Wild Folk

jewels set in crystal. Flocks of skuas, jaegers, and little auks circled and screamed above the smoky green wate

e of spades, and his round, blunt head was of a dingy white color, while the rest of his fifteen inches was covered with a loose, kinky, gray-brown

vered them in 1741, in the surf and shallows around a barren island, in the sea which now bears his name. When they won their way back to Asia, sly, wise Chinese merchants paid their weight in silver for the new furs, so lustrous, silky, and durable, which the

. For the most part, however, he lived clasped in his mother's arms and wrapped in the silky folds of her fur, while he

nt, misshapen head thrust itself into the air a few yards away. It had little eyes set high in the skull, while the ea

retched himself out on the kelp-raft, his cylindrical body, all gleaming ebony and silver in the sunlight, showed nearly as long as that of a man, and weighed perhaps a hundred and twenty-five pounds. It was the great otter's pelt, h

st ears that ever guarded the life of one of the wild folk, at the same time winnowing the air through a pair of nostrils that could smell smoke-that danger-signal to all

e periods of quiet happiness which come even into the lives of the hunted. While her cub snuggled against her soft fur, she tossed a kelp-bulb high into the air, catching it like a ball, first in one bare little palm

nd brown, was crossing from Asia to America; for, unlike most of his fierce clan, he hunted by day. Larger than that death-in-the-dark, the great-horned owl, or that fierce white ghost of the North, the snowy owl, he sk

late for any other creature to escape. No animal, however, on land or sea can dive with the sea otter. Just as the crooked talons were closing, she slipped through the kelp into

zed the glowing figure as that of a sea bass, a bronze-green fish hardly to be distinguished from the small-mouthed black bass of fresh water. The bass was no mean swimmer, but the long, oar-like, webbed hind legs of the sea otter twisted over and over each other like the screw of a propeller, and drove her through the water with such tremendous speed that, in spite of the handi

f animals. The webbed flipper-like hind feet, which drove her with such speed through the water, were of very little use on land, and her tiny forepaws were so short that they seemed to have no wrists a

a foot in width, or crunch with her pebble-like teeth into the white meat of the vast, armored crabs of those seas. Another one of her favorite foods was the sea urchin-that chestnut burr of the sea. Protected by a bristling hedge of steel-sharp spines, it wo

by hunger, she followed a fleeing pollock out into the open sea. The big gleaming fish, with the black line along its silver sides, swam far and fast. Yet, if the otter had not been hampered by her clinging cub, the chase would have been a short one. As it was, she did not overtake the fugi

right in its path. Dark, and shining like wet rubber, the shape resembled nothing so much as that of a great, double-headed sledgehammer. From either of the living hammer-heads gleam

of all the sharks are so undershot that, in order to grip their prey, they must perforce turn over on their sides. This peculiarity of their kind was all that saved the otter. For a second the grim head overshadowed her. Then, with a twist of its long tail, shaped like the fluke of an anchor, the shark turned over and the vast mouth

drab and livid skin-only rings and strips and columns of tough, springy cartilage, which enabled him to cut through the water like a blade of tempered gray steel. With the rush of a torpedo the grim figure shot after the fleeing otter, who had but one advantage and that was in length. It takes a six-foot body less time to turn than one that measures fifteen feet. In a straightaway race, the fish would have overtaken the mammal in a few seconds;

at soon she must breathe or die. Little by little she shaped her course toward the surface, dreadfully fearing lest the second she must spend in drawing one deep breath would be her last. She flashed upward through a whole gamut of greens-chrome, cedar, jasper, myrtle, malachite, emerald, ending with th

round misshapen head bristling and his snaky black eyes gleaming like fire, this one crossed the vast back of the shark like a shadow. As the great fish turned to follow the fleeing mother, the blunt pebble-teeth of the dog otter, which can grind the flintiest shells to powder, fastened themsel

ormentor, fixed as it was in the central ridge of the shark's back. Again and again the hammer-head bent from side to side; but each time the old dog otter evaded the clashing teeth and ground to bits joint after joint of the shark's spine, while the lashing tail-strokes became feebler and feebler. Not until the mo

these sea otter were among the last of their race, and there was a price upon their pelts beyond the dreams of the avarice of a thousand murky Aleuts and oily Kolash and Kadiakers, to say nothing of a horde of white adventurers f

theast, the storm quarter of that coast, and the air throbbed with the boom of breakers, while

too, must sleep where they can breathe. Battered and blinded by the gale, the little family started to hunt for some refuge where they might slumber out the storm. Along all the miles of coast, and

A mile to windward he stopped, thrust his blunt muzzle high up into the gale, and winnowed the salt-laden air through the meshes of his wonderful nostrils. T

sought the entrance of a sea cave in whose winding depths, many years before, he had found refuge. As he thrust his head into the hidden opening, his sturdy breast struck the strands of a net made of sea-lion sinews, so soaked a

sheltered kelp-raft never broken by the waves, although too near shore to be a safe refuge except in a storm. There, in the very centre of the heaving bed, with the w

ck was the son of a factor of the Hudson Bay Company, which, in spite of kings and parliaments, st

ore about sea otter than any man in his tribe. At that th

hour went by, and still the old man sat huddled under the lee of the cliff. At last, he suddenly stood up. Although the gale seemed still at its height, his practised eye saw signs that it was

glimpses of dim islands, old Oonga held his course unfalteringly, until, just as the gale began to slacken, they reached the kelp-bed in the lee of the little island. Across the hollow tendrils the o

ter nuzzled its small white nose against its mother's warm breast. As she felt its touch, without opening her eyes she clasped the cub tighter in her arms, with a curiously

him. Suddenly, in the silence, with sea and sky watching, he knew that he could no more strike down that mother sleeping before him with her dear-loved cub in her arms, than he could have killed a human child entrusted to his care. With a quick motion, he spl