A whaling voyage was filled, especially in the earlier days, with as much danger as adventure. The ships were manned by sailors who had taken to the life as lads, or, held by the fascination of the North, returned thither year after year, seldom caring to make voyages elsewhere. They lived amid the ice. True northman and fine seaman, many a whaler’s master is proud of the fact that he began his career as a cabin boy and worked his way aft. He is a fighter, every inch of him, such as only “the wild” can breed. He has an iron code of honour, and a strain of true Norse hardness in him for his enemy. But he has also the manly virtues of his type—fidelity to his fellows, and generosity to lesser men than himself. Previous to an Arctic voyage, months were spent in the commissioning of these vessels. Every rope and block was overhauled. The ships’ boats were rigorously tested and each carefully fitted out. Food and stores of all kinds were taken aboard wholesale, against every contingency experience and foresight could suggest, especially that of a forced wintering in the north. An armoury of weapons was carried: harpoons and harpoon guns for the boats, lances for killing whales, huge knives for cutting up the carcases, bombs, hatchets, rifles and ammunition. No less exhaustive was the inventory of the “trade”—articles for the Eskimo trade and barter—such as needles, soaps (scented and otherwise), pipes, matches, calico, beads, and, above all, tobacco! Every boy’s book of adventure will suggest the scope of the slop chest, the incredible handiness and nattiness of the galley, the reek of the fo’c’sle, the snug dignity of the Captain’s cabin, and the compressed completeness of an equipment designed to last a ships’ entire crew (let us say her tonnage is about 129, and her company number twenty-nine) over many months of toil, emergency, and utter isolation. She carried no doctor. The first mate presided over the medicine chest, and had resort to some small book of directions as to what to give and what to do in case of illness or accident. In the early days adventurers to the Arctic were sorely stricken with scurvy, for want of vegetable food and a knowledge of how to provide against this deficiency. We have often heard of desperate feats of amateur surgery carried out on board ship. It has been that the mate of a whaling vessel often acted, not at all unsuccessfully, as surgeon.