Arctic and Antarctic Proportions
CHAPTER XXXI
This chapter will show that it is foolish to sit up late, and that it does not do to shoot polar bears in pyjamas. Last night Hamilton and I sat up fairly late playing vingt-et-un for matches. But the Dons and De Gisbert sat up still later, almost all night, brewing a concoction of seal-oil and things on the cabin stove for boots. Just as they succeeded, it upset all over the shoulder of Don José junior’s coat. They were very merry, but they should have been in bed, as it was their morning watch at nine o’clock, and they went to bed not long before that hour. Spaniards are quite reckless of the night hours, a few days’ stay in Madrid will convince anyone of this—the people walk about all night. The aforesaid brothers when they did turn in got into pyjamas—how people cling to custom. Gisbert, being more experienced, of course turned in all standing, as anyone of any polar experience always does. Now they are sorry for these late hours and for sleeping in pyjamas, for result. Soon after they had turned in, there appeared a very large she-bear and two cubs close to the floe-edge, which could have been shot from the bow. Just the chance they like, no horrid walking and stalking over snow. Gisbert was ready in a minute, but they lost the precious time getting out of the pyjamas into warm clothes, and the bear could not wait, and perforce they had to follow her over the snow and a fog came down.
They have lost it; and here we are, a whole ship’s company, sleeping, or doing nothing but grousing and counting the hours, as we lie on dead-still water in dead-still fog—which is waste of time and patience and is quite absurd, Q.E.D.
We are back to our last bear forest, “the woods are full of them,” as Hamilton says; back to bear-hunting because there are no whales and because our path west and south and north is barred with ice. Perhaps by the middle of August there may be a road open to the land. We have seen the mist on the hills, at any rate a wide stretch of many miles of whitish light thrown up to the sky, which tells us that the land is there and that we are not more than fifty or sixty miles distant from it.
We still hope to get the she-bear and the cubs; they are nice small cubs, not like the well-grown wicked fellows we have on board; we could almost make pets of these small fellows.
A man we know of got one a year or two ago. He was one of three Norwegians left on a certain island in these latitudes—we will not give its exact bearings—to collect skins during a winter. They got a hundred bearskins and ninety white fox of considerable value, and they are there still in barrels, and ought to be quite good yet. They lost their boat and were picked up and taken home. They had a baby bear, which they brought up on the bottle. It was a charming pet till about twelve months old and then he had to be destroyed or he would have killed them in play.
I am sorry to say here that at middag’s-mad we, aft the mainmast, had not remembered this was Sunday till pancakes came on the table. As the second lot arrived the steward stepped in rather quietly and whispered: “A seal astern,” so we jumped out with the pistol (by what some might call a lucky shot), hit it through the brain and it floated dead, and a white ivory gull hung over it. It was just the kind of skin, too, I wanted for the projected motoring coat. Then we realised it was Sunday, and to make up leeway we displayed bunting, the Royal Spanish Yachting Club and our Royal Eastern Yacht Club—the vice-commodore’s—and the Red Lion of Scotland (the origin of which is buried in the mist of historical obscurity) at the fore, quite a gallant display for such short notice.