The game was in his eyes a contest, a struggle with a difficulty, yet a motionless, unwearying struggle, congenial to his tastes. - Jules Verne

The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides. The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence. It is nothing but love and emotion; it is the Living Infinite.

Hobson perceived with some alarm that bears were very numerous in the neighbourhood and that scarcely a day passed without one or more of them being sighted. Sometimes these unwelcome visitors belonged to the family of brown bears, so common throughout the whole "Cursed Land"; but now and then a solitary specimen of the formidable Polar bear warned the hunters what dangers they might have to encounter as soon as the first frost should drive great numbers of these fearful animals to the neighborhood of Cape Bathurst. Every book of Arctic explorations is full of accounts of the frequent perils in which travelers and whalers are exposed from the ferocity of these animals.

La nécessité est, d’ailleurs, de tous les maîtres, celui qu’on écoute le plus et qui enseigne le mieux.