The great danger to
the nutshell skin's is from becoming ice-logged when the sleet storms
fall and freeze; and for the rest, the sea makes small matter of a
hunter more or less.
{74} No landsman's still-hunt affords the thrilling excitement of the
otter hunter's spearing-surrounds. Fifteen or twenty-five little skin
skiffs, with two or three men in each, paddle out under a chief elected
by common consent. Whether fog or clear, the spearing is done only in
calm weather. The long line of bidarkas circles silently over the
silver sea. Not a word is spoken, not a paddle blade allowed to click
against the bone gun'els of the skiff. Double-bladed paddles are
frequently used, so shift of paddle is made from side to side of the
canoe without a change of hands. The skin shallops take to the water
as noiselessly as the glide of a duck. Yonder, where the boulders lie
mile on mile awash in the surf, kelp rafts--forests of seaweed--lift
and fall with the rhythmical wash of the tide. Hither the otter
hunters steer, silent as shadows. The circle widens, deploys, forms a
cordon round the outermost rim of the kelp fields.
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