168 HaWs First Cajdure. rway, isos. 



silver and cream; tlie rays active and cliang-eable; the sun was about 

 one degree above the Wager s ice horizon, making the fleecy clouds 

 brightly aglow. Tlie hour was 8.20 p. m. The temperature for a 

 number of days remained low, the readings being 37° and even 42° 

 below freezing-point. 



Sealing, however, soon began to prove successful. Nu-ker-zlwo^ 

 with one stroke, harpooned a mother that had on her back a pup 3 feet 

 o inches in length, and on which the hair was beginning to take the 

 place of its white woolly coat. Shortly after this, five other seals were 

 taken. Under the guidance of the Innuits, and with the help of his 

 (»\vn capital seal-dog Ou-e-Ia, on the 5th, Hall made his own first but 

 valued prize, a neit-yitJc, weighing 200 pounds. Finding himself 

 among the busy sealers on the ice, he soon heard Nu-ker-zlioo calling 

 him to the seal-hole at which he was; and seating himself on a snow- 

 block over the unseen hole, and there listening intently and scarcely 

 moving a limb for one full hour, at last he heard a softly-breathing 

 noise beneath the snow. Raising himself then cautiously to his feet, 

 which rested on the furred took-too skin, and with his right hand pois- 

 ing his oo-nar over the spot that Nu-ker-zlioo had imprinted in the snow 

 o\er the seal-hole, with his full force he drove the spear vertically 

 down, and instantly found that the blow was a telling one. The coil 

 of the seal-line held in his left hand, began at once to run out; in fact, 

 tin- whole of it was at first jerked out of his hand. But "quick as a 

 flash," he says : 



I s(.'iz(Ml it a^aiii, or I ^vould have, lost iny prize, as well as the harpoon and 

 liiK". 'V\\v scaleis far and near saw that 1 was last to a seal, and although 1 

 ( alNW lo \ii J:rr-:lioo/^Jcietc! Iciete!^^ — come here! come here! — there was no neces- 

 sity Un- it, lor Ih-Iopc I uttered a word he and all the others were making their way 

 to inc. II;i«l I can;,'!!! a whale, there could not have been more surprised and 



