Page:They who walk in the wilds, (IA theywhowalkinwil00robe).pdf/68

 complacency of his self-trust forgot all about the great white bear as soon as that crafty marauder had vanished from his sight. And the whole herd forgot with him. The only foe whom Ah-wook had learned to fear was man—represented by the Eskimo, with his swift kayak and deadly swift harpoon. For months there had been no sign of man in all that region. It was a fitting time, when the arctic sun burned so benignly, for the King of the Floes to relax his vigilance.

With ponderous floppings and gruntings, the herd scattered all over the ice. Their rough and oily-black hides, almost bursting with fatness, glistened in the sunlight. The unwieldy cows, tusked like the bulls and almost as ferocious-looking (but the tenderest and most devoted of mothers), sprawled happily as they nursed their ever-greedy calves. These latter, many of them almost as big as their mothers, but as yet without tusks, were as grotesquely unlovely as the offspring of such monstrous parents might be expected to be. As a rule, there is some charm or grace or winsomeness to be found in the younglings of even the clumsiest and ugliest of the wild kindreds. But the baby walrus can only be accounted a gross caricature of babyhood.

It chanced that one young cow, less wary and more adventurous than her companions, was smitten with a whim to try basking on the dry,