II. PIETRO’S[2] PET

II. PIETRO’S[2] PET

WHEN Finny-Foot, the seal baby, found himself in the fisherman’s net, he never once thought how easy it would be to catch one of the fish wriggling all about him.

His first thought was surprise that he should be rising out of the water against his will. Then he was afraid. He had never seen a human being so close before. Sometimes he had barked, with the family group on seal rocks, as people came to watch them from the beach. Then he would swim to the other side of the rocks to wait till all was safe once more.

It was a boy of nine whose black eyes first spied Finny-Foot as the net was emptied. “Pietro” his father called him. His cheeks were flushed with the kiss of the California sun, and his black curls blew in the breeze, as he stood bare-footed in the fishing-boat. This boy spoke words that Finny-Foot, of course, could not understand. But he read the kindness in his tones, and he felt the gentleness with which the boy stroked his furry head, and he was no longer quite so frightened.

The boy must have asked his father if he might have the seal for a pet, because in another moment he was hugging him joyously, both arms tight around him, while the fish squirmed at their feet, and the man and his partner set sail for home.

But though Finny-Foot was no longer so afraid of being killed and eaten, as the killer whales would have eaten him, swallowing the little fellow whole, he suddenly realized that he was a long way from home and mother. Putting his fore flippers on Pietro’s shoulder, he began to cry, and you would never believe how much it sounded like a human baby crying for its mother.

Pietro stroked his wet, oily, fishy-smelling fur, which was as soft as a kitten’s, and tried to comfort him, but still the seal baby wailed his loneliness.

His mother heard him, too, and came swimming after the boat, her great eyes questioning his round, frightened eyes, as he peered over Pietro’s shoulder. But when he struggled to get free, the boy only held him the tighter, and Pietro and the men had their eyes on the course ahead, for the stiffening wind was carrying them along at a great rate. But she followed as far as she could, then sadly gave it up and went back to tell the colony what had happened.

By and by it occurred to Pietro that his pet might be hungry, and he offered him a little fish. Finny-Foot ate it eagerly, and the boy laughed at his round, puppy-like head, and kitten-like whiskers, and the clever fore fins that he had instead of arms. He looked like a fish, in one way, too, with his hind flippers held back close together like a tail.

When they had landed at Fisherman’s Wharf and Pietro had carried the pale, spotty-coated little fellow to the shack where the nets hung drying, young Finny-Foot surprised the boy by walking across the porch. It was a funny walk, but we will have to call it that, because it certainly was not swimming. First the seal would raise himself on his fore nippers, then draw himself forward, with a hump of his back. Sometimes he used his hind flippers, and sometimes he kicked them together straight up in the air. The other fishermen’s children greeted this performance with shrieks of laughter; and they offered him fish till Pietro had to put a stop to it, for fear Finny-Foot would over-eat.

He got his mother’s wash-tub and filled it with sea water for his strange visitor; then, with the help of some of his young neighbors, he rolled a great rock up on the porch beside it, in the sunshine. There, he felt, the little seal might feel at home. Then he hooked the screen door on the inside, so that no one could get in to tease him.

Finny-Foot was a tiny fellow. His mother had been only five feet long, for she was a harbor or leopard seal, not a fur seal. Her tribe, an old sailorman told Pietro, are found everywhere, from the Arctic Ocean to South Carolina on the Atlantic side and Southern California on the Pacific. All up and down the coast, this old sailor had seen harbor seals, barking on the rocks and fishing on the sandy bars. He had heard they even swam away up some of the big rivers and into the Great Lakes. They have been seen off the coast of the British Isles, and as far away as Japan.

Finny-Foot soon learned to know the boy as his friend, and inside of a week was genuinely fond of him. He loved to have Pietro stroke his silky fur. He would come humping himself along to where the boy sat in the sunshine, mending his father’s nets, and lay his round, white head against his arm, and make a funny puppy-like sound that the boy came to understand meant: “Please come and play with me!”

Then Pietro would teach him to fetch and carry a stick, or some other simple trick. He longed to try throwing the stick in the water for Finny-Foot to retrieve, but he never felt quite sure that his odd pet would swim back to him.

An old seaman used to watch the seal at his antics. One day he offered the boy a dollar for his pet. He said he wanted to take Finny-Foot on board the whaling vessel for a mascot, to bring them luck. But the boy would not part with him.

The next day the old sailor offered him five dollars, but still Pietro would not listen. His ship was to sail the next day at dawn, and the boy heaved a sigh of relief when, with a final offer of seven dollars, the old man said goodbye. The money would have meant needed clothes to the fisherman’s boy, but he would not part with his pet.

Then as Pietro was looking at a newspaper that someone had left on the wharf, his eyes caught the picture of a troupe of trained seals rolling barrels. They were to be in next week’s vaudeville show, and Pietro resolved to find a way to see it.