The Cruise of the Snowbird: A Story of Arctic Adventure

“‘I kind o’ sees ye now,’ he says. ‘I can just dimly descry ye, you looks about as frisky as a pair o’ bull buffaloes. Ha! ha! ha! You’ll be precious cold before long, though,’ Nat continues. ‘Now don’t say Nat’s a bad old sort. He’s going to throw ye down his flask; maybe ye can’t catch it, so behold, Nat puts it in the pocket of his big skin coat, and pitches it down into your hole. Don’t think it’s the b’ar, cause he won’t come home till it’s just a trifle darker, and then – ha! ha! ha! – I thinks I sees the dust he’ll raise. Good-bye, my sylvan beauties. Good night, babies. Take care of your little selves; don’t catch cold whatever ye do.’

“But all this was only Nat’s fun, ye see. He carried a right good heart within him, I can tell you, and he wasn’t above five hours gone when back he comes with two more of our friends carrying a big lantern, a long rope, and an axe, and in about ten minutes more Jager and I were both on the brink; but I can tell ye, gentlemen, it was about the coldest five hours ever trapper Seth spent in his little existence.”

The anxiety on board the yacht for the past few days had been very deep indeed, but as our heroes drew once more near to their home, and Stevenson made sure they were all there, dogs and all.

“Hurrah, boys!” he cried to his men; “man the rigging!”

Ay, and they did too, and it would have done your heart good to have heard that ringing cheer, and it wasn’t one cheer either, but three times three, and one more to keep them whole.

McBain and his little party made noble response, you may be well sure; and meanwhile Peter, with his bagpipes, had mounted into the foretop and played them Highland welcome as they once more jumped on board of the saucy Snowbird.

What a delightful evening they spent afterwards in the snuggery! They were often in the habit of inviting one of the mates aft, or even weird little Magnus, with his budget of wonderful tales, but to-night they must needs have it all to themselves, and it was quite one bell in the middle watch ere they thought of retiring, and even after that they must all go on deck to have a look around.

Not a breath of wind, not a cloud in the sky, and stars as big as saucers.

“Jack Frost has come while we’ve been talking,” said McBain. “Look here, boys.”

He threw a bit of wood overboard as he spoke; it rang as it alighted on the surface of the ice.

Chapter Twenty Two

Frost and no Skates! – Rory Disconsolate – McBain to the Rescue – A Roaring Day and a Merry Night – A Mysterious Pool

King Frost had come – and come, too, with a will, for when Rory went on deck next morning the ice was all around the yacht, hard and smooth and black.

“It is frozen in we are,” said Rory – “frozen in entirely, and never a vestige of a skate in the ship. Just look, Allan, that ice is bearing already! What could have possessed us to leave Scotland without skates?”

“It is provoking,” remarked Allan, looking at the ice with a rueful countenance.

“Well, we can’t go back home for them, that is certain sure. D’ye think, now, that old Ap could manufacture us a few pairs?”

“He is very handy,” Allan said; “but I question if he could manufacture skates.”

“However,” said Rory, “the ice is bearing; we can slide if we can’t skate. So I, for one, am going over the side presently.”

“Not to-day, Rory boy,” said a quiet voice behind him, while at the same time a hand was laid gently on his shoulder – “not to-day, Rory, it wouldn’t be safe,” said McBain. “I know you would risk it, but I love you too well to allow it.”

“And sure, isn’t your word law, then?” replied Rory.

McBain smiled, and no more was said on the subject; but for all that Rory had the ice on his mind all day, and that accounted for his having been seen in close confab with old Ap for a whole hour, during which pieces of wood and bits of iron were critically looked at, and many strange tools examined and designs drawn on paper by Rory’s deft artistic fingers. But the result of all this may be summed up in the little word nil. Ap had taken much snuff during this consultation, but, “No, no; look, you see,” he said, at last, “if it were a box now, or a barrel, or a boat, I could manage it; but skates, look you, is more science than art.”

So Rory had rather a long face when he came aft again, which was something most unusual for Rory. But his was the nature that is easily cast down, and just as easily elevated again. His spirits were about zero before dinner; they rose somewhat during that meal, and fell once more when the cloth was removed.

“Do you think,” asked Ralph of McBain, “that the frost will hold?”

“Oh,” cried Rory, “don’t talk of the frost! sure it is the provokingest thing that ever was, that the three of us should have forgotten our skates. I’m going to get my fiddle.”

“Wait a moment,” said McBain.

“Steward,” he continued, “serve out warm clothing to-morrow for these young gentlemen, and remind them to put on their pea-jackets; we are going to have such a frost as you never even dreamt of in Scotland. Don’t forget to put them on, boys; and Peter, ‘dubbing’ for the boots mind, no more paste blacking.”

“Ay, ay, sir!” said Peter.

“And don’t forget the paper blankets.”

“That I won’t, sir!” from Peter.

Now while McBain was speaking Rory’s face was a study; the clouds were fast disappearing from his brow, his eye was getting brighter every moment. At last, up he jumped, all glee and excitement.

“Hurrah!” he cried, seizing the captain by the hand. “It is true, isn’t it? Oh! you know what I’d be saying. The skates, you know! Never expect me to believe that the man who thought beforehand about warm clothes for his boys, and dubbing and paper blankets, was unmindful of their pleasures as well.”

“Peter, bring the box,” said McBain, quietly laughing.

Peter brought the box, and a large one it was too.

Three dozen pairs of the best skates that ever glided over the glassy surface of pond or lake.

Rory looked at them for a moment, then admiringly at McBain.

“I was going to get my fiddle,” says Rory, “and it would be a pity to spoil a good intention; but troth, boys, it isn’t a lament I’ll be playing now, at all, at all.”

Nor was it. Rory’s fiddle spoke – it laughed, it screamed; it told of all the joyousness of the boy’s heart, and it put everybody in the same humour that he himself and his fiddle were in.

Next morning broke bright and clear; Rory and Allan were both up even before the stars had faded, and by the time they had enjoyed the luxury of the morning tub – for that they meant to keep up all the year round, being quite convinced of the good of it – and dressed themselves, laughing and joking all the time, Peter had the breakfast laid and ready.

The ice was hard and solid as steel, and glittered like crystal in the rays of the morning sun, and you may be sure our heroes made the best of it, and not they alone, but one half at least of the yacht’s officers and crew. The whole day was given up to the enchanting amusement of skating, and to frolic and fun. Wonderful to say, old Ap proved himself quite an adept in the art, and the figures this little figure-head of a man cut, and the antics he performed, astonished every one.

But Seth, alas! was but a poor show; he never had had skates on his feet before, so his attempts to keep upright were ridiculous in the extreme. But Seth did not mind that a bit, and his pluck was of a very exalted order, for, much as his anatomy must have been damaged by the innumerable falls he got, he was no sooner down than he was up again. Allan and Ralph took pity on him at last, and taking each a hand of the old man, glided away down the ice with him crowing with delight.

“But, sure, then,” cried Rory, “and it’s myself will have a partner too.”

And so he linked up with old Ap, old Ap in paper cap and immensity of apron, Rory in pilot coat and Tam o’ Shanter. What a comical couple they looked! Yes, I grant you they looked comical, but what of that? Their skating far eclipsed anything in the field, and there really was no such thing as tiring either Ap or Rory.

And hadn’t they appetites for dinner that day! Allan’s haunch of venison smoked on the board; and Stevenson, Mitchell, and the mate of the Trefoil had been invited to partake, as there was plenty for everybody, and some to send forward afterwards.

“Now,” said McBain, after the cloth had been removed, and cups of fragrant coffee had been duly discussed, “what say you, gentlemen, if we leave the Snowbird to herself for an hour or two, pipe all hands over the side, and go on shore and open the new hall?”

“A grand idea!” cried Ralph and Allan in a breath. “Capital!” said Rory.

And in less than an hour, reader, everything was prepared: a great fire of logs and coals was cracking and blazing on the ample hearth of the hall, a fire that warmed the place from end to end, a fire at which an ox might have been roasted. The piano had been transported on shore; at this instrument Ralph presided, and near him stood Rory, fiddle in hand. McBain was duly elected chairman, and the impromptu concert had commenced. The officers occupied the front seats, the men sat respectfully on forms in the rear. Had you been there you would have observed, too, that the crew had paid some little attention to their toilet before coming on shore; they had doffed their work-a-day clothing, and donned their best. Even Ap had laid aside his immensity of apron, and came out in navy blue, and Seth was once again encased in that brass-buttoned coat of his, and looked, as Rory said, “all smiles, from top to toe.”

McBain felt himself in duty bound to make a kind of formal speech before the music began. He could be pithy and to the point if he couldn’t be eloquent.

“Officers and men,” he said, “of the British yacht, Snowbird, – We are met here to-night to try, – despite the fact, which nobody minds, that we are far from our native land, – if we can’t spend a pleasant evening. We have been together now for many months, together in sunshine and storm, together in our dangers, together in our pleasures, and I don’t think there has ever been an unpleasant word spoken fore or aft, nor has a grumbler ever lifted up his voice. But we have a long dreary winter before us, and perils perhaps to pass through which we little wot of. But as we’ve stood together hitherto, so will we to the end, let it be sweet or let it be bitter. And it is our duty to help keep up each other’s hearts. I purpose having many such meetings here as the present, and let us just make up our minds to amuse and be amused. Everybody can do something if he tries; he who cannot sing can tell a story, and if there be any one single mother’s son amongst us who is too diffident to do anything, why just let him keep a merry face on his figure-head, and, there, we’ll forgive him! That’s all.”

McBain sat down amidst a chorus of cheers, and the music began. Ralph played a battle piece. That suited his touch to a “t,” Rory told him, and led an encore as soon as it was finished. Then Rory himself had to come to the front with his fiddle, and he played a selection of Irish airs, arranged by himself. Then there was a duet between Allan and Ralph; then McBain himself strode on the stage with a stirring old Highland song, that brought his hearers back to stirring old Highland times in the feudal days of old, when men flew fiercely to sword and claymore, as the fiery cross was borne swiftly through the glen, and wrong had to be righted in the brave old fashion. Stevenson followed suit with a sea song; he had a deep bass voice, and his rendering of “Tom Bowling” was most effective.

It was Rory’s turn once more. He brought out a real Irish shillalah from somewhere, stuck his hat, with an old clay pipe in it, on one side of his head, and gave the company a song so comical, with a brogue so rich, that he quite brought down the house. It was not one encore, but two he got; in fact, he became the hero of the evening. Both Mitchell and the mate of the Trefoil found something to sing, and Ap and Magnus something to say if they couldn’t sing. Magnus’s story was as weird and wild as he looked himself while telling it; Ap’s was a simple relation of a daring deed done at sea during the herring-fishery season. After this Seth spun one of his trapper yarns, and the music began again. A sailor’s hornpipe this time – a rattling nerve-jogging tune that set the men all on a fidget. They beat time with their fingers, they tapped a tattoo with their toes; and when they couldn’t stand it a moment longer, why they simply started up in a bold and manly British fashion, cleared the floor, and gave vent to their feelings through their legs and their feet.

The dancing became fast and furious after that, and when Ralph and Rory were tired of playing they came to the floor, and Peter took their place with his bagpipes. But the longest time has an end, and at last Ap’s shrill pipe summoned all hands on board.

There was little need of sleeping-draughts for any one on board the Snowbird that night.

The frost held, our heroes could tell that before they left their beds, so intensely cold was it. Glad were they now of the addition of the paper blankets served out by Peter; eider-down quilts could hardly have made them feel more comfortable.

The frost held, they could tell that when they went to their tubs. Peter had placed the water in each bath only an hour before, but the ice was already so hard that instead of getting in at once Rory squatted down to look at it, and he did not like the looks of it either. The sponge was as hard as a sledge-hammer, so he took that to break the ice with. Then he tried one foot in, and quickly drew it out again and shook it. The water felt like molten lead.

“I wonder now,” he said to himself, “if brother Ralph will venture on a cold plunge on such a morning as this.”

And, wondering thus, he rolled his shoulders up in his door-curtain, and, poking his head into the passage, hailed Ralph.

“Hullo, there!” he cried; “Ralph! Porpy!”

“Hullo!” cried Ralph; “I’ll Porpy you if I come into your den!”

“Well, but tell me this, old man,” said Rory; “I want to know if you’re going to do a flounder this morning?”

“To be sure!” said Ralph. “Listen!”

Rory listened, and could hear him plashing.

McBain passed along at the moment, and, hearing the conversation, he took part in it to this extent, —

“Boys that don’t have their baths don’t have their breakfasts.”

“In that case,” said Rory, “I’m in too!” And next moment he was plashing away like a live dolphin. But hardly was he dressed than there came all over him such a glorious warm glow, that he would have gone through the same ordeal again had there been any occasion. At the same time he felt so exhilarated in spirits that nothing would serve him but he must burst into song.

The frost held, they could tell that when they met in the saloon and glanced at the windows; the tracery thereon was so beautiful, that even at the risk of letting his breakfast get cold, Rory must needs run for his sketch-book and make two pictures at least. Meanwhile, Ralph had settled down to serious eating. You see, there was very little poetry about honest Ralph, he was more solid than imaginative.

After breakfast our trio took to the ice again. They soon had evidence that some one had been there before them, for about a mile along the shore, and a little way out to sea, they saw that several poles had been planted, and on each pole fluttered a red flag. They looked inquiringly at McBain.

“You wonder what the meaning of that is?” said McBain; “and I myself cannot altogether explain it.”

“But you had the flags placed there?”

“True,” said McBain; “and they are placed around a pool of open water.”

“Open water!” exclaimed Rory, “and the sea frozen everywhere all around!”

“Ah, yes!” replied McBain; “that is the mystery. But we are in the land of mysteries. This pool of open water may be situated over a warm spring, or it may be there is some kind of a whirlpool there which prevents the formation of the ice, only there it is, sure enough, and howsoever hard the frost should become, or howsoever long it may last, I think that that pool will never, never close and freeze.

“The ice,” he continued, “was thin at the edge, but I have had it broken off, and will try to keep it so, and thus you will be enabled to go quite close to the water’s edge; and if my experience is anything to go by, you’ll see many a startling apparition there before the winter is past and gone.”

“You astonish me,” said Rory.

“And me,” said Allan.

“But what,” persisted Rory, “will the apparitions be like?”

“Nothing that can harm us, I think,” said McBain. “But as the ice extends farther seaward, sea-monsters will come to the pool to breathe and to disport themselves in the sunshine.”

“Perhaps the sea-serpent, for instance?” said Rory.

“Perhaps,” said McBain.

“Och! sure then,” cried Rory, losing all his seriousness at once, “we’ll have a shot at the old boy, that’s all?”

Chapter Twenty Three

The Great Black Frost – Funny Jack Frost – The Cold Half-Hour – A Terrible Apparition under the Ice – Blowing Soap-Bubbles – Strange Effect – Snow and Snow-Shoes

For week after week the great black frost continued, seeming only to wax more and more intense as the time went on. With the exception of the mysterious pool, mentioned in last chapter, and the small hole kept open alongside the yacht, there was no water to be met with anywhere. The sea, as far as the eye could reach, was a smooth unbroken sheet of glass, two feet in thickness if a single inch. If there was any ripple or swell in the now far-off blue water, it did not affect the ice for miles around the Snowbird in the slightest. There was never a crack and never a flaw in it. It was hard, solid, and black, adamantine one might almost say in its extreme hardness. The chips broken off from the edge of the ice-hole looked like pieces of greenish rock crystal. The ice-hole itself required to be broken every time a bucket was dipped in it.

Meanwhile the days grew shorter and shorter, but there was never a breath of wind, and never a cloud in the sky. And the sun looked cold and rayless, yet at night the stars shone out with extraordinary brilliancy.

Breakfast was now a meal to be partaken of by lamplight, and so too was dinner, but they both passed off none the less pleasantly for that.

“It seems to me,” said Allan one morning, “that one of these days the sun won’t trouble to get up at all.”

“We are just in the latitude,” remarked McBain, “where even at midsummer there is a little night, and at mid-winter a little day.”

“But we will never be positively in the dark, I should think, while the stars are so brilliant?” Allan asked.

“We’ll have the glorious aurora borealis by-and-bye,” said McBain, “to say nothing of long spells of moonlight; but we are, as I said before, in the very centre of a land of wonders, and there will doubtless be nights when the storm spirit will be abroad in all his might and majesty, clothed in clouds and darkness, a darkness more intense and terrible than any we have ever experienced in our own country.”

“It is a good thing,” said Rory, “that you thought of taking such an array of beautiful lamps.”

Yes, Rory was right, it was a beautiful array. As Ralph remarked, “the Snowbird was strong in lamps.”

They hung in the passage, they hung in the snuggery, and four of them lit up the saloon, with a brightness almost equal to that of day itself.

And those lamps gave heat as well as light, but large fires were kept constantly roaring in the stoves. The stove that stood in the snuggery was a very large one, and to make the place all the more comfortable the deck was almost buried in skins – trophies of the prowess of our heroes in the hunting-field. And yet with all this it must be confessed that at times the cold was felt to be very severe; indeed, the thermometer kept steadily down many degrees below zero. There was one way of defying it during the day, however, and that way lay in action.

“Keep moving is my motto,” said Rory one day on the ice.

“Indeed, Rory boy,” said McBain, “you act well up to it; if I were asked to define you now, do you know the words I would use?”

“No,” said Rory.

“Perpetual motion personified,” said McBain.

“Thank you,” Rory said, lifting his cap.

There was an excellent way of keeping out the cold after dinner, and that was to make a circle round the snuggery stove, reclining on the skins with cups of warm fragrant coffee, and engaging in pleasant conversation. There was another way of keeping out the cold in the long evenings, and that was to retire to the new hall and give a dance. This was the favourite plan with the crew at all events, and McBain, well knowing the value of healthful happy exercise, was always delighted when Rory professed himself ready and willing to discourse sweet music to the men tripping it on the light fantastic toe.

But the time of all others when our heroes really did feel the effects of the excessively low temperature, was the cold half-hour immediately after turning into bed. Of course the curtains would be carefully and closely drawn, ay, and heads carefully covered with bedclothes, but for all that, shiver they must for the cold half-hour. But gradually the feeling wore away, warmth stole over them, then noses could be protruded over the quilts, and by-and-by sleep sealed up their senses.

When they awoke in the morning, lo and behold they were lying in caves of snow! Top and bottom of the bed, back and roof, were covered with snow to the depth of half an inch; and so were the curtains, and so were the quilts. Where in the name of mystery had the snow come from? The explanation is easy enough. The snow was nothing more nor less than their frozen breath.

I do not think a single day passed that Rory did not, during this black frost, make a sketch from a frozen pane of glass. The frost effects on the frozen glass were simply magical, and it was very curious to notice that some of the panes had been but lightly touched with the frost; they were unfinished sketches, so to speak, while others represented whole landscapes, mountain and forest and sky as well.

“Look at this pane,” said Rory, one morning. “Now I wonder what Jack Frost meant to have filled that picture in with?”

“Jack seems to have been having a frolic,” said Allan. “Why, there is only one long white thread down the centre of the pane, and this is all hung over with battle-axes and crosses. Jack’s a funny fellow.”

“Jack is,” said Rory.

“Poor Seth!” he continued; “d’ye know the trick he played him yesterday?”

“No,” said Allan.

“Oh! then,” said Rory, “what should John Frost, woe worth him! do but go and freeze the poor man’s nose, and sure enough to-day it is as big as the teapot; there is no looking at him without laughing.”

“Poor fellow!” Allan remarked.

Frost-biting was far from a rare accident now, and when on the ice it was found necessary for both men and officers to keep a sharp look-out on each other’s faces; a white spot represented a sudden frost-bite, unfelt by the person most interested, and only visible to his companion. But it had at once to be rubbed with ice to gradually restore the circulation, else the part, after the lapse of some hours, would mortify.

Here is a strange thing. For the first day or two of frost, while the ice was still comparatively thin, by lying flat down and gazing beneath, they were in a short time able to perceive fishes and other denizens of the deep close underneath them. Even sharks, and creatures with shapes still more dreadful, at times appeared. There was a strange fascination in this to Rory, these dark, turning, twisting shapes close under him, that stared at him with their terrible eyes, or mouthed at the ice as if they would fain swallow him, appearing and disappearing in the dark water; it was fascinating, yet fearful.

When coming from the shore on the evening of the second day, “Let us skate for a mile or two in the starlight,” said Rory.

“Agreed!” said Allan, and off they went.

They skated quite a mile from the shore.

“Now,” said Rory, “let us have a peep through the ice.”

“We can’t see anything in the dark,” replied Allan.