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 t