hundred mothers hunting for their children through the playgrounds, and
the babies were kept lively. But, as Matkah told Kotick, So long as you
don t lie in muddy water and get mange, or rub the hard sand into a cut
or scratch, and so long as you never go swimming when there is a heavy
sea, nothing will hurt you here.
Little seals can no more swim than little children, but they are unhappy
till they learn. The first time that Kotick went down to the sea a wave
carried him out beyond his depth, and his big head sank and his little
hind flippers flew up exactly as his mother had told him in the song,
and if the next wave had not thrown him back again he would have
drowned.
After that, he learned to lie in a beach pool and let the wash of the
waves just cover him and lift him up while he paddled, but he always
kept his eye open for big waves that might hurt. He was two weeks
learning to use his flippers; and all that while he floundered in and
out of the water, and coughed and grunted and crawled up the beach and
took catnaps on the sand, and went back again, until at last he found
that he truly belonged to the water.
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
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