They were coming our way, and all hands stood by to show the visitors how we loved to speed the parting guest--our way of showing this being the vocal and instrumental method already described.
"Wesharkoopsi, an Eskimo, who stood right behind me and who had been telling us what an expert he was with the harpoon, was making threatening gestures which boded ill for any walrus that came near us.
"Suddenly, with a loud 'Ook! Ook!' a bull rose like a giant jack-in-the-box right alongside of me, giving us a regular shower bath, and he got both tusks on the gunwale of the boat.
"Wesharkoopsi was not expecting a fight at such close quarters, and he got badly rattled.

Instead of throwing his harpoon he dropped it, yelled madly, and began to spit in the monster's face.

It is needless to state that we never again took Wesharkoopsi walrus-hunting in a whale-boat.
"The others were shouting, swearing in English and Eskimo at Wesharkoopsi, the walrus, and everything in general; some were trying to hit the brute, others to back water.
"I was not eager just then to test the soundness of one arctic explorer's dictum: 'If a walrus gets his tusks over the side of the boat, you must not hit him, as such a course would induce him to back water and upset you; but gently grasp the two-thousand-pound monster by the tusks and drop him overboard'-- or words to that effect.

If this one had got his tusks a quarter inch further my way, he would have had them clear over the gunwale; so I held my rifle at port arms, stuck its business end into the visitor's face, and let him have it--which settled his account.
"That walrus had tried to upset us, but almost immediately another one tried a new variation of the game, an almost successful effort to sink us--a regular dive-tackle.
"He was a large bull that an Eskimo had harpooned.

He showed what he was made of by promptly attacking the float and putting it out of commission, then he proceeded to make off with the harpoon, float, and all.