THE WHITE SEAL
Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us, And black are the waters that sparkled so green. The moon, o'er the combers, looks downward to find us At rest in the hollows that rustle between. Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow; Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease! The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee, Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.
_Seal Lullaby._
THE WHITE SEAL
ALL these things happened several years ago at a place calledNovastoshnah, or North East Point, on the Island of St. Paul, away andaway in the Bering Sea. Limmershin, the Winter Wren, told me the talewhen he was blown on to the rigging of a steamer going to Japan, and Itook him down into my cabin and warmed and fed him for a couple of daystill he was fit to fly back to St. Paul's again. Limmershin is a veryodd little bird, but he knows how to tell the truth.
Nobody comes to Novastoshnah except on business, and the only people whohave regular business there are the seals. They come in the summermonths by hundreds and hundreds of thousands out of the cold gray sea;for Novastoshnah Beach has the finest accommodation for seals of anyplace in all the world.
Sea Catch knew that, and every spring would swim from whatever place hehappened to be in--would swim like a torpedo-boat straight forNovastoshnah, and spend a month fighting with his companions for a goodplace on the rocks as close to the sea as possible. Sea Catch wasfifteen years old, a huge gray fur-seal with almost a mane on hisshoulders, and long, wicked dogteeth. When he heaved himself up on hisfront flippers he stood more than four feet clear of the ground, and hisweight, if any one had been bold enough to weigh him, was nearly sevenhundred pounds. He was scarred all over with the marks of savage fights,but he was always ready for just one fight more. He would put his headon one side, as though he were afraid to look his enemy in the face;then he would shoot it out like lightning, and when the big teeth werefirmly fixed on the other seal's neck, the other seal might get away ifhe could, but Sea Catch would not help him.
Yet Sea Catch never chased a beaten seal, for that was against the Rulesof the Beach. He only wanted room by the sea for his nursery; but asthere were forty or fifty thousand other seals hunting for the samething each spring, the whistling, bellowing, roaring, and blowing on thebeach was something frightful.
From a little hill called Hutchinson's Hill you could look over threeand a half miles of ground covered with fighting seals; and the surf wasdotted all over with the heads of seals hurrying to land and begin theirshare of the fighting. They fought in the breakers, they fought in thesand, and they fought on the smooth-worn basalt rocks of the nurseries;for they were just as stupid and unaccommodating as men. Their wivesnever came to the island until late in May or early in June, for theydid not care to be torn to pieces; and the young two-, three-, andfour-year-old seals who had not begun housekeeping went inland abouthalf a mile through the ranks of the fighters and played about on thesand-dunes in droves and legions, and rubbed off every single greenthing that grew. They were called the holluschickie,--thebachelors,--and there were perhaps two or three hundred thousand of themat Novastoshnah alone.
Sea Catch had just finished his forty-fifth fight one spring whenMatkah, his soft, sleek, gentle-eyed wife came up out of the sea, andhe caught her by the scruff of the neck and dumped her down on hisreservation, saying gruffly: "Late, as usual. Where _have_ you been?"
It was not the fashion for Sea Catch to eat anything during the fourmonths he stayed on the beaches, and so his temper was generally bad.Matkah knew better than to answer back. She looked around and cooed:"How thoughtful of you. You've taken the old place again."
"I should think I had," said Sea Catch. "Look at me!"
He was scratched and bleeding in twenty places; one eye was almostblind, and his sides were torn to ribbons.
"Oh, you men, you men!" Matkah said, fanning herself with her hindflipper. "Why can't you be sensible and settle your places quietly? Youlook as though you had been fighting with the Killer Whale."
"I haven't been doing anything _but_ fight since the middle of May. Thebeach is disgracefully crowded this season. I've met at least a hundredseals from Lukannon Beach, house-hunting. Why can't people stay wherethey belong?"
"I've often thought we should be much happier if we hauled out at OtterIsland instead of this crowded place," said Matkah.
"Bah! Only the holluschickie go to Otter Island. If we went there theywould say we were afraid. We must preserve appearances, my dear."
Sea Catch sunk his head proudly between his fat shoulders and pretendedto go to sleep for a few minutes, but all the time he was keeping asharp lookout for a fight. Now that all the seals and their wives wereon the land you could hear their clamor miles out to sea above theloudest gales. At the lowest counting there were over a million seals onthe beach,--old seals, mother seals, tiny babies, and holluschickie,fighting, scuffling, bleating, crawling, and playing together,--goingdown to the sea and coming up from it in gangs and regiments, lying overevery foot of ground as far as the eye could reach, and skirmishingabout in brigades through the fog. It is nearly always foggy atNovastoshnah, except when the sun comes out and makes everything lookall pearly and rainbow-colored for a little while.
Kotick, Matkah's baby, was born in the middle of that confusion, and hewas all head and shoulders, with pale, watery blue eyes, as tiny sealsmust be; but there was something about his coat that made his motherlook at him very closely.
"Sea Catch," she said, at last, "our baby's going to be white!"
"Empty clam-shells and dry seaweed!" snorted Sea Catch. "There never hasbeen such a thing in the world as a white seal."
"I can't help that," said Matkah; "there's going to be now"; and shesang the low, crooning seal-song that all the mother seals sing to theirbabies:
You mustn't swim till you're six weeks old, Or your head will be sunk by your heels; And summer gales and Killer Whales Are bad for baby seals.
Are bad for baby seals, dear rat, As bad as bad can be; But splash and grow strong, And you can't be wrong, Child of the Open Sea!
Of course the little fellow did not understand the words at first. Hepaddled and scrambled about by his mother's side, and learned to scuffleout of the way when his father was fighting with another seal, and thetwo rolled and roared up and down the slippery rocks. Matkah used to goto sea to get things to eat, and the baby was fed only once in two days;but then he ate all he could, and throve upon it.
The first thing he did was to crawl inland, and there he met tens ofthousands of babies of his own age, and they played together likepuppies, went to sleep on the clean sand, and played again. The oldpeople in the nurseries took no notice of them, and the holluschickiekept to their own grounds, so the babies had a beautiful playtime.
When Matkah came back from her deep-sea fishing she would go straight totheir playground and call as a sheep calls for a lamb, and wait untilshe heard Kotick bleat. Then she would take the straightest of straightlines in his direction, striking out with her fore flippers and knockingthe youngsters head over heels right and left. There were always a fewhundred mothers hunting for their children through the playgrounds, andthe babies were kept lively; but, as Matkah told Kotick, "So long as youdon't lie in muddy water and get mange; or rub the hard sand into a cutor scratch; and so long as you never go swimming when there is a heavysea, nothing will hurt you here."
Little seals can no more swim than little children, but they are unhappytill they learn. The first time that Kotick went down to the sea a wavecarried him out beyond his depth, and his big head sank and his littlehind flippers flew up exactly as his mother had told him in the song,and if the next wave had not thrown him back again he would havedrowned.
After that he learned to lie in a
beach-pool and let the wash of thewaves just cover him and lift him up while he paddled, but he alwayskept his eye open for big waves that might hurt. He was two weekslearning to use his flippers; and all that while he floundered in andout of the water, and coughed and grunted and crawled up the beach andtook cat-naps on the sand, and went back again, until at last he foundthat he truly belonged to the water.
Then you can imagine the times that he had with his companions, duckingunder the rollers; or coming in on top of a comber and landing with aswash and a splutter as the big wave went whirling far up the beach; orstanding up on his tail and scratching his head as the old people did;or playing "I'm the King of the Castle" on slippery, weedy rocks thatjust stuck out of the wash. Now and then he would see a thin fin, like abig shark's fin, drifting along close to shore, and he knew that thatwas the Killer Whale, the Grampus, who eats young seals when he can getthem; and Kotick would head for the beach like an arrow, and the finwould jig off slowly, as if it were looking for nothing at all.
Late in October the seals began to leave St. Paul's for the deep sea, byfamilies and tribes, and there was no more fighting over the nurseries,and the holluschickie played anywhere they liked. "Next year," saidMatkah to Kotick, "you will be a holluschickie; but this year you mustlearn how to catch fish."
They set out together across the Pacific, and Matkah showed Kotick howto sleep on his back with his flippers tucked down by his side and hislittle nose just out of the water. No cradle is so comfortable as thelong, rocking swell of the Pacific. When Kotick felt his skin tingle allover, Matkah told him he was learning the "feel of the water," and thattingly, prickly feelings meant bad weather coming, and he must swim hardand get away.
"In a little time," she said, "you'll know where to swim to, but justnow we'll follow Sea Pig, the Porpoise, for he is very wise." A schoolof porpoises were ducking and tearing through the water, and littleKotick followed them as fast as he could. "How do you know where to goto?" he panted. The leader of the school rolled his white eyes, andducked under. "My tail tingles, youngster," he said. "That meansthere's a gale behind me. Come along! When you're south of the StickyWater [he meant the Equator], and your tail tingles, that means there'sa gale in front of you and you must head north. Come along! The waterfeels bad here."
This was one of very many things that Kotick learned, and he was alwayslearning. Matkah taught him how to follow the cod and the halibut alongthe under-sea banks, and wrench the rockling out of his hole among theweeds; how to skirt the wrecks lying a hundred fathoms below water, anddart like a rifle-bullet in at one porthole and out at another as thefishes ran; how to dance on the top of the waves when the lightning wasracing all over the sky, and wave his flipper politely to theStumpy-tailed Albatross and the Man-of-war Hawk as they went down thewind; how to jump three or four feet clear of the water, like a dolphin,flippers close to the side and tail curved; to leave the flying-fishalone because they are all bony; to take the shoulder-piece out of a codat full speed ten fathoms deep; and never to stop and look at a boat ora ship, but particularly a row boat. At the end of six months, whatKotick did not know about deep-sea fishing was not worth the knowing,and all that time he never set flipper on dry ground.
"TEN FATHOMS DEEP."]
One day, however, as he was lying half asleep in the warm watersomewhere off the Island of Juan Fernandez, he felt faint and lazy allover, just as human people do when the spring is in their legs, and heremembered the good firm beaches of Novastoshnah seven thousand milesaway; the games his companions played, the smell of the seaweed, theseal-roar, and the fighting. That very minute he turned north, swimmingsteadily, and as he went on he met scores of his mates, all bound forthe same place, and they said: "Greeting, Kotick! This year we are allholluschickie, and we can dance the Fire-dance in the breakers offLukannon and play on the new grass. But where did you get that coat?"
Kotick's fur was almost pure white now, and though he felt very proud ofit, he only said: "Swim quickly! My bones are aching for the land." Andso they all came to the beaches where they had been born and heard theold seals, their fathers, fighting in the rolling mist.
That night Kotick danced the Fire-dance with the yearling seals. The seais full of fire on summer nights all the way down from Novastoshnah toLukannon, and each seal leaves a wake like burning oil behind him, and aflaming flash when he jumps, and the waves break in great phosphorescentstreaks and swirls. Then they went inland to the holluschickie grounds,and rolled up and down in the new wild wheat, and told stories of whatthey had done while they had been at sea. They talked about the Pacificas boys would talk about a wood that they had been nutting in, and ifany one had understood them, he could have gone away and made such achart of that ocean as never was. The three- and four-year-oldholluschickie romped down from Hutchinson's Hill, crying: "Out of theway, youngsters! The sea is deep, and you don't know all that's in ityet. Wait till you've rounded the Horn. Hi, you yearling, where did youget that white coat?"
"I didn't get it," said Kotick; "it grew." And just as he was going toroll the speaker over, a couple of black-haired men with flat red facescame from behind a sand-dune, and Kotick, who had never seen a manbefore, coughed and lowered his head. The holluschickie just bundled offa few yards and sat staring stupidly. The men were no less than KerickBooterin, the chief of the seal-hunters on the island, and Patalamon,his son. They came from the little village not half a mile from the sealnurseries, and they were deciding what seals they would drive up to thekilling-pens (for the seals were driven just like sheep), to be turnedinto sealskin jackets later on.
"Ho!" said Patalamon. "Look! There's a white seal!"
Kerick Booterin turned nearly white under his oil and smoke, for he wasan Aleut, and Aleuts are not clean people. Then he began to mutter aprayer. "Don't touch him, Patalamon. There has never been a white sealsince--since I was born. Perhaps it is old Zaharrof's ghost. He was lostlast year in the big gale."
"I'm not going near him," said Patalamon. "He's unlucky. Do you reallythink he is old Zaharrof come back? I owe him for some gulls' eggs."
"Don't look at him," said Kerick. "Head off that drove offour-year-olds. The men ought to skin two hundred to-day, but it's thebeginning of the season, and they are new to the work. A hundred willdo. Quick!"
Patalamon rattled a pair of seal's shoulder-bones in front of a herd ofholluschickie and they stopped dead, puffing and blowing. Then hestepped near, and the seals began to move, and Kerick headed theminland, and they never tried to get back to their companions. Hundredsand hundreds of thousands of seals watched them being driven, but theywent on playing just the same. Kotick was the only one who askedquestions, and none of his companions could tell him anything, exceptthat the men always drove seals in that way for six weeks or two monthsof every year.
"I am going to follow," he said, and his eyes nearly popped out of hishead as he shuffled along in the wake of the herd.
"The white seal is coming after us," cried Patalamon. "That's the firsttime a seal has ever come to the killing-grounds alone."
"Hsh! Don't look behind you," said Kerick. "It _is_ Zaharrof's ghost! Imust speak to the priest about this."
The distance to the killing-grounds was only half a mile, but it took anhour to cover, because if the seals went too fast Kerick knew that theywould get heated and then their fur would come off in patches when theywere skinned. So they went on very slowly, past Sea-Lion's Neck, pastWebster House, till they came to the Salt House just beyond the sight ofthe seals on the beach. Kotick followed, panting and wondering. Hethought that he was at the world's end, but the roar of the sealnurseries behind him sounded as loud as the roar of a train in a tunnel.Then Kerick sat down on the moss and pulled out a heavy pewter watch andlet the drove cool off for thirty minutes, and Kotick could hear thefog-dew dripping from the brim of his cap. Then ten or twelve men, eachwith an iron-bound club three or four feet long, came up, and Kerickpointed out one or two of the drove that were bitten by their companionsor were
too hot, and the men kicked those aside with their heavy bootsmade of the skin of a walrus's throat, and then Kerick said: "Let go!"and then the men clubbed the seals on the head as fast as they could.
Ten minutes later little Kotick did not recognize his friends any more,for their skins were ripped off from the nose to the hindflippers--whipped off and thrown down on the ground in a pile.
That was enough for Kotick. He turned and galloped (a seal can gallopvery swiftly for a short time) back to the sea, his little new mustachebristling with horror. At Sea-Lion's Neck, where the great sea-lions siton the edge of the surf, he flung himself flipper over-head into thecool water, and rocked there, gasping miserably. "What's here?" said asea-lion, gruffly; for as a rule the sea-lions keep themselves tothemselves.
"_Scoochnie! Ochen scoochnie!_" ("I'm lonesome, very lonesome!"), saidKotick. "They're killing _all_ the holluschickie on _all_ the beaches!"
The sea-lion turned his head inshore. "Nonsense," he said; "your friendsare making as much noise as ever. You must have seen old Kerickpolishing off a drove. He's done that for thirty years."
"It's horrible," said Kotick, backing water as a wave went over him, andsteadying himself with a screw-stroke of his flippers that brought himup all standing within three inches of a jagged edge of rock.
"Well done for a yearling!" said the sea-lion, who could appreciate goodswimming. "I suppose it _is_ rather awful from your way of looking atit; but if you seals will come here year after year, of course the menget to know of it, and unless you can find an island where no men evercome, you will always be driven."
"Isn't there any such island?" began Kotick.
"I've followed the _poltoos_ [the halibut] for twenty years, and I can'tsay I've found it yet. But look here--you seem to have a fondness fortalking to your betters; suppose you go to Walrus Islet and talk to SeaVitch. He may know something. Don't flounce off like that. It's asix-mile swim, and if I were you I should haul out and take a nap first,little one."
Kotick thought that that was good advice, so he swam round to his ownbeach, hauled out, and slept for half an hour, twitching all over, asseals will. Then he headed straight for Walrus Islet, a little low sheetof rocky island almost due northeast from Novastoshnah, all ledges ofrock and gulls' nests, where the walrus herded by themselves.
He landed close to old Sea Vitch--the big, ugly, bloated, pimpled,fat-necked, long-tusked walrus of the North Pacific, who has no mannersexcept when he is asleep--as he was then, with his hind flippers half inand half out of the surf.
"Wake up!" barked Kotick, for the gulls were making a great noise.
"Hah! Ho! Hmph! What's that?" said Sea Vitch, and he struck the nextwalrus a blow with his tusks and waked him up, and the next struck thenext, and so on till they were all awake and staring in every directionbut the right one.
"THEY WERE ALL AWAKE AND STARING IN EVERY DIRECTION BUT THE RIGHT ONE."]
"Hi! It's me," said Kotick, bobbing in the surf and looking like alittle white slug.
"Well! May I be----skinned!" said Sea Vitch, and they all looked atKotick as you can fancy a club full of drowsy old gentlemen would lookat a little boy. Kotick did not care to hear any more about skinningjust then; he had seen enough of it; so he called out: "Isn't there anyplace for seals to go where men don't ever come?"
"Go and find out," said Sea Vitch, shutting his eyes. "Run away. We'rebusy here."
Kotick made his dolphin-jump in the air and shouted as loud as he could:"Clam-eater! Clam-eater!" He knew that Sea Vitch never caught a fish inhis life, but always rooted for clams and seaweeds; though he pretendedto be a very terrible person. Naturally the Chickies and theGooverooskies and the Epatkas, the Burgomaster Gulls and the Kittiwakesand the Puffins, who are always looking for a chance to be rude, took upthe cry, and--so Limmershin told me--for nearly five minutes you couldnot have heard a gun fired on Walrus Islet. All the population wasyelling and screaming: "Clam-eater! _Stareek_ [old man]!" while SeaVitch rolled from side to side grunting and coughing.
"_Now_ will you tell?" said Kotick, all out of breath.
"Go and ask Sea Cow," said Sea Vitch. "If he is living still, he'll beable to tell you."
"How shall I know Sea Cow when I meet him?" said Kotick, sheering off.
"He's the only thing in the sea uglier than Sea Vitch," screamed aburgomaster gull, wheeling under Sea Vitch's nose. "Uglier, and withworse manners! _Stareek!_"
Kotick swam back to Novastoshnah, leaving the gulls to scream. There hefound that no one sympathized with him in his little attempts todiscover a quiet place for the seals. They told him that men had alwaysdriven the holluschickie--it was part of the day's work--and that if hedid not like to see ugly things he should not have gone to thekilling-grounds. But none of the other seals had seen the killing, andthat made the difference between him and his friends. Besides, Kotickwas a white seal.
"What you must do," said old Sea Catch, after he had heard his son'sadventures, "is to grow up and be a big seal like your father, and havea nursery on the beach, and then they will leave you alone. In anotherfive years you ought to be able to fight for yourself." Even gentleMatkah, his mother, said: "You will never be able to stop the killing.Go and play in the sea, Kotick." And Kotick went off and danced theFire-dance with a very heavy little heart.
That autumn he left the beach as soon as he could, and set off alonebecause of a notion in his bullet-head. He was going to find Sea Cow, ifthere was such a person in the sea, and he was going to find a quietisland with good firm beaches for seals to live on, where men could notget at them. So he explored and explored by himself from the North tothe South Pacific, swimming as much as three hundred miles in a day anda night. He met with more adventures than can be told, and narrowlyescaped being caught by the Basking Shark, and the Spotted Shark, andthe Hammerhead, and he met all the untrustworthy ruffians that loaf upand down the high seas, and the heavy polite fish, and thescarlet-spotted scallops that are moored in one place for hundreds ofyears, and grow very proud of it; but he never met Sea Cow, and he neverfound an island that he could fancy.
If the beach was good and hard, with a slope behind it for seals to playon, there was always the smoke of a whaler on the horizon, boiling downblubber, and Kotick knew what _that_ meant. Or else he could see thatseals had once visited the island and been killed off, and Kotick knewthat where men had come once they would come again.
He picked up with an old stumpy-tailed albatross, who told him thatKerguelen Island was the very place for peace and quiet, and when Kotickwent down there he was all but smashed to pieces against some wickedblack cliffs in a heavy sleet-storm with lightning and thunder. Yet ashe pulled out against the gale he could see that even there had oncebeen a seal nursery. And it was so in all the other islands that hevisited.
Limmershin gave a long list of them, for he said that Kotick spent fiveseasons exploring, with a four months' rest each year at Novastoshnah,where the holluschickie used to make fun of him and his imaginaryislands. He went to the Gallapagos, a horrid dry place on the Equator,where he was nearly baked to death; he went to the Georgia Islands, theOrkneys, Emerald Island, Little Nightingale Island, Gough's Island,Bouvet's Island, the Crossets, and even to a little speck of an islandsouth of the Cape of Good Hope. But everywhere the People of the Seatold him the same things. Seals had come to those islands once upon atime, but men had killed them all off. Even when he swam thousands ofmiles out of the Pacific, and got to a place called Cape Corientes (thatwas when he was coming back from Gough's Island), he found a fewhundred mangy seals on a rock, and they told him that men came theretoo.
That nearly broke his heart, and he headed round the Horn back to hisown beaches; and on his way north he hauled out on an island full ofgreen trees, where he found an old, old seal who was dying, and Kotickcaught fish for him and told him all his sorrows. "Now," said Kotick, "Iam going back to Novastoshnah, and if I am driven to the killing-penswith the holluschickie I shall not care."
&nb
sp; The old seal said: "Try once more. I am the last of the Lost Rookery ofMasafuera, and in the days when men killed us by the hundred thousandthere was a story on the beaches that some day a white seal would comeout of the north and lead the seal people to a quiet place. I am old andI shall never live to see that day, but others will. Try once more."
And Kotick curled up his mustache (it was a beauty), and said: "I am theonly white seal that has ever been born on the beaches, and I am theonly seal, black or white, who ever thought of looking for new islands."
That cheered him immensely; and when he came back to Novastoshnah thatsummer, Matkah, his mother, begged him to marry and settle down, for hewas no longer a holluschick, but a full-grown sea-catch, with a curlywhite mane on his shoulders, as heavy, as big, and as fierce as hisfather. "Give me another season," he said. "Remember, Mother, it isalways the seventh wave that goes farthest up the beach."
Curiously enough, there was another seal who thought that she would putoff marrying till the next year, and Kotick danced the Fire-dance withher all down Lukannon Beach the night before he set off on his lastexploration.
This time he went westward, because he had fallen on the trail of agreat shoal of halibut, and he needed at least one hundred pounds offish a day to keep him in good condition. He chased them till he wastired, and then he curled himself up and went to sleep on the hollows ofthe ground-swell that sets in to Copper Island. He knew the coastperfectly well, so about midnight, when he felt himself gently bumped ona weed bed, he said: "Hm, tide 's running strong to-night," and turningover under water opened his eyes slowly and stretched. Then he jumpedlike a cat, for he saw huge things nosing about in the shoal water andbrowsing on the heavy fringes of the weeds.
"By the Great Combers of Magellan!" he said, beneath his mustache. "Whoin the Deep Sea are these people?"
They were like no walrus, sea-lion, seal, bear, whale, shark, fish,squid, or scallop that Kotick had ever seen before. They were betweentwenty and thirty feet long, and they had no hind flippers, but ashovel-like tail that looked as if it had been whittled out of wetleather. Their heads were the most foolish-looking things you ever saw,and they balanced on the ends of their tails in deep water when theyweren't grazing, bowing solemnly to one another and waving their frontflippers as a fat man waves his arm.
"Ahem!" said Kotick. "Good sport, gentlemen?" The big things answered bybowing and waving their flippers like the Frog-Footman. When they beganfeeding again Kotick saw that their upper lip was split into two pieces,that they could twitch apart about a foot and bring together again witha whole bushel of seaweed between the splits. They tucked the stuff intotheir mouths and chumped solemnly.
"Messy style of feeding that," said Kotick. They bowed again, and Kotickbegan to lose his temper. "Very good," he said. "If you do happen tohave an extra joint in your front flipper you needn't show off so. Isee you bow gracefully, but I should like to know your names." The splitlips moved and twitched, and the glassy green eyes stared; but they didnot speak.
"Well!" said Kotick, "you're the only people I've ever met uglier thanSea Vitch--and with worse manners."
Then he remembered in a flash what the Burgomaster Gull had screamed tohim when he was a little yearling at Walrus Islet, and he tumbledbackward in the water, for he knew that he had found Sea Cow at last.
"HE HAD FOUND SEA COW AT LAST."]
The sea cows went on schlooping and grazing, and chumping in the weed,and Kotick asked them questions in every language that he had picked upin his travels; and the Sea People talk nearly as many languages ashuman beings. But the Sea Cow did not answer, because Sea Cow cannottalk. He has only six bones in his neck where he ought to have seven,and they say under the sea that that prevents him from speaking even tohis companions; but, as you know, he has an extra joint in his foreflipper, and by waving it up and down and about he makes what answers toa sort of clumsy telegraphic code.
By daylight Kotick's mane was standing on end and his temper was gonewhere the dead crabs go. Then the Sea Cow began to travel northward veryslowly, stopping to hold absurd bowing councils from time to time, andKotick followed them, saying to himself: "People who are such idiots asthese are would have been killed long ago if they hadn't found out somesafe island; and what is good enough for the Sea Cow is good enough forthe Sea Catch. All the same, I wish they'd hurry."
It was weary work for Kotick. The herd never went more than forty orfifty miles a day, and stopped to feed at night, and kept close to theshore all the time; while Kotick swam round them, and over them, andunder them, but he could not hurry them up one half-mile. As they wentfarther north they held a bowing council every few hours, and Koticknearly bit off his mustache with impatience till he saw that they werefollowing up a warm current of water, and then he respected them more.
One night they sank through the shiny water--sank like stones--and, forthe first time since he had known them, began to swim quickly. Kotickfollowed, and the pace astonished him, for he never dreamed that Sea Cowwas anything of a swimmer. They headed for a cliff by the shore, a cliffthat ran down into deep water, and plunged into a dark hole at the footof it, twenty fathoms under the sea. It was a long, long swim, andKotick badly wanted fresh air before he was out of the dark tunnel theyled him through.
"My wig!" he said, when he rose, gasping and puffing, into open water atthe farther end. "It was a long dive, but it was worth it."
The sea cows had separated, and were browsing lazily along the edges ofthe finest beaches that Kotick had ever seen. There were long stretchesof smooth worn rock running for miles, exactly fitted to make sealnurseries, and there were playgrounds of hard sand, sloping inlandbehind them, and there were rollers for seals to dance in, and longgrass to roll in, and sand-dunes to climb up and down, and best of all,Kotick knew by the feel of the water, which never deceives a true SeaCatch, that no men had ever come there.
The first thing he did was to assure himself that the fishing was good,and then he swam along the beaches and counted up the delightful lowsandy islands half hidden in the beautiful rolling fog. Away to thenorthward out to sea ran a line of bars and shoals and rocks that wouldnever let a ship come within six miles of the beach; and between theislands and the mainland was a stretch of deep water that ran up to theperpendicular cliffs, and somewhere below the cliffs was the mouth ofthe tunnel.
"It's Novastoshnah over again, but ten times better," said Kotick. "SeaCow must be wiser than I thought. Men can't come down the cliffs, evenif there were any men; and the shoals to seaward would knock a ship tosplinters. If any place in the sea is safe, this is it."
He began to think of the seal he had left behind him, but though he wasin a hurry to go back to Novastoshnah, he thoroughly explored the newcountry, so that he would be able to answer all questions.
Then he dived and made sure of the mouth of the tunnel, and racedthrough to the southward. No one but a sea cow or a seal would havedreamed of there being such a place, and when he looked back at thecliffs even Kotick could hardly believe that he had been under them.
He was six days going home, though he was not swimming slowly; and whenhe hauled out just above Sea-Lion's Neck the first person he met was theseal who had been waiting for him, and she saw by the look in his eyesthat he had found his island at last.
But the holluschickie and Sea Catch, his father, and all the otherseals, laughed at him when he told them what he had discovered, and ayoung seal about his own age said: "This is all very well, Kotick, butyou can't come from no one knows where and order us off like this.Remember we've been fighting for our nurseries, and that's a thing younever did. You preferred prowling about in the sea."
The other seals laughed at this, and the young seal began twisting hishead from side to side. He had just married that year, and was making agreat fuss about it.
"I've no nursery to fight for," said Kotick. "I want only to show youall a place where you will be safe. What's the use of fighting?"
"Oh, if you're trying to back ou
t, of course I've no more to say," saidthe young seal, with an ugly chuckle.
"Will you come with me if I win?" said Kotick; and a green light cameinto his eyes, for he was very angry at having to fight at all.
"Very good," said the young seal, carelessly. "_If_ you win, I'll come."
He had no time to change his mind, for Kotick's head darted out and histeeth sunk in the blubber of the young seal's neck. Then he threwhimself back on his haunches and hauled his enemy down the beach, shookhim, and knocked him over. Then Kotick roared to the seals: "I've donemy best for you these five seasons past. I've found you the island whereyou'll be safe, but unless your heads are dragged off your silly necksyou won't believe. I'm going to teach you now. Look out for yourselves!"
Limmershin told me that never in his life--and Limmershin sees tenthousand big seals fighting every year--never in all his little life didhe see anything like Kotick's charge into the nurseries. He flunghimself at the biggest sea-catch he could find, caught him by thethroat, choked him and bumped him and banged him till he grunted formercy, and then threw him aside and attacked the next. You see, Kotickhad never fasted for four months as the big seals did every year, andhis deep-sea swimming-trips kept him in perfect condition, and, best ofall, he had never fought before. His curly white mane stood up withrage, and his eyes flamed, and his big dogteeth glistened, and he wassplendid to look at.
Old Sea Catch, his father, saw him tearing past, hauling the grizzledold seals about as though they had been halibut, and upsetting the youngbachelors in all directions; and Sea Catch gave one roar and shouted:"He may be a fool, but he is the best fighter on the Beaches. Don'ttackle your father, my son! He's with you!"
Kotick roared in answer, and old Sea Catch waddled in, his mustache onend, blowing like a locomotive, while Matkah and the seal that was goingto marry Kotick cowered down and admired their men-folk. It was agorgeous fight, for the two fought as long as there was a seal thatdared lift up his head, and then they paraded grandly up and down thebeach side by side, bellowing.
At night, just as the Northern Lights were winking and flashing throughthe fog, Kotick climbed a bare rock and looked down on the scatterednurseries and the torn and bleeding seals. "Now," he said, "I've taughtyou your lesson."
"My wig!" said old Sea Catch, boosting himself up stiffly, for he wasfearfully mauled. "The Killer Whale himself could not have cut them upworse. Son, I'm proud of you, and what's more, _I'll_ come with you toyour island--if there is such a place."
"Hear you, fat pigs of the sea! Who comes with me to the Sea Cow'stunnel? Answer, or I shall teach you again," roared Kotick.
There was a murmur like the ripple of the tide all up and down thebeaches. "We will come," said thousands of tired voices. "We will followKotick, the White Seal."
Then Kotick dropped his head between his shoulders and shut his eyesproudly. He was not a white seal any more, but red from head to tail.All the same he would have scorned to look at or touch one of hiswounds.
A week later he and his army (nearly ten thousand holluschickie and oldseals) went away north to the Sea Cow's tunnel, Kotick leading them, andthe seals that stayed at Novastoshnah called them idiots. But nextspring when they all met off the fishing-banks of the Pacific, Kotick'sseals told such tales of the new beaches beyond Sea Cow's tunnel thatmore and more seals left Novastoshnah.
Of course it was not all done at once, for the seals need a long time toturn things over in their minds, but year by year more seals went awayfrom Novastoshnah, and Lukannon, and the other nurseries, to the quiet,sheltered beaches where Kotick sits all the summer through, gettingbigger and fatter and stronger each year, while the holluschickie playround him, in that sea where no man comes.
LUKANNON
This is the great deep-sea song that all the St. Paul seals sing whenthey are heading back to their beaches in the summer. It is a sort ofvery sad seal National Anthem.
I met my mates in the morning (and oh, but I am old!) Where roaring on the ledges the summer ground-swell rolled; I heard them lift the chorus that dropped the breakers' song-- The beaches of Lukannon--two million voices strong!
_The song of pleasant stations beside the salt lagoons, The song of blowing squadrons that shuffled down the dunes, The song of midnight dances that churned the sea to flame-- The beaches of Lukannon--before the sealers came!_
I met my mates in the morning (I'll never meet them more!); They came and went in legions that darkened all the shore. And through the foam-flecked offing as far as voice could reach We hailed the landing-parties and we sang them up the beach.
_The beaches of Lukannon--the winter-wheat so tall-- The dripping, crinkled lichens, and the sea-fog drenching all! The platforms of our playground, all shining smooth and worn! The beaches of Lukannon--the home where we were born!_
I meet my mates in the morning, a broken, scattered band. Men shoot us in the water and club us on the land; Men drive us to the Salt House like silly sheep and tame, And still we sing Lukannon--before the sealers came.
_Wheel down, wheel down to southward; oh, Gooverooska go! And tell the Deep-Sea Viceroys the story of our woe; Ere, empty as the shark's egg the tempest flings ashore, The beaches of Lukannon shall know their sons no more!_
The Jungle Book Page 5
