“Say,” cried Billy excitedly, as the second boat seemed in process of being launched, “I wonder if we couldn’t get in on this party?”
But although they were all wild to go along and take a hand in the fun, they soon saw that there was no hope of it. There were only two boats—not enough to carry all the native hunters, so of course there would be no room for them, who were strangers to these children of the North, and, in their eyes, rank amateurs.
“Wonder why they don’t get a couple of more boats, so they can all go,” whispered Mouser, and Bobby answered, getting the idea from a story he had once read.
“They are afraid of frightening the animals, I guess. They have to steal up on them quietly, and if too many went they wouldn’t have any chance of surprising them.”
In this Bobby had put his finger on the fundamental idea in the science of seal and walrus hunting.
The animals, sluggish and slow when not in the water, friendly and unsuspicious by nature, will, if not frightened, allow their pursuers to approach quite close to them.
Then it is the aim of the hunters to kill the animals nearest to the water—whether on the ice or ashore—so that the bodies of the slain animals surround, prison-like, those of their live companions, cutting off the retreat of the latter.
So the boys watched, fascinated, while the two slender canoes crept out upon the water, the natives paddling gently so as not to alarm their intended victims on the ice floe.
Nearer and nearer they came, the first canoe bearing Kapje, circling cautiously about the animals, bringing up on the opposite side of the floe from the other boat.
“Surrounding them!” cried Bobby, beginning to feel a sort of sick sympathy for the animals at bay. They did not seem to have a chance, surrounded like that.