`` I should think I had , '' said Sea Catch . `` Look at me ! '' He was scratched and bleeding in twenty places ; one eye was almost out , and his sides were torn to ribbons . `` Oh , you men , you men ! '' Matkah said , fanning herself with her hind flipper . `` Why ca n't you be sensible and settle your places quietly ? You look as though you had been fighting with the Killer Whale . '' `` I have n't been doing anything but fight since the middle of May . The beach is disgracefully crowded this season . I 've met at least a hundred seals from Lukannon Beach , house hunting . Why ca n't people stay where they belong ? '' `` I 've often thought we should be much happier if we hauled out at Otter Island instead of this crowded place , '' said Matkah . `` Bah ! Only the holluschickie go to Otter Island . If we went there they would say we were afraid . We must preserve appearances , my dear . '' Sea Catch sunk his head proudly between his fat shoulders and pretended to go to sleep for a few minutes , but all the time he was keeping a sharp lookout for a fight . Now that all the seals and their wives were on the land , you could hear their clamor miles out to sea above the loudest gales . At the lowest counting there were over a million seals on the beach -- old seals , mother seals , tiny babies , and holluschickie , fighting , scuffling , bleating , crawling , and playing together -- going down to the sea and coming up from it in gangs and regiments , lying over every foot of ground as far as the eye could reach , and skirmishing about in brigades through the fog . It is nearly always foggy at Novastoshnah , except when the sun comes out and makes everything look all pearly and rainbow-colored for a little while .
Kotick , Matkah 's baby , was born in the middle of that confusion , and he was all head and shoulders , with pale , watery blue eyes , as tiny seals must be , but there was something about his coat that made his mother look XXXXX him very closely .
If at between except for of on since that to