UNCOMFORTABLT NEAR BEING THE LAST. 183 



difference, as far as I have been able to ascertain, 

 between them and the " right" whale of the Greenland 

 seas, but from some caprice of nomenclature for which 

 there is no accounting. 



So in leisurely fashion we worked north, keeping, of 

 course, a bright look-out all the way for straggling 

 cachalots, but not seeing any. From scraps of informa- 

 tion that in some mysterious fashion leaked out, we 

 learned that we were bound to the Okhotsk Sea, it being 

 no part of the skipper's intentions to go prowling around 

 Behrings Sea, where he believed the whales to be few 

 and far between. 



It may be imagined that we of the crew were not at 

 all pleased with this intelligence, our life being, we 

 considered, sufficiently miserable without the addition 

 of extreme cold ; for we did not realize that in the 

 Arctic regions during summer the cold is by no means 

 unbearable, and our imagination pictured a horrible 

 waste of perpetual ice and snow, in the midst of which 

 we should be compelled to freeze while dodging whales 

 through the crevices of the floes. But whether our 

 pictures of the prospects that awaited us were caricatures 

 or no made not the slightest difference. " Growl you 

 may, but go you must " is an old sea-jingle of the truest 

 ring ; but, while our going was inevitable, growling was 

 a luxury none of us dare indulge in. 



We had by no means a bad passage to the Kuriles, 

 which form a natural barrier enclosing the immense 

 area of the Okhotsk Sea from the vast stretch of the 

 Pacific. Around this great chain of islands the naviga- 

 tion is exceedingly difficult, and dangerous as well, from 

 the ever-varying currents as from the frequent fogs and 

 sudden storms. But these impediments to swift and 



