Orleans independent standard. [volume] (Irasburgh, Vt.) 1856-1871, 1856-12-05
AWALRUS HUNT.

When the walrus is above water, the
hunter is fiat and motionless; as be begins
to sink, alert and ready FOR aspiring. The
animals head is hardly below the water
line before every man is in a rapid run
and again, as if by instinct, before the
beast returns, all are motionless behind
projecting knolls of ice. They seem to
know beforehand not only the time he
win be absent. but the very spot that he
will appear. In this way, hiding and ad-
vancing by turns, Myouk, with Morton
at his heels, has reached plate of thin
ice, hardly strong enough to bear them,
at the very brink of the pool the walrus
are curveting in.
Myouk, ill now, phlegmatic, seems
to awaken with excitement. His coil of
walrus-hide, welltrimmed line of many
fathoms' length, is lying at his side. He
fixes one end of it in an iron barb, and
iastens this loosely by socket upon a
shaft Of unicorn's horn; the other end is
already lOoped, or, as a sailor would say,
doubled in a bight.". It is the work of
moment. He has grasped the harpoon;
the water is in motion. Putting with
pent up respiration, the walrus is within
couple Of fathoms close before him.
Myouk rises slowly, his right arm thrown
back, the left fat at his side. The wal
rus looks about him, shaking the water
from his crest Myouk throws up his left
arm and the animal, rising breast high,
fixes one look before he plunges. 1t has
cost him all that curiosity can cost the
harpoon is buried under his left Aipper.
Though awuk is down in a moment
Myouk is running at desperate speed
from the scene of his victory, paying off
his coil freely, but clutehing the end by
its loop. He seizes as he runs stick of
bone, rudely pointed with iron, and by
sudden movement drives it into the ice
to this he secures his line, pressing it
down close to the ice-surface with his
feet.
" Now comes the struggle. The hole
is dashed in mad commotion with the
struggles of the wounded beast the line
is drawn tight al one moment, the next
relaxed; the hunter has now left his sta
ton. There is a crack of the ice and
rearing up through it are two walruses,
not many yards from where he stands.
One of them, the male, is excited, and
seemingly terrified; the other, the fe-
male, collected and vengeful. Down
they go again, after one grim survey of
the field; and on the instant Myouk
has changed his position, carrying his coil
with him and fixing it anew.
He has hardly fixed it before the pair
have again risen, breaking up an area of
ten feet diameter about the very spot he
left. As they sink once more he again
changes his place. And SO the conflict
goes on between address and force, till
the victim, half exhausted, receives a
second wound, and is played Ike trout
by the anglers reel.
"The instinct of attack which charac-
terizes the walrus is interesting 10 the
naturalist, as it is characteristic also of
the land animals, the paehyderm with
which he is classed. When wounded he
rises high out of the water, plunging
heavily against the ice, and strives to
raise himself with his fore-fippers upon
its surface. As tbreaks under its weigh,
his countenance assumes a still more vim
dictive expression, his bark changes to a
roar, and the foam pours out from his
jaws till il froths his beard.
"Even when not excited, he manages
his tusks brayely. They are so strong
that he uses them to grapple the rocks
with, and climb sleeps of ice and land,
which would be inaccessible TO him with
out their aid. lie ascends IN this way
rocky islands that are sixty and hun
dred feet above the level Of the sea and
/ have myself seen him in these elevated
positions, basking with his young in the
cool sunshine ofAugust and September"