IN SERIOUS PERIL 153 



ran by him we were pretty surely lost : we could not recover the 

 shore against the heavy chop of sea, and the wide gulf was be- 

 fore us. Luckily, our skipper guessed right he had the sea- 

 man's sense of situation and we came near enough for his 

 mighty shout to reach the cook; the craft luffed up and after 

 much manoeuvring we managed to get aboard, all but the skip- 

 per pretty well worn out by the toil at the oars. He was of the 

 tireless kind, and, although sixty years of age, still a man of 

 marvellous endurance. We found that the cook, who was left on 

 watch, had turned in for a sleep, and that when he discovered 

 the craft adrift he had got up his anchor, a good job for two 

 men, hoisted jib and mainsail, and set out for the place where 

 he belonged. He did right, but his activity brought us into 

 grave peril. 



For six weeks we amassed and stored fossils and what of liv- 

 ing things came to hand. The wealth to naturalists was mostly 

 in the ancient life. The shores were so wave-swept that there 

 was little life in the shallow waters; on the land, too, it was 

 scanty. Few birds nested near the shore, and when we tried to 

 penetrate inland, the thick, low scrub woods defeated us. We 

 found one or two nesting-places of the eider ducks, but they 

 were not plenty. We tried for the interior across the bogs. To 

 go with safety it was necessary to have an oar under each arm, 

 so that in case one broke through it would be possible to climb 

 out, for one often went up to the armpits in the cold swamp 

 water. So we gave up the attempt, and the interior remained to 

 us unknown, no very tempting mystery, however, for look- 

 ing from the open sea the eye ranged far across it and showed 

 a dull monotonous expanse of northern woods. 



There were no traces of deer, caribou, or moose; black bears, 

 however, seemed to be plenty. At one place near the centre of 

 the south shore we found the ruins of a large whale, which had 

 been wrecked like a ship. On this mass of flesh many bears had 

 been feeding, as was shown by their plentiful tracks. None of 

 them were in sight, but we could trail them inland on the paths 



