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At the same time we introduced a new order of things with our dogs. Hitherto we had been obliged to keep them tied up on account of seal-hunting; otherwise they went off by themselves and ravaged. There were certain individuals who specially distinguished themselves in this way, like Wisting's Major. He was a born hunter, afraid of nothing.
In each one he permitted one of the boys to go with the sailors on this seal-hunting expedition. The seals, which are so very active in water, where they can swim with such grace and rapidity, are very helpless on land or ice, and so large numbers were killed by the sailors.
It seems that he has been seal-hunting regularly each season for a dozen years, and is accounted one of the two or three very best boat-steerers in both fleets. "Ah, my boy," he shook his head ominously at me, "'tis the worst schooner ye could iv selected, nor were ye drunk at the time as was I. 'Tis sealin' is the sailor's paradise on other ships than this.
Stopping just inside the threshold, he looked about for him, blinking in the strong light and shaking back the wet fur of his collar. It seemed as though every member of the house-hold except Leif were lounging along the benches, waiting for the evening meal. Eric leaned against one arm of his high-seat, talking jovially with Thorhall the steward, who had returned that morning from seal-hunting.
The excitement of the affair, like all other things human, soon passed away, and the ordinary routine of the wood-path, the fur-path, and seal-hunting, the saw-pit, the net-loft, and boat-building, turned our attention to our own affairs once more.
He had done everything, seal-hunting, abalone-gathering, boar-hunting, all kinds of shooting, cow-punching in the rough Coast Ranges, and all other queer and outlandish and picturesque vocations by which a man can make a living. He weighed two hundred and twelve pounds and was the best game shot with a rifle I ever saw. As you may imagine, Old Slob was a stocky individual.
The information, he thought, might possibly be of much assistance to them hereafter in directing their course, should such a step become necessary, to those better known portions of the island on the eastern side which whalers and seal-hunting craft were reported to be in the habit of frequenting during the short summer season of that dreary region.
For some time past the natives had been unsuccessful in their seal-hunting; and as seals and walruses constituted their chief means of support, they were reduced to short allowance. Edith's portion, however, had never yet been curtailed.
Getting further forward upon the road, Caius now saw what he could not see from his own door, a great beacon fire lit upon the hill where the men had been watching. Its flame and smoke leaped up from the white hill into the blue heaven. It was the seal-hunting, then, to which all the island was going forth. Caius, now that he understood the tumult, experienced almost the same excitement.
I knew these men and their mental processes, was one of them myself, living the seal-hunting life, eating the seal-hunting fare, thinking, largely, the seal-hunting thoughts. There was for me no strangeness to it, to the rough clothes, the coarse faces, the wild laughter, and the lurching cabin walls and swaying sea-lamps. As I buttered a piece of bread my eyes chanced to rest upon my hand.
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