246 WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 



should say. Light or no light, he fires his camera. We could 

 not help smiling the other day when he went for the first 

 time on to the floe with a party to photograph a bear-hunt. 

 Hardly had he gone five yards when one leg went deep into 

 a hole in the floe and his shoe came off. He emptied the 

 water, and then the other came off, so he hastily fixed his 

 tripod, fired a shot at the ship and came on board again, 

 and took to the guitar and his proper offices. To-night a 

 sudden idea seized him and he left his cosy corner by our 

 galley fire and Johanna, our "she- cook," and came with 

 guitar and that instrument called the mouth-organ, and 

 arranged our bears' heads and skins on the main-hatch, and 

 sat himself down on a block of wood between them and got 

 one of the men to fire his camera at him. But first he pro- 

 duced a pocket-mirror, when I called his attention to a hair 

 being astray, and having arranged that, he pulled his white 

 jacket into position, fixed up the guitar and mouth-organ 

 and struck a fine pose. I might have fired a plate at him, 

 but there was not nearly enough light. The head of 

 Hamilton's enormous bear, as if resentful of this last indignity 

 of having to pose in such a picture, broke the barrel it rested 

 on as if in protest even the head and neck is a big lift for 

 one man. 



Another picture composed itself a little later. We 

 watered ship from one of these shallow blue pools on the 

 floe, two men at the pool filling tin pails with a large tin 

 bailer. To encourage them our jolly, burly vivandiere went 

 out to them with her cheery laugh, carrying a glass and 

 bottle of aqua vite. There was colour ! and if not elegance, 

 a beauty of fitness, which is saying a good deal for the lady ; 

 the ample, strong form, in pale blue and white pinafore kind 

 of dress, tripped over the floe, and the deep blue of the 

 sailors' clothes and her red cheeks, and the golden yellow 

 of the aquavit, the grey of the zinc pails, and the blue and 

 white of the snow, suddenly struck one as the first decided 

 effect of strong colour contrast which we have seen for 

 days. 



Nothing very exciting to-day, mist and snow on deck till 

 evening, when it cleared, and became very calm. We were 



