512 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



when I first saw him and as he did not move I concluded it was 

 a mud heap. When I got nearer he hfted his head and saw me 

 (becoming suspicious rather than frightened) so I had to hunt 

 him by the auktok which took an hour. Had I identified him 

 at first, I could have secured him from cover in five minutes. 

 From a pressure ridge at the camp I saw other seals. For prac- 

 tice Charlie went after three that were half a mile away. He got 

 a large male seal at sixty yards." 



So the optimism was founded not only on being able to walk 

 for the first time in thirty-seven days, but on the foundation of 

 two seals killed and hauled to camp where one was more than we 

 could use. I have always found it good tactics in the early part 

 of a trip where an attempt is being made to convince new men 

 that living off the country is safe, to kill a few animals to throw 

 away. I get no pleasure from the killing of animals and disbelieve 

 in waste of any kind, but the effort is not wasted, nor the meat 

 either, if it creates confidence, for that leads to good spirits and 

 enthusiastic work with willing execution of orders and all the happy 

 circumstances that flow from a belief in the practicability of what 

 is being attempted and the soundness of the method used. 



This was Charlie's first seal, and I remember the details 

 very well. The weather was fine and we went together to the top 

 of an ice hummock by our camp. Out of seven seals visible we 

 selected three on perfectly level ice. If you are going to use the 

 auktok method, dispensing entirely with cover, it is essential that 

 the field of approach shall be so flat that during your snake-like 

 progress you are never hidden from the seal's view, for no matter 

 how carefully you may play seal, it will spoil everything if he sees 

 you disappear for a moment to appear again, for this is an essen- 

 tially unseal-like happening. There was wind enough so that the 

 crunching of the snow under a man crawling could not be heard by 

 the seals at more than forty or fifty yards. Charlie had first a 

 careful coaching, ending by having him explain to me exactly what 

 he was going to do. He then went out and did it, to all appearances 

 as well as an old hand. He became in one jump a good seal hunter 

 and after that probably lost less than one seal out of four he went 

 after, which is what the record of a good seal hunter should be. 

 Here we had again an example of the advantage of a white man's 

 more orderly mind. Emiu had been drilled many a time and prob- 

 ably tried a dozen seals before he got the first one. 



Eight dogs were in our present team. I prefer six but made 

 an exception in this case because I expected to have to ride a 



