We have got some sail set to a westerly breeze and go so steadily that we can vary our amusements of lasso-throwing, etc., etc., with fencing. The señors are interested in fencing but are not very good, but they are good shots at clay pigeons; that is another side-show we have, De Gisbert is quite a showman at it. With a five-shooter shot-gun he throws three clay pigeons up with the left hand and shoots them all before they reach the water. But at fencing the writer has rather a pull, the last three years’ practice in Edinburgh with our most perfect teacher, M. Leon Crosnier, ought to have some effect.
A Dead Bear Being Lifted on Board by Steam Winch and Chain
In Gisbert’s Spanish Polar expedition next year, or the year after, all men will fence for health’s sake. But who will instruct? that is the art—fencing without an instructor is hopeless.
A seal or two appear to-day and some little auks.
We get the lines and harpoons ready for our two bow whale-guns, and other harpoons and lines for walrus boats. “Chips,” the carpenter, is busy overhauling old oars, and making new oars.
So if all goes well we should soon be fast in a whale, or walrus, or up against a bear.
But we strike the ice rather far east, over two hundred miles from Greenland coast! Gisbert has tried before to get into Greenland to south and west of Jan Mayen; this time we hope to get in from farther north, about seventy-five degrees, and hope to strike Shannon Island or that neighbourhood. We have some slight hope of meeting Eskimos, and possibly musk oxen. Captain Trolle of the Danish navy was up here in 1906-1908, and charted the coast of North-East Greenland. He took command when the leader, Mylius Erichsen, lost his life in the interior. He says there is a hut on the island, one of these lonely dwellings visited by human beings once a century, generally under pressure of circumstance.
At afternoon café we overhaul cameras—like the rest of their outfit, the cameras of the Dons are of the best, as neat as can be: and we pull out all the books on recent polar work, which we and De Gisbert have between us, and discuss the writers we know.