CHAPTER IX.
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.
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.