That nearly broke his heart , and he headed round the Horn back to his own beaches ; and on his way north he hauled out on an island full of green trees , where he found an old , old seal who was dying , and Kotick caught fish for him and told him all his sorrows . `` Now , '' said Kotick , `` I am going back to Novastoshnah , and if I am driven to the killing-pens with the holluschickie I shall not care . '' The old seal said , `` Try once more . I am the last of the Lost Rookery of Masafuera , and in the days when men killed us by the hundred thousand there was a story on the beaches that some day a white seal would come out of the North and lead the seal people to a quiet place . I am old , and I shall never live to see that day , but others will . Try once more . '' And Kotick curled up his mustache -LRB- it was a beauty -RRB- and said , `` I am the only white seal that has ever been born on the beaches , and I am the only seal , black or white , who ever thought of looking for new islands . '' This cheered him immensely ; and when he came back to Novastoshnah that summer , Matkah , his mother , begged him to marry and settle down , for he was no longer a holluschick but a full-grown sea-catch , with a curly white mane on his shoulders , as heavy , as big , and as fierce as his father . `` Give me another season , '' he said . `` Remember , Mother , it is always the seventh wave that goes farthest up the beach . '' Curiously enough , there was another seal who thought that she would put off marrying till the next year , and Kotick danced the Fire-dance with her all down Lukannon Beach the night before he set off on his last exploration . This time he went westward , because he had fallen on the trail of a great shoal of halibut , and he needed at least one hundred pounds of fish a day to keep him in good condition . He chased them till he was tired , and then he curled himself up and went to sleep on the hollows of the ground swell that sets in to Copper Island . He knew the coast perfectly well , so about midnight , when he felt himself gently bumped on a weed-bed , he said , `` Hm , tide 's running strong tonight , '' and turning over under water opened his eyes slowly and stretched . Then he jumped like a cat , for he saw huge things nosing about in the shoal water and browsing on the heavy fringes of the weeds . `` By the Great Combers of Magellan ! '' he said , beneath his mustache . `` Who in the Deep Sea are these people ? '' They were like no walrus , sea lion , seal , bear , whale , shark , fish , squid , or scallop that Kotick had ever seen before . They were between twenty and thirty feet long , and they had no hind flippers , but a shovel-like tail that looked as if it had been whittled out of wet leather .
Their heads were the most foolish-looking things you ever saw , and they balanced on the ends of their tails in deep XXXXX when they were n't grazing , bowing solemnly to each other and waving their front flippers as a fat man waves his arm .
North beauty flippers others sorrows summer tail time trail water