The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 3Whymper, Frederick
History
The Sea: Its Stirring Story of Adventure, Peril, & Heroism. Volume 3
Whymper, Frederick
Adventure and adventurers; Arctic regions; Ocean; Voyages around the world
scutes, and laie down to rest, appointing one of our men to keepe watch;
and when the sun was north there came three beares towards our scutes,
wherewith he that kept the watch cried out lustily, ‘Three beares! Three
beares!’ at which noise we leapt out of our boates with our muskets, that
were laden with small shot to shoote at birds, and had no time to reload
them, and therefore shot at them therewith; and although that kinde of
shot could not hurt them much, yet they ranne away, and in the meane time
they gaue vs leisure to lade our muskets with bullets, and by that meanes
we shot one of the three dead.... The 29th of June, the sun being
south-south-west, the two beares came againe to the place where the dead
beare laie, when one of them tooke the dead beare in his mouth, and went a
great way with it ouer the rugged ice, and then began to eate it; which we
perceauing, shot a musket at her, but she, hearing the noise thereof, ran
away and let the dead beare lie. Then foure of vs went thither, and saw
that in so short a time she had eaten almost the halfe of her.” It was as
much as these four could do to carry away the half of the body left,
although the bear had just before dragged the whole of it over the rough
and hummocky ice with little exertion.
On July 1st they were again in great danger among the driving, grinding
ice, their boats were much crushed, and they lost a quantity of goods,
and, what was of vital importance at the time, a large proportion of their
remaining provisions. A few days afterwards their little company was still
further reduced by the death of one of the sailors. On July 11th, and a
week afterwards, they were enclosed by ice, from which they could not
extricate themselves. During this enforced delay they shot a bear, whose
fat ran out at the holes made by the bullets, and floated on the water
like oil. They obtained some seventy duck eggs on a neighbouring island,
and for a time feasted royally. “The 18 of July,” says the narrator,
“about the east sunne, three of our men went vp vpon the highest part of
the land to see if there was any open water in the sea; at which time they
saw much open water, but it was so farre from the land that they were
almost out of comfort, because it lay so farre from the land and the fast
ice.” They had on this occasion to row to an ice-field, unload, and drag
and carry boats and goods at least three-fourths of a mile across; they
then loaded and set sail, but were speedily entangled again, and had to
repeat their previous experiences.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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