Herschel Island, so that as far as the eye could reach was a jumble of bergs and solid floe, but behind the island where the ships lay the salt water had frozen as level as a floor. The nine months that the whalemen were compelled to lie in idleness, while not enlivened by social gayeties, were far from monotonous. With lumber brought up from San Francisco there had been built on shore a commodious one-room house, whose most conspicuous articles of furniture were a big stove that roared day and night, a billiard table and a number of benches and chairs. This was the clubroom of the sixty or seventy officers of the fleet, and here they congregated to play billiards and whist or sit about through the long Arctic evenings, while the wind howled outside, smoking and spinning yarns of many seas, or of boyhood days at New Bedford, New London and Martha's Vineyard. There were veterans who had whaled on every ocean, and had been in nearly every port on the globe; men who recollected well the raid of the cruiser Shenandoah when she burned the fleet on the coast of Siberia thirty years before, and who had been in the Point Barrow disaster, when nearly a score of ships were crushed in the ice floe. The sailors and firemen of the fleet did not have the privileges of this house, but contented themselves with games and amusements of their own. They had an orchestra that played long and vociferously, and there was an amateur dramatic troupe that gave entertainments during the winter. But it was on the great national game of Base Ball that officers and men most depended to break the tedium of their long imprisonment and furnish needed exercise.
"A large number of bats and balls had been brought up from San Francisco by one of last summer's arrivals, and as soon as the ships had gone into quarters seven clubs were organized and formed into a league to play for the 'Arctic Whalemen's Pennant,' which was a strip of drilling nailed to a broomhandle. One nine was composed entirely of officers, another of seamen, a third of firemen, a fourth of cooks and waiters, and so on—the seven nines constituting the 'Herschel Island League.' A set of written rules provided that the series of games should begin after a month's practice and continue throughout the winter, and that all must be played on schedule time regardless of weather. Another provision was that on the diamond all ship rank was obliterated, and a sailor could 'boss' even venerable Capt. Murray without fear of reproof. No sooner had the harbor frozen over than the diamond was laid out and practice begun. Salt water ice is not quite so slippery as that from fresh water, but great care had to be used by the players.
"After a season of practice, during which there was much speculation as to the merits of the various nines and no end of chaff and banter, the first game of the series was played, and in the brief twilight of an arctic December day, with the mercury 38° below zero, the 'Roaring Gimlets' vanquished the 'Pig-Stickers' by a score of