Hundreds of seals gambolled on the ice floes and on the shores of the little uncharted islands which make those waters such a serious menace to the mariner.

Sometimes the boats were away for a week.

Sometimes two days found them headed back for Seal Cove, laden with seals, walrus, and narwhal.

Many of them succeeded in getting a good catch of white whales, for which those waters are so noted; but these were caught at the mouths of the tidal rivers, for the whales go up the rivers every day with the tide, and it was when the tide was ebbing that the whales were most easily caught.

It was only the biggest and strongest boats that ventured so far as the tidal rivers, however, and with these Jervis Ferrars never went.