118 WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 



rather bigger and stronger than the average Scot, and as 

 reliable-looking, and yet perhaps a little happier than we are, 

 even in their anxious times. 



I don't think our Norse crew found Belfast altogether a bed 

 of roses. Some had shore leave, with five shillings each to 

 spend up town. Our cook, or steward, told me of their 

 adventures. He heard of them from the watchman, who 

 was made their confidant. Now they are ship's property. 

 Seven of them, all young fellows, " very greenhorns," said 

 the cook, washed, put on celluloid collars, brushed up, and 

 sallied forth at night, and they had barely got to the bridge 

 along Queen's Quay when three of them had given their five 

 shillings to maids of Erin, fair, frail things in shawls, and the 

 coy creatures fled and the three came home to the ship 

 lamenting so the watchman said. The others, to a certain 

 extent, enjoyed all the tumasha, and, to be sociable, bought a 

 penny Union Jack buttonhole, badges that almost everyone 

 was wearing ; what they signified they don't quite know yet. 

 It was jolly lucky they weren't killed. They went up Bally 

 Macarack Street, in the heart of the Roman Catholic dis- 

 trict, and were mobbed by Nationalists, fifteen girls and 

 a dozen men. Happily the police arrived in time. The 

 tallest of our crew got a severe kick on the part he sits on, 

 and the smallest got a " shock," as he said, on his eye, and 

 they say : " If we lies here in Belfast one years we no go shore 

 again ! No fears ; dem's folk's mad, dem's crazy ! What's 

 all that for-dumna 4 Ulster ' dems shouts all de time ? " 



We are picking out our course to-night (Monday) on 

 the chart rather comfortably in the cabin. It is smooth and 

 we are in mid-Channel, in the north-west we have Holyhead 

 Light. We forecast a run of luck for ourselves. We've had 

 our share of head-winds and little difficulties since we left 

 the south of Norway, so with the compasses we mark out 

 six days' run as long as to-day's run, which will bring us 

 to Azores in six days, or seven days sure, if we have a little 

 strong fair wind we won't think of nasty rough weather. 



But "Just about here," the compasses pause, "I was 

 three weeks," said Henriksen. "That Christmas was the 



