`` How shall I know Sea Cow when I meet him ? '' said Kotick , sheering off . `` He 's the only thing in the sea uglier than Sea Vitch , '' screamed a Burgomaster gull , wheeling under Sea Vitch 's nose . `` Uglier , and with worse manners ! Stareek ! '' Kotick swam back to Novastoshnah , leaving the gulls to scream . There he found that no one sympathized with him in his little attempt to discover a quiet place for the seals . They told him that men had always driven the holluschickie -- it was part of the day 's work -- and that if he did not like to see ugly things he should not have gone to the killing grounds . But none of the other seals had seen the killing , and that made the difference between him and his friends . Besides , Kotick was a white seal . `` What you must do , '' said old Sea Catch , after he had heard his son 's adventures , `` is to grow up and be a big seal like your father , and have a nursery on the beach , and then they will leave you alone . In another five years you ought to be able to fight for yourself . '' Even gentle Matkah , his mother , said : `` You will never be able to stop the killing . Go and play in the sea , Kotick . '' And Kotick went off and danced the Fire-dance with a very heavy little heart . That autumn he left the beach as soon as he could , and set off alone because of a notion in his bullet-head . He was going to find Sea Cow , if there was such a person in the sea , and he was going to find a quiet island with good firm beaches for seals to live on , where men could not get at them . So he explored and explored by himself from the North to the South Pacific , swimming as much as three hundred miles in a day and a night . He met with more adventures than can be told , and narrowly escaped being caught by the Basking Shark , and the Spotted Shark , and the Hammerhead , and he met all the untrustworthy ruffians that loaf up and down the seas , and the heavy polite fish , and the scarlet spotted scallops that are moored in one place for hundreds of years , and grow very proud of it ; but he never met Sea Cow , and he never found an island that he could fancy . If the beach was good and hard , with a slope behind it for seals to play on , there was always the smoke of a whaler on the horizon , boiling down blubber , and Kotick knew what that meant .
Or else he could see XXXXX seals had once visited the island and been killed off , and Kotick knew that where men had come once they would come again .
If as behind in like of than that to with