"five hundred pounds: The skin will make [63] a good rug. High power rifles do awful execution, the two bullets that struck the seal in the head simply pulverizing its the skull. The sea was alive with a little shell fish known as Pteropods belonging to the class of Pteropods and swimming freely by means of wing-like appendages. These small animals form an important item in the food of the whales of these waters. As we approached land we got our first good view of the front of the continental ice cap, now at the level of the ocean and stretching along as a straight-edged, lowlying, horizontal white cloud between the blue sea and the blue sky. We did not quite overtake the midnight sun on our way north- hard, but we were in continuous