SEALEBS. 
59 
everything was complete, and we were actually being 
towed away from these earnest onlookers, they were 
compelled reluctantly to leave off gazing on a ship 
about to sail round Spitzbergen. 
The schooner and such attractions as Hull has to 
offer to a stranger so distracted our attention we 
hardly noticed the time slipping by. The 11th of 
May came at last, with a cold northerly wind and 
heavy rain, arguments which left no other alternative 
for us than the necessity of waiting for a favourable 
change. While we waited, Mr. Bickaby returned 
home from a sealing expedition to the west ice, 
between Jan Mayen’s Island and Greenland, where 
he had been fortunate enough to secure, in lat. 73° 
north, some seven thousand seals. He had difficulties 
to contend with in this voyage, of no small degree. 
Frozen for three weeks in the pack that surrounded 
them, they drifted south as far as Iceland, but at length 
the ice gave way, and they were once more set free. 
The pursuit of the seal at this early season (in March) 
is, therefore, an enterprise not unattended with danger 
—but the tempting wages paid to needy and adven¬ 
turous seamen on successful voyages always secures a 
crew, while the awful experiences of those who have 
escaped from former hazardous expeditions at this 
season of the year, seem to have little or no effect 
