The Seal Hunters

©2007 Ian Hobson

The young polar bear ran ahead across the ice and snow, leaving his mother and sister behind. 'Be careful, Yolli, don't go so fast!' his mother called. She could easily have overtaken Yolli but chose to stay beside Meela, the smallest and most timid of her two cubs as she was having difficulty walking on the ice without slipping.

Only a few days had passed since the three of them had emerged into the sunlight from their winter hideaway beneath the snow. At first Yolli and Meela had been frightened: it was so cold up on the surface, after so long snuggled up beside their mother, and the sunlight was so bright that it hurt their eyes. But as their mother squeezed through the opening and followed her two cubs out onto the snowy slope and then began to slide lazily down it, Yolli had followed her lead and tumbled down the slope after her, soon shouting, 'Come on, Meela, this is fun!'

Yolli stopped and looked back across the ice at his mother and sister. 'Come on, Mother!' he shouted. 'Come on, Meela!' He ran back towards them, slipping and sliding and having more fun than he had ever dreamed possible. 'Look at me!' he shouted as he ran faster and then deliberately slid across the ice until he hit a rough patch and was thrown head over heels to land in a heap at his mother's feet.

'Serves you right,' said the female polar bear, whose name was Eashla. 'I told you to be careful. Now be a good cub and walk with me and your sister.' She looked lovingly at her two cubs: their coats of thick fur were growing whiter and would soon be as white as her own; but she wished Meela was a little bigger.

'Can we have some milk first?' Meela asked as she nuzzled her mother's flank. Eashla sat back on her haunches to allow Meela to suckle. The two cubs had been raised on their mother's milk and had yet to experience any other kind of food.

'Me too!' exclaimed Yolli, leaping onto his mother and almost knocking his sister over.

Eashla swiped Yolli away with a huge furry front paw. 'Don't be so rough,' she said, 'there's plenty of milk for both of you.' Though she knew that her milk would not last for ever and that she needed to begin hunting as soon as possible. She looked across the ice, turning her head from left to right, and wondering if her hunting grounds would be any bigger this season. Perhaps it was just her imagination; but it seemed to Eashla that the ice fields were growing smaller and smaller, year by year. She allowed Yolli to suckle beside his sister and then, when they had both had enough milk, she led them on across the ice.

'Where are we going?' Yolli asked as he walked beside his mother and sister.

'Nowhere in particular,' replied Eashla. 'I just want to get you used to being on the ice. Then soon I'll have to go and find us something to eat.' While nursing her two cubs, Eashla had not eaten at all.

'Can't we just have milk?' Meela asked.

Eashla laughed. 'Not for ever, you can't. And I need to eat too.'

'But what will we eat?' Yolli enquired.

'Whatever I can catch,' replied Eashla, wishing that life on the icecap was not quite so hard. 'And one day soon,' she said, 'you two will have to learn to hunt for yourselves.'

'But what will we hunt for,' Yolli asked.

'Seals, of course,' replied Eashla. 'Or fish. Have you forgotten the stories I told you?' During the winter, as soon as her cubs were old enough to understand, she had told them all the traditional hunting stories.

'I like the story about Yonkla,' said Yolli. 'Can you tell us that one again?'

'What, now?' said Eashla.

'Yes, now!' exclaimed both Yolli and Meela. So, as it was warm in the sun and there was only the lightest of breezes, Eashla flopped down on the ice and lay on her side and, as her two cubs settled beside her with their heads resting on her flank, she told them the story of Yonkla the hunter.

***

It had been a long cold winter with hardly a single day without snow and howling winds, and many creatures had perished. But a young polar bear called Yonkla had survived, and as the spring came he set out to hunt for his favourite food: seals.

Now some might say that it's cruel for bears to hunt seals, but life on and under the ice is hard: to survive, the middle-sized fish have to eat the little fish, and the big fish have to eat the middle-sized fish, and the seals have to eat the big fish, and the polar bears have to eat the seals. But not all of them; just the ones that are too slow and can't escape fast enough.

Now Yonkla, being very young, had never hunted on his own before, but remembering what his mother had taught him about finding a hole in the ice and waiting patiently for a seal to come up to breathe, he went off in search of just such a hole. And when at last he found one, he sat beside it and waited… and waited… and waited.

But in the way of all youngsters, Yonkla soon became restless and got to his feet to look down the hole, and seeing nothing but seawater, he began to wander away. But it was just then that a seal bobbed its head up in the ice-hole, took a deep breath and bobbed back under the ice again. Of course, Yonkla rushed back to the ice-hole, hoping to catch the seal, but he was too slow; the seal had gone. So again he sat down to wait, and he waited… and waited… and waited.

But again he became restless, and he got back onto all fours and looked down into the ice-hole, again seeing nothing but water, but just as he was about to wander away again, up bobbed a huge seal, almost as big as Yonkla. For a moment the two just stared at each other with their noses almost touching, but then Yonkla made a grab for the seal, using his strong jaws and teeth to take it by the scruff of the neck and haul it half out of the ice-hole. But it was then that Yonkla found out that seals can be quite heavy as well as quite strong, and soon he was being dragged through the ice-hole himself and his head was under the water and his bottom and his hind legs were stuck up in the air.

Yonkla clawed at the sides of the ice-hole and struggled and pulled while the seal tried franticly to break Yonkla's grip on its neck, but Yonkla would not let go, and once more he pulled the seal half out of the ice-hole, only to have his head pulled back under the water again. And this tugging and struggling went on for a very long time. But in the end it was Yonkla who won the tugging contest, for though the seal had fought bravely, it had been no match for a hungry polar bear. And as the seal gave up its life so that Yonkla could eat, Yonkla gave silent thanks to his mother for teaching him to be patient and to never give in.

***

'I'm going to be a hunter like Yonkla!' exclaimed Yolli as he got to his feet and bounced up and down on the ice as though he was trying to make an ice-hole. And then he raced off towards the horizon imagining that he was Yonkla and that today he was going to catch a seal, though he didn't know for sure what one looked like.

'Wait for us!' his mother called as she and Meela got up to follow him across the ice, but Yolli took no notice, he just ran on and on until he came to something that he didn't expect.

It was a crack in the ice; a long thin crack that Yolli at first thought might be an ice-hole. Though it was not even wide enough for him to put his paw down. He thought about waiting for his mother and sister to catch up but in his eagerness to go hunting for seals he stepped over the crack and then ran on until he came to yet another crack.

This crack was wider than the first, and Yolli could now see into the clear blue water beneath the ice. He flopped down and reached towards it but soon withdrew his paw when he felt how cold the water was. But then something else caught his attention: there was something on the ice a little way ahead, something dark, and it was moving slowly across the ice and Yolli knew that it must be a seal. So he leapt across the wider crack in the ice and went racing ahead again, and was not too surprised when the black thing moved away and then vanished.

'It must be a seal!' he shouted, 'and it must have gone down an ice-hole!' And Yolli was almost right, because the black creature had been a seal, but it had not gone down a hole, it had gone off the edge of the ice and out into the open sea, and when Yolli raced up to where the seal had dived in, he almost fell into the sea himself.

For a while he looked down into the water, trying to catch a glimpse of the seal, but there was no sign of it, so he looked out across the ocean. There were huge lumps of ice out there and some of them were moving. It was then that Yolli remembered his mother and sister and decided to return to them, but when he got back to the crack in the ice he found that the gap had widened, and it was now too wide to jump across. He looked back towards his mother and sister; he could see them in the distance but they had stopped and were looking down at the ice, probably into that first crack, Yolli thought.
'Mother!' he shouted. 'Meela! I can't get back!' At first Yolli thought that his cries were in vain but then he saw his mother look up. She seemed to pause for a moment as though talking to Meela but then, to Yolli's relief, she leapt forward and started to run towards him. He waited patiently for his mother to reach the far side of the crack in the ice, but all the while the crack was getting wider and wider and Yolli was worried that he would drift away and never see his family again.

But soon Eashla reached the edge of the ice and without stopping she plunged into the seawater and swam towards her boy cub. 'You must swim, Yolli!' she shouted as she got closer to the floating sheet of ice on which Yolli was stranded.

'I can't,' replied Yolli.

But Eashla was not taking no for an answer. 'Yes you can,' she said, and as she reached the floating ice sheet she scrambled up onto it and, without a moments hesitation, she pushed Yolli into the sea and then dived in after him. 'You have to learn to swim sooner or later,' she said as they both came up for air. And to Yolli's surprise, he found that he could swim and that the water was not as cold as he had feared.

***

Yolli and Meela snuggled up against their sleeping mother. They were back in their den under the snow, safe and warm, while outside the weather had rapidly changed from warm sunshine to wind-blown blizzard. 'You were very brave, Yolli,' whispered Meela, 'swimming in that cold water.'

'It was easy,' replied Yolli, glad that his mother had not mentioned that she'd had to push him in. 'I'll probably go swimming again tomorrow,' he said with a yawn. And before long, he was fast asleep, dreaming dreams of Yonkla and Yolli the seal hunters.