This was one of very many things that Kotick learned, and he was always learning.  Matkah taught him to follow the cod and the halibut along the under-sea banks and wrench the rockling out of his hole among the weeds; how to skirt the wrecks lying a hundred fathoms below water and dart like a rifle bullet in at one porthole and out at another as the fishes ran; how to dance on the top of the waves when the lightning was racing all over the sky, and wave his flipper politely to the stumpy-tailed Albatross and the Man-of-war Hawk as they went down the wind; how to jump three or four feet clear of the water like a dolphin, flippers close to the side and tail curved; to leave the flying fish alone because they are all bony; to take the shoulder-piece out of a cod at full speed ten fathoms deep, and never to stop and look at a boat or a ship, but particularly a row-boat.  At the end of six months what Kotick did not know about deep-sea fishing was not worth the knowing.  And all that time he never set flipper on dry ground.

One day, however, as he was lying half asleep in the warm water somewhere off the Island of Juan Fernandez, he felt faint and lazy all over, just as human people do when the spring is in their legs, and he remembered the good firm beaches of Novastoshnah seven thousand miles away, the games his companions played, the smell of the seaweed, the seal roar, and the fighting.  That very minute he turned north, swimming steadily, and as he went on he met scores of his mates, all bound for the same place, and they said:  “Greeting, Kotick!  This year we are all holluschickie, and we can dance the Fire-dance in the breakers off Lukannon and play on the new grass.  But where did you get that coat?”

Kotick’s fur was almost pure white now, and though he felt very proud of it, he only said, “Swim quickly!  My bones are aching for the land.”  And so they all came to the beaches where they had been born, and heard the old seals, their fathers, fighting in the rolling mist.

That night Kotick danced the Fire-dance with the yearling seals.  The sea is full of fire on summer nights all the way down from Novastoshnah to Lukannon, and each seal leaves a wake like burning oil behind him and a flaming flash when he jumps, and the waves break in great phosphorescent streaks and swirls.  Then they went inland to the holluschickie grounds and rolled up and down in the new wild wheat and told stories of what they had done while they had been at sea.  They talked about the Pacific as boys would talk about a wood that they had been nutting in, and if anyone had understood them he could have gone away and made such a chart of that ocean as never was.  The three- and four-year-old holluschickie romped down from Hutchinson’s Hill crying:  “Out of the way, youngsters!  The sea is deep and you don’t know all that’s in it yet.  Wait till you’ve rounded the Horn.  Hi, you yearling, where did you get that white coat?”