84 THENORTHPOLE 



we let drive — and he began to sink. With a tri- 

 umphant cheer, the Eskimos harpooned him. 



"Then we signaled to the Roosevelt to come up, 

 and as soon as the friends and neighbors of the deceased 

 smelled the smoke, they made for parts unknown. 



"In this hunt, as in all other walrus hunts I was 

 in, I had a hard time in trying not to take a crack at 

 the floats. They were black, and jumped around in 

 the weirdest way, so that they appeared to be alive. 

 I knew that if I shot one, I would never hear the last 

 of it, so took good care. 



"Another time we went for a herd of fifty-odd 

 walruses that were sleeping on the ice. The wind 

 was blowing fairly hard, and it is never easy to shoot 

 accurately from a whale-boat which is doing a cake- 

 walk in the arms of a choppy sea. When we got 

 twenty yards from the ice cake, we began to fire. I 

 hit a couple of walruses, but did not kill them, and 

 with fierce grunts the huge brutes wriggled into the 

 sea. They were coming our way, and all hands stood 

 by to show the visitors how we loved to speed the 

 parting guest — our way of showing this being the 

 vocal and instrumental method already described. 



" Wesharkoopsi, an Eskimo, who stood right 

 behind me and who had been telling us what an expert 

 he was with the harpoon, was making threatening 

 gestures which boded ill for any walrus that came 

 near us. 



"Suddenly, with a loud 'Ook! Ook!' a bull rose 

 like a giant jack-in-the-box right alongside of me, 

 giving us a regular shower bath, and he got both tusks 

 on the gunwale of the boat. 



