Wild Folk Part 10

At last an ally of the sea folk joined in the hunt. Water was claiming her toll of oxygen from the alien within her depths. A sea otter can stay under for half an hour at a pinch--but not when swimming at full speed, with the laboring heart pumping blood at capacity; and this one realized despairingly that soon she must breathe or die. Little by little she shaped her course toward the surface, dreadfully fearing lest the second she must spend in drawing one deep breath would be her last. She flashed upward through a whole gamut of greens--chrome, cedar, jasper, myrtle, malachite, emerald, ending with the pulsing, golden sap-green of the surface. Swim as she would, however, the monstrous head was always just at her flank, and the slightest pause would give those fatal teeth their grip. Once again she avoided by a hair's breadth a snap of the deadly jaws, and struggled despairingly toward the upper air.

As the great fish turned to follow, out from the sunlight, through the gleaming water, shot a long dark body. Away from the safety of the kelp to the head of horror with its implacable eyes came the old dog otter, for the creed of the sea otter is unchanging--one mate for life and death. With his round misshapen head bristling and his snaky black eyes gleaming like fire, this one crossed the vast back of the shark like a shadow. As the great fish turned to follow the fleeing mother, the blunt pebble-teeth of the dog otter, which can grind the flintiest sh.e.l.ls to powder, fastened themselves with a bull-dog grip just behind the last fin of the shark, where its long, sinuous tail joined the body. With all the force of his tremendous jaws, the great sea otter clamped his teeth through the ma.s.ses of muscles, deep into the cartilage column, crushing one of its ball-and-socket joints.

Like a steel spring, the shark bent almost double on itself. Just as the gaping jaws were about to close, with a quick flirt of his body the otter swung across to the other side, without relaxing for an instant the grip of those punishing teeth. The undershot jaws of the great fish could not reach the head of its tormentor, fixed as it was in the central ridge of the shark's back. Again and again the hammer-head bent from side to side; but each time the old dog otter evaded the clashing teeth and ground to bits joint after joint of the shark's spine, while the lashing tail-strokes became feebler and feebler. Not until the mother otter and her cub were safe on their way to the kelp-bed, breathing great life-saving draughts of fresh air at the surface, did the grim jaws of the old otter relax. Then, with an arrowy dive and double, he shot under and over the disabled fish, and sped away to join his mate in the hidden thickets of the kelp.

The swift Arctic summer soon pa.s.sed, to be followed by the freezing gales of an Arctic winter. With the storms would come an enemy from the land, fiercer and more fatal than any foe that menaced the otter family by sea or sky; for these sea otter were among the last of their race, and there was a price upon their pelts beyond the dreams of the avarice of a thousand murky Aleuts and oily Kolash and Kadiakers, to say nothing of a horde of white adventurers from all the five continents of earth. Only in storms, when the kelp-beds are broken and the otter are forced to seek the shelter of beaches and sea caves, do hunters still have a chance to secure these rarest of all the fur-bearers.

At last came the first of the great winter gales. Day after day the wind howled up from the southeast, the storm quarter of that coast, and the air throbbed with the boom of breakers, while all the way down the Straits the white-caps foamed and roared among a tangle of cross-currents.

Out at sea, the great kelp-raft on which the otter family had lived since spring was at last broken and scattered under the pounding of the gale. Otter need sleep as much as humans, and like them, too, must sleep where they can breathe. Battered and blinded by the gale, the little family started to hunt for some refuge where they might slumber out the storm. Along all the miles of coast, and among the myriads of barren islands, there seemed to be no place where they could find a yard of safety. At the first sign of bad weather every strip of beach was patrolled and every islet guarded.

To lonely little Saanak the dog otter first led them, hoping to find some tiny stretch of safe beach among the water-worn boulders piled high along the sh.o.r.e. A mile to windward he stopped, thrust his blunt muzzle high up into the gale, and winnowed the salt-laden air through the meshes of his wonderful nostrils. Then he turned away at right angles, toward another island. A little band of Indian hunters, starved with cold, had built far back among the rocks a tiny fire.

Smoke spells death to a sea otter. Beyond Saanak the wary veteran visited other beaches, only to detect the death-scent of human footprints, although they had been washed by waves and covered by tides. In far-away Oonalaska, he sought the entrance of a sea cave in whose winding depths, many years before, he had found refuge. As he thrust his head into the hidden opening, his st.u.r.dy breast struck the strands of a net made of sea-lion sinews, so soaked and bleached by salt water that it bore even to his matchless nostrils no smell of danger. With a warning chirp, he halted his mate following close behind, and backed out carefully, without entangling himself among the wide meshes.

Agonizing for sleep, the little band turned back and journeyed wearily to the far-away islet of Attoo, the westernmost point of land in North America. In its lee was a sheltered kelp-raft never broken by the waves, although too near sh.o.r.e to be a safe refuge except in a storm.

There, in the very centre of the heaving bed, with the waves booming outside, the otter family slept the sleep of utter exhaustion, their heads buried under the kelp-stems and their shimmering bodies showing on the surface.

At the foot of a high bluff on Kadiak Island crouched d.i.c.k Barrington, on his first otter-hunt. d.i.c.k was the son of a factor of the Hudson Bay Company, which, in spite of kings and parliaments, still rules Arctic America. With him as a guide was Oonga, the chief of a tribe of Aleutian hunters.

"Stick to old Oonga," the factor had advised. "He knows more about sea otter than any man in his tribe. At that there's only one chance in a thousand that you'll get one."

The old chief had allowed the rest of the band to slip away one by one, each choosing the islet or bit of sh.o.r.e where he hoped to draw the winning number in this lottery of the sea. Hour after hour went by, and still the old man sat huddled under the lee of the cliff. At last, he suddenly stood up. Although the gale seemed still at its height, his practised eye saw signs that it was about to break, and in a moment, with d.i.c.k's help, he had launched the triple-pointed, high-sterned _bidarka_, a little craft made of oiled sea-lion skins, and as unsinkable as any boat could be.

A few quick strokes of the paddle, and they were beyond the breakers.

Then, straight across the bay, through the rush and smother of the storm, they shot toward Attoo. Steering by unknown ranges and glimpses of dim islands, old Oonga held his course unfalteringly, until, just as the gale began to slacken, they reached the kelp-bed in the lee of the little island. Across the hollow tendrils the old chief guided the bidarka silently, in a zigzag course. Suddenly he stretched out his paddle, and, touching d.i.c.k on the shoulder, pointed to a dark spot showing against the kelp a hundred yards away.

With infinite care the two edged the canoe along, until there before them lay asleep the mother otter, her cub clasped tight in her arms.

Even as they watched, the little otter nuzzled its small white nose against its mother's warm breast. As she felt its touch, without opening her eyes she clasped the cub tighter in her arms, with a curiously human gesture, and wrapped it close in her long silky fur, which had a changing shimmer and ripple through it like watered silk--a pelt with which a man might ransom his life.

As d.i.c.k gripped the short heavy club which the old chief had placed at his feet at the beginning of the voyage, and looked down upon the pair, it seemed to him as if the great sea had taken him into her confidence and entrusted the sleeping mother and child to him.

Suddenly, in the silence, with sea and sky watching, he knew that he could no more strike down that mother sleeping before him with her dear-loved cub in her arms, than he could have killed a human child entrusted to his care. With a quick motion, he splashed the water over the sleeping otter with the end of his club. So swiftly that the eye could scarcely follow her motion, the great otter flashed out of sight under the kelp, with her cub still held close. Once again, mother-love had been too strong for death.