nding a
sign of human life. Yet we learned that we were not the first who had
landed on Endeavour Island. High up on the beach of the second cove from
ours, we discovered the splintered wreck of a boat--a sealer's boat, for
the rowlocks were bound in sennit, a gun-rack was on the starboard side
of the bow, and in white letters was faintly visible _Gazelle_ No. 2.
The boat had lain there for a long time, for it was half filled with
sand, and the splintered wood had that weather-worn appearance due to
long exposure to the elements. In the stern-sheets I found a rusty
ten-gauge shot-gun and a sailor's sheath-knife broken short across and so
rusted as to be almost unrecognizable.

"They got away," I said cheerfully; but I felt a sinking at the heart and
seemed to divine the presence of bleached bones somewhere on that beach.

I did not wish Maud's spirits to be dampened by such a find, so I turned
seaward again with our boat and skirted the north-eastern point of the
island. There were no beaches on the southern shore, and by early
afternoon we rounded the black promontory and completed the
circumnavigation of the island. I estimated its circumference at
twenty-five miles, its width as varying from two to five miles; while my
most conservative calculation placed on its beaches two hundred thousand
seals. The island was highest at its extreme south-western point, the
headlands and backbone diminishing regularly until the north-eastern
portion was only a few feet above the sea. With the exception of our
little cove, the other beaches sloped gently back for a distance of
half-a-mile or so, into what I might call rocky meadows, with here and
there patches of moss and tundra grass. Here the seals hauled out, and
the old bulls guarded their harems, while the young bulls hauled out by
themselves.

This brief description is all that Endeavour Island merits. Damp and
soggy where it was not sharp and rocky, buffeted by storm winds and
lashed by the sea, with the air continually a-tremble with the bellowing
of two hundred thousand amphibians, it was a melancholy and miserable
sojourning-place. Maud, who had prepared me for disappointment, and who
had been sprightly and vivacious all day, broke down as we landed in our
own little cove. She strove bravely to hide it from me, but while I was
kindling another fire I knew she was stifling her sobs in the blankets
under the sail-tent.

It was my turn to be cheerful, and I pla