25:2 THE SEA. 



and so large that I at first mistook it for a walrus. Signal was made for the Hope to follow 

 astern, and, trembling with anxiety, we prepared to crawl down upon him. 



" Petersen, with the large English rifle, was stationed in the bow, and stockings were 

 drawn over the oars as mufflers. As we neared the animal our excitement became so 

 intense that the men could hardly keep stroke. I had a set of signals for such occasions, 

 which spared us the noise of the voice; and when about three hundred yards off the oars 

 were taken in, and we moved on in deep silence with a single scull astern. 



" He was not asleep, for he reared his head when we were almost within rifle-shot ; 

 and to this day I can remember the hard, careworn, almost despairing expression of the 

 men's thin faces as they saw him move : their lives depended on his capture. 



" I depressed my hand nervous!}', as a signal for Petersen to fire. M'Gary hung upon 



THE HOME OF THE EIDER DUCK. 



his oar, and the boat, slowly but noiselessly sagging ahead, seemed to me within certain 

 range. Looking at Petersen, I saw that the poor fellow was paralysed by his anxiety, 

 trying vainly to obtain a rest for his gun against the cut-water of the boat. The seal 

 rose on his fore-flippers, gazed at us for a moment with frightened curiosity, and coiled 

 himself for a plunge. At that instant, simultaneously with the crack of our rifle, he 

 relaxed his long length on the ice, and, at the very brink of the water, his head fell help- 

 less to one side. 



" I would have ordered another shot, but no discipline could have controlled the men. 

 With a wild yell, each vociferating according to his own impulse, they urged both boats 

 upon the floes. A crowd of hands seized the seal, and bore him up to safer ice. The men 

 seemed half crazy : I had not realised how much we were reduced by absolute famine. They 

 ran over the floe, crying and laughing, and brandishing their knives. It was not five minutes 

 before each man was sucking his bloody fingers, or mouthing long strips of raw blubber. 



" Not an ounce of this seal was lost. The intestines found their way into the soup- 

 kettles without any observance of the preliminary home processes. The cartilaginous parts 

 of the fore-flippers were cut off in the melee and passed round to be chewed upon ; and 



