WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 191 



into produce for patent leather, margarine, and olive 

 oil. 1 



We had a pull of about a mile in the evening in our whale- 

 boat three double sculls and attempted to approach four 

 seals on the floe edge, but they dived into the water. A 

 young member of the party came up and had a look at us, 

 and Archie put a very pretty shot from the moving boat into 

 its head at about ninety yards and we pulled it aboard 

 before it had time to sink. 



On the 9th July the air and mist were still southerly, and 

 there was nothing doing except painting ice studies, firing 

 at marks with our various rifles and pistols, shifting from one 

 floe to another and drifting southerly at about twenty miles 

 per day on the cold current, that brings the polar ice and 

 water down past East Greenland to keep the people in the 

 British Isles from becoming too slack. Our Spanish friends 

 are brisk as can be in the cold and damp, busy all day 

 stripping rifles, and pistols, and cameras, and putting them 

 up again with great deftness and neatness of hand and 

 clever nests of tools. 



At aften-mad a tiny seal (Vitulina) put its innocent little 

 face up astern, and Don Luis boldly seized Gisbert's mann- 

 licher and snapped a bullet into it ; the telescope was sighted 

 for a thousand yards at the time, but he got it all right. 



Gisbert and the skipper in the afternoon overhauled plans 

 for the Spanish Polar Expedition. I read some of the endless 

 literature on the subject, and pray inwardly that I may not 

 have to endure any more of either Arctic or Antarctic winter 

 weather, it is the summer and the long daylight of either end 

 of the world that I like. Heaven knows why the night was 

 invented. The comfort of awakening at midnight to find 

 the sun shining and no need for candles or matches is to me 

 beyond words. 



This day, the 10th July, has been more exciting as I write 

 we are circling round a great polar bear that has taken to 

 the sea we keep closing in between it and the ice-floes 

 and it goes snorting along, horribly disgusted at being 



1 Seal oil is manufactured into olive oil in Paris and the patent leather is 

 made at Dundee. 



