AN UNFORTUNATE CHANGE OF WEATHER. 323 
information of “a dozen or more bear” having been 
seen by the boat’s crew farther down the beach. 
“What a pity we didn’t go that way !” said one. 
“Maybe it’s better we didn’t,” said another. 
“/’m going after them now !” said a third. 
“And the boat’s going on board,” said the master, as 
he closed his boxes and beckoned to the crew. 
“Just like our luck!” exclaimed the last speaker, in a 
voice of fleeting disgust: “ wg might as well have stopped 
on board.” 
Ten minutes later, and the boat was at her davits, 
while the shrill whistle of our only boatswain’s mate was 
ringing around the silent decks, calling the wearied crew 
to the oft-repeated wmrk of heaving up the anchor, and 
telling of work, work, nothing but work, as long as the 
daylight lasted. Another ten minutes, and we were 
again under way, continuing through rain and wind the 
interminable coast-line, — a stormy end to an unexpected 
spell of good weather. 
We had not worked along thus many hours wdien the 
wind hauled ahead and increased to a gale ; so we had to 
heave to and let it blow by. It lasted all that night, 
and we were rapidly losing much of our hardly-gained 
ground, when the w'eather fortunately moderated, and we 
were enabled once more to close in wnth the beach and 
continue the survev. As wm thus worked our toilsome 
4/ 
way to the northward, vro found the low, flat land along 
which we had been hitherto running, gradually changing 
its nature to that of bold and towering heights that lifted 
their snow-clad crests far into the foggy sky and shoved 
their rocky bases well out into the sea in the shape of 
