62 ICE-BOUND ON KOLGUEV 
though we hung about for a bit we could not make it 
other than an undertaking far too dangerous. We had 
all but left the return till too late. The ice, as we pulled 
back, was fairly vaczng up upon the yacht. 
How wicked it looked! Monstrous lumps indeed they 
were, pounding on, one after the other, dipping and 
swaying like great hungry sea-bears thrown forward as 
cavalry from the pack. 
There was an old man pulling in the stern thwarts who 
had spent a lifetime in the Greenland seas. He made an 
impression on me I shall not hurriedly forget. His hard 
old face, half fear and half defiance, he never stopped 
inveighing at the ice. ‘Damn thee,’ he said, ‘damn 
thee, are ye coming on then, ye blackguard, are you 
going to have us this time? God Almighty, but it’s close 
you are !|—Now then, boys,—oh, the devil!’ and we just 
missed a big block. Thus ran his adjuration ; only 
he said it in the Scotch, and he said it in the whaler’s 
form of words. 
“You don’t seem very fond of the ice, Jim?’ I 
remarked. 
‘I have lost too many relations by it,’ he replied, ‘and 
blood is thicker than water.’ 
There came to my tongue-tip, but I did not say it: 
‘And thicker than either is ice.’ 
We were on board again, catching up the boat and 
slipping off only just in time. 
You can imagine something of our feelings. I 
