Wild Adventures round the Pole

Chapter Eight.

A Gale from the Mountains – Daybreak in Iceland – The Great Balloon Ascent – Rory’s Yarn – The Snow-Cloud – The Pirate is Seen

A whole week has elapsed since the events transpired which I have related in last chapter, – a week most interestingly if not always quite pleasantly spent. The Arrandoon is lying before the quaint, fantastical old town of Reikjavik, surrounded almost in every direction by mountains bold and wild, the peaked summits and even the sides of which are now covered with ice and snow. For spring has not yet arrived to unrivet stern winter’s chains, to swell the rivers into roaring torrents, and finally to carpet the earth with beauty. The streams are still frozen, the bay in which the good ship lies at her anchors twain, is filled with broken pancake-ice, which makes communication with the shore by means of boat a matter of no little difficulty, for oars have to be had inboard or used as pressing poles, and boat-hooks are in constant requisition.

Winter it is, and the country all around might be called dreary, were it not for the ever-varying shades of colour that, as the sun shines out, or anon hides his head behind a cloud, spread themselves over hill and dale and rugged glen. Oh! the splendour of those sunrises and sunsets, the rose tints, the purples, the emerald greens and cool greys, that blaze and blend, grow faint and fade as they chase each other among mountains and ravines! What a poor morsel of steel my pen feels as I attempt to describe them! Yet have they a beauty peculiarly their own, – a beauty which never can be forgotten by those whose eyes have once rested thereon.

The fair-haired Danish girl has been landed, and for a time has found shelter and peace in the humble home of her uncle the clergyman. Our heroes have been on shore studying the manners and customs of the primitive but hospitable people they find themselves among.

Several city worthies have been off to see the ship and to dine. But to-night our heroes are all by themselves in the saloon. Dinner is finished, nuts and fruit and fragrant coffee are on the table, at the head of which sits the captain, on his right the doctor and Ralph, on his left Allan and Rory. Freezing Powders, neatly dressed, is hovering near, and Peter, the steward, is not far off, while the cockatoo is busy as usual, helping himself to tremendous billfuls of hemp-seed, but nevertheless putting in his oar every minute, with a “Well, duckie?” or a long-drawn “Dea-ah me!”

I cannot say that all is peace, though, beyond the wooden walls of the Arrandoon, for a storm is raging with almost hurricane violence, sweeping down from the hills with ever-varying force, and threatening to tear the vessel from her anchorage. Steam is up, the screw revolves, and it taxes all the engineer’s skill to keep up to the anchors so as to avert the strain from them.

But our boys are used to danger by this time, and there is hardly a moment’s lull in the conversation. Even Sandie McFlail, M.D. o’ Aberdeen, has already forgotten all the horrors of mal-de-mer; he even believes he has found his sea-legs, and feels all over as good a sailor as anybody.

“Reikjavik?” says Ralph; “isn’t it a queer break-jaw kind of a name. It puts one in mind of a mouthful of exceedingly tough beefsteak.”

“A gastronomic simile,” says Rory; “though maybe neither poetical nor elegant, sure, but truly Saxon.”

“Ah! weel,” the doctor says, in his quiet, thoughtful, canny way, “I dinna know now. Some o’ the vera best poetry of all ages bears reference to the pleesures o’ the table. Witness Horace’s Odes, for instance.”

“Hear! hear!” from Allan; and “Horace was a brick!” from honest English Ralph; but Rory murmurs “Moore?”

“But,” continues the doctor, “to my ear there is nothing vera harsh in the language that these islanders speak. They pronounce the ‘ch’ hard, like the Scotch; their ‘j’s’ soft, like the Spanish; and turn their ‘w’s’ into ‘v’s.’ They pronounce church – kurk; and the ‘j’ is a ‘y,’ or next thing to it. ‘Reik’ or ‘reyk’ means smoke, you know, as it is in Scotch ‘reek;’ and ‘wik,’ or ‘wich,’ or ‘vik’ means a bay, as in the English ‘Woolwich,’ ‘Sandwich,’ etc, so that Reikjavik is simply ‘the bay of smoke,’ or ‘the smoking bay;’ but whether with reference to the smoke that hangs over the town, or the spray that rises mistlike from the seething billows when the wind blows, I cannot say – probably the former; and it is worthy of note, gentlemen, that some savage races far, far away from here – the aborigines of Australia, for example – designate towns by the term ‘the big smoke.’”

“How profoundly erudite you are, doctor!” says Rory. “Now, wouldn’t it have been much better for your heirs and assigns and the world at large, if you had accepted a Professorship of Antiquity in the University of Aberdeen, instead of coming away with us, to cool the toes of you at the North Pole, and maybe leave your bones to bleach beneath the Aurora Borealis, eh?”

“Ha! there I have you,” cries Sandie, smiling good-humouredly, for by this time he was quite used to Rory’s bantering ways, – “there I have you, boy Rory; and it is with the profoundest awe and respect for everything sacred, that I remind you that the Aurora Borealis never bleached any bones; and those poor unfortunates who, in their devotion for science, have wandered towards the mystery land around the Pole, and there laid down their lives, will never, never moulder into dust, but, entombed in the green, salt ice, with the virgin snow as their winding-sheet, their bodies will rest in peace, and rest intact until the trumpet sounds.”

There was a lull in the conversation at this point, but no lull in the storm; the waves dashed wildly over the ship, the wind roared through the rigging, the brave vessel quivered from stem to stern, as if in constant fear she might be hurled from the protection afforded by anchor and cable, and cast helpless upon the rock-bound shore.

A lull, broken presently by a deep sigh from Freezing Powders.

“Well, duckie?” said Polly, in sympathising tones.

“Well, Freezing Powders,” said McBain, “and pray what are you sighing about?”

“What for I sigh?” repeated Freezing Powders. “Am you not afraid you’se’f, sah! You not hear de wild winds roar, and de wave make too much bobbery? ’Tis a’most enuff, sah, to make a gem’lam turn pale, sah!”

“Ha! ha?” laughed Rory; “really, it’ll take a mighty big storm, Freezing Powders, to make you turn pale. But, doctor,” he continued, “what say you to some music?”

“If you’ll play,” said the surgeon, “I’ll toot.”

And so the concert was begun; and the shriek of the storm spirit was drowned in mirth and melody, or, as the doctor, quoting Burns, expressed it, —

But after this night of storm and tempest, what a wonderful morning it was! The sun shot up amidst the encrimsoned mountain peaks, and shone brightly down from a sky of cloudless blue. The snow was everywhere dazzling in its whiteness, and there was not a sigh of wind to raise so much as a ripple on the waters of the bay, from which every bit of ice had been blown far to sea. Wild birds screamed with joy as they wheeled in hundreds around the ship, while out in the bay a shoal of porpoises were disporting themselves, leaping high in air from out of the sparkling waters, and shrieking – or, as the doctor called it, “whustling” – for very joy.

Every one on board the Arrandoon was early astir – up, indeed, before the sun himself – for there were to be great doings on shore to-day. The first great experimental balloon ascent and flight was about to be made. Every one on shore was early astir, too; in fact, the greatest excitement prevailed, and on the table-land to the right of, and some little distance from, the town, from which the balloon was to ascend, the people had assembled from an early hour, even the ladies of Reikjavik turning out dressed in their gayest attire, no small proportion of which consisted of fur and feathers.

The aeronaut was a professional, Monsieur De Vere by name. McBain had gone all the way to Paris especially to engage his services. Nor had he hired him at random, for this canny captain of ours had not only satisfied himself that De Vere was in a scientific point of view a clever man, but he had accompanied him in several ascents, and could thus vouch for his being a really practical aeronaut.

Who would go with De Vere in this first great trip over the regions of perpetual snow? The doctor stepped forward as a volunteer, and by his side was Rory. Perhaps Allan and Ralph were rather lazy for any such aerial exploit; anyhow, they were content to stay at home.

“We’ll look on, you know,” said Ralph, “as long as we can see you; and when you return – that is, if ever you do return – you can tell us all about it.”

When all was ready the ropes were cast loose, and, with a ringing cheer from the assembled multitude, up arose the mighty balloon, straight as arrow from bow, into the blue, sunny sky. Like the eagle that soars from the peak of Benrinnes, she seemed to seek the very sun itself.

Rory and the surgeon, who had never been in a balloon before – nor even, for the matter of that, down in a coalpit – at first hardly relished their sudden elevation, but they soon got used to it.

Not the slightest motion was there; Rory could hardly credit the fact that he was moving, and when at last he did muster up sufficient courage to peep earthwards over the side of the car.

“Oh, look, doctor dear!” he cried; “sure, look for yourself; the world is moving away from us altogether!”

And this was precisely the sensation they experienced. Both the doctor and Rory were inclined to clutch nervously and tremulously the sides of the car in the first part of their ascent; but though the former was not much of a sailor, somewhat to his surprise he experienced none of those giddy feelings common to the landsman when gazing from an immense height. He could look beneath him and around him, and enjoy to the full the strange bird’s-eye landscape and seascape that every moment seemed to broaden and widen, until a great portion of the northern island, with its mountains, its lakes, its frozen torrents, its gulfs and bays and islands, and the great blue southern ocean, even to the far-off Faroe Isles, lay like a beautifully portrayed map beneath their feet. The grandeur of the scene kept them silent for long minutes; it impressed them, it awed them. It did more than even this, for it caused them to feel their own littleness, and the might of the Majesty that made the world.

De Vere himself seldom vouchsafed a single glance landwards; he seemed to busy himself wholly and solely with the many strange instruments with which he was surrounded. He was hardly a moment idle. The intense cold, that soon began to benumb the senses of Sandie, seemed to have no deterrent effect on his efforts.

“I must confess I do fell sleepy,” said the worthy medico, “and I meant to assist you, Mr De Vere.”

“Here,” cried the scientist, pouring something out of a phial, and handing it to him, “drink that quick.”

“I feel double the individual,” cried Sandie, brightly, as soon as he had swallowed the draught.

“Come,” said Rory, “come, monsieur, I want to feel double the individual, too.”

“No, no, sir,” said De Vere, smiling, “an Irishman no want etherism; you are already – pardon me – too ethereal.”

Sandie was gazing skywards.

“Happy thought!” cried Rory; “let us go to the moon.”

“No,” laughed the doctor; “nobody ever got that length yet.”

“Oh, you forget, Mr Surgeon,” said Rory, – “you forget entirely all about Danny O’Rourke.”

“Tell us, then, Rory.”

“Troth, then,” began Rory, in his richest brogue, “it was just like this same. Danny was a dacint boy enough, who lived entoirely alone with Biddy his wife, and the pig, close to a big bog in old Oireland. Sitting on a stone in the midst of this bog was Danny, one foine summer’s evening, when who should fly down but an aigle. ‘Foine noight,’ says the aigle. ‘The same to you,’ says Danny, ‘and many of them.’ ‘But,’ says the aigle, ‘don’t you see that it is sinking you are?’ ‘Och! sure,’ cries Danny, ‘and so it is. I’ll be swallowed up in the bog, and poor Biddy and the pig will nivir set eyes on me again. Och! och! what’ll I do?’ ‘Git on to me back, troth,’ says the aigle, ‘and I’ll fly you sthraight to your Biddy’s door.’ ‘And the blessings av the O’Rourkes be wid ye thin,’ says Danny, putting his arms round the aigle’s neck, ‘for you are the sinsible bird, and whatever I’d have done widout ye, ne’er a bit o’ me knows. But isn’t it high enough you are now, aroon? Yonder is my cottage just down there.’ For,” continued Rory, “you must know that by this time the aigle had mounted fully a mile high with poor Danny. ‘Be quiet wid ye,’ says the aigle, ‘or I’ll shake ye off me back entoirely. Don’t ye remember robbing my nest last year? I do. And it’s niver a cottage you’ll ever see again, nor Biddy, nor the pig either. It’s right up to the moon I’m flying wid ye.’ ‘What!’ cries Danny, ‘to that bit av a thing like a raping-hook? Och! and och! what’ll become av me at all at all?’ But the moon got bigger the nearer they came to it, and they found it a dacint size enough when they got there entirely. ‘Catch a howld av the end av the raping-hook,’ says the aigle, ‘or by this and by that I’ll shake ye off me shoulder.’ And so poor Danny had no ho’ but just to do as he was told, and away flew the aigle and left him. While he was wondering what he should do now, a stern voice behind him says, ‘Let go – let go the end of the raping-hook, and be off wid ye back to your own counthry.’ ‘It’s hardly civil av you,’ says Danny, ‘to ask me sich a thing. Sure it is few ever come to call on you anyhow.’ ‘Let go,’ thundered the man o’ the moon; and he gave Danny just one kick, and off went the poor boy flying into the air. ‘It’s killed I’ll be,’ says he to himself, ‘killed entoirely wid the fall, and what’ll become o’ me wife Biddy and the pig is more’n I can tell.’ But he fell, and he fell, and he fell, and he never seemed to stop falling, till plump he alights right in the middle o’ the sea, and there he lay on the broad back av him, till a big lump av a whale came and splashed him all over wid his tail. But sure enough the sea was only his bed, and the big whale turned out to be Biddy herself, with the watering-pot, telling him to get up, for a lazy ould boy, and feed the pig, and troth it was nothing but a dream after all.