Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 April 1895 — Walrus Hunting in the North. [ARTICLE]

Walrus Hunting in the North.

Arnold Pike tells of a walrus hunt in Bird Bay, to the north of Spitzbergen. The bay was full of fast ice, but eastward the sea was fairly open, and the hunter was rowing slowly back to the sloop, when the harpooner suddenly laid aside his glass and headed the boat for a black mass which the mirage magnified into the size of a small house, but which was really a walrus. “The walrus raises his head and we are motionless,” says Mr. Pike. “It is intensely still, and the scraping of a piece of ice along the boat seems like the roar of a railway train passingoverhead on some bridge. Down goes the head and we glide forward again. The walrus is uneasy; again and again he raises his head and looks around with a quick motion, but we have the sun right at our back and lie never notices us. At last we are within a few feet, and with a shout of ‘Voek op, gamling!’ meaning ‘Wakeup, old boy,’which breaks the stillness like a shot, the harpooner is on his feet, his weapon clasped in both hands above his head. As the walrus plunges into the sea the iron is hurled in his sic®> and with a quick twist to prevent the head from slipping out of the same slit that it has cut in the thick hide, the handle is withdrawn and thrown into tho boat. No. 2, who with a turn round the forward thwart has lieen paying out the line, now checks it, as stroke and the ‘hammelmand,’ facing forward, hang back on their cars to cheek the rush. Bumping and scraping the ice, we are towed along for about five minutes and then stop, as the walrus comes to the surface to breathe. In the old days the lance would finish the business, but now it is the rifle. He is facing the boat. I sight for one of his eyes and lot him have both barrels, without n«uch effect, apparently, for away we r ish for two or three minutes more, when he is up again, still facing the boat. He seems to care no more for tne solid express bullets than if they were peas, but he is low this time, and as he turns to dive exposes the fatal spot at the back of the head, and dies.”—[Milwaukee Wisconsin.