Nature was hard at work trying to overcome its handicap now.

It was struggling to impress on Baree that the time had now come when he must seek his own food.

The fact impinged itself upon him slowly but steadily, and he began to think of the three or four shellfish he had caught and devoured on the stony creek bar near the windfall.

He also remembered the open clamshell he had found, and the lusciousness of the tender morsel inside it.

A new excitement began to possess him.