The White Czar: A Story of a Polar Bear

by Clarence Hawkes

On the morning in question, they set forth just as they had for the walrus hunt, with three komatiks and a supply of food.

But this time they were armed differently. Most of their harpoons they left behind, and instead they carried their high power rifles. In rare cases the white bear can be driven into the open water and harpooned from a kayak, but this is not the usual mode of hunting him.

The travelling on the icefloe was rather rough. Often they would come to a mighty berg which had been ended up and had frozen into the floe in that position; then they would have to go around it.

They had travelled perhaps five miles northward along the floe, when the dog team of Eiseeyou set up a yelping and rushed forward. They came almost immediately to an open hole in the ice between a couple of cakes. The hole showed evidence of artificial thawing about the edge.

Eiseeyou got off his komatik and after examining the hole carefully, motioned to his comrades on the other komatiks to come forward. They also examined the hole with care. Then all three looked wise, and said in one breath, "Nik-suk."

It was a breathing hole of Nik-suk the seal that they had discovered; so like children that they were, they for the time being forgot all about the White Czar and were all excitement about Nik-suk.

If there is one animal in the north country that the Eskimo knows better than any other it is Nik-Suk, for he is the most valuable of all the arctic animals to the Eskimo. The three hunters now knew that every twenty minutes, as regularly as the clock could have told it, the seal would come to this hole to breathe, provided he had no other breathing hole. So the three komatiks were withdrawn for a distance from the breathing hole, and Tucksu was given the task of tending the dog teams, while Eiseeyou and Tunkine made ready for the seal.

Eiseeyou lay down on the ice about fifteen feet from the breathing hole, resting partly on his left elbow so that he could watch the hole, while in his right hand he held a trusty harpoon. His companion Tunkine lay upon the ice farther away, with the rawhide cord attached to the harpoon firmly wound around his waist. They might have been blocks of ice themselves, so still they lay. Five minutes passed, ten, and fifteen, and still the seal did not come to the surface to breathe. Perhaps it was an old hole, but they would wait a while longer. Patience is a quality that the Eskimo has learned to perfection, just as have all primitive people. Finally, when Eiseeyou had about concluded that it must be an old hole, in spite of the excitement of the dogs, the beautiful head with the very human eyes of the little-ringed seal popped up in the air hole to breathe.