Although seals can exist for a long time without food, they must eat sooner or later. So the mother seal, having stayed on one of the islands with her pup until she is very hungry, will leave him gorged with milk sufficient to nourish him during her absence, and set forth on long fishing expeditions that may extend over two or even three days. When she returns she finds her own little one amid thousands of others that look exactly like him, just as surely as a human mother would select her own baby from a roomful. So anxious is the mother that her pup shall have enough food to make him grow into a strong, beautiful holluschickie that she will nurse none but him. Thus if she did not return from her long journey in search of food he would surely die of starvation, as all the other seal-mothers would be too busy supplying the wants of their own little ones to care for him.
[CHAPTER XVII]
CRUEL KILLING OF MOTHER-SEALS
It was because Captain Duff wanted more seal-skins, and because the seals insisted in resorting to Bering Sea, that he had taken the Seamew into those waters. He knew that the Pribyloff seals, in vast numbers, roamed far and wide in search of food; he knew that here they were less shy and more easily secured than elsewhere, and he believed that, hidden by the prevalent and friendly fogs, his swift little schooner could escape the vigilance of meddlesome patrol boats. Of course he ran the risk of losing his vessel by taking her into the forbidden waters for this purpose, and of course he was disobeying a law in so doing, Captain Duff was willing to run the risk, however, and as for laws—while he entertained a great respect for those that protected his interests, he had little regard for such as interfered with his schemes for money-getting. So, having hidden the seal-skins already secured in a place from which he, or those whom he might send, could reclaim them at some future time, and having provided himself with a supply of salted codfish, beneath which the skins that he now hoped to obtain might be concealed, foxy Captain Duff headed the Seamew into Bering Sea, and sailed her for a day and a night towards the seal-haunted Pribyloff Islands.
Only he of all on board knew whither she was being taken; or if Jalap Coombs suspected, he shrewdly kept his own counsel, as is always best for mates to do unless their advice is asked. He had become so strangely taciturn during the last two days, that even his boys, as he called Phil and Serge, could extract no information from him.
Early in the morning of the second day the Seamew was hove to. With the first light the hunters were ordered into their boats, and sent in pursuit of the schools of seals that surrounded the schooner in every direction, as far as the eye could reach through the drifting fog. These were darting, diving, leaping high in air, gambolling with all the playfulness of kittens, and showing themselves by every movement to be the swiftest of swimmers, and the most graceful of marine animals.
Although Phil Ryder was not prepared for a flat disobedience of orders, he still moved towards the boat with such evident reluctance as to attract the captain’s notice.
“I shall pay you the same commission as the other hunters for this day’s work, Ryder,” said Captain Duff, a day or two later, when the Seamew was well into Bering Sea, “and the hunter making the biggest score to-day will get a ten-dollar bonus. The same will be given to the steersman of his boat, and half as much to his boat-puller.”
“Hurrah for Captain Duff!” yelled Oro Dunn. “That bonus has got to come to my boat, or I’m no shot.”