278 WHALING 



meat and Brower had given the whalers all the food he had in 

 his storehouses, they had no more than kept themselves alive; 

 and when the gi'eat herd came up from the south, the men had 

 enough to eat for the first time in five months. 



Two of them were sick with scurvy and two more were 

 threatened, but Doctor Call at once took measures against it. 

 Lieutenant Jarvis, representing the Government, seized the 

 school-house and the refuge station as quarters for the men, 

 and had " Kelly's old house'' torn down for firewood. In clean, 

 reasonably comfortable quarters, with regular exercise under the 

 direction of Doctor Call and with no further fear of starvation, 

 they settled down in something like content to wait for spring. 



On July 28th, having fought her way up the coast day by 

 day through the opening ice, the Bear, laden with food and 

 clothing and coal, reached Cape Smyth and made fast to the 

 ground ice in seventeen fathoms. Changing winds drove the 

 pack ice back toward shore and so seriously threatened to crush 

 her that all hands prepared to leave at a word, and night after 

 night they went uneasy to bed; but on August 15th the wind 

 changed and the pack began to swing away, and the next day, 

 after working back and forth for hours under a full head of 

 steam, she freed herself. Leaving in the whaling vessels 

 enough coal and provisions to last until they reached the near- 

 est port, the Bear headed for Seattle where she arrived on 

 September 13, 1898, after nine months in the Arctic. She had 

 on board one hundred and two men and officers from the 

 wrecked vessels. 



Since the Pacific Steam Whaling Company in 1886 (two years 

 after the first attempt) proved that shore whaling with guns 

 and bombs could be carried on profitably, fleets of steam whalers 

 have been going into the Arctic. But the logs of steam whalers 

 are dull reading; they have little more to offer than the log of 

 a tow-boat or a trawler; and the days of New Bedford's Arctic 

 fleet are done. 



If, however, you search the often almost illegible pages of 

 the log books, you will find quaint narratives of the long 



