Seasons with the Sea-horses; Or, Sporting Adventures in the Northern Seas

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Hurst and Blackett, 1861 - Arctic regions - 312 pages

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Page 76 - ... hangs lifeless on the line: now the junger begins to utter his plaintive grunting bark, and fifty furious Walruses are close round the boat in a few seconds, rearing up breast high in the water, and snorting and blowing as if they would tear us all to pieces. Two of these auxiliaries are speedily harpooned in their turn, and the rest hang back a little, when, as bad luck would have it, the junger gives up the ghost, owing to the severity of his harpooning, and the others no longer attracted by...
Page 129 - ... her ; we then scrambled through the icy mud up to where she lay, and despatched her. The cubs, quite black with mud and shivering with cold, lay upon the body of their mother, growling viciously, and would not allow us to touch them, until the men, bringing a couple of walrus-lines from the boat, threw nooses over their heads and secured them tightly, coupling them together like a brace of dogs. They were about the size of colley-dogs, and no sooner did they feel themselves fast, than, quite...
Page 80 - I made the acquaintance of the skyppar of a sloop, who had been seized by a bereaved cow- walrus, and by her dragged twice to the bottom of the sea; but without receiving any injury beyond being nearly drowned and having a deep scar...
Page 64 - The monsters lay with their heads reclining on one another's backs and sterns, just as I have seen rhinoceroses lying asleep in the African forests ; or, to use a more familiar simile, like a lot of fat hogs in a British straw-yard. I should think there were about eighty or one hundred on the ice, and many more swam grunting and spouting around, and tried to clamber up amongst their friends, who, like surly people in a full omnibus, grunted at them angrily, as if to say "Confound you ! don't you...
Page 129 - ... shot, as the boat had grounded within two hundred yards of the animals. Lord David fired, and struck the old bear in the back, paralyzing her ; we then scrambled through the icy mud up to where she lay, and despatched her. The cubs, quite black with mud and shivering with cold, lay upon the body of their mother, growling viciously, and would not allow us to touch them, until the men, bringing a couple of walrus-lines from the boat, threw nooses over their heads and secured them tightly, coupling...
Page 225 - Russian establishment; but on reaching the huts they were horror-struck to find its inmates all dead. Fourteen of the unhappy men had recently been buried in shallow graves in front of the huts, two lay dead just outside the threshold, and the remaining two were lying dead inside, one on the floor and the other in bed.
Page 145 - Rosmarnt trichecus altogether a most unearthly and demoniacal appearance as he rears his head above the waves. I think it not unlikely that the old fable of the mermaid may have been originated by their grim resemblance to the head of a human being when in this position.
Page 75 - ... flourishing, and then they are all down. On, on, goes the boat as hard as ever we can pull the oars ; up come the Sea-horses again, pretty close this time, and before they can draw breath the boat rushes into the midst of them : whish ! goes the harpoon : birr ! goes the line over the gunwale : and a luckless junger...
Page 78 - Walrus. If, however, Bruin, pressed by hunger and a tempting opportunity, is so illadvised as to snap a calf, the whole herd come upon him, drag him under water, and tear him to pieces with their long sharp tusks.
Page 128 - This seemed to embarrass them very much, as the cubs couldn't jump over the channels, and the old bear appeared to be getting very anxious and uneasy ; but she showed great patience and forbearance with her cubs, always waiting, after she had jumped over a channel, until they swam across, and affectionately assisting them to clamber up the steep sides of the rocky places ; nevertheless the mixture of sticky mud with rough ice and halffrozen water soon reduced the unhappy cubs to a pitiable state...

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