I would know that long cunning female again, I believe, were I to meet her, from the odd movements, from her “out-stretched neck and ever watchful eye.” The cubs should be grateful for such a mother; without her skill in character-reading, they would both be in little cages on board here! Does it not make the reader comfortable to know that they are at liberty, free to enjoy seal-killing and fat galore, and pure snow and air and the Arctic world to roam in? When they would not follow fast enough Mother Bear turned and spoke angrily, then finally went and spanked them. A bear and a monkey are the only animals, excepting man, who spank their young. So up here you see little domestic touches in bear life, which, so far, you cannot get in a zoo. It is worth coming north to see such a matron tending her young, to see the jolly round yellow cubs full of fun, gambolling over the fine old mother, playing with her ears and head and teeth that at half-a-bite could take a man’s head off like asparagus. Here is a picture of such a group. “Rest after Play,” it should perhaps be called. “True till Death” might be too harrowing.
Sometimes fatal accidents occur in bear-hunting. I have heard of several, but they are small in number compared to the number of bears shot. A few years ago Gisbert witnessed one. Two Norwegian sealers came on an ice-floe after two bears somewhere east of Spitzbergen, and they killed one and set to work skinning it. The second bear was holding towards Gisbert’s vessel, so one of the Norwegians hurried off to annex it by himself, which is not a very safe thing to do. He pursued it some time and wounded it, and the bear went for him, and his rifle jammed, and when De Gisbert’s party came up a little while afterwards the man was in ribbons.
Now I hope we may stop writing about bears and soon come in touch with our older friends, the whales, of one kind or another. We are prepared for Balean whales, or Nord Cappers, “the old kind,” I call them. But for the big stronger Finners we are not prepared. I have written about these in a previous chapter—about the special tackle required to master their enormous strength. “Modern whales,” I call them, or Finners, the largest animal that exists in this world, or ever has existed, up to one hundred and twenty feet; longer than the prehistoric Diplodocus. The Balean whale or Mysticetus that used to be fished here, and which has grown so scarce, though it is generally depicted destroying boats, is a fat, leisurely “fish” compared to these bigger and more active Finners, but alas, he is now not only scarce but is also very shy and wary.
Forty-five miles we plod along, with northerly strong wind, and pass two of what they call icebergs here—“ice chips” down South—a grey sky ribbed like sea-sand overhead, with the light off snow land on the sky; a yellowish cold glare to the westward; that is Greenland, and we at last pull up against the land-floe. It is just the same as the big sea-floes which we have been amongst, still it is against the land! Twenty-five miles of it we guess; when the haze over it lifts we shall see Greenland’s icy mountains. The days of heat and basking in the blooming saxifrage and yellow poppies seem still far away. But patience—if you wait for ever so long you sometimes get your heart’s desire.
The strong wind from north and west is cutting off bits of this land-floe of all sizes, from a yard wide to a mile or two, and so taking them down to cool our north temperate zone. I wish the process had begun sooner, so that we now might be nearer land in shallow soundings looking for walrus. I sincerely desire to see them, as I think my heavy ·475 would have the chance of its life as against the smaller bore rifles we have with us. You have to shoot them, then harpoon them before they sink; when one is harpooned the others rally round and there is wild work. Whales, musk oxen and walrus, coupled with a bee humming in the Greenland meadows, is my desire. It is said there are mosquitoes, but for none of the breed have I any desire, either little or big, from Bassein Creek or Seringapatam. They do say, however, that the Greenland specimen does not have any fever on its proboscis.
Whales at last in our night watch! I must write my notes about them before I turn in. Some people say whaling is not sport. I differ from them. It is the best sport I know. We had bear and whale in the same basket to-night, first a cast for a whale which went off, and then immediately after a shot at a bear which we got, and then another whale, which we got also, both within two hours. Certainly though it was only a narwhal the whale was the best sport.