I asked Jimmy if he would like to reel for a while. I figured it should be exciting for him, and I carefully handed him the reel. But almost as soon as he had the reel in his hands, he seemed to have trouble with it, and before I could say anything, he took the cover off the reel. He also released the brake on the reel and a great length of the clear, plastic line was pulled back into the ocean. In exasperated dismay I grabbed the line and stopped any more from going into the ocean. I had heard before that when the line was held in the hands instead of on the reel it was easier for whatever was pulling on the line to break it. So I was concerned that the line would break and I would lose my prey.

Although I felt as if I were about to black out and as if I needed to lie down because of my shock over the rod and reel, I pulled myself together and continued pulling on the plastic line, which I began wrapping in a circle around my right hand and right elbow. By now whatever was on the other end had traveled back over to the left, and appeared to possibly be wearing out. Also to the left, large muddy waves had begun crashing into the shore. The line disappeared into the middle of the turbulent waves as I continued steadily pulling in the line and wrapping it around my right arm. Finally the line once again began moving toward the right, and when it was right in front of me, I thought I could see something appearing in the water near the shore.

Suddenly something quite large, about a meter and a half long lurched out of the water and onto the shore. It was bulky and brown, and headed straight toward me. In a flash I realized it was a female seal, perhaps not fully grown. As it moved frenetically about, I leaped down and threw my arms around it, trying to hold it still. I was worried it might have teeth and bite me, but for some reason I didn't think it had any teeth. Finally it began to calm down and I rubbed my face against its soft brown fur. I thought the fur would be worth quite a bit if someone were to kill the seal and skin it. But I wouldn't do that. I just wanted to help it.

I hollered to someone to get my father, who was in the building right next to where I was. The building was raised on poles so that the first floor was about five meters off the ground. My father, up there playing cards with someone, walked out onto the porch above me and looked down at me holding the seal. It didn't seem to make much difference to him one way or the other, although he did admonish me to be careful of the seal's teeth. Only now did I let it go and see that it did indeed have some rather sharp-looking teeth.

As I looked at the seal's mouth, I could see where the hook was caught on the left side right at the juncture of the top and bottom lips. It appeared to just be barely embedded in there. I could see the hook quite clearly, and I could see that only a small part of flesh was still hooked. There was also some blood. The hook must be causing quite a bit of pain, because I discovered that simply by holding the line and pulling on it ever so slightly, I could direct the seal to move in whichever direction I wanted. I paraded it around a bit, but I didn't continue because I didn't want to hurt the seal. I was only interested now in getting the hook out of its mouth as painlessly as possible.