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This might be at Atka, where the finest otter hunters in the world lived, or on the south shore of Oonalaska, or in Cook's Inlet where the rip of the tide runs a mill-race, or just off Kadiak on the Saanach coast, where twenty miles of beach boulders and surf waters and little islets of sea-kelp provide ideal fields for the sea-otter.
While hunting the sea-cow in the kelp-beds and sea-marshes the men had noticed that whenever a swashing sea or tide drove the shattering spray up the rocks, there would come riding in on the storm whole herds of another sea denizen thousands upon thousands of them, so tame that they did not know the fear of man, burying their heads in the sea-kelp while the storm raged, lifting them only to breathe at intervals.
Some days before the Resolution of Dec. 23 was adopted by the Commons, the Army had taken steps for bringing the King nearer to London, to abide the issue. He had been in Hurst Castle for about a fortnight, rather poorly lodged in the old apartments of the keep, and complaining of the fogs that rose from the salt-water marshes around, with their beds of ooze and sea-kelp.
Later, Steller discovered that the huge sea-cow often thirty-five feet long seen pasturing on the fields of sea-kelp at low tide, afforded food of almost the same quality as the land cow.
They had a rare team of dogs, Caesar and Wolf and Grouch and the rest, five or six uneasy crabs which they had caught and harnessed to a tiny sledge made from a curved root and a shingle tied together with a bit of sea-kelp. And when the crabs scurried away over the hard sand, waving their claws wildly, Noel and Mooka would caper alongside, cracking a little whip and crying "Hi, hi, Caesar!
Oft would they return to their sweethearts, sporting musky girdles of sea-kelp, tasseled with green little pouches of grass, brimful of seed-pearls; and jingling their coin in the ears of the damsels, throw out inuendoes about the beautiful and bountiful mermaids: how wealthy and amorous they were, and how they delighted in the company of the brave gallants of Tupia.
What has he there, towing behind? It is tangled sea-kelp clinging to its fins. But the clogged thing strains to keep up with its fellows. Yet little they heed. Away they go; every fish for itself, and any fish for Samoa. At last the poor Boneeta is seen no more. The myriad fins swim on; a lonely waste, where the lost one drops behind. Strange fish!
Brown sea-kelp and sea-green sea-grass and the sea-anemone that are the floating gardens of the sea-gods and sea-goddesses; sea-birds, soft-bosomed as doves and crying with their ceaseless and sorrowful cry; and all they that are sea-borne along the sea-board, these were there in their glory. We hid in caverns and there dreamed our sea-dreams.
An enormous mammal, more than three tons in weight, with hind quarters like a whale, snout and fore fins resembling a cow, grazed in herds on the fields of sea-kelp and gazed languidly without fear on the newcomer Man. This was the famous sea-cow described by the enthusiastic Steller, but long since extinct.
In such manner Ben-Hur obtained hold on Galilee, and paved the way to greater services in the cause of the King Who Was Coming. And with what result we shall see. "And, waking, I beheld her there Sea-dreaming in the moted air, A siren lithe and debonair, With wristlets woven of scarlet weeds, And oblong lucent amber beads Of sea-kelp shining in her hair."
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