The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries Part 10

"Not quite," was the reply. "The road to the killing-grounds begins there, though. Naturally! We don't take any seals from a rookery."

"Why not?"

"No use! They are all either old bulls, females, or pups," was the answer. "The fur of the old sea-catches is coa.r.s.e. Couldn't sell it.

Never kill a cow seal under any circ.u.mstances. That's what all the trouble in killing seals at sea is about. You can't tell a holluschickie from a cow seal in the water. Cruel, too. When a cow seal is on her way to the rookery, she will have a baby seal in a few days."

"The holluschickie, then," said Colin, "don't come on the rookery at all?"

"Never! Absolutely! The bachelors, which are young male seals five years old and under, leave the rookery alone. The old sea-catches look after that. Certainly! It is mutilation or death for a holluschickie to put so much as a flipper on a rookery. They seldom try. Therefore, the hauling-grounds are at a distance. Obviously! Sometimes, though, it is impossible for the holluschickie to get to the sea without having to cross the rough, rocky ground which is suitable for a rookery."

"How can they work it, then?"

"The sea-catches leave a road eight feet wide, no more, no less. This path through the rookery gives just room for two holluschickie to pa.s.s.

The beachmasters whose harems are on either side of this road watch them. They keep their lookout from a station right beside the road. If one of the holluschickie touches a cow on either side of this clear road-s.p.a.ce, he will be attacked savagely."

"But I should think he could get away easily enough," Colin objected, "because the sea-catch can't leave his harem."

"Can't! Old bulls are all the way along," the agent answered. "Every one will attack a holluschickie who has once been attacked. No chance to escape. But the bachelors know that. They pa.s.s up and down such a causeway by thousands, night and day. They 'don't turn to de right, don't turn to de lef', but keep in de middle ob de road,'" quoted the agent, laughing.

"And you say that all the furs, then, are taken from among the holluschickie?" queried the boy.

"Every one of them."

"But how do you hunt the bachelor seals?"

The agent stared at him in surprise, and then burst into a short peal of laughter.

"Hunt? How do you hunt pet puppies?" he queried, in reply. "The holluschickie are the tamest, gentlest creatures in the world. Here are the hauling-grounds now. Let's go down. You'll see how tame they are."

"But it's like a dancing-floor or a parade-ground for soldiers!" cried Colin as, reaching the top of the hill, he looked across a stretch of upland plain at least half a mile across. There was not a blade of gra.s.s, not a twig of shrubbery of any kind, all had been beaten down and the bare ground was as smooth as though it had been leveled off and rolled. Upon this bare plain, thousands of the holluschickie were playing, the most characteristic game seeming to be a voluntary march or dance, when the bachelors would roughly gather into lines or groups and lope along at exactly the same speed together for about fifty feet, stopping simultaneously for a few moments, and then going on again, as though obeying the commands of a drill-sergeant.

"They don't seem to play with each other much," commented Colin as the two walked among the holluschickie, who showed neither fear nor excitement, merely shuffling aside a foot or two to let them pa.s.s.

"They do in the water," the agent said. "Play 'King of the Castle' on a flat-topped rock for hours together. One seal pushes the other off the coveted post, only to be dislodged himself a minute after. And I have never once seen any sign of ill-humor. They never bite. They never injure one another. They never even growl angrily. It's hard to believe that their tempers can change so quickly when they reach the rookery."

"They seem to be of all ages and sizes," said Colin.

[Ill.u.s.tration: BULL FUR-SEAL CHARGING THE CAMERA.

_Courtesy of the National Geographic Magazine._]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SNAPSHOTTING AN OLD BEACH-MASTER.

This plate was recovered, although the photographer was drowned on the treacherous sh.o.r.es of the Pribilof Islands the very day the picture was taken.

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

"Yearlings of both s.e.xes and males from two years old to five," the agent answered.

"Do they fast all summer, too, like the sea-catches?"

"No," was the reply. "No need for it. They go to sea every few days. If the sun is out they stay in the sea. They make long journeys, too, just as the mother seals have to do, because a seal needs at least thirty pounds of fish a day to keep in good condition. All the nearby fishing-grounds have been exhausted."

"I suppose the different colors show the different ages?" the boy suggested.

"Exactly," the agent answered. "That's important, too. By law we are only allowed to sell skins weighing between five and eight and a half pounds. That means only those of males two and three years old. The skin of a yearling weighs just about four pounds and that of a four-year-old male eleven or twelve."

"How about the two-year-old cow seals? You said that only the yearlings among the females were here."

"The cow seals never come twice to the hauling grounds," was the reply.

"They go for the first time to the rookeries in their second year."

"I should think it would be easy enough then to 'cut out' a herd," the boy said. "I could pretty nearly do it myself."

"Obviously! Without any trouble!" was the reply. "But you've got to go slow."

"Why?" the boy queried.

"If a seal is hurried he gets heated. You remember I told you how little they can stand. If a seal is killed after being heated, fur comes off in patches and the skin is of no value. Let's go on. I have to tally those that are knocked down."

"I thought you were going to drive some!" said Colin in a disappointed tone, as they turned away from the hauling-grounds along a well-beaten road.

"The drive started three hours ago and more," was the reply. "Quarter of a mile an hour is fast enough to make seals travel. You can drive as fast as a mile an hour, but lots will be left on the road to die from the exertion. Yet the same seals will swim hundreds of miles in a day."

"But what can you do, then, on a warm day? Do you drive during the night?"

"No seals here on a warm day," was the immediate answer. "You saw all those thousands of holluschickie on the hauling-grounds? If the sun were to come out now, in half an hour there wouldn't be a seal on the entire flat. All disappear into the sea. Absolutely!"

"What is that group over there?" asked Colin, pointing to a small cl.u.s.ter a short distance ahead of them, near some rough frame buildings.

"That's the drive," the agent answered. "The killing-grounds are always near the salt-houses. What's that? The smell? Worst smell in the world, I thought, when I first came here. You can't kill seals in the same place year after year and just leave the flesh to rot without having a frightful odor. One gets used to it after a while."

"It seems to me that you're running the risk of starting up a plague or something!"

"No," was the reply, "it has never caused any sickness here. Then the drive is small now to what it used to be. Time was when three or four thousand seals would be driven, where we only take a couple of hundred now. Fallen off terribly! Fifty years ago, every available inch of all the beach was rookery, settled as thick as in the rookery you saw just now. The holluschickie were here in uncounted millions. These hills, now overgrown with gra.s.s, show the soil matted with fine hair and fur where the seals shed their coats for hundreds of years. Now a few scattered rookeries are all that remain."

"Do you suppose the seal herd will ever be as big again?" the boy asked.

The agent shook his head.

"I'm afraid not. The governments interested won't keep up the international agreement long enough," he said regretfully. "It would take thirty or forty years. Yet it would be worth it. You see," he continued, "this is absolutely the only place in the world where the true Alaskan fur seal--the sea bear, as it used to be called, because it isn't a seal at all--can be found. The fur seals on the Russian islands are a different species. Those on the j.a.panese islands are different from both."

"You say a fur seal isn't a seal at all?" asked Colin. "What's the difference?"

"Not the same at all. Different, entirely. Don't even belong to the same group of animal. They look differently. Their habits are unlike. Oh, they're dissimilar in every way."

"Just how?" asked Colin curiously.