The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries Part 11

"In the first place, the s.e.xes of the hair or common seal are the same size, not like the fur seal, where the sea-catch is four or five times bigger than the female. Then they don't breed in harems and the male hair seal does not stay on sh.o.r.e. A fur seal swims with his fore flippers, a true seal with his hind flippers. A fur seal stands upright on his fore flippers, a hair seal lies supine. A fur seal has a neck, a hair seal has practically none. A fur seal naturally has fur, the hair seal has no undercoat whatever. A pup fur seal is black, a pup hair seal is white. Different? Obviously! Pity the old name 'sea bear' died out.

It would have prevented confusion between fur seal and true seal."

With this beginning, the agent pa.s.sed into a detailed description of the anatomy of the two different kinds of seal, and wound up with an earnest panegyric of his fur seal family. By the time the agent had completed his earnest defense of the sea bear, lest it should be confused with the more common seal, the two had reached the killing-grounds, where the natives were awaiting the agent's word to begin their work. He stepped up to the foreman of the gang and with him looked over the first 'pod'

of about fifty that had been selected for killing, noting one or two that looked either too young or too old or with fur in bad condition, and these points settled, he gave the word to begin.

The 'pod' of seals was surrounded by eight men, each armed with a club about five and a half feet long, the thickness of a baseball bat at one end and three inches in diameter at the other. Behind him, each of the natives had laid his stabbing-knife, skinning-knife, and whetstone. At the word the killing began. Each native brought down his club simultaneously, the first blow invariably crus.h.i.+ng the slight, thin bones of the fur seal's skull and stretching it out unconscious. The six or seven seals that fell to each man's share were clubbed in less than a minute for the lot.

The Aleuts then dropped their clubs and dragged out the stunned seals so that no one of them touched another, and taking their stabbing-knives, drove them into the hearts of the seals between the fore flippers. In no case did Colin see any evidence that the seal had felt a moment's suffering.

"Now," said the agent, "watch this, if you like seeing skilful work.

Skinning has got to be done rapidly. Precisely! Else the seal will 'heat' and spoil the fur."

Watching the native nearest to him, Colin noticed that he rolled the seal over, balancing it squarely on its back. Then he made half a dozen sweeping strokes--all so expert and accurate that not a slip was made with the knife, nor was any blubber left on the skin. In less than two minutes, by the watch, he had skinned the seal, leaving on the carca.s.s nothing but a small patch of the upper lip where the stiff mustache grows, the insignificant tail, and the coa.r.s.e hide of the flippers.

The whole sight was a good deal like butchery, and Colin felt a little uncomfortable. Moreover, he was not hardened to the odor arising from the blubber of the seal. He beat a retreat.

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Nagge," he called, holding his handkerchief to his nose, "but that's too much for me."

The agent turned and noticed his departure. He called back to the boy:

"Do you see that low hill? To the right of that ruined hut?"

"Yes," Colin responded.

"Just below that are some sea-lions! Go and take a look at them. I'll join you as soon as we are through here. Won't be long. But you'll have to stalk them to the leeward if you want to get close," he added, "they're shy. I'll meet you there and we'll go back to dinner. You ought to be hungry by then."

"I will be, then," Colin responded cheerfully, adding under his breath, as he glanced back over his shoulder at the killing-grounds, "but I'm not now!"

A short walk through the long moss a-glitter with wild flowers, poppies, harebells, monkshood, and a host of sub-Arctic species, brought the lad to the top of the hill. There he paused a moment, to look over the island, treeless save for dwarf willows six inches high and a ground-dwelling form of crowberry. Below him, and some distance away, were the sea-lions, but even from that coign of vantage they looked so big and menacing that Colin wondered whether they might not stalk him, instead of his stalking them.

After a little scrambling, however, he found himself at the bottom of the cliff, and made his way as carefully as he could to the sea-lion rookery. But when he did come near and rounded a large boulder in order to get a fair view, he was inclined to think that shyness was the last idea he would have gained from the looks of sea-lions. Near him, almost erect on his fore flippers, was an old bull, a tremendous creature, well over six feet in height and weighing not less than fifteen hundred pounds.

Apart from size, he was a much more vicious-looking creature than the sea-catch; the tawny chest and grizzled mane gave him a true lion-like look, and an upturned muzzle showed the sharp teeth glistening white against the almost black tongue, while a small wicked, bulldog eye glittered at the intruder. The female sea-lion, near by, was almost as large as a six-year-old bull seal.

Wanting to see something happen, and realizing from the build of the sea-lion that he could not make much progress on land, Colin threw a stone at a pup sea-lion who was asleep on a rock close by.

But the boy was utterly unprepared for the result, for no sooner did the huge sea-lion realize his advance as he strode forward to throw the stone, than it was smitten with panic. When, moreover, it heard the 'crack' of the pebble as it hit a rock behind him, the cowardly creature went wild with fear, and made convulsive and clumsy efforts to reach the water ten feet away, tumbling down twice in doing so, and finally plunging into the ocean trembling as though with ague. At the alarm, the entire rookery took flight, leaving the pups behind, sprawling on the rocks. The parents ranged up in a line about fifty feet from sh.o.r.e and remained at that safe distance as long as Colin was in sight. He watched the pups for a little while, but they were not nearly as interesting as seals, and he was quite ready to go when his friend hailed him from the top of the hill.

"Sea-lions look sort of human in the water, don't they?" remarked Colin as he rejoined his friend, and turned for a farewell glance at the creatures with their upright heads and shoulders and inquisitive look.

"The Aleuts say they are," his friend replied. "They declare their ancestors were sea-lions or seals. That's a general belief on the north coast of Scotland and in the Hebrides, too."

"That men came from seals?"

"Certainly. What do you suppose started all the mermaid stories? Round head, soft tender eyes, and a fish's tail? Seals! Obviously! And, if you notice old pictures of mermaids the tail is drawn as if it were split in two, just like the two long flippers of the seal."

"I never thought of that before," said the boy.

"You've heard of the Orforde merman, of course, haven't you?"

Colin admitted his ignorance.

"Queer yarn. Quite true, though," the agent said. "Doc.u.ments show it. It happened off the coast of Suffolk, England. About the end of the twelfth century, I think. Some fishermen caught a creature which they described as being like an old man with long gray hair, but which had a fish's tail. It could live out of the water just as well as in it. They brought it to the Earl of Orforde. In spite of all their efforts they could not teach the merman to speak. Naturally! So the priest of the parish suggested that perhaps the creature had something to do with the devil.

Characteristic of the time! So they took the 'merman' to church. But it showed no sign of adoration and didn't seem to understand the ceremonies. So they were convinced that it was an evil thing, and put it to the torture, hoping to extract a confession from--a seal!"

"But there are mermaids!" said Colin. "I've seen 'em. Not alive, of course, but stuffed."

"So have I," the agent said, laughing; "that was a trick the j.a.panese used and fooled a lot of people. Why, there was one in a museum in Boston for years! It was a fake, of course. Obviously!"

"How did they do it?"

"Head and shoulders of a newly-born monkey fastened to a fish's body. I forget now what fish. Then with incredible pains, they laid rows upon rows of fish scales all over the monkey's shoulders and chest. Wonderful work. Each scale was glued on separately, beginning from scales almost microscopic and shading both in size and color exactly into those of the fish hinder portion. The work was so exquisitely done that its artificiality could not be detected. But live mermaids haven't been put in any aquarium. Not yet!"

"I don't suppose there's even a water-baby left!" the boy said, laughing.

"No," was the reply. "We couldn't give it any milk now, the sea-cows have been all killed off."

"Sea-cows?"

"Big creatures, bigger even than walruses. Lots of them here some time.

We find their bones everywhere. Nearly all our sled-runners are made of sea-cow bones. They grazed like cattle below water on the seaweeds of the sh.o.r.e and the natives used to spear them at low tide."

[Ill.u.s.tration: CATCH OF HERRING ON BEACH AT GASTINEAU CHANNEL, ALASKA.

_Courtesy of the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries._]

"Are there walruses here, too?"

"I saw three a few years ago, but none since. About two hundred miles north of here, however, on St. Matthew's Island, there used to be scores of them. But I reckon hunters and polar bears, between them, have destroyed most of them."

"Do polar bears come here in winter?"

The agent shook his head.

"The Pribilof Islands are not cold enough for a polar bear. Besides he likes walrus meat better than seal. Bear eats a lot of fish, too."

"I thought they lived almost entirely on seals."

"They couldn't very well," was the reply. "Seal is a better swimmer than a bear, although the polar bear is a marvel in the water for a land animal and can overhaul a walrus. The big white fellows only catch seal when basking on the ice. They get a good many that way. The hunters have left nothing to the Pribilofs except the fur seal and the sea-lion, and not many of those. And unless we can find a way to stop the seal-pirates, those will soon be gone, too."

"Do you have much trouble with that sort of thing?" the boy asked.

"A lot nearly every year. We won't have so much of it now. Great Britain, j.a.pan, Russia, and the United States are united in the desire to prevent pelagic sealing. Good thing, too. A treaty has been signed, forbidding it for fifteen years. So you see, a seal poacher on the rookeries finds everybody against him."

"Wasn't there a lot of trouble some years ago?" Colin asked. "I heard that there was real fighting here."

"Indeed there was, and lots of it! No one, not even the United States Government, ever knew how much. While the islands were leased to a private company the beaches were patrolled by riflemen. Russian and j.a.panese schooners frequently sent off boatloads of armed men during a fog, to kill as many seals as possible, protecting their men by gunfire.

But that was before the Bureau of Fisheries took hold!"