The meat was needed for the dogs. Firing a volley, we killed two of the huge animals outright. The rest of the herd dived and scattered.
Manoeuvring alongside the pan, we put one man of the crew overboard to rope the carcasses to be hoisted on deck with the winch.
It happened that the sailor who went over the side was an Italian who had never been in the North. He was very keen and excited. While he was busy tying a rope round each animal’s head under the tusks, a big bull walrus, which had probably been wounded in the body a few minutes before, suddenly came up to the surface beside the pan. With one heave, the enormous animal jumped clean out of the water to the ice a few feet from the sailor whose back was turned. Everyone on board was terrified.
Nobody dared to shoot for fear of hitting the man.
The walrus shook his head and seemed ready to plunge his tusks right in the middle of the man’s back. He weighed over fifteen hundred pounds.
Feeling the animal’s breath on him, the Italian turned round. “Get out of here, you ugly thing!” he shouted in his own language, and with that he slapped him right across the jaw with the back of his hand. The walrus gave a grunt, slid backwards over the edge of the pan and vanished in the depths of the sea.
The sailor calmly turned back to his job, while on board we breathed a prayer of thankfulness.