' nests, where the walrus herded by themselves.

He landed close to old Sea Vitch--the big, ugly, bloated, pimpled,
fat-necked, long-tusked walrus of the North Pacific, who has no manners
except when he is asleep--as he was then, with his hind flippers half in
and half out of the surf.

"Wake up!" barked Kotick, for the gulls were making a great noise.

"Hah! Ho! Hmph! What's that?" said Sea Vitch, and he struck the next
walrus a blow with his tusks and waked him up, and the next struck the
next, and so on till they were all awake and staring in every direction
but the right one.

"Hi! It's me," said Kotick, bobbing in the surf and looking like a
little white slug.

"Well! May I be--skinned!" said Sea Vitch, and they all looked at Kotick
as you can fancy a club full of drowsy old gentlemen would look at a
little boy. Kotick did not care to hear any more about skinning just
then; he had seen enough of it. So he called out: "Isn't there any place
for seals to go where men don't ever come?"

"Go and find out," said Sea Vitch, shutting his eyes. "Run away. We're
busy here."

Kotick made his dolphin-jump in the air and shouted as loud as he could:
"Clam-eater! Clam-eater!" He knew that Sea Vitch never caught a fish in
his life but always rooted for clams and seaweed; though he pretended to
be a very terrible person. Naturally the Chickies and the Gooverooskies
and the Epatkas--the Burgomaster Gulls and the Kittiwakes and the
Puffins, who are always looking for a chance to be rude, took up the
cry, and--so Limmershin told me--for nearly five minutes you could not
have heard a gun fired on Walrus Islet. All the population was yelling
and screaming "Clam-eater! Stareek [old man]!" while Sea Vitch rolled
from side to side grunting and coughing.

"Now will you tell?" said Kotick, all out of breath.

"Go and ask Sea Cow," said Sea Vitch. "If he is living still, he'll be
able to tell you."

"How shall I know Sea Cow when I meet him?" said Kotick, sheering off.

"He's the only thing in the sea uglier than Sea Vitch," screamed a
Burgomaster gull, wheeling under Sea Vitch's nose. "Uglier, and with
worse manners! Stareek!"

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 ug