The Bungalow Boys Along the Yukon Part 6

The old bull was rus.h.i.+ng down on the boat, rearing his head aloft. His ugly creased neck tilted back. His great tusks impended above the boat's side ready to crush on it as a terrier seizes on a rat. But before the ponderous jaws could close, "Spit!" came from Tom's automatic, and dazed and finally wounded unto death, the huge bull slipped back harmlessly into the water.

As the craft careened in the swell of the sinking body, Sandy almost went overboard for a second time. But he managed to save himself just as the carca.s.s came bobbing up alongside. He seized the boat hook, jabbing it down into the great body, and gave a yell of triumph.

"I got him," he yelled, as the others came running and stumbling toward him. "Come on, and get your dead walrus!"

A cheer answered him. Not long after, with the s.h.i.+vering Sandy wrapped in what dry clothing they could spare, the boat, with its prize in tow, was sculled back to the s.h.i.+p where, as you may imagine, all hands had a thrilling tale to tell.

Sandy was made to gulp down boiling coffee and was hustled into a change of garments, while the others examined the body of the monster in whose slaying it might be said that they all had had a more or less active share. Tom felt not a little proud of his part as they gazed at the dead bull and admired his huge proportions. Soon Sandy joined them.

"Aweel, I'm thinking that we'll have a christening the noo," said he.

While the sailors were skinning the walrus and cutting out the four foot tusks, Sandy s.n.a.t.c.hed up some strips of blubber and vanished. In a quarter of an hour or so he appeared with a cooking pan in his hands. Its contents was steaming and emitted a rank and fishy odor.

"What in the world have you got there?" Tom wanted to know.

"Give you three guesses," rejoined Sandy.

"It smells like sixty," observed Jack.

"Yes; keep to leeward of us, my lad," put in the captain.

"Well, what is it?" asked Mr. Dacre.

"Soup,--walrus soup," guessed Jack.

"If it is, I don't want any of it," declared Tom, sniffing the fishy odor.

"Don't worry, _you_ won't get any," chortled Sandy.

"What are you going to do with it?" asked Jack.

"As I observed some time ago, we'll have a christening the noo," was the rejoinder.

"A christening!"

"Aye! That native said that old 'Frozen Face' needed a shampoo wi'

seal oil, but I'm thinking that walrus oil will be just as good or better."

A shout broke from the boys.

"Good for you, Sandy," cried Tom. "Come on, we'll give the old boy a bath in it. He surely looked out well for you to-day."

While their elders looked on amusedly, the lads doused the long suffering totem with the ill-smelling oil and danced around the aged figure with mock solemnity, intoning what was meant to be a mystic chant:

"_Oh, totem in our hours of ease,_ _Uncertain, coy and hard to please;_ _Now you have had your walrus bath,_ _Be nice and kind, and smile and laugh;_ _And kindly watch our destiny,_ _Northward, toward the Arctic Sea._"

CHAPTER VII.

AN ADVENTURE OF JACK'S.

"What's that yonder, uncle?" asked Tom.

It was the morning after the adventure with the walrus and the _Northerner_ was steaming steadily on toward Valdez, her next port of call on her voyage north. At that place she would take on coal for the final stage of her journey to St. Michaels near the mouth of the Yukon, where the party would be left after the small steamer had been put together.

Tom was a great boy to lean against the rail scanning the sea in search of something that might prove exciting. He had been gazing steadily against the far horizon for some minutes. Mr. Dacre hastened to his cabin and came back with a pair of binoculars.

He raised them and looked fixedly in the direction that Tom had indicated.

"It's a whale," he declared, "or rather a whole school of them, if I'm not mistaken. They are dead ahead of us. If we keep on this course, we shall run almost squarely into them."

He hastened off to inform the captain and Mr. Chillingworth while Tom set out to find his chums. He found them in the wireless room practicing on the key. At his news they speedily jumped up and joined him in the bow.

Within an hour they came into plain sight of what appeared at first to be so many giant logs rolling about in the sea. All at once, among the "logs," which of course were the whales, appeared splashes of white water. The leviathans swam swiftly here and there as though in fear.

"What's the matter with them?" wondered Tom.

"Maybe it's the s.h.i.+p's coming that has scared them," suggested Jack.

"It's the totem at the bow, mon," declared the Scotch boy solemnly.

The captain leaned over the bridge rail and shouted to them.

"There's a school of killers in among them."

"Killers?"

"Yes, the killer whales. They are the enemies of the other kind and just naturally take after them when they meet. Watch close now!"

The boys needed no second bidding. Strangely fascinated by the turbulent scene below, they leaned far out to watch the thras.h.i.+ng water. It was a strange combat of the sea. The monster fish appeared, in their panic at the advent among them of the killers, not to notice the oncoming steamer.

"Look close now and you'll see tall, upright fins moving about among 'em," sung out the captain.

"I see them!" cried Tom. "Are those the killers?"

"That's what. Sea tigers, they ought to call 'em. They're as bad as sharks," was the reply.

Mr. Dacre joined the boys. One of the biggest of the whales appeared to be an especial target for the "killers." They pursued it relentlessly in a body.

"Wow!" cried Tom suddenly, "look at that!" The big whale had leaped clear out of the water, breached, as the whalers call it. Its body shone in the sunlight like a burnished surface. They saw its whole enormous bulk as if it had been a leaping trout.

"He's as big as a house!" cried Jack.

"I've seen houses that were smaller!" laughed Mr. Dacre; "your bungalow, for example."

Down came the whale again with a splash that sent the spray flying as high as the _Northerner's_ mast tops.