"Seals?" said Colin, jumping up eagerly. "Oh, where?"
"Sit down, boy," interrupted the captain sternly; "you'll see enough of seals before you get home."
"All right, Captain Murchison," Colin answered; "I'm in no hurry to be home."
In spite of his recent loss the captain could not help a grim smile stealing over his face at the boy's readiness for adventure, no matter where it might lead. But he had been a rover in his boyhood himself, and so he said no more.
"Why, there must be millions of seals to make as much noise as that!" Colin objected.
"There aren't; at least, not now," was Hank's reply. "There were tens of millions of fur seals in these waters when I made my first trip out here in 1860, but they've been killed off right an' left, same as the buffalo. The government has to protect 'em now, an' there's no pelagic sealin' allowed at all."
"What's pelagic sealing?" asked Colin.
"Killing seals at sea," the whaler answered. "That's wrong, because you can't always tell a
young male from a female seal in the water, an' the females ought never to be killed. But you'll learn all about it. Beg pardon, sir," Hank continued, speaking to the captain, "but by the noise of the seals those must be either the Pribilof or the Commander Islands?"
"Pribilof, by my reckoning," the captain answered. "Do you hear anything of the third boat?"