Strange people crowd the fo’castle.  Two years ago the ships bound for “Outside” got nipped in early ice and were forced to winter at Herschel all unprepared.  Reduced to half-rations the crew got weak, and scurvy threatened.  The Mounted Police (who by the way are “mounted” in imagination only, as there is nothing for the most gallant to stride here but Husky dogs), in making examination of the men below decks, got to their enquiries a technical reply that staggered them.  One able-bodied seaman, busied with between-decks blubber, proved to be a medical man with degrees from two colleges.  He subsequently made at the request of the Police a searching report on the state of health of the island community, adding suggestions for its improvement.  The report was signed “T.H.  Toynbee Wright, M.D.,” and, after making it, the A.B., M.D. saluted, donned his oily overalls, and turned once more to the savoury spoils of the Bowhead.  Which all goes to prove that in these latitudes “you never can tell.”

Whale-men at Herschel give whales five names according to age and size:  they are “suckers” under a year, “short-heads” as long as they are suckled, “stunts” at two years, “skull-fish” with baleen less than six feet long, and “size-fish” at the age when a boy reaches man’s estate.  A whale needs no re-incarnation theory of the theosophist, for he crowds enough experience into one sea-life to satisfy the fact-thirst of the greediest little Gradgrind.  Fancy, thrashing the sea for a thousand years!  A “sucker” who happened to be disporting round the British Isles when Alfred the Great was burning those historic cakes and prefiguring with candles the eight-hour day may still be chasing whale-brit round an Arctic iceberg.  The whale mates, we are told, once and for keeps.  Jogging along from one ocean end to another with the same wife for a thousand years without turning fluke to look at an affinity!  Shades of Chicago and Pittsburg, hide your wings!  Whales follow their annual migration as regularly as do moose and caribou on land, the seal and salmon in the Pacific.  Seen first in May in Bering Strait, the Bowheads trend from here north and east, doubling back on their westward journey in July and August, when the Herschel Island whalers go out to intercept them.  September sees the great mammals off Southern Kamchatka, and year by year with regularity they follow this Arctic orbit, edging farther in successive seasons to the north and east.  The usual track of any family of whales may be left at a tangent on account of a furious storm, excessive cold, the want of food, the harassing of an enemy, or a change in the season of their amours.