50 HUNTING IN THE ARCTIC 



the "Abler" drove through the quartering sea and 

 occasionally a great wave would slap against the house. 

 I rose three times in the night and went on deck in my 

 thin pajamas to see if the island was in sight. A piercing 

 chill was coming down from the distant northern ice, the 

 thermometer recording 37 degrees, F., and I returned 

 to my blanket quickly. To me, ignorant of the ''Abler," 

 and peeping through the httle pane of glass at my bed 

 head, the crested seas seemed vicious, and kept me un- 

 easy all night, for fear that we should be unable to work 

 up to the island if we were carried off too far to leeward, 

 and that we should be blown far south of our course. As 

 the blow increased to forty miles an hour, and might have 

 been able to rise to one hundred and forty for all that I 

 knew, it crossed my mind several times that we might 

 possibly be in for something serious. After we got used 

 to the "Abler" a trifling breeze like this never annoyed 

 us. The captain kept her to it with the fore sail on, and 

 at six next morning land was sighted. During the fore- 

 noon we rounded under the lee of Southeast Cape, St. 

 Lawrence Island, where the sea was still choppy, but not 

 menacing, and proceeded on our way about three or four 

 miles from the shore. Here it was much more comfortable. 

 The wind slackened somewhat; the sun came out and 

 warmed us a bit. Several of us did not get up for break- 

 fast, but all enjoyed some more reindeer meat at lunch. 



The bold Southeast Cape of St. Lawrence Island looked 

 forbidding, and the snow-capped mountains cooled off the 

 wind so that it was about 44 degrees, F., in our cabin in the 

 morning. We held outside the reefs, several miles off shore 

 and the south coast trending northward in a great sweep, 

 to jut out again at the Southwest Cape, took the land out 

 of sight as we plowed along, except for the loftier moun- 

 tains on the promontories. 



