THE WORLD'S WONDERS. f>67 



know beforehand not only the time he will be absent, but the 

 very spot at which he will reappear. In this way, hiding and 

 advancing by turns, Myouk, with Morton at his heels, reached a 

 plate of thin ice, hardly strong enough to bear them, at the very 

 brink of the water-pool the walruses were curvetting in. Myouk, 

 till now phlegmatic, seems to awaken with excitement. His coil 

 of walrus-hide, a well-trimmed line of many fathoms' length, is 

 lying at his side. He fixes one end of it in an iron barb, and 

 fastens this loosely by a socket upon a shaft of unicorn's horn ; 

 the other end is already looped, or, as sailors would sa} r , " doubled 

 in a bight." It is the work of a moment. He has grasped the 

 harpoon ; the water is in motion. Puffing with pent-up respira- 

 tion, the walrus is within a couple of fathoms directly before 

 him ; Myouk rises slowly, his right arm thrown back, the left 

 flat at his side. The walrus looks about him, shaking the dripping 

 brine from his arched neck; Myouk throws up his left arm, 

 while the animal rises breast high to fix one look before plung- 

 ing below again, but as he poises the harpoon is buried under 

 his left flipper. 



Down now the wounded walrus buries itself deep under water, 

 while Myouk runs with desperate speed from the scene, playing 

 oft % his coil freely, but clutching the end by its loop. As he runs 

 he seizes a small piece of bone, rudely pointed with iron, and by 

 a sudden movement drives it into the ice ; to this he secures his 

 line, pressing it down close to the ice surface with his feet. 



Now comes the struggle. The hole is dashed in mad commo- 

 tion with the struggles of the wounded beast ; the line is drawn 

 tight at one moment, the next relaxed ; the hunter has not left 

 his station. There is a crash of the ice ; and rearing up through 

 it are two walruses, not many yards from where he stands. One 

 of them, the male, is excited and seemingly terrified : the other, 

 the female, collected and vengeful. Down they go again, after 

 one grim survey of the field : and on the instant Moyouk has 

 changed his position, carrying his coil with him and fixing it anew. 



He has hardly fixed it before the pair have again risen, break- 

 ing up an area of ten feet in diameter about the very spot he left. 



