The hunters hear the bellow, and press forward in single file; winding behind ice-hummocks and ridges in a serpentine approach towards a group of “pond-like discolorations,” recently frozen ice-spots, which are surrounded by older and firmer ice.
In a few minutes they come in sight of the walrus. There they are, five in number, rising at intervals through the ice in a body, and breaking it up with an explosion which sounds like the report of heavy ordnance. Conspicuous as the leaders of the herd are two large and fierce-looking males.
Now for a display of dexterity and skill. While the walrus remains above water, the hunter lies flat and motionless; when it begins to sink, behold, the hunter is alert and ready to spring. In fact, scarcely is the tusked head below the water-line before every man is in a rapid run; while, as if by instinct, before it returns all are prone behind protecting knolls of ice. They seem to guess intuitively, not only how long it will be absent, but the very point at which it will reappear. And, in this way, hiding and advancing by turns, they reach a plate of thin ice, scarcely strong enough to bear a man’s weight, on the very brink of the dark pool in which the walrus are gambolling.
The phlegmatic Eskimo harpooneer now wakens into a novel condition of excitement. His coil of walrus-hide, a well-trimmed line of many fathoms length, lies at his side. He attaches one end to an iron barb, and this he fastens loosely, by a socket, to a shaft of unicorn’s horn; the other end is already loosed. It is the work of a second! He has grasped the harpoon. The water eddies and whirls; puffing and panting, up comes the unwieldy sea-horse. The Eskimo rises slowly; his right arm thrown back, his left hanging close to his side. The walrus looks about him, and throws the water off his crest; the Eskimo launches the fatal weapon, and it sinks deep into the animal’s side.
Down goes the wounded awak, but the Eskimo is already speeding with winged feet from the scene of combat, letting his coil run out freely, but clutching the final loop with a desperate grip. As he runs, he seizes a small stick of bone, roughly pointed with iron, and by a swift strong movement thrusts it into the ice; he twists his line around it, and prepares for a struggle.
The wounded walrus plunges desperately, and churns the ice-pool into foam; meantime, the line is hauled tight at one moment, and loosened the next; for the hunter has kept his station. But the ice crashes; and a couple of walrus rear up through it, not many yards from the spot where he stands. One of them, a male, is excited, angry, partly alarmed; the other, a female, looks calm, but bent on revenge. Down, after a rapid survey of the field, they go again into the ocean-depths; and immediately the harpooneer has chosen his position, carrying with him his coil, and fixing it anew.
Scarcely is the manœuvre accomplished before the pair have once more risen, breaking up an area of ten feet in diameter about the very spot he left. They sink for a second time, and a second time he changes his place. And thus continues the battle between the strength of the beast and the address of the man, till the former, half exhausted, receives a second wound, and gives up the contest.
The Eskimos regard the walrus with a certain degree of superstitious reverence, and it is their belief that it is under the guardianship of a special representative or prototype, who does not, indeed, interfere to protect it from being hunted, but is careful that it shall be hunted under tolerably fair conditions. They assert that near a remarkable conical peak, which rises in the solitudes of Force Bay, a great walrus lives all alone, and when the moon is absent, creeps out to the brink of a ravine, where he bellows with a voice of tremendous power.
The walrus-hunter, unless he keeps to the sea-shore, and the ice-floes within reach of a boat, must be prepared to undergo many hardships, and to confront with a calm heart the most baffling and terrible dangers. He may be overtaken by a gale; and a gale in the wild remote North, far from any shelter,—a gale which drives before it the blinding snow and pitiless icicles,—a gale which sweeps unresisted and irresistible over leagues of frozen snow,—a gale which comes down from the mountain-recesses where the glaciers take their rise,—is something so dread, so ghastly, that the dweller in temperate regions can form no idea of it.
We remember that one of the gallant seekers after Franklin describes an Arctic gale, and its effects. He says that the ice, at a short distance from the shore, had in many places been swept bare of snow by the driving blast; and over the glassy sheet he and his companions were helplessly carried along before the gale. The dogs, seldom stretching their traces, ran howling in front of the sledges, which pressed upon their heels.