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 pronouns 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, willy-nilly, through the water into the secluded creek, like a prisoner to the block.