rcise of it, and always take most elaborate
precautions to render their approach to a whale noiseless.

Our extraordinary want of success at last so annoyed the skipper that
he determined to quit the ground and go north. The near approach of
the open season in those regions probably hastened his decision, but I
learned from Goliath that he had always been known as a most fortunate
man among the "bowheads," as the great MYSTICETAE of that part of
the Arctic seas are called by the Americans. Not that there is any
difference, as far as I have been able to ascertain, between them
and the "right" whale of the Greenland seas, but from some caprice of
nomenclature for which there is no accounting.

So in leisurely fashion we worked north, keeping, of course, a bright
look-out all the way for straggling cachalots, but not seeing any. From
scraps of information that in some mysterious fashion leaked out, we
learned that we were bound to the Okhotsk Sea, it being no part of
the skipper's intentions to go prowling around Behrings Sea, where he
believed the whales to be few and far between.

It may be imagined that we of the crew were not at all pleased with
this intelligence, our life being, we considered, sufficiently miserable
without the addition of extreme cold, for we did not realize that in the
Arctic regions during summer the cold is by no means unbearable, and our
imagination pictured a horrible waste of perpetual ice and snow, in the
midst of which we should be compelled to freeze while dodging whales
through the crevices of the floes. But whether our pictures of the
prospects that awaited us were caricatures or no made not the slightest
difference. "Growl you may, but go you must" is an old sea-jingle of the
truest ring; but, while our going was inevitable, growling was a luxury
none of us dare indulge in.

We had by no means a bad passage to the Kuriles, which form a natural
barrier enclosing the immense area of the Okhotsk Sea from the
vast stretch of the Pacific. Around this great chain of islands the
navigation is exceedingly difficult, and dangerous as well, from the
ever-varying currents as from the frequent fogs and sudden storms. But
these impediments to swift and safe navigation are made light of by
the whalemen, who, as I feel never weary of remarking, are the finest
navigators in the world where speed is not the first consideration.

The most peculiar features of these inhospitable shores to a seaman are