154 THE ARCTURUS ADVENTURE 



After spending five minutes in deliberate inspec- 

 tion, she decided that I was too strange a creature 

 to be a desirable associate and withdrew, her off- 

 spring shuffling laboriously behind her, to a more 

 distant spot, where they sank down and instantly 

 went to sleep again. 



My next attempt to be accepted in sea-lion circles 

 met with more success. Further down the beach 

 there was a group of youngsters, with one adult 

 female apparently in charge; as a sea-lion has 

 only one pup at a birth, I could only suppose that 

 this was a sort of creche, where other mothers left 

 their children under the watchful eye of a good- 

 natured neighbor while they went out to do the 

 fish-marketing. Here I was received, if not as an 

 equal, at least with more toleration than before, and 

 as children are notoriously less suspicious than their 

 elders, these fat sleek pups believed in my good 

 intentions. The nurse or mothers' helper or what- 

 ever she was, showed some uneasiness at my too- 

 familiar approach and at last made slowly for the 

 water with her brood in tow, but when I followed 

 and stepped into the shallow tide-pool in the rocks, 

 which was evidently a favorite play-ground, the 

 young ones floundered around me, lifting their 

 small whiskered muzzles to peer curiously into my 

 face as I crouched, and unmercifully tickling my 

 bare feet and ankles as they dived to investigate my 

 submerged portions. 



As I looked from one to another of the doggish 

 faces, I realized that every one of these pups had 

 something the matter with its eyes. A sea-lion's eyes 



