“I’ve followed the poltoos [the halibut] for twenty years, and I can’t say I’ve found it yet. But look here⁠—you seem to have a fondness for talking to your betters; suppose you go to Walrus Islet and talk to Sea Vitch. He may know something. Don’t flounce off like that. It’s a six-mile swim, and if I were you I should haul out and take a nap first, little one.”

Kotick thought that that was good advice, so he swam round to his own beach, hauled out, and slept for half an hour, twitching all over, as seals will. Then he headed straight for Walrus Islet, a little low sheet of rocky island almost due northeast from Novastoshnah, all ledges of rock and gulls’ nests, where the walrus herded by themselves.

He landed close to old Sea Vitch⁠—the big, ugly, bloated, pimpled, fat-necked, long-tusked walrus of the North Pacific, who has no manners except when he is asleep⁠—as he was then, with his hind flippers half in and half out of the surf.