WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 103 



The origin of the chapter heading is perhaps obscure. It 

 was inspired by the fact that we reached the outer ocean, 

 returned to Colla Firth and shelter in the evening, and 

 dropped anchor in the twilight opposite the Norwegian 

 wooden-painted buildings of the Alexandra Whale Company, 

 which all the workers have left for the winter, the Norsemen 

 to Norway, and the Shetlanders to their crofts, like bees to 

 enjoy their summer earnings through the winter. 



The morning was perfect so we weighed anchor about 

 five A.M. As we passed Haldane's house at Lochend, 

 the black blinds were still down and the sun shining on 

 its white wall, so we did not as much as blow our horn 

 to disturb its inmates but hied away for the open sea 

 again, past these Ramna Stacks and held a course N.W. 

 For about ten miles we kept this course till we got to 

 the forty and sixty fathom soundings that mark the change 

 to deep water, then turned S.W., gradually leaving Shet- 

 land below the horizon with Foula, the outlying craggy 

 island showing grey against a pale rib of salmon-coloured 

 sky beneath the grey pigeon- coloured clouds. And for once 

 in a way we have what may be called a smooth sea, at least 

 there's no white water, and alas and alas, no whales nor any 

 sign of life in the ocean. Evidently the season is over, the 

 Gulf Stream has been switched off. 



There is still so much to do on board that there is barely 

 time for disappointment. The whales must be somewhere, 

 so why not farther down our Scottish coast ; so we keep going 

 south, one man only watching, all the rest of us busy with a 

 variety of work the artist, the first mate and a hand laying 

 down a flooring on our main-deck or waist, made of planks we 

 brought from the wood behind Henriksen's house on Nottero. 

 This is to save our permanent deck, for when the whales do 

 come they will have their dark, silky skin and firm, white fat 

 hauled up on to this from their bodies in the sea, and there 

 will be so much cutting and chopping and hauling wire 

 ropes and iron flinching blocks across this waist or main-deck 

 that our permanent deck would suffer in appearance were it 

 not protected. And the smith is tackling a piece of iron- 

 work, with the bos'n as assistant, making clamps to hold 



