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
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