192 WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 



out-manoeuvred. It is our third to-day ! The mist lifted a 

 little in the afternoon it was charming colour as it lifted 

 and faint blue appeared overhead, and the pools in the ice 

 were most delicate yellow set in snow of faintest pink, each 

 pool edged with emerald. Why the snow takes the delicate 

 tints in northern high latitudes, may someone else explain. 

 My devoir was to attempt its colour in paints, a much more 

 difficult thing than circumventing this poor old yellow bear 

 that I hear snuffing and puffing over the side. My com- 

 panion, Don Luis V., writes his notes beside me, and runs 

 out occasionally to see the bear that is waiting till the gun 

 of the watch (Don Jose") comes off the floe ; it is his turn 

 to shoot. Don Luis got his first bear this afternoon. We 

 were plodding along beside a fairly big and rugged floe, 

 say a mile in length, with a seal or two on it, when someone 

 spotted the pale yellow object far away on the violet- tinted 

 snow, and as it was his watch, he and Gisbert and their men 

 set out over the floe to stalk it. 



The pale yellow coat of a beast on a white floe is less easily 

 distinguished than, say, a man in a black coat, and top hat 

 and umbrella. But unless one is colour-blind one cannot 

 accept its colouring as protective. I must argue this out 

 with my friend Dr Bruce when I return to town, for I see that 

 in his charming and instructive book, " Polar Research " 

 (which everyone should read who is the least interested in 

 either Arctic or Antarctic regions), he thinks the tint of some 

 piece of ice, coloured yellow by algae, is so like the colour of 

 a bear that seals may be misguided enough to mistake him 

 for yellow ice. No, no, Bruin's black nose and eyes you can 

 see for miles, and so too you can distinguish his lemon- 

 yellow coat, almost green in the shadow with the snow's 

 reflection. 



As proof of even the bear's belief to the contrary of this 

 protective colouring theory, he will hold his yellow paws 

 over his black nose, so I am told, when stalking a seal ; and 

 I can vouch myself that one endeavoured to hide both his 

 black nose and yellow body when he stalked me. 



The most prominent thing on a floe, bar a bear, is a piece 

 of brown ice, or yellow ice patch, the first coloured by land 



