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.
The distance to the killing-grounds was only half a mile, but it took an
hour to cover, because if the seals went too fast Kerick knew that they
would get heated and then their fur would come off in patches when they
were skinned. So they went on very slowly, past Sea Lion s Neck, past
Webster House, till they came to the Salt House just beyond the sight
of the seals on the beach. Kotick followed, panting and wondering.
He thought that he was at the world s end, but the roar of the seal
nurseries behind him sounded as loud as the roar of a train in a tunnel.
Then Kerick sat down on the moss and pulled out a heavy pewter watch
and let the drove cool off for thirty minutes, and Kotick could hear the
fog-dew dripping off the brim of his cap. Then ten or twelve men, each
71