222 WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 



open when you came out of the cabin for the blaze of light. 

 What a change, everything sharp and clear, compared to the 

 veiled misty ice effects of last week ! 



We were at breakfast and would have liked time for a 

 pipe before the news came : " An ice-bear ! " and over the 

 bows on to the floe by the rope ladder five of us scrambled. 

 The writer was armed with a heavy double 475, and cart- 

 ridges the size of asparagus, said to be unnecessarily heavy, 

 but Hamilton's last monster bear took five of his 355 magnum, 

 all in pretty good places. It seems to me that a really big 

 bear would be more surely killed by a heavy 475 or 500. 1 

 Bad luck it was to have to travel with a cut foot, and 

 doubly bad at the very start to make a false step and go 



head first into a hole in the floe, and to get wet through, with 

 waders full at the start. However, Archie cleverly caught 

 the rifle and gave me a hand out, and I got rid of some of 

 the water in the way all anglers are familiar with that is, 

 lying on your back and holding up your feet, a few "tut 

 tuts," and we proceeded over hard snow, when we could get 

 it, wading blue shallows from time to time. Two of our 

 seamen went flanking about a mile out on to the floe and we 

 beat up half-a-mile from sea-edge, aiming at the place where 

 we had seen the bears from the crow's nest, a female with 

 two cubs. The chill of the early start, cold water and the 

 soreness of the foot wore off as we slowly covered mile after 

 mile ; sometimes walking was merely a struggle, soft snow 

 covering blocks of ice with horrid pitfalls, other times over 



1 Not proved. The smaller 250 bore and higher velocity seemed to us 

 all to be most effective and stopping. 



