FIRST EXPERIENCES 
61 
the pup was dropped, and lay on the water mewing 
like a cat. Thinking I had wounded it, I pulled 
up and took it into the boat, only to be rebuked 
by my hunters, who said I ought to have let it 
lie, as the mother would be sure to come for it, 
when she could be more easily “ kept run of ” 
encumbered with her pup. That lesson being 
learned, I did not offend again. Our day’s hunting 
resulted in three large otters and three or four small 
ones. 
After this we each hunted independently, with 
but poor results, as the otters could nearly always 
get away from one boat. We fell in with other 
schooners (there were seven of us altogether), and 
I noticed those which had proper hunters were 
“ running ” their otters; that is, all three boats 
turned their attention to the one otter, systematically 
keeping it in between the boats, which lay several 
hundred yards apart in the form of a triangle. 
Their boats were manned by three or four men 
(including the hunters), who used paddles : we had 
only two men in a boat—the hunter, and one man 
pulling a pair of sculls. 
Recognizing that a change in our methods had to 
be made, I manned our boats after this with two 
men besides the hunter, leaving only the cook, 
cabin-boy, and skipper, on board. One day, whilst 
lying off the coast of Yetorup, anchored with a 
kedge in a large patch of kelp, we left in our boats 
at daylight, and pulled to the south-west some 
eighteen or twenty miles, taking a bottle or two of 
water and our lunch. When off what we named the 
Pinnacle Rocks, it commenced to blow, the gale 
rapidly increasing with a heavy sea. Being so far 
