and screaming Clam-eater! Stareek [old man]! while Sea Vitch rolled
from side to side grunting and coughing.
Now will you tell? said Kotick, all out of breath.
Go and ask Sea Cow, said Sea Vitch. If he is living still, he ll be
able to tell you.
How shall I know Sea Cow when I meet him? said Kotick, sheering off.
He s the only thing in the sea uglier than Sea Vitch, screamed a
Burgomaster gull, wheeling under Sea Vitch s nose. Uglier, and with
worse manners! Stareek!
Kotick swam back to Novastoshnah, leaving the gulls to scream. There he
found that no one sympathized with him in his little attempt to discover
a quiet place for the seals. They told him that men had always driven
the holluschickie--it was part of the day s work--and that if he did not
like to see ugly things he should not have gone to the killing grounds.
But none of the other seals had seen the killing, and that made the
difference between him and his friends. Besides, Kotick was a white
seal.
What you must do, said old Sea Catch, after he had heard his son s
adventures, is to grow up and be a big seal like your father, and have
a nursery on the beach, and then they will leave you alone. In another
five years you ought to be able to fight for yourself. Even gentle
Matkah, his mother, said: You will never be able to stop the killing.
Go and play in the sea, Kotick. And Kotick went off and danced the
Fire-dance with a very heavy little heart.
That autumn he left the beach as soon as he could, and set off alone
because of a notion in his bullet-head. He was going to find Sea Cow,
if there was such a person in the sea, and he was going to find a quiet
island with good firm beaches for seals to live on, where men could not
get at them. So he explored and explored by himself from the North to
the South Pacific, swimming as much as three hundred miles in a day
and a night. He met with more adventures than can be told, and narrowly
escaped being caught by the Basking Shark, and the Spotted Shark, and
the Hammerhead, and he met all the untrustworthy ruffians that loaf up
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