another may be the means of saving their
lives. To "copy" is to play the game of follow-my-leader: and so the
boys use the phrase "a good big copy from pan to pan" when they mean
it is a long leap between.

There is uncontrollable excitement aboard a sealer when the prize is
in sight at last. Perhaps the ship has been buffeting the ice for
many weary days, bucking the floes and backing away again with the
lookout in the crow's nest scanning the horizon in vain with powerful
spy-glasses.

But at last the joyful cry is heard: "Whitecoats!" or "Dere'm de
whitey jackets!" In less time than it takes to tell the men swarm over
the bulwarks with their gaffs and knives and are deployed among the
seals.

The "whitecoats" are the helpless young ones, mild and innocent as
puppies, with great tears in their eyes and as pettable as woolly
lambs if the sealers did not have to steel their hearts and think of
their own young ones at home. Can you blame the man with the knife,
any more than you blame the butcher who serves your household with
lamb chops, if he goes to the red-handed slaughter with might and
main? Those "whitey jackets" may spell to his family the difference
between starvation and sufficiency if not plenty. He cannot afford to
let sentiment interfere with his grim business.

The young seals are gaffed without trouble: the old ones are shot. The
adult males are called "dogs"--and a "dog" hood seal, brought to bay
and standing up on his flippers like a bear, is an ugly customer. It
needs two men to tackle him, and if they are not careful he will bite
off an arm or a leg in a jiffy. Yet the "dog" takes to the water, if
he can get there, without paying the slightest heed to what becomes of
the mother seal or the young one. He is generally a poor defender of
his own family.

For the hood seal family consists of but the three. Father--the "dog"
hood--blows a big skin bag over his head when he is attacked, and the
blows of the gaff rain upon it harmlessly. So terrific is his bite,
when he gets a chance at his assailant, that the Newfoundlanders say
the carcass itself can bite after the head has been cut off. A mature
"dog" seal weighs from 600 to 900 pounds.

Bucking the ice to get at the main herd is a big part of the battle.
Sometimes the skipper shouts: "Bombs out!" Then the blasting powder is
produced, and the cry comes: "Hot poker for the blasts!" The fuse is
then touched off with the red-hot implement. The bomb is