_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