IN THE ICE 



123 



mal would come bouncing on its flippers straight 

 at one with a vicious barking roar. The nose 

 was the okchug's most vulnerable point. A tap 

 on the nose with a club would stretch the great 

 creature out dead. It required a cool head, a 

 steady nerve, and a good aim to deliver this fin- 

 ishing stroke upon the small black snout. If one 

 missed or slipped on the ice, the possible conse- 

 quences would not have been pleasant. We 

 tanned the skins of the okchugs and made them 

 into trousers or " pokes." The meat was hung 

 over the bows to keep in an ice-box of all out- 

 doors. Ground up and made into sausages, it 

 was a piece de resistance on the forecastle bill of 

 fare. 



One night in the latter part of May we saw 

 far off a great light flaring smokily across the 

 sea. It was what is known in whaler parlance as 

 a bug-light and was made by blazing blubber 

 swinging in an iron basket between the two 

 smokestacks of a whale-ship's try-works. By it 

 the crew of that distant ship was working at 

 trying out a whale. The bug-light signaled to 

 all the whaling fleet the first whale of the season. 



