WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 289 



so someone had to shoot and that quickly, so Gisbert and I 

 dived for our respective rifles, and each loaded at the same 

 instant and each fired as we swung past at eighty yards, 

 and each within the hundredth part of a second, and each 

 hit the seal in the middle. Neither of us knows which was 

 the vital shot. We shoved the ship's head against the floe 

 and a man clambered over the bow and made a lasso fast to 

 the seal. It seems a small matter to pot a seal on an ice- 

 floe, but I would give many pounds, shillings and pence to 

 be able to pass on the beauty of the colouring of that chunk 

 of ice and green and lilac reflections in the purple sea, the 

 silvery grey of the seal sparkling in the sunlight on the snow, 

 and the reflected white light on the pink face of the man who 



jumped on to the ice to bring it aboard. The Prophet, we 

 call him, a typical Norseman, with blue eyes, bushy yellow 

 eyebrows, yellow hair and a kindly expression he may be 

 thirty years old, he might be a thousand he is a type. His 

 prophecies almost always come true. " It will be better 

 before it is worse." "We will get another bear before 

 Gisbert cleans his rifle," and so on. Remarks such as above 

 are more interesting in his broken English our steward's 

 broken English this morning almost rose to the level of 

 punning. Archie Hamilton asked him sympathetically how 

 he had slept Archie, Gisbert and the steward all sleep in the 

 fore part of the deck-house, and the bears are just outside. 



