Page:Tarka the Otter.djvu/112

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Seal Cavern

and lifting her body forward by short jumps, moving fast as a walking man. She reached her cub and caressed it with her tongue, making sounds over it between sobbing and bleating. Then she turned her back to the man, and flung sand and pebbles at him with quick scooping strokes of her flippers. The man took from his pocket a wooden whistle, made from an elderberry stick, and played several soft notes upon it. The seal looked at him, enjoying the rude music. She lay still and happy with her calf, whose head was turned on one side as it sucked through the side of its mouth. The man played on, moving nearer to the seal. Slowly he bent down to stroke its head, and the seal licked his hand.

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