Fulmar Petrels
Photo by C. A. Hamilton
“Starboard” Being Hoisted on Board by Steam Winch
Another bear yarn I heard from my friend Henriksen, whom I have written about in previous chapters on our whaler the St Ebba. His father used to go north, and once took a farm hand from his home in the island of Nottero. Hansen was no sailor, and was a little weak-minded, but enormously strong physically. In the fo’c’sle, the crew made him their butt, till one morning he rose in his simple wrath and threw the crew out separately up the scuttle on to the deck when they should have been at dinner, and kept them out till they pleaded for mercy. Shortly after he became their hero, for one day whilst they were all away on the ice sealing they were signalled to, to return to the ship, for the ice was breaking up, and all hands made a long run round an opening lane to get aboard, but big Hansen hooked a piece of floating ice and started navigating himself across, paddling with his ice pick, and he was not in the least put out when he observed a big bear awaiting his landing. But the bear seemed impatient and shoved off to meet him half-way, and Hansen quietly waited and dealt it a mighty blow with his pick into the brain as it came alongside, and killed it, then towed it along with him, skinned it, and came to the ship with its head and skin over his head and shoulders, very bloody but very pleased.
Last night we were fog-stayed, we could not get ahead a thin fog with the midnight sun shining through. We had many small things to occupy ourselves with, but every five minutes some of us were out at the cabin door to look at the view. Only a plain of snow fading in violet ridges into the mist, with very few features, but the delicacy of the colour you hardly notice at first, day after day grows on you, and if you try to paint it, it grows more quickly, and you realise the difficulty of trying to reproduce Nature’s highest quiet notes. It was our watch till three—that is, Archie’s and mine—but the others stayed up, though there was little chance of seeing a bear. So inside the cabin we piled coal on to the small stove and blew smokes, and it was warm, distinctly cosy, and the guitar thrummed, and several of us hummed and wrote and smoked, and then went out into the cold, frosty air and looked at the colour, the fantasy of ice form and colour and the icicles hanging from scanty rigging, and came back to the cabin and vainly tried to find words to express appreciation of the beauty of the white scenery.
So we stayed up till the end of our watch, then Archie and I turned in, very sleepy, and our Spanish friends stood their watch as well, till nine. They never seem to turn a hair for want of sleep.