Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 1.djvu/287

266 verge, found the almost dead man moving his lips, as if crying for aid, but his voice was gone; not even a whisper responded to his most desperate struggles to articulate. Another minute, it was certain, would have sealed his fate—an ocean grave. It seems that, on coming up from the "great deep," the unfortunate harpooner had attempted to draw himself on to the floe, but this he was too enfeebled to do. When this whale turned flukes, as it instantly did on being struck, it went down perpendicularly for soundings, as the Mysticetus (Greenland whale) generally does. Its great speed, and the resistance of the "drug," with that of the drag of the victim's body, caused such a strain upon the line that it parted. On this very fortunate moment the buoyant "drug" shot up like an arrow, bringing with it its precious freight—a living soul. A few weeks after this same whale, with the four harpoons fast to it, was found in drift ice dead. The Esquimaux state that whenever a harpoon penetrates to the flesh of the whale, it will surely die. Harpoons struck into the blubber, and remaining there, will not prove fatal; it is only so when it goes through the blubber into the "krang," (flesh). Another incident, but of a most fatal character, occurred not many years ago in Field Bay. A party of Innuits were out in two oo-mi-ens (large skin boats) when a whale was struck. The line, in running out, whipped round a leg of the harpooner, instantly tearing it from the body at the hip-joint! The shock capsized the boat and all that were therein. The sea all around the victim became thick with oug (blood). A landing was early sought and effected, but the poor creature soon died. The following sad accident was also related to me: Koo-ou-le-arng's wing-a (husband) was killed, when Ebierbing was a boy, at Kingaite, in Northumberland Inlet. He was out sealing near the base of the high land (Kingaite signifies high land), when an avalanche of snow came suddenly upon him, not only overwhelming him, but a large extent of ice, carrying it and him down, far down into the sea. Being missed,