Suddenly one man makes a silent signal that is flashed in an instant along the entire line. He has caught a glimpse of one of the coveted animals apparently asleep. Although no word is spoken, and no sound comes from end to end of the little fleet, the sharp-witted animal takes the alarm almost at the moment of discovery, and dives like a shot to the very bottom of the sea, leaving only a bubbling wake to mark his descent.
A few powerful strokes bring the bidarkie of the discoverer to the spot. There it is abruptly halted, and the hunter holds his paddle aloft while the others skim over the water like a flight of birds, until they have ranged themselves in a great circle half a mile in diameter about him. The otter must come up to breathe within fifteen or twenty minutes, and when he does so some one of the thirty pairs of keen-sighted eyes so eagerly watching for him is sure to detect the act, even though he should show only the tip of his nose. A wild yell announces the discovery; the hunted animal again dives; another bidarkie, with uplifted paddle, marks the spot, and again the circle is formed. Thus the unfortunate otter, coming to the surface at shorter and shorter intervals, is made to dive and dive again, never being allowed to draw a full breath, until at the end of two or three hours he floats on the surface completely exhausted, and falls an easy victim to the nearest spear.
To an uninterested observer it is a pitiful sight to see a defenceless and harmless creature thus hunted to its death. At the same time the pursuit is possessed of the fascination that always attends the matching of human skill against animal cunning and powers of endurance. Then, too, there is the excitement of ever-present danger in thus venturing into the open sea, almost beyond sight of land, in such cockle-shells as Aleutian bidarkies. In that region of sudden squalls and fierce gales, dense fogs that settle over the water like vast smothering blankets almost without warning――huge whales and other sea-monsters that are always rising to the surface, and whose slightest touch would overturn a bidarkie as though it were a feather――the uncertainties of an otter-hunter’s life are many and constant.