“As the distance between us and the game steadily narrowed, we began to realise that we were likely to meet with rather formidable antagonists. Their aspect was forbidding in the extreme, and our sensations were perhaps not unlike those which the young soldier experiences who hears for the first time the order to charge the enemy. We should all, very possibly, have been quite willing to retreat had we dared own it. Their tough, nearly hairless hides, which are about an inch thick, had a singularly iron-plated look about them, peculiarly suggestive of defence; while their huge tusks, which they brandished with an appearance of strength that their awkwardness did not diminish, looked like very formidable weapons of offence if applied to a boat’s planking or to the human ribs, if one should happen to find himself floundering in the sea among the thick-skinned brutes. To complete the hideousness of a facial expression which the tusks rendered formidable enough in appearance, Nature had endowed them with broad flat noses, which were covered all over with stiff whiskers, looking much like porcupine quills, and extending up to the edge of a pair of gaping nostrils. The use of these whiskers is as obscure as that of the tusks; though it is probable that the latter may be as well weapons of offence and defence as for the more useful purpose of grubbing up from the bottom of the sea the mollusks which constitute their principal food. There were two old bulls in the herd who appeared to be dividing their time between sleeping and jamming their tusks into each other’s faces, although they appeared to treat the matter with perfect indifference, as they did not seem to make any impression on each other’s thick hides. As we approached, these old fellows—neither of which could have been less than 16 feet long, nor smaller in girth than a hogshead—raised up their heads, and, after taking a leisurely survey of us, seemed to think us unworthy of further notice; and then, punching each other again in the face, fell once more asleep. This was exhibiting a degree of coolness rather alarming. If they had showed the least timidity we should have found some excitement in extra caution; but they seemed to make so light of our approach that it was not easy to keep up the bold front with which we had commenced the adventure. But we had come quite too far to think of backing out; so we pulled in and made ready for the fray.