They were trying to pull the walrus up out of the water, where they had found him floundering about, fatally wounded with the slugs we had fired through his back. The sea about the rocks was discolored with his blood, and turbid with the dirt he had torn up. Donovan had slaughtered him with the butcher-knife; and, with the boat's painter noosed over the head of the carcass, they were now trying to draw it up on the ledge. Weymouth and I at once bore a hand; and it took all six of us, tugging hard, to get it up.
"What a mass of fat and flesh!" Kit exclaimed, puffing.
"I don't believe I could ever stomach it!" Wade groaned.
"We can offer you something better!" exclaimed Weymouth, holding up the geese. "What think of those fellows? Wild-geese! And look at these!" holding up his cap. "Nice fresh eggs!—to be had by the dozen! and nothing to pay, either!"
"Why, fellows, this is a sort of northern paradise!" cried Raed. "But what sticks me is how to cook those eggs and geese. I never could suck eggs."
"Just build a fire, and I'll show you how to cook 'em," Weymouth said.
"But what shall we have for fuel?" Kit demanded.
That was a staggerer.
Boom! It seemed as if those far-borne echoes would never die with the distance. A low, dismal, sullen sound! They gave us queer sensations. As each came rolling on the sea, our hearts would bound. Up to that moment, "The Curlew" had not been taken; but perhaps that shot had struck down her sails.
It was now half-past two. The vessels could hardly be less than twenty or twenty-five miles off. But there is nothing to absorb or deaden sound along those straits.