The moon , o'er the combers , looks downward to find us At rest in the hollows that rustle between . Where billow meets billow , then 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 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 quaint 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 . Sea Catch knew that , and every spring would swim from whatever place he happened to be in -- would swim like a torpedo-boat straight for Novastoshnah and spend a month fighting with his companions for a good place on the rocks , as close to the sea as possible . Sea Catch was fifteen years old , a huge gray fur seal with almost a mane on his shoulders , and long , wicked dog teeth . When he heaved himself up on his front flippers he stood more than four feet clear of the ground , and his weight , if anyone had been bold enough to weigh him , was nearly seven hundred pounds . He was scarred all over with the marks of savage fights , but he was always ready for just one fight more . He would put his head on one side , as though he were afraid to look his enemy in the face ; then he would shoot it out like lightning , and when the big teeth were firmly fixed on the other seal 's neck , the other seal might get away if he could , but Sea Catch would not help him . Yet Sea Catch never chased a beaten seal , for that was against the Rules of the Beach . He only wanted room by the sea for his nursery . But as there were forty or fifty thousand other seals hunting for the same thing each spring , the whistling , bellowing , roaring , and blowing on the beach was something frightful . From a little hill called Hutchinson 's Hill , you could look over three and a half miles of ground covered with fighting seals ; and the surf was dotted all over with the heads of seals hurrying to land and begin their share of the fighting . They fought in the breakers , they fought in the sand , and they fought on the smooth-worn basalt rocks of the nurseries , for they were just as stupid and unaccommodating as men . Their wives never came to the island until late in May or early in June , for they did not care to be torn to pieces ; and the young two - , three - , and four-year-old seals who had not begun housekeeping went inland about half a mile through the ranks of the fighters and played about on the sand dunes in droves and legions , and rubbed off every single green thing that grew .
They were called the holluschickie -- the bachelors -- and there were perhaps two or three hundred thousand of them at XXXXX alone .
Beach Hill Japan Novastoshnah Paul Point billow flipperling nurseries storm