WHALING AND BEAR-HUNTING 297 



. . . Larsen has gone ashore for fresh milk and also fresh 

 eggs, rowing across the reflections of hill and rocks. 



The candle burns straight up without a flicker ; last night 

 we could not have lit a pipe had we felt so inclined what 

 are we to do about clothes ? Suddenly we feel our double 

 winter clothing is far too thick ; can it be possible that to- 

 morrow morning we will only need thin summer clothes ? 



As we fished we talked more intimately than before. I 

 found my Spanish friends had been in our West Highlands ; 

 they compared this fiord with Loch Etive, and Ben Nevis to 

 a snow-capped mountain we have reflected in the still mirror, 

 and they say the hills remind them of their own Spain, 

 West Scotland, and West Norway do indeed have certain 

 similarity. 



But the quiet ! and the candlelight and the soft northern 

 midnight twilight in the fiord, and the ripple of the boat 

 coming back with the milk are great things ! to be re- 

 membered by themselves for ever and aye. 



If our night at anchor at the entrance of the fiord was 

 quiet and peaceful, Tromso on a Sunday felt even more so. 

 We came in with a brisk breeze blowing sharp ripples on 

 the sheltered strait or loch, and were thankful to be under 

 shelter, for the same breeze off the hill-side, clothed with alder 

 and heather, would be a different thing a hundred miles 

 north by west. 



Even our bears seem to be at rest. By the afternoon we 

 have all got shaven and shorn, and into more townified 

 clothes, in some cases to advantage, in others not so. The 

 blue jacket with brass buttons of the styrmand gives him far 

 more of an air than he had with his old weather-worn pea 

 jacket. But De Gisbert is ruined. The old Gisbert, the 

 bear-killer, and the new F. J. de Gisbert would hardly recog- 

 nise each other. Polar Gisbert in a great thick, deep blue 

 Iceland jersey, broad-shouldered, deep-chested, with black 

 beard with a wave in it, and black hair unbrushed and curling, 

 a vermilion-and- white spotted handkerchief round his throat, 

 loose corduroy knickers and wooden clogs like a Dutchman, 

 was a picture of the jolly deep-sea piratical-looking Columbus 

 we know. But this Gisbert ! of Hamburg and Madrid, in a 



