LAST VOYAGE OF CAPT. ROSS. 
317 
finela, one of the crew hastened to the hole where the seal’s flesh 
was kept for the dogs, and returning with a good heavy lump 
of it, threw it down before them, exclaiming, “ There ye d—d 
lubbers, stop your mouths with it.’’ It soon appeared that the 
mastication of a few pounds of seal’s flesh, and the utterance of 
a series of harmonious sounds cannot be carried on at one and 
the same time—the sounds suddenly ceased—but the life of man 
is a chequered scene, whether it be in a berth on board the Vic¬ 
tory in Felix Harbour, at the court of St. James’, or an Irish¬ 
man’s study in a back room of the attic story of a residence in 
St. Giles’. The ancients tells us, that a man in attempting to 
avoid Scylla, frequently falls into Charybdis, and we have an 
adage synonymous in our language, when a man falls into one 
evil by avoiding another, that he has jumped out of the frying- 
pan into the fire, and such was, to their great misfortune, the 
lot of the sailors of the Victory in whose berth the two Esqui¬ 
maux had been allowed to take up their lodging for the night. 
It is true that a stoppage had been put to the duet, and so far 
a great evil was suspended, but then a new light suddenly burst 
upon the sailors in the discovery that a seal, like a pheasant or 
a partridge, has some peculiar cuts, or slices to which the gas¬ 
tronomes give the preference, and for the peace and quietness 
of the sailors, it unfortunately happened that the lump of seal’s 
flesh, which the sailor had abtracted from the hole, was just one 
of those favourite bits, to which the Esquimaux epicures give 
the preference. A man who throws a bone to two hungry curs, 
must necessarily expect a battle, and the lump of flesh was no 
sooner thrown to the Esquimaux, than each of them snapped at 
it, and catching hold of it with their hands, raised such a hub¬ 
bub with their expressions of anger and defiance towards each 
other, that the sailors found, in the jargon of the English law¬ 
yers, that they had taken nothing by their motion, on the con¬ 
trary, it became a question, whether their duet was not to be 
preferred to the discord, which now raged between them, accom¬ 
panied as it was by the most hideous yells and hootings, which 
ever burst from the throat of an enraged Esquimaux. It is 
howeyer a great consolation to an individual to know when he 
