Realizing these things, I had no misgivings, so knelt down and put out a box of ten cartridges. The har-pooner, seeing my preparations, said: "For God's sake, don't shoot." He had had experiences with wounded bears before, which he did not wish to repeat. It seemed to me, however, that, between the two of us, we had things our own way as we had had such splendid practice at seals a short time before and our hands were in, so, when bruin stood up to have a look at us, less than a hundred yards away, I fired and hit him in the head.
I was intensely pleased as it was my first bear and also the first seen that year by any of the ships.
We had, as spectators, the entire crew, as the ship was not far away and every one on board was watching. A bear is considered lucky, considerable trouble being taken to pick one up. As they looked very yellow in the white ice, they were easily seen. Curiosity, no doubt, drew this one to us, as we were kneeling down and not moving when he stood up to look. Had we moved, he would probably have gone away. I kept the skull, the entire occipital portion of which was shattered, although the skin wound was small, as the copper-nosed bullets only expanded well on striking something hard.
The boat came back for us and, after skinning the prize, we went on board. As there was much heavy ice to the west, we steamed back towards Disco, and a lead, opening to the north, later in the day, gave us a chance of going a few miles in the right direction.
May 21st. Wednesday. We had come rather close to the land by morning and were off Disco Fiord. There was very heavy ice coming down and numbers of bergs about, so navigation was exceedingly difficult and dangerous, and we made little or no progress until noon, when the ice slackened and let us go ahead, the wind blowing from the north and loosening it. In the evening it was very cold, with snow squalls.
I got an ivory gull this day (P. Eburnea) and also a glaucous gull (Larus Glaucus). The ivory gull positively looked like ivory as it stood on the ice, and the glaucous gull, with its great spread of snow-white wings, was beautiful.
We were sorry that the ship did not stop at Godhaven, or Lieveley, as it was generally called, because of its importance as a point of departure for expeditions. They generally obtained dogs there, and whalers, for a century and more, had made it a port to call, but this was a race for the north and no time was to be wasted. We managed to work on our course all afternoon and during the night, as the wind had slackened the ice.