It does not take us long to fix the ice anchor in a suitable cake, and with the blocks and rope we drag him head-first on to the ice, and skin him. On examining his head, I find that the whole of the front part has been broken into small pieces by the first four shots, one tusk blown clean away, and the other broken. So much for shooting a walrus in the face!
Of course, the walrus does not always allow the boat to approach within harpooning distance. If it is very uneasy (which it is more likely to be in calm weather than when there is a slight breeze blowing), the beast will begin to move when the boat is, say, fifty yards distant. Then is the time for a steady wrist and a clear eye, for the creature must be shot, and shot dead, or, no matter how badly it is wounded, it will reach the water, and, dying there, sink like a stone to the bottom.
Although the walrus does not often show fight, it is not, on the whole, a rare thing for him to do so. The harpooners say that three-year-old bulls are the most liable to attack a boat, especially if it is allowed to overrun them when fast to a harpoon line. The following incident illustrates this.
One sunny night, towards the end of May, we were running for Black Point, Spitzbergen, as the skipper did not like the look of a heavy black bank of clouds which a freshening breeze was blowing up out of the south-west. Suddenly, as we were threading our way through some heavy old ice, we found that we were among the walrus, and we determined to lie aback for a few hours and take some. They were lying about in twos and threes on the ice lumps, and in a good mood to be stalked, so that we soon had the skins of three young bulls in the bottom of the boat; but the fourth, a three-year-old bull, gave trouble. He did not like the look of the boat, and a rather long shot only wounded him. After diving off the ice he rose quite close to the boat, and when the harpooner gave him the weapon, instead of making off he immediately charged. It was hand-to-hand work then: lance and axe, hakkepik and oar, thrust and slashed, struck and shoved, while the white tusks gleamed again and again through the upper streaks of the boat; for a walrus can strike downwards, upwards, and sideways, with much greater quickness than one would imagine possible. After a while he drew off, and, slipping a cartridge into the Express (which I had emptied as soon as the struggle began), I put a bullet through his brain, and he hung dead on the line. We were lucky to escape with no more damage than a few holes in the boat and a couple of broken oars. There were many walrus around us, both on the ice and in the water, but the breeze had freshened into a gale, and snow began to fall heavily, so that we were glad to get on board again and run for shelter into Kraus Haven, a little inlet in the mossy plain which stretches from the foot of Black Point to the sea.