The Seal Hunter (youngsters:adventure, 2057 words)
Author: Ian Hobson	Added: May 29 2007	Views/Reads: 6639/3103	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Only a few days had passed since the three of them had emerged into the sunlight from their winter hideaway beneath the snow...

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

'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 breath, 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 into the water.  'I'll probably go swimming 
again tomorrow,' he said with a yawn.  And before long, he was fast 
asleep, dreaming dreams of Yonkla the seal hunter. 


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