At last, the entrance to the Straits was reached. Passing Resolution Island close to windward and with a fair wind, the Narwhal sped through. Slipping swiftly past Coats Island and through the narrow Fisher Strait with big Southampton Island on the north, she headed for Rowe’s Welcome, where Captain Edwards planned to pass the long and dreary Arctic winter.
“Gosh!” exclaimed Tom as the boys gazed across the vast expanse of the bay. “This is like the ocean. I thought Hudson Bay was just like a big lake.”
Captain Edwards chuckled. “Mighty big lake!” he laughed. “About six hundred miles wide and a thousand miles long—big enough to drop all New England into it and just make a little island about the size of Southampton yonder. And did you know we could go on sailing and come out over north’ard of Alaska—that is, if the ice’d let us?”
“No, I never did,” admitted Tom. “I wish geographies taught us all these things. We learn that Lake Superior is awfully big but they never say much about these out-of-the-way places.”
“Well, Superior’s a pretty sizable pond,” declared the skipper. “But it’s just a puddle ’longside this bay. Why, from James Bay to the north’ard point of Melville Peninsula’s as far as acrost the Atlantic at the mouth of the St. Lawrence; and from Nottingham Island at the end of the Straits to the Seal River, t’other side of the bay, it’s as far as from New York to Chicago.”
“Whew, I guess I’ll have to remember that and tell the boys at home,” said Jim. “Are there whales in here?”
“Whales!” exclaimed the skipper. “One of the best grounds I know. If this weather holds out we’ll get a heap of ile afore ice begins to make.”
Cap’n Pem who stood near shook his head dolefully. “Too consarned good fer to las’,” he declared. “Li’ble to come down a rip-snortin’ mos’ anny minnet. Storm breeder’s what I calls it. Yes, sir. Feels like summer now, but I’ll bet ye we ketch it afore we git to the Welcome.”
It was, as the old whaleman said, “too good to last”—a soft, warm day with a blue sky, a calm sea barely ruffled by the light southerly wind, and altogether like an Indian Summer day in New England. But to the experienced eye of the old whaleman there were many signs that the weather would not last and that something was wrong. The ducks, that had been winging southward, huddled together, raised their heads uneasily and gabbled ceaselessly. The V-shaped flocks of geese were mere specks in the sky, and their hoarse honks came faintly through the air. The gulls uttered raucous cries and wheeled and screamed. Little knots of auks and guillemots kept rising from the waves, heading on rapidly moving wings for the craggy shores. The sun had a pale, hazy appearance while about it was a huge ring of light, like the ghost of a rainbow.