I asked where it was killed, and was informed in the harbor.

I had already begun to read some of Mayne Reid's books and other boys' books of adventure, and I felt that this seal brought all these adventures in realistic fashion before me.

As long as that seal remained there I haunted the neighborhood of the market day after day.

I measured it, and I recall that, not having a tape measure, I had to do my best to get its girth with a folding pocket foot-rule, a difficult undertaking.

I carefully made a record of the utterly useless measurements, and at once began to write a natural history of my own, on the strength of that seal.