“I can see him waving his hands, it seems to me, and now he’s shooing them with his hat,” exclaimed Goritz. “He’s in something of a fix. Hurry.”
THE PROFESSOR AND THE PRIBYLOF SEALS
We bounded forward, and over the beaten sand raced together, taking quick glances ahead at the now certain embarrassment of our friend. It was indeed the Professor, and his predicament was unmistakable. Amusement however mingled with our anxiety, for as we drew near we could plainly make out that he had taken his hat between his teeth and was violently wagging his head, the absurd appendage of his cap flying up and down producing a very ludicrous effect. It was a serviceable device, however, for the amazed seals had stopped their approaches; their barking or snarling, at first quite audible, had ceased, and they were now attentively regarding the Professor with almost immobile heads.
“Guess,” called out Hopkins between breaths, “they think the Professor is a little dippy, and are reconsidering his engagement as a domestic instructor.”
We were now near enough to attract the Professor’s sight; he hailed us with swinging arms but did not venture to desist from his mandarin-like wig-wagging. The approach to his position was a little difficult, and we suffered some falls. Our advent had attracted the notice of the bulls and they swerved about to receive us, humping their backs, leaping forward on their flippers, and renewing their truculent miauling or barking. We attacked them with stones but their defiance was unchanged, and they lunged and rushed, quite unappalled by our onset. They would retreat almost immediately to their former positions, holding the poor Professor in chancery with an apparent unanimity that kept Goritz laughing, for with every retreat, the Professor would renew his violent gesticulations.
At length Goritz and Hopkins armed with an armful of stones drove in on the biggest of the bulls, and assailed him with such a shower of missiles that his reserve was overcome, and he plunged forward, following them for twenty feet or more. I ran to the Professor and caught his arm, and we got out of the zone of danger, while the momentarily allied beachmasters, frustrated from their imprisonment of him, suddenly resented each other’s proximity and after a miscellaneous “mix-up,” as Hopkins called it, shuffled and loped away to their former stations, the chosen spots for their future seraglios.
With the liberated Professor we sat down on some stool-like fragments inserted in the sand of the beach and heard his story. It was laughable enough and added an unusual trait to the recorded conduct of the big bull seals, usually indifferent to the approach of men. These three indolent, unoccupied forerunners of the great herds that might soon be expected, had actually chased the Professor and, having cornered him on the promontory, had hopelessly besieged him. The Professor had been too much interested or too imprudent. His amiability perhaps had brought him into this unexpected dilemma, for he had gathered up seaweed from the rocks at the edge of the water, and attempted to feed the bulls. They followed him, and their disappointed expectations developed later into the pugnacity that had made him a prisoner.
While he was talking a few more seals emerged from the ocean, lazily hauling themselves on the rocks with that ill-assured clumsiness of motion so strikingly replaced in the water by the greatest grace, agility and speed.
“But Professor,” interrupted Goritz, “what were you doing with your hat?”