SHOOTING A SEAL 



the water, and the boat was off with a jerk. The 

 oarsmen pulled with all their might ; the man at the 

 stern was rolling the boat from side to side with the 

 force of his sculling ; and Jerry was eagerly looking 

 out and shouting terse directions. There seemed to 

 be nothing but the red patch near the rocks, where 

 the water was all stained with blood; but as the 

 steersman brought the boat sweeping round the 

 others pulled in their oars and leaned over the side, 

 and in less time than it takes to tell I was helping 

 them to heave a big seal into the boat. It came 

 slithering over and flopped down, and lay there, limp 

 and lifeless, with whiskers quivering and big eyes 

 seeming to gaze right into mine. It looked just like 

 one of the rocks close by ; its silvery coat, flecked 

 with black and shining with wet, was a perfect imita- 

 tion of the black boulders with their coating of ice 

 and the water swilling over them. No wonder my 

 eyes could not see it when the steersman did ; but 

 Eskimo eyes are different. 



For the moment things seemed strangely quiet : 

 there was something so human in the look of those 

 big placid brown eyes that I felt almost miserable to 

 see the innocent thing lying dead. But I came back 

 from my dreams with a start. My boatmen seemed 

 to go back of a sudden to their ancestry of hundreds 

 of years ago ; for one minute the old original Eskimo 

 in them welled up and drowned all that I knew of 

 them. They slit the seal's throat and sucked its 

 warm blood. 



Our organist, who can render classical tunes from 

 the oratories for voluntaries in church, and who can 

 play any instrument in the band that he chooses ; the 

 schoolmaster, who can preach a sermon, and teach 



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