Child of the Open Sea ! Of course the little fellow did not understand the words at first . He paddled and scrambled about by his mother 's side , and learned to scuffle out of the way when his father was fighting with another seal , and the two rolled and roared up and down the slippery rocks . Matkah used to go to sea to get things to eat , and the baby was fed only once in two days , but then he ate all he could and throve upon it . The first thing he did was to crawl inland , and there he met tens of thousands of babies of his own age , and they played together like puppies , went to sleep on the clean sand , and played again . The old people in the nurseries took no notice of them , and the holluschickie kept to their own grounds , and the babies had a beautiful playtime . When Matkah came back from her deep-sea fishing she would go straight to their playground and call as a sheep calls for a lamb , and wait until she heard Kotick bleat . Then she would take the straightest of straight lines in his direction , striking out with her fore flippers and knocking the youngsters head over heels right and left . There were always a few hundred mothers hunting for their children through the playgrounds , and the babies were kept lively . But , as Matkah told Kotick , `` So long as you do n't lie in muddy water and get mange , or rub the hard sand into a cut or scratch , and so long as you never go swimming when there is a heavy sea , nothing will hurt you here . '' Little seals can no more swim than little children , but they are unhappy till they learn . The first time that Kotick went down to the sea a wave carried him out beyond his depth , and his big head sank and his little hind flippers flew up exactly as his mother had told him in the song , and if the next wave had not thrown him back again he would have drowned . After that , he learned to lie in a beach pool and let the wash of the waves just cover him and lift him up while he paddled , but he always kept his eye open for big waves that might hurt . He was two weeks learning to use his flippers ; and all that while he floundered in and out of the water , and coughed and grunted and crawled up the beach and took catnaps on the sand , and went back again , until at last he found that he truly belonged to the water . Then you can imagine the times that he had with his companions , ducking under the rollers ; or coming in on top of a comber and landing with a swash and a splutter as the big wave went whirling far up the beach ; or standing up on his tail and scratching his head as the old people did ; or playing `` I 'm the King of the Castle '' on slippery , weedy rocks that just stuck out of the wash . Now and then he would see a thin fin , like a big shark 's fin , drifting along close to shore , and he knew that that was the Killer Whale , the Grampus , who eats young seals when he can get them ; and Kotick would head for the beach like an arrow , and the fin would jig off slowly , as if it were looking for nothing at all . Late in October the seals began to leave St. Paul 's for the deep sea , by families and tribes , and there was no more fighting over the nurseries , and the holluschickie played anywhere they liked . `` Next year , '' said Matkah to Kotick , `` you will be a holluschickie ; but this year you must learn how to catch fish . '' They set out together across the Pacific , and Matkah showed Kotick how to sleep on his back with his flippers tucked down by his side and his little nose just out of the water . No cradle is so comfortable as the long , rocking swell of the Pacific .
When Kotick felt his skin tingle all XXXXX , Matkah told him he was learning the `` feel of the water , '' and that tingly , prickly feelings meant bad weather coming , and he must swim hard and get away .
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