During the day I caught a young seal. It had shed nearly all its long white hair and the short, silvery coat underneath looked very pretty. I amused myself plucking the balance of the original coat. The seal appeared to enjoy it. It was killed accidentally a few days later.
March 20th. Blowing bard with snow squalls. A number of pans were broken and many sculps lost, but we secured all we wanted; about one thousand came on board and the 'tween-decks were nearly full.
March 21st. A fine day, but the ship beset, so we cleaned up and finished off the 'tween-decks; then we put all on deck that we thought the ship would carry. This would not have been done had the ship had to go any distance, but all the time we were sealing we had been drifting south, so that we were now a very short distance from St. John's. The Captain and mate would stand on the ice and look her over and then decide that perhaps she would carry a few more, and so on, until there was not much of the Aurora's bull above the water. The ice opened in the afternoon and we laid our course for St. John's, steaming half speed. The ship was decorated with flags, the men cheering and singing—at least two hundred of them without shelter; they stood upon the forecastle head and among the sculps on deck. The wind had died away and it was a beautiful afternoon. There were plenty of leads and the ice becoming more open every hour.
March 22nd. During the night we passed through Baccalieu Tickle and in the morning we were close to the coast. As we steamed through the narrows, the men climbed the rigging and cheered. We had accomplished a wonderful thing. The ship was the first in of the year, and was also full. Soon we were tied up at our old berth on the south side, and our crew were busy discharging our cargo of about twenty-eight thousand seals. Each young seal counted one in settling with the crew and each old seal counted two; of course, an old seal took up much more room than two young ones, and on a voyage like this, where the ship could be filled with young, the crew were not anxious to kill old ones. On our two trips, the Aurora actually killed 28,150, but the crew were paid for 29,300.
CHAPTER V—THE LABRADOR SEALING
"Now, Brothers, for the icebergs of frozen Labrador
Floating spectral in the moonshine, along the low black
shore!