WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 207 



through bear steak. I noticed the smallest of our Spanish 

 friends, who would blush to face a whole egg in Madrid 

 on a July morning, calmly got outside four this morning, 

 each with its slice of bear ; he has slept a good deal since. 

 We consider that he is a pucca shikari and also a born actor ; 

 it is pure joy to watch his movements of hands and face and 

 body as he and Gisbert jestingly argue out a subject. He 

 told us last night how the wine tasters in South Spain can 

 throw a glass of wine into the air in a thin stream, and catch 

 it all in the glass again as it falls. You see he is showing 

 how it is done. He threw up a glass of 

 pontet canet, but instead of falling back 

 into the glass it all went down his neck 

 and wrist. We laughed some, then he dried 

 himself and went on to show us something 

 else, every now and then popping his head 

 out at the cabin door to see if anything 

 was stirring on the ice-floes. 



Some of my friends plan making a great 

 sanatorium up in these latitudes on claims 

 which we have pegged out in Spitzbergen, 

 so that people who cling to life may go there to get 

 rid of tubercular complaints. There is not an atom 

 of a germ there, so people with chest complaints recover 

 there on the land. But you can have persistent colds on 

 board a vessel, I suppose because of germs belonging to it. 

 Some vessels seem to breed a plentiful supply. I know a 

 vessel that carries colds for all hands on every trip. It is, 

 I believe, somewhat similar with scurvy. 



We got a very ugly brown shark this morning, one of those 

 deep-sea Arctic sharks (Squalus Borealis) that do not follow 

 ships, but live away down fifty fathoms deep and possibly 

 eat cod. Why he came up it is hard to say; possibly he 

 scented seal. We welcomed him with a harpoon as he swam 

 alongside, and got a running bowline round his tail, and slung 

 him alongside, head down, till he nearly died. He was only 

 ten feet eight inches, a rough brown ugly beggar, not so 

 fierce-looking or active as those blue sharks we killed last 

 year, off the Azores, for eating our sperm-whale blubber. 



