and after partial tiring the turtle is either drowned or driven ashore, or else lifted on the craft.[270] Immediately on landing the quarry, the plastron is broken loose by blows of the hupf[271] and torn off by vigorous wrenches of the warriors and their strong-taloned spouses in the impetuous fury of a fierce blood-craze like that of carnivorous beasts; the blood and entrails and all soft parts are at once devoured, and the firmer flesh follows at a rate depending on the antecedent hunger, both men and women crushing integument and tendon and bone with the hupf, tearing other tissues with teeth and nails, mouthing shreds from the shells, and gorging the whole ravenously if well ahungered, but stopping to singe and smoke or even half roast the larger pieces if nearer satiety. If the quarry is too large for immediate consumption and not too far from a rancheria the remnants (including head and flippers and shells) are hoisted to the top of the jacal immediately over the open end—the conventional Seri larder—to soften in the sun for hours or days; and on these tough and gamey tidbits the home-stayers, especially the youths, chew luxuriously whenever other occupations fail. In times of plenty, such sun-ripened fragments of reeking feasts are rather generally appropriated first to the children and afterward to the coyote-dogs; and it is a favorite pastime of the toddlers to gather about an inverted carapace on hands and knees, crowding their heads into its noisome depths, displacing the rare scavenger beetles and blowflies of this arid province, mumbling at the cartilaginous processes, and sucking and swallowing again and again the tendonous strings from the muscular attachments, until, overcome by fulness and rank effluvias, they fall asleep with their heads in the trough—to be stealthily nudged aside by the cringing curs attached to the rancheria. Commonly the carapace and the longer bones from the flippers of the larger specimens are preserved entire for other uses, and are cleaned only by teeth and talons and tongues, aided by time but not by fire; but the plastron, unless broken up and consumed immediately, is subjected to a cooking process in which it serves at once as skillet and cutlet—it is laid on the fire, flesh side up, and at intervals the shriveling tissues are clawed off and devoured, while at last the scorched or charred scutes themselves are carried away to be eaten at leisure.[272]