116 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 
has reason to sit himself clown with a long landing-gaff 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 pause with me for a brief 
interval on Sannak to understand, even imperfectly, the full hazard of this enter- 
prise. We can not walk, for the wind blows too hard —note the heavy seas foaming, 
chasiug, and swiftly rolling by, one after the other — hear the keen whistle of the 
gale as it literally tears the crests of the breakers into tatters, and skurries on in 
sheets of fleecy vapor, whirring and whizzing away into the darkness of that fright- 
ful storm which has been raging m this tremendous fashion, coming from the west- 
ward, during the last three or four days without a moment’s cessation. Look at 
those two Aleuts under the shelter of that high bluff by the beach. Do you see them 
launch a bidarka, seat themselves within, and lash their kamlaykas firmly over the 
rims to the man-holes? And now observe them boldly strike out beyond the protec- 
tion of that cliff and plunge into the very vortex of the fearful 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 10 or 20 or 
even 30 miles away, directly to the leeward from where they pushed off, lies a series 
of islets, and rocks awash, out upon which the long-continued 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 globose 
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 back into the ocean without the least delay. So our two 
hunters, perhaps the only two souls among the fifty or sixty now camped at San- 
nak who are brave enough, have resolved to scud down on the tail of this howling 
gale, run in between the breakers to the leeward of this rocky islet ahead of them, 
and sneak from that direction over the land and across to the windward coast, so as 
to silently and surely creep up and on to the keip-bedded victims, when, in the fury 
of the storm, the fast-falling footsteps of the hunter are not heard by the active yet 
somnolent animal ere a deadly whack of his short club falls upon its unconscious 
head. The noise of such a tempest is far greater than that made by the stealthy 
movements of these venturesome natives, who, plying their heavy, wooden bludgeons* 
dispatch the animals one after another without alarming the whole number. In this 
way two Aleutian brothers are known to have slain 78 otters in less than one hour. 
If these hardy men, when they pushed off from Sannak in that gale, had devi- 
ated a paddle’s length from their true course for the islet which they finally struck, 
after scudding 20 or 30 miles before the fury of wind and water, they would have 
been swept on and out into a vast marine waste and to certain death from exhaus- 
tion. They knew it perfectly when they ventured, yet at no time could they 
have seen ahead clearly, or behind them, farther than a thousand yards. Still, if 
they waited for the storm to abate, then the otters would all be back in the water 
ere they could even reach the scene. By doing what we have just seen them do, they 
fairly challenge our admiration for their exhibit of nerve and adroit calculation, under 
the most trying of all natural obstruction, for the successful issue of their venture. 
In conclusion, the writer calls attention to a strange habit of the Aleutian otter- 
hunters of Attu, who live on the extreme westernmost island of the grand Alaskan 
archipelago. Here the kalan is captured in small nets,* which are spread out over 
the floating kelp-beds or u otter-rafts,” the natives withdrawing and watching from 
* Sixteen to 18 feet long, 6 to 10 feet wide, with coarse meshes ; made nov adays of 
twine, but formerly of seal and sea-lion sinews, 
