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whose daughter had lately been married, had planned to stay at home, and her husband, who in the past had been in the habit of entrusting many details to her care, confesses himself at a disadvantage. He was hopeful, however, of a prosperous voyage, and could congratulate himself on his officers, men of experience, all but one of whom had sailed with him before. He had used particular care in selecting a crew, and had signed on twenty-six good men, ordering them to be on board on the morning of the 'Bowhead's' sailing. And on this page he says: Could I have looked into the future and caught a glimpse of what I should have been called upon to do, I never would have been tempted [to make this voyage] with all the riches in store.' It was after the business of getting the ship under way and guiding her out of the Golden Gate, that his first officer made the startling remark: A big proportion of the men forward were never on a deck before.' Then was made the disturbing discovery, that there had been 'substitutions ashore in the night, and that most of the men who had come on board were scallywags and scoundrels, would-be deserters, whose game was to obtain a free passage to some point within reach of the Alaskan goldfields. A bad enough beginning to a voyage such as that which lay ahead of the whaler, but worse was to follow. On March 29, one of the boat-steerers, a worthy fellow and valuable member of the crew, in helping to secure a sail, fell overboard and was seen no more; and five days later, while yet a gloom hung over the ship, a crank-shaft of the engine gave way, necessitating a return to Frisco for repairs. To sign on a new crew at this time of day would have cost more than the venture could afford, and while repairs were being effected, the scamps, most of whom had had already enough of the sea, were held aboard by an armed guard. Two, nevertheless, got away by taking to the water. The 'Bowhead' sailed

again at the end of April, a precious month of the season being lost. At the last moment, and too late to reach San Francisco in time, Mrs Cook changed her mind, and, three months later, she joined the ship at Nome. Had he dreamed then what was before them, declares the Captain, he would have sailed without her.

Not till Sept. 3 did they take their first-and last

-whale of the season, and so stormy was the weather that, after 'cutting in' the head, they were compelled to let the carcase, with its hundred barrels of oil, go adrift. The 'bone,' however, weighed twenty-one hundred pounds -a worth-while whale. Soon after this the ships which had not done profitably enough to go home went into winter quarters, and by Oct. 4 the 'Bowhead' was frozen in. There was no idleness. The ships had to be put in shape for the winter, their hulls banked up with snow, stores of ice-blocks cut for the water supply, sledging parties sent to the mainland for stocks of deer meat, business done with the natives for further supplies, including fish and ptarmigan. Their friendly relations with the natives were to stand the Americans in good stead before the end of that Arctic voyage. The winter was passed cheerfully, on the whole.

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On June 27, 1904, the ice released its grip. On the same day, Robert Hansen, a good shipmate, died after three months' illness. On July 23 they took their first new season's whale, a big one, but with great labour owing to the crowding floes. 'Luck or fate,' says the Captain, in one of his rare black moods, has worked, and is continuing to work, against us.' Yet a week later, two whales having been got in the interval, he is bright again. It would take but a short continuation of our good work of last week to show a profit on this cruise.' What an unaffected chap he is! Surely, on the business of whaling so frankly human a book as this has never been written! If one must find fault, there are pages on which he might so easily have told us more. Often he says next to nothing about the hunt; he dismisses the capture, or 'saving,' to use the correct word, of a whale, however troublesome and exciting, in a few lines. He is so familiar with his subject that, like many learned men, he does not allow for the ignoramus; he sometimes seems to forget that he is writing mainly for landlubbers. So, perhaps, after all, there is something to be said for the mere writing man who goes whaling. In mid-August he is down-hearted again. 'Impossible on account of the ice to get where the whales are.' It was to prove a second lean season for many ships in those waters, and Chapter XXI has the sorry heading, 'Another Winter in the Arctic.' Again they

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made the best of it, but the reader senses the struggle against depression. And in the 'Bowhead' was trouble with some of the scallywags. One of them, a mighty bruiser, if no sailor, felled the first officer, whereupon the Captain, single-handed, seized and clapped the steel cuffs on his wrists. There the trouble seemed quelled; none the less, it was an evil omen.

Once more, on July 5, 1905, we see the 'Bowhead' safely released from the ice. But her bad luck holds. A month later, while yet her harpooners have 'saved' not one whale, she speaks three lucky ships which have been home for the winter and, since re-entering the Arctic, have captured two, three, and five whales respectively. Galling-yes-and another month is to pass before the 'Bowhead' gets a poor couple. And about this time Captain Cook made a discomforting discovery. While comparatively little ice was in sight, the temperature of the sea was extraordinarily low for the time of year. Doubts, vague, amorphous, at first, crystallised into a definite dread. I dare say he had visions of the disaster of 1871, when thirty-two American whalers were caught, flung up, let down, and crushed by the ice, though, marvellously, not a life was lost. Reluctantly, dutifully, anxiously, he turned his ship towards the West-towards her course for home. Said his wife: 'Aren't you starting rather early, and sacrificing a chance to take some more whales?' He told her of the thermometer's warning, adding: 'You know we could not possibly exist, with our supplies of every kind so reduced as they are, for a third winter here. I am not going to take any chances.' Whereupon she declared she would rather die than face a third winter. Poor lady! Even as she spoke the way home was being barred, and on Sept. 18, the 'Bowhead,' after many desperate attempts to break out, was 'frozen in solid.' In like plight were the ships 'Alexander,' 'Karluk,' and 'Jeanette.' The prospect was a bleak one; hopeless it would have been but for the natives, who said: 'We will take care of you. None shall starve. Deer and moose will be found plentiful.'

'Mrs Cook,' says her husband, 'who had stood by me amid the privations and hardships of a life aboard an Arctic whaler for eleven years without a murmur, now gave up completely, her nervous system going all

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to pieces. She went into a state of melancholia.' Poor man! Well do I remember,' he says, writing of an incident of two months later, Nov. 24, 1905. At twelve o'clock noon, the captains of the in.prisoned ships stood on the highest hill of Herschel Island and looked for the last glimpse of the upper rim of the setting sun, which would shine no more until Jan. 15, 1906. These men, who had faced all manner of dangers without a tremor, shook their heads as they gazed at the ships below and felt that they were now facing the gravest peril of their lives.' In that simple little piece of description Captain Cook, I venture to think, gives us a great picture, with the title Anxiety.' It was to be a long, long winter. While there was strict rationing, there was no starvation, thanks to the Eskimos, small yet mighty hunters, whose frequent supplies of fresh meat kept the ships' companies in fair strength and, best of all, free from scurvy; but there are no records of festivities, as in previous winters. Still, there were rifts in the dreariness-unexpected rifts, for one does not look for visitors from civilisation in that remoteness and desolation. But visitors turned up, one of them, too, a visitor of distinction. Just before the 'Bowhead was gripped in the ice, Amundsen, the explorer, who had sailed from Norway thirty months earlier, came out of the fog in his motor sloop. With his comrades he had completed two years of observation work at the Magnetic Pole on Boothia Peninsula, and was now hopefully making for the Pacific, his being the first expedition to navigate the Northwest Passage. But presently the ice got his little ship also, and a few weeks later he appeared among the captive whalers, with a dog team and one native. Anxious to send home news of his safety and whereabouts, he found the whalemen in a like state of mind. Far away over that frozen, snowy distance lay Eagle City, an outlandish place, no doubt, yet wondrously linked with all civilisation by a thread of copper. The difficulty was to find a capable and willing guide. At last a young Eskimo hunter and his wife offered themselves, their price, payable on completion of their task, to be a whaleboat fully fitted out. Late in October, Amundsen, accompanied by a whaling skipper, whose ship had been wrecked, bearing bunches of telegraphic

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messages to shipowners and friends, set out on that long, dark, perilous trip. Twenty weeks passed before Amundsen and the natives were again sighted, sledging over the ice, and you can imagine the reception they got, and how the bunches of replies were clutched. We, who in our security and convenience take the telegraph for granted, cannot conceive what that thread of copper I meant to those mariners, and to their friends at home, some of whom had almost lost hope. There were messages also froni the shipowners, promising assistance with the opening of the ice.

Another visitor is mentioned-a little casually, one feels, in all the circumstances. 'Feb. 23, a man by name of Harrison from the Royal Geographical Society of London, arrived here from Peel River. As he had a fine team of dogs, the use of which he tendered us, we gladly made his stay as agreeable as possible to him.' I'm afraid that had I, all the way from London, arrived in that latitude, with the thermometer about 30° below, I should now be looking for more than four and a half lines in the good Captain's volume. Liberation came on July 10, 1906. The Captain thankfully records the happy fact that during the winter there had been no deaths, and very little sickness, and attributes this entirely to the excellent Eskimos who, without knowing when, if ever, they would be paid, hunted for and provided the essential fresh meat. On four ships wintering in another quarter, where fresh meat had been scarce, or unprocurable, there were three deaths.

It was Captain Cook's intention, and his desire, once the 'Bowhead' was revictualled, and in spite of prodigious difficulties with mutinous men, whom by sheer force of personality he eventually reduced to submission, to put in yet another season's whaling, and so, if it were possible, turn the loss to his owners into a profit. But the state of his wife's health was such that she must forthwith go home under his care, and having handed over his command to Captain Tilton, who had just lost his ship, the 'Alexander,' aforementioned, on the rocks at Cape Parry, he turned his back on the Arctic. He did not then know that he was 'going for good,' or I imagine that his journal would have contained, despite the evil the Arctic had done him, a

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