The Jungle Book, part 10 · page 21 2101Where billow meets billow, then soft be thy pillow, Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!102The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee, Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas!103Seal Lullaby104All these things happened several years ago at a place called Novastoshnah, or North East Point, on the Island of St. Paul, away and away in the Bering Sea.105Limmershin, the Winter Wren, told me the tale when he was blown on to the rigging of a steamer going to Japan, and I took him down into my cabin and warmed and fed him for a couple of days till he was fit to fly back to St. Paul’s again.106Limmershin is a very quaint little bird, but he knows how to tell the truth.107Nobody comes to Novastoshnah except on business, and the only people who have regular business there are the seals.108They come in the summer months by hundreds and hundreds of thousands out of the cold gray sea.109For Novastoshnah Beach has the finest accommodation for seals of any place in all the world.110Sea Catch knew that, and every spring would swim from whatever place he happened to be in--would swim like a torpedo-boat straight for Novastoshnah and spend a month fighting with his companions for a good place on the rocks, as close to the sea as possible.111Sea Catch was fifteen years old, a huge gray fur seal with almost a mane on his shoulders, and long, wicked dog teeth.112When he heaved himself up on his front flippers he stood more than four feet clear of the ground, and his weight, if anyone had been bold enough to weigh him, was nearly seven hundred pounds.113He was scarred all over with the marks of savage fights, but he was always ready for just one fight more.114He would put his head on one side, as though he were afraid to look his enemy in the face; then he would shoot it out like lightning, and when the big teeth were firmly fixed on the other seal’s neck, the other seal might get away if he could, but Sea Catch would not help him.115Yet Sea Catch never chased a beaten seal, for that was against the Rules of the Beach.116He only wanted room by the sea for his nursery.117But as there were forty or fifty thousand other seals hunting for the same thing each spring, the whistling, bellowing, roaring, and blowing on the beach was something frightful.118From a little hill called Hutchinson’s Hill, you could look over three and a half miles of ground covered with fighting seals; and the surf was dotted all over with the heads of seals hurrying to land and begin their share of the fighting.119They fought in the breakers, they fought in the sand, and they fought on the smooth-worn basalt rocks of the nurseries, for they were just as stupid and unaccommodating as men.120Their wives never came to the island until late in May or early in June, for they did not care to be torn to pieces; and the young two-, three-, and four-year-old seals who had not begun housekeeping went inland about half a mile through the ranks of the fighters and played about on the sand dunes in droves and legions, and rubbed off every single green thing that grew.121They were called the holluschickie--the bachelors--and there were perhaps two or three hundred thousand of them at Novastoshnah alone.122Sea Catch had just finished his forty-fifth fight one spring when Matkah, his soft, sleek, gentle-eyed wife, came up out of the sea, and he caught her by the scruff of the neck and dumped her down on his reservation, saying gruffly: “Late as usual.123Where have you been?”124It was not the fashion for Sea Catch to eat anything during the four months he stayed on the beaches, and so his temper was generally bad.125Matkah knew better than to answer back.126She looked round and cooed: “How thoughtful of you.127You’ve taken the old place again.”128“I should think I had,” said Sea Catch.129“Look at me!”130He was scratched and bleeding in twenty places; one eye was almost out, and his sides were torn to ribbons.131“Oh, you men, you men!”132Matkah said, fanning herself with her hind flipper.133“Why can’t you be sensible and settle your places quietly?134You look as though you had been fighting with the Killer Whale.”135“I haven’t been doing anything but fight since the middle of May.136The beach is disgracefully crowded this season.137I’ve met at least a hundred seals from Lukannon Beach, house hunting.138Why can’t people stay where they belong?”139“I’ve often thought we should be much happier if we hauled out at Otter Island instead of this crowded place,” said Matkah.140“Bah!141Only the holluschickie go to Otter Island.142If we went there they would say we were afraid.143We must preserve appearances, my dear.”144Sea Catch sunk his head proudly between his fat shoulders and pretended to go to sleep for a few minutes, but all the time he was keeping a sharp lookout for a fight.145Now that all the seals and their wives were on the land, you could hear their clamor miles out to sea above the loudest gales.146At the lowest counting there were over a million seals on the beach--old seals, mother seals, tiny babies, and holluschickie, fighting, scuffling, bleating, crawling, and playing together--going down to the sea and coming up from it in gangs and regiments, lying over every foot of ground as far as the eye could reach, and skirmishing about in brigades through the fog.147It is nearly always foggy at Novastoshnah, except when the sun comes out and makes everything look all pearly and rainbow-colored for a little while.148Kotick, Matkah’s baby, was born in the middle of that confusion, and he was all head and shoulders, with pale, watery blue eyes, as tiny seals must be, but there was something about his coat that made his mother look at him very closely.149“Sea Catch,” she said, at last, “our baby’s going to be white!”150“Empty clam-shells and dry seaweed!” snorted Sea Catch.151“There never has been such a thing in the world as a white seal.”152“I can’t help that,” said Matkah; “there’s going to be now.”153And she sang the low, crooning seal song that all the mother seals sing to their babies:154You mustn’t swim till you’re six weeks old, Or your head will be sunk by your heels; And summer gales and Killer Whales Are bad for baby seals.155Are bad for baby seals, dear rat, As bad as bad can be; But splash and grow strong, And you can’t be wrong.156Child of the Open Sea!157Of course the little fellow did not understand the words at first.158He paddled and scrambled about by his mother’s side, and learned to scuffle out of the way when his father was fighting with another seal, and the two rolled and roared up and down the slippery rocks.159Matkah used to go to sea to get things to eat, and the baby was fed only once in two days, but then he ate all he could and throve upon it.160The first thing he did was to crawl inland, and there he met tens of thousands of babies of his own age, and they played together like puppies, went to sleep on the clean sand, and played again.161The old people in the nurseries took no notice of them, and the holluschickie kept to their own grounds, and the babies had a beautiful playtime.162When Matkah came back from her deep-sea fishing she would go straight to their playground and call as a sheep calls for a lamb, and wait until she heard Kotick bleat.163Then she would take the straightest of straight lines in his direction, striking out with her fore flippers and knocking the youngsters head over heels right and left.164There were always a few hundred mothers hunting for their children through the playgrounds, and the babies were kept lively.165But, as Matkah told Kotick, “So long as you don’t lie in muddy water and get mange, or rub the hard sand into a cut or scratch, and so long as you never go swimming when there is a heavy sea, nothing will hurt you here.”166Little seals can no more swim than little children, but they are unhappy till they learn.167The first time that Kotick went down to the sea a wave carried him out beyond his depth, and his big head sank and his little hind flippers flew up exactly as his mother had told him in the song, and if the next wave had not thrown him back again he would have drowned.1 2← previousThe Jungle Book, part 9next →The Jungle Book, part 11↑ back to The Jungle BookThis page in Markdown → https://md.mova.elamur.ai/free/en/corpora/tales/pg236/10/page/2/