Menie sat perfectly still and watched his father. Kesshoo reached the bladder and began to pull on the line, but just at that moment the big seal turned round and swam right under the kyak!
In a second the kyak turned bottom side up in the water! Menie screamed. The people watching on the shore gave a great howl, and Koko's father started up the beach after his own kyak.
He thought perhaps Kesshoo could not manage both the ice raft and the seal, and he meant to go to help him.
But in one second Kesshoo was right side up again. No water could get into the kyak because Kesshoo's skin coat was drawn tight over the hole in the deck, and Kesshoo was in the coat!
Kesshoo often turned somersaults in the water in that way. Sometimes he even did it for fun! He said afterward that he could have turned the boat right side up again with just his nose, without using either his paddle or his arms, if only his nose had been a little bigger, and though he meant this for a joke, the twins believed that he really could do it.
The moment he was right side up again, Kesshoo gave chase once more to the bladder. The seal was very weak now, and Kesshoo knew that it would soon come to the surface and float and that then he could tow it in.
He had not long to wait. The bladder bobbed about for a while and then was still. Kesshoo drew up the line, and paddled back to the ice raft, towing the big seal after him.
"Catch this," he said to Menie. He threw him the end of the line. "Wind the line six times round the harpoon," he said, "and hold tight to the end of it."
Menie did as he was told. Then Kesshoo tied together the two ends of the harpoon line, which he had cut, and began to tow the ice raft back to share again.
Menie kept tight hold of the other line and towed the seal!