Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/90

 each one is a big black mark like a harp. The old harp-seals start from way up north of Melville Sound in the early part of the winter and by March they are off the Labrador coast. There tens of thousands of them herd together on the drifting ice when the little white-coats, as the baby seals are called because their fur is so white, are born and, curiously enough, nearly all of them are born on the same day.

It was a great sight to see these fat roly-poly baby seals lying on their backs on the drifting ice and using their flippers to fan themselves with to keep cool.

A few days later the ships were so close to each other that Mackey and I visited back and forth across the ice while the crews were busy taking the seals. When we headed for St. Johns we had on board our ship more than twenty-five thousand sealskins, which was as big a load as we could carry, while the Midnight Sun had nearly fifty thousand and together we broke all previous records.

This being the case these hardened Arctic Captains were as tickled as a couple of sea-urchins and both agreed that wireless was the