266 WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 



side by side or end on, in one cage, with a partition between 

 them. . . . 



Already they take seal blubber, and Gisbert has put a tin 

 of preserved milk into their drinking water. Their poor 

 gums were bleeding with efforts to chaw the wicked ropes 

 that held them by the neck. . . . 



Four P.M. The children are now more quiet, one con- 

 descends to lick my finger and has accepted several slices of 

 fresh seal blubber, with every manifestation of pleasure, and 

 it carefully licks each paw afterwards, toe by toe. 



Now it is my watch for a bear, and I do not feel in the 

 least inclined for more bear, on the floe in orthodox style, 

 or in the water style, which Scoresby cautiously observes 

 " presents a certain amount of safety." He studied in 

 Edinburgh University. A belt of mist is down again to 

 westward and there is a fine fog bow ; we are in the sun, 

 but cannot proceed, blindfolded, as it were. We might get 

 into some cul-de-sac in the floe ice. 



Odd, is it not, that only a few minutes after writing ex- 

 pressions of disinclination for bear I was working at a poor 

 attempt to get effect of a fog bow in water-colour, and some- 

 one shouted " Bear ! " and I had to dive for rifle and pistol, 

 tumbled into the boat with four men and rowed away into 

 the sun's glitter. Sure enough the bear was there, swimming 

 across from one tiny floe to another, so there was the chance 

 in the water recommended by Scoresby. We swung along 

 at a good rate and I got it, first shot, in the centre of the 

 brain, at about twenty yards with the pistol, which made up 

 a little for the absence of a stalk. Great was the joy of the 

 men over the '38 automatic and its deadly effect. To 

 anyone who has not had the excitement of shooting a sitting 

 rabbit, I would recommend polar bear shooting in the water : 

 on a floe in difficult ground there is a chance for the bear, 

 a definite chance, and quite a good chance too for the bear, 

 if the hunter is a duffer. But of course, as compared with 

 rabbit-shooting, there is the difficulty of getting to a floe with 

 a bear on it, and you may be nipped in the ice, or you may 

 die of scurvy, so rabbit-shooting taking it all round may be 

 safer. 



