Outing . hopes of getting northalong the Alaskan coast. They hadfound the solid ice pack as far south asSt. Pauls Island, so returned. Withthem came news from ships at the south,the two chief items being that twenty-one whales had been caught and that theStamhoul had been stove ; not so seri-ously, however, but that she could be re-paired. This was the slowest getting anywhereI had ever experienced. On the first dayof May we were 100 miles below CapeNavarin. A week later we were off thecape. Then we pressed forward andwent perhaps fifty miles, but only to bebeset in the pack andremain three da
Outing . hopes of getting northalong the Alaskan coast. They hadfound the solid ice pack as far south asSt. Pauls Island, so returned. Withthem came news from ships at the south,the two chief items being that twenty-one whales had been caught and that theStamhoul had been stove ; not so seri-ously, however, but that she could be re-paired. This was the slowest getting anywhereI had ever experienced. On the first dayof May we were 100 miles below CapeNavarin. A week later we were off thecape. Then we pressed forward andwent perhaps fifty miles, but only to bebeset in the pack andremain three dayswithout moving aships length, exceptas the current carriedus. Then a north-westerly gale carriedus back below CapeThaddeus. Four orfive days later the iceopened sufficiently toallow of making anattempt to work north-ward, and in two weekswe had only goneabout one hundredmiles. During thesetwo weeks we hadsailed north and drift-ed south, sailed southand drifted north—infact, gone in every WHALING. 115. direction. Onecurrent carried usto within s i x t ymiles of tlie Ana-dir River, whileanother carried usoff to the the cu r -rent settled downto a general north-erly flow and car-ried us in theproper direction atthe rate of fromtwo to twelvemiles a day. Localcurrents occasion-a11 y the first dayof June each shiplay tied up to abig cake of ice,and of the vesselsnearest us, theHi da Ig o, whichwas east southeast in the morn-ing, was carriedto south by east by night. The Abram Barker was car-ried from north by east to north east bynorth, and the Northern Lights from westhalf north to south west by west. To be bothered like this is an every-day experience to an Arctic whaleman,and it is a small part of what he mustpatiently submit to. A contrary currentmay hold him in the pack while shipsabout him make sail, and head for thewhaling grounds. Or while he is wear-ing and tacking about, waiting an oppor-tunity to continue his course, he is har-assed by
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