the Sea Catch. All the same, I wish they d hurry.
It was weary work for Kotick. The herd never went more than forty or
fifty miles a day, and stopped to feed at night, and kept close to the
shore all the time; while Kotick swam round them, and over them, and
under them, but he could not hurry them up one-half mile. As they went
farther north they held a bowing council every few hours, and Kotick
nearly bit off his mustache with impatience till he saw that they were
following up a warm current of water, and then he respected them more.
One night they sank through the shiny water--sank like stones--and for
the first time since he had known them began to swim quickly. Kotick
followed, and the pace astonished him, for he never dreamed that Sea Cow
was anything of a swimmer. They headed for a cliff by the shore--a cliff
that ran down into deep water, and plunged into a dark hole at the
foot of it, twenty fathoms under the sea. It was a long, long swim, and
Kotick badly wanted fresh air before he was out of the dark tunnel they
led him through.
My wig! he said, when he rose, gasping and puffing, into open water at
the farther end. It was a long dive, but it was worth it.
The sea cows had separated and were browsing lazily along the edges of
the finest beaches that Kotick had ever seen. There were long
stretches of smooth-worn rock running for miles, exactly fitted to make
seal-nurseries, and there were play-grounds of hard sand sloping inland
behind them, and there were rollers for seals to dance in, and long
grass to roll in, and sand dunes to climb up and down, and, best of all,
Kotick knew by the feel of the water, which never deceives a true sea
catch, that no men had ever come there.
The first thing he did was to assure himself that the fishing was good,
and then he swam along the beaches and counted up the delightful low
sandy islands half hidden in the beautiful rolling fog. Away to the
northward, out to sea, ran a line of bars and shoals and rocks that
would never let a ship come within six miles of the beach, and between
the islands and the mainland was a stretch of deep water that ran up to
the perpendicular cliffs, and somewhere below the cliffs was the mouth
of the tunnel.
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