weren t grazing, bowing solemnly to each other and waving their front
flippers as a fat man waves his arm.
Ahem! said Kotick. Good sport, gentlemen? The big things answered by
bowing and waving their flippers like the Frog Footman. When they began
feeding again Kotick saw that their upper lip was split into two pieces
that they could twitch apart about a foot and bring together again with
a whole bushel of seaweed between the splits. They tucked the stuff into
their mouths and chumped solemnly.
Messy style of feeding, that, said Kotick. They bowed again, and
Kotick began to lose his temper. Very good, he said. If you do happen
to have an extra joint in your front flipper you needn t show off so. I
see you bow gracefully, but I should like to know your names. The split
lips moved and twitched; and the glassy green eyes stared, but they did
not speak.
Well! said Kotick. You re the only people I ve ever met uglier than
Sea Vitch--and with worse manners.
Then he remembered in a flash what the Burgomaster gull had screamed
to him when he was a little yearling at Walrus Islet, and he tumbled
backward in the water, for he knew that he had found Sea Cow at last.
The sea cows went on schlooping and grazing and chumping in the weed,
and Kotick asked them questions in every language that he had picked
up in his travels; and the Sea People talk nearly as many languages as
human beings. But the sea cows did not answer because Sea Cow cannot
talk. He has only six bones in his neck where he ought to have seven,
and they say under the sea that that prevents him from speaking even
to his companions. But, as you know, he has an extra joint in his
foreflipper, and by waving it up and down and about he makes what
answers to a sort of clumsy telegraphic code.
By daylight Kotick s mane was standing on end and his temper was gone
where the dead crabs go. Then the Sea Cow began to travel northward very
slowly, stopping to hold absurd bowing councils from time to time, and
Kotick followed them, saying to himself, People who are such idiots as
these are would have been killed long ago if they hadn t found out some
safe island. And what is good enough for the Sea Cow is good enough for
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