170 ADVENTURES IN ALASKA
or seascape—changing every minute. There are herds of walrus all around us, some numerous, containing two or three hundred on one cake of ice, others small; here a group of four or five big bulls on a cake just large enough to hold them; then fifteen or twenty on a wider berg with little hum-mocks, up the slopes of which the big brutes crowd.
Scull and Lovering have taken the kyakcatamaran and are paddling to the nearest bunch of walrus not five hundred yards from the ship. Captain K. has launched the big skin boat, or oomiak, and is perched on the high stern, steering. His aeroscope moving-picture machine and graphlex camera, his field-glass and rifle are by him. "Eskimo Prank " and I are in front of him with our paddles; while Dr. Elting and Collins are in the bow, with paddles in their hands and their big Ross and Mannlicher rifles close by. We corkscrew our way through the ice, steering past a bunch of walrus on a small cake. " Small ice—lose urn quick," says Prank. We are heading to a herd of twenty or thirty, with some big tuskers among them. We keep to the leeward of them, for the sense of smell seems to be