The White Seal

'The White Seal' is a short story by the Nobel Prize-winning British author Rudyard Kipling. It first appeared in print in the August 1893 issue of the London-based magazine National Review. It was published again in 1894 as part of the anthology The Jungle Book. Unusually for a story in The Jungle Book, none of the action in 'The White Seal' takes place in India. The story proper begins on an island in the Bering Sea between Russia and Alaska. The title character and protagonist, Kotick, is the first white seal ever to have been born on the island. When Kotick discovers that some of the seals on the island are killed by hunters for their skins every year, he sets off on a quest to find an island where seals can live without fear because no humans have ever visited it. His quest takes him all over the Pacific Ocean and beyond.