Wild Adventures round the Pole

“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.”