CHAPTER XIX 



WE SECURE OUR FIRST SEAL 



MAY 15th it had come to a shown-down. The leads were get- 

 ting more numerous and we had great trouble in finding 

 crossings. Evidences that the ice was drifting to the west 

 were multiplying and it was certain that we could not get ashore in 

 Banks Island until a westerly wind began to drive the ice east 

 toward the land. When we came now to a lead we stopped and 

 made up our minds we would not move again until we had a seal. 

 During the first three or four hours two seals came up within two 

 hundred yards of me and I killed both. And they sank. 



Then followed an hour or two of waiting, at the end of which 

 one came up about two hundred and fifty yards from the hummock 

 where I was lying, although only a few yards from the edge of 

 the lead. The sun was behind me and the light just right. Here 

 the flat trajectory of a rifle that has a velocity of over 3,100 feet, 

 as mine had, has the great advantage that one does not have to 

 worry about estimating distances. Seals often show their shoulders 

 out of the water as far as the region of the heart, but when there is 

 danger of their sinking a body wound is undesirable. My bullet 

 went through the brain, and the dead seal floated so high that I 

 could see instantly he was safe. Storkerson was watching and his 

 repeated shouts of "It floats!" would have delighted the hearts of 

 the manufacturers of a certain kind of soap. 



That evening the diary was as hopeful as it had been appre- 

 hensive the day before. "It is lucky we wrote woe and foreboding 

 in our diaries yesterday. There is nothing of the sort to-day to 

 write about. We are having the first full meal for over a week. 

 No more equal divisions of small portions of food into rations." 



As if for further encouragement we saw this day the first bear 

 track in two weeks. A female with two cubs had been traveling 

 south along one of the leads. For two or three days we had been 

 seeing about one fox track per day, but for a week or two before 

 that not more than one every three or four days. Our struggle 

 to reach the land-fast ice of Banks Island was no less strenuous. 



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