A seal can stay under water a long, long time.
But an Eskimo, for his part, can sit all day as still as a tombstone in a cemetery.
Woe be to the furry creature, if it waits a fraction of a second too long before it dives!
In the clear sunlight the shaft flashes whistling from the throwing stick, the barb strikes, and the seal goes down in a welter of blood-stained foam. At the end of the harpoon line is a bladder—and as the bladder dances away over the surface, sometimes bobbing out of sight, Papik is after it like a hound chasing a rabbit.
The bladder is to the barbed harpoon what the fisherman's float is to the baited hook.
When the seal comes up, furious to attack and punish the hunter, it first tears the bladder in pieces—then it makes at the kayak.
But Papik is calmly ready. He has a lance with which he takes careful aim.
The seal comes on, bent double to hurl itself forward with all its might. It seems strange that a creature usually so gentle can show such ferocity.
The lance is flung. It goes through the seal's mouth and comes out at the back of the neck. The seal shakes its head violently, but it is doomed.
Papik's second lance strikes through a flipper into the lungs.