Wild Adventures round the Pole

Chapter Twenty Nine.

Northward Ho! – Hoisting Beacons – The White Fog – The Great Sea-Serpent

“Good-bye, and God be with you.”

It was a prayer as heartfelt and fervent as ever fell from the lips of an honest sailor.

The Arrandoon steamed away, and soon was hidden from view behind a lofty iceberg, and all that Silas Grig, as he stood on his own quarter-deck, could now hear, was the sad and mournful wail of Peter’s bagpipes. Peter was playing that wild and plaintive melody which has drawn tears from so many eyes when our brave Highland regiments were departing for some far-off seat of wax, to be —

“Heigho! matie,” sighed Silas, talking to his chief officer and giving orders all in one breath, “I don’t think we’ll – haul aft the jib-sheet – ever see them again. I don’t think they can – take a pull on the main-brace – ever get back from among that fearful – luff a little, lad, luff – ice, matie. And the poor boys, if any one had told Silas he could have loved them as much as he does in so short a time, he would have laughed in his face. Come below, matie, and we’ll have a drop o’ green ginger. Keep her close, Mortimer, but don’t let her shiver.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” said the man at the wheel.

In a few hours the wind got more aft, and so, heading now for more southern climes, away went the Canny Scotia, with stun’sails up. I cannot say that she bounded over the waters like a thing of life. No; but she looked as happy and frisky as a plough-horse on a gala day, that has just been taken home from the miry fields, fed and groomed, and dressed with ribbons and started off in a light spring-van with a load of laughing children.

But eastwards and north steamed the Arrandoon. Indeed, she tried to do all the northing she could, with just as little easting as possible. She passed islands innumerable; islands that we fail to see in the chart, owing, no doubt, to the fact that they are usually covered entirely with ice and snow, and would be taken for immense icebergs. But this was a singularly open year, and there was no mistaking solid rocky land for floating ice.

The bearings of all these were carefully put down in the charts – I say charts, because not only the captain and mate, but our young heroes as well, took the daily reckoning, and kept a log, though I am bound in the interests of truth to say that Ralph very often did not write up his log for days and days, and then he impudently “fudged” it from Rory’s.

“Are you done with my log?” Rory would sometimes modestly inquire of Ralph as he sat at the table busily “fudging.”

“Not yet, youngster,” Ralph would reply; “there, you go away and amuse yourself with your fiddle till I’m done with it, unless you specially want your ears pulled.”

McBain landed at many of these islands, and hoisted beacons on them. These beacons were simply spare spars, with bunches of light wood lashed to their top ends, so that at some little distance they looked like tall brooms. He hoisted one on the highest peak of every island that lay in his route.

They came at length to what seemed the very northernmost and most easterly of these islands, and on this McBain determined to land provisions and store them. It would tend to lighten the ship; and “on the return voyage,” said the captain, “if so be that Providence shall protect and spare us, they will be a welcome sight.”

This done, the voyage was continued, and the sea becoming clearer of ice towards the west, the course was altered to almost due north.

The wind drawing round more to the south, the fires were banked, and the vessel put under easy sail. The water all round looked black and deep; but, with all the caution of your true sailor, McBain had two men constantly in the chains to heave the lead, with a watch continually in the crow’s-nest to give warning of any sudden change in the colour of the water. More than once such a change was observed, the surface becoming of a yellowish ashen hue away ahead of them. Then the main or fore yard was hauled aback, and a boat despatched to investigate, and it was found that the strange appearance was caused by myriads of tiny shrimplets, what the northern sailor calls “whale’s food.” Whether this be whale food or not I cannot say for certain, but several times our heroes fell in with a shoal of bottle-noses, disporting themselves among these curious ashen-hued streams.

This formed a temptation too great to resist, for the oil would do instead of fuel when they wintered away up in the extreme north. So boats were lowered – not two but four, for these brutes are as wild as the winds and more wily than any old fox. No less than four were “bagged,” as Rory called it. They were not large, but the blubber obtained from them was quite sufficient to fill one large tank. The best of it was, that Ralph – big, “plethoric” (another of Rory’s pretty words), Saxon Ralph, made quite a hero of himself by manfully guiding his boat towards a floundering monster that was threatening destruction to the third whaler, which was fast to her, and skilfully spearing her at the very nick of time.

Rory was in the same boat, and drenched in blood from head to heels though both of them were, he must needs get up and shake his “baby brother” by the hand.

“Oh, sure!” said Rory, with tears in his eyes, “it’s myself that is proud of the English race, after all. They haven’t the fire of the Gael; but only just awaken them! – Dear Ray, you’re a broth of a boy, entirely.”

“What do you think,” said McBain, one morning just after breakfast – “what do you think, Rory, I’m going to make to-day?”

“Sure, I don’t know,” said Rory, all interest.

“Why, fenders,” said McBain.

“Fenders?” ejaculated Rory, with wider eyes. “Fenders? troth it’ll be fire-irons you’ll be making next, sir; but what do you want with fenders?”

“You don’t take,” said Ralph. “It is fenders to throw overboard when the ice is too obtrusive, isn’t it, sir?”

“That’s it,” said the captain, laughing. “Sometimes the bergs may be a bit too pressing with their attentions, and then I’ll hang these over. That’s it.”

It took nearly a fortnight to complete the manufacture of these fenders or trusses, for each of them was some twelve feet long by three in diameter composed of compressed straw and shielded by knitted ropework.

To the captain’s foresight in making these fenders, they several times owed the safety of their gallant ship during the winter that followed.

A whole month passed away. The sun now set every night, and the still, long day began to get sensibly shorter.

The progress northward was hindered by dense white fogs, which at times hugged the ship so closely that, standing by the bowsprit, you could not see the jibboom-end. The vessel, as Sandy McFlail expressed it, seemed enveloped in huge sheets of wet lint. Then the fog would lift partially off and away – in other words, it seemed to retire and station itself at some distance, with the ice looming through it in the most magical way. At these times the ship would be stopped, and our heroes were allowed to take boat exercise around the Arrandoon, with strict injunctions not to go beyond a certain distance of the vessel. Their laughing and talking and singing never failed to bring up a seal or two, or a round-eyed wondering walrus, or an inquisitive bladder-nose, but the appearance of these animals, as they loomed gigantic through the fog, was sometimes awful in the extreme. When a malley or gull came sweeping down towards them it looked as big as the fabulous Roc that carried away Sinbad the Sailor, and Rory would throw himself in the bottom of the boat and pretend to be in a terrible fright.

(The optical illusions caused among the ice by these fogs are well and humorously described in a book just to hand called “The Voyage of the Vega” (Macmillan and Co). I myself wrote on the same subject thirteen years ago, in a series of articles on Greenland North.)

“Oh! Ray, boy, look at the Roc,” he would cry. “I’m come for, sure enough. Do catch hold of me, big brother. Don’t let the great baste carry me off. Sure, he’ll fly up to the moon with me, as the eagle did with Daniel O’Rourke.”

I think the fog must have caused delusions in sound as well as sight, else why the following.

They were pulling gently about, one day, in the first whaler, when, borne along on the slight breeze that was blowing, came a sound as of happy children engaged at play. The merry laughter and the occasional excited scream or shout were most distinctly audible.

“Whatever can it be?” cried Allan, looking very serious, his somewhat superstitious nature for a moment gaining the ascendency.

“Sure,” said Rory, “you needn’t pull so long a face, old man; it’s only the childer just got out of school.”

The “childer” in this instance were birds.

“It’s much clearer to-day,” said Stevenson, one morning, as he made his usual report. “We can see the clouds, and they’re all on the scud. I expect we’ll have wind soon, sir.”

“Very well, Mr Stevenson,” was the reply, “be ready for it, you know; have the fires lit and banked, and then stand by to get the ice-anchors and fenders on board,” (the ship was fast to a berg).

“There is a line of ice to the westward, sir, about a quarter of a mile off, and clear water all between.”

“Thank you, Mr Stevenson.”

But Stevenson did not retire. He stopped, hesitatingly.

“You’ve something to ask me, I think?” said McBain.

“I’ve something to tell you,” replied the mate, with a kind of a forced laugh. “I dare say you will think me a fool for my pains, but as sure as you gentlemen are sitting there at breakfast this morning, about five bells in the middle watch I saw – and every man Jack of us saw – ”

“Saw what?” said McBain. “Sit down, man; you are looking positively scared.”

“We saw —the great Sea-Serpent!”

(What is herein related really occurred as described. I myself was a witness to the event, being then in medical charge of the barque Xanthus, recently burned at sea.)

McBain did not attempt to laugh him out of his story, but he made him describe over and over again what he had seen; then he called the watch, and examined them verbally man by man, and found they all told the self-same tale, talking soberly, earnestly, and truthfully, as men do who feel they are stating facts.

The terrible monster they averred came from the northwards, and was distinctly visible for nearly a minute, passing between the ship and the ice-line which Stevenson had mentioned. They described his length, which could not have been less than seventy or eighty yards, the undulations of his body as he swept along on the surface of the water, the elevated head, the mane and – some added – the awful glaring eyes.

It did not come on to blow as the mate predicted, so the ship made no move from her position, but all day long there was but little else talked about, either fore or aft, save the visit of the great sea-serpent, and as night drew on the stories told around the galley fire would have been listened to with interest by any one at all fond of the mysterious and awful.

“I mean,” said Rory, as he retired, “to turn out as soon as it is light, and watch; the brute is sure to return. I’ve told Peter to call me.”

“So shall I,” said Allan and the doctor.

“So shall I,” said Ralph.

“Well, boys,” said McBain, “I’ll keep you company.”

When they went on deck, about four bells in the middle watch, they were not surprised to find all hands on deck, eagerly gazing towards the spot where they had seen “the manèd monster of the deep,” – as poet Rory termed him – disappear.

It was a cold, dull cheerless morning; the sun was up but his beams were sadly shorn – they failed to pierce the thick canopy of clouds and mist that overspread the sky, and brought the horizon within a quarter of a mile of them. They could, however, easily see the ice-line – long and low and white.

A whole hour passed, and McBain at all events was thinking of going below, when suddenly came a shout from the men around the forecastle.

“Look! look! Oh! look! Yonder he rips! There he goes!”

Gazing in the direction indicated, the hearts of more than one of our heroes seemed to stand still with a strange, mysterious fear, for there, rushing over the surface of the dark water, the undulated body well-defined against the white ice-edge, was – what else could it be? – the great sea-serpent!

“I can see his mane and head and eyes,” cried Rory. “Oh! it is too dreadful.”

Then a shout from the masthead, —

“He is coming this way.”

It was true. The manèd monster had altered his course, and was bearing straight down upon the Arrandoon.

No one moved from his position, but there were pale, frightened faces and starting eyes; and though the men uttered no cry, a strange, frightened moan arose, a fearful quavering “Oh-h-h?” – a sound that once heard is never to be forgotten. Next moment, the great sea-serpent, with a wild and unearthly scream, bore down upon the devoted ship, then suddenly resolved itself into a long flight of sea-birds (Arctic divers)!

So there you have a true story of the great sea-serpent, but I am utterly at a loss to describe to you the jollity and fun and laughing that ensued, as soon as the ridiculous mistake was discovered.

And nothing would suit Ted Wilson but getting up on the top of the bowsprit and shouting, —

“Men of the Arrandoon, bold sailors all, three cheers for the great sea-serpent. Hip! hip! hip! Hurrah!!!”

Down below dived Ralph, followed by all the others. “Peter! Peter! Peter!” he cried.

“Ay, ay, sir,” from Peter.

“Peter, I’m precious hungry.”

“And so am I,” said everybody.

Peter wasn’t long in laying the cloth and bringing out the cold meat and the pickles, and it wasn’t long either before Freezing Powders brought hot coffee. Oh! didn’t they do justice to the good things, too!

“I dare say,” said the doctor, “this is our breakfast.”

“Ridiculous!” cried Ralph, “ridiculous! It’s only a late supper, doctor. We’ll have breakfast just the same.”

“A vera judeecious arrangement,” said Sandy.

Chapter Thirty.

Land Ho! The Isle of Desolation – The Last Blink of Sunshine – The Aurora Borealis – Strange Adventure with a Bear

“Well, Magnus,” said Captain McBain one day to his old friend, “what think you of our prospects of gaining the North Pole, or your mysterious island of Alba?”

Magnus was seated at the table in the captain’s own room, with an old yellow, much-worn chart spread out before him, the only other person in the cabin, save these two, being Rory, who, with his chin resting on his hands and his elbows on the table, was listening with great interest to the conversation.

“Think of it?” replied the weird wee man, looking up and glaring at McBain through his fierce grey eyebrows. “Think of it, sir? Why we are nearly as far north now as we were in 1843. We’ll reach the Isle of Alba, sir, if – ”

“If what, good Magnus?” asked McBain, as the old man paused. “If what?”

“If that be all you want,” answered Magnus.

“Nay, nay, my faithful friend,” cried the captain, “that isn’t all. We want to reach the Pole, to plant the British flag thereon, and return safely to our native shores again.”

“So you will, so you will,” said Magnus, “if – ”

“What, another ‘if,’ Magnus?” said McBain. “What does this new ‘if’ refer to?”

“If,” continued Magnus, “Providence gives us just such another autumn as that we have had this year. If not – ”

“Well, Magnus, well?”

“We will leave our bones to lie among the eternal snows until the last trump shall sound.”

After a pause, during which McBain seemed in deep and earnest thought.

“Magnus,” he said, “my brave boys and I have determined to push on as far as ever we can. We have counted all the chances, we mean to do our utmost, and we leave the rest to Providence.”

Allan had entered while he was speaking, and he said, as the captain finished, —

“Whatever a man dares he can do.”

“Brave words, my foster-son,” replied McBain, grasping Allan’s hand, “and the spirit of these words gained for the English nation the victory in a thousand fights.”

“Besides, you know,” added Rory, looking unusually serious, “it is sure to come right in the end.”

The Arrandoon, wonderful to relate, had now gained the extreme altitude of 86 degrees north latitude, and although winter was rapidly approaching, the sea was still a comparatively open one. Nor was the cold very intense; the frosts that had fled away during the short Arctic summer had not yet returned. The sea between the bergs and floes was everywhere calm; they had passed beyond the region of fogs, and, it would almost seem, beyond the storm regions as well, for the air was windless.

So on they steamed steadily though slowly, never relaxing their vigilance; so careful, indeed, in this respect was McBain, that the man in the chains as well as the “nest hand” were changed every hour, and only old and tried sailors were permitted to go on duty on these posts.

“Land ahead!” was the shout one day from the nest. The day, be it remembered, was now barely an hour long.

“Land ahead on the port bow!”

“What does it look like, Mr Stevenson?” cried the captain.

The mate had run up at the first hail.

“I can just see the tops of a few hills, sir,” was the reply, “towering high over the icebergs.”

The Arrandoon bore away for this strange land. In three hours’ time they were lying off one of the dreariest and most desolate-looking islands it has ever been the lot of mariners to behold. It looked like an island of some worn-out planet, whose internal fires have gone for ever out, from which life has long since fled, which possesses no future save the everlasting night of silence and death.

Some slight repairs were required in the engine-room, so the Arrandoon lay here for a week.

“To think,” said McBain, as he stood on the bridge one day with our heroes, “that in the far-distant past that lonely isle of gloom was once clad in all the bright colour of tropical vegetation, with wild beasts roaming in its jungles and forests, and wild birds filling its groves with music, – an island of sunshine, flowers, and beauty! And now behold it.”

An expedition was got up to explore the isle, and to climb its highest peak to make observations.

McBain himself accompanied it, so did Allan, Rory, and Seth. It was no easy task, climbing that snowy cone by the light of stars and Aurora. But they gained the summit ere the short, short day broke.

To the north and west they saw land and mountains, stretching away and away as far as eye could follow them. To the east and north water studded with ugly icebergs that looked as if they had broken away from the shores of the western land.

“But what is that in the middle of yonder ice-floe to the south and west?” cried Rory.

“As I live,” exclaimed McBain, as he eyed the object through the glass, “it is a ship of some kind, evidently deserted; and it is quite as evident that we are not the only explorers that have reached as far north as this island.”

The mystery was explained next day, and a sad story brought to light. McBain and party landed on the floe and walked towards the derelict. She was sloop-rigged, with sails all clewed, and her hull half hidden in snow. After a deal of difficulty they succeeded in opening one of the companion hatches, and making their way down below.

No less than five unburied corpses lay huddled together in the little cabin. From their surroundings it was plain they had been walrus-hunters, and it was not difficult to perceive that the poor fellows had died from cold and hunger many, many years before.

Frozen in, too far up in this northern sea, they had been unable to regain the open water, and so had miserably perished.

Next day they returned and laid the mortal remains of these unfortunate men in graves in the snow, and even Rory was much more silent and thoughtful than usual as they returned to the ship.

Was it not possible that they might meet with a similar fate? The poor fellows they had just buried had doubtless possessed many home ties; their wives and mothers had waited and wished a weary time, till at long last the heart had grown sick with hope deferred, and maybe the grave had long since closed over them.

Such were some of Rory’s thoughts, but after dinner McBain “brought him up with a round turn,” as he phrased it.

“Rory,” he cried, “go and play to us. Freezing Powders, you young rascal, bring that cockatoo of yours up on the table and make us laugh.”

Rory brightened up and got hold of his fiddle; and “All right, sah,” cried Freezing Powders. “I bring de old cockatoo plenty quick. Come along, Cockie, you catchee my arm and pull yourse’f up. Dat’s it.”

“Come on,” cried Cockie, hopping on the table and at once commencing to waltz and polka round. “Come on; play up, play up.”

A queer bird was Cockie. He cared for nobody except his master and Rory. Rory he loved solely on account of the fiddle, but his affection for Freezing Powders was very genuine. When his master was glad, so was Cockie; when the little nigger boy felt tired, and threw himself down beside the cage to rest, then Cockie would open his cage door and back tail foremost under the boy’s arm, heaving as he did so a deep, delighted sigh, as much as to say, “Oh, what joy it is to nestle in here?”

Cockie was not a pretty bird; his bill was worn and all twisted awry, and his eyes looked terribly old-fashioned, and the blue, wrinkled skin around them gave him quite an antediluvian look. He was white in colour – or, more correctly speaking, he had been white once; but time, that steals the roses from the softest cheeks, had long since toned him down to a kind of yellow lilac, so he did not look a very respectable bird on the whole.

“You ought to wash him,” McBain said, one day. “Wash him, sah?” said Freezing Powders; “is dat de ’xpression you make use of, sah? Bless you, sah! I have tried dat plenty much often; I have tried to wash myself, too. No good in eeder case, sah; I ’ssure you I speak de truf.”

“Come on I come on?” cried Cockie. “Play up! play up! La de lal, de lal, de lal!”

And round spun the bird, keeping time to the merry air, and every now and then giving a “whoop?” such as could only be emitted by Cockie himself, a Connemara Irishman, or a Cuscarora Indian.

But this is a remarkable thing, Cockie danced and whirled in one direction till he found his head getting light, then he reversed the action, and whirled round the other way!

(This description of the wonderful bird is in no way overdrawn.)

It really seemed as if he would tire Rory out. “Lal de dal!” he sung: “our days are short – whoop! – our lives are merry – lal de dal, de dal, de whoop!”

But Rory changed his tactics; he began to play The Last Rose of Summer, leaning down towards the table. Cockie stopped at once, and backed, tail foremost, in under the musician’s hands, crouching down with a sigh to listen.

But Rory went off again into the Sprig of Shillelagh, and off went Cockie, too, dancing more madly than ever with a small flag in his mouth that Freezing Powders had handed him. Then he stopped at last, and walked about gasping, pitching penholders and pencils in all directions.

“Here’s a pretty to-do!” he said; and when somebody laughed, Cockie simply shrieked with laughter till he had everybody joining him and holding their sides, and feeling sore all over. Verily, Cockie was a cure! No wonder his master loved him.

In a few days the Arrandoon left the desolate island, which Rory had named “Walrus Isle.”

Everybody was on deck as the vessel slowly steamed away.

Most of the land was already shrouded in gloom, only in the far distance a tall mountain cone was all ablaze with a crimson glory, borrowed from the last blink of sunshine. Yes, the god of day had sunk to rest, and they would bask no more in his cheering beams for many a long and weary month to come.