238 WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 



fast to a young one the rest of the family, parents and 

 relatives, are down on you and you have a chance of getting 

 the great ivory spear through your boat. There is all the 

 possibility of lines and legs getting mixed, boat upset, or 

 dragged under floes, and lots more, if you care to tot them up. 

 Curiously, there have been far more lives lost at bottle- 

 nose whaling than at that of the larger kinds (the bottle-nose 

 and narwhal are about the same size). A bottle-nose is not 

 larger than the narwhal, but it goes off with such a dash 

 that I have known several men to have been carried over- 

 board Captain Larsen for one. He told me he went over 

 with coil round his leg, and another man in front ; he got 

 loose but the other man never came up again. 



The great Svend Foyn was once taken overboard that 

 was with a five-inch rope, after a finner whale, which is 

 seldom or never known to check its first rush. This one did, 

 slacked the line and Svend Foyn came to the surface and 

 struck out and clambered on board, where the mate stood 

 white with horror, and all the welcome he could muster was : 

 " I I I am afraid you are wet, Captain ! " and Foyn 

 laughed himself dry. . . . 



Then Fortune gave a belated smile on our adventurers. 

 The foolish bear left the immense floe, on which it was 

 perfectly safe, and took a swim to a small one lying on the 

 far side. Our boat having gone round after this narwhal, 

 was therefore able to spot something moving across the calm 

 water, and when the object got to the floe and crawled out 

 on to the ice, great was their rejoicing to find their bear 

 again. So they pursued it again and killed it with one head 

 shot, one in the neck, and three in the body. It was a small 

 bear, a female about three metres, thirty centimetres that 

 is, seven feet six inches and had bad teeth and looked old ! 

 My last, about the same length, had splendid teeth and 

 looked young. This accepted measurement, which we 

 take from nose to tail, does not give a true impression of the 

 size of a bear, for this bear standing up would be about nine 

 feet in height. I do not see why we should not measure a 

 bear standing up as we measure man, from top of his head 

 to his heel. We never think of giving a man's height in feet 



