“All right, then, suppose you shoot the first one,” Dick said a little sarcastically.
Sandy tightened his lips, raised his rifle and took aim at the head of a fine young seal. Just then a baby seal flopped away from its mother’s side, directly on a line with Sandy’s sights. The baby seal stood up on its flippers and looked at the boys as cute as could be.
Sandy expelled his breath in a disgusted gasp, and let his rifle fall to his hip.
“Brave boy,” taunted Dick in fun. “If I wanted turkey for Thanksgiving I wouldn’t send you out to chop off its head.”
“I can’t help it,” admitted Sandy. “I’ve felt this way before, but not so much as now. I don’t see how anyone can slaughter these animals by the hundreds even if their skins are so valuable.”
Just then a big bull seal crawled up on the ice out of the water, making an angry noise in his throat. This old fellow was quite fierce looking and did not apparently take kindly to the presence of the boys. He reared up and fixed baleful eyes upon them, opening his huge, whiskered mouth to show his tusks.
Neither of the boys felt the same sympathy for this new and hostile arrival, and Dick quickly raised his rifle and brought down the bull with one shot.
At the sound of the rifle almost all of the seals took to the water hastily, swimming about and watching the man creatures from a distance. But the old bull did not move from where he had fallen.
“The next problem is how are we going to get this big brute ashore.”
“Gee, I never thought of that. I wonder how much he weighs,” said Sandy, going forward and trying to lift the dead animal.