Note 135 — Chapter X · AMPHIBIAN MILLIONS. (continued 3)
Reading edition
When turning the stunned and senseless carcasses, the only physical danger of which the sealers run the slightest risk, during the whole circuit of their work, occurs thus: at this moment the prone and quivering body of the “holluschak” is not wholly inert, perhaps, though it is nine times out of ten; and as the native takes hold of a fore flipper to jerk the carcass over on to its back, the half-brained seal rouses, snaps suddenly and viciously, often biting the hands or legs of unwary skinners: they then come leisurely and unconcernedly up into the surgeon’s office at the village, for bandages, etc. A few men are bitten every day or two daring the season on the islands, in this manner, but I have never learned of any serious result following any case.
The sealers, as might be expected, become exceedingly expert in keeping their knives sharp, putting edges on them as keen as razors, and in an instant detect any dulness by passing the balls of their thumbs over the suspected edges to such blades.
The white sealers of the Antarctic always used an orthodox butcher’s “steel” in sharpening their knives, but these natives never have, and probably never will abandon those little whetstones above referred to.
During the Russian management, and throughout the strife in killing by our own people in 1868, a very large number of the skins were cut through, here and there, by the slipping of the natives’ knives, when they were taking them from the carcasses, and “flensing” them from the superabundance, in spots, of blubber. These knife-cuts through the skin, no matter how slight, give great annoyance to the dresser, hence they are always marked down in price. The prompt scrutiny of each skin on the islands by an agent of the Alaska Commercial Company, who rejects every one of them thus injured, has caused the natives to exercise greater care, and the number now so damaged, every season, is absolutely trifling.
Another source of small loss is due to a habit which the “holluschickie” have of occasionally biting each other when they are being urged along in the drives, and thus crowded once in a while one upon the other. Usually these examples of “zoobäden” are detected by the natives prior to the “knocking down,” and spared; yet those which have been nipped on the chest or abdomen cannot be thus noticed, and, until the skin is lifted, the damage is not apprehended.
The aim and force with which the native directs his blow determines the death of a fur-seal. If struck direct and violently, a single stroke is enough. The seals’ heads are stricken so hard sometimes that those crystalline lenses to their eyes fly out from the orbital sockets like hail-stones, or little pebbles, and frequently struck me sharply in the face, or elsewhere, while I stood near by watching a killing-gang at work.
A singular lurid green light suddenly suffuses the eye of a fur-seal at intervals when it is very much excited; as the “podding” for the clubbers is in progress and at the moment when last raising its head it sees the uplifted bludgeons on every hand above, fear seems then for the first time to possess it and to instantly gild its eye in this strange manner. When the seal is brained in this state of optical coloration I have noticed that the opalescent tinting remained well defined for many hours or a whole day after death. These remarkable flashes are very characteristic to the eyes of the old males during their hurly-burly on the rookeries, but never appear in the younger classes unless as just described, as far as I could observe.