WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 201 



four yards, and it got disquieted and turned back to the ship, 

 then slipped over the floe- edge into the sea, and we rowed 

 after it, and a sailor made a dozen poor attempts to cast a 

 lasso over its neck ; he bungled it over somehow and we 

 towed it, using dreadful language at us, alongside, and 

 afterwards got it on board into a cage. 



I think this recapitulates our bearing for twenty-four 

 hours rather concisely. It does not quite convey the slight 

 chill you feel at setting out, on however beautiful and silvery 

 a morning, at, say, five o'clock, after being up all night, to 

 wade across ice and snow to face the horrible and dangerous 

 Ursus Maritimus, or white monarch of the pole, and it does 

 not give the calm sense of conceit that you feel when you 

 have succeeded in slaughtering the same, and preserving your 

 skin ; it would be bad form to express such sentiments loud 

 out. The only sign our Spanish friends showed was that they 

 were a little sallow when they set out, and a little warmer 

 in colour on their return. A. C. H. quotes Neil Munro 

 to express his feeling. " Man," he says, " am feeling shust 

 sublime could poo the mast oot o' the ship an' peat a Brussels 

 carpet." No wonder, lucky fellow, a one-thousand-and- 

 twenty-pounder for his first polar bear. His first black 

 bear we thought mighty big a year or two ago, away back 

 in the barrens of Newfoundland ; it weighed three hundred 

 and eighty pounds. Which is best to eat, polar or black 

 bear, it is hard to say. I vote for black bear pre sale and 

 fed in the blueberry season. Still, the meat of the polar 

 bears here is extremely good and feels strengthening. One 

 needs strengthening. Yesterday was high summer, just 

 touching freezing, but still and a little sunny ; to-night a gale 

 from north-east and cold, and ice driving gently round us. 



But I am not complaining ! No I've been a summer 

 and autumn in Antarctic ice. After the bad days and black 

 nights there in January and February, nothing north of the 

 Line need be considered as intolerable. 



One note before winding up this day's reckoning. If you 

 wish to think of the Arctic or Antarctic, you must think in 

 colour somehow or other. If you think in black and white 

 you miss the idea, and form a wrong impression all in black 



