The White Seal

31 min read

Oh! hush thee, my baby, the night is behind us,And black are the waters that sparkled so green.The moon, o'er the combers, looks downward to find usAt rest in the hollows that rustle between.Where billow meets billow, there soft be thy pillow;Ah, weary wee flipperling, curl at thy ease!The storm shall not wake thee, nor shark overtake thee,Asleep in the arms of the slow-swinging seas.

Seal Lullaby.

THE WHITE SEAL

ALL these things happened several years ago at a place called Novastoshnah, or North East Point, on the Island of St. Paul, away and away in the Bering Sea. Limmershin, the Winter Wren, told me the tale when he was blown on to the rigging of a steamer going to Japan, and I took him down into my cabin and warmed and fed him for a couple of days till he was fit to fly back to St. Paul's again. Limmershin is a very odd little bird, but he knows how to tell the truth.

Nobody comes to Novastoshnah except on business, and the only people who have regular business there are the seals. They come in the summer months by hundreds and hundreds of thousands out of the cold gray sea; for Novastoshnah Beach has the finest accommodation for seals of any place in all the world.

The White Seal

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