Page:Polar Exploration - Bruce - 1911.djvu/79

Rh for a winter skin than for one at the end of summer, when it is actually brownish yellow. This yellowness is more marked when the bear is in his natural surroundings of white ice, and at first sight seems anything but a protective coloration. Yet when an old Arctic voyager shouts "A bear!" younger hands will look a while before they see the heavy monster a couple of hundred yards off on a floe, and it is not easy, at first, to account for this, until looking across the great expanse of white one sights another bear, and keeps on seeing imaginary bears for a long time. The old veteran smiles and simply says, "Yellow ice." Then the novice easily accounts for his wrong conclusion, and finds that there are patches of yellow ice all over the floe just the colour of a polar bear's coat, lighter in spring when daylight has just returned and when winter snows and frosts still hold, darker in summer like the bear's dirty summer coat. I remember an incident on board the Windward in 1896, in the Barents Sea. All hands were on the poop deck on a Sunday afternoon while the veteran mate was conducting a short service. Short as the service was, our mate appeared unduly anxious to get it over, until, with a final effort, he finished—for-ever-and-ever-Amen-there's-a-bear! The old boy had seen the bear shortly after the beginning of the reading till