WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 271 



silence I heard a shot from away over there, thirty or twenty- 

 five miles off no, it must have been a glacier cracking, a 

 berg calving, perhaps. That sound carries in such weather 

 a tremendous distance, and so too does the wave made in 

 the sea by the ice- cliffs falling. 



Vessels lying in calm several miles away from such glaciers 

 have been nearly swamped with the wave raised by a calving 

 berg. 



The evenings are now, on the 1st of August, just distinguish- 

 able from the day by a little increase of yellow in the sky 

 and pink on the snow. To-night the sea froze over with a 

 thin coat of ice and we go rustling through it. 



Later, about twelve o'clock, we were in an open lane, 

 between floes and no thin ice, where a family of narwhals 

 seemed to be working for their living. So we lowered a 

 whale-boat as quietly as possible and rowed gently after 

 them, and as usual, just as we got, say, to within forty yards, 

 and held the harpoon aimed ready to drive it into the biggest 

 bull, say at twenty yards, for they show very little above 

 water, they quietly slipped under for other ten or twenty 

 minutes, and then appeared several hundred yards away. 

 With modern big harpoon-gun from the bow of the small 

 whaling steamer, we can harpoon from thirty to forty yards, 

 but in shooting from the bow of small boat close to water's 

 level the range is more limited. We tried waiting, following, 

 and circumvention, and when we tried to cut across their 

 course, one of them broke water actually between the oar 

 blades and the boat and made a great swirl ; and evidently 

 this too close contact scared the family party, and they all 

 disappeared, and we went on board, still hopeful, however, 

 for three times at least we had been within a second, or say 

 two yards, of our chance of securing a great white ivory horn. 



. . . Our patience was tried again and the writer's was 

 found wanting. I had turned in and heard the boat being 

 lowered away, and let a crew go without me, and never heard 

 them come back, though there must have been thunderous 

 treading of sea-boots on deck a foot above my head, ropes 

 falling and blocks rattling you can sleep soundly here when 

 you get the chance. 



