The harpooner, who commands the boat’s crew, rows from the bow thwart, near the weapons and telescope, which he alone uses. It is he who searches for game, and decides on the method of attack when it is found. ‘No. 2,’ generally the strongest man in the boat, is called the ‘line man’; it is his duty to tend the line when a walrus is struck and to assist the harpooner, while ‘stroke’ and the ‘hammelmand’ hang back on their oars, to prevent the boat from ‘overrunning’ the walrus.
In such a boat, then, one lovely September morning, we are rowing easily back to the sloop, which is lying off Bird Bay, a small indentation in the east face of the northernmost point of Spitzbergen. The skin of an old he-bear, half covering the bottom of the boat, proves that we have already earned our breakfasts, but no one is in a hurry. The burnished surface of the sea is unmarked by a ripple save where broken by the lazy dip of the oars. Northwards, beyond the bold contour of North Cape, the rugged outlines of the Seven Islands stand out sharply against the blue sky; behind us the hills of the mainland, dazzling in their covering of new snow, stretch away to the south. Bird Bay and Lady Franklin’s Bay are full of fast ice, which must have lain there all the summer, but the blazing sun makes it difficult to see where ice ends and water begins. Around us and to the east the sea is fairly open, except for the flat cakes of ice broken off from the fast ice, and several old sea-worn lumps, which, from their delicate blue colour (sea ice is white), we know have fallen from the glaciers of the east coast, or, perhaps, have travelled from some land, out there beyond Seven Islands, which no man has yet seen. The harpooner is balancing himself, one foot on the forward locker and one on the thwart, examining through a telescope something which appears to be a lump of dirty ice, about half a mile away. Suddenly he closes his glass and seizes the oars. ‘Hvalros,’ he says, and without another word the ‘hammelmand’ heads the boat for the black mass which, as we rapidly approach (for no one is lazily inclined now), the mirage magnifies into the size of a small house. Now we are within a couple of hundred yards, and each man crouches in the bottom of the boat, the harpooner still in the bow, his eyes level with the combing, intently fixed upon the walrus. The ‘hammelmand’ alone is partly erect on his seat, only his arms moving, as he guides us from behind one lump to another. Suddenly the walrus raises his head, and we are motionless. It is intensely still, and the scraping of a piece of ice along the boat seems like the roar of a railway train passing overhead 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 he never notices us. At last we are within a few feet, and with a shout of ‘Vœk op, gamling!’ (‘Wake up, 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 buried in his side, 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 the boat. No. 2, who, with a turn round the forward thwart, has been paying out the line, now checks it, as stroke and the ‘hammelmand,’ facing forward, hang back on their oars to check the rush. Bumping and scraping amongst 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 let him have both barrels, without much effect apparently, for away we rush for two or three minutes more, when he is up again, still facing the boat. He seems to care no more for the solid Express bullets (I am using a .450 Holland & Holland Express) than if they were peas; but he is slow this time, and, as he turns to dive, exposes the fatal spot at the back of the head, and dies.