The Journal of a Sporting Nomad 
at one o’clock at night there was no appreciable 
difference in the light then and twelve o’clock 
noon. 
I was asleep one night when the officer of the 
watch sent down word to me that we were 
amongst a large school of Finner whales. As I 
had asked to be advised if we met any, the 
summons was not altogether unexpected, but 
I wished the genus whale at the bottom of the 
sea when I was awakened! However, I tumbled 
up on deck, and was rewarded by seeing an 
extraordinary number of these leviathans playing 
about all round the steamer. There must have 
been hundreds of them. Could some of the 
whaling steamers have known of this school they 
would have soon taken toll of their number. As 
it was, I remained on the bridge watching them 
until we had passed, then again turned into 
my cosy berth. 
After a fine voyage we arrived at our destina- 
tion, Ice Fjord. This is one of the most fre- 
quented fjords of the island. There was a great 
quantity of drift-ice about that made navigation 
difficult. The engines were put “ dead slow,” 
for it would be no sort of joke to ram a small 
iceberg. Spitzbergen, “‘ needle- pointed,” is so 
called on account of the jagged nature of the 
tops of the mountains, which are serrated in 
many instances like the edge of a saw. In the 
early spring and again in autumn the drift-ice 
148 
