The distance to the killing-grounds was only half a mile,but it took an hour to cover,because if the seals went too fast Kerick knew that they would get heated and then their fur would come off in patches when they were skinned. So they went on very slowly, past Sea Lion’s Neck, past Webster House, till they came to the Salt House just beyond the sight of the seals on the beach. Kotick followed, panting and wondering. He thought that he was at the world’s end, but the roar of the seal nurseries 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 and let the drove cool off for thirty minutes, and Kotick could hear the fog-dew dripping off the brim of his cap. Then ten or twelve men, each with an iron-bound club three or four feet long, came up, and Kerick pointed out one or two of the drove that were bitten by their companions or too hot, and the men kicked those aside with their heavy boots made 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 hind flippers,whipped off and thrown down on the ground in a pile.That was enough for Kotick.He turned and galloped (a seal can gallop very swiftly for a short time) back to the sea; his little new mustache bristling with horror. At Sea Lion’s Neck, where the great sea lions sit on the edge of the surf, he flung himself flipper-overhead into the cool water and rocked there, gasping miserably. “What’s here?” said a sea lion gruffly,for as a rule the sea lions keep themselves to themselves.
“Scoochnie!Ochen scoochnie!” (“I’m lonesome, very lonesome!”) said Kotick. “They’re killing all the holluschickie on all the beaches!”
The Sea Lion turned his head inshore. “Nonsense!” he said. “Your friends are making as much noise as ever.You must have seen old Kerick polishing off a drove.He’s done that for thirty years.”
“It’s horrible,” said Kotick,backing water as a wave went over him,and steadying himself with a screw stroke of his flippers that brought him all standing within three inches of a jagged edge of rock.
“Well done for a yearling!” said the Sea Lion, who could appreciate good swimming.“I suppose it is rather awful from your way of looking at it,but if you seals will come here year after year,of course the men get to know of it,and unless you can find an island where no men ever come 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’t say I’ve found it yet.But look here--you seem to have a fondness for talking to your betters--suppose you go to Walrus Islet and talk to Sea Vitch. He may know something. Don’t flounce off like that. It’s a six-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 own beach, hauled out,and slept for half an hour, twitching all over,as seals will. Then he headed straight for Walrus Islet,a little low sheet of rocky island almost due northeast from Novastoshnah,all ledges and rock 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 manners except when he is asleep--as he was then,with his hind flippers half in and 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 next walrus a blow with his tusks and waked him up, and the next struck the next, and so on till 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 a little white slug.
“Well!May I be--skinned!” said Sea Vitch, and they all looked at Kotick as you can fancy a club full of drowsy old gentlemen would look at a little boy. Kotick did not care to hear any more about skinning just then; he had seen enough of it. So he called out: “Isn’t there any place for seals to go where men don’t ever come?”
“Go and find out,” said Sea Vitch, shutting his eyes.“Run away. We’re busy 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 in his life but always rooted for clams and seaweed; though he pretended to be a very terrible person. Naturally the Chickies and the Gooverooskies and the Epatkas--the Burgomaster Gulls and the Kittiwakes and the Puffins, who are always looking for a chance to be rude, took up the cry, and--so Limmershin told me--for nearly five minutes you could not have heard a gun fired on Walrus Islet. All the population was yelling and screaming “Clam-eater!Stareek [old man]!” while Sea Vitch 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 be able 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 a Burgomaster gull,wheeling under Sea Vitch’s nose. “Uglier,and with worse manners!Stareek!”
Kotick swam back to Novastoshnah,leaving the gulls to scream.There he found that no one sympathized with him in his little attempt to discover a quiet place for the seals. They told him that men had always driven the holluschickie--it was part of the day’s work--and that if he did not like to see ugly things he should not have gone to the killing grounds. But none of the other seals had seen the killing, and that made the difference between him and his friends. Besides, Kotick was a white seal.
“What you must do,” said old Sea Catch,after he had heard his son’s adventures,“is to grow up and be a big seal like your father,and have a nursery on the beach,and then they will leave you alone.In another five years you ought to be able to fight for yourself.” Even gentle Matkah, 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 the Fire-dance with a very heavy little heart.