“Oh!” cried Phil, “I can’t stand this! It is too horrible! Come on, Serge. Let’s get away from here.”
So, to the surprise of the teacher, who had imagined that his new friends would be particularly interested in this scene, to which he had become hardened by a life-long familiarity, they turned from it and hurried away.
If they had remained they would have seen the dead seals skinned with marvellous dexterity, and the skins loaded into mule-carts to be driven to a salt-house, where they would lie in pickle for several weeks before being rolled into bundles of two each, and stored in the company warehouse. At the end of the season, which closes in August, during which month the seals shed their coats, the seventy or one hundred thousand skins representing the year’s take would be shipped on the company’s own steamer to San Francisco, and from there to London, to be prepared for use, as described in a previous chapter.
But Phil was too sick at heart and disgusted with the scene he had just witnessed to care for any further details of the business. So, followed by Serge and the teacher, he set rapidly off in the direction of the rookeries or breeding-grounds, in search of more agreeable scenes.
In the rookeries the lords of all they survey are the old bulls, huge shaggy fellows, from six to eighteen or twenty years of age. These arrive at the islands early in May, and each immediately takes possession of a bit of the bowlder-strewn coast about twenty feet square.
“He files a homestead claim on it,” as Serge laughingly remarked.
“Yes,” said the guide, “and he is ready to defend it with his life, if necessary, against all rivals.”
Here he remains, unless some bull more powerful than he drives him away, for the succeeding three months. During that time he neither eats nor drinks, never visits the sea, and only takes the merest snatches of sleep. His entire time is spent in roaring out fierce challenges to his neighbors, fighting savage battles with them, stealing their wives whenever he gets a chance, and in protecting his own against other seal wife-stealers like himself. He will attack a man who ventures on his domain as quickly as he will a brother-seal, and is altogether a most pugnacious and disagreeable old fellow. He is three or four times as large as the gentle little female seals who gather around him, and, always holding himself erect with defiantly uplifted head, towers above them to a height of several feet.