178 HUNTING THE SEA 



the year following, and had anchored for the night in seven 

 fathoms of water about the middle of the bay, when a 

 tremendous sea set in suddenly, followed by a gale of 

 wind, and, before the frozen sails could be unloosened, the 

 great Pacific rollers had got her in their grip and had 

 pitched her like a cork upon the shore. No lives were 

 lost, fortunately, but they spent a miserable six months in 

 the little fishing settlement on the other side of the island 

 until rescued by a cruiser and taken to Hakodate. 



We carried a good breeze with us for a short time only 

 before it fell a dead calm, which continued with the usual 

 dense fog until the following afternoon, when it cleared up 

 a bit, when we found ourselves beyond Otter Island and 

 close to the southern extremity of Yetorup. We drifted 

 about in a cold, wet fog and rain all that night, with 

 occasional light breezes springing up and dying away as 

 suddenly as they came. A school of enormous fin-back 

 whales or rorquals passed slowly close alongside of us, 

 dwarfing our seventy odd feet of length with their grand 

 proportions. The night was lighted up with a grand display 

 of sheet lightning; but we got little rest as we were tossed 

 and tumbled about, until we thought we should roll our 

 masts out, in the grip of a tide-rip which seems always to be 

 running off either end of the island. Morning found us 

 abreast of the island of Shikotan, a gentle two-knot breeze 

 fanning us along all day on our southerly course. 



The fog got lighter as we left our inhospitable hunting 

 ground farther astern, enabling us to see the varied bird 

 life that peopled the waters. Flocks of dusky petrels, 

 boatswain birds with and without their long tail feathers 

 and Mother Carey's chickens, besides gonies, while 

 albatrosses and many others surrounded us on all sides. 



A large sword fish jumped high out of the water five or 

 six times close beside us, no doubt in the endeavour to- 

 escape those cruel hooked teeth of a grampus which was 

 hunting it with all the persistency and relentless ferocity of 

 its kind. During the night our starboard quarter was struck 



