CHAPTER XIX 



A NARROW PINCH 



THE whaling fleet divided soon after enter- 

 ing the Arctic Ocean. Some of the ships 

 went straight on north to the whaling 

 grounds about Point Barrow and Herschel Is- 

 land. The others bore to the westward for the 

 whaling along the ice north of eastern Siberia. 

 We stood to the westward. In a few days we 

 had raised the white coasts of a continent of ice 

 that shut in all the north as far as the eye could 

 see and extended to the Pole and far beyond. 

 With the winds in the autumn always blowing 

 from the northwest, the sea was perfectly calm 

 in the lee of this indestructible polar cap. I 

 have been out in the whale boats when they 

 were heeled over on their beam-ends under 

 double-reefed sails before a gale of wind upon 

 a sea as smooth as the waters of a duck pond. 



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