58 " MANY A SLIP," ETC. 



knelt in the bow of the boat, and selected my 

 own opportunity to fire, and the moment the 

 rifle was discharged, all the men rowed with 

 their utmost strength to the spot, where, if 

 the seal showed any symptoms of life, I 

 always darted a harpoon into him, but if he 

 seemed quite dead, some one jumped out and 

 struck the haak-pick into his head, and 

 dragged him away from the edge for fear he 

 should come alive again. This is not an un- 

 necessary precaution, as I have known a seal 

 apparently stone dead, give a convulsive kick 

 over the brink of the ice, and go to the bottom 

 like a 68-pound shot, while his proprietors, as 

 they delusively considered themselves, were 

 standing within two feet of him. 



When the seal is fairly dead, all the men 

 except one get on the ice, and with their knives 

 they strip the skin and blubber, in one sheet, 

 off his body in a very few minutes. The car- 

 cass, or "krop," is then thrown into the sea, 

 that it may not be mistaken for a live seal at a 

 distance ; the blubber is laid flat in the bottom 

 of the boat, and you proceed in quest of more 

 or return to the ship. 



A full-sized Spitzbergen seal, in good con- 

 dition, is about nine and a half or ten feet 



