ht came on they realized
their terrible position and that, with a gale of wind blowing, they
could not hope to reach land in their small boats. Nothing but an
awful death stared them in the face, for in order to hunt over the ice
men must be lightly clad, so as to run and jump from piece to piece.
Without fire, without food, without sufficient clothing, exposed to
the pitiless storm on the frozen sea, they endured thirty-six hours
without losing a life. Finally, they dragged their boats ten miles
over the ice to the land, where they arrived at last more dead than
alive.

It is the physical excitement of travelling over broken loose ice on
the bosom of the mighty ocean, and the skill and athletic qualities
which the work demands, that makes one love the voyage. Jumping from
the side of the ship as she goes along, skurrying and leaping from
ice-pan to ice-pan, and then having killed, "sculped," and "pelted"
the seal, the exciting return to the vessel! But it has its tragic
side, for it takes its regular tribute of fine human life.

A Mr. Thomas Green, of Greenspond, while a boy, with his father and
another man and a 'prentice lad, was tending his seal nets when a
"dwey" or snowstorm came on, and the boat became unmanageable and
drifted off to sea. They struck a small island, but drifted off again.
That night the father and the 'prentice lad died, and next morning the
other man also. The son dressed himself in all the clothes of the
other three, whose bodies he kept in the boat. He ate the flesh of an
old harp seal they had caught in their net. On the third day by
wonderful luck he gaffed an old seal in the slob ice. This he hauled
in and drank the warm blood. On the fifth day he killed a white-coat,
and thinking that he saw a ship he walked five miles over the floe,
leaving his boat behind. The phantom ship proved to be an island of
ice, and in the night he had to tramp back to his open punt. On the
seventh day he was really beginning to give up hope when a vessel, the
Flora, suddenly hove in sight. He shouted loudly as it was dark,
whereupon she immediately tacked as if to leave him. Again he shouted,
"For God's sake, don't leave me with my dead father here!" The words
were plainly heard on board, and the vessel hove to. The watch had
thought that his previous shouting was of supernatural origin. He and
his boat with its pitiful load were picked up and sent back home by a
passing vessel.

On this particular voyage we