Part 8

So little is known of the life history of the walrus that I am unable to speak with confidence, but the young are evidently brought forth very early in the spring, April or May, and float with their mothers (the females and young herding together), up into the Arctic Ocean as far as the shoals off Wrangle Island, one hundred and fifty miles north of the Siberian Coast. There the little ones are guarded by the cows, which during the summer months are the only really dangerous walrus ever met with. Were the walrus the ferocious and combatant animal he is sometimes depicted, it would be a risky thing indeed to hunt him in skin boats or any other small craft. Imagine three or four tons of muscular fierceness, armed with strong, sharp, spearlike tusks, charging at you. The front part of his head is a solid mass of tough bone more than a foot thick. He could strike his tusks through your boat and sink it in an instant, or hook them over the edge and upset you, spearing you one by one in the water.

But the huge pachyderm is the most timid and good-natured of animals. It is only when the female fears for the safety of her young that she shows anything like ferocity. In 1911 Captain Kleinschmidt was taking moving pictures of the walrus herds. He had two catamarans, made by lashing two kyaks together with firm cross pieces. In the foremost craft two Eskimo hunters with their spears were paddling ahead, to slip up on the herds and harpoon them at the proper time, while the moving-picture man was in the other craft to take pictures of the herds and of the whole performance.

A herd of cows and their young had been frightened from an ice-cake into the water. Suddenly one of these cows thrust her tusks forward, the sign of a charge: "Look out!" cried K. to the Eskimo as the cow dived. They made frantic efforts to paddle their kyaks to the nearest berg, but the cow came up under the craft and slashed with her tusks one of the kyaks, ripping the bottom and filling it with water. The other kyak of the catamaran tilted dangerously, the Eskimo in the sinking one throwing himself upon it, and the two frightened natives made their escape to the ice-cake. Coming to the surface again the cow sighted Captain K.'s catamaran, thrust her tusks forward again and dived; he saw her body deep in the water coming toward him and thought his time had come; but luckily when she struck the canoe had veered and received only a glancing blow. She came to the surface within a yard of the picture man, who had his rifle ready and thrust it against her brain and pulled the trigger, which ended that affair. But it was a perilous adventure, and one is liable to meet with such if he is so rash as to venture among the herds of the cows with their young.

During this hunt of ours, although we saw great herds aggregating hundreds of walrus, we did not see a cow or calf among them; only the big bulls herded together and occasionally a solitary one.

After passing Cape Prince of Wales into the Arctic Ocean we had a week of battling with winds and tide before we got into the ice-pack well up towards Wrangell and Herald Islands. We had another week of pounding ice, poking through the narrow "leads," constantly turning and running the other way in our effort to get to the shores where the walrus herds would feed.

We had fun with the polar bears, but, with one exception, saw no walrus for nearly two weeks of this strenuous fight. This one exception was a big old bull that we sighted reposing in solitary dignity on an ice-cake in the midst of this vast white solitude.

Captain K. took Dr. Elting with him in the kyaks which we manufactured into a catamaran, and while the _Abler_ lay "off and on" the two hunters whom we watched through our field-glasses made their sinuous way behind ice hummocks through the narrow "leads" and around the jamming cakes of the ice-field. We saw them at last seemingly right upon the walrus, on the same cake. The big fellow was fast asleep in the uneasy fashion that all walrus and seal have of sleeping; that is, every two or three minutes they will raise their heads and move them back and forth, during which time the hunters must keep perfectly still and if possible behind the ice-cakes. The walrus, however, has not the keen sight of the seal, and is more easily approached.

Our hunters moored their skin boat on the ice-cake close to the walrus, crept up behind a hummock right upon him, and Dr. Elting put his bullet into the brain of the beast, which is situated in his neck, and not in what appears to be his head. It was an easy and not very exciting triumph. What possessed this old bull to lie there alone scores of miles from his companions, I do not know. He may have been there two or three weeks on that one ice-cake, as the Eskimos tell us this is sometimes their habit.

It was not until August eighteenth that we got sight of our first walrus herd, and then for three days we were right in the midst of them. We had been driven by buffeting winds and threatening ice-packs away from the vicinity of the islands far westward along the Siberian coast and were perhaps thirty or forty miles from land. The cry was raised from the "crow's nest": "Walrus!"

The appearance of the herd as we approached it was very unlike anything imagined by those who had not hitherto seen these animals. All sorts of comparisons crowd upon one's imagination when trying to describe them. Some of them look like huge caterpillars and have an exactly similar motion, except that their antennæ are bent downward instead of upward. Sometimes when bunched up they look like immense squirrels. Sometimes when scratching themselves with their flippers they have the languid movements of a fashionable lady fanning herself; and again, when two are sparring at each other, they have the fierce mien of gladiators. But always there is that particularly comical edge about them that impels to irresistible laughter, as when one approaches a cage of monkeys. Their attitudes and motions are so unexpected and ridiculous.

I did little hunting myself but went with the other hunters in the _oomiak_ or large skin boat; and I believe I got more enjoyment than any one else of the party; for I was not doing the killing, and was enjoying equally the misses and the hits of the others and, above all, the study of these huge and interesting brutes. Many of my preconceived notions, obtained by reading and by hearsay, were put to flight during those three or four days.

Only a few years ago a report to the Smithsonian Institute was published in which it was stated that the walrus were very watchful and wary, and that when reposing on the ice-cake they selected a large bull to climb the highest pinnacle and keep watch for foes, and that when he grew weary of his vigil and wished to sleep he would prod the bull next to him with his tusks and let him take his turn while the former watchman took a nap. It was thus inferred that the walrus scanned the region of ice with eagle eyes and had a system of signalling similar to the organized human gunboats or armies.

But this is all nonsense. The fact is that the walrus cannot see more than ten or twelve feet at the most, and even at that distance I doubt whether he can distinguish more than the mere outlines of any object. His eyes are the eyes of a fish, small and rudely constructed and exceptionally nearsighted. They are made for use in the dim depths of the sea. When the sun shines the walrus shut their eyes and apparently cannot open them. When alarmed they rush into the water and then come up and will crowd within five or six feet of the moving-picture man or hunter, bulging their eyes like those of a crab in frantic attempts to see their foe.

We clad ourselves in white muslin parkas, and got our _oomiaks_ or _kyaks_ boldly up under the noses of these great beasts with them staring down upon us. The only thing we had to guard against was their getting our wind. If we kept to leeward of them we were always out of their sight. The strange bulging of the eyes when excited gives a most grotesque appearance to the countenance of these walrus, as ordinarily their eyes are deep sunken in their heads.

Let me sketch a picture from life: It is the twentieth of August. We are in the vicinity of Cape North on the Northern Siberian coast. We are twenty or thirty miles offshore. The day is warm, sunny, still. The ship is tied to a large iceberg; a wilderness of floating ice-cakes stretches in every direction to the horizon. In some places these are massed together; again there will be little open places, and ragged leads, but everywhere ice, ice, ice. And it is all in motion; a slow heaving and grinding of the floe, and the tidal currents moving in different directions and with varied rapidity, but all trending northwest, the landscape--or seascape--changing every minute. There are herds of walrus all around us, some numerous, containing two or three hundred on one cake of ice, others small; here a group of four or five big bulls on a cake just large enough to hold them; then fifteen or twenty on a wider berg with little hummocks, up the slopes of which the big brutes crowd.

Scull and Lovering have taken the kyak-catamaran and are paddling to the nearest bunch of walrus not five hundred yards from the ship. Captain K. has launched the big skin boat, or _oomiak_, and is perched on the high stern, steering. His aeroscope moving-picture machine and graphlex camera, his field-glass and rifle are by him. "Eskimo Prank" and I are in front of him with our paddles; while Dr. Elting and Collins are in the bow, with paddles in their hands and their big Ross and Mannlicher rifles close by. We corkscrew our way through the ice, steering past a bunch of walrus on a small cake. "Small ice--lose um quick," says Prank. We are heading to a herd of twenty or thirty, with some big tuskers among them. We keep to the leeward of them, for the sense of smell seems to be their one keen sense, and even that does not compare in acuteness with the nose of the polar bear or the caribou.

Captain K. and "Eskimo Prank" are the only ones in our party who are perfectly calm and unexcited, and they seem to the rest of us rash and careless. The boat is steered right in sight of the herd, and we are getting close to them. Now the big, ugly heads of five or six which have been digging clams come up right alongside of us. Suddenly their heads rise high out of the water and their sunken eyes bulge out as they stare up into our faces. It takes a whole minute's scrutiny to satisfy them that we are enemies, and they go down with great splashing and blowing to come up again almost in the same place and stare at us again. So we are escorted up to the edge of the ice-cake on which the herd reposes. As a precaution against discovery we list the _oomiak_ so that its side protects us from their sight.

We range alongside the cake; "Prank" and I hold it steady by clutching spurs of ice. The captain with his picture machines, and the hunters with their guns crawl out on the ice. They are clad in white parkas--but there is plenty to see about them in all conscience, and they make plenty of noise. We are only twenty or thirty feet from the nearest walrus. Two or three big bulls are on the hummock right above us. The captain and the hunters maneuver about, cautiously but sometimes in plain sight, and discuss, in voices clearly audible three times the distance, the question as to which have the best tusks, which lie most favorably for a good shot, in which hump of the neck the brain lies and just where to shoot. The captain gets his bulky aeroscope placed and sets the engine to buzzing and clacking. The hunters are waiting for the beasts to turn just right so as to expose the brain. For the brain of a walrus is as small as that of a rhinoceros in proportion to its size--about as big as one's two fists,--and you must know just where it is, and place your ball right through it, or your game will flop and flounder in his dying struggles and roll into the sea and you'll lose him. Hence the nervous care and uncertainty of the hunters. For ten or fifteen minutes we wait for the chance, the favorable moment.

But about that foolish sentinel story: A beast that cannot tell an _oomiak_ full of bipeds, or these same bipeds with guns or cameras from a fellow walrus at the distance of ten yards, doesn't plan and place a relay of watchmen. We learned from close and long observation that the walrus couldn't see us in the sunshine--their eyes were shut, or nearly so, and dim when open. Neither can they hear well. They have no external ear at all, only a tiny hole which requires close observation to discover. Even the near roar of a heavy rifle does not always alarm them, and hunters with smaller rifles have killed one after another of a whole herd until all were slain, without causing a stampede. Of course the repeated shots of two or three rifles close at hand will generally cause them to rush into the water, but even that does not always scare them. A heavy shot near by will bring all heads up, but if it is not repeated they will soon go to sleep again.

But what a thrilling time it was for me as I sat in the boat or on the ice-cake and watched the drama! It was far more comedy than tragedy. The great beasts, as heavy as elephants, were lying in bunches or rolling around like a lot of huge, fat hogs. Here a great bull with long tusks was lying on his back and scratching himself against an ice hummock, wriggling and squirming like a Newfoundland dog. Another was curled up in an impossible heap and scratching the top of his head with his hind flipper. Another was making his way through a bunch of sleeping comrades, rolling them around or scrambling over them and fighting those that resented his intrusion. Some were swimming about the landing place of low ice and trying to scramble onto the cake, and these would disturb a whole bunch of the lazy animals and there would be trouble.

And the noises they made were as various and interesting as their positions. One huge fellow, so close to me that I could have punched him with a bamboo fishing-rod, shook his head slowly from side to side with shut eyes and groaned with a dismal falling cadence, for all the world like a fat old man with the rheumatism: "O-o-o-h: D-e-a-r me, d-e-a-r me; this world's a wilderness of woe!"

Another was optimistic, and his was a sigh of infinite content. "A-a-h-h!" he said, "what a nice, soft, warm bed this ice-cake is! How fat and delicious those clams were! And I don't believe there is one of those horrible, malodorous little human bipeds with his deadly bang-stick within a hundred miles of us." And there we were within twenty feet of him, trying to locate his brain-pan!

Some grunted like pigs in sheer laziness. Others barked sharply as they prodded each other with their strong, sharp tusks: "Get off my stomach, you lazy son of a clam-digger! Wow! Wow!"

Two of them were sparring like gladiators, raising their heads high and roaring defiance; but it was all good nature, for in a minute they were lying asleep, one with his head across the other's neck.

All their movements, attitudes and voices had such a droll element; all were so irresistibly funny that I wanted to lie down on my back and roar with laughter.

But our hunters wanted big heads and tusks as trophies; our Eskimos desired some hides to make their _oomiaks_ and to cover their houses; and we wanted tons of meat for the women and children of the Siberian villages. And so after a while the rifles roared and roared again and again, and the hunters moved close up, working their levers fast. The mad scramble of the walrus for the water was a most grotesque sight. They charged blindly ahead whichever way they happened to be lying, humping up their backs as they drew their hind flippers under them and stretching out again, just like the "woolly bear" caterpillars I used to tease when a boy. Those that escaped the volley splashed heavily into the water and dived deep, but presently they were all at the surface again, blowing and coughing, bunching in masses, crowding close to the feet of the moving-picture man, stretching their heads six feet out of the water, popping and rolling their ochre-colored eyes in frantic efforts to see. Then one would get a whiff of the dreaded man-scent and would go down with a mighty splash and snort, and the whole crowd would follow suit, soon to come up and repeat the performance five or six times before they could finally get it into their slow brains that this was a dangerous neighborhood.

We had four most interesting days among the walrus, and the hunters were sated with sport and trophies. My wishes were more modest. I had announced to Dr. John Timothy Stone, the Moderator of the Atlanta General Assembly, 1913, that my grand object in going on this hunt was to kill a walrus myself, get his tusks and have a couple of ivory gavels made out of them, that I might present them to the outgoing and incoming moderators of the next General Assembly, which was to meet in Chicago, 1914.

I got my walrus in this fashion: Captain K., Dr. Elting and I were in the _oomiak_ with "Eskimo Prank." Dr. E. had got a fine head, and we were cruising about, when we spied a bunch of seven or eight big walrus on a hummocky berg near the edge of the ice-floe. The swell of the open ocean came in here with considerable force, and long, smooth topped billows heaved among the ice-floes, washing far up on the shelving bergs. We pushed our boat into a narrow passage and the swell took it and landed the bow on the ice right in the midst of the walrus. The captain and the doctor took the hazardous chance and leaped on the ice, placing the muzzles of their rifles almost against the heads of their selection. I was not quick enough to make the jump, but as the _oomiak_ surged back with the receding wave I saw a walrus charging down the sloping ice diagonally from me. Both he and I were moving rapidly and in opposite directions and I could only take a hasty "wing" shot. It was the most difficult shot of all my experience. I was standing uncertainly in the plunging _oomiak_, swaying and tottering as the light craft shot down the receding wave away from the iceberg; while the frightened walrus was humping himself for all he was worth, trying frantically to get off the ice-floe into the ocean, his head bobbing up and down with his rapid motion. I was wobbling in one direction and he in another, and the space between us was widening fast. There was no time to be lost. Balancing most unsteadily, I swung up my rifle for a snap shot. It was a great moment. I had little hope of hitting the mark; but my walrus fell to the crack of the rifle, with his nose in the water. A delay of one-tenth of a second and I would have lost him. I had my gavels.

The closing scene of our walrus drama was a comedy scene, and possessed what every drama ought to have--human interest. We had pounded our way southeast again through the fast thickening ice-floe driven upon us by a strong northwest wind. At one time to the least experienced of the party it seemed as if there was no possible way out, as if we must spend the winter on the bleak shore of Northern Siberia. But always the narrow leads opened before us, and after two or three days of slow and careful work through the ice we emerged from it, and before a strong, fair wind we bowled along towards Bering Strait. The early morning of August twenty-fifth found us anchored in the harbor of East Cape, after a hard struggle against wind and tide.

Here is a large Eskimo village. The Tchukchees, or reindeer-herding Eskimos do not roam as far north as this, and these were the seal and walrus hunters. They depend almost entirely for their food upon the sea, and a shortage of these animals sometimes causes starvation.

This village is situated behind a high bluff, but it is not well sheltered, and a fierce wind offshore caused the ship to tug violently at her anchor, and made landing difficult. Captain K. and the Eskimos got a boat ashore and secured a stout line to the ship. Then the eight or nine great carcases on our deck were heaved by the donkey engine into the sea. They would float by this time. They were not spoiled at all in the estimation of the Eskimo, only "ripe." They were tied to the line and then a large crowd of Eskimos took hold, ran up the beach and so towed the meat ashore.

Then, what a scene! Out from every one of those large balloon-framed, skin-covered houses poured the men, women and children, shouting, screaming, hurrying in joy and excitement. The men with high waterproof mukluks were cutting up the carcases, and men and women would seize the hunks of meat and rush away to their houses, pursued by scores of wolfish dogs which leaped and snapped at the meat. Occasionally the dogs would succeed in getting away with a large chunk, when instantly there would be a general mix-up from which some of the dogs would emerge limping and howling. There was a dog-fight every five minutes.

The moving-picture man and the camera fiends moved about "taking" the crowd. The men with old ivory ornaments, white ivory implements, and other curios to sell besieged the white men. In all the houses cooking was going on, and many were chewing on the raw blubber. It was a day of days to these poor people, and for the first time on our voyage of pleasure we felt ourselves benefactors to the human race. "The calendar of these Eskimos will date from to-day," said the only American white man who lives in East Cape village. "They will count time all winter from the day of the big feed of walrus meat."

But better than the meat for their bodies which we procured for these poor people of the Arctic shore, was the Bread of Life that I was able to direct to several Eskimo towns, from the knowledge gained in this great walrus hunt.

_Printed in the United States of America_

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTE:

Obvious printer errors have been corrected. Otherwise, the author's original spelling, punctuation and hyphenation have been left intact.

End of Project Gutenberg's Adventures in Alaska, by Samuel Hall Young