SEAL-HUNTING AMONG THE FLOES 



flitters chase the seals among the floating ice-pans. 

 Boats and kajaks are the order of the hunt, and speed 

 is the great thing needed, because the seals have lost 

 their winter coat of fat, and sink as soon as they are 

 dead. A wounded seal dives, or, if too hard hit to 

 dive, floats, flapping its flippers, on the surface ; a dead 

 seal sinks, and because he does not want to lose it, 

 the hunter who uses a gun makes a frantic dash for 

 the place where the seal showed itself, paddling or 

 rowing his hardest as soon as his shot is fired. The 

 men, and boys too, for that matter, are complete 

 masters of their kajaks, wonderfully speedy and 

 remarkably safe, but they are not so versed in what 

 I might call acrobatic kajaking as the Greenland 

 Eskimos. Nothing delighted my Okak neighbours 

 better than to be told about the Karalit (Green- 

 landers) ; they listened open-mouthed to any news 

 of these Innuit over the water, and feasted their eyes 

 on the photographs of the fleets of short kajaks or of 

 the people in their quaint costumes ; they stared with 

 wonder when they heard how the Greenlanders can 

 turn themselves and their kajaks right side up if they 

 happen to upset, for the Labrador men have forgotten 

 how to do that. 



Most of the men prefer guns to harpoons for the 

 spring hunting, and take their stand in a small boat 

 with a boy as oarsman ; the boy's duty is to steady 

 the boat on the water, and then to ply his oars with 

 all his might as soon as the shot is fired ; and I have 

 watched the boats drifting aimlessly among the floes, 

 the man with gun poised ready, the boy with oars 

 upon the water, letting the boat turn idly round and 

 round because of the impossibility of knowing where 

 a seal's head might pop up. It must be exasperating 



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