While the “spearing surround” of the Aleutian hunter is orthodoxy, the practice, now universal, of surf-shooting the otter, is heterodoxy, and is so styled among these people, but it has only been in vogue for a short time, and it is primarily due to our traders, who, in their active struggle to incite the natives to a greater showing of skins, have loaned and have given, to the young hunters in especial, the best patterns of rifles. With these firearms the shores of many of the Aleutian channels, Saanak, and the Chernaboors, are patrolled during heavy weather, and whenever a sea-otter’s head is seen in the surf, no matter if a thousand yards out, the expert, patient marksman shoots seldom in vain, and if he does miss the mark, he has a speedy chance to try again, for the great distance, and thunderous roar of the breakers prevent the kahlan from hearing or taking alarm in any way until it is hit by the rifle-bullet: nine times out of ten, when the otter is thus struck, it is in the head, which is all that the creature usually exposes. Of course such a shot is instantly fatal, so that the hunter has reason to sit himself down with a long landing-gaff and wait serenely for the surf to gradually heave the prized carcass within his ready reach. Last, but most exciting and recklessly venturesome of all human endeavor in the chase of a wild animal is the plan of “clubbing.” You must pause with me for a brief interval on Saanak to understand, even imperfectly, the full hazard of this enterprise. We cannot walk, for the wind blows too hard—note the heavy seas foaming, chasing and swiftly rolling by, one after the other—hear the keen whistle of the gale as it literally tears the crests of the breakers into tatters, and skurries on in sheets of fleecy vapor, whirring and whizzing away into the darkness of that frightful storm which has been raging in this tremendous fashion, coming from the westward, during the last three or four days without a moment’s cessation. Look at those two Aleutes under the shelter of that high bluff by the beach. Do you see them launch a bidarka, seat themselves within and lash their kamlaykas firmly over the rims to the man-holes? And now observe them boldly strike out beyond the protection of that cliff and plunge into the very vortex of the fearful sea, and scudding, like an arrow from the bow, before the wind, they disappear almost like a flash and a dream in our eyes! [Illustration: ALEUTES CLUBBING SEA OTTERS During a furious gale on the Chernaboor Rocks]