Leaning over the bridge, we watched the moving icebergs.

Evening fell. At sunset the mountains were opalescent. New ones appeared; they trailed laminated algae, which, long and fine as hair, appeared first as captive sirens, then as a vast reticulation; the moon shone through as a jellyfish in a net, as nacreous holothurian; then moving freely through the open sky, the moon turned azure-colored. Pensive stars went astray, whirled, plunged into the sea.

Toward midnight appeared a gigantic vessel; the moon illuminated it mysteriously; its rigging stood motionless; the bridge was dark. It passed close beside us; there was no sound of oars, no noise from the crew. We finally realized that it was caught in the ice, between two icebergs that had closed in on it. It passed on by, silently, and disappeared.

Toward morning, a little while before dawn, a cool breeze brought alongside us an islet of purest ice; in the middle, like a globed fruit, like a magic egg, gleamed an immortal jewel. It was a morning star on the waves, and we could not tire of gazing at it. It was as pure as a ray from Lyra; it vibrated at dawn like a melody; but as soon as the sun rose, the ice that had encased it melted and allowed it to fall into the sea.

That day we fished for whales.

This marks the end of my memories and the beginning of my undated journal.

*   *   *

Into the abyss transplendent with tempest-tossed spume, where no man had ever intruded upon the savage feasts of the albatrosses and eiders, Eric descended, swinging like a diver from a thick elastic cord and brandishing at the end of his naked arm a wide swan-slaying knife. A humid current rises from the depths where the green waves writhe and the wind drives the spume. The great frightened birds wheel and deafen him with the beating of their wings. Bending over and gripping the rock to which the cord is attached, we watch: Eric is above their nests; he descends into the heart of the turmoil; in snow-colored feathers and exquisite down sleep the young eiders; Eric the bird-killer puts his hand on the covey; terrified, the little ones awaken and struggle, trying to escape; but Eric buries the knife in their feathers and laughs when he feels their warm blood on his hands. The blood streams down their feathers, and their beating wings splatter it on the rock. Their blood streams down to the water, and their blood-drenched down is scattered by the waves. The great startled birds are trying to protect their young! Eric, menaced by their claws, slashes them with his knife. And then from the waves arises a vortex of enraged spume; driven between the walls of the abyss by the sea wind, white as the swans’ down, it rises, rises, rises, and driven furiously upward with its neverending spirals of feathers, disappears in the sky which we see, whirlpool blue, when we look upward.

On these schistous cliffs the guillemots build their nests. The females remain perched; the males fly around them; they cry out stridently and their cries and the noise of their wings deafen anyone who approaches. They fly in such great hordes that they darken the sky in passing; they wheel ceaselessly. Grave, motionless, never shrieking, the females stand expectantly in a row on a huge ridge where the rock overhangs slightly. They sit on their solitary eggs, deposited there furtively, like droppings, and not in nests but on the bare sloping rock. They sit there, rigid and grave, holding the eggs between their feet and tails to keep them from rolling off.

The ship ventured between the sheer cliffs, into a dark, narrow fiord; the rocks seemed to drop sharply to unknown depths in the transparent water, appearing at times to be the reflection of the cliffs; but the depths were dark and the cliffs white with birds. The males above our heads made so much noise that we could not hear each other. We were advancing slowly; they seemed not to see us. But after Eric, a skilled slinger, hurled a few stones into the opaque cloud and killed several of them with each stone, causing them to fall near the ship, then their redoubled cries enraged their mates on the cliff; leaving behind the nuptial rock and the hope of progeny, all of them took flight, emitting horribly strident screams. It was a fearsome army; we were ashamed of the commotion, especially when we saw all the doomed eggs, now forsaken and no longer held against the ridge, roll down the cliff. They rolled the entire length of the cliff, their broken shells leaving horrible white and yellow trails. Some of the more devoted brooders tried in taking flight to carry their eggs in their claws, but the eggs soon fell out and broke on the blue sea, dirtying the water. We were upset by the commotion and left in great haste, for the terrible stench of the coveys was beginning to engulf us.

… In the evening, at the time for prayers, Paride had not returned; we looked for him and called out to him until night, but we were unable to find out what had happened to him.

The Eskimos live in snow huts; their huts, stretched out across the plain, look like tombstones; but their souls are entombed with their bodies; a wisp of smoke rises from each hut. The Eskimos are ugly; they are small; there is no tenderness in their love-making; they are not voluptuous and their joy is theological; they are neither evil nor good; their cruelty is unmotivated. Inside their huts it is dark; one can hardly breathe there.