Then you can imagine the times that he had with his companions,ducking under the rollers;or coming in on top of a comber and landing with a swash and a splutter as the big wave went whirling far up the beach; or standing 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 that just stuck out of the wash. Now and then he would see a thin fin, like a big shark’s fin, drifting along close to shore, and he knew that that was the Killer Whale, the Grampus, who eats young seals when he can get them; and Kotick would head for the beach like an arrow, and the fin would 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, by families and tribes,and there was no more fighting over the nurseries,and the holluschickie played anywhere they liked.“Next year,” said Matkah to Kotick,“you will be a holluschickie;but this year you must learn how to catch fish.”
They set out together across the Pacific,and Matkah showed Kotick how to sleep on his back with his flippers tucked down by his side and his little nose just out of the water. No cradle is so comfortable as the long, rocking swell of the Pacific. When Kotick felt his skin tingle all over, Matkah told him he was learning the “feel of the water,” and that tingly, prickly feelings meant bad weather coming, and he must swim hard and get away.
“In a little time,” she said,“you’ll know where to swim to,but just now we’ll follow Sea Pig, the Porpoise,for he is very wise.” A school of porpoises were ducking and tearing through the water,and little Kotick followed them as fast as he could.“How do you know where to go to?” he panted. The leader of the school rolled his white eye and ducked under.“My tail tingles, youngster,” he said.“That means there’s a gale behind me. Come along!When you’re south of the Sticky Water [he meant the Equator] and your tail tingles, that means there’s a gale in front of you and you must head north. Come along!The water feels bad here.”
This was one of very many things that Kotick learned,and he was always learning.Matkah taught him to follow the cod and the halibut along the under-sea banks and wrench the rockling out of his hole among the weeds; how to skirt the wrecks lying a hundred fathoms below water and dart like a rifle bullet in at one porthole and out at another as the fishes ran; how to dance on the top of the waves when the lightning was racing all over the sky, and wave his flipper politely to the stumpy-tailed Albatross and the Man-of-war Hawk as they went down the wind; 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 fish alone because they are all bony; to take the shoulder-piece out of a cod at full speed ten fathoms deep, and never to stop and look at a boat or a ship, but particularly a row-boat. At the end of six months what Kotick did not know about deep-sea fishing was not worth the knowing. And all that time he never set flipper on dry ground.
One day, however, as he was lying half asleep in the warm water somewhere off the Island of Juan Fernandez, he felt faint and lazy all over, just as human people do when the spring is in their legs, and he remembered the good firm beaches of Novastoshnah seven thousand miles away, the games his companions played, the smell of the seaweed, the seal roar, and the fighting. That very minute he turned north, swimming steadily, and as he went on he met scores of his mates, all bound for the same place, and they said: “Greeting, Kotick!This year we are all holluschickie,and we can dance the Fire-dance in the breakers off Lukannon 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 of it, he only said, “Swim quickly!My bones are aching for the land.” And so they all came to the beaches where they had been born,and heard the old seals, their fathers,fighting in the rolling mist.
That night Kotick danced the Fire-dance with the yearling seals.The sea is full of fire on summer nights all the way down from Novastoshnah to Lukannon, and each seal leaves a wake like burning oil behind him and a flaming flash when he jumps, and the waves break in great phosphorescent streaks and swirls. Then they went inland to the holluschickie grounds and rolled up and down in the new wild wheat and told stories of what they had done while they had been at sea. They talked about the Pacific as boys would talk about a wood that they had been nutting in, and if anyone had understood them he could have gone away and made such a chart of that ocean as never was. The three- and four-year-old holluschickie romped down from Hutchinson’s Hill crying: “Out of the way, youngsters!The sea is deep and you don’t know all that’s in it yet.Wait till you’ve rounded the Horn. Hi, you yearling,where did you get that white coat?”
“I didn’t get it,” said Kotick. “It grew.” And just as he was going to roll the speaker over,a couple of black-haired men with flat red faces came from behind a sand dune,and Kotick, who had never seen a man before,coughed and lowered his head.The holluschickie just bundled off a few yards and sat staring stupidly.The men were no less than Kerick Booterin,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 sea nurseries,and they were deciding what seals they would drive up to the killing pens--for the seals were driven just like sheep--to be turned into seal-skin jackets later on.
“Ho!” said Patalamon. “Look!There’s a white seal!”
Kerick Booterin turned nearly white under his oil and smoke,for he was an Aleut, and Aleuts are not clean people.Then he began to mutter a prayer. “Don’t touch him,Patalamon. There has never been a white seal since--since I was born.Perhaps it is old Zaharrof’s ghost.He was lost last year in the big gale.”
“I’m not going near him,” said Patalamon. “He’s unlucky.Do you really think he is old Zaharrof come back?I owe him for some gulls’ eggs.”
“Don’t look at him,” said Kerick.“Head off that drove of four-year-olds.The men ought to skin two hundred to-day,but it’s the beginning of the season and they are new to the work.A hundred will do. Quick!”
Patalamon rattled a pair of seal’s shoulder bones in front of a herd of holluschickie and they stopped dead, puffing and blowing. Then he stepped near and the seals began to move, and Kerick headed them inland, and they never tried to get back to their companions. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of seals watched them being driven, but they went on playing just the same. Kotick was the only one who asked questions, and none of his companions could tell him anything, except that the men always drove seals in that way for six weeks or two months of every year.
“I am going to follow,” he said,and his eyes nearly popped out of his head as he shuffled along in the wake of the herd.
“The white seal is coming after us,” cried Patalamon.“That’s the first time a seal has ever come to the killing-grounds alone. ”
“Hsh!Don’t look behind you,” said Kerick.“It is Zaharrof’s ghost!I must speak to the priest about this.”