82 ADVENTURES IN THE NORTHERN SEAS. 



hundred grisly heads and long gleaming white tusks 

 above the waves; they give one spout from their 

 blow-holes, take one breath of fresh air, and the 

 next moment you see a hundred brown hemispher- 

 ical backs, the next a hundred pair of hind flippers 

 flourishing, and then they are all down. On, on, 

 goes the boat as hard as ever we can pull the oars ; 

 up come the sea-horses again, pretty close this time, 

 and before they can draw breath the boat rushes 

 into the midst of them: whishf goes the harpoon: 

 birr ! goes the line over the gunwale : and a luck- 

 less junger on whom Christian has kept his eye is 

 "fast:" his bereaved mother charges the boat in- 

 stantly with flashing eyes and snorting with rage ; 

 she quickly receives a harpoon in the back and a 

 bullet in the brains, and she hangs lifeless on the 

 line : now the junger begins to utter his plaintive 

 grunting bark, and fifty furious walruses are close 

 round the boat in a few seconds, rearing up breast 

 high in the water, and snorting and blowing as if 

 they would tear us all to pieces. Two of these 

 auxiliaries are speedily harpooned in their turn, 

 and the rest hang back a little, when, as bad luck 

 would have it, the junger gave up the ghost, owing 

 to the severity of his harpooning, and the others, 

 no longer attracted by his cries, retire to a more 

 prudent distance. But for the "untoward"' and 

 premature decease of the junger, the men tell me 

 we should have had more walruses on our hands 

 than we could manage. We now devote our at- 



