6o 
FROM EDINBURGH TO THE ANTARCTIC 
sail, for the wind is right aft, and the foresail is shaking ; 
then they come down the shrouds, stepping noiselessly 
with bare feet on the bending ratlins, blots of dark-blue 
shadow against the moonlit sky. Nick and I lean with 
our elbows on the bulwarks and watch the shifting path 
of moonlight on the waves. He tells me long stones of 
all the world in a quiet, sub- 
dued voice, that goes well with 
the stillness and the moonlight. 
It was many years ago when 
he left Innisphail. Now the 
world is his country and 
Dundee his home. He has 
served in every berth on board 
all kind of crafts in many 
trades — in racing schooners, 
in the Channel fruit trade, 
in clippev ships to China, in 
ocean tramps, liners, trawlers, yachts, and whalers in 
the Arctic. He went up to Franz-Joseph Land with 
Mr. Leigh Smith when they relieved Nordenskeold in 
Spitzbergen in '73. What interested me most in his 
description of that land was the picture he drew of 
the lonely graveyards on the shores there, where the 
whaling men were buried centuries ago. One hundred 
and fifty whaling vessels used to sail from the port of 
Hull alone. Fleets sailed from London, Poole, and Liver- 
pool, so the graves were not then unvisited ; now it is 
but rarely a voyager looks at the rough wooden crosses 
and the grey stones, . . . 
