The aim and force with which the native directs his blow determines the death of a fur-seal. If struck direct and violently, a single stroke is enough. The seals’ heads are stricken so hard sometimes that those crystalline lenses to their eyes fly out from the orbital sockets like hail-stones, or little pebbles, and frequently struck me sharply in the face, or elsewhere, while I stood near by watching a killing-gang at work.
A singular lurid green light suddenly suffuses the eye of a fur-seal at intervals when it is very much excited; as the “podding” for the clubbers is in progress and at the moment when last raising its head it sees the uplifted bludgeons on every hand above, fear seems then for the first time to possess it and to instantly gild its eye in this strange manner. When the seal is brained in this state of optical coloration I have noticed that the opalescent tinting remained well defined for many hours or a whole day after death. These remarkable flashes are very characteristic to the eyes of the old males during their hurly-burly on the rookeries, but never appear in the younger classes unless as just described, as far as I could observe.
[136] The shallow depths of Bering Sea give rise to a very bad surf, and though none of the natives can swim, as far as I could learn, yet they are quite creditable surfmen, and work the heavy “baidar” in and out from the landing adroitly and circumspectly. They put a sentinel upon the bluffs over Nah Speel, and go and come between the rollers as he signals. They are not graceful oarsmen under any circumstances, but can pull heartily and coolly together when in a pinch. The apparent ease and unconcern with which they handled their bidarrah here in the “baroon” during the fall of 1869 so emboldened three or four sailors of the United States Revenue Marine cutter Lincoln that they lost their lives in such surf through sheer carelessness. The “gig” in which they were coming ashore “broached to” in the breakers just outside the cove, and their lifeless forms were soon after thrown up by merciless waves on the Lagoon rookery. Three graves of these men are plainly marked on a western slope of the Black Bluffs.
There is a false air of listlessness and gentleness about an open sea, or roadstead roller, that is very apt to deceive even watermen of good understanding. The crushing, overwhelming power with which an ordinary breaker will hurl a large ship’s boat on rocks awash, must be personally experienced ere it is half appreciated.
CHAPTER XI.
THE ALASKAN SEA-LION.
A Pelagic Monarch.—Marked Difference between the Sea-lion and the Fur-seal.—The Imposing Presence and Sonorous Voice of the “Sea-king.”—Terrible Combats between old Sea-lion Bulls.—Cowardly in the Presence of Man, however.—Sea-lions Sporting in the Fury of Ocean Surf.—It has no Fur on its Huge Hide.—Valuable only to the Natives, who Cover their “Bidarrah” with its Skin.—Its Sweet Flesh and Inodorous Fat.—Not such Extensive Travellers as the Fur-seals.—The Difficulty of Capturing Sea-lions.—How the Natives Corral them.—The Sea-lion “Pen” at Northeast Point.—The Drive of Sea-lions.—Curious Behavior of the Animals.—Arrival of the Drove at the Village.—A Thirteen-mile Jaunt with the Clumsy Drove.—Shooting the old Males.—The Bloody “Death-whirl.”—The Extensive Economic Use made of the Carcass by the Natives.—Chinese Opium Pipes Picked with Sea-lion Mustache bristles.
The sea-lion is also a characteristic pinniped of the Pribylov Islands, but ranks much below the fur-seal in perfected physical organization and intelligence. It can, as well as its more sagacious and valuable relative, the Callorhinus, be seen, perhaps, to better advantage on these islands than elsewhere in the whole world that I know of. The marked difference between a sea-lion and the fur-seal up here is striking, the former being twice the size of its cousin.
The size and strength of a northern sea-lion, Eumetopias stelleri, its perfect adaptation to its physical surroundings, unite with a singular climatic elasticity of organization. It seems to be equally well satisfied with the ice-floes of the Kamchatka Sea to the northward, or with the polished boulders and the hot sands of the coast of California. It is an animal as it appears upon its accustomed breeding grounds at Northeast Point, where I first saw it, that commanded my involuntary admiration by its imposing presence and sonorous voice, as it reared itself before me, with head, neck, and chest upon its powerful forearms, over six feet in height, while its heavy bass voice drowned the booming of the surf that thundered on the rocks beneath its flanks.
A GROUP OF SEA-LIONS