Menie sat perfectly still and watched his father. Kesshoo reached
the bladder and began to pull on the line, but just at that
moment the big seal turned round and swam right under the kyak!
In a second the kyak turned bottom side up in the water! Menie
screamed. The people watching on the shore gave a great howl, and
Koko's father started up the beach after his own kyak.
He thought perhaps Kesshoo could not manage both the ice raft and
the seal, and he meant to go to help him.
But in one second Kesshoo was right side up again. No water could
get into the kyak because Kesshoo's skin coat was drawn tight
over the hole in the deck, and Kesshoo was in the coat!
Kesshoo often turned somersaults in the water in that way.
Sometimes he even did it for fun! He said afterward that he could
have turned the boat right side up again with just his nose,
without using either his paddle or his arms, if only his nose had
been a little bigger, and though he meant this for a joke, the
twins believed that he really could do it.
The moment he was right side up again, Kesshoo gave chase once
more to the bladder. The seal was very weak now, and Kesshoo knew
that it would soon come to the surface and float and that then he
could tow it in.
He had not long to wait. The bladder bobbed about for a while and
then was still. Kesshoo drew up the line, and paddled back to the
ice raft, towing the big seal after him.
"Catch this," he said to Menie. He threw him the end of the line.
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