A WALRUS HUNT 83 



and with hoarse grunts of pain and fury they all 

 wriggled off the ice and dived out of sight. The boat 

 was hurried to within five yards of Mac's bull, and an 

 Eskimo hurled a harpoon, hit the large bull, and threw 

 overboard the sealskin float. At this stage of the game 

 about forty other walruses, that had been feeding 

 below, came up to the surface to see what the noise 

 was about, spitting the clam shells out of their mouths 

 and snorting. The water was alive with the brutes, 

 and many of them were so close to us that we could 

 hit them with the oars. A harpoon was driven into 

 another by a corking throw; and just then, when my 

 magazine was empty, things began to come our way. 



"Suddenly a large bull, followed by two others, 

 all wounded, came to the surface twenty yards off, 

 gave tongue to their battle-cry and charged. The 

 Eskimos were not pleased at the look of things. They 

 grabbed the oars and began to bang them on the gun- 

 wale of the boat, yelling like so many steam sirens, 

 hoping to scare the invaders off; but they might as 

 well have been crooning lullabies. 



"Mac, who had never before shot anything larger 

 than a bird, was cool, and his automatic was going 

 off like a pom-pom, when we cut loose on the charging 

 trio. Their numerous companions added to the gen- 

 eral din; and the reports of the rifles, the shouts and 

 pounding of the Eskimos, with the bellowing of the 

 infuriated animals, sounded like Vesuvius blowing 

 its head off. We sank one walrus, then disabled an- 

 other; but the biggest one dived and came up with a 

 snort right alongside of the boat, so that he blew water 

 in our faces. With our guns almost touching his head, 



