Quite a number of the smaller seals on the flanks had got by, and as the pressure lessened, the array of the centre partook more of the "open order" of advance. To a party as well armed as the four friends, this change assured a bloodless victory. Each missile, fired point-blank, did its work, and the huge monsters, unable to seize the agile hunters, as they eluded their ponderous charge, received the fatal shot at such close range that the fur around the wound was often scorched by the burning powder.
Every barrel had been discharged, nine hooded seals had fallen, and the survivors had already reached the open water; but frightened by the unwonted sights and sounds, many of the smaller seals still remained at the upper end of the valley, or with awkward speed were climbing the sloping ice-hills which sheltered it. Drawing an axe from his belt, Regnar started forward in pursuit. Peter and Waring, with clubs of hard wood, followed, and La Salle, reloading his ponderous weapon, brought up the rear.
A massacre of helpless and beautiful animals followed, for the next few moments, for Regnar, with a single tap on the nose, killed two Greenland seals; and following his example, Peter and Waring disposed of as many more. Suddenly a loud cry from the latter broke the silent butchery.
"And the next Second the glittering Teeth
were about to close upon his helpless Victim."
Page 237.
"Look! Stop that old hood! That makes ten. My goodness! I never see such seal! That's right, Peter, head him off. Hit him again, Waring! Take that, you old bladder-nose!"
The seal, a monstrous one, a veteran male, had attempted to scale the higher mounds, but surrounded by his more agile enemies, halted and showed fight. In vain Waring and Peter showered tremendous blows upon his head with their beechen clubs, and even the heavy axe of Orloff fell upon his natural helmet of air-distended skin, with a violence whose only effect was to increase the anger of the enraged amphibia, and fill the scene of the strife with hollow sounds, like the hoarse booming of a big drum.
At last Waring missed his aim, and his club, which was slung at his wrist by a kind of sword knot, was seized in the jaws of the seal, and his succeeding rush jerked the frightened lad from his footing beneath the fore-flippers of the animal. It was only the work of an instant for those terrible jaws to grind the club into splinters, and the next second the glittering teeth were about to close upon his helpless victim. At that juncture a huge rusty tube was thrust past Regnar's head into the very face of the seal; a tremendous concussion threw him upon the ice, stunned and deafened; and the monster, rearing into the air, seemed to be fairly dashed to the ice, shivering with the tremor of death.
"Are you hurt, George?" asked La Salle, breathless with haste and restrained emotion.