152 HUNTING THE SEA OTTER. 



especially old Junkey, who had been licking his lips in 

 anticipation of a square meal ; but it was a great relief to 

 ourselves, for the smell of roasting seal throughout the 

 vessel was a thing to be felt. Of course, after such a day, 

 the two following ones were densely foggy ; and, though we 

 groped about aimlessly in the boats, only one otter was 

 seen, though not bagged. 



Thus ended July, with its twenty-five days of storm or 

 fog, the boats being only able to hunt at all during twenty 

 of those days, often only for a few hours, on account of 

 stress of weather; while the sole three clear days, when 

 almost continuous hunting was possible, produced respec- 

 tively eight, ten, and eight otters. 



The coming of August had been eagerly looked forward 

 to as the best month for hunting; for surely in the height 

 of summer if, indeed, there were such a season on this 

 desolate coast some slight cessation of dense fog and 

 cold rain might be expected. But we soon found that 

 such few flowers and fruits as were able to exist amidst 

 such a bleak and humid atmosphere seemed only to bloom 

 and ripen as Nature's protest against the surrounding 

 gloom, instead of being, as we thought, the signs of 

 summer. 



The continuous struggle between the Arctic waters that 

 swept the coast with endless force and the warmer currents 

 from the Okhotsk, or further south, which were hurrying 

 with equal persistence and energy to the north, flowing at 

 times past each other in deceptive silence, at others 

 seeking conflict with angry crests upheaved in the roar 

 and struggle of the tide-rip, could scarcely be conducive to 

 anything like stability in the atmospheric conditions. Add 

 to these the colder and warmer strata of air they carried 

 with them on their surfaces, and supplement all by the 

 hot fumes of boiling springs and volcanic blasts that used 

 to sweep over the boats at certain parts of the coast like 

 breaths from a furnace, and it can easily be understood 

 how small was the chance of even the most elementary 



