encounter with the bear.

CHAPTER ELEVEN.

THE WHITE WHALE SHOAL.

"_What_ a horrid smell, Hamish! What is it?" cried Steve, going
forward.

"Bear's grease, sir. They're chust cooking the fat we got yesterday.
Like to ha'e some in a pot for your hair?"

"What? Nonsense!"

"Mak' your whiskers grow, sir," said the man, grinning. "Look yonder;
Watty Links has been for some. Leuk at his head."

Steve did look, to see that the boy's red hair was streaky, gummy, and
shining, as he had been applying the grease wholesale--that is, with
more liberality than care.

For the bear's fat--some three hundred and fifty pounds' weight--was in
the great caldron surrounded by steam, which hissed beneath it from the
engine-boiler as the _Hvalross_ glided slowly along about half a mile
from the low, regular ice cliff, which stretched away apparently without
end, glittering and displaying its lovely delicate tints of pale blue
wherever it was shattered or riven at the edge.

"It does seem rum," said Steve to himself, "for the sun to be always
up--let's see, what do you call it?--above the horizon."

As he reached the caldron he found Jakobsen, with his sleeves rolled
above his brawny elbows, busily at work superintending the rendering
down, and he looked up and gave the boy a friendly nod.

"Well, opposition cook!" cried Steve, laughing; "breakfast ready? What
is it, bear-soup?"

"No, sir," said the man seriously, "only the fat."

"Ah, well, I won't taste that," said Steve; and he went on to where his
comrades Andersen and Petersen were busy over the great outstretched
bear's skin, which they were cleaning and dressing so that it should be
perfectly preserved. Johannes was seated on a stool with a keg between
his legs, the little tub being turned up to form a table, on which
rested the great grinning head of the slain animal, whose skull he was
carefully cleaning from every particle of flesh and fat, throwing the
scraps overboard to the great cloud of sea-birds which wheeled and
darted and pounced down upon every morsel thrown into the sea.

"Ugh! what a disgusting job!" said Steve.

"Think so, sir? Oh no, it's clean enough--quite fresh." And he threw
over a handful of bear-flesh, after cutting it in small pieces.

"Why did you do that?" asked Steve.

"To give all the birds a chance."

"Oh! I say, how hungry they seem!"

"Yes, they do, sir. I often wonder how they live at all in the stormy
times."

S