220 WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 



dark clothes look so delicate and ethereal on the floe in this 

 fine mist, and to see a bear's faint yellow coat in contrast ! 



Our party came back towing a drift pine stem which we 

 had spotted far off on the ice from the mast-head. Quite 

 an important find in the wide world of ice. They towed 

 it to the ship with a lasso. 



Gisbert and the writer did quite a lot of lasso practice, 

 partly at a stick set in ice, partly at our dog, as it ran to fetch 

 a glove great sport for us, but the dog soon showed a 

 desire to climb on board by the rope ladder. As we cut 

 off the ice-worn root with our ice axe we discussed the 

 possible journeyings of the pine stem ; from its roots we knew 

 it had grown on rocky ground, from the rings, its slow growth 

 and age, and consequently of the climate it had survived in ; 

 from the known currents and drifts we calculated it came 

 from far-away eastwards, say from the Lena river in Siberia. 

 When tired of lassoing, De Gisbert showed me something 

 about splitting logs. I am not a great expert with an axe, 

 and he is rather, he cut his sea-boot soon almost through 

 the leather of the inside of the instep without cutting his foot. 

 To show him what I could do, with a mighty welt I split a 

 log, and the axe glanced and cut my instep through the sea- 

 boot and two pairs of stockings. A chopped tree and a 

 chopped foot may not appear to have wide or deep interest 

 to anyone but the owner of the foot, and may not seem worthy 

 of record in such Arctic notes as these. But let us pause 

 and consider, if there is not something wonderful and almost 

 inexplicable in this apparently trifling incident. Here you 

 have East meeting East, North meetingNorth ! A " gentleman 

 of Scotland born " proceeds by a devious route from Edin- 

 burgh via Hull to an ice-floe in the North Polar basin. And 

 here, from some unknown river in far Siberia, possibly the 

 Lena, by the great polar current, after possibly years of 

 voyaging, comes this lonely barkless pine stem, and they 

 meet. And the gentleman chops the extremity of the tree 

 with the ship's axe and his own extremity at the same time 

 namely his left instep, as before mentioned. Does not this 

 incident, though trifling in itself, recall the divine words of 

 the Immortal William : " There's a divinity that shapes 



