Some funny incidents occur at these prolonged sittings. I remember one experienced old seal-hunter who told me that when he was a young man he was once out all night watching a blow-hole and got very sleepy--so sleepy, indeed, that he could not keep his eyes open. After vainly endeavoring to arouse himself, he finally succumbed, and, falling asleep, tumbled over backward and wandered in the land of dreams. Suddenly awakening he saw what he supposed to be a man with hostile intentions standing and looking down upon him through the dim starlight. Every time he moved in the least, in order to get up, the strange man moved in a threatening sort of way, and he had to lie still again. At last, after getting thoroughly awakened, he discovered what he had taken for an enemy, and had caused him such alarm, was only his own leg sticking up in the air and resting against the snow-block seat from which he had tumbled when he fell asleep. Another hunter was overcome by sleep at a seal hole, and awakened by the consciousness of danger, saw a great white bear watching the hole, which in his sleepiness he had neglected. The hunter had fallen behind his snow seat in such a way as to be concealed from the bear, which had been attracted by the scent of the seal and arrived just at the moment when the young man awoke. To jump to his feet and fly from the vicinity of danger was, with the frightened Esquimau, the work of a minute, and so startled the bear that it also made off in the opposite direction as fast as feet would carry it. When the seal comes up to breathe it stays about ten minutes, which gives the hunter plenty of time to get his spear and line ready. He then must take accurate aim and make a vigorous thrust through the little hole, withdrawing the spear quickly and holding the line tightly, so as to exhaust the game as much as possible before the line is all run out. The end is wound tightly around his right arm, and he sits down, bracing himself to resist the struggles of the animal to free itself. It usually makes three desperate efforts to escape, and then the hunter begins to haul in on his line, and, breaking away the snow around the hole, to admit of the passage of the body, lands his prey on the ice.