Part 4 (2/2)
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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 s.n.a.t.c.hed 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 b.l.o.o.d.y fortune, still swam at his side; she retired only when her spouse was dead, and she herself was p.r.i.c.ked 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 carca.s.s, 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 a.s.signed, 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 s.h.a.ggy 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 cus.h.i.+ons, 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 s.h.a.ggy 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 h.o.r.n.y 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 compet.i.tor 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.
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