WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 295 



seemed about to die ; in fact, he looks a dead man now. 

 Hamilton too is feeling tired and lies down. Altogether we 

 would be glad to be up some fiord fishing cod for the sake of 

 the rest and fresh food. 



We had a gleam of sun from the north to-night, golden 

 precious sunlight ; it touched waves far away in front of us 

 till they were yellow as golden guineas, while the crests near 

 us were colder, more sickly white than silver or thawing 

 snow. 



Every cloud has its silver lining, but give me the touch of 

 gold on the crests of long waves at the end of a gale, half the 

 crest radiant, and the side in shadow cold, bluish white. 



But our short-lived sun-gleam fades and we are all in grey 

 the timbers creak, creaking anxiously, sorely, and we plod 

 along, two miles to the hour at the best, our disreputable sail 

 set again, a subdued crew longing for land. 



One comfort about this wooden craft is, that she was built 

 for bottle-nose whaling and has bulwarks. The modern 

 steam-whaler is somewhat smaller and has no bulwarks, only 

 a rail, because she must offer as little resistance as possible 

 to a rapid side rush of a big whale. So in such weather, 

 even in this half-gale, they would be under water all but the 

 bridge, whilst here we can go nearly dry-shod behind nearly 

 two and a half feet of bulwark, behind which our too-strong 

 she-cook in slippers can easily dodge the little water that 

 comes on board. 



Seven-forty P.M. An interval here of twenty-four hours. 



It would take each of us books in black margins to de- 

 scribe the melancholy of the gale ; not a very severe gale, with 

 only low waves for the amount of wind, but they are hard, 

 and telling on our little home. It is remarkable what low, 

 hard waves we have here. South of Norway, with similar 

 strength of wind, I am sure the waves would be twice the 

 height, but here they seem very hard and give heavy hits for 

 their size. South in the sub-tropics, with half-an-hour's 

 wind, I have seen waves get up twice as high as those we had 

 last night, which were not a bit dangerous have had them 

 over the bridge, soft and warm, and no harm done; here 



