58 THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE KARLUK 
finally made a spring and landed on his prey. The 
seal never woke up. 
Sometimes the ice would be closed up and our 
Eskimo would get no seal, or the weather would 
be bad and the sky overcast, but when the ice parted 
and the water-lanes opened, if the air was fine, 
the seal would sometimes swim over to the edge of 
the floe, put their flippers up and crawl out of the 
water. Then they would lie out on the ice and sun 
themselves. After a time, as the sun disappeared 
and the raw wind came up, they would become cold 
from staying on the ice and then they would slide 
back into the water. I have seen seal off the New¬ 
foundland coast that were so sunburned after lying 
for many days on the ice, blockaded in the bays 
by the on-shore winds, that they actually cried out 
with pain when they finally went into the water, 
and came back on to the ice again at once. 
