SEALS AND SEAL-SKINS
As it is as essential for those who wish to follow this story
understandingly to know something of the fur-seal――its haunts, habits,
and the methods of its capture――as it was to Phil Ryder, let us
anticipate by a few hours the information that Serge is to give him,
and learn a few of these things for ourselves.
Most of us have seen seals either in salt-water harbors or coast
inlets, or at least in the tanks of zoölogical gardens; but the animals
we have thus seen are hair-seals, which are so common as to be found
in all the salt-waters of the world from poles to tropics. They are,
however, most plentiful on the coasts of the north Atlantic, where
they form an important food-supply for the Eskimos of Greenland and
the natives of Labrador. Although the skin of the hair-seal is of
little value, the oil extracted from its blubber forms so important an
article of commerce that a large fleet of steam and sailing vessels
leaves St. Johns, Newfoundland every year, for the sole purpose of
capturing hair-seals, and the annual catch amounts to several hundreds
of thousands of these animals.
The fur-seal is as different from its cousin the hair-seal as a sheep
is from a goat. The most important point of difference between them is
that while both are furnished with outer coats of stiff grayish hair,
the former wears an under covering of soft velvetlike down or fur
which the hair-seal is obliged to go without. It is this under-garment
of the fur-seal that is so highly prized, and from which are made
the seal-skin jackets, cloaks, muffs, and other articles that are so
expensive and valuable.
An immense amount of the most skilled and careful labor is devoted to
preparing these seal-skins, besides that required in procuring them
in distant seas and shipping them to London, where it can be had most
cheaply. When removed from the animal the skin is salted, bundled, and
shipped. Arrived at its destination it must be repeatedly wet, dried,
and heated, scraped, shaved down to a uniform thickness, and softened.
Then its outer coating of coarse, unsightly hairs must be plucked out
by the roots, and the yellowish-gray inner coat of soft fur must be
given eight to twelve coatings of dye, applied by hand with a brush,
in order to produce the rich “seal-brown” color that fashion demands.
The amount of labor thus expended on a single skin is enormous, and as
several of them are required for a garment, while a heavy duty must
be paid before they can re-enter this country, it is no wonder that
seal-skin jackets are expensive luxuries.
One hundred years or so ago vast rookeries of fur-seals existed in the
far southern waters of the Antarctic Ocean. During a period of eighty
years these were so ruthlessly destroyed by the sealing-fleets of all
maritime nations that in those waters the fur-seal became practically
extinct.
About 1768 the Russian sea-otter hunters, who had discovered the
Aleutian Islands, that wonderful chain of volcanic rocks that divides
Bering Sea from the North Pacific, first noticed the annual migration
of countless millions of fur-seals northward through the passes between
the islands in the early summer, and southward in the autumn. For
eighteen years they sought in vain to discover where these seals went
to, and at length a Muscovite fur-trader named Gerassin Pribyloff
solved the mystery. For three years he had braved the terrors of Bering
Sea, cruising over its length and breadth in a little old sloop named
_St. George_. At length on a certain July day, when the fog was so
dense that it hid one end of his vessel from the other, he heard the
roar of a vast concourse of seals, and at the same time there was
wafted to him through the sodden air the unmistakable odor of their
rookeries.
With the lifting of the fog Pribyloff discovered the group of rocky
islets that bears his name to this day. The nearest or most southerly
of these he named St. George, after his vessel, while a much larger
one some thirty miles to the north he called St. Paul. Two other
insignificant islets named Otter and Walrus complete the group.
From these islands, which are enveloped in fog for half the year, and
lashed by winter storms during the remainder, comes to-day the bulk of
the world’s supply of seal-skin. While they were owned by the Russians,
the annual slaughter of seals upon them was something incredible,
amounting to many hundreds of thousands. It sometimes happened that a
hundred thousand skins would be cast into the sea and destroyed, in
order to keep up the market price, and the utter extermination of the
fur-seal appeared inevitable. Since 1867, however, when the Pribyloffs,
together with the rest of Alaska, became the property of the United
States, wise laws have so restricted the killing that the preservation
of the seal herds is assured just so long as the laws can be enforced.
Under these laws only one company, which pays handsomely for the
privilege, may kill seals on these islands, and even it may only kill a
specified number of young males between one and six years of age. Thus
the old bulls, the females, and the pups are never molested.
On this little group of fog-enshrouded islands does the fur-seal
breed, and to them the vast herds return year after year with the
regularity of the seasons themselves. They arrive in June and depart
in October, when they move southward into the Pacific, spreading
themselves over all its limitless area, between the coasts of North
America and Japan, but never landing or leaving the water until they
again return to their chosen home in Bering Sea.
In their annual northward journey the seals divide into two great
herds, one of which follows the North American coast-line, and the
other that of Japan, keeping as close to shore as do the schools of
fish on which they feed, which is anywhere from one to two hundred
miles. During this journey they are harassed and pursued by what is
termed “pelagic” or open-water sealers, both American, who outfit
at San Francisco or Seattle, and British, who sail from Victoria.
Heretofore these pelagic sealers, who are said to kill and lose from
five to ten seals for every one that they obtain, and who annually
bring in several hundreds of thousands of skins, have been unrestrained
by law. For some years they hunted in the waters of Bering Sea, as
well as in the open ocean. Finally the Americans claimed the exclusive
control of the sea, and the British denied that they possessed the
right to do so. While the question was in dispute, both parties agreed
that Bering Sea should be closed to all pelagic sealers, and both
nations maintained war vessels in those waters to capture or drive away
any sealers violating this agreement. In 1893 the vexed question was
settled by arbitration, that gave to the Americans exclusive control
of Bering Sea waters within a radius of sixty miles of the Pribyloff
Islands, forbade the killing of fur-seals in any waters between the
first of May and the last of July, and prohibited the use of rifles in
seal-hunting at any time.
As the year of our story was before that of this settlement by
arbitration, Bering Sea was closed by law to all sealers, though
certain of them still dared the risk of entering it for the sake of the
rich prizes they might bring out if undetected by any of the patrolling
war-ships. At the same time pelagic sealing was briskly carried on
outside of the protected waters, and the north-bound herds were
harassed on all sides by swift sailing-vessels and even steamers fitted
out for their destruction. Some of these attempted to pass themselves
off as fishermen, and as such ventured inside the forbidden limits,
trusting to their disguise to protect them.
It was on board one of these pelagic sealers, owned in Victoria and
clearing as a fisherman from that port, that Phil Ryder now found
himself shipped as a hunter. In this position he hoped and expected to
make a speedy voyage to Sitka, in Alaska, which was at the same time
one of the very last ports in which Captain Duff would have cared to
find himself under the circumstances.
Most of the foregoing information concerning fur-seals was imparted
to Phil by Serge on the morning of the first day out, and before the
lesson was concluded the former’s eyes were opened to many things. He
had been awakened very early that morning by a startling crash, which
for a moment caused him to imagine that the _Seamew_ had struck a rock.
At the same time the cabin was filled with the roar of Captain Duff’s
fierce voice. Reassured as to the safety of the schooner, Phil smiled
as he recalled Jalap Coombs’s theory of the necessary lung exercise
indicated by the latter sound. The burly master of the _Seamew_
seemed to have been entirely restored to his wonted state of mind by
his night of seclusion, and to have decided to continue his practice
of loud-mouthed bullying in spite of the surprising setback it had
received the evening before. Consequently the moment he emerged from
his state-room he glanced about him to see whom he might first devour.
Just then the form of the schooner’s black cook, Ebenezer by name, who
was called “Ebb” for short, and sometimes “Slack Ebb” or “Low Ebb,” as
the nautical fancy of the crew suggested, appeared at the entrance of
the narrow passage leading from the galley.
Snatching a plate from the table, and flinging it at the cook’s head
to emphasize his remarks, the captain roared out a query as to why
breakfast was not ready.
Adroitly ducking like one well accustomed to such greetings, and
thereby allowing the flying missile to crash against the side of Phil’s
bunk, Ebenezer grinned to show his appreciation of the captain’s
playfulness, and answered: “Yes, sah. Dreckly, in free minute, sah.”
“Three minutes, ye black swab! See that it’s on the table inside of one
minute, or I’ll have ye cut into fish-chum, and make halibut bait of
your heart.”
“Berry good, sah,” responded Ebenezer, still grinning, though his eyes
rolled wildly at this horrible threat, as he hastily shuffled from
the cabin backward like a crab. Not until he gained the shelter of
the passage did he cease to watch the captain’s every movement. Then
he turned and fled precipitately to the galley. Here he felt as safe
as though in a fortified castle, for the passage was too narrow to be
successfully navigated by so beamy a craft as the _Seamew’s_ master,
and when that autocrat of the ship was on deck the cook took good care
to keep the galley hatch closed and fastened on the inside.
At Ebb’s flight, Captain Duff chuckled hoarsely, and muttered to
himself, “That’s the way to fix ’em.”
“Good-morning, sir,” remarked Phil at this moment.
“Eh! What’s that?” demanded the captain, whirling around with
surprising agility for a man of his size. “Why aren’t you on deck, ye
landlubber? I want you to understand that I don’t allow no skulking
below at this time o’ day.”
“Very well, sir. I’ll go just as quick as I get my shoes on. I don’t
suppose you want me to do so barefooted.”
“Barefooted, or web-footed, or club-footed, or without any feet at all!
What is it to me how ye go, so long as ye do go!” roared the captain.
“Am I master of this ship, I’d like to know, or am I only a howling
figure-head?”
“You certainly are, sir,” replied Phil, as with shoes in hand he
moved towards the companion-way. “And I am certain that no one who is
acquainted with you would doubt it for a moment.”
With this parting shot the lad disappeared, leaving the captain to
splutter and fume and wonder if there was any hidden meaning in his
remark. “If it warn’t for his shooting,” he muttered, “I’d set him
ashore on the first land we make, and I don’t know but what I’d better
get rid of him anyway, afore he stirs up a mutiny.”
Then he went on deck, where he made things so lively for the next five
minutes, and sent the crew scurrying hither and thither with such
agility by his fiercely worded and loudly bellowed orders, that when he
went below for breakfast he actually forgot to find fault with the cook
for having served the meal so long before that its several dishes had
grown cold.