What is good and bad about the “paddling hell-for-leather away from a harmless seal”?
I’m reading The Inflatable Volunteer by Steve Aylett, and I’m stuck with this sentence.
Last week I was flooding the banks with saliva, slivers of gill and drifting snot, paddling hell-for-leather away from a harmless seal.
It’s a pretty bizarre novel, so I don’t know if I don’t understand because of my bad English or if this was the author’s intention.
What does it mean when a man is paddling an area close to a harmless seal? In your passage this is literally a “harmless seal” or just means something else which is equally non-threatening).
Paddling = propelling oneself, (usually using a paddle, but not necessarily)
hell-for-leather = as fast as possible
harmless = lacking the capacity or intent to injure
seal = aquatic mammal
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