CHAPTER IV 
ATURDAY, iph September.— -Lat. 544°; lon g* 
^ All night we have sailed with a fair wind, and have 
slept the jgiost refreshing sleep. A contrast to last night, 
when the seas were going over us, and we expected every 
moment to go under. But our comfort has been of short 
duration. The wind has gone round to the old quarter, 
the S.W., and blows big guns. None of our crew, old 
Arctic men, have had such a buffeting as this in the North 
Atlantic : this fortnight has been a revelation to most of 
them. This afternoon we hung on to the rails on the 
poop, occasionally plunged in foam, whilst the first mate 
spun us yarns of the sport the whalers have in Davis 
Strait. Tales of bear shooting, reindeer stalking, and long 
excursions in the boats for days and weeks together, in the 
Arctic summer, up silent, sunny fiords, unknown, unnamed, 
where the splash of oars is never heard, where the rivers are 
filled with salmon and never a one to catch them. The 
whale-ships leave Dundee in the spring of the year and are 
in the Straits in about two or three weeks. Sometimes a 
passenger goes with one of these ships, and if by good 
luck he happens on a decent skipper, such a trip is most 
enjoyable. 
By far the best plan — a plan that I am surprised has not 
been carried out yet — would be for some five or six sports- 
men to charter a whaler for the summer, take just enough 
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