288 WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 



and we are free and in a handsome, rolling, free-born, deep-sea 

 true-blue ocean swell. Everyone is pleased. One is bound 

 to admit that at any time in the ice there is, especially to one 

 who knows about it, an indefinable sense of strain. This 

 strain, slight as it is, expresses itself in our crowd. De Gisbert 

 is playing " The Cock o' the North " on the mouth melodeon, 

 with great go ; the writer has just adapted the old sea chantey 

 to the bagpipes, "What shall we do with a Drunken Sailor," 

 and a violent desire to excel at lasso-throwing has seized 

 Archie, and so on. 



Even our home, lately so sedate and dignified and re- 

 strained in its movements in amongst the ice, has taken a 

 jolly seaman-like lurch and roll. The crow's nest and mast, 

 shining in the sun, go swinging to and fro across the sky 

 now she puts her nose down into the blue, pleasantly, and 

 rises and our old level horizon of the ice days is away below 

 us as our bows point to the skies right and left we roll and 

 we swing her south-east, for habitable land, for Tromso 

 and Trondhjem and green trees growing and new fresh food ; 

 for even a few months in the ice with food getting rather stale 

 makes us hanker a little after a new kitchen. We are tired 

 of eating bear and of looking at their legs, which adorn our 

 shrouds, great red-black limbs that we see all day swinging 

 against the sky and eat slices of at every meal. Eating and 

 seeing dead bear and hearing and smelling the living captives 

 twenty-four hours of the day is too much of a good thing, 

 so this is why we hanker after a new kitchen. 



I dislike a storm at sea, but I do confess I love the sea 

 when it is smooth and blue, and it soothes you with a long 

 gentle roll such as we have to-day. 



It looks as if we were to have a smooth crossing to Norway, 

 still the fiddles must come down from our cabin walls and 

 again grace our little table. For in a small boat such as 

 ours every yachtsman knows that they are inevitable whilst 

 deep-sea sailing. Gisbert cleans his rifle and the fiddles are 

 on the table ! so we are really done with the Arctic in the 

 meantime. He and I each used our rifles an hour or two ago 

 in the ice. No one knew who was to shoot at a seal on a floe 

 that possessed a coat we all envied ; we were rapidly passing, 



