WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 185 



a pull, the last three years' practice in Edinburgh with our 



most perfect teacher, M. Leon Crosnier, ought to have some 



effect. 

 In Gisbert's Spanish Polar expedition next year, or the 



year after, all men will fence for health's sake. But who 



will instruct ? that is the art fencing without an instructor 



is hopeless. 



A seal or two appear to-day and some little auks. 

 We get the lines and harpoons ready for our two bow 



whale-guns, and other harpoons and lines for walrus boats. 



" Chips," the carpenter, is busy overhauling old oars, and 



making new oars. 



So if all goes well we should soon be fast in a whale, or 



walrus, or up against a bear. 



But we strike the ice rather far east, over two hundred 

 miles from Greenland coast ! Gisbert has tried before to get 

 into Greenland to south and west of Jan May en ; this time we 

 hope to get in from farther north, about seventy-five degrees, 

 and hope to strike Shannon Island or that neighbourhood. 

 We have some slight hope of meeting Eskimos, and possibly 

 musk oxen. Captain Trolle of the Danish navy was up here 

 in 1906-1908, and charted the coast of North-East Greenland. 

 He took command when the leader, Mylius Erichsen, lost his 

 life in the interior. He says there is a hut on the island, 

 one of these lonely dwellings visited by human beings once 

 a century, generally under pressure of circumstance. 



At afternoon cafe* we overhaul cameras like the rest of 

 their outfit, the cameras of the Dons are of the best, as neat 

 as can be : and we pull out all the books on recent polar 

 work, which we and De Gisbert have between us, and discuss 

 the writers we know. 



Small floes are now on all sides, and mist. We run through 

 one small stream of ice, shoving the pieces aside, leaving our 

 green paint behind and some splinters on the jagged ice feet, 

 and it is rather a sensation for my friends, their first experience 

 of ice then we heave to and drift. By-and-by we spot a 

 hooded-seal and our first watch goes to the bows in the 

 faint hope of getting a shot from board-ship, as we think 

 the movement in the small boat would spoil their aim, and 



