ARCTIC HUNTING.
EARLY in October the Esquimo disappeared from the range of travel from
the brig. Hans and Hickey were sent to the hunting grounds, and they
returned with the unwelcome news, no walrus, no Esquimo. Where could
they have gone? Were they hovering on the track of the escaping party
under Dr. Hayes? and where were these? Would the natives return from a
trip south, and bring any news of the battle they were fighting with the
ice and cold?
While such queries may have been indulged by the brig party, they had
serious thoughts concerning their own condition. Their fresh provisions
were nearly exhausted. Without walrus or bear meat, their old enemy,
scurvy, would come down upon them like an armed man. There was now
plainly another occasion for one of those accidental occurrences,
through which the eye of a devout Christian sees God's kind hand. In the
midst of these painful thoughts the shout by Hans was heard ringing
through the brig: "Nannook! nannook!"
"A bear! a bear!" chimed in Morton.
The men seized their guns and ran on deck. The dogs were already in
battle array with the bear, which was attended by a five-months-old
cub. Not a gun was in readiness on the instant, and while they were
being loaded the canines were having rough sport with bruin. Tudla, a
champion fighter, had been seized twice, by the nape of his neck, and
made to travel several yards without touching the ground. Jenny, a
favorite in the sledge, had made a grand somerset by a slight jerk of
the head of the bear, and had alighted senseless. Old Whitey, brave but
not bear-wise, had rushed headlong into the combat, and was yelping his
utter dissatisfaction with the result while stretched helpless upon the
snow. Nannook considered the field of battle already won, and proceeded,
as victors have always done, to a very cool investigation of the spoils.
She first turned over a beef barrel, and began to nose out the choice
bits for herself and child. But there was a party interested in this
operation whom she had not consulted. Their first protest was in the
form of a pistol ball in the side of her cub. This, to say the least,
was rather a harsh beginning. The next hint was a rifle ball in the side
of the mother, which she resented by taking her child between her hind
legs and retreating behind the beef-house. Here, with her strong
forearms, she pulled down three solid rows of beef barrels which made
one wall of the house. She then mounted the rubbish, seized a half
barrel of herring with her teeth, and with it beat a retreat. Turning
her back on the enemy was not safe, for she immediately received, at
half pistol range, six buck shots. She fell, but was instantly on her
feet again, trotting off with her cub under her nose. She would have
escaped after all but for two of the dogs. These belonged to the
immediate region, and had been trained for the bear hunt. They
embarrassed her speed but did not attack her. One would run along ahead
of her, so near as to provoke the bear to attempt to catch him, and then
he would give her a useless chase to the right or left, the other one,
at the right moment, making a diversion by a nip in her rear. So coolly
and systematically was this done that poor Nannook was hindered and
exhausted without being able to hurt her tormentors in the least.
This game of the dogs brought again Dr. Kane and Hans on the field of
conflict. They found the bear still holding out in the running fight,
and making good speed away from the brig. Two rifle balls brought her to
a stand-still. She faced about, took her little one between her fore
legs, and growled defiance. It took six more balls to lay her lifeless
on the blood-stained snow!
This method of conquering the foe was no doubt, from the bear point of
view, mean and cowardly; instead of the hand-to-paw fight, recognized as
the Arctic lawful way of fighting, it was sending fire-death at a safe
distance for the attacking party. With her own chosen weapons--two
powerful arms, and a set of almost resistless teeth--the bear was the
stronger party. But then it was the old game of brains against brute
force, with the almost sure result. As to the cruelty, the bear had no
reason to complain. She came to the brig seeking, if haply she might
find, a man, or men, to appease her craving hunger and feed her child.
The men sought and obtained her life that they might stay the progress
of their bitter enemy, the scurvy, and save their own lives!
When the mother fell, her child sprung upon her body and made a fierce
defense. After much trouble, and, we should think, some danger from her
paws and teeth, both of which she used as if trained for the fight, she
was, caught with a line looped into a running knot between her jaws and
the back of her head, somewhat as farmers catch hogs for the slaughter.
She was marched off to the brig and chained outside, causing a great
uproar among the dogs.
The mother-bear's carcass weighed when cleaned three hundred pounds;
before dressing, the body weighed six hundred and fifty. The _little_
one weighed on her feet one hundred and fourteen pounds. They both
proved most savory meat, and were eaten with gratitude, as the special
gifts of the great Giver.
This bear capture was soon followed by one no less exciting and truly
Arctic in its character. It was the hunt and capture of a walrus, the
lion of the sea, as the bear is the tiger of the ice. The story is as
follows:---
About the middle of October Morton and Hans were sent again to try to
find the Esquimo. They reached on the fourth day a little village beyond
Anoatok, seventy miles from the brig. Here they found four huts, two
occupied and two forsaken. In one was Myouk, his parents and his brother
and sister; in the other was Awahtok, Ootuniah, their wives, and three
young children. The strangers were made to feel at home. Their moccasins
were dried, their feet rubbed, two lamps set ablaze to cook them a
supper, and a walrus skin spread on the raised floor for them to stretch
and rest their weary limbs. The lamps and the addition to the huts'
company sent the thermometer up to ninety degrees above zero, while
outside it was thirty below. The natives endured this degree of heat
finely, as the men and children wore only the apparel nature gave them,
and the women made only a slight, but becoming, addition to it. The
strangers after devouring six small sea-birds a piece enjoyed a night of
profuse perspiration and sound sleep.
In the morning Morton perceived that Myouk and his father were preparing
for a walrus hunt, and he cordially invited himself and Hans to go with
them. The two strangers accepted the invitation thus given, and the
party of four were soon off.
A large size walrus is eighteen feet long, with a tusk thirty inches.
His whole development is elephantine, and his look grim and ferocious.
The Esquimo of this party carried three sledges; one they hid under the
snow and ice on the way, and the other two were carried to the hunting
ground at the open water, about ten miles from the huts. They had nine
dogs to these two sledges, and by turns one man rode while the other
walked.
As they neared the new ice, and saw by the murky fog that the open water
was near, the Esquimo removed their hoods and listened. After a while
Myouk's countenance showed that the wished-for sound had entered his
ear, though Morton, as attentively listening, could hear nothing. Soon
they were startled by the bellowing of a walrus bull; the noise, round
and full, was something between the mooing of a cow and the deep baying
of a mastiff, varied by an oft-repeated quick bark. The performer was
evidently pleased with his own music, for it continued without cessation
while our hunters crept forward stealthily in single file. When within
half a mile of some discolored spots showing very thin ice surrounded by
that which was thicker, they scattered, and each man crawled toward a
separate pool, Morton on his hands and knees following Myouk. Soon the
walruses were in sight. They were five in number, at times rising
altogether out of the deep, breaking the ice and giving an explosive
puff which might have been heard, through the thin, clear atmosphere, a
mile away. Two grim-looking males were noticeable as the leaders of the
group.
[Illustration: Walruses--A Family Party.]
Now came the fight between Myouk, the crafty, expert hunter, and a
strong, maddened, persistent walrus. Morton was the interested
looker-on, following the hunter like a shadow, ready, if it had been
wanted, to put in his contribution to the fight in the form of a
rifle-ball. When the walrus's head is above water, and peering
curiously around, the hunter is flat and still. As the head begins to
disappear in the deep he is up and stirring, and ready to dart toward
the game. From his hiding-place behind a projecting ice knoll the hunter
seems not only to know when his victim will return, but where he will
rise. In this way, hiding and darting forward, Myouk, with Morton at his
heels, approaches the pool near the edge of which the walruses are at
play. Now the stolid face of Myouk glows with animation; he lies still,
biding his time, a coil of walrus hide many yards in length lying at his
side. He quickly slips one end of the line into an iron barb, holding
the other, the looped end, in his hand, and fixes the barb to a locket
on the end of a shaft made of a unicorn's horn. Now the water is in
motion, and only twelve feet from him the walrus rises, puffing with
pent up respiration, and looks grimly and complacently around. What need
_he_ fear, the mighty monarch of the Arctic sea! Myouk coolly, slowly
rises, throws back his right arm, while his left arm lies close to his
side. The walrus looks round again and shakes his dripping head. Up goes
the hunter's left arm. His victim rises breast-high to give one curious
look before he plunges, and the swift, barbed shaft is buried in his
vitals! In an instant the walrus is down, down in the deep, while Myouk
is making his best speed from the battlefield, holding firmly the looped
end of his harpoon-line, at the same time paying out the coil as he
runs. He has snatched up and carries in one hand a small stick of bone
rudely pointed with iron; he stops, drives it into the ice and fastens
his line to it, pressing it to the ice with his foot.
Now commence the frantic struggles of the wounded walrus. Myouk keeps
his station, now letting out his line, and then drawing it in. His
victim, rising out of the water, endeavors to throw himself upon the
ice, as if to rush at his tormenter. The ice breaks under his great
weight, and he roars fearfully with rage. For a moment all is quiet. The
hunter knows what it means, and he is on the alert. Crash goes the ice,
and up come two walrusses only a few yards from where he stands; they
aimed at the very spot but will do better next time. But when the game
comes up where he last saw the hunter he has pulled up his stake and run
off, line in hand, and fixed it as before, but in a new direction. This
play goes on until the wounded beast becomes exhausted, and is
approached and pierced with the lance by Myouk.
Four hours this fight went on, the walrus receiving seventy lance
thrusts, dangling all the while at the end of the line with the cruel
harpoon fixed in his body. When dying at last, hooked by his tusk to the
margin of the ice, his female, which had faithfully followed all his
bloody fortune, still swam at his side; she retired only when her spouse
was dead, and she herself was pricked by the lance.
Morton says the last three hours wore the aspect of a doubtful battle.
He witnessed it with breathless interest.
The game was, by a sort of "double purchase," a clever contrivance of
the Esquimo, drawn upon the ice and cut up at leisure. Its weight was
estimated at seven hundred pounds.
The intestines and the larger part of the carcass, were buried in the
crevices of an iceberg--a splendid ice-house! Two sledges were loaded
with the remainder, and the hunters started toward home. As they came
near the village the women came out to meet them; the shout of welcome
brought all hands with their knives. Each one having his portion
assigned, according to a well understood Esquimo rule, the evening was
given up to eating. In groups of two or three around a forty pound
joint, squatting crook-legged, knife in hand, they cut, ate, and slept,
and cut and ate again. Hans, in his description of the feast to Dr.
Kane, says: "Why, Cappen Ken, sir, even the children ate all night. You
know the little two-year-old that Aroin carried in her hood--the one
that bit you when you tickled it?"
"Yes."
"Well, Cappen Ken, sir, that baby cut for herself, sir, with a knife
made out of an iron hoop, and so heavy it could hardly lift it, cut and
ate, sir, and ate and cut, as long as I looked at it."
Morton and Hans returned to the brig with two hundred pounds of walrus
meat and two foxes, to make glad the hearts of their comrades.
Besides these Arctic monsters of the sea, and shaggy prowlers of the
land and ice, there was another sort of game, requiring a different kind
of hunting, found nearer home.
We have related the experiment, a year before this, of the explorers
with the rats. They had failed to smoke them out by a villainous
compound, and, as the experience came near burning up the vessel, it was
not repeated. They bred like locusts in spite of the darkness, cold, and
short rations, and went every-where--under the stove, into the steward's
drawers, into the cushions, about the beds, among the furs, woolens, and
specimens of natural history. They took up their abode among the bedding
of the men in the forecastle, and in such other places as seemed to them
cosy and comfortable. When their rights as tenants were disputed they
fought for them with boldness and skill.
At one time a mother rat had chosen a bear-skin mitten as a homestead
for herself and family of little ones. Dr. Kane thrust his hand into it
not knowing that it was occupied, and received a sharp bite. Of course
his hand left the premises in rather quick time, and before he could
suck the blood from his finger the family had disappeared, taking their
home with them.
Rhina, a brave bear-dog, which had come out of encounters with his
shaggy majesty with special honors, was sent down into the citadel of
the rats. She lay down with composure and slept for a while. But the
vermin gnawed the horny skin of her paws, nipped her on this side, and
bit her on that, and dodged into their hiding-places. They were so
many, and so nimble, that poor Rhina yelled in vexation and pain. She
was taken on deck to her kennel, a cowed and vanquished dog.
Hans, true to his hunter's propensity, amused himself during the dreary
hours of his turn on the night watch, by shooting them with his bow and
arrow. Dr. Kane had these carefully dressed and made into a soup, of
which he educated himself to eat, to the advantage of his health. No
other one of the vessel's company cared to share his pottage.
Hans had one competitor in this "small deer" hunting, as the sailors
called it. Dr. Kane had caught a young fox alive, and domesticated it in
the cabin. These "deer" were not quick enough to escape his nimble feet
and sharp teeth. But unfortunately he would kill only when and what he
wanted to eat.
December came in gloomily. Nearly every man was down with the scurvy.
The necessary work to be done dragged heavily. The courage of the little
company was severely taxed but not broken. But where were the escaping
party under Dr. Hayes? Were they yet dragging painfully over their
perilous way? were they safe at Upernavik? or had they perished?
While such queries might have occupied the thoughts of the dwellers in
the "Advance," on the seventh of the month Petersen and Bonsall of that
party returned; five days later Dr. Hayes arrived, with the remainder
of his company. Their adventures had been marvelous, and their escape
wonderful. It will be a pleasant fancy for us to consider ourselves as
sitting down in the cabin of the "Advance," and listening to their story
from the lips of one of their party.