CHAPTER XXIII
BALKED OF THEIR PREY
BALKED OF THEIR PREY
BALKED OF THEIR PREY
When Kapje returned he was accompanied by a number of other Eskimos who carried spears and a couple of queer looking boats which the boys afterward learned were made of animal skin.
These boats, staunch in the water and capable of holding two or three men apiece, were yet light enough to be carried easily on shore.
As the jabbering natives approached, Bobby made a dive for Kapje and asked to be allowed to go along on the expedition. The latter grunted assent, giving each of them one of the sharp-pointed, long, heavy spears.
They tramped on through the loose, light snow till they came to the waterfront. There they stopped, the Eskimos still jabbering in excitement, and pointing oceanwards.
The boys strained their eyes to see, through the curtain of falling snow, what it was the natives were getting so worked up about.
Bobby was the first to see it, and he grabbed Fred, who was nearest him, pointing out toward the water.
“Look!” he cried. “That large ice floe! It’s covered with something! Seals! Or walruses, I guess. That’s what Kapje said!”
The water was filled with floating blocks of ice, varying in size, some of them—and these were farther out from the shore—large enough to build a small igloo on.
As Bobby had said, one of these large ice floes was so covered with animals of some kind that it was weighted down to the surface of the water.
Breathlessly the boys looked from this to the gesticulating natives. It seemed that they were to witness first hand a native walrus hunt—or seal hunt. The ice floe was not near enough yet for them to determine just what kind of animals crowded so closely upon it.
“Look!” cried Fred, under his breath. “Kapje’s getting ready for business.”
The Eskimo had deftly slipped one of the queer canoes into the water and had jumped into it, spear in hand, while two more of the natives followed him.
“Say,” cried Billy excitedly, as the second boat seemed in process of being launched, “I wonder if we couldn’t get in on this party?”
But although they were all wild to go along and take a hand in the fun, they soon saw that there was no hope of it. There were only two boats—not enough to carry all the native hunters, so of course there would be no room for them, who were strangers to these children of the North, and, in their eyes, rank amateurs.
“Wonder why they don’t get a couple of more boats, so they can all go,” whispered Mouser, and Bobby answered, getting the idea from a story he had once read.
“They are afraid of frightening the animals, I guess. They have to steal up on them quietly, and if too many went they wouldn’t have any chance of surprising them.”
In this Bobby had put his finger on the fundamental idea in the science of seal and walrus hunting.
The animals, sluggish and slow when not in the water, friendly and unsuspicious by nature, will, if not frightened, allow their pursuers to approach quite close to them.
Then it is the aim of the hunters to kill the animals nearest to the water—whether on the ice or ashore—so that the bodies of the slain animals surround, prison-like, those of their live companions, cutting off the retreat of the latter.
So the boys watched, fascinated, while the two slender canoes crept out upon the water, the natives paddling gently so as not to alarm their intended victims on the ice floe.
Nearer and nearer they came, the first canoe bearing Kapje, circling cautiously about the animals, bringing up on the opposite side of the floe from the other boat.
“Surrounding them!” cried Bobby, beginning to feel a sort of sick sympathy for the animals at bay. They did not seem to have a chance, surrounded like that.
Then suddenly the incredible thing happened. The animals on the ice—the boys had gathered from the mutterings of the Eskimos that they were not walruses, but were seals—as though finally deciding that the men in the approaching boats were not friendly to them, began to move slowly, sluggishly, the ones nearest the edge slipping off into the water with a dull splash.
The men in the canoes, as though maddened at sight of their escaping prey, rushed toward the floe and the animals that still remained upon it.
They were too late. Before they had reached near enough to the ice for the throwing of a spear, the last seal had deserted its resting place, the huge drifting block of ice was empty.
“Zowie, that’s the time they got fooled!” cried Fred excitedly. “Old Mr. Seal sure gave them the slip!”
“Not yet!” cried Mouser excitedly. “Look! They’re looking for them in the water.”
“Not much chance,” said Bobby, wondering at the queer relief he felt. “Seals are mighty slow on land, but they make up for it in the water. Besides, I’ve read that they’re pretty fierce when they’re attacked in the water.”
In this Bobby proved himself right. The men in the boats, after encircling the ice floe several times in the pursuit of the escaping seals, finally gave it up and returned, disgruntled enough, to the shore.
“Well,” said Fred suddenly, “I can’t say I’m sorry. The seal’s a friendly sort of old boy—just see what faithful intelligent pets they make, almost as good as a dog—and it seems a shame to kill ’em off just for the sake of what you can get from them.”
“Lucky for you the natives can’t understand much of what you’re saying,” laughed Bobby, glad that Fred felt the same way he did about it. “Hunting seals is their chief outdoor sport, you know.”
“Well, they can have it, for all I care,” retorted Fred.
“It isn’t the Eskimos that are killing the seals off,” remarked Billy wisely. “They’re leaving that to us, who live farther south and don’t need the fur or anything about ’em, really. The Eskimos do need to kill ’em or starve and freeze themselves.”
Although the boys were eager to find Mooloo, they by no means wasted the rest of that day.
They wandered about the strange, fascinating, snow-covered land, regarding the dome-shaped igloos with an interest that never grew less, stumbling at last into an old stone hut which showed its deserted state in every dejected nook and cranny of it.
“Wonder why there’s no one living here,” said Mouser, as the lads wandered about the place. “You see plenty of snow houses around, but I should think a place like this would be lots more comfortable.”
They put this question to Kapje some time later when, driven by the pangs of hunger and a desire to thaw out their noses, they returned to the igloo.
The man, seemingly disgruntled at the failure of the hunt that morning, was sitting before the fire, a frown on his heavily creased face.
His wife, who was again stirring a delectable smelling mixture over the oil stove, gave them her broad grin.
In answer to Bobby’s question of why the Eskimos built snow igloos when there were perfectly good stone houses going to waste, the native merely grunted and shrugged his shoulders.
“Eskimo like igloo best,” he answered. “Time come move along, leave snow house, build another. No move stone house.
“Up there,” he added, after a short silence, waving his hand in a generally northern direction, “Eskimo use stone house. Down here he like igloo.”
At that moment, the son of the household entering, Mrs. Eskimo, as Billy called her, served the lunch and there was no more conversation in that particular igloo for several minutes to come.
Then Kapje, as though still smarting from his failure of the morning, turned to the boys, a deeper frown wrinkling his forehead.
“You see them seal this morning?” he asked, and the boys nodded.
“That way, lots of time,” went on the Eskimo, as though it were a relief to tell his grievance to someone. “Seal, he scared. You get spear ready for him an’—poof—he gone, like that. Too much hunt. Other time, kill ’em easy. Now, see you come too quick. Seal hunt no like old days.” And here the man shook his head and looked so mournful the boys had all they could do to keep from laughing.
After lunch they noticed with delight that the snow had stopped and the sun was attempting to smile weakly through the heavy storm clouds.
At the sight Bobby charged back into the igloo to tell Kapje the good news and urge him to start with them right away to find Mooloo. Still the Eskimo shook his head.
“In the morning we start,” he said and something in his tone convinced Bobby that there would be no changing his mind on this point. “Then we reach Mooloo before dark. Start now—no can do.”
So, burning with impatience, the boys were forced to spend another night in the igloo.
First thing in the morning they were up, garbed once more in their snug fur clothing, ready to start on the journey.
After a hearty breakfast, they shook hands warmly with Mrs. Eskimo, who beamed broadly upon them and wished them good luck.
Then they were out in the keen, brisk air, with the sun smiling down on them and Kapje and his son waiting for them to start.
“All right,” cried Bobby joyfully. “Let’s go.”