Walrus Islet is a little, low sheet of rocky island in the North Pacific, almost due northeast of Novastoshnah. Made up of ledges and gulls’ nests, it is a place where the walruses herd by themselves rather than a seal rookery or a human settlement. Its isolation and inhabitants make it a natural stopping place for Kotick when he begins searching beyond the familiar beaches for somewhere men cannot reach.

Setting and Inhabitants

Walrus Islet is presented as spare and exposed: a low rocky island marked by ledges, seabirds, and the separate congregation of the walruses. Kotick reaches it after swimming six miles from Novastoshnah, following a sea lion’s suggestion that the old walrus Sea Vitch might know of an untouched island. The journey makes the islet part of a chain of marine spaces through which Kotick moves after witnessing the slaughter of seals at the killing-grounds.

The island’s social atmosphere is dominated by old Sea Vitch, a huge, ugly, bloated, pimpled, fat-necked, long-tusked walrus. He has almost no manners except when asleep, and Kotick finds him resting with his hind flippers half in and half out of the surf. Even before Sea Vitch gives useful advice, the scene establishes Walrus Islet as a rough, noisy community whose residents are more inclined to mock an interruption than to welcome a visitor.

Kotick’s Visit

Kotick lands near the sleeping Sea Vitch and calls for him to wake. Sea Vitch rouses the next walrus with a blow from his tusks, and the disturbance passes through the group until all the walruses are awake and staring in every direction except the right one. When they see the small white seal bobbing in the surf, Sea Vitch reacts with startled amazement, while Kotick recoils from any further talk of skinning because the sight of the seal killing-grounds is still vivid to him.

Kotick asks whether there is a place where seals can live without men ever coming. Sea Vitch first dismisses him, telling him to go and find out for himself. Kotick answers by provoking the walrus with the cry “Clam-eater!” The gulls join in, repeating the insult for nearly five minutes until the island becomes a chorus of screams and laughter. Only after this noisy challenge does Sea Vitch provide an answer: Kotick should ask Sea Cow, if Sea Cow is still living.

A Waypoint in the Search for Safety

Walrus Islet does not solve Kotick’s problem, but it changes the direction of his search. The other seals at Novastoshnah have treated the killing as an unavoidable part of their yearly existence, and Sea Catch and Matkah have urged Kotick to grow up, fight for a place on the beach, and accept the established order. The walruses offer no sympathy either, but Sea Vitch’s reference to Sea Cow gives Kotick a possible source of knowledge outside the assumptions of both seals and men.

Kotick therefore swims back from Walrus Islet to Novastoshnah and later sets out alone across the North and South Pacific. He searches for Sea Cow and for a firm, quiet island where seals will be safe from human hunters. The islet’s importance lies in this redirection: its inhabitants are not protectors, yet their curt answer sends Kotick onward toward the discovery that will eventually make a new rookery possible.

Narrative Significance

Walrus Islet functions as a threshold between ordinary seal life and Kotick’s self-appointed quest. Novastoshnah represents the established seasonal economy of crowded beaches, territorial fighting, and repeated human exploitation; Walrus Islet is a detached outpost inhabited by creatures who possess a different, if equally abrasive, knowledge of the sea. The movement from one space to the other shows Kotick refusing to accept that inherited custom is the same as necessity.

The island also exposes the limits of animal communities when confronted with human power. The seals know that men drive them to the killing-grounds, but most have not seen what happens there and consequently do not share Kotick’s urgency. At Walrus Islet, the walruses turn his appeal into a joke before pointing him onward. Yet even this indifference becomes part of the geography of resistance: each island, beach, and open-water encounter either blocks Kotick or supplies the next lead. Walrus Islet is thus less a destination than a decisive link in the route toward a refuge beyond human reach.