198 
IN FORBIDDEN SEAS 
steaming into the anchorage, accompanied by the 
Sapphire and Swift At this time the relations 
between England and Russia were very much 
strained, and the British ships had been shadowing 
the Russians wherever they went. The Russians 
were consequently very angry. The British vessels 
coaled and dropped outside again that same night, 
ready to follow up the Russians again should they 
leave Yokohama. In the course of the day the 
Japanese anchored one of their warships alongside 
the Vladimir Monomack , as a sort of protest against 
the threatened violation of the neutrality of the 
port. I was on the Nemo at the time, watching the 
British ships coming in, but was not close enough to 
the Vladimir Monomack to see what actually took 
place on board. 
We arrived on the hunting-grounds early in 
June, but had no hunting until we reached Urup ; 
there we were out three times before getting our 
first otter. During the month we lowered boats 
nine times, pulling some 225 miles for four otters. 
July and August were worse ; we got very little 
hunting weather, and, when we did get it, saw no 
ottersi Gales were frequent, and we had narrow 
escapes from being wrecked and losing some anchors 
and part of our chain cable. 
Otters being so very scarce, I resolved to run 
down to Shikotan to repair sails, fill up with wood 
and water, and then go north again to try for seals. 
On the way down to Shikotan, when off the south¬ 
west end of Yetorup, a peculiar phenomenon oc¬ 
curred. About 9.40 o’clock on the night of Septem¬ 
ber 4 a very light, unsteady south-west wind was 
blowing, with a somewhat rough sea. It was cloudy, 
