March 14th. Every one up at dawn. The ship was alongside a pan when I came on deck, and the winch was going all the time, while the orders "Heave away port," "Heave away starboard," were being constantly given, and every few minutes a bunch of sculps would be hauled on board and thrown below by the men on deck. When this pan was cleaned up, the officer in the barrel directed the ship's course to the next, and so it went, all day long, a portion of the crew working coal as usual. I went aloft and saw our men, five or six miles away, piling up our cargo. In the afternoon, I went off: in the direction the men were and fortunately I had a gaff: with me. I had on very thick clothes and a pilot jacket over all. When about a mile from the ship, and while walking over a nice, smooth piece of ice, I noticed that it was bending under me. I turned and was getting back to the hummocks, when I went through. Fortunately, the gaff caught on both sides and I only went in up to my arms, so was able to climb out. The cold of the water was intense and I had a fright. Before reaching the ship, my clothes were frozen hard. One great comfort about the Aurora was that she was a steamer, so when any accidents of this kind occurred, it was a great thing, having the top of the boiler to retire to. Here one had warmth at any rate. As there was nothing much separating the top of our boiler from the stoke hole, there was a deposit of ashes and soot, but a little thing like that did not much trouble a man fished out of a frozen sea.
It was cold and dark when the sealers began coming on board and a fog was settling down, so about nine P. M. we were quite uneasy over some who bad not turned up. The whistle sounded frequently, and it was a relief when the last appeared. Some were really very much exhausted and were given rum.
We took on board about five thousand seals and the men had killed many thousand more.
March 15th. A snow storm blowing, so the men could not go to the sealing, and very little new work was accomplished. However, the ship managed to reach a lot of her pans, and the Newfoundland men hauled the sculps from others farther away, so that by night, four thousand more were on board. Coal was worked energetically all day.
The barometer was rising at night and the snow had ceased, so the weather looked more settled.
March 16th. Sealers away when I came on deck, and our own crew very busy with the seals and coal. The ice showed a lot of leads and there were seals in the open ponds, so I spent my time at them with the rifle and had some good shooting.
At dinner the mate told us we had taken on board over three thousand sculps and by night two thousand more were added to these. About sixteen thousand five hundred were now on board.
I spent some time aloft. The glare from the ice was fearfully trying as the sun was very bright. Owing to the open character of the ice, we followed the sealers quite well. We found several of our pans broken by the weight of seals on them; in every case we saw sharks in the open water beside the broken pan. Once the ship had her engines going ahead to keep her bows against the ice, while she took seals on board (I was looking over the rail aft), when I saw a shark gliding up to the propeller. It hit him on the side and cut a flap out about two feet long. He swam about with this mass hanging from him for awhile and then went back to the propeller, which finished him with an awful gash across the neck. This was the only one I saw killed.
The night was clear and the men had no difficulty in getting on board.