Page:Thirty-One Years on the Plains and in the Mountains.djvu/723

Rh hunting was near the mouth of the Yukon river. The captain anchored about twenty miles from land. There were six sealing boats with the schooner, the shooter had charge of his boat, and there were two or three other men v to accompany him. One of my boatmen was a Frenchman and the other a German; they were both stout and willing to work. While I received two dollars

Shooting Seal.

a piece for all the seals killed, they only got one dollar each, making in all four dollars each that the seals cost the company.

In the morning the captain gives each man his course and instructions to return at once when the signal cannon is fired. The first morning that we started out we went about four miles before we saw any seal, when we ran on to a school sleeping on the water. The two boatmen pulled up among them and I turned loose to shooting them and got six out of the outfit before they got away from us. Shooting seal out of a boat reminded me very much of shooting Indians when on a bucking cayuse, as the boat is always in motion, and it is all that a person can do to stand up in it when the sea is any ways rough. That day I killed nine seal and we were called in at two o'clock, as there was fog coming up, and we