look 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 has
been such a thing in the world as a white seal.
I can t help that, said Matkah; there s going to be now. And she
sang the low, crooning seal song that all the mother seals sing to their
babies:
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. He
paddled and scrambled about by his mother s side, and learned to scuffle
out of the way when his father was fighting with another seal, and the
two rolled and roared up and down the slippery rocks. Matkah used to go
to 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
of thousands of babies of his own age, and they played together like
puppies, went to sleep on the clean sand, and played again. The old
people in the nurseries took no notice of them, and the holluschickie
kept to their own grounds, and the babies had a beautiful playtime.
When Matkah came back from her deep-sea fishing she would go straight
to their playground and call as a sheep calls for a lamb, and wait until
she heard Kotick bleat. Then she would take the straightest of straight
lines in his direction, striking out with her fore flippers and knocking
the youngsters head over heels right and left. There were always a few
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