A. Merritt's Fantasy Magazine, February 1950 — page 96: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

i Pewied ts 96 A. MERRITT’S FANTASY knots, scratching fleas after seal fashion. This time the job was pretty simple. I just had to work along between the little herd of seals and the nearest water edge, from that position, if they were still un- alarmed when I started to shoot, I might even bag all six before they could get to the water. So when I was about four hun- dred yards from the herd, I got down on hands and knees and crawled along, and when I was still closer, 1 wormed my way along, seal fashion. T WAS a lot more difficult to hunt six than to hunt one. Because this was not a regular herd; these fellows seemed to be together only by accident. In a regular herd, watch will be kept, probably, by one or two duly appointed members, while the others enjoy a good snooze, but all six of these fellows were popping up their heads, and there were few times when I could catch them all with their heads down. It was while I was lying prone, playing seal, and pretending to scratch fleas with my elbows, that I first saw the killer = _ whales. There was a whole school of them —a dozen, | should say, and by the look - of the long dorsal fins cutting the water, they were all adults. That made me feel perfectly certain of my seals. They had seen those fins cut- ting the water, I could be sure, and much as they feared bears on land, they feared killer whales in the sea still more. Orca Gladiator, to call him by his dressed-up name, thinks nothing of swal- lowing half a dozen seals one after the other. He swims like a streak; he has a pair of jaws capable of smashing a small boat with one bite; and he fears nothing in the seas except the great sperm whale. I watched the long fins cutting the wa- ter with a hiss of spray about them, and a moment later, I decided that I had reached the right spot. I was beginning to feel a touch of pity for those poor seals, seeing that they had rifles to face on shore, and. devils waiting for them in the water. I gave one look toward the sea, and saw that the whales had disappeared and raised myself to one knee, ready for fast and.accurate shooting. But J did not pull the trigger. For just then it seemed as if a salvo of cannons had been fired from the bottom of the sea. The ice broke up all around me, with a great roaring and smashing sound, and up through the broken ice, close to the seals, shot the projectiles that had smashed the thin sheet—the killer whales! I saw thirty gleaming feet of one of them go into the air with that vast stretch of mouth closing on the body of a seal. I saw the red spurt of that seal’s blood. And then the whole school went down out of sight. But still, as I leaped frantically from one block of ice to another, trying to get back to the main island, those night- mares rushed half a body’s length out of the water to get a luckless seal. Some- times they missed and turned in midair to snap at another. It was frightful; and I was right in the middle of it. I might not be a seal, but I knew that the appetite of Orca Gladiator does not pause for such fine distinctions. I had just jumped from one bobbing little iceberg and managed to get on the verge of a much more substantial chunk when a gleaming, dripping giant shot up, and a vast mouth clapped. together scant inches from my head. I heard the gush of air expelled by the clapping of those jaws, and I saw the tiger gleam in the eye of the killer as it threw itself at me. Into the water beyond me he crashed, and threw up a mass of spray all over me, and drenched me to the skin. On hands and knees in the middle of my ice cake, I remained sweating and trembling, cling- ing sickly to the glassy surface. The killer did not try me again and I did not stay long on my little floe. I started hopping again from one to an- other, using the rifle as a balancing staff, And in a moment more, very weak in the knees, very giddy in the head, I stood again on the rim of the island. Even there | did not pause, but ran as fast as I could straight inland.° For one of the Orcas, or the whole school of them, might decide to top off seal-meat with man’s flesh, and I preferred to stay away from that particular banquet. I sat down and got some of the shud- ders out of me; it was bitterly cold. And though sea water drying and freezing on your body is not so deadly as fresh water, still it's bad enough. So I turned and started back at a fast