“I didn’t get it,” said Kotick.  “It grew.”  And just as he was going to roll the speaker over, a couple of black-haired men with flat red faces came from behind a sand dune, and Kotick, who had never seen a man before, coughed and lowered his head.  The holluschickie just bundled off a few yards and sat staring stupidly.  The men were no less than Kerick Booterin, the chief of the seal-hunters on the island, and Patalamon, his son.  They came from the little village not half a mile from the sea nurseries, and they were deciding what seals they would drive up to the killing pens—­for the seals were driven just like sheep—­to be turned into seal-skin jackets later on.

“Ho!” said Patalamon.  “Look!  There’s a white seal!”

Kerick Booterin turned nearly white under his oil and smoke, for he was an Aleut, and Aleuts are not clean people.  Then he began to mutter a prayer.  “Don’t touch him, Patalamon.  There has never been a white seal since—­since I was born.  Perhaps it is old Zaharrof’s ghost.  He was lost last year in the big gale.”

“I’m not going near him,” said Patalamon.  “He’s unlucky.  Do you really think he is old Zaharrof come back?  I owe him for some gulls’ eggs.”

“Don’t look at him,” said Kerick.  “Head off that drove of four-year-olds.  The men ought to skin two hundred to-day, but it’s the beginning of the season and they are new to the work.  A hundred will do.  Quick!”

Patalamon rattled a pair of seal’s shoulder bones in front of a herd of holluschickie and they stopped dead, puffing and blowing.  Then he stepped near and the seals began to move, and Kerick headed them inland, and they never tried to get back to their companions.  Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of seals watched them being driven, but they went on playing just the same.  Kotick was the only one who asked questions, and none of his companions could tell him anything, except that the men always drove seals in that way for six weeks or two months of every year.

“I am going to follow,” he said, and his eyes nearly popped out of his head as he shuffled along in the wake of the herd.

“The white seal is coming after us,” cried Patalamon.  “That’s the first time a seal has ever come to the killing-grounds alone.”

“Hsh!  Don’t look behind you,” said Kerick.  “It is Zaharrof’s ghost!  I must speak to the priest about this.”

The distance to the killing-grounds was only half a mile, but it took an hour to cover, because if the seals went too fast Kerick knew that they would get heated and then their fur would come off in patches when they were skinned.  So they went on very slowly, past Sea Lion’s Neck, past Webster House, till they came to the Salt House just beyond the sight of the seals on the beach.  Kotick followed, panting and wondering.  He thought that he was at the world’s end, but the roar of the seal nurseries behind him sounded as loud as the roar of a train in