They mounted walrus-tusk spears, tipped with slate, on long driftwood poles. They sledded their umiaks out to the nearest open water, a half mile or so from shore. Here they placed them ready for launching, and built on the windward side a windbreak of ice and snow behind which they found shelter, for it was still very cold. Painted and plumed, here they waited for a week. One day the welcome cry of “Akovuk! akovuk!” (Whale! whale!) rang from the watchers, and the spout of a whale was seen in the open lead. The black body rolled along carelessly, heedless of danger, till it was nearly opposite them. Then the harpooner took his place in the bow of the umiak with two paddlers behind him. The others launched the boat with a rush, and it slid of its own momentum across the space of water till its bow gently rubbed the whale’s side. Kroo, the harpooner, stood erect. With all his strength he drove the slate-tipped and barbed harpoon into the whale’s side, pushing desperately on the long driftwood pole. Then the paddlers backed rapidly away, while he threw overboard about fifteen fathoms of walrus line fastened to the ivory harpoon, and having along its length three sealskin pokes as floats. The wounded whale sounded, and tried to roll the weapon out on the bottom, but failing in this he rose again and began trying to lash the thing from him by blows of his flukes at the pokes. By this time the other umiak was launched, and another and another string of floats was made fast to him in a similar manner, till, buoyed up so that he could no longer dive, and exhausted with his battle with the light pokes, he lay sullen and was lanced to death by Kroo, with an ivory lance on a driftwood pole. Then there was great rejoicing among the villagers. The whale was hardly dead before they began to cut bits of the outer epidermis, the blackskin, from him and to bolt it raw, it being considered a great delicacy among “the people;” indeed, many white men find its nutty, oily flavor pleasant.