EPISODE: 16

thousands of miles out of the Pacific and got to a place called

Cape Corrientes (that was when he was coming back from

Gough's Island), he found a few hundred mangy seals on a rock

and they told him that men came there too.

That nearly broke his heart, and he headed round the Horn

back to his own beaches; and on his way north he hauled out on

an island full of green trees, where he found an old, old seal who

was dying, and Kotick caught fish for him and told him all his

sorrows. "Now," said Kotick, "I am going back to Novastoshnah,

and if I am driven to the killing-pens with the holluschickie I

shall not care."

The old seal said, "Try once more. I am the last of the Lost

Rookery of Masafuera, and in the days when men killed us by

the hundred thousand there was a story on the beaches that

some day a white seal would come out of the North and lead the

seal people to a quiet place. I am old, and I 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 the only white seal that has ever been born on the

beaches, and I am the only seal, black or white, who ever

thought of looking for new islands."

This cheered him immensely; and when he came back to

Novastoshnah that summer, Matkah, his mother, begged him to

marry and settle down, for he was no longer a holluschick but a

full-grown sea-catch, with a curly white mane on his shoulders,

as heavy, as big, and as fierce as his father. "Give me another

season," he said. "Remember, Mother, it is always the seventh

wave that goes farthest up the beach."

Curiously enough, there was another seal who thought that

she would put off marrying till the next year, and Kotick danced

the Fire-dance with her all down Lukannon Beach the night

before he set off on his last exploration. This time he went

westward, because he had fallen on the trail of a great shoal of

halibut, and he needed at least one hundred pounds of fish a

day to keep him in good condition. He chased them till he was tired, and then he curled himself up and went to sleep on the

hollows of the ground swell that sets in to Copper Island. He

knew the coast perfectly well, so about midnight, when he felt

himself gently bumped on a weed-bed, he said, "Hm, tide's

running strong tonight," and turning over under water opened

his eyes slowly and stretched. Then he jumped like a cat, for he

saw huge things nosing about in the shoal water and browsing

on the heavy fringes of the weeds.

"By the Great Combers of Magellan!" he said, beneath his

mustache. "Who in 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 between twenty and thirty feet long, and they had no hind

flippers, but a shovel-like tail that looked as if it had been

whittled out of wet leather. Their heads were the most foolish-

looking things you ever saw, and they balanced on the ends of

their tails in deep water when they weren't grazing, bowing

solemnly to each other and waving their front flippers as a fat

man waves his arm.

"Ahem!" said Kotick. "Good sport, gentlemen?" The big things

answered by bowing and waving their flippers like the Frog

Footman. When they began feeding again Kotick saw that their

upper lip was split into two pieces that they could twitch apart

about a foot and bring together again with a whole bushel of

seaweed between the splits. They tucked the stuff into their

mouths and chumped solemnly.

"Messy style of feeding, that," said Kotick. They bowed again,

and Kotick began to lose his temper. "Very good," he said. "If

you do happen to have an extra joint in your front flipper you

needn't show off so. I see you bow gracefully, but I should like

to know your names." The split lips moved and twitched; and

the glassy green eyes stared, but they did not speak.

"Well!" said Kotick. "You're the only people I've ever met uglier

than Sea Vitch—and with worse manners." Then he remembered in a flash what the Burgomaster gull had

screamed to him when he was a little yearling at Walrus Islet,

and he tumbled backward in the water, for he knew that 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 up in his travels; and the Sea People talk

nearly as many languages as human beings. But the sea cows did

not answer because Sea Cow cannot talk. 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 to his

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 to a sort of clumsy telegraphic code.

By daylight Kotick's mane was standing on end and his temper

was gone where the dead crabs go. Then the Sea Cow began to

travel northward very slowly, stopping to hold absurd bowing

councils from time to time, and Kotick followed them, saying to

himself, "People who are such idiots as these are would have

been killed long ago if they hadn't found out some safe island.

And what is good enough for the Sea Cow is good enough for the

Sea Catch. All the same, I wish they'd hurry."

It was weary work for Kotick. The herd never went more than

forty or fifty miles a day, and stopped to feed at night, and kept

close to the shore all the time; while Kotick swam round them,

and over them, and under them, but he could not hurry them up

one-half mile. As they went farther north they held a bowing

council every few hours, and Kotick nearly bit off his mustache

with impatience till he saw that they were following up a warm

current of water, and then he respected them more.

One night they sank through the shiny water—sank like

stones—and for the first time since he had known them began to

swim quickly. Kotick followed, and the pace astonished him, for

he never dreamed that Sea Cow was anything of a swimmer.

They headed for a cliff by the shore—a cliff that ran down into

deep water, and plunged into a dark hole at the foot of it, twenty fathoms under the sea. It was a long, long swim, and

Kotick badly wanted fresh air before he was out of the dark

tunnel they led him through.

"My wig!" he said, when he rose, gasping and puffing, into

open water at the farther end. "It was a long dive, but it was

worth it."

The sea cows had separated and were browsing lazily along

the edges of the finest beaches that Kotick had ever seen. There

were long stretches of smooth-worn rock running for miles,

exactly fitted to make seal-nurseries, and there were play-

grounds of hard sand sloping inland behind them, and there

were rollers for seals to dance in, and long grass 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 sea catch,

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 low sandy islands half hidden in the beautiful

rolling fog. Away to the northward, out to sea, ran a line of bars

and shoals and rocks that would never let a ship come within six

miles of the beach, and between the islands and the mainland

was a stretch of deep water that ran up to the perpendicular

cliffs, and somewhere below the cliffs was the mouth of the

tunnel.

"It's Novastoshnah over again, but ten times better," said

Kotick. "Sea Cow must be wiser than I thought. Men can't come

down the cliffs, even if there were any men; and the shoals to

seaward would knock a ship to splinters. 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 was in a hurry to go back to Novastoshnah, he

thoroughly explored the new country, so that he would be able

to answer all questions. Then he dived and made sure of the mouth of the tunnel, and

raced through to the southward. No one but a sea cow or a seal

would have dreamed of there being such a place, and when he

looked back at the cliffs even Kotick could hardly believe that he

had been under them.

He was six days going home, though he was not swimming

slowly; and when he hauled out just above Sea Lion's Neck the

first person he met was the seal who had been waiting for him,

and she saw by the look in his eyes that he had found his island

at last.

But the holluschickie and Sea Catch, his father, and all the

other seals laughed at him when he told them what he had

discovered, and a young seal about his own age said, "This is all

very well, Kotick, but you 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 you never did. You preferred

prowling about in the sea."

The other seals laughed at this, and the young seal began

twisting his head from side to side. He had just married that

year, and was making a great fuss about it.

"I've no nursery to fight for," said Kotick. "I only want to show

you all a place where you will be safe. What's the use of

fighting?"

"Oh, if you're trying to back out, of course I've no more to

say," said the young seal with an ugly chuckle.

"Will you come with me if I win?" said Kotick. And a green

light came into his eye, 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 was out

and his teeth sunk in the blubber of the young seal's neck. Then

he threw himself back on his haunches and hauled his enemy...