gros seal! _Sapre tonnere!_ _deux_ gros seal. Two beeg seal! _V'la V'la!_ shes jomp right out o' reever--engh!"

The excited Canadian's gesticulating hands drew every eye in the direction he indicated, which was a little to the left of the central tidal channel, between them and the straying creeks.

And the scouts' excitement fairly fizzed like a burning fuse as, mingled with Toiney's cry, sounded a hoa.r.s.e bark, wafted across the plains of water, the harsh "Beow!" or "Weow!" according as the semi-distant ear might translate it, of an angry bull-seal.

Each boy's heart leaped into his distended throat at the sound, but not so high as leaped the bull-seal, to whom the other term significant of his male gender--that of dog-seal--hardly applied, for he outweighed half a dozen good-sized dogs.

Breathlessly gazing, the scouts saw him jump clear out of the water not quarter of a mile from them, his sleek, dark bulk sheathed in crystal armor, wrought of brine and sunbeams--his flippers dripping rainbows!

Down he came again with a wrathful splash that sent the foam flying, and struck his companion, an apparently smaller animal whose head alone was visible, a furious blow on that sleek head with one of his clawed flippers.

"_Gard' donc!_ _Gard' donc_, les gros seal _qui se battent_! De beeg seal dat fights--dat strike heem oder, engh?" exploded Toiney again.

"So they are--fighting! Goodness! that big fellow is pitching into the one in the water. Going for him like fury, for some reason!" broke from the excited boys, as they stared, open-mouthed, while this belligerent performance was repeated, accompanied once or twice by the grunting bark of the larger seal.

"Great guns! he's a snorter, isn't he? You could hear that battle-cry of his nearly a mile off, at night, when the weather is decently calm as to-day," came from Captain Andy while he slowed down the panting motor-boat in order that the scouts might have a good view of the angry sea-calf--another name for the harbor seal--which Nixon yearned to see, and which was so absorbed in wreaking vengeance on a flippered rival that it paid no attention at all to the approaching launch.

"Gee whiz! isn't he a monster?"--"Must be five or six feet long!"--"Can't he make the foam fly, though?"--"You'd think he owned the river!" came at intervals from the gasping spectators.

"_Nom-de-tonnerre!_ she's _gros_ seal: shes mak de watere go lak'

scramble de egg--engh?" gurgled Toiney, mixing up his p.r.o.nouns in guttural excitement over this river duel, such as he had witnessed once before, when two male seals contested for the favor of some marbled sweetheart.

In this case the duelists were evidently unevenly matched, for presently a wild cry came from Scout Nixon:--

"See! See! he has him by the throat now. That big fellow has his fangs in the other seal's throat! Must have! For he's dragging him along to that little creek! He's going to kill him."

"_Mille tonnerres!_ I'll t'ink shes go for choke heem, me: dat's de tam he'll go deaded sure--engh?" Thus Toiney came gutturally in on the excited duet, as seven strained faces peered over the motor-boat's side at the one-sided battle.

"_Mille tonnerres_"--"a thousand thunders"--were being launched, indeed, upon the spotted head of the weaker animal, half stunned by the furious blows rained on him by the clawed hind-flippers of his adversary, and now finding himself dragged, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, through the water into the secluded creek, like a prisoner to the block.

He tried diving, to loosen those cruel fangs, but was mercilessly forced to the surface again by his big rival.

"Well! I think this fight has gone on long enough; I'm going to separate them," cried Captain Andy. "I guess the tide is high enough for us to overhaul them in that little creek, without danger of being pocketed, or hung up aground, there!"

And with a warning _chug! chug!_ the power-boat Aviator made straight for the bubbling mouth of the creek, across the foamy wake left by the fighting seals, and dashed in after them.

Not until it was almost upon them did the triumphant male tear his four fangs from his rival's throat. Then, startled at last, he swam off a few strokes in a wild flurry, and dove, while Captain Andy drove his throbbing boat in between the combatants.

For a thrilling minute the scouts found themselves at the centre of a grand old mix-up that churned the waters of the creek; the weaker seal, now half dead, was right beneath the boat. Presently his head appeared upon the surface a few yards ahead of it. Swimming feebly a short distance, he crawled out of the water a little higher up the creek and lay upon the marshy bank entirely played out.

His merciless rival reappeared too, to the rear of the boat, strong as ever, swimming rapidly for the creek's mouth and the open water beyond it.

"That seal is 'all in';" Nixon pointed to the victim. "If we could go on to the head of the creek, we might step out on the bank and have a good look at him."

"I can't land you from the power-boat, but you can get into the little Pill if you like, an' row up 'longside him." Captain Andy pointed to the tubby rowboat bobbing astern. "No! only three of you may go, more might capsize her; she ain't much of a boat, though she's a slick bit o' wood for her size! Easy there now! Steady!"

The st.u.r.dy Pill was drawn alongside. Scouts Warren and Chase, with one brother Owl, stepped into her, and rowed to the head of the creek, whence they had a near view of the half-throttled creature as he lay, mouth open, stretched out upon the marshy bank, his strong hind-flippers extended behind him, their brown claws glistening with brine.

"Whew! he's spotted like a sandpiper's egg," said Nixon, looking at the head and back of the marbled seal. "Seems to me he's of a lighter color than the big fellow who nearly did for him; _he_ looked almost black out of water--but then he was all wet. And what a funny little tail this one has, not bigger than a pair of spectacles!"

"See his black nose an' short fore-flippers!" whispered Leon. "Don't his eyes stick out? They're a kind o' blue-black an' glazy. There! he's noticing us now. He's trying to flounder off--with that funny, teetering kind o' wabble they have! Say! hadn't we better row back to Captain Andy, and leave him to recover? He's all used up; that big one gave him an awful licking."

And this merciful consideration from Starrie Chase, who, prior to his scout days, would have had no thought save how to finish the cruel work of the big bully and put an end to the beaten rival!

"Well! you did see a harbor seal, Nix, 'most near enough to shake his flipper, eh?" challenged Captain Andy as the three scrambled back aboard the motor-boat, and made the little Pill fast astern by its short towrope, while the Aviator bore out of the blue creek, to head upstream toward the town again.

"Yes! I'd have tried to do it too, if he hadn't been so completely 'all in,'" laughed the scout. "I suppose we'll have plenty of opportunities to see seals and listen to their barking when we camp out on the white dunes during the last days of August and the beginning of September.

They say the young ones make a kind of cooing noise, much like a turtle-dove, only stronger; I'm bent on capturing a pup-seal, to tame him!"

"Oh! you'd have no trouble about the taming, only you couldn't feed him!

But you'll see seals a-plenty an' hear 'em, too, next summer. They just love to lie out on a reef o' rocks in the sun, when the tide's low, especially if the wind's a little from the no'thwest," said the ex-skipper. "A lonely reef, a warm sun, and light no'thwesterly breeze make up the harbor-seal's heaven, I guess!"

CHAPTER XV

THE CAMP ON THE DUNES

And when those fervently antic.i.p.ated last days of August did in due time dawn, they brought with them many opportunities to Nixon and his brother scouts of watching Spotty Seal and his kindred in the enjoyment of their mundane paradise, whose pavement of gold was a wave-washed reef and its harpings the mild bl.u.s.ter of a northwesterly breeze.

During the final week of August and the first of September their scoutmaster, a rising young naval architect, had a respite from designing wooden vessels, from considering how he could best combine speed and seaworthiness in an up-to-date model; and he arranged to devote the whole of that holiday to camping out with his boy scout troop upon the milky Sugarloaf Dunes.

A more ideal camping-ground could scarcely have been found than among the white sand-hills, capped with plumy vegetation which formed the background for an equally dazzling line of beach, where the gray-and-white gulls strutted in feathered rendezvous, and were hardly to be scared away by the landing in their midst of the first patrol of scouts, put ash.o.r.e from Captain Andy's motor-boat in a light skiff, a more capacious rowboat than the Pill.

But they had brought the tubby Pill down the river too, in tow of the launch; and Captain Andy, who was partial to scouts, had arranged to leave that rotund little rowboat with them, so that, two or three at a time, they might explore the tidal river with the creeks that intersected the marshes in the neighborhood of the white dunes.

"Just look at that gray gull, will you?" laughed Patrol Leader Nixon, as he landed from the skiff. "He's made up his mind that we Owls have no rights here: that this white beach is his stamping-ground, and he won't be frightened away!"

Other gulls had reluctantly taken wing and wheeled off during the prolonged process of landing the eight members of the Owl Patrol, with their scoutmasters and camp outfit, in various detachments from the launch, which was too large to run right in to the beach.

But this one youthful sea-gull, a mere boy in plumage gray, held his ground, parading the lonely beach with head turning alertly from side to side, as if he were admonishing his wheeling brothers with: "These are boy scouts! Look at me: I tell you, you have nothing to fear!"

So bold was his mien, so peaceful the att.i.tude of the human invaders, that presently the regiment of sea-gulls fluttered back to a point of rendezvous only a little removed from their former one.

"We won't have much company beyond ourselves and the birds, I guess!"

remarked Nixon presently. "There are no houses in sight except those three fine bungalows about quarter of a mile off on the edge of the dunes. And the fisherman's shack on the beach below them!"