Indeed, more than
knees go under the manhole. When pressed for room, the Aleut has been
known to crawl head foremost, body whole, right under the manhole and
lie there prone between the feet of the paddlers with nothing between
him and the abysmal depths of a hissing sea but the parchment keel of
the bidarka, thin as paper.
How do these thin skin boats escape wreckage on a sea where tide-rip
washes over the reefs all summer and ice hummocks sweep out from the
shore in winter tempest? To begin with, the frost that creates the ice
clears the air of fog, and the steel-shod pole either sheers the
bidarka off from the ice, or the ice off from the bidarka. Then, when
the fog lies knife-thick over the dangerous rocks in summer time, there
is a certain signal to these deep-sea plunderers. The huge Pacific
walrus--the largest species of walrus in the world--lie in herds of
hundreds on these danger rocks, and the walrus snorts through the gray
mist like a continual fog-horn. No better danger signal exists among
the rocks of the North Pacific than this same snorting walrus, who for
all his noise and size is a floundering coward.
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