“Oh, mercy! Look! Aren’t their dark heads just like those of a lot of boys, swimming round? And did you--did you see them when they made a dash for the water?”
“They were so quick that you couldn’t see them!”
“Yes, I did! They--they floundered off the bar with the funniest kangaroo roll, half-upright, their little fore-flippers in the air--like puppies’ paws--swinging the hind parts of their bodies first to one side, then--then to the other--the queerest teeter! Oh! I’ll never forget it!... Never!”
Olive’s own voice “teetered” upon the protests that softly lashed the sunshine around the boat, breaking in upon the general medley of her companions’ excitement.
As she perched upon the ruddy rim of the old red settler, her arm was about the shoulders of the adopted Camp Fire Sister, little Flamina, whose Green Leaf was a perfect quiver leaf now, the night-black pupils of her eyes--big dilated--shining through their jetty lashes, like radium in the dark.
“Ah, Madonna! How I am excita’! Vitello marina! De bigga seal! I no see such bigga sealla on shore of Napoli--me!” she cried, her childish mind traveling back by aërial route--the sisterly arm about her made it a rainbowed route--from the lonely wildness of the Ipswich Sand-bar to the sunny beauty of her native shores on the blue bay of Naples as she had occasionally beheld them.
“Ha! Justa looka!” panted Flamina again, liquidly musical as a little spring brook, hugging her excitement passionately, within locked arms, to the breast of her small pea-green sweater. “De bigges’ seal ees no mova--heem stay on sand--rolla ova! Ah! Brava! Brava!”
“Brava, indeed! Did you ever see such bravado?” It was Sesooā’s low, laughing outburst. “Three of them--four--aren’t stirring--not making a break for the water at all! Ginger! we must be within thirty yards of them now. The Big Four lying up there, high an’ dry, on the ridge of the sloping bar! And--and one of them a monster! Perfect ‘whale,’ as the boys would say! Oh-h! will you look at his fangs--long yellow fangs--and his mustache twinkling with brine!
“And the round, brown spots all over him! See him roll over on his side and grin, as if he dared--dared us to come nearer! Mercy! Hasn’t he a half-human kind of face! I’m afraid; he looks like a man-fish, a--monster!”
Little Owl--Lilla--was crouching, hands clasped, in the red stern of the old settler, as the words tumbled forth through her parted lips. Behind her, rocking upon the eddies, was the fern-decked, birch canoe.