The White Seal Part Two - Rudyard Kipling

We conclude the story of The White Seal from the Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling (Part One is here).

The White Seal has gone in search of the Sea Cow who can tell him of a special place where no humans visit. It is only in such a sanctuary that the seals can live without fear of being hunted.

We would like to thank our sponsor, the Center for Guided Montessori Studies.

Read by Richard Scott. Duration 24.07.

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
and down the seas, and the heavy polite fish, and the scarlet spotted
scallops that are moored in one place for hundreds of years, and grow
very proud of it; but he never met Sea Cow, and he never found an island
that he could fancy.

If the beach was good and hard, with a slope behind it for seals to play
on, there was always the smoke of a whaler on the horizon, boiling down
blubber, and Kotick knew what that meant. Or else he could see that
seals had once visited the island and been killed off, and Kotick knew
that where men had come once they would come again.

He picked up with an old stumpy-tailed albatross, who told him that
Kerguelen Island was the very place for peace and quiet, and when Kotick
went down there he was all but smashed to pieces against some wicked
black cliffs in a heavy sleet-storm with lightning and thunder. Yet as
he pulled out against the gale he could see that even there had once
been a seal nursery. And it was so in all the other islands that he
visited.

Limmershin gave a long list of them, for he said that Kotick spent five
seasons exploring, with a four months' rest each year at Novastoshnah,
when the holluschickie used to make fun of him and his imaginary
islands. He went to the Gallapagos, a horrid dry place on the Equator,
where he was nearly baked to death; he went to the Georgia Islands,
the Orkneys, Emerald Island, Little Nightingale Island, Gough's Island,
Bouvet's Island, the Crossets, and even to a little speck of an island
south of the Cape of Good Hope. But everywhere the People of the Sea
told him the same things. Seals had come to those islands once upon a
time, but men had killed them all off. Even when he swam thousands of
miles out of the Pacific and got to a place called Cape Corrientes (that
was when he was coming back from Gough's Island), he found a few hundred
mangy seals on a rock and they told him that men came there too.

That nearly broke his heart, and he headed round the Horn back to his
own beaches; and on his way north he hauled out on an island full of
green trees, where he found an old, old seal who was dying, and Kotick
caught fish for him and told him all his sorrows. "Now," said Kotick,
"I am going back to Novastoshnah, and if I am driven to the killing-pens
with the holluschickie I shall not care."

The old seal said, "Try once more. I am the last of the Lost Rookery of
Masafuera, and in the days when men killed us by the hundred thousand
there was a story on the beaches that some day a white seal would come
out of the North and lead the seal people to a quiet place. I am old,
and I shall never live to see that day, but others will. Try once more."

And Kotick curled up his mustache (it was a beauty) and said, "I am the
only white seal that has ever been born on the beaches, and I am the
only seal, black or white, who ever thought of looking for new islands."

This cheered him immensely; and when he came back to Novastoshnah that
summer, Matkah, his mother, begged him to marry and settle down, for
he was no longer a holluschick but a full-grown sea-catch, with a curly
white mane on his shoulders, as heavy, as big, and as fierce as his
father. "Give me another season," he said. "Remember, Mother, it is
always the seventh wave that goes farthest up the beach."

Curiously enough, there was another seal who thought that she would put
off marrying till the next year, and Kotick danced the Fire-dance with
her all down Lukannon Beach the night before he set off on his last
exploration. This time he went westward, because he had fallen on the
trail of a great shoal of halibut, and he needed at least one hundred
pounds of fish a day to keep him in good condition. He chased them till
he was tired, and then he curled himself up and went to sleep on the
hollows of the ground swell that sets in to Copper Island. He knew the
coast perfectly well, so about midnight, when he felt himself gently
bumped on a weed-bed, he said, "Hm, tide's running strong tonight," and
turning over under water opened his eyes slowly and stretched. Then
he jumped like a cat, for he saw huge things nosing about in the shoal
water and browsing on the heavy fringes of the weeds.

"By the Great Combers of Magellan!" he said, beneath his mustache. "Who
in the Deep Sea are these people?"

They were like no walrus, sea lion, seal, bear, whale, shark, fish,
squid, or scallop that Kotick had ever seen before. They were between
twenty and thirty feet long, and they had no hind flippers, but a
shovel-like tail that looked as if it had been whittled out of wet
leather. Their heads were the most foolish-looking things you ever saw,
and they balanced on the ends of their tails in deep water when they
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
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.

"It's Novastoshnah over again, but ten times better," said Kotick. "Sea
Cow must be wiser than I thought. Men can't come down the cliffs, even
if there were any men; and the shoals to seaward would knock a ship to
splinters. If any place in the sea is safe, this is it."

He began to think of the seal he had left behind him, but though he was
in a hurry to go back to Novastoshnah, he thoroughly explored the new
country, so that he would be able to answer all questions.

Then he dived and made sure of the mouth of the tunnel, and raced
through to the southward. No one but a sea cow or a seal would have
dreamed of there being such a place, and when he looked back at the
cliffs even Kotick could hardly believe that he had been under them.

He was six days going home, though he was not swimming slowly; and when
he hauled out just above Sea Lion's Neck the first person he met was the
seal who had been waiting for him, and she saw by the look in his eyes
that he had found his island at last.

But the holluschickie and Sea Catch, his father, and all the other seals
laughed at him when he told them what he had discovered, and a young
seal about his own age said, "This is all very well, Kotick, but you
can't come from no one knows where and order us off like this. Remember
we've been fighting for our nurseries, and that's a thing you never did.
You preferred prowling about in the sea."

The other seals laughed at this, and the young seal began twisting his
head from side to side. He had just married that year, and was making a
great fuss about it.

"I've no nursery to fight for," said Kotick. "I only want to show you
all a place where you will be safe. What's the use of fighting?"

"Oh, if you're trying to back out, of course I've no more to say," said
the young seal with an ugly chuckle.

"Will you come with me if I win?" said Kotick. And a green light came
into his eye, for he was very angry at having to fight at all.

"Very good," said the young seal carelessly. "If you win, I'll come."

He had no time to change his mind, for Kotick's head was out and his
teeth sunk in the blubber of the young seal's neck. Then he threw
himself back on his haunches and hauled his enemy down the beach, shook
him, and knocked him over. Then Kotick roared to the seals: "I've done
my best for you these five seasons past. I've found you the island where
you'll be safe, but unless your heads are dragged off your silly necks
you won't believe. I'm going to teach you now. Look out for yourselves!"

Limmershin told me that never in his life--and Limmershin sees ten
thousand big seals fighting every year--never in all his little life
did he see anything like Kotick's charge into the nurseries. He flung
himself at the biggest sea catch he could find, caught him by the
throat, choked him and bumped him and banged him till he grunted for
mercy, and then threw him aside and attacked the next. You see, Kotick
had never fasted for four months as the big seals did every year, and
his deep-sea swimming trips kept him in perfect condition, and, best
of all, he had never fought before. His curly white mane stood up with
rage, and his eyes flamed, and his big dog teeth glistened, and he was
splendid to look at. Old Sea Catch, his father, saw him tearing past,
hauling the grizzled old seals about as though they had been halibut,
and upsetting the young bachelors in all directions; and Sea Catch gave
a roar and shouted: "He may be a fool, but he is the best fighter on the
beaches! Don't tackle your father, my son! He's with you!"

Kotick roared in answer, and old Sea Catch waddled in with his mustache
on end, blowing like a locomotive, while Matkah and the seal that was
going to marry Kotick cowered down and admired their men-folk. It was
a gorgeous fight, for the two fought as long as there was a seal that
dared lift up his head, and when there were none they paraded grandly up
and down the beach side by side, bellowing.

At night, just as the Northern Lights were winking and flashing through
the fog, Kotick climbed a bare rock and looked down on the scattered
nurseries and the torn and bleeding seals. "Now," he said, "I've taught
you your lesson."

"My wig!" said old Sea Catch, boosting himself up stiffly, for he was
fearfully mauled. "The Killer Whale himself could not have cut them up
worse. Son, I'm proud of you, and what's more, I'll come with you to
your island--if there is such a place."

"Hear you, fat pigs of the sea. Who comes with me to the Sea Cow's
tunnel? Answer, or I shall teach you again," roared Kotick.

There was a murmur like the ripple of the tide all up and down the
beaches. "We will come," said thousands of tired voices. "We will follow
Kotick, the White Seal."

Then Kotick dropped his head between his shoulders and shut his eyes
proudly. He was not a white seal any more, but red from head to tail.
All the same he would have scorned to look at or touch one of his
wounds.

A week later he and his army (nearly ten thousand holluschickie and old
seals) went away north to the Sea Cow's tunnel, Kotick leading them,
and the seals that stayed at Novastoshnah called them idiots. But next
spring, when they all met off the fishing banks of the Pacific, Kotick's
seals told such tales of the new beaches beyond Sea Cow's tunnel that
more and more seals left Novastoshnah. Of course it was not all done at
once, for the seals are not very clever, and they need a long time to
turn things over in their minds, but year after year more seals went
away from Novastoshnah, and Lukannon, and the other nurseries, to the
quiet, sheltered beaches where Kotick sits all the summer through,
getting bigger and fatter and stronger each year, while the
holluschickie play around him, in that sea where no man comes.

Lukannon

This is the great deep-sea song that all the St. Paul seals sing when
they are heading back to their beaches in the summer. It is a sort of
very sad seal National Anthem.

I met my mates in the morning (and, oh, but I am old!)
Where roaring on the ledges the summer ground-swell rolled;
I heard them lift the chorus that drowned the breakers' song--
The Beaches of Lukannon--two million voices strong.

The song of pleasant stations beside the salt lagoons,
The song of blowing squadrons that shuffled down the dunes,
The song of midnight dances that churned the sea to flame--
The Beaches of Lukannon--before the sealers came!

I met my mates in the morning (I'll never meet them more!);
They came and went in legions that darkened all the shore.
And o'er the foam-flecked offing as far as voice could reach
We hailed the landing-parties and we sang them up the beach.

The Beaches of Lukannon--the winter wheat so tall--
The dripping, crinkled lichens, and the sea-fog drenching all!
The platforms of our playground, all shining smooth and worn!
The Beaches of Lukannon--the home where we were born!

I met my mates in the morning, a broken, scattered band.
Men shoot us in the water and club us on the land;
Men drive us to the Salt House like silly sheep and tame,
And still we sing Lukannon--before the sealers came.

Wheel down, wheel down to southward; oh, Gooverooska, go!
And tell the Deep-Sea Viceroys the story of our woe;
Ere, empty as the shark's egg the tempest flings ashore,
The Beaches of Lukannon shall know their sons no more!