How did they
steer their cockle-shell skiffs--these Vikings of the North Pacific; or
did they steer at all, or only fly before the gale on the wings of the
mad north winds? Who can tell? The feet of man leave earth sometimes
when the spirit rides out reckless of land or sea, or heaven or hell,
and these plunderers of the deep took no reckoning of life or death
when they rode out on the gale, where the beach combers shattered up
the rocks, and the creatures of the sea came huddling landward to take
refuge among the kelp rafts.
Tossing the skin skiffs high and dry on some rock, with perhaps the
weight of a boulder to keep them from blowing away, the hunters rushed
off to the surf wash armed only with a stout stick.
The otters must be approached away from the wind, and the noise of the
surf will deaden the hunter's approach; so beating their way against
hurricane gales--winds that throw them from their feet at
times--scrambling over rocks slippery as glass with ice, running out on
long reefs where the crash of spray confuses earth and air, wading
waist-deep in ice slush, the hunters dash out for the kelp beds and
rocks where the otter are asleep.
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