"Steady, sir." The bow would stop in its lateral swing.
"Port."
"Port, sir." The bow would swing the other way.
"Steady." We would be upon our old course again.
Once I remember the mate was in the crow's nest and had been narrowly missing ice all day for the fun of the thing—"showing off," as we rather disturbed green hands said. A 'berg about thirty feet high, a giant for Behring Sea waters, showed a little ahead and to leeward of our course. The mate thought he could pass to windward. He kept the brig close to the wind until the 'berg was very near. Then he saw a windward passage was impossible and tried suddenly to go to leeward.
"Hard up your wheel," he cried.
"Hard up it is, sir."
The bow swung toward the 'berg—swung slowly, slowly across it. The tip of the jib-boom almost rammed a white pinnacle. Just when everybody was expecting the brig to pile up in wreck on the ice, the great 'berg swept past our starboard rail. But we had not missed it. Its jagged edges scraped a line an inch deep along our side from bow to stern.
Shooting okchug (or, as it is sometimes spelled, ooksook) or hair seals was a favorite amusement in the spring ice. The mate was an expert with a rifle. He shot many as they lay sunning themselves on ice cakes. Okchugs are as large as oxen and are covered with short silvery hair so glossy that it fairly sparkles. If an okchug was killed outright, its head dropped over upon the ice and it lay still. If only slightly wounded, the animal flounced off into the sea. If vitally hurt, it remained motionless with its head up and glaring defiance, whereupon a boat's crew would row out to the ice cake and a sailor would finish the creature with a club.