“October 3. I write at midnight. Leaving the deck, where I have been tramping the cold out of my joints, I come below to our little cabin. As I open the hatch, every thing seems bathed in dirty milk. A cloud of vapor gushes out at every chink, and, as the cold air travels down, it is seen condensing deeper and deeper. The thermometer above is at 7° below zero.
“The brig and the ice around her are covered by a strange black obscurity—not a mist, nor a haze, but a peculiar, waving, palpable, unnatural darkness: it is the frost-smoke of Arctic winters. Its range is very low. Climbing to the yard-arm, some thirty feet above the deck, I looked over a great horizon of black smoke, and above me saw the heaven without a blemish.
“October 4. The open pools can no longer be called pools; they are great rivers, whose hummock-lined shores look dimly through the haze. Contrasted with the pure white snow, their waters are black even to inkyness; and the silent tides, undisturbed by ripple or wash, pass beneath a pasty film of constantly forming ice. The thermometer is at 10°. Away from the ship, a long way, I walked over the older ice to a spot where the open river was as wide as the Delaware. Here, after some crevice-jumping and tickly-bender crossing, I set myself behind a little rampart of hummocks, watching for seals.
“As I watched, the smoke, the frost-smoke, came down in wreaths, like the lambent tongues of burning turpentine seen without the blaze. I was soon enveloped in crapy mist.
“To shoot seal, one must practice the Esquimaux tactics of much patience and complete immobility. It is no fun, I assure you after full experience, to sit motionless and noiseless as a statue, with a cold iron musket in your hands, and the thermometer 10° below zero. But by-and-by I was rewarded by seeing some overgrown Greenland calves come within shot. I missed. After another hour of cold expectation, they came again. Very strange are these seal. A countenance between the dog and the mild African ape—an expression so like that of humanity, that it makes gun-murderers hesitate. At last, at long shot, I hit one. God forgive me!
“The ball did not kill outright. It was out of range, struck too low, and entered the lungs. The poor beast had risen breast-high out of water, like the treading-water swimmers among ourselves. He was thus supported, looking about with curious, expectant eyes, when the ball entered his lungs.
“For a moment he oozed a little bright blood from his mouth, and looked toward me with a sort of startled reproachfulness. Then he dipped; an instant after, he came up still nearer, looked again, bled again, and went down. A half instant afterward, he came up flurriedly, looked about with anguish in his eyes, for he was quite near me; but slowly he sunk, struggling feebly, rose again, sunk again, struggled a very little more. The thing was drowning in the element of his sportive revels. He did drown finally, and sunk; and so I lost him.
“Have naturalists ever noticed the expression of this animal’s phiz? Curiosity, contentment, pain, reproach, despair, even resignation I thought, I saw on this seal’s face.
“About half an hour afterward, I killed another. Scurvy and sea-life craving for fresh meat led me to it; but I shot him dead.
“On returning to the ship, I found one toe frost-bitten—a tallow-looking dead man’s toe—which was restored to its original ugly vitality by snow-rubbing. Served me right!