"The Cruise of the "Snowbird" Crew in the "Arrandoon"" (continued 4)

“Stand by, Stevenson,” cried McBain, dropping on one knee, “to fire if I don’t kill at once.”

The monster held her head low as she advanced, and a less experienced hunter would have made this the target. McBain knew better. He aimed at the lower part of the neck, and the bear fell pierced through the great artery of the heart. Yet so near had he allowed the animal to come before firing, that Stevenson, trembling for his safety, had brought his own rifle to the shoulder.

Then those two poor young bears stood up to fight for their dead dam, giving vent to growls of grief and rage.

“We can take them alive, sir,” said Stevenson. “Come along, lads.” This last sentence was addressed to the boat’s crew. “Come along quick, and bring the ropes.”

Had old Seth been there, these young Bruins would soon have been lassoed. But McBain’s men were not over expert at such work. They did manage to rope one in a few minutes, but the other gave them a deal of trouble—sport one man erroneously called it. He invariably flew at the man who tried to throw the rope, and the man invariably made his feet his friends, thus giving another man a chance to try his skill. If he failed he had to run next, and so on until at long last one more adroit or more fortunate than his fellow succeeded in throwing the lasso over the young bear’s neck, and brought it half strangled to the ice.

“A present for you, Captain Grig,” cried McBain, pulling alongside the Canny Scotia with his double capture.

Silas was delighted when he saw the two live bears. “Heaven bless you, sir!” he exclaimed. “Why, sir, they’ll fetch forty pounds each in the London too. Forty pounds, sir! Think o’ that. Eighty pounds for the two o’ them. Keep my little wife and all the family for a month o’ Sundays. Hurrah! matie, luck’s turned.”

Chapter Eighteen.

A New Arrival—The Dogs—Trapper Seth Becomes Kennel-Man—Preparations for a Great Seal Hunt—The Greenland Bear.

On the very day that McBain shot the great she-bear—for it was one of the largest that ever fell before a sportsman’s gun—on that day, and on the afternoon of that day, just as our heroes were about to leave the island and re-embark on the Arrandoon, there landed from off that saucy “little two-stick yacht” one of the tallest Yankees that ever stepped in boots.

Seth squeezed the hand of this countryman of his till tears sprang into the stranger’s eyes; and they were not tears of emotion, nor sentiment either, but of downright pain.

“I say, siree?” cried the newcomer, shaking his hand and looking at the tips of his fingers, “patriotism and brotherly love are both beautiful things in their way, but when it comes to squeezing the blood out from under a fellow’s finger-nails, then I say, bother brotherly love.”

“I’m proud to meet you, sir,” exclaimed Seth, “let us shake hands once more.”

“Never a shake, old man,” said the stranger; “let us admire each other at a respectable distance. But come, gentlemen all,” he continued, turning to the others, “you ain’t going on board just yet. Come up with me to my house. I daresay you’ve been there already; but come back and break bread with Nathaniel Cobb, sometimes called the Little Wonder, because I ain’t much more’n seven feet high.”

Nat Cobb’s boat’s crew were Norwegians every one of them, short, somewhat squat, fair-haired fellows, but as active and bustling as a corresponding number of well-bred fox-terriers. A couple of them were moving on ahead now, with an immense basket between them.

“That’s the dinner,” said the Little Wonder; “and you’ll find there’s enough for all hands, too.”

“Well, gentlemen,” Nat said, when everybody had done justice to the good things placed before them, “let us drink each other’s healths in a cup of fragrant mocha, for that’s the wine for Greenland weather. Gentlemen, I look around me at your smiling faces, and I pledge you and bid you welcome to my island of Jan Mayen.”

“Hallo!” thought Rory, “your island.”

“Yes, gentlemen,” continued Nat, looking as if he really read Rory’s thoughts, “my island. Six months and more ago I annexed it, and to-morrow once again the stars and stripes will proudly flutter from yonder flagstaff, and the bird o’ freedom will soar over this wild mountain land.”

Apart from his queer, half-boastful speech, Nat Cobb was a very agreeable companion.

He was very frank at all events.

After looking at Rory for the space of half a minute, he suddenly stretched out his hand.

“I like you,” he said, “muchly, and I like you all. It is from men like you that the mightiest republic in the world has been built. But why don’t you speak more, Rory, as your messmates call you?”

“Ach! troth?” said Rory, “and sure I’m driving tandem with the thinking.”

“And you’re wondering,” said Nat, “where a piece of elongated mortality like myself stretches himself of a night on board the Highflier?”

“Seeing,” replied Rory, laughing, “that you’re about as long as the keel, and maybe a bit longer, I may well wonder that same; and unless you lean against a mast, I don’t quite see how you can stretch yourself.”

“Well, young sir, I’ll tell you how I do it. I double up into four, and lie on my back! that is how it’s done.”

The Little Wonder went off with our party to the Arrandoon; and as Yankees are ever ready to trade, he had not been long on board when McBain had purchased from him a dozen of his best dogs. They were to be kept until the ship returned from a week’s sport among the old seals, then taken on board just before the Arrandoon left for the extreme north. Old Seth was duly told off to superintend the erection of kennels, forward near the bows, and old Seth was in his glory in consequence.

“I’ll feel myself o’ some kind o’ use now,” he said. “Kennel-man in ordinary to the Arrandoon, a free house and victuals found, I guess it ain’t half a bad sitivation.”

About a week after this—the Greenland sealer having been made as good as new again—the Jan Mayen fleet sailed away from the island, and directed its course about north-and-by-east. First on the line went the noble Arrandoon sailing, not steaming, for a nice beam wind was blowing; next came the Canny Scotia with her tall, tapering spars; and the saucy Highflier, with her fore-and-aft canvas, brought up the rear.

Nathaniel Cobb was Arctic meteorologist to a private company of American scientists, but his time was pretty much his own, and he didn’t mind spending a week or a fortnight of it among the old seals. He wanted a skin or two anyhow, he said, to make a warm carpet for his “house,” and some oil to burn for fuel, but promised that everything beyond what he really wanted which happened to fall to his gun should be given to Silas.

Silas Grig was never happier in his life than he was now. Luck had indeed turned, fortune was about to favour him for once in a way. His would be a bumper ship, full to the hatches, with a bing of skins on deck that he wouldn’t be able to find room for below. And when he returned to Peterhead, flags would fly and bands would play, and his little wife and he would live happy ever after.

McBain wanted to show his young companions a little genuine sport, and at the same time do a good turn to honest Silas, by helping him to a voyage; while the former, on the other hand, were all excitement and bustle, for the Arrandoon was about to be transformed into a sealer; and the idea being such a perfectly new one, was correspondingly appreciated.

The little fleet kept well together; it would not have suited them to part company, although, even on a wind, without the aid of her boilers, the Arrandoon could easily have shown her consorts a pair of clean heels. The doctor himself was led away with enthusiasm, and longed to draw a bead, as Seth called it, on a bear itself. He had chosen a rifle from the box, cleaned and polished it, and called it his own.

“I’ve never shot a wild beast,” he explained to Rory, “but, man, if I get the chance, I’ll have a try.”

“Bravo!” cried Rory, “and you’re sure to get the chance, you know.”

The ice was loose, although the weather was clear and very frosty. There was a heaving motion in the main pack that prevented the bergs from getting frozen together, but for all that the fleet kept well clear of it, for fear of getting beset. Patches of old seals might, it is true, have been found far in among the ice, but the risk was too great to run, so McBain kept to the outside edge, and the others followed his example.

Silas Grig was invited on board the Arrandoon; and proud he was when the captain told him that he could choose five-and-twenty of his best men, and superintend their preparations for going after the seals. The third mate might be one of the number, but neither Stevenson nor Mitchell was to be allowed to go, although McBain did not object to these officers, or even the engineers, having a day’s sport now and then.

It was a glorious morning—for Greenland—when Captain McBain called all hands, in order that Silas might choose the men who were to assist him in making his fortune. The sun was shining as brightly as ever it does in England, and there wasn’t too much wind to blow the cold through and through one. Either of the officers might have passed for old men, if white hairs make men look old, for their hair, whiskers, and moustachios were coated with hoar-frost ice. Our heroes had just finished breakfast, all of them having had a cold sea-bath to give them a glow before they sat down, and were now walking briskly up and down the quarter-deck, talking merrily and laughing.

The Scotia had her foreyard aback, and the Arrandoon had also stopped her way, and yonder was Silas in his boat coming rapidly over the rippling water towards the steamer, the skipper himself standing like a gondolier and steering with an oar in true whaler fashion.

“Now, lads,” cried Silas, when the men of the Arrandoon lay aft in obedience to orders. “You’re a fine lot, I must say; every man Jack o’ ye is better than the other; but I just want the men that have been to the country before. The men among ye that know a seal-club from a toastin’-fork, or a lowrie-tow from a bell-rope, just elevate a hand, will ye?”

(Lowrie-tow—the rope with which the men drag the skins to the ship’s side.)

No less than fifteen gloved hands were waved aloft. Silas was delighted, and did not take long to choose the remaining ten.

“You’ll go on the ice by twos, you know, men,” he continued, “and when one o’ ye tumbles into the water, why, the other’ll simply pull him out. Nothing easier.”

All these hands were to be clubsmen and draggers, while “the guns,” as they were called, comprised the following: Ralph, Rory, Allan, Sandy the surgeon, De Vere the aeronaut, Seth trapper, and the third mate, seven in all, and warranted to give a good account of the seals, and keep the men steadily on drag if the sport was anything like good.

Having made these preliminary arrangements, the men were dismissed, and Silas spent the rest of the day forward with old Ap the carpenter and the sail-maker. And very busy the whole four of them were, too, for three dozen daggers or seal-knives had to be fitted with sheaths of leather, and belts to go round the men’s waists, and three dozen lowrie-tows, with the same number of seal-clubs, had to be got ready.

I saw the other day an engraving of a sealing scene in Greenland, evidently done by an artist who had never been in the Arctic regions in his life, and who had therefore trusted to his imagination, which had led him far from the truth. In this picture there is a ship under canvas: error Number 1, for sealers always clue or brail up before the men go over the side. The ice is tall and pinnacled: error Number 2, for the ice the old seals lie on is either flat or hummocky. The men on the ice are leaping madly from berg to berg and clubbing old seals: error Number 3, for unless old seals get positively frozen out of the water by the pieces becoming fast together, they will not wait to be clubbed. You may catch a weasel asleep, but never an old seal. Lastly, in this picture, the men are wielding clubs that have evidently been borrowed from some gymnasium: this constitutes error Number 4, for seal-clubs are nothing like these. They are more like an ancient battle-axe; the shaft is about four or five feet long and made of strong, tough wood, while through the top of this terrible weapon is run the part that does the execution—a square piece of iron or steel—sharpened at one end, hammer-like at the other, and nearly a foot long. With this instrument a strong man has been known to lay a Greenland bear dead with one blow. No one of course would dare to attack a bear armed with a club alone, but instances have occurred where the bear has been the aggressor, and where the man had to defend himself as best he could.

One word parenthetically about the great Polar or ice bear. Until I had first seen the carcass of one lying flensed on the ice, I could not have believed that any wild beast could attain such gigantic proportions. The footprints of this monster were as large as an ordinary pair of kitchen bellows. The pastern, or ankle, seemed as wide as the paw, and as near as I could guess about thirty inches round; the forearms and hind-legs were of tremendous strength; so too were the shoulders and loin. An animal like this with one stroke can slay the largest seal in Greenland, and could serve the biggest lion that ever roared in an African jungle precisely the same. As to the voice, it is hardly so fearful as the lion’s, but heard, as I heard it one night on the pack, within two yards of me, it is sufficiently appalling, to say the least of it. It is a sort of half-cough, half roar. As trapper Seth described it after his adventure at the cave in Jan Mayen, when little Freezing Powders so nearly lost the number of his mess:

“The roar of a healthy Greenland bear, when the owner of it is so close ye could kick him, is a kind o’ confusin’; it shakes your innards considerable, and makes ye think the critter has swallowed the thick end of a thunderstorm and is tryin’ to work it up again.”

An elephant—a tusker—is no joke when he loses his temper and comes after you, nor is a lion or tiger when he thinks he can do you a mischief, but I would rather face either of them twice over than I would an ice bear with his back up, if I myself were unarmed. I was very young, by the way, when I found myself confronted with my first Greenland bear, but I well remember both what my thoughts were at the time, and what were my feelings. The truth is, I had made the captain promise he would give me a chance to go and fight one of these terrible giants of the ice. He did so in good time, and I confess that as the boat neared the pack—I being in the bows—I suddenly discovered that I was not half so brave as I had previously imagined. The bear did not run away, as I fear I had almost wished that he would. He simply waited, looking at us somewhat inquiringly; and when I landed, all alone, mind you, he came along to meet me, and inquire what I wanted, and I hated him while I envied him for his coolness. He seemed to say, “Why, you’re only a boy; just wait till I get alongside you, and I’ll show you how I treat boys. I’ll turn you inside out.” I had to wait. Wild horses couldn’t have tom me from the spot, where I had dropped on one knee. Oh! I can assure you, I would have liked, well enough, to run away, but with all the ship’s crew looking at me—? No; death rather than live a coward. On came Bruin, much to my disgust; I would have felt as brave as a lion had he only shown me his heels. Then these questions chased each other through my brain: “How near will I let the beggar come before I fire? Shall I hit him on the head, or shoot him in the chest? and, What shall I do if the rifle misses fire?”

Bruin still advanced at a shambling trot. Then I brought my rifle to the shoulder and took aim, glancing along the glimmering barrel till I could only see the visé at the end, and immediately beyond that Bruin’s yellow breast. Bang, bang! I dare say it really was myself who pulled those two triggers of my double-barrelled rifle, but at the time I felt as if I had nothing at all to do with it. Then there was a shout from the boat, and a shout from the ship. Bruin was dead, and I was the hero; but somehow I did not feel that I deserved the praise which I received. Yet, after all, I daresay I only felt in this encounter as most boys would have felt. Doing anything dangerous is always nasty at first, but when one gains confidence in himself, then is the time one knows—

“That strange joy that warriors feel In foemen worthy of their steel.”

Chapter Nineteen.

“Silas Grig, His Yarn”—The White Whale—Afloat on an Iceberg—A Dreary Journey—Bear Adventures—“The Seals! The Seals!”

There was only one subject in the whole world that Silas Grig was thoroughly conversant with, and that was the manners and customs of his friends the seals. Had you started talking upon either politics or science, or the state of Europe or Ireland, Silas would have become silent at once. He would have retired within himself; his soul, so to speak, would have gone indoors, and not come out again until you had done. Such was Silas; and he confessed frankly that he had never sung a song nor made a speech in his lifetime. He was a perfect enthusiast while talking about the natural family Phocidae. No naturalist in the world knew half so much about them as Silas. On the evening of the day in which he had chosen his men from the crew of the Arrandoon, he was pronounced by both Ralph and Rory to be in fine form. He was full of anecdote, and even tales of adventure, so our heroes allowed him to talk, and indeed encouraged him to do so.

“What!” he cried, his honest, fear-nothing face lighting up with smiles as he eyed Rory across the table after dinner. “Spin you a yarn, d’ye say? ah! boy, and you’ll excuse me calling ye a boy. Silas never could tell a story, and I don’t suppose he ever had an adventure as signified much to you in his life.”

“Never mind,” insisted Rory, “you tell us something, and I’ll play you that old tune you so dearly love.”

“Ah! but,” said Silas, “if my matie were only here; now you wouldn’t think, gentlemen,”—here he glanced round the table as seriously as if contradiction were most unlikely—“you wouldn’t think that a fellow like that, with such an ugly chunk of a head, had any sentiment; but he has, though, and he owns the prettiest wife and the smartest family in all Peterhead.”

“Look here,” cried Rory, “be quiet about your matie. Sure this is what we’re waiting for.”

He exhibited the doctor’s slate as he spoke, and on the back thereof, behold! in large letters, the words,—

“Silas Grig, His Yarn.”

Silas laughed till his sides ached, his eyes watered, the chair creaked, and the rafters rang. It was a pleasant sight to see. After this he lit up a huge meerschaum pipe, “hoping there was no offence,” cleared his throat, turning his face upwards at the pendent compass, as if seeking help there. Then he began,—

“Of the earlier days of Silas Grig little need be said. I daresay he was no better and no worse than other boys. He nearly plagued the life out of his grandmother, and drove three maiden aunts to the verge of distraction, and made any amount of work for the tailor and the shoemaker; and when they couldn’t stand him any longer at home they sent him to school, reminding the teacher ere they left him there, that to spare the rod was to spoil the child. The teacher didn’t forget that; he whipped me three times a day, drilled me through the English grammar and Grey’s arithmetic, then flogged me into Caesar; and when I translated the passage, ‘Caesar triduas vias fecit’ (Caesar made three days’ journey.) into ‘Caesar made three roads,’ the dominie gave me such a dressing that I followed Caesar’s example—I made three days’ journey due north, and never returned to my maiden aunts, nor the dominie either.

“I found myself now in the heart of what I then took to be a big town, for I wasn’t very big myself, you know. It was only Peterhead, after all. I marched boldly down to the docks, and on board a great raking-masted Greenlandman.

“‘What use would you be?’ inquired the skipper when I told him what I wanted. ‘Bless me!’ he added, ‘you ain’t any size at all; the bears would eat you up.’

“‘I’ll have him,’ said the doctor, ‘if you’ll let me, captain. He can be my lob-lolly-boy and body-guard.’

“And so, gentlemen, from that day to this I’ve been a sailor o’ the northern seas; and there isn’t much to be seen in these regions that old Silas hasn’t come across, from Baffin’s Bay to Kamschatka, from lonely Spitzbergen in the north to Iceland in the south.”

“And so you’ve been in Spitzbergen, have you?” said McBain.

“Why, bless you, yes,” replied Silas. “It was there I was in at the death of the great white whale, and a sad day it was for us, I can tell you. He was white with age. (Very old whales are sometimes found in the far northern seas covered with a kind of parasite, which gives them a white or light-grey appearance.) I should think he couldn’t have been much under a hundred years old, and just as sly and wary as a hundred and forty foxes all rolled in to one. Many and many a boat had tried to catch him, but he had a way of diving and doubling to avoid the harpoons that some believed was rather more than natural; then when you thought he was miles and miles away, pop! up he would come among the very midst of the boats, and a funny thing it would be if he didn’t knock one o’ them to smithereens with that tail o’ his. We killed him though. Our skipper himself speared him, but it was hours after that before he died. And before he died terrible was the revenge he took on his destroyers. Gentlemen, Silas Grig has no language in his vocabulary to describe the vicious wrath of that sea-demon. I think I see him now as he rose to the surface, blowing blood and spray, snorting with fury, with fire seeming to flash out of his little evil eyes. We in the boats thought our last hour had come, as he ploughed down through us. But our hearts stood still with fear and dread when he dashed past us and made for the ship itself. Onward with lightning speed went the brute, leaving a wake astern such as a man-o’-war might have left.

“Our craft—a small brig—was lying with her foreyard aback. She looked as if sleeping on the gently rippling water. No one spoke in the boats, every eye was fixed on our ship—our home, and on the fearful monster advancing to attack her. We could see that the people left on the brig knew the whole extent of their danger, for they seemed all on deck. There were wild shouts, and guns were fired, but nothing availed to avert the catastrophe. Then, oh! the sad, despairing cry that rose to heaven from that doomed ship! It seems to ring in my ears whenever I think of it. The whale struck her right amidships, and she went over and down at once. No soul was saved; and when we rode up to the spot, there was nothing to be seen, and nothing to be heard, save the body of the great white whale, dead, on his side, with the waves lap-lapping against it as it slowly rose and fell.

“For six long, cold, weary days we lived in the open boats, feeding on the flesh of the seals we happened to kill, and quenching our thirst with the snow we gathered from the ice. When we had almost despaired of being saved, for we were far to the nor’ard and east of the usual fishing-grounds, a Norwegian walrus-hunter picked us up, and landed us at last, in midwinter, on a dreary shore in Lapland. But, gentlemen, that is nothing to what we, the survivors of the ill-fated Jonathan Grey, suffered some years afterwards. The ship got ‘in the nips’ coming out o’ the pack. We were crushed just as you might crash an egg-shell between your fingers. Thirty of us embarked upon the very iceberg that had caused our ruin, with two casks of biscuit, and hardly clothes enough to cover us. Then it came on to blow, and, huddled together in the centre of the berg, we were blown out to sea, trying in vain to keep each other warm, and defend ourselves from the cruel cold seas that dashed over us, heavier than lead, more remorseless than the grave. Fifteen days were we on the berg, and every day some one dropped off, ay, and the living seemed to envy the quiet, calm sleep of the dead. A sail in sight at last; and how many of us, think you, were alive to see it? Three I only three! It was a year after this before I was fit to brave the Arctic seas again, and meanwhile I had met my Peggy—my little wife that is. Some difference, you will allow, gentlemen, between Silas Grig afloat on a solitary iceberg in a troubled northern sea, and Silas strolling on the top of a breezy cliff in the bright moonlight of midsummer, with Peggy on his arm, and just as happy as the sea-birds.

“Were these the only times that I was cast away? No—for I lost my ship by fire once in the northern ice of Western Greenland, and it was two whole years before either myself or my messmates placed foot again on British soil. There wasn’t a ship anywhere near us, and the nearest settlement was a colony of transported Danes, that lived about three hundred miles south of us. We saved all we could from the burning barque, and that was little enough; then we constructed rough sledges, and tied our food and chattels thereon, and set out upon our long, dreary march. It took us well-nigh two months to accomplish our journey, for the way was a rough one, and the region was wild and desolate in the extreme. It was late in autumn, and the sun shone by day, but his beams were sadly shorn by the falling snow. Five suns in all we could count at times, though four, you know, were merely mirages. We did not all reach the colony; indeed, many succumbed to the fatigue of the march, to frost-bites, and to scurvy; and we laid them to rest in hastily-dug graves, and the snow was their only winding-sheet. It was more than a year before we found a passage back to our own country, and kind though the poor people all were to us, the governor included, we had to rough it, I can tell you. But you see, sailors who choose the Arctic Seas as their cruising-grounds must expect to suffer at times.

“Bears, did you say? Thousands! I’ve counted as many as fifty at one time on the ice, and I’ve had a few encounters with them too, myself, though I’ve known those that have had more. I’ve known men fight them single-handed, and come off scot-free, leaving Bruin dead on the ice. Dickie McInlay fought a bear with a seal-club. You may be sure the duel wasn’t of his own proposing; but coming across the ice one day all alone, he rounded the corner of a hummock, and lo! and behold! there was a monstrous bear washing the blood off his chops after eating a seal.

“‘Ho! ho!’ roared the bear. ‘I have dined, but you’ll come in handy for dessert. Oho! Waugh, O! oh!’

“Dick was a little bit of a fellow, but his biceps was as big, round, and just as hard as a hawser.

“‘If you come an inch nearer me,’ cried Dickie, quite undaunted, ‘it’ll be a dear day’s work for ye, Mr Bruin.’

“The bear crouched for a spring. He never did spring, though; but Dickie did; and he will tell you to this day that he never could understand how he managed to clear the space betwixt himself and the bear so speedily. Then there was a dull thud; Bruin never lifted head again, for the iron of Dickie’s club was planted deep into his brain.

“The doctor here,” continued Silas, “can tell you what a terribly sharp and deadly weapon of offence a large amputating knife would prove, in the hands of a powerful man, against any animal that ever lived. But the doctor I don’t think would care to attack a bear with one.”

“Indeed, no,” said Sandy; “I would rather be excused.”

“But the surgeon of the North Star did,” said Silas. “I was witness myself to the awful encounter. But the poor surgeon was mad at the time; he had given way to the rum-fever—rum-fiend it should be called. With his knife in his hand he wandered off and away all by himself over the pack. I saw the fight between the bear and him commence, and sent men at once to assist him. When they reached the scene of action they found the huge bear lying dead, stabbed in fifty places at least. The snow for yards around had been trampled down in the awful struggle, and was yellow and red with blood. The doctor lay beside the bear, apparently asleep. I need not tell you that he slept the sleep that knows no waking. The poor fellow’s body was crushed to pulp.

“Charles Manning, a spectioneer of the Good Resolve, was lying on his back on the sunny side of a hummock, snatching a five-minutes’ rest, for it was sealing time, when a bear crept up behind him, more stealthily than any cat could have done. He drew his paw upwards along the poor fellow’s body. Only once, mind you, but he left him a mere empty shell.”

(The author is relating facts; names only are concealed.)

“Ah! but, gentlemen, you should have seen a two-mile run I had not five years ago from a bear. Silas himself wouldn’t have believed that Silas could have done the distance in double the time. He was coming home all by himself, when he burst his rifle firing at a seal, and just at that moment up popped a bear.

“‘All alone, are you, Silas?’ Bruin seemed to say.

“‘Yes,’ replied Silas, moving off; ‘and I don’t want your company either. I know my way, thank you.’

“‘Oh, I daresay you do!’ says the bear. ‘But it will only be friendly like if I see you home. Wait a bit.’

“‘Never a wait!’ said Silas; and so the race began.

“Of course they saw it from the ship, and sent men to meet me and settle Bruin. Puffed? I should think I was! I lay on my face for five minutes, with no more breath in my old bellows than there is in a dead badger?”

“You’ve seen the sea-lion, I suppose, Captain Grig?” said Allan.

“I have that!” replied Silas, “and the sea-bear, too, and I don’t know which of the two I’d rather meet on the top of a berg, for they are vicious brutes both.”

“I’ve read some very interesting accounts of them,” said Allan, “in the encyclopaedias.”

“So have I,” laughed old Silas, “written by men who had never seen them out of the Brighton Aquarium. Pardon me, but you cannot study nature from books.”

“Do you know the Stemmatopus cristatus?” inquired Rory.

“What ship, my boy?” said Silas, with one hand behind his ear; “I didn’t catch the name o’ the craft.”

“It isn’t a ship,” said Rory, smiling; “it is a great black seal, with a thing like a kettle-pot over his head.”

“Oho!” cried Silas; “now I know. You mean the bladder-nose. Ay, lad! and a dangerous monster he is. A Greenland sailor would almost as soon face a bear as fight one of those brutes single-handed.”

“But the books tell us,” said Rory, “that, when surprised by the hunter, they weep copiously.”

“Bother such books!” said Silas. “What? a bladder-nose weep! Crocodile’s tears, then, lad! Why, gentlemen, this monstrous seal is more fierce than any other I know. When once he gets his back up and erects that kettle-pot o’ his, and turns round to see who is coming, stand clear, that’s what Silas says, for he means mischief, and he’s as willing to take his death as any terrier dog that ever barked. I would like to see some o’ those cyclopaedia-building chaps face to face with a healthy bladder-nose on a bit o’ bay ice. I think I know which o’ them would do the weeping part of the business.”

“Down south here,” said McBain—“if we can call it south—the seals have their young on the ice, don’t they?”

“You’re right, sir,” said Silas.

“And where do they go after that?”

“Away back to the far, far north,” said Silas. “We follow them up as far as we can. They live at the Pole.”

“Ah!” said McBain; “and that, Captain Grig, is in itself a proof that there must be open water around the Pole.”

“I haven’t a doubt about it!” cried Silas; “and if you succeed in getting there you’ll see land and water too, mountains and streams, and maybe a milder climate. Seals were never made to live down in the dark water; they have eyes and lungs, even, if they are amphibious. But look! look! look, men, look!”

Silas started up from the table as he spoke, excitement expressed in every lineament of his face. He pointed to the port from which at present the Canny Scotia was plainly visible, about half a mile off, on the weather quarter. The men could be seen crowding up the rattlings, and even manning the yards, and wildly waving their caps and arms in the air.

Silas threw the port open wide. “Listen!” he cried.

Our heroes held their breath, while over the water from the distant barque came the sound of many voices cheering. Then the Arrandoon’s rigging is manned, and glad shout after glad shout is sent them back.

Next moment Stevenson rushed into the cabin. “The seals! the seals!” was all he could say, or rather gasp.

“Are there many?” inquired several voices at once.—“Millions on millions!” cried the mate; “the whole pack is black with them as far as ever we can see from the mainmast head.”

Chapter Twenty.

Seal-Stalking—A Glorious Day’s Sport—Piper Peter and the Bear—A Strange Duet—The Seal-Stalkers’ Return.

It was about midnight on the 24th of April when the seals were sighted. Midnight, and the sun was low down on the horizon, but, for three long months, never more would it set or sink behind the sea of ice. The weather was bright, bracing, beautiful. Not a cloud in the sky, and hardly wind enough to let the ships get well in through the pack, towards the place where the seals lay as thick as bees, and all unconscious of their approaching fate. But the Arrandoon got steam up, and commenced forcing her way through the closely packed yet loosely floating bergs, leaving behind her a wake of clear water, which made it easy work for the Scotia and the saucy little “two-stick yacht” to follow her example.

My young reader must dismiss from his mind the idea of tall, mountainous, pinnacled icebergs, like those he sees in common engravings. The ice was in heavy pieces, it is true, from forty to sixty or seventy feet square, and probably six feet out of water, with hummocks here and there, and piles of bay ice that looked like packs of gigantic cards, but so flat and low upon the whole, that from the masthead a stretch of snow-clad ice could be seen, spreading westwards and north for many and many a mile.

When even the power of steam failed to force the Arrandoon farther into the pack, the ships were stopped, fires were banked and sails were clewed, and all hands prepared for instant action. The men girt their knives and steels around them, and threw their “Jowrie-tows” across their broad shoulders, and the officers, dressed in their sealing costume, seized their rifles and shot-belts.

Next moment the bo’s’n’s shrill pipe sounded out in the still air, and the order was shouted,—

“All hands over the side.”

In five minutes more the ships were apparently deserted. You wouldn’t have heard a sound on board, for few were left but stewards and cooks; while little boy Freezing Powders and his wonderful cockatoo had it all to themselves down in the saloon of the great steamship. The boy was bending down beside his favourite in the corner.

“What’s the row? What’s the row? What’s the row?” the bird was saying.

“I don’t know nuffin’ more nor you do, Cockie,” was the boy’s reply; “but it strikes dis chile dat dey have all taken leave of der senses, ebery moder’s son of dem. And de captain he have gone up into de crow’s-nest, which looks for all de world like a big barrel of treacle, Cockie, and he have shut hisself in der, and nuffin’ does he do but wave a long stick wid a black ball at de end of it. (The fan with which Greenland captains guide their men in the direction of the seals.) Dat is all de knows; but oh! Cockie, don’t you take such drefful big mouf-fuls o’ hemp. Supposin’ anyting happen to you, Cockie, den I hab nobody to talk to dat fully understand dis chile.”

The Canny Scotia was moored to the ice so close to the Arrandoon that the captains of the respective ships could maintain a conversation without stressing their lungs to any very great extent. Talking thus, each in his own crow’s-nest, they looked for all the world like a couple of chimney-sweeps conversing together from rival chimneys. The cooks were not idle in the galleys, they were busy boiling hams and huge joints of beef, and these, when cooked, were taken on deck; for sealing is hungry work, and every time a man brings a drag to the vessel’s side he helps himself to a lordly slice and a biscuit.

By-and-by the draggers began to drop in fast enough, each one hauling an immense skin with the fat or blubber attached; and these skins were all hoisted on board the Scotia, for all hands were working for Silas. But our heroes had the sport, and, taking it all in all, I do not think there is any sport in the world to compare to that of seal-stalking. Without any of the cowardliness of battue shooting, in which the poor surrounded animals are helpless, and cruelly and mercilessly slain, you have far more excitement, and the sport is not unattended with danger. To be a good seal-stalker you need the limbs of an athlete, the eye of an excellent marksman, and all the stealth and cunning of a tabby cat or a Coromanche Indian. If your nerves are not well strung, or your muscles not like iron, you may fail to leap across the lane of dark water that separates piece from piece; if you do fail and are not speedily helped out, the current may drag you beneath the bergs, or those dreadful sharks, that seldom are absent where blood is being spilled on the sea of ice, may seize and pull you down to a fearful death; if you are not a good shot, your seals will get away, for your bullet must pierce either neck or head; and, lastly, if you are not cunning, if you do not stalk with stealth, your seals will escape with the speed of lightning.

On warm, sunny days the seals lie close and sleep soundly, but they always have their sentries set. Kill the sentry, and many others are at your mercy; miss him, or merely wound him, and he gives the alarm instanter, and all the rest jump helter-skelter into the sea, according you a beautiful view of their tail-ends, which you don’t find very advantageous in the way of making a bag.

A good sealer, like a good skirmisher, takes advantage of every bit of cover, and many a death-blow is dealt from the shelter of a lump of loose ice.

The gunners to-day, as they usually do, went on after the seals in skirmishing order, in one long line, each taking a breadth of about seventy or one hundred yards.

It was an hour past midnight before they left the ships. When it was nine in the morning there was a kind of general assembly of the riflemen to breakfast, behind a large square hummock of packed bay ice, and only the very oldest among them could believe that it was so late. (These strange hummocks, which resemble, as already stated, huge packs of cards, are formed of pieces of bay ice about a foot thick, which has been broken up between two bergs, and finally thrown up out of the water altogether. They form quite a characteristic feature of a North Greenland icescape.) Why, to our own particular heroes it seemed scarcely an hour since they had left their ship, so great is the excitement of seal-stalking. But Ralph and Rory and Allan had done so well, and had managed to lay so many splendid seals dead on every piece of ice, that they earned high encomiums from the mate of the Canny Scotia; and even the doctor hadn’t shot amiss, and proud was he to be told so.

“But, my dear sirs,” said Sandy, “I’d like to know why a good surgeon shouldn’t be a good sportsman. Don’t you know that the great Liston himself was sometimes summoned to an operation at the hospital, just as he was mounting his horse to ride off to the hunt, arrayed in scarlet and cords?”

“And what did he do?” asked Rory.

“Pass the pie,” said Ralph.

“Why,” continued the doctor, enthusiastically, “doffed his scarlet coat and donned an old gown, whipped off a leg in one minute ten and a half seconds, and was in the saddle again five minutes after that.”

“Brayvo!” cried Captain Cobb, “doctor, you’re a brick, and if ever you come out to New Jersey, come and see Cobb, and I guess he’ll give you a good time of it.”

“Ray,” said Rory.

“Well, Row,” said Ray.

“Your face and hands are begrimed with powder, and there is a kind of wolfish look about you that is worth studying. You look like a frozen-out blacksmith who hasn’t a penny to buy a bit of peas-pudding or a morsel of soap.”

“I’m hungry, anyhow,” said Ray. “How good of McBain to send such a jolly breakfast! But I say, Row, d’ye remember the proverb about Claudius? Well, don’t you call my face and hands black till you’ve washed your own. You look like a chimney-sweep who has been out of work for a week, and got no food since the day before yesterday.”

“Well, well,” says Row, “but ’deed in troth, my dear big boy, nobody can wonder at your being successful as a seal-stalker, for what with the colour of your face, and the urgency, so to speak, of the two eyes of you, and that big fur cap, why the seals take you for one o’ themselves, a big bladder-nose.”

“Pass the ham,” said Ray; “Allan, some more coffee, I begin to feel like a giant refreshed.”

“I do declare upon mine honour,” said De Vere, “dat dis is de most glorious pignig (picnic) I ever have de pleasure to attend. But just you look at mine friend Seth, how funnily he do dress.”

“It may be a funny way,” said Allan, “but it is a most effectual one; dear old trapper Seth has killed more seals this morning than any two of us.”

Seth was dressed from top to toe in young seals’ skins, the hair outwards, with the exception of the cap, which was of darker fur, and a black patch on his back. They were not loose garments, they were almost as tight as a harlequin’s; but when Seth drew his fur cap over his face and threw himself on the ice, and began wriggling along, his resemblance to a saddle-seal was so preposterous that everybody burst into a hearty laugh.

“That’s the way I gets so near them,” said Seth, standing once more erect.

“Look, look!” cried Rory, and every eye was turned in the direction in which he pointed; and there, in a pool of dark water not twenty yards away, a dozen beautiful heads, with round, wondering eyes, had popped up to gaze at them.

It was a lovely sight, and never a rifle was lifted to shoot. Presently they disappeared, but on the mate of the Scotia giving vent to a loud whistle, up came the heads again, and there they remained as long as the mate whistled, for of all wild creatures in the world that I have ever come across, the Greenland seal is the most inquisitive; and no doubt the experience of some of my old-boy readers who have been to the country is the same as my own.

Onwards, steadily onwards, all that day went our sportsmen; they did not even assemble again for another meal, and at five of the clock they found themselves fully four miles from the place where the ships lay. The field of seals which they had attacked was some ten miles square, and although they had worked their way into it for miles, nevertheless when the flags were hoisted to recall them, at two bells in the first dog-watch, the field of seals still remained about ten miles square. This may seem strange, but is thus accounted for. Out of say twenty seals on each berg, fifteen at least would escape, and these swam away under the pack, and again took the ice on the far-off edge of the field of seals.

It being somewhat too far to drag the skins to the ship, bings had been made on the ice during the latter part of the day, so that no dead seals should be left unflensed upon the ice. When they wended their way homewards at the end of this glorious day’s shooting a broom was stuck besom-side up, on each bing, with the name of the ship on the handles. This is done with the view of preventing other ships from appropriating the skins. This is the custom of the country—one of the unwritten laws of the sea of ice.

While the gunners and their merry men were yet a long way off from the ships, there came a hail from the crow’s-nest of the Arrandoon, which, by the way, McBain had hardly left all the time. Peter had brought him up coffee and food, and he had danced in the interval to keep himself warm.

“On deck there?”

“Ay, ay, sir,” roared Peter, looking up.

“Is dinner all laid?”

“Ay, sir, and the cook is waiting.”

“Well, on with the kilt, Peter, if you’re not afraid of getting your hocks frozen, get the bagpipes, and go and meet the hunters.”

Down below dived Peter, and he was up again in what sailors call “a brace of shakes,” arrayed in full Highland costume, with the bagpipes over his arm. No wonder the cockatoo cried,—

“De-ah me?” when he saw Peter, and added, “Such a to-do! such a to-do! such a to-do!”

Now the bears had been rather numerous on the pack that day, just as the sharks were in the water. Doubtless the sharks found many a poor wounded seal to close their vengeful jaws upon, for they are either too cowardly or not swift enough to catch a healthy phoca; but the bears had behaved themselves unusually well. They had had plenty to eat, at all events, and seemed to know that the men at work on the ice were laying up a store of provisions for them that would last them all the summer, so they had made no attempt to attack them. But on their way back to the ship the doctor, who was striding on a little way in advance of the rest, startled a huge monster who was sunning himself behind a hummock. It would be difficult to say whether the bear or the doctor was the more startled; at all events the latter fired and missed, and the former made off, running in the direction of the ships. But he hadn’t gone above half a mile when who should Bruin meet but Peter, coming swinging along with his bagpipes under his arm. Never a gun had Peter, and never a club—only the pipes. As soon as they saw each other they both stopped short.

“I do declare,” Bruin seemed to say to himself, “here is a man or something all alone. But what a strange dress! I never saw anybody dressed like that before. Never mind, he looks sweet and nice; I’ll have a bit.”

“I do declare,” said Peter to himself, “if that isn’t a big lump of a bear coming along, and I haven’t even a stone to throw at him. Whatever shall I do at all, at all? Och! and och! this is the end of me now, at last. Sure enough it is marching to my own funeral I’ve been all the time, instead of going to meet the sportsmen. Oh! Peter, Peter! you’ll never see your old mother in this world again, nor Scotland either. Yonder big bear is licking his chops to devour you. Yonder is the big hairy sarcophagus that’ll soon contain your mangled remains. Who would have thought that Peter of Arrandoon would have lived to play his own coronach?” (Coronach—a funeral hymn or wail for the departed.)

Hardly knowing what he did, poor Peter shouldered his pipes, and began to play a dreary, droning, yelling, squealing lament.

At the same moment Bruin commenced to perform some of the queerest antics ever a bear tried before. He stretched first one leg, then another, and he stretched his neck and described circles in the air with his nose, keeping time with the music. Then he sat up entirely on one end.

“Oh!” he seemed to say, “flesh and blood couldn’t stand that; I must, yes, I must give vent to a Ho—o—o—o—o—

“And likewise to a Hoo—oo—oo—oo—oo!!”

Reader, the voice of an asthmatical steam-engine, heard at midnight as it enters a tunnel, is a melancholy sound, so is the Welsh hooter, and the fog-horn of a Newcastle coal brig; but all combined, and sounding together, would be but a feeble imitation of the agonising notes of that great white bear as he sat on his haunches listening to Peter’s pipes. Peter himself saw the effect his music had produced, and, like the “towsy tike” in Tam o’ Shanter,—

“He hotched and blew wi’ might and main.”

And, as if Peter had been a great magician, Bruin felt impelled to try to follow the notes, though I am bound to say he did not always keep even in the key-note. Surely such a duet was never heard before in this world. There was a small open space of water not far from the hummock on which the piper of the Arrandoon had stationed himself; it was soon alive with the heads of hundreds of seals who had come up to listen; so, upon the whole, Peter had a most appreciative audience. But see yonder, is that a seal on the ice that is creeping closer and closer up behind the bear? Nay, for seals don’t carry rifles; and now the newcomer levels his gun just for a moment, there is a puff of blue-white smoke, the bear springs high in the air, then falls prostrate on the snow. His ululations are over for ever and ay; the piper plays a merrier air, and advances with speed to meet old Seth and the rest of the sportsmen, who, glad as they are to see him alive, greet him with uproarious cheers and laughter. Then a procession is formed, and with Peter and his pipes striding on in front, thus do the seal-stalkers return to the Arrandoon.

Chapter Twenty One.

The Coming Frost—Silas Warns the “Arrandoon” of Danger—Forging Through the Ice—Beset—A Strange and Alarming Accident.

So willingly and merrily worked all hands on the ice, that in less than three days the Canny Scotia was almost a full, though by no means a bumper ship, and poor Silas began to see visions of future happiness in his mind’s eye, when he should return to his native land and complete the joy of his family. Unfortunately, however, his good fortune did not last for the present. How seldom, indeed, good luck does last in this world of ours! One day, towards midnight, the sky apparently assumed a brighter blue. This seemed to concern Silas considerably. The good man was walking the deck at the time with his inseparable companion the first mate, neither of whom ever appeared now to court sleep or rest.

“Matie,” said Silas, pointing skywards, “do you see any difference in the colour yonder?”

“That do I!” replied the mate.

“And hasn’t it got much colder?”

“Well, both of us have been walking,” the chief officer returned, “at the rate of several knots, just to keep the dear life in us, and I never saw you, sir, with your hands so deep in your pockets before.”

Down rushed the captain to consult his glass; he was speedily up again, however. “It is just as I thought,” he said. “Now come up into the nest with me; there’s room for both of us. Look!” he added, as soon as they had reached their barrel of observation, “the rascals know what is coming. They are taking the water, and before ten minutes there won’t be a seal with his nose on that bit of pack. Heigho, matie! heigho! that is just like my luck. If I’d been born a tailor, every man would have been born a Highlander, and made his own kilts. But hi! up, matie, Silas doesn’t mean to let his heart down yet for a bit. A black frost is on the wing. There is no help for that, but the Arrandoon’s people don’t seem to know it. I must off over and tell them;” and even as he spoke Silas began descending the Jacob’s ladder. “Call all hands!” he cried, as he disappeared over the side; “we must work her round as long as the pieces are anything loose-like.”

It was not a long journey to the big sister ship, and the sturdy legs of this ancient mariner would soon get him there. But he would not wait till alongside; he needs must hail her while still many yards from her dark and stately sides.

“What ho, there!” he bawled. “Arrandoon ahoy!”

That voice of his was a wonderful one. It might have awakened the dead; it was like a ten-horse power speaking-trumpet lined with the roughest emery-paper. Seals heard it far down beneath the ice, and came to the surface to listen and to marvel. A great bear was sitting not twenty yards from Silas. He thought he should like to eat Silas, but he could not swallow that voice, so he went across the ice instead. Then the voice rolled in over the vessel’s bulwarks, startled the officer on duty, and went ringing down below through the state-rooms, causing our sleeping heroes to tumble out of their bunks with double-quick speed, even the usually late and lazy Ralph evincing more celerity than ever he had done in his life before.

They met, rubbing their eyes and looking cold and foolish, all in a knot in the saloon. Cold and foolish, and a little bit frightened as well, for the words of Silas sounded terribly like “the Arrandoon on fire!”

Not a bit of it, for there came the hail again, and distinct enough this time.

“Arrandoon ahoy! Is everybody dead on board?”

“What is the matter?” cried McBain, as soon as he got on deck, dressed as he was in the garments of night.

“Black frost, Captain McBain,” answered Silas, springing up the side, “and you’ll soon find that matter enough, or my name ain’t Grig, nor my luck like a bad wind, always veering in the wrong direction. The seals are gone, sir—every mother’s son o’ them! My advice is—but, dear me, gentlemen! go below and rig out. Why, here’s four more of you! That ain’t the raiment for a black frost! You look like five candidates for a choking good influenza!” This first bit of advice being taken in good part, “Now,” continued Silas, “your next best holt, Captain McBain, will be to get up steam, and get her head pointed away for the blue water, else there is no saying we may not leave our bones here.”

“Ah!” exclaimed McBain, “we’ve no wish to do that. And here comes our worthy engineer. The old question, chief—How soon can you get us under way?”

“With the American hams, sir,” was the quiet reply, “in about twenty minutes; with a morsel of nice blubber that I laid in especially for the purpose of emergencies, in far less time than that.”

“Thanks!” said McBain, smiling; “use anything, but don’t lose time.”

The ships lay far from the open sea. They had been “rove” a long way in through the pack, to get close to the seals, but, independently of that, floating streams of ice, one after another, had joined the outer edge of this immense field of bergs, placing them at a greater distance from the welcome water.

Steam was speedily roaring, and ready for its work. Then, not without considerable difficulty, the vessel was put about, and the voyage seaward was commenced. Slow and tedious this voyage was bound to be, for there was so little wind it was useless to shake the sails loose, so the duty of towing her consorts devolved upon the Arrandoon. Instead of remaining on his own ship, Silas Grig came on board the steamer, where his services as iceman were fully appreciated.

As yet the frost had made no appreciable difference to the solidity of the pack; a very gentle swell was moving the pieces—a swell that rolled in from seaward, causing the whole scene around to look like a tract of snow-clad land, acted on by the giant force of an earthquake. Forging ahead through such ice, even by the aid of steam, is hard, slow work; and, assisted as the Arrandoon was by men walking in front of her and pushing on the bergs with long poles, hardly could she make a headway of half a mile an hour, and there were twenty good miles to traverse! It was a weary task, but the men bent their backs cheerfully to it, as British sailors ever do to a duty that has to be performed.

(Light lie the earth on the breast of the gallant Captain Brownrigg, R.N., and green be the grass on his grave. My young readers know the story; it is such stories as his they ought to read; such men as he ought to be enshrined in their memory. Betrayed by treacherous Arabs, with a mere handful of men he fought their powerful dhow and guns; and even when hope itself had fled he made no attempt to escape, but fought on and fought on, till he fell pierced with twenty wounds. He was a heroic sailor, and he was doing his duty!)

Even had it been possible to keep up the men’s strength, forty hours must have elapsed ere the Arrandoon would be rising and falling on blue water. But many hours had not gone by ere the men got a rest they little cared for—for down went the swell, the motion among the bergs was stilled, and frost began its work of welding them together.

“Just like my luck, now, isn’t it?” said Silas, when he found the ship could not be budged another inch, and was quite surrounded by heavy ice.

“I don’t believe in luck,” said Captain McBain; “and, after all, things might have turned out even worse than they have.”

“Oh!” said Silas, “I’m not the man to grumble or growl. We are comfortable and jolly, and we have plenty to eat.”

“We won’t have much sport, though,” said Rory, with a sigh, “if we have to remain here long, for the bears will follow the seals, won’t they?”

“That they will,” replied Silas, “and small blame to them; it is exactly what I should like to do myself.”

“Well, you can, you know,” said McBain, laughing. “We have a splendid balloon. De Vere will take you for a fly I’m sure, if you’ll ask him.”

“What! trust myself up in the clouds!” cried Silas; “thank you very much for the offer, but if ill-luck has kept following my footsteps all my life, ill-luck would be sure to follow me if I attempted any aerial flights, and I’d come down by the run.”

“Well, we’re fairly beset, anyhow,” said Rory, “and I daresay we’ll have to try to make the best of it.”

So guns were placed disconsolately ill the racks, as soon as the terrible black frost had quite set in, or if they were taken out when a walk was determined on, it was only for fashion’s sake, and for the fear that an occasional bear might be met with. But it was good fun breaking bottles with rifle bullets, and good practice as well. As the days went on, and there were no signs of the pack breaking up, a number of books were taken down to be perused, much time was spent in playing piano or violin, or both together, while after dinner the hours were devoted to talking. Many a racy yarn was told by Cobb, many an adventure by Seth, and many a queer experience by Silas Grig, and duly appreciated, too. So the evenings did not seem long, whatever the days did.

Said Silas one morning to McBain, as they stood together leaning on the bulwarks.

“I don’t quite like the look of that ice, captain; it is precious big, and if it came on to press a bit, why, it would go clean through the ribs of us, strong though our good ships are. And that cockle-shell of Cobb’s would be the very first to go down to the bottom.”

“Or up to the top,” suggested McBain.

“What?” laughed Silas; “would you clap your balloon top of her, and lift her out like?”

“No, not that; but we could hoist her high and dry on top of the ice easily enough.”

“Well, I declare,” cried Silas, clapping one brawny hand on his knee, “that is a glorious idea. And an old iceman like me to never think of it!”

Then Silas’s face fell, as he said,—

“Ah! but you couldn’t hoist me up too. The Canny Scotia would go down; that would be more of my luck.”

“Well, but I’ve thought of a plan. I have torpedoes on board. I’ll have a go at this ice, anyhow.”

“Make a kind of harbour, you mean?” inquired Silas.

“That’s it,” was the reply.

“But,” said Silas, still somewhat dubious, “you know the currents run like mill-streams in under the ice. Well, suppose your torpedoes were to be floated in under my ship, and went bursting off there?”

“Well, your ship would be hoisted,” replied McBain; “that would be all.”

“Ay!” said Silas, “that would be all; that would end all the luck, good or bad.”

“But there is no fear of any such accident. And now let us just have a try at it.”

Blowing up icebergs with torpedoes is by no means difficult, when you know how to do it, but sometimes the current will shift the guiding-pole or rope, and were it to get under the stern of the ship itself, it would make it awkward for the Arctic explorers. In the present instance everything went well, and berg after berg succumbed to the force of the gun-cotton, until the last, when, by some mismanagement, one torpedo was shifted right under a piece of ice on which stood, tools in hand, about ten men, besides Silas, Rory, and Captain McBain himself. Of course it was not likely that boy Rory was going to be far away when any fun was going on, so that is why he happened to be on top of this identical berg when the blowing-up took place. And here is precisely what was seen by disinterested bystanders—a smother of snow and water and ice, mixed, rising in shape of a rounded column over ten feet high, and, dimly visible in the misty midst thereof, a minglement of hands and heads and arms and legs. The sound accompanying the columnar rising was something between a puff and a thud; I cannot better describe it. Then there was a sudden collapse, and next moment the arms and the legs and the hands and the heads were all seen sprawling and struggling in the frothy, seething water below. It simply and purely looked as if they were all being boiled alive in a huge cauldron. But the strangest part of the story is to come. With the exception of a few trifling braises, not one of those who were thus surprised by so sudden a rise in the world was a bit the worse. The ducking in the cold sea was certainly far from pleasant, but dry clothes and hot coffee soon put that to rights, and they came up smiling again.

Freezing Powders, who was on deck at the time of the accident, was dreadfully frightened, and ran down below instantly to report matters to his favourite.

“What’s the row? What’s the row? What’s the row?” cried the bird as the boy entered the saloon.

“Don’t talk so fast, Cockie, and I’ll tell you,” said Freezing Powders, sinking down on the deck with one arm on the cage. “I tink I’se all right at present, though my breaf is all frightened out of my body, and I must look ’bout as pale as you, Cockie.”

“De-ah me!” said Cockie.

“But don’t hang by de legs, Cockie. When you wants a mouf-ful of hemp just hop down for it, else de blood all run to your poor head, den you die in a fit?”

“Poor de-ah Cockie! Pretty old Cockie!” said the bird, in mournful tones.

“And now I got my breaf again, I try to ’splain to you what am de row. De drefful world round de ship is all white, Cockie, and to-day dey has commenced blowing it up, and jus’ now, Cockie, dey has commenced to blow derselves up?”

“De-ah me!” from Cockie.

“Dat am quite true, Cockie, and de heads and de legs am flying about in all directions! It is too drefful to behold!”

“Now then, young Roley Poley!” cried Peter, entering at that moment, “toddle away forward for some boiling-hot coffee, and run quicker than ever you ran in your life.”

“I’se off like a bird!” said Freezing Powders, darting out of the cabin as if there had been a boot after him.

Chapter Twenty Two.

Captain Cobb Retires—More Torpedoing—The Great Ice-Hole—Strange Sport—The Terrible Zugaena—The Death Struggle.

Both Captain McBain and Silas Grig felt more easy in their minds when they had got fairly rid of the green-rooted monsters of icebergs that had lain so placidly yet so threateningly alongside their respective ships. And oh! by the way, how very calm, harmless, and gentle bergs like these can look, when there is no disturbing element beneath them, their snow-clad tops asleep and glistening in the sunlight; but I have seen them angry, grinding and crashing together, each upheaval representing a height of from fifteen to thirty feet; each upheaval representing a strength hydraulic equal in force to the might of the great ocean itself.

Our heroes had taken time by the forelock. They had “guncottoned the bergs,” as Captain Cobb termed it, and lay for the time being in square ice-locked harbours, and could bid defiance to almost any ordinary occurrence, whether gale of wind in the pack or swell from the distant sea.

As the days went by the black frost seemed only to increase in severity.

“How long d’ye think,” said Captain Cobb, one morning, while at breakfast in the Arrandoon—“how long d’ye think this state of affairs’ll last? ’cause, mind ye, I begin to feel a kind o’ riled already.”

McBain looked inquiringly at Silas.

“If it’s asking me you are,” said the latter, “I makes answer and says, it may be for months, but it can’t be for ever.”

“But the frost isn’t likely to go for a week, is it now?”

“That it won’t, worse luck,” was the reply.

“Well, then, gentlemen,” said Cobb, “this child is going off, straight away out o’ here back to Jan Mayen.”

“Back to Jan Mayen?”

“Back to Jan Mayen!” everybody said, or seemed to say, in one breath.

“I reckon ye heard aright,” said the imperturbable Yankee.

“It’s just like this, ye see,” he continued. “I’m paid by my employers to make observations on the old island down yonder; stopping here ain’t taking sights, but it’s taking the company’s dollars for nothing, so if you’ll—either o’ ye—lend me a hand or two, and promise to hoist up Cobb’s cockle-shell in the event of a squeeze, Cobb himself is off home, ’tain’t mor’n fifty miles.”

The journey was a dangerous one, nobody knew that better than the bold American himself, and it was a true sense of duty to his employers that caused him to undertake it. But having once made up his mind to a thing, Cobb was not the man to be deterred from accomplishing it.

So, with many a good wish for his safety, accompanied by only three men, he set out on his long journey over the snow. Rory, from the deck of the Arrandoon, and McBain from the nest, watched them as long as they were in sight. Indeed, I am not at all sure that Rory did not feel a little sorry he had not asked leave to accompany them, so fond was he of adventure in every shape and form.

It was a relief for him—and not for him alone—when McBain, in order to break the monotony of existence, and by way of doing something, proposed trying the effects of his torpedoes again at some distance from the ship, and forming a great ice-hole.

“Things will come up to breathe, and look about them, you know,” he explained, “and then we may get some sport, and Silas may bag a seal or two.”

Our heroes were overjoyed when the working party was called away. At last there was a prospect of doing something, and seeing an animal of some kind, for not only the bears, but the very birds had deserted them. Sometimes, indeed, a solitary snowbird would come flying around the ships. It would hover for awhile in the air, giving vent to many a peevish, mournful chirp, then fly away again.

“No, no, no!” it seemed to say, “there is nothing good to eat down there—no raw flesh, no blood—and so I’m off again to the distant sealing ground, where the yellow bear prowls, and the snow is red with blood.”

A few hours’ work with torpedoes, picks, and ice-saws, was enough to form an opening big enough for the purpose required. The broken pieces were either “landed high and dry,” or sunk beneath the pack, and so the work was completed.

“It’ll entail a deal of trouble, gentlemen,” said Dr McFlail, “to keep that hole clear with the temperature which we are at present enjoying—or rather enduring.”

“There is that in the sea, doctor,” said Silas, with a knowing nod, “which will save us the trouble.”

He wasn’t wrong. Not an hour elapsed ere a few black heads, with great wondering eyes, appeared above the surface and peered around them, and blinked at the sun, and seemed to enjoy mightily a sniff of the fresh air and a blink of the daylight.

“This is nice, now,” they said, “and ever so much better than being down there in the dark—quite an oasis in the desert.”

Bang! bang!

Two of them slowly sank to rise no more.

“This won’t do,” said Allan; “it is only murder to shoot poor seals that we cannot land and make some good out off. What is to be done?”

“Be quiet with ye!” said Rory. “Sure yonder is Seth himself, coming straight from the ship, in his suit of skins, and if he isn’t up to some manoeuvre then my name isn’t Roderick, that is all.”

Seth was up to something; he had a coil of rope with him, and the nattiest little harpoon that ever was handled.

“Fire away, gentlemen!” he said, lying down on the sunny side of a small hummock pretty close to the water’s edge, “only don’t hit the old trapper; he’d rather die in his bed if it be all the same to you.”

Undeterred by the fate that had befallen their companions, it was not long before other seals popped up to breathe. Our heroes were ready for them, and two again were killed, one being missed. Seth was ready for them, too. He sprang to his feet, and ere the smoke had melted in the thin air, one of the seals was neatly harpooned and dragged to the edge. Here it was gaffed, and lifted or pulled bodily on to the ice by help of Ralph’s powerful arm. The harpoon was released, and before the other seal had time to sink it was served in precisely the same manner.

The sport was exceedingly novel, and combined, as Rory said, “all the pleasures of shooting and fishing in one glorious whole.”

No work on natural history, so far as my reading goes, remarks upon the exceedingly great speed exhibited by the Greenland seal in his flight—it is in reality a flight—through and beneath the water. I have often been astonished at the rapidity of their movements; so swiftly do they dart along that the eye can barely follow them for the moment or two they are visible. This power of swimming enables them to pursue their finny prey for many miles under an ice-pack; it doubtless also enables them to escape the fangs of their natural enemy, the great Greenland shark (Scymnus borealis), and on the present occasion it accounted for their appearance at the great breathing-hole made for them by the torpedoes and ice-saws of the Arrandoon. The water under the pack would be everywhere else as black and dark as midnight, but through this opening the sunshine would stream in straight and powerful rays, and not seals alone, but fishes and monsters of the deep of many kinds, would naturally come towards the light, as the salmon does to the glimmer from the torch of the Highland poacher.

The sport obtained at the opening was not of a very exciting character on the first day, but next morn, to their joy, they found that a bear had been around, and had left the marks of his broad soles in the snow. Many more seals, too, came up to breathe, and more harpoons had to be requisitioned. Silas was once more in his glory at the prospect of adding a few more skins, and a few more tons of oil, to the cargo he had already shipped.

Towards afternoon the fun grew fast and furious, and when Peter came in person to announce dinner, he could hardly get his officers to pay any heed to the summons. Even Cockie down in the saloon heard the noise, and must needs inquire, as he stretched his neck and fastened one bead of an eye on his little black master.

“What’s all the to-do about? What’s all the to-do about?”

“I don’t know,” was the reply of Freezing Powders. “I don’t know no more nor you do, Cockie. I tinks dey has gone to blow derselves all to pieces again.”

Dinner was partaken of in a merrier mood that day than it had been for weeks. Silas was there, of course; in fact, he had become an honorary member of the Arrandoon mess.

“You see, Captain Grig,” McBain had observed, “we must have you as much with as now as we can, for we soon go different roads, don’t we?”

“Ah! yes,” replied Silas, with a bit of a sigh; “you go north; God send you safe back; and I go back to my little wife and large family.”

“Happy reunion, won’t it be?” said Allan.

The eyes of Silas sparkled, but his heart was too full of happy thoughts to say more than simply,—

“Yes.”

“Won’t the green ginger fly?” said Rory.

“I say, boys,” Ralph put in, “this sort of thing positively gives a man a kind of an appetite.”

Rory looked at him with such a mischievous twinkle in his eyes that Ralph longed to pinch him.

“Just as if ever you lost yours,” said Rory.

At this moment the sound of a rifle was heard, apparently close to the ship.

“It’s the trapper,” cried Rory; “it’s friend Seth. Sure enough I know the charming music of his long gun. Now, Ray, I’ll wager my fiddle he has bagged a bear.”

Rory was right for once, and here is how it fell out. Several bears had that day scented the battle from afar, or were attracted by the noise of the malleys and gulls that were now wheeling around the ships in thousands. They stood aloof while shooting was going on, sitting on their haunches licking their chops, greedy, hungry, expectant; but as soon as the sportsmen went off to dine,—

“Now is our time,” said one, “to get a bit of fresh meat.”

“Come on, then,” cried another; “there are a hundred seals lying on the ice. Hurrah?”

So down they came to the feast. They had not had such a treat for a whole day, and that is a long time for a bear to fast, and they made good use of their time, you may be sure, and so earnest were they, that they did not perceive a long, hairy creature that came creeping stealthily towards them. When at last one of them did observe this strange animal “with the tail of his eye,” he said to himself,—

“Oh! it is only a tiny bit of a young seal, hunting for a lost mother, perhaps. Well, I’ll have it presently by way of dessert.”

And almost immediately after, the sound that had startled our friends at their dessert rang out in the clear, frosty air, and Bruin’s head dropped never more to rise. His brother bears suddenly discovered they had eaten enough; anyhow, they remembered that it was always best to rise up from the table feeling that you could eat a little more, so they shambled away across the pack as fast as four legs could carry them.

“Bravo, Seth, old boy,” cried Rory and Allan, coming on the scene.

Ralph only waited to finish some pastry, then he too joined them.

“Why,” said the latter, “it is the biggest bear we have seen yet.”

In true trapper fashion, Seth was already on his knees beside the enormous carcass, engaged with knife and fist and elbow, “working the rascal out of his jacket,” as he called it, when Rory, who was not far from the edge of the water, started, or rather sprang back in horror.

“Oh! Allan, Allan! Ray, Ray! look!” he cried.

Well might he cry “look,” for a more terrible or revolting apparition never raises head over the black waters of the Greenland ocean than the zugaena, or hammer-headed shark. The skull is in shape precisely what the name indicates, that of a gigantic hammer, with a great eye at each end, and the mouth beneath. This shark is not unfrequently met with in the northern seas, and he is just as fierce as he is fearful to behold.

Allan and Ralph both saw the brute, and neither could repress a shudder. It appeared but for a few moments, then dived below again.

Silas and McBain, coming up at the time, were told of the occurrence.

“I know the vile beasts well,” said Silas, “and they do say that they never appear in these seas without bringing a big slice o’ ill-luck in their wake. That is unless you catches them, and sometimes that doesn’t save the ship. When I was skipper o’ the Penelope, and that is more than ten years ago, there wasn’t a lazier chap in the crew than snuffy Sandy Foster. He wasn’t a deal o’ use down below, he did nothing on deck, and he never went aloft. He had two favourite positions: one was sitting before a joint of junk, with a knife in his hand; t’other was leaning against the bulwarks with a pipe in his mouth, and we never could make out which he liked best.

“‘Did ever you do anything clever in your life, Sandy?’ I asked one day.

“Sandy took his pipe out of his mouth and eyed the mainmast for fully half a minute. Then he brought his eyes round to my face, and said,—

“‘Not that I can remember o’, sir.’

“‘The first time, Sandy,’ says I, ‘that you do anything clever, I’ll give you a pair of the best canvas trousers in the ship.’

“Sandy’s eyes a kind of sparkled; I’d never seen them sparkle before.

“‘I’ll win them,’ said Sandy, ‘wait till ye see.’

“And, indeed, gentlemen, I hadn’t long to wait. One day the brig was dead before the wind under a crowd o’ cloth, for there wasn’t much wind, but a nasty rumble-tumble sea; there was no doubt, gentlemen, from the looks o’ that sea, that we had just come through a gale o’ wind, and there was evidence enough to go to jury on that there was another not far away. Well, it was just in the dusk o’ the evening—we were pretty far south—that the cry got up,—

“‘Man overboard.’

“It was our bo’s’n’s boy, a lad of fourteen, who had gone by the run. Singing out to the mate to lay to, I ran forward, and if ever I forget the expression of the poor bo’s’n’s face as he wrung his hands and cried, ‘Oh, save my laddie! Oh, save my laddie!’ my name will change to something else than Silas.

“‘I’ll save him,’ cried a voice behind me. Some one rushed past. There was a splash in the water next moment, and I had barely time to see it was Sandy. Before the boat reached the spot they were a quarter of a mile astern, but they were saved; they found the bo’s’n’s laddie riding ‘cockerty-coosie’ on Sandy’s shoulder, and Sandy spitting out the mouthfuls of salt water, laughing and crying,—

“‘I’ve won the breeks! I’ve won the canvas breeks, boys!’

“He had won them, and that right nobly, too. Well, after he had worn them for over a month, it became painfully evident even to Sandy that they sorely needed washing; but, woe is me! Sandy was too lazy to put a hand to them. But he thought of a plan, nevertheless, to save trouble. He steeped them in a soda ley, attached a strong line to them, and pitched them overboard to tow.

“When, after two hours’ towing, Sandy went to haul them up, great was his astonishment to find a great hammer-head spring half out of the water and seize them. Sandy had never seen so awful a monster before; he put it down as an evil spirit.

“‘Let go,’ he roared; ‘let go my breeks, ye beast.’

“Now, maybe, with those hooked teeth of his, the shark could not let go; anyhow, he did not.

“‘I dinna ken who ye are, or what ye are,’ cried Sandy, ‘but ye’ll no get my breeks. Ah! bide a wee.’

“Luckily the dolphin-striker lay handy, Sandy made a grab at it, and next minute it was hard and fast in the hammer-head’s neck. To see how that monster wriggled and fought, more like a fiend than a fish, when we got him on deck, would have—but look—look—r—”

Seth had not been idle while his companions were talking. He had cut off choice pieces of blubber and thrown them into the sea; he had coiled his rope on the ice close by; then, harpoon in hand, he knelt ready to strike. Nor had he long to wait. The bait took, the bait was taken, the harpoon had left the trapper’s hand and gone deep into the monster’s body.

I will not attempt to describe the scene that followed—it was a death-scene that no pen could do justice to—the wild struggle of the giant shark in the water, his mad and frantic motions ere clubbed to death on the ice, and his terrible appearance as he snapped his dreadful jaws at everything within reach; but here is a fact, strange and weird though it may read—fully half an hour after the creature seemed dead, and lying on its side, while our heroes stood silently round it, with the wild birds wheeling and screaming closely overhead, the zugaena suddenly threw itself on its stomach as if about to swim away. It was the last of its movements, and a mere spasmodic and painless one, though very distressing to witness.

Chapter Twenty Three.

Rory’s Reverie—Silas on the Scymnus Borealis—The Battle with the Sharks—Rory Gets in for it again—Thrown among the Sharks.

The ships still lay hard and fast in the ice-pack, many miles to the nor’ard and eastward of the Isle of Jan Mayen. There was as yet no sign of the frost giving way. Day after day the bay ice between the bergs got thicker and thicker, and the thermometer still stood steadily well down below zero. But the wind never blew, and there never was a speck of cloud in the brilliant sapphire sky, nor even haze itself to shear the sun of his beams; so the cold was hardly felt, and after a brisk walk or scamper over the ice our heroes felt so warm that they were in the habit of throwing themselves down on the snow on the southern side of a hummock of ice. Book in hand, Rory would sometimes lie thus for fully half an hour on a stretch. Not always reading, though; the fact of Rory’s having a book in his hand was no proof that he was reading, for just as often he was dreaming; and I’ll tell you a little secret—there were a pair of beautiful eyes which were filled with tears when last he had seen them, there were two rosy lips that had quivered as they parted to breathe the word “good-bye.” These, and a soft, small hand that had lain for a moment in his, haunted him by night and by day, and seemed ever present with him through all his wild adventures.

Ah! but they didn’t make him unhappy, though; no, but quite the reverse.

He was reclining thus one day all by himself, about a quarter of a mile from his ship, when Ralph and McBain came gently up behind him, walking as silently as the crisp snow, that felt like powdered glass under their feet, would permit them.

“Hullo! Rory,” cried McBain, in a voice of thunder.

Startled from his reverie, Rory sprang to his feet, and instinctively grasped his rifle.

His friends laughed at him.

“It is somewhat late to seize your rifle now, my boy,” said McBain; “supposing now we’d been a bear, why, we would be eating you at this present moment.”

“Or making a mouse of you,” added Ralph, “as the yellow bear did of poor Freezing Powders; and at this very minute you’d be—

“‘Dancin’ for de dear life Among de Greenland snow.’”

“I was reading,” said Rory, smiling, “that beautiful poem of Wordsworth, We are seven.”

“Wordsworth’s We are seven?” cried Ralph, laughing. “Oh! Row, Row, you’ll be the death of me some day. Since when did you learn to read with your book upside down?”

“Had I now?” said Rory, with an amused look of candour. “In troth I daresay you are right.”

“But come on, Row, boy,” continued Ralph, “luncheon is all ready, Peter is waiting, and after lunch Silas Grig is going to show as some fun.”

“What more malley-shooting?” asked Rory.

“No, Row, boy,” was the reply; “he is going to lead us forth to battle against the sharks.”

“Against the sharks!” exclaimed Rory, incredulous.

“I’m not in fun, really,” replied Ralph. “Silas tells us they are in shoals of thousands at present under us; that the sea swarms with them, some fifteen feet long, others nearer twenty.”

“Oh!” said Row; “this is interesting. Come on; I’m ready.”

While the trio stroll leisurely shipwards over the snow, let me try to explain to my reader what Rory meant by malley-shooting, as taught them by Silas Grig. The term, or name, “malley,” is that which is given by Greenlandmen to the Arctic gull. Although not so charming in plumage as the snowbird, it is nevertheless a very handsome bird, and has many queer ways of its own which are interesting to the naturalist, and which you do not find described in books. These gulls build their nests early in the season on the cliffs of Faroe and Shetland, and probably, though I have never found them, in sheltered caves of Jan Mayen and Western Greenland as well. Despite the extreme cold, they manage to bring forth and rear their young successfully, and are always ready to follow Greenland ships in immense flocks. Wherever work is going on, wherever the crack of the rifle is heard on the pack, wherever the snow is stained crimson and yellow with blood, the malleys will be there in daring thousands. The most curious part of the thing is this: they possess a power of either scent or sight, which enables them to discover their quarry, although scores of miles away from it. For example—the Arctic gulls, as a rule, do not follow a ship for sake of the bits of bread and fat that may be thrown overboard. Some of them do, I know, but I look upon these as merely the lazaroni, the beggars of their tribe; your healthy, youthful, aristocratic malley prefers something he considers better. Give him blubber to eat, or the flesh of a new slain seal, and he will follow you far enough. Now a ship may be lying becalmed off this pack, with no seals in sight, and doing nothing; if so she will be deserted by these birds. Not from the crow’s-nest, though aided by the most powerful telescope, will you be able to descry a single gull; but no sooner is a sealskin or two hauled on deck to be cleared of their fat, than notice seems to be flashed to the far-off gulls, and in a few minutes they are winging around you, making the welkin ring with their wild, delighted screams. They alight in the water around a morsel of meat in such bunches, that a table-cloth would cover two dozen of them.

Having had enough—and that “enough” means something enormous—they go off for a “fly,” just as tumbling pigeons do. You may see them in hundreds high in air, sailing round and round, enjoying themselves apparently to the very utmost, and shrieking with joy. Now is the time for the skua to attack them. A bold, black, hawklike rascal is this skua, a robber and a thief. He never comes within gunshot of a ship. He is as wild and untamable as the north wind itself; yet, no sooner have the malleys commenced their post-prandial gambols than he is in the midst of them. He does not want to kill them; only some one or more must disgorge their food. On this the skua lives. No wonder that Greenland sailors call him the unclean bird.

The malley-gull floats on the waves as lightly and gently as a child’s toy air-ball would. His usual diet is fish, except in sealing times; and of the fish he catches the marauding skua never fails to get his share. It is for the sake of the feathers sailors shoot these birds on the ice, for they are nearly as well feathered as an eider duck.

Getting tired of shooting seals in the water, Rory and Allan one day, leaving the others on the banks of the great ice-hole, determined to make a bag of feathers. And here is how they bagged their game.

Armed with fowling-pieces, they retired to some distance from the water party and lay down behind a hummock of ice. Here they might have lain until this day without a bird looking twice in their direction had they not provided themselves with a lure. This lure was simply a pair of the wings of a gull, which one waved above his head, while the other prepared to fire right and left. And not a minute would these wings be waved aloft ere the gulls, with that strange curiosity inherent in all wild creatures, would begin to circle around, coming nearer and nearer, tack and half-tack, until they were within reach of the guns, when—down they came. But the untimely end of one brace nor twenty did not prevent their companions from trying to solve the mystery of the waving wings.