396 FARTHEST A'ORTH 



for a shot, and, when I saw Johansen standing ready 

 at the head of the first, I fired at the back of the neck. 

 The animal turned over a little, and lay there dead. 

 At the report the first started up, but at the same moment 

 received Johansen's bullet. Half stunned, it turned its 

 o-iofantic body round towards us; in a moment I had 

 discharged the ball from my smooth-bore at it, but, like 

 johansen, I hit too far forward in the head. The blood 

 streamed from its nostrils and mouth, and it breathed 

 and coughed till the air vibrated. Supporting itself 

 upon its enormous tusks, it now lay still, coughing blood 

 like a consumptive person, and quite indifferent to us. 

 In spite of its huge body and shapeless appearance, which 

 called up to the imagination bogy, giant, and kraken, 

 and other evil things, there was something so gently 

 supplicating and helpless in its round eyes as it lay there 

 that its goblin exterior and one's own need were forgot- 

 ten in pity for it. It almost seemed like murder. I put an 

 end to its sufferings by a bullet behind the ear, but those 

 eyes haunt me yet ; it seemed as if in them lay the prayer 

 for existence of the whole helpless walrus race. But it is 

 lost ; it has man as its pursuer. It cannot, however, be 

 denied that we rejoiced at the thought of all the meat and 

 blubber we had now brought down in one encounter; it 

 made up for the cartridges expended upon the one that 

 had sunk. But we had not got them on land yet, and it 

 would be a long piece of work to get them skinned and 

 cut up and brought home. The first tiling we did was 



