Wild Adventures round the Pole

Chapter One.

The Twin Rivers – A Busy Scene – Old Friends with New Faces – The Building of the Great Ship – People’s Opinions – Ralph’s Highland Home

Wilder scenery there is in abundance in Scotland, but hardly will you find any more picturesquely beautiful than that in which the two great rivers, the Clyde and the Tweed, first begin their journey seawards. It is a classic land, there is poetry in every breath you breathe, the very air seems redolent of romance. Here Coleridge, Scott, and Burns roved. Wilson loved it well, and on yonder hills Hogg, the Bard of Ettrick – he who “taught the wandering winds to sing” – fed his flocks. It is a land, too, not only of poetic memories, but one dear to all who can appreciate daring deeds done in a good cause, and who love the name of hero.

If the reader saw the rivers we have just named, as they roll their waters majestically into the ocean, the one at Greenock, the other near the quaint old town of Berwick, he would hardly believe that at the commencement of their course they are so small and narrow that ordinary-sized men can step across them, that bare-legged little boys wade through them, and thrust their arms under their green banks, bringing therefrom many a lusty trout. But so it is.

Both rise in the same district, within not very many miles of each other, and for a considerable distance they follow the same direction and flow north.

But soon the Tweed gets very faint-hearted indeed.

“The country is getting wilder and wilder,” she says to her companion, “we’ll never be able to do it. I’m going south and east. It is easier.”

“And I,” says the bold Clyde, “am going northwards and west; it is more difficult, and therein lies the enjoyment. I will conquer every obstacle, I’ll defy everything that comes against me, and thus I’ll be a mightier river than you. I’ll water great cities, and on my broad breast I will bear proud navies to the ocean, to do battle against wind and wave. ‘Faint heart never won fair lady.’ Farewell, friend Tweed, farewell.”

And so they part.

This conversation between the two rivers is held fourteen hundred feet above the level of the sea, and five score miles and over have to be traversed before the Clyde can reach it. Yet, nothing daunted, merrily on she rolls, gaining many an accession of strength on the way from streams and burns.

“If you are going seaward,” say these burns, “so are we, so we’ll take the liberty of joining you.”

“And right welcome you are,” sings the Clyde; “in union lies strength.”

In union lies strength; yes, and in union is happiness too, it would seem, for the Clyde, broader and stronger now, glides peacefully and silently onwards; or if not quite silently, it emits but a silvery murmur of content. Past green banks and wooded braes, through daisied fields where cattle feed, through lonely moorlands heather-clad, now hidden in forest depths, now out again into the broad light of day, sweeping past villages, cottages, mansions, and castles, homes of serf and feudal lord in times long past and gone, with many a sweep and many a curve it reaches the wildest part of its course. Here it must rush, the rapids and go tumbling and roaring over the lynns, with a noise that may be heard for miles on a still night, with an impetuosity that shakes the earth for hundreds of yards on every side.

“I wonder how old Tweed is getting on?” thinks our brave river as soon as it has cleared the rocks and rapids and pauses for breath.

But the Clyde will soon be rewarded for its pluck and its daring, before long it will enter and sweep through the second city of the empire, the great metropolis of the west; but ere it does so, forgive it, if it lingers awhile at Bothwell, and if it seems sullen and sad as it dashes underneath the ancient bridge where, in days long gone, so fierce a fight took place that five hundred of the brave Covenanters lay dead on the field of battle. And pardon it when anon it makes a grand and splendid sweep round Bothwell Bank, as if loth to leave it. Yonder are the ruins of the ancient castle —

But see, our river has left both beauty and romance far behind it. It has entered the city – the city of merchant princes, the city of a thousand palaces; it bears itself more steadily now, for hath not Queen Commerce deigned to welcome it, and entrusted to it the floating wealth of half a nation? The river is in no hurry to leave this fair city.

“My noble queen,” it seems to say, “I am at your service. I come from the far-off hills to obey your high behests. My ambition is fulfilled, do with me as you will.”

But soon as the bustle and din of the city are led behind, soon as the grand old hills begin to appear on the right, and glimpses of green on the southern banks, lo! the tide comes up to welcome the noble river; and so the Clyde falls silently and imperceptibly into the mighty Atlantic. Yet scarcely is the lurid and smoky atmosphere that hangs pall-like over the town exchanged for the purer, clearer air beyond, hardly have the waters from the distant mountains begun to mingle with ocean’s brine, ere the noise of ten thousand hammers seems to rend the very sky.

Clang, clang, clang, clang – surely the ancient god Vulcan has reappeared, and taken up his abode by the banks of the river. Clang, clang, clang. See yonder is the Iona, churning the water into foam with her swift-revolving paddles. She has over a thousand passengers on board; they are bound for the Highlands, bent on pleasure. But this terrible noise and din of hammers – they will have three long miles of it before they can even converse in comfort. Clang, clang, clang – it is no music to them. Nay, but to many it is.

It is music to the merchant prince, for yonder lordly ship, when she is launched from the slips, will sail far over the sea, and bring him back wealth from many a foreign shore. It is music to the naval officer; it tells him his ship is preparing, that ere long she will be ready for sea, that his white flag will be unfurled to the breeze, and that he will walk her decks – her proud commander.

And it is music – merry music to the ears of two individuals at least, who are destined to play a very prominent part in this story. They are standing on the quarter-deck of a half-completed ship, while clang, clang, clang, go the hammers outside and inside.

The younger of the two – he can be but little over twenty-three – with folded arms, is leaning carelessly against the bulwarks. Although there is a thoughtful look upon his handsome face, there is a smile as well, a smile of pleasure. He is taller by many inches than his companion, though by no means better “built,” as sailors call it. This companion has a bold, brown, weather-beaten face, the lower half of it buried in a beard that is slightly tinged with grey; his eyes are clear and honest, – eyes that you can tell at a glance would not flinch to meet even death itself. He stands bold, erect, firm. Both are dressed well, but there is a marked difference in the style of their attire. The garments of the elder pronounce him at once just what he is, – one who has been “down to the sea in ships.” The younger is dressed in the fashionable attire of an English gentleman. To say more were needless. A minute observer, however, might have noticed that there was a slight air of négligé about him, if only in the unbuttoned coat or the faultless hat pushed back off the brow.

“And so you tell me,” said the younger, “that the work still goes bravely on?”

“Ay, that it does,” said his companion; “there have been rumours of a strike for higher wages among the men of other yards, but none, I am proud to say, in this.”

“And still,” continued the former, “we pay but a fraction of wage more than other people, and then, of course, there is the extra weekly half-holiday.”

“There is something more, Ralph – forgive me if I call you Ralph, in memory of dear old times. You will always be a boy to me, and I could no more call you Mr Leigh than I could fly.”

Ralph grasped his companion by the hand; the action was but momentary, but it showed a deal of kindly feeling. “Always call me Ralph,” he said, “always, McBain, always. When we are back once more at sea I’ll call you captain, not till then. But what is the something more that makes our men so happy?”

“Why, your kindly manner, Ralph boy. You mix with them, you talk with them, and take an interest in all their doings, and you positively seem to know every one of them by name. Mind you, that extra half-holiday isn’t thrown away: they work all the harder, and they are happy. Why, listen to them now.”

He paused, and held up one hand. From bows to stern of the vessel there arose the sound of industry, incessant, continual; but high over the clang of hammers and the grating noise of saws there arose the voice of song.

“They sing, you see,” continued McBain; “but they don’t put down their tools to sing. But here comes old Ap. What cheer, Mr Ap Ewen?”

Those of my readers who knew Ap as he was two or three years ago – the little stiff figure-head of a fellow – would be surprised to see him now. (Vide “Cruise of the Snowbird.” Same Author and Publishers.) He is far more smartly dressed, he is more active looking, and more the man, had taken him in hand. He had caused him to study his trade of boat-builder in a far more scientific fashion, with the result that he was now, as our story opens, foreman over all the men employed on the ship in which Ralph Leigh stood.

Indeed, McBain himself, as well as Ap, were good examples of what earnest study can effect. There is hardly anything which either boy or man cannot learn if he applies his mind thereto.

“What cheer, Mr Ap Ewen?” said McBain.

“More hands wanted, sir,” said Ap, pulling out his snuff-box and taking a vigorous pinch.

“More hands, Ap?” exclaimed McBain.

“Ay, sir, ay; look you see,” replied Ap, “you told me to hurry on, you see, and on Monday we shall want to begin the saloon bulkheads.”

“Bravo! Ap, bravo! come to my office to-night at seven, and we’ll put that all straight.”

“Thank you, sir,” said Ap, touching his hat and retiring.

Ralph Leigh was owner of the splendid composite steamship that was now fast nearing her completion.

She was not being built by contract, but privately, and McBain was head controller of every department, and for every department he had hired experts to carry on the work. The vessel was designed for special service, and therefore she must be a vessel of purity, a vessel of strength. There must not be a flaw in her, not a patch – all must be solid, all must be good. McBain had hired experts to examine everything ere it was purchased, but he made use of his own eyes and ears as well. The yard in which the ship was built was rented, and every bit of timber that entered it was tested first, whether it were oak or teak, pine, mahogany, or cedar; and the iron the same, and the bolts of copper and steel, so that Captain McBain’s work was really no sinecure.

“Well, then,” said Ralph, “I’ve been over all the ship; I’m extremely pleased with the way things are going on, so if you have nothing more to say to me I’m off. By the way, do the people still flock down on Friday afternoons to look over the ship?”

“They do,” replied McBain; “and poor old Ap, I feel sorry for him. He gets no Friday half-holiday; he won’t let me stop, but he insists upon remaining himself to show the people round.”

“And the people enjoy it?”

“They do. They marvel at our engines, as well they may. The gear, so simple and strong, that Ap and I invented for the shipping and unshipping of the rudder, and the easy method we have for elevating the screw out of the water and reducing the vessel to a sailing ship, they think little short of miraculous. They are astonished, too, at the extraordinary strength of build of the ship. Indeed, they are highly complimentary to us in their general admiration. But,” continued McBain, laughing aloud, “it would amuse you to hear the remarks of some of these good, innocent souls. The two 12-pounder Dalgrens are universal favourites. They pat them as if they loved them. One girl last Friday said ‘they just looked for a’ the warld like a couple o’ big iron soda-water bottles.’ They linger in the armoury; old Ap shows them our ‘express’ rifles, and our ‘bone-crushers,’ and the hardened and explosive bullets: then he takes them to the harpoon-room and shows them the harpoons, and the guns, and the electric apparatus, and all the other gear. They stare open-mouthed at the balloon-room and the sledge-lockers, but when they come to the door of the torpedo-chamber they simply hurry past with looks of awe. It is currently reported that we are bound for the very North Pole itself; I’m not sure we are not going to bring it back home with us. Anyhow, they say that as soon as we reach the ice, we are to fill our balloons, attaching one to each mast and funnel, and float away and away over the sea of ancient ice until we reach the Pole.”

Ralph laughed right merrily, and next minute he was over the side, with his face set townwards, trudging steadily on to the railway-station. It was only a trifle over three miles; there were cabs to be had in abundance, but what young man would ride if he had time to walk?

Ralph was going home. Not to his fair English home far away in the south, for ever since, in the early spring-time – and now it was autumn – the keel of the ship —his ship – had been laid, Ralph had taken up his abode in a rustic cottage by the banks of a broad-bosomed lake in the Highlands of Argyll. Wild though the country was all around, it was but four miles from the railway, and this journey he used to accomplish twice or oftener every week, on the back of a daft-looking Welsh pony that he had bought for the purpose. Once on board the train, two hours took him to the city, and thence a brisk walk to the building-yard.

He had watched, week after week, the gradual progress of his ship towards completion, with an interest and a joy that were quite boyish. He dearly loved to see the men at work, and listen to their cheerful voices as they laboured. Even the smell of the pine or cedar shavings was perfume to Ralph, and the way he used to climb about and wander over and through the ship, when she was little more than ribs, knees, and beams, was quite amusing.

But he was nevertheless always happy to get back to his Highland home, his books, his boat, and his fishing-rod. She was a widow who owned the humble cottage, but she was kind and good, and Ralph’s rooms, that looked away out over the lake, were always kept in a state of perfect cleanliness. The widow had one little daughter, a sweetly pretty and intelligent child, over whose fair wee head five summers had hardly rolled. Jeannie was her name, Jeannie Morrison, and she was an especial pet of Ralph’s. She and the collie dog always came gleefully down the road to meet him on his return from the distant city, and you may be perfectly sure he always brought something nice in his pocket for the pair of them.

When tired of reading, Ralph used to romp with wee Jeannie, or take her on his knee and tell her wonderful stories, which made her blue eyes grow bigger and more earnest than ever as she listened.

In fact, Jeannie and Ralph were very fond of each other, indeed, and every time he went to a romantic little island out in the lake to fish, he took Jeannie in the stern of the boat, and the time passed doubly quick.

“Oh, Mista Walph! Mista Walph!” cried Jeannie, bursting into Ralph’s room one afternoon, clapping her hands with joy. “Mista McBain is coming; Capping McBain is coming.”

“Yes,” said Mistress Morrison, entering behind her little daughter. “I’m sure you’ll be delighted, sir, and so am I, for the captain hasn’t been here for a month.”

Then Ralph got his hat, and, accompanied by the honest collie and his favourite Jeannie, went off down the road to meet McBain and bid him welcome to his Highland home.

Chapter Two.

The Dinner by the Lake – Rory’s Run Round Africa – The Return of the Wanderers

“When did you hear from Allan and Rory?” asked McBain that day, as they were seated at dinner in the little Highland cottage.

Mrs Morrison had done her best to put something nice before them, and not without success either – so thought Ralph, and so, too, thought his guest. At all events, both of them did ample justice to that noble lake trout. Five pounds did he weigh, if he weighed an ounce, and as red was he in flesh as if he had been fed upon beet. The juicy joint of mountain mutton that followed was fit to grace the table of a prince – it was as fragrant and sweet as the blooming heather tops that had brought it to perfection. Nor was the cranberry tart to be despised. The berries of which it was composed had not come over the Atlantic in a barrel of questionable flavour – no, they had been culled on the dewy braelands that very morning by the fair young fingers of wee Jeannie Morrison herself. The widow did not forget to tell them that, and it did not detract from their enjoyment of the tart. For drink they had fragrant heather ale – home-brewed.

“When did I hear from Allan and Rory?” said Ralph, repeating McBain’s question; “from the first, not for weeks – he is a lazy boy; from the latter, only yesterday morning.”

“And what says Rory?” asked McBain.

“Oh!” replied Ralph, “his letter is beautiful. It is twelve pages long. He is loud in his praises of the behaviour of the yacht, as a matter of course; but in no single sentence of this lengthy epistle does he refer definitely to the health or welfare of anybody whatever.”

“From which you infer – ?”

“From which I infer,” said Ralph, “that everybody is as well as Rory himself – that my dear father is well, and Allan, and his mother, and his sister Helen Edith. He is a queer boy, Rory, and he encloses me a couple of columns from a Cape of Good Hope paper, in which he has written an epitome of the whole voyage, since they first started in May last. He calls his yarn ‘Right round Africa.’ He commences at Suez, a place where even boy Rory, I should think, would fail to find much poetry and romance; but they must have enjoyed themselves at Alexandria, where Rory mounted on top of Pompey’s Pillar, rode upon donkeys, and did all kinds of queer things. Well, they spent a week at Malta, with its streets of stairs, its bells, its priests, its convents, and its blood-oranges. Rory missed trees and shade, though; he says Malta is a capital place for lizards, or any animal, human or otherwise, that cares to spend the day basking on the top of a stone. He liked Tunis and Algiers better, and he quite enjoyed Teneriffe and Madeira. Then they crossed over to Sierra Leone, and he launches forth in praise of the awful forests – ‘primeval,’ he calls them – and he says, in his own inimitable Irish way, that ‘they are dark, bedad, even in broad daylight.’ Then all down the strange savage West Coast they sailed; they even visited Ashantee, but he doesn’t say whether or not they called on his sable majesty the king. Of course they didn’t miss looking in at Saint Helena, which he designates a paradise in mid-ocean, and not a lonely sea-girt rock, as old books call it. Ascension was their next place of resort. That is a rock, if you like, he says; but the sea-birds’ eggs and the turtle are redeeming features. And so on to the Cape, and up the Mozambique, landing here and there at beautiful villages and towns, and in woods where they picked the oysters off the trees.”

(Oysters growing on trees seems a strange paradox. They do so grow, however. The mangrove-trees are washed by the tide, and to their tortuous roots oysters adhere, which may be gathered at low water.)

“They really must be enjoying themselves,” said McBain.

“That they are,” Ralph replied, pulling out Rory’s letter. “Just listen how charmingly he writes of the Indian Ocean – nobody else save our own poetic Rory could so write: – ‘My dear, honest, unsophisticated Ralph, – oh, you ought to have been with us as we rounded the Cape! That thunderstorm by night would have made even your somewhat torpid blood tingle in your veins. It was night, my Ralph; what little wind there was was dead off the iron-bound coast, but the billows were mountains high. Yes, this is no figure of speech. I have never seen such waves before, and mayhap never will again. I have never seen such lightning, and never heard such thunder. We remained all night on deck; no one had the slightest wish to go below. As I write our yacht is bounding over a blue and rippling sea; the low, wooded shore on our lee is sleeping in the warm sunlight, and everything around us breathes peace and quiet, and yet I have but to clap my hand across my eyes, and once again the whole scene rises up before me. I see the lightning quivering on the dark waves, and flashing incessantly around us, with intervals of the blackest darkness. I see the good yacht clinging by the bows to the crest of the waves, or plunging arrowlike into the watery ravines; I see the wet and slippery decks and cordage, and the awe-struck men around the bulwarks; and I see the faces of my friends as I saw them then – Allan’s knitted brow, his mother’s looks of terror, and the pale features of poor Helen Edith. There are nights, Ralph, in the life of a sailor that he is but little likely ever to forget; that was one in mine that will cling to my memory till I cease to breathe.’

“Don’t you call that graphic?” said Ralph.

“I do,” replied McBain; “give us one other extract, and then lend me the letter. I’ll take it to town with me, and you can have it again when you come up.”

“Well,” said Ralph, “he describes Delagoa Bay and the scenery all round it so pleasantly, that if I hadn’t an estate of my own in old England I would run off and take a farm there; right quaintly he talks of the curious Portuguese city of Mozambique; he is loud in the praises of the Comoro Islands, especially of Johanna, with its groves of citrons and limes, its feathery palm-trees, and its lofty mountains, tree-clad to the very summits; and he could write a lordly volume, he says, on the sultanic city of Zanzibar, where, it would seem, his adventures were not like angels’ visits – few and far between. He has even fought with the wild Somali Indians, and assisted at a pitched battle between Arabs and a British cruiser. Then he describes his adventures in the woods and in the far-off hills and jungles, tiger-slaying; here is a serpent adventure; here is a butterfly hunt. Fancy butterflies as big as a lady’s fan, and of plumage – yes, that is the very word Rory makes use of – ‘plumage’ more bright than a noonday rainbow.

“Here again is a description of the great Johanna hornet, two inches long, blue-black in colour, and so dreaded by the natives that they will not approach within twenty yards of the tree these terrible insects inhabit. Here is a beetle as big as a fish, and as strong apparently as a man, for he seizes hold of the top of the big pickle-jar into which Rory wants to introduce him, and obstinately refuses to be drowned in spirits; and here is a centipede as long as an adder, green, transparent, deadly; tarantulas as big as frogs, hairy and horrible; scorpions as big as crabs, green and dangerous as the centipedes themselves, that run from you, it is true, but threaten you as they run.

“It is pleasant,” continued Ralph, “to turn from his descriptions of the awful African creepie-creepies, and read of the enchanting beauty of some parts of the Zanzibar woods, the mighty trees mango-laden, the patches of tempting pine-apples, through which one can hardly wade, the curious breadfruit-trees, the pomolos, the citrons, the oranges, and the guavas, that look and taste, says Rory, ‘like strawberries smothered in cream.’ He dilates, too, on the beauty of the wild flowers, and the brilliancy of the birds – birds that never sing, but flit sadly and silently from bough to bough in the golden sunlight. From the very centre of this beautiful wood Rory, with masterly pen, carries you right away to a lovely coral island in the Indian Ocean.