WALRUS-CATCHING IN RICE STRAIT. 33 



shooting as best he can. If you see a great beast swimming 

 sullenly and warily under the boat, and about to turn belly 

 upwards, the only thing to be done is to row off with all speed, 

 before the irritated animal has time to ram a hole in the bottom 

 of the boat, which otherwise it is pretty sure to do before you 

 know what has happened. 



If the worst comes to the worst, a coat, or, better still, a seal- 

 skin with the blubber on it, must be trampled into the hole for 

 the time being ; there is not a minute for anything else. 



Sometimes it happens that, without a moment's warning, a 

 pair of enormous tusks are silently thrust over the gunwale. In 

 such a case, you must never fire or attempt to beat off the animal, 

 but must just seize it by the tusks and lift it back into the 

 water, or the boat will be capsized at once. Even if you are 

 lucky enough to shoot the walrus dead on the spot, its weight 

 alone is sufficient to capsize the boat, and they are not pleasant 

 hosts to be received by. 



It once happened to the sloop ' Eivalen,' in the eighties, when 

 she was up whaling off the coast of Spitzbergen, that a quite small 

 bull walrus swam stealthily after one of her boats, which had not 

 molested it in any way, and capsized it before the men were able 

 to do anything to prevent it. When a second boat, which was out 

 with the first, reached the spot, the walrus had so mutilated two 

 of the men that they had already sunk, while a third was rescued 

 in an almost expiring condition. The fourth alone was unhurt; 

 it was the harpooner himself, Peder Andresen, one of the well- 

 known ' Stakvold boys ' from a farm in Norway of that 

 name. 



Even when the herd does not turn and swim to the attack, the 

 situation may be critical enough. If, for instance, you have more 

 than one bull in hand at a time, you are in danger of being 

 drawn under ; and it is necessary to be especially cautious when 

 handling the so-called ' bank-oxen ' old males which frequent 

 the shoals far out at sea. A team of this kind is a dangerous one ; 

 especially if you happen to come across ice. They are very fond of 

 following the edge of a floe and suddenly making an abrupt turn, 

 in which case the line runs out across the ice and the boat follows 

 VOL. i. D 



