142 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



out, tJie expert, patient marksman shoots seldom in vain, and if be 

 does miss the mark, he has a speedy chance to try again, for the 

 great distance, and thunderous roar of the breakers prevent the 

 kahlan from hearing or taking alarm in any way until it is hit by 

 the rifle-bullet : nine times out of ten, when the otter is thus 

 struck, it is in the head, which is all that the creature usually 

 exposes. Of coiu'se such a shot is instantly fatal, so that the hunter 

 has reason to sit himself down with a long landing-gafl" and wait 

 serenely for the surf to gradually heave the prized carcass within 

 his ready reach. 



Last, but most exciting and recklessly venturesome of all human 

 endeavor in the chase of a wild animal is the plan of "clubbing." 

 You must i^ause with me for a brief interval on Saanak to under- 

 stand, even imperfectly, the full hazard of this enterprise. We can- 

 not walk, for the wind blows too hard — note the heavy seas foam- 

 ing, chasing and swiftly rolling by, one after the other — hear the 

 keen whistle of the gale as it literally tears the crests of the break- 

 ers into tatters, and skurries on in sheets of fleecy vapor, whirring 

 and whizzing away into the darkness of that frightful storm Avhich 

 has been raging in this tremendous fashion, coming from the west- 

 ward, during the last three or four days without a moment's cessa- 

 tion. Look at those two Aleutes under the shelter of that high 

 bluff by the beach. Do you see them launch a bidarka, seat them- 

 selves within and lash their kamlaykas firmly over the rims to the 

 man-holes ? And now observe them boldly strike out beyond the 

 protection of that cliff and plunge into the very vortex of the fear- 

 ful sea, and scudding, like an arrow from the bow, before the wind, 

 they disappear almost like a flash and a dream in our eyes ! 



Yes, it looks to you like suicide ; but there is this method to 

 their madness. These men have, by some intuition, arrived at an 

 understanding that the storm will not last but a few hours longer 

 at the most, and they know that some ten or twenty or even thirty 

 miles away, directly to the leeward from where they pushed off, lies 

 a series of islets, and rocks awash, out upon which the long-con- 

 tinued fury of this gale has driven a number of sea-otters that 

 have been so sorely annoyed by the battle of the elements as to 

 crawl there above the wash of the surf, and, burying their glo- 

 bose heads in heaps of sea-weed to avoid the pelting of the 

 wind, are sleeping and resting in great physical peace until the 

 weather shall change : then they will at once revive and plunge 



