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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.
"What's here?" said a sea lion gruffly, for as a rule the sea lions keep themselves to themselves. "Scoochnie! Ochen scoochnie!" "They're killing all the holluschickie on all the beaches!" The Sea Lion turned his head inshore. "Nonsense!" he said. "Your friends are making as much noise as ever. You must have seen old Kerick polishing off a drove. He's done that for thirty years."
That very minute he turned north, swimming steadily, and as he went on he met scores of his mates, all bound for the same place, and they said: "Greeting, Kotick! This year we are all holluschickie, and we can dance the Fire-dance in the breakers off Lukannon and play on the new grass. But where did you get that coat?"
"I don't care to undertake the herding of one of those harems," I objected. "But there are the holluschickie," she said. "The holluschickie haul out by themselves, and Dr. Jordan says that paths are left between the harems, and that as long as the holluschickie keep strictly to the path they are unmolested by the masters of the harem."
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-space, 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!
You can eat birds and walrus, and a man might eat a fur-seal if he'd had nothing else for a week, though I've struck nothing that has more smell than the holluschickie blubber. If it was winter, I'd have tried the ice. The Huskies make out on it for weeks together, and quite a few of the steam whaler men have trailed an odd hundred or two miles over it one time or another.
A quarter of a mile inland we came upon the holluschickie sleek young bulls, living out the loneliness of their bachelorhood and gathering strength against the day when they would fight their way into the ranks of the Benedicts. Everything now went smoothly. I seemed to know just what to do and how to do it.
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 pass 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.
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 ugly things he should not have gone to the killing grounds.
"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 pass. "They do in the water," the agent said. "Play 'King of the Castle' on a flat-topped rock for hours together.
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