Page:The cruise of the Corwin.djvu/64

 seldom clear before the middle or end of June. Here the ice occurs in ragged, berglike masses from a foot to a hundred feet in breadth, and with the highest point not more than ten or twelve feet above the water. Its color is bluish-white, looking much like coarse, granular snow, with pale blue stratified bases under water.

We ran past one flat cake on which lay a small white seal which kept its place, though we were within fifteen or twenty feet of it. Guns were then brought into the pilot-house and loaded. In a few minutes another seal was discovered riding leisurely on its ice raft and shot. The engine was stopped, the boat lowered, and a sailor stepped on the ice and threw the heedless fellow into the boat. It seemed to pay scarce any attention to the steamer, and, when wounded by the first ball that was fired, it did not even then seek to escape, which surprised me since those among the fiords north of Wrangell and Sitka are so shy that my Indians, as we glided toward them in a canoe, seldom were successful in getting a shot. The seal was nearly white-a smooth oval bullet without an angle anywhere, large, prominent, humanlike eyes, and long whiskers. It seemed cruel to kill it, and most wonderful to us, as we shivered in our overcoats, that it could live