MORSE AND MAHLEMOOT. 



441 



when they relax their grasp in July. In a few short weeks, how- 

 ever, they return to stay for the rest of the year and best part of 

 the next. Such brief intervals for navigation in the Arctic Ocean 

 during every July and August are those which lure whaling-ships, 

 and the dark lanes of open water in white ice-floes are the last 

 refuge of many hard-hunted whales, unless they dive, and rise to 

 breathe again in that conjectured clear yet frigid flood of a polar 

 sea, far away under the north star. 



There is nothing more to see, or noteworthy to learn, at or be- 

 yond Point Barrow, even were you to live and drag out a wretched 

 year's existence in looking for it, so you gladden the heart of your 

 skipper and his hardy crew by telling them to shape a course home- 



The Ringed Seal (Phoca foetida). 

 [The common Hair- Seal of the Arctic Ocean.} 



ward. Back through the Straits of Bering, wrapped in a chill 

 thick fog, the little schooner heels, with a singing northwester on 

 her quarter that holds her canvas just as taut as if made of tough 

 wood. She fairly scrapes by the Diomedes the walls of Noorna- 

 book loom up high in a cold, gray fog-light, as though its bold, 

 gray cliffs were right over her spars but the crew know at the time 

 that they are more than two miles away from that surf which noisily 

 thunders on the dark rocks of these islets. That same chill wind, 

 and gloomy fog-surrounding, follows them into Bering Sea not a 

 glimpse of all the land and mountain, which they so plainly dis- 

 cerned going up, have they caught going down. 



What trifles often determine our success or failure in life ! Had 

 it not been for a sudden sunburst from the gloom of a leaden fog 



