The Jungle Book
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 down the beach, shook
him, and knocked him over. Then Kotick roared to the seals: “I’ve done
my best for you these five seasons past. I’ve found you the island where
you’ll be safe, but unless your heads are dragged off your silly necks
you 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 ten
thousand big seals fighting every year--never in all his little life
did he see anything like Kotick’s charge into the nurseries. He flung
himself at the biggest sea catch he could find, caught him by the
throat, choked him and bumped him and banged him till he grunted for
mercy, and then threw him aside and attacked the next. You see, Kotick
had never fasted for four months as the big seals did every year, and
his deep-sea swimming trips kept him in perfect condition, and, best
of all, he had never fought before. His curly white mane stood up with
rage, and his eyes flamed, and his big dog teeth glistened, and he was
splendid to look at. Old Sea Catch, his father, saw him tearing past,
hauling the grizzled old seals about as though they had been halibut,
and upsetting the young bachelors in all directions; and Sea Catch gave
a roar and shouted: “He may be a fool, but he is the best fighter on the
beaches! Don’t tackle your father, my son! He’s with you!”
Kotick roared in answer, and old Sea Catch waddled in with his mustache
on end, blowing like a locomotive, while Matkah and the seal that was
going to marry Kotick cowered down and admired their men-folk. It was
a gorgeous fight, for the two fought as long as there was a seal that
dared lift up his head, and when there were none they paraded grandly up
and down the beach side by side, bellowing.
At night, just as the Northern Lights were winking and flashing through
the fog, Kotick climbed a bare rock and looked down on the scattered
nurseries and the torn and bleeding seals. “Now,” he said, “I’ve taught
you your lesson.”
“My wig!” said old Sea Catch, boosting himself up stiffly, for he was
fearfully mauled. “The Killer Whale himself could not have cut them up
worse. Son, I’m proud of you, and what’s more, I’ll come with you to
your island--if there is such a place.”
“Hear you, fat pigs of the sea. Who comes with me to the Sea Cow’s
tunnel? Answer, or I shall teach you again,” roared Kotick.
There was a murmur like the ripple of the tide all up and down the
beaches. “We will come,” said thousands of tired voices. “We will follow
Kotick, the White Seal.”
Then Kotick dropped his head between his shoulders and shut his eyes
proudly. 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 his
wounds.
A week later he and his army (nearly ten thousand holluschickie and old
seals) went away north to the Sea Cow’s tunnel, Kotick leading them,
and the seals that stayed at Novastoshnah called them idiots. But next
spring, when they all met off the fishing banks of the Pacific, Kotick’s
seals told such tales of the new beaches beyond Sea Cow’s tunnel that
more and more seals left Novastoshnah. Of course it was not all done at
once, for the seals are not very clever, and they need a long time to
turn things over in their minds, but year after year more seals went
away from Novastoshnah, and Lukannon, and the other nurseries, to the