BEARS FOR A CHANGE
Soon after taking our third whale, we saw our first polar bears--two of
them on a narrow floe of ice. When the brig was within fifty yards of
them the mate got out his rifle and began blazing away. His first shot
struck one of the bears in the hind leg. The animal wheeled and snapped
at the wound. The second shot stretched it out dead. The second bear was
hit somewhere in the body and, plunging into the sea, it struck out on a
three-mile swim for the main ice pack. It swam with head and shoulders
out, cleaving the water like a high-power launch and leaving a creaming
wake behind. Moving so swiftly across the brig's course, it made a
difficult target.
"I'm going down after that fellow," said Mr. Winchester.
He called a boat's crew and lowered, taking his place in the bow with his
rifle, while Long John sat at the tiller. He had got only a short distance
from the ship when Captain Shorey ordered Gabriel after him.
"Killing that bear may be a bigger job than he thinks," he said. "Lower a
boat, Mr. Gabriel, and lend a hand. It may be needed."
In a few minutes Gabriel was heading after the mate's boat. Neither boat
hoisted sail. With four men at the sweeps, it was as much as the boats
could do to gain on the brute. If the bear was not making fifteen miles an
hour, I'm no judge.
Mr. Winchester kept pegging away, his bullets knocking up water all around
the animal. One ball struck the bear in the back. That decided the animal
to change its tactics. It quit running away and turned and made directly
for its enemies.
"Avast rowing," sang out the mate.
The men peaked their oars, turned on the thwarts, and had their first
chance to watch developments, which came thick and fast. Rabid ferocity,
blind fury, and deadly menace were in every line of that big white head
shooting across the water toward them. The boat sat stationary on a
dancing sea. The mate's rifle cracked repeatedly. The bullets peppered the
sea, sending up little spurts of water all about the bear. But the beast
did not notice them, never tried to dodge, never swerved aside--just kept
rushing for the boat with the directness of an arrow.
It was a time of keen excitement for the men in the boat. They kept
glancing with an "Oh, that Blücher or night would come" expression toward
Gabriel's boat, which was doing all that oars could do to get into the
fray, Big Foot Louis standing all the while in the bow with harpoon ready.
The bobbing of his boat disconcerted the mate's aim. Though he was a crack
shot, as he had often proved among the okchugs, I never saw him shoot so
badly. But he kept banging away, and when the bear was within fifteen or
twenty yards he got home a ball in its shoulder. The beast plunged into
the air, snarling and clawing at the sea, then rushed again for the boat
like a white streak. It rammed into the boat bows-on, stuck one mighty
paw over the gunwale, and with a snarling roar and a frothing snap of
glistening fangs, leaped up and tried to climb aboard.
Just at this critical instant Gabriel's boat came into action with a port
helm. Louis drove a harpoon into the beast behind the shoulder--drove it
up to the haft, so that the spear-head burst out on the other side. At
the same moment the mate stuck the muzzle of his rifle almost down the
bear's throat and fired. The great brute fell back into the water, clawed
and plunged and roared and clashed its teeth and so, in a whirlwind of
impotent fury, died.
For a moment it lay limp and still among the lapping waves, then slowly
began to sink. But Louis held it up with the harpoon line and the animal
was towed back to the brig. It measured over seven feet in length and
weighed 1,700 pounds--a powerful, gaunt old giant, every inch bone and
sinew. Mr. Winchester retrieved the other bear from the ice floe. It was
considerably smaller. The pelts were stripped off and the carcasses thrown
overboard. The skins were in good condition, despite the earliness of the
season. They were stretched on frames fashioned by the cooper, and tanned.
A week or so later we sighted a lone bear on an ice floe making a meal off
a seal it had killed. It was late in the afternoon and one had to look
twice before being able to make out its white body against the background
of snow-covered ice. When the brig sailed within seventy-five yards the
bear raised its head for a moment, took a squint at the vessel, didn't
seem interested, and went on eating.
Resting his rifle on the bulwarks and taking careful aim, Mr. Winchester
opened fire. The pattering of the bullets on the ice seemed to puzzle the
bear. As it heard the missiles sing and saw the snow spurt up, it left the
seal and began walking all about the floe on an investigation. Finally
it reared on its hind legs to its full height. While in this upright
position, a bullet struck it and turned it a sudden twisting somersault.
Its placid mood was instantly succeeded by one of ferocious anger. It
looked toward the vessel and roared savagely. Still the bullets fell
about it, and now alive to its danger, it plunged into the sea and struck
out for the polar pack a mile distant.
Mr. Winchester again lowered, with Gabriel's boat to back him up. The
chase was short and swift. The boats began to overhaul the bear as it
approached the ice, the mate's bullets splashing all about the animal,
but doing no damage. As the brute was hauling itself upon the ice, a ball
crashed into its back, breaking its spine. It fell back into the water and
expired in a furious flurry. A running bowline having been slipped over
its neck, it was towed back to the brig.
Not long afterward, while we were cruising in open water, a polar bear
swam across the brig's stern. There was neither ice nor land in sight.
Figuring the ship's deck as the center of a circle of vision about ten
miles in diameter, the bear already had swum five miles, and probably
quite a bit more, and it is certain he had an equal distance to go before
finding any ice on which to rest. It probably had drifted south on an ice
pan and was bound back for its home on the polar pack.
The bear made too tempting a target for the mate to resist, and he brought
out his rifle and, kneeling on the quarter-deck, he took steady aim and
fired. His bullet struck about two feet behind the animal. He aimed again,
but changed his mind and lowered his gun.
"No," he said, "that fellow's making too fine a swim. I'll let him go."
Cleaving the water with a powerful stroke, the bear went streaking out of
sight over the horizon. It is safe to say that before its swim ended the
animal covered fifteen miles at the lowest estimate, and possibly a much
greater distance.
One moonlight night a little later, while we were traveling under short
sail with considerable ice about, a whale blew a short distance to
windward. I was at the wheel and Mr. Landers was standing near me. "Blow!"
breathed Mr. Landers softly. Suddenly the whale breached--we could hear it
distinctly as it shot up from a narrow channel between ice floes. "There
she breaches!" said Mr. Landers in the same low voice, with no particular
concern. We thought the big creature merely was enjoying a moonlight
frolic. It breached again. This time its body crashed upon a strip of
ice and flopped and floundered for a moment before sliding back into the
water. Then it breached half a dozen times more in rapid succession. I had
never seen a whale breach more than once at a time, even when wounded. Mr.
Landers became interested. "I wonder what's the matter with that whale,"
he said.
To our surprise, two other black bodies began to flash up into the
moonlight about the whale. Every time the whale breached, they breached,
too. They were of huge size, but nothing like so large as the whale.
"Killers!" cried Mr. Landers excitedly.
Then we knew the whale was not playing, but fighting for its life. It
leaped above the surface to a lesser and lesser height each time. Plainly
it was tiring fast. When it breached the last time only its head and a
small portion of its body rose into the air and both killers seemed to be
hanging with a bulldog grip upon its lower jaw. What the outcome of that
desperate battle was we did not see. The whale and its savage assailants
moved off out of eye-shot. But for some time after we had lost sight of
the whale we could hear its labored and stertoreous breathing and its
heavy splashes as it attempted to breach.
Killers, Mr. Landers told me, are themselves a species of rapacious,
carnivorous whale, whose upper and lower jaws are armed with sharp,
saw-like teeth. They are otherwise known as the Orca gladiator, and
tiger-hearted gladiators of the sea they are. The great, clumsy bowhead
with no teeth with which to defend itself, whose only weapons are its
flukes and its fins, is no match for them. They attack the great creature
whenever they encounter it, and when it has exhausted itself in its
efforts to escape, they tear open its jaws and feast upon its tongue. The
killer whale never hunts alone. It pursues its titanic quarry in couples
and trios, and sometimes in veritable wolf-like packs of half a dozen.
There is usually no hope for the bowhead that these relentless creatures
mark for their prey.