264 
IN FORBIDDEN SEAS 
visited, it has been almost always with the con¬ 
nivance, invitation, or consent, of the natives 
themselves. 
In the whole course of my experience I have 
never known an instance—and I am sure I should 
have heard had one arisen—of a sea-otter hunter 
or sealer stealing a skin, committing robbery, or 
assaulting or attacking a native or anyone else, in 
any of the places visited by him when hunting. 
On the other hand, scores of men engaged in pelagic 
hunting have been shot down and murdered while 
hunting near the land, without ever a shot being 
fired in retaliation by those attacked. Sometimes 
these victims have been there by inadvertence 
during thick, foggy weather, and at other times 
knowingly taking the risk. 
The natives of their own accord would not shoot 
those who ventured near the land, as they know 
that much less drastic measures would be quite 
sufficient; but they are compelled and encouraged 
to do so by their employers, who arm them with 
repeating rifles, and reward them when they succeed 
in murdering someone ; and these same employers 
are usually the people who, without ever having 
taken any risk themselves, either in fitting out a 
prospecting expedition or personally taking part in 
such themselves, reap the benefits of the risks and 
hardships undertaken, and the discoveries made, by 
the sea-otter hunters and sealers. They are like 
that pirate of the gulls, the skua, amongst the kitti- 
wakes, who, instead of seeking his own food, watches 
until another bird captures a fish, and then swoops 
down upon him, compels him to give it up, and 
swallows it himself. It has always been so. Some. 
