"I saw three a few years ago, but none since. About two hundred miles north of here, however, on St. Matthew's Island, there used to be scores of them. But I reckon hunters and polar bears, between them, have destroyed most of them."
"Do polar bears come here in winter?"
The agent shook his head.
"The Pribilof Islands are not cold enough for a polar bear. Besides he likes walrus meat better than seal. Bear eats a lot of fish, too."
"I thought they lived almost entirely on seals."
"They couldn't very well," was the reply. "Seal is a better swimmer than a bear, although the polar bear is a marvel in the water for a land animal and can overhaul a walrus. The big white fellows only catch seal when basking on the ice. They get a good many that way. The hunters have left nothing to the Pribilofs except the fur seal and the sea-lion, and not many of those. And unless we can find a way to stop the seal-pirates, those will soon be gone, too."
"Do you have much trouble with that sort of thing?" the boy asked.
"A lot nearly every year. We won't have so much of it now. Great Britain, Japan, Russia, and the United States are united in the desire to prevent pelagic sealing. Good thing, too. A treaty has been signed, forbidding it for fifteen years. So you see, a seal poacher on the rookeries finds everybody against him."
"Wasn't there a lot of trouble some years ago?" Colin asked. "I heard that there was real fighting here."