A WALRUS HUNT
The walrus are among the most picturesque and powerful fauna of the far
North. More than that, their pursuit and capture, a process by no means
devoid of peril, is an important part of every serious arctic
expedition, for on every expedition of mine these huge creatures,
weighing as they do all the way from 1,200 to 3,000 pounds, are hunted
for the purpose of obtaining the maximum of meat for dog food in a
minimum of time.
Wolstenholm and Whale Sounds, which are passed before reaching Etah, are
favorite haunts of the walrus. The hunting of these monsters is the most
exciting and dangerous sport in the arctic regions. The polar bear has
been called the tiger of the North; but a contest between one or two, or
even three, of these animals and a man armed with a Winchester repeating
rifle is an entirely one-sided affair. On the contrary, a contest with a
herd of walrus,--the lions of the North,--in a small whale-boat, will
give more thrills to the minute than anything else I know of within the
Arctic Circle.
On the last expedition I did not go after walrus myself, leaving that
exhilarating labor to the younger men. I have seen so much of it in the
past that my first vivid impression is somewhat blunted. I have
therefore asked George Borup to write for me an account of
walrus-hunting, as it appears to a novice, and his story is so vivid
that I give it to the reader in his own words, graphic with the keen
impressions of a young man and picturesque with college slang. He says:
"Walrus-hunting is the best sport in the shooting line that I know.
There is something doing when you tackle a herd of fifty-odd, weighing
between one and two tons each, that go for you whether wounded or not;
that can punch a hole through eight inches of young ice; that try to
climb into the boat to get at or upset you,--we never could make out
which, and didn't care, as the result to us would have been the
same,--or else try to ram your boat and stave holes in it.
"Get in a mix-up with a herd, when every man in the whale-boat is
standing by to repel boarders, hitting them over the head with oars,
boat-hooks, axes, and yelling like a cheering section at a football game
to try to scare them off; with the rifles going like young Gatling guns,
and the walruses bellowing from pain and anger, coming to the surface
with mad rushes, sending the water up in the air till you would think a
flock of geysers was turned loose in your immediate vicinity--oh, it's
great!
"When we were walrus-hunting, the _Roosevelt_ would steam along, with
all hands on the watch. Then suddenly a keen-eyed Eskimo would sing out,
'Awick soah!' or, possibly, 'Awick tedicksoah!' ('Walruses! A great many
walruses!')
"We would look to see if there were enough of the animals to make a raid
worth while; then, if the prospect was satisfactory, the _Roosevelt_
would steam along to leeward, for if they smelled her smoke they would
wake up and we would never see them again.
"Henson, MacMillan, and I used to take turns going after these brutes.
Four or five Eskimos, one sailor, and a whale-boat were assigned to each
of us. The boats were painted white to resemble pieces of ice, and the
row-locks were muffled, that we might steal along as noiselessly as
possible.
"As soon as we sighted a herd worthy of our lead, we would sing out to
our men, 'Shake her up!' and they would all come on the jump. After a
hurried though careful look to see if we had four or five oars, five
harpoons, lines, floats, two rifles, and ammunition, we would cry,
'Stand by to lower away'; and as the _Roosevelt_ slackened speed we
would slide down the davit ropes, man the oars, and go out to look for
trouble--which we usually found.
"We would get as near as possible to the walruses on the ice. If they
were sound asleep, we could row to within five yards and harpoon a
couple; but generally they would wake up, when we were about twenty
yards away, and begin to slide off into the water. We would then shoot,
and if they attacked us it was easy to harpoon them; while if they
started to leave the country, it might be a Marathon race before we got
close enough to make the harpoons fast in their hides.
"A walrus when killed will go to the bottom like a ton of lead, and our
business was to get a harpoon into him before that event took place. The
harpoon is fastened to the float by a long thong made of sealskin, and
a float is made of the entire skin of a seal filled with air for
buoyancy.
"A thing we soon learned to look out for was to let this thong, which
was neatly coiled up like a lasso before it was thrown, have the right
of way and all the space it needed; for if it happened to take a turn
around one of our legs when the other end was fast to a walrus, we would
be missing that useful member, and be pulled into the water--and
possibly drowned.
"Now a crew that goes through a scrimmage with these monsters develops
teamplay of a high order in a surprisingly short time. The sailor would
steer, four Eskimos would row, and in the bow would be the best
harpooner with one of us beside him. The two men forward would enable
the men rowing to be spelled, if we had a long chase.
"I shall never forget my first mix-up with a herd. We had sighted about
ten walruses two miles away, and MacMillan and I, Dennis Murphy, a
sailor, and three Eskimos manned a whale-boat, and off we went. About
two hundred yards from the walruses we quit rowing and let Murphy scull
us, while Mac and I crouched side by side in the bow, the Eskimos with
their harpoons being ready right behind us.
"When we were about twenty yards from the herd, one bull woke up, gave a
grunt, poked another, woke him, and then--bang! bang! bang! we opened
fire. Mac had a Winchester automatic rifle, and he got off five shots so
fast that before the first one left the muzzle the other four were
chasing it. He dropped a large bull, which gave a convulsive flop and
rolled into the water with a splash. I hit a couple, and with hoarse
grunts of pain and fury they all wriggled off the ice and dived out of
sight. The boat was hurried to within five yards of Mac's bull, and an
Eskimo hurled a harpoon, hit the large bull, and threw overboard the
sealskin float. At this stage of the game about forty other walruses,
that had been feeding below, came up to the surface to see what the
noise was about, spitting the clam shells out of their mouths and
snorting. The water was alive with the brutes, and many of them were so
close to us that we could hit them with the oars. A harpoon was driven
into another by a corking throw; and just then, when my magazine was
empty, things began to come our way.
"Suddenly a large bull, followed by two others, all wounded, came to the
surface twenty yards off, gave tongue to their battle-cry and charged.
The Eskimos were not pleased at the look of things. They grabbed the
oars and began to bang them on the gunwale of the boat, yelling like so
many steam sirens, hoping to scare the invaders off; but they might as
well have been crooning lullabies.
"Mac, who had never before shot anything larger than a bird, was cool,
and his automatic was going off like a pom-pom, when we cut loose on the
charging trio. Their numerous companions added to the general din; and
the reports of the rifles, the shouts and pounding of the Eskimos, with
the bellowing of the infuriated animals, sounded like Vesuvius blowing
its head off. We sank one walrus, then disabled another; but the biggest
one dived and came up with a snort right alongside of the boat, so that
he blew water in our faces. With our guns almost touching his head, we
let drive--and he began to sink. With a triumphant cheer, the Eskimos
harpooned him.
"Then we signaled to the _Roosevelt_ to come up, and as soon as the
friends and neighbors of the deceased smelled the smoke, they made for
parts unknown.
"In this hunt, as in all other walrus hunts I was in, I had a hard time
in trying not to take a crack at the floats. They were black, and jumped
around in the weirdest way, so that they appeared to be alive. I knew
that if I shot one, I would never hear the last of it, so took good
care.
"Another time we went for a herd of fifty-odd walruses that were
sleeping on the ice. The wind was blowing fairly hard, and it is never
easy to shoot accurately from a whale-boat which is doing a cake-walk in
the arms of a choppy sea. When we got twenty yards from the ice cake, we
began to fire. I hit a couple of walruses, but did not kill them, and
with fierce grunts the huge brutes wriggled into the sea. They were
coming our way, and all hands stood by to show the visitors how we loved
to speed the parting guest--our way of showing this being the vocal and
instrumental method already described.
"Wesharkoopsi, an Eskimo, who stood right behind me and who had been
telling us what an expert he was with the harpoon, was making
threatening gestures which boded ill for any walrus that came near us.
"Suddenly, with a loud 'Ook! Ook!' a bull rose like a giant
jack-in-the-box right alongside of me, giving us a regular shower bath,
and he got both tusks on the gunwale of the boat.
"Wesharkoopsi was not expecting a fight at such close quarters, and he
got badly rattled. Instead of throwing his harpoon he dropped it, yelled
madly, and began to spit in the monster's face. It is needless to state
that we never again took Wesharkoopsi walrus-hunting in a whale-boat.
"The others were shouting, swearing in English and Eskimo at
Wesharkoopsi, the walrus, and everything in general; some were trying to
hit the brute, others to back water.
"I was not eager just then to test the soundness of one arctic
explorer's dictum: 'If a walrus gets his tusks over the side of the
boat, you must not hit him, as such a course would induce him to back
water and upset you; but gently grasp the two-thousand-pound monster by
the tusks and drop him overboard'--or words to that effect. If this one
had got his tusks a quarter inch further my way, he would have had them
clear over the gunwale; so I held my rifle at port arms, stuck its
business end into the visitor's face, and let him have it--which settled
his account.
"That walrus had tried to upset us, but almost immediately another one
tried a new variation of the game, an almost successful effort to sink
us--a regular dive-tackle.
"He was a large bull that an Eskimo had harpooned. He showed what he was
made of by promptly attacking the float and putting it out of
commission, then he proceeded to make off with the harpoon, float, and
all. He happened to come near my end of the boat, and I shot at him; but
whether I hit the mark or not I do not know. Anyhow, he dived, and
while we were all looking over the side for him to appear, our craft
was hit a tremendous whack by something under the stern--so hard that it
upset the bosun, who was standing there peacefully sculling.
"Our friend was getting a little too strenuous; but he dived before I
could shoot again, and came up fifty yards off. Then I hit him with a
bullet, and he disappeared. Maybe we were not an anxious crowd in that
boat for the next few minutes, as we knew that that submarine earthquake
was due for another blow-up at any instant--but when and where! We
stared at the surface of the water, to see if possible from what
direction the next attack would come.
"One more such scrimmage as the last and we would be all in--both
literally and metaphorically; for he had put a big hole through the
bottom of the boat, and as she had a double bottom we could not check
the leak, and one man had to bale rapidly. We always carried along a lot
of old coats to stop holes in the boats, but in this case they might as
well have been pocket handkerchiefs.
"Suddenly an Eskimo who was looking over the side yelled: '_Kingeemutt!
Kingeemutt!_' ('Back her! Back her!') But the words were hardly out of
his mouth when--smash! rip! bang!--the stern of the boat rose under the
shock, the bosun was nearly knocked overboard, an Eskimo catching him on
the fly, and a hole I could have put both fists through suddenly
appeared within an inch of his foot, just above the water line.
"I looked over the gunwale. There the brute lay on his back, tusks
upright under the stern; then with a quick flop he dived. The men did
their usual stunts to scare him off. Up he came fifteen yards away, gave
his battle-cry, 'Ook! Ook! Ook!' to warn us to look out for trouble, and
came tearing along the surface of Whale Sound like a torpedo boat
destroyer, or an unmuffled automobile with a bicycle policeman on its
trail.
"I got my rapid-fire gun into the game and sank him; then we made for
the nearest cake of ice--and reached it none too soon."
[Illustration: HOISTING A WALRUS TO THE DECK OF THE ROOSEVELT]
To take up the story where Borup leaves it, when the first wounded
walrus had been despatched with a bullet, and the floats were all taken
in, an oar was erected in the boat for a signal, and the _Roosevelt_
steamed up. The floats and the lines were taken over the rail of the
ship, the walrus raised to the surface of the water, a hook inserted,
and the winch on deck hoisted the monster on board, to be later skinned
and cut up by the expert knives of the Eskimos. While this work was
going on, the deck of the ship looked like a slaughterhouse, with the
ravenous dogs--at this stage of the journey we had already about one
hundred and fifty--waiting, ears erect and eyes sparkling, to catch the
refuse thrown them by the Eskimos.
[Illustration: A NARWHAL KILLED OFF CAPE UNION, JULY, 1909. THE MOST
NORTHERLY SPECIMEN EVER CAPTURED]
In the Whale Sound region we sometimes obtained narwhal and deer, but
there was no narwhal hunting to speak of on the upward journey this last
time. Walrus, narwhal, and seal meat are valuable food for dogs, but a
white man does not usually enjoy it--unless he is nearly starved. Many
times, however, during my twenty-three years of arctic exploration, I
have thanked God for even a bite of raw dog.