I stood there spellbound, for such a panorama of uncouth animals, lying in compact masses as far as the eye could see, I had never beheld before. They presented a curious sight, their breath exhausting from their nostrils in clouds of steam, and they appeared to take little or no notice of the approaching boat. It was now the midnight twilight; on the northern horizon the rays from both the setting and the rising sun were strangely intermingled. With the boat still moving gently ahead, the skipper became so enraptured with the sight that he let the _Witch_ bump into a piece of ice with such force that she started a seam in the starboard side and soon began to leak, though not seriously. Meanwhile the old Eskimo leader was strutting along the deck puffing at his big brass pipe as a solace for his growing excitement. Presently he ordered the oomiak (skin boat) to be brought alongside and the hunting paraphernalia to be placed therein. The Eskimos, sitting in the boat ready for the fray, whined like so many coyotes, levelling their guns and trying their sights, while they waited in anxious expectancy for the word to start. The sun was rising under a black cloud, and there was not yet enough actinic light for me to take my photographs. While we waited the natives grew angry with me for not commencing the attack, but still I delayed. Dick put the binocular to his eyes and scanned each herd in turn, the animals lying upon the ice in solid masses. "There's not a female in the bunch," he announced. "Just a lot of love-sick bulls drifting towards the Arctic." "Why don't they live with the females and help to look after the young?" asked Flynn. "They are not like the polygamous seal, with his harem of twelve to fifteen wives," said the skipper, who was a surprisingly well-spoken man. "The walrus has one wife a season, with whom he lives upon the ice-floes. Sometimes they go ashore, climbing up the rocks and rolling in the green grass and fresh water; then they go back to the sea again. The young one is born in the month of May or June, upon the ice. Then the females, with the youngsters, separate from the bulls and migrate north until they reach the great permanent ice-pack. Those bulls that you see form the rear-guard of the annual migration." [Illustration: THE FIRST HERD OF WALRUS SIGHTED--THE ANIMAL WITH UPRAISED HEAD IS THE SENTRY. _From a Photograph._] "What do they use their tusks for?" I inquired.