not sealing on the ice, as along the
coast of Newfoundland: it is hunting them in open water--a very
different thing.

Papik (let us call him) spots the seal he wants and creeps up on it,
paddling warily.

The seal, a wise creature where such hunting is concerned, sees him
and dives.

Papik rests on his paddle, and gets his harpoon ready for the
reappearance of the seal.

It is a waiting game. Whenever the seal bobs up, the kayak is a little
nearer, for while the seal is under water a few strokes of the paddle
have cut down the distance.

A seal can stay under water a long, long time.

But an Eskimo, for his part, can sit all day as still as a tombstone
in a cemetery.

Woe be to the furry creature, if it waits a fraction of a second too
long before it dives!

In the clear sunlight the shaft flashes whistling from the throwing
stick, the barb strikes, and the seal goes down in a welter of
blood-stained foam. At the end of the harpoon line is a bladder--and
as the bladder dances away over the surface, sometimes bobbing out of
sight, Papik is after it like a hound chasing a rabbit.

The bladder is to the barbed harpoon what the fisherman's float is to
the baited hook.

When the seal comes up, furious to attack and punish the hunter, it
first tears the bladder in pieces--then it makes at the kayak.

But Papik is calmly ready. He has a lance with which he takes careful
aim.

The seal comes on, bent double to hurl itself forward with all its
might. It seems strange that a creature usually so gentle can show
such ferocity.

The lance is flung. It goes through the seal's mouth and comes out at
the back of the neck. The seal shakes its head violently, but it is
doomed.

Papik's second lance strikes through a flipper into the lungs.

The seal is still alive as he comes close. Papik stabs it with his
long knife, and it ceases to struggle at last. The seal is a creature
that clings to life a long, long time. He ties the seal to the stern
of the kayak, rearranges his apparatus, coils his rope, puts his
lances in their place, and is ready for another. If he is in luck, he
may paddle homeward with four seals, and even more, in his wake.

If a storm comes before he gets to the shore, his watermanship is
severely tested. He fights not only to bring his boat and himself
through the tumult of the waters: he means to save every one of those
carcasses wallowing along behind.

In the midst of his hard fighting with