uick as flash, the steersman lifts his paddle. Not a word is
spoken, but so keen is the hearing of the sleeping otter, the drip of
the lifted paddle has not splashed into the sea before the otter has
awakened, looked and dived like lightning to the bottom of the sea
before one of the Aleut hunters can hurl his spear. Silently, not a
whisper, the steersman signals again. The hunters deploy in a circle
half a mile broad round the place where the sea-otter disappeared; for
they know that in fifteen or twenty {75} minutes the animal must come
up for breath, and it cannot run farther than half a mile under sea
before it reappears.

Suddenly somebody sees a round black-red head poke above water, perhaps
close to the line of watchers. With a wild shout, the nearest bidarkas
dart forward. Whether the spear-throw has hit or missed, the shout has
done enough. The terrified otter dives before it has breath. Over the
second diving spot a hunter is stationed, and the circle narrows, for
the otter must come up quicker this time. It must have breath. Again
and again, the little round head peeps up. Again the shout greets it.
Again the lightning dive. Sometimes only a bubble gurgling to the top
of the water guides the watchers. Presently the body is so full of
gases from suppressed breathing, it can no longer sink, and a quick
spear-throw secures the quarry. One animal against, perhaps, sixty
men. Is the quest fair? Yonder thunders the surf below beetling
precipices. Then the tide wash comes in with a rip like a whirlpool,
or the ebb sets the beach combers rolling--lashing billows of tumbling
waters that crash together and set the sheets of blinding spray
shattering. Or the fog comes down over a choppy sea with a whizzing
wind that sets the whitecaps flying backward like a horse's mane. The
chase may have led farther and farther from land. As long as the
little black head comes up, as long as the gurgling bubble tells of a
struggling breather below, the hunters follow, be it {76} near or far,
till, at the end of two or three hours, the exhausted sea-otter is
taken. Perhaps forty men have risked their lives for a single pelt for
which the trader cannot pay more than forty dollars; for he must have
his profit, and the skin must be dressed, and the middlemen must have
their profit; so that if it sells even for eleven hundred dollars in
London--though the average is nearer one hundred and fifty dollars--the
Aleut is luc