'she blows !' 57 



ship; a lazy seal slid reluctantly from an ice floe as the 

 vessel approached. The ship was sailing into a wonder- 

 ful new world where days and nights begin to merge into 

 one long afternoon, but for Jonathan one thing was 

 needed to make it complete — the spout of a whale. 



A haze covered the sun and cut short the brief glory of 

 the sub-Arctic summer and one by one the icebergs to the 

 eastwards became wrapped in an advancing bank of fog 

 until only the summits of the highest were still visible. 



On the poop-deck Macy, the burly first mate, took final 

 compass bearings of the bergs and the distant peaks of 

 Baffin Land. The fog bank advanced and Jonathan felt 

 its cold touch as it covered the ship, whose upperworks 

 now became mere grey silhouettes which lost their 

 sharpness of definition as they receded from the eye into 

 the grey yet oddly luminous murk. 



Jonathan went below to the galley where old Pierre the 

 Basque cook reviled him for having stayed so long on deck. 

 Normally Jonathan would not have been worried by the 

 outburst for Pierre was always scolding him for being on 

 deck instead of in the galley but on this occasion he could 

 detect real anger in the Frenchman's manner and he 

 knew at once that yet another of the ship's company 

 had fallen prey to the belief that there was a 'Jonah' on 

 board. 



The fog grew thicker. On a well-charted coast the 

 captain would probably have sought an anchorage as 

 soon as he saw the fog approaching but the coast of 

 Baffin Land was only vaguely defined upon his charts and 

 he decided to sail slowly north-eastwards under a single 

 staysail away from the dangers of the rocky shore and into 

 the open waters which he realised were only slightly less 

 dangerous by reason of the risk of collision with icebergs. 



For two days the ship crept through the murk with 

 lookouts stationed aloft and on the bowsprit and nothing 

 was sighted. 



