walrus, but when so hampered it is considered well secured, and is finally despatched by the long keen lance.
When, however, the attack is made in the neighborhood of heavy ice, as it frequently is, the hunt is much less likely to result successfully. Because of the floating crystal, the hunter often finds it difficult to follow the movements of his game, and even if successful in this and in placing a harpoon or two, he is often defeated in the end by the line being torn from the float, which has become fast in the broken ice. Thus once freed, the wounded animal usually makes good his escape.
Occasionally these walrus contests result disastrously to the hunter, for the sea-horse is by no means a passive, harmless creature, submitting without resistance to the attacks of its enemies. Frequently one—or a number of them together—will make a charge upon the assailants, attacking them viciously with their huge tusks, which, if brought in contact with an Eskimo, are likely to make a sorry-looking object of him. Of course, through long experience and practice in the chase, the Eskimo hunters become very expert in dodging and foiling a charge, but sometimes they are caught and roughly handled by these uncouth monsters of the sea.
Upon one occasion an old hunter whom I knew, named Coto, met with a bad accident while hunting walruses in his kyack. A number of them charged upon him suddenly, and being unable to get out of their way quickly enough, his frail craft was broken and torn to shreds, and his body was frightfully bruised and lacerated. The poor fellow recovered, however, but only after months of sore suffering.
For a short time during the autumn season the sea-
