The Cruise of the Snowbird: A Story of Arctic Adventure

But Rory was of a different opinion, and no sooner had he lain down than, “Oh, Allan, Allan! look, look!” he cried.

Allan saw it too – a terrible shape, seemingly made of fire, wriggling up from the dark depths and approaching the spot where they lay, until they could see it easily. A gigantic snake apparently, as big as the stem of the tallest oak, all quivering and phosphorescent, with crimson eyes and a mouth of awful teeth! The boys felt fear now if they never felt it before. They were spellbound, too; they could not remove their gaze from the apparition, and a kind of nightmare dread took possession of their hearts.

But the thing disappeared at last; it vanished as it had come, leaving only the blackness of darkness. The spell was broken, and they skated back again towards the yacht in silence, but wondering greatly at what they had seen.

The country around them, with its hills and its forests, looked dismal enough now at times. There was no cloud scenery, and consequently no lovely sunrises or sunsets, but just in the gloaming hour, soon after the sun had gone down, the lower part of the sky all round, between the immediate horizon and the upper vault of blue, used to assume a strange sea-green hue, in which the bright stars sparkled and shone like diamonds of the purest water.

“Hallo!” said Rory, one day, “I’ve got an idea.”

The day was one of intensest frost – probably the coldest they had ever yet experienced.

“Yes, an idea,” he continued – “and that is more than ever you had, you know, Ralph.”

“Well, then, tell us,” said Ralph; “but I should think it will get frozen hard if you attempt to put it into words.”

“But I won’t,” said Rory; “I mean to put it into action.”

Rory dived down below, and his two companions remained on deck, wondering what he was going to be up to.

But presently Rory returned, bearing long clay pipes and a basin of soapsuds. “The idea is a very ridiculous one,” he said, “but a funny one. Fancy, old sailors like ourselves, and mighty hunters, blowing soap-bubbles like so many babies! But here, boys, take your pipes and heave round.”

Next moment both Ralph and Allan entered into the business with spirit, and everybody looked on astonished, for, strange to say, the beautiful soap-bubbles were no sooner blown than they were frozen, and instead of floating away and fading shortly, they remained in existence. The boys blew them by the score and by the hundred, until the deck of the yacht and the top of the companion, and even the bulwarks, were laden with them.

“Now then,” cried Rory, in ecstasy; “what d’ye think of that, captain? Troth! there is a beautiful cargo for you.”

“It’s a very fragile one,” said McBain.

“Ah! but,” said Rory, “it is poetic in the extreme, and entirely new, and I’m sure nobody ever saw such a sight before.”

“Nobody but yourself,” said McBain, “could have conceived so very strange an idea.”

“Truly,” said Rory, “Jack Frost is a funny fellow.”

“Jack Frost and you are a pair then, Rory; but I’ve got news for you.”

“What is it?”

“The glass is going down, and I think we’ll soon have a change.” McBain was right. That same day, shortly before sundown, a strange mist or fog gathered in the sky all around them, but not close aboard of them; the country was nowhere obscured, only the sky itself; and through this mist the great sun glared ruddy and angry-like.

“It is the snow-mist,” said McBain.

But still there was no wind; all nature was hushed, as if she held her breath and waited expectant.

The powdery snow began to fall as soon as the sun went down, and ere nightfall it lay inches deep on the decks, and on all the sea of ice beside them. It soon changed in its character – from being powdery it now came down in huge flakes; and when the morning broke, so deep was the fall, that there was little to be seen of the yacht save her tall and tapering masts. She was now, indeed, a Snowbird!

The fall had seemingly stopped, however, but the clouds with which the sky was now overcast were dark and threatening.

It was now “all hands on deck to clear the ship of snow,” and in less than an hour the yacht looked quite herself again, only all around her was the white waste of snow. There would be no more skating for a time, at least. A look of disappointment crept over Rory’s face, and he sighed as he saw Peter restoring the now useless skates to their box and putting them away. He had to fly to his fiddle for relief. That, at all events, was a never-failing source of comfort to this strangely-tempered Irish boy.

The men were very busy now for a few days. A road had to be dug through the deep snow to the shore, and a clearance made all around the new hall, as well as around the ice-hole. Had Rory had his will, he would have set the men to work on the ice itself, to clear roads all over it, so that he might still enjoy his favourite pastime, skating.

The snow was soft and powdery, and when he got over the side and attempted to walk on it, he almost disappeared entirely, but there was a remedy for even this evil.

From his store-room McBain produced half-a-dozen pairs of snow-shoes, and old Ap and his assistant were invited aft to study their construction, with the intention of imitating them, and making many more pairs, for all hands must be furnished with these curious “garments,” as Rory called them.

Our heroes felt very awkward in them at first, especially Ralph, but Seth came to the rescue and volunteered a few lessons.

“I guess,” he said to Rory, “you imagines you’ve got a pair of dancing-pumps on, and you wants to do a hornpipe. It ain’t a mortal bit of use trying that. You mustn’t lift your feet so high; you must just skoot along as I do, so, and – so.”

“Why, I wish I could skoot along like you,” said Rory, picking himself up the best way he could, for in trying to imitate the old trapper he had gone over and almost disappeared, shoes and all. “Troth, Seth, my bright young boy, these pedal appliances don’t suit me at all. Och! my poor ankles. I do believe the whole lot of the two of them is fairly out of joint. But one can’t learn anything useful without trying, so here goes again. Come along, Porpy. Cheerily does it. Hullo! Where is Porpy?”

There was at that present moment nothing of Porpy, as Rory often facetiously called his companion Ralph, to be seen except a pair of legs with snow-shoes at the end of them, and these were waggling most expressively.

But Ralph soon got up and alongside again, and then Rory did not call him Porpy any longer, because he did not like to have his ears pulled.

“I say, Ralph,” he said, slyly, “you’ve no idea what a pair of elegant legs you have.”

“Indeed!” said Ralph.

“Yes,” continued his tormentor, “and eloquent as well as elegant. They are a speaking pair. Had you only seen yourself two minutes ago, when there was nothing of you visible at all, at all, but just them same pair of beautiful limbs, you’d – ”

But Rory never finished his sentence. He had stuck the toe of one of his snow-shoes into the snow, and away he went next.

Well, you see this learning to “skoot along,” as Seth called it, was not devoid of interest and fun, but in a few days they could skoot as well as Seth himself, and even carry their guns under their arms in the most approved fashion.

It was well for them that they had learned to hold their guns while walking with snow-shoes, for one day the trio had an adventure with some illustrious strangers, that taxed all their skill both in walking and shooting. I will introduce them to you in the next chapter.

Chapter Twenty Four

The Dogs and the Snow – The Sledge-Dog – Training Caribou – A Dinner-Party Interrupted – The Race for Life

“What’s ‘agley’?” asked Rory of Allan, on the morning after the great snowfall.

“What is what?” Allan replied, looking at his friend in some surprise.

“What’s ‘agley’?” repeated Rory. “Sure, now, can’t you speak your own language?”

“Oh yes,” said Allan; “but I don’t know that anything in particular is agley this morning. Is there anything agley with you?”

“Be easy with a poor boy,” said Rory. “Troth, it is the meaning of the word I’d be after getting hold of.”

“Ah! now I see,” said Allan. “Well, ‘agley’ means ‘deviation from a straight line;’ ‘out of the plumb,’ in other words.”

“I thought as much,” Rory remarked in a thoughtful manner, “and it is your own darling poet that says, —

“‘The best-laid schemes of mice and menGang aft agley,And leave us nought but grief and painFor promised joy.’”

Rory finished the quotation with a bit of a sigh, that caused McBain to say, —

“What is the matter with you, boy Rory? Have you received a disappointment of any kind?”

“Indeed, and I have then,” replied boy Rory, “and I suppose I must confess, for haven’t Ap and myself been busy at it for the last three weeks, making an ice-ship, and hadn’t we got her all complete, keel and hull and sails and all? and troth, she would have gone gliding over the surface of the ice like a thing of life. It was only the wind we were waiting for, and then we would have given you such a surprise, but instead of the wind the snow comes. Isn’t it a pity?”

“Oho!” cried Ralph, “and so that accounts for Rory’s mysterious disappearances; that accounts for Ap and he being closeted together for an hour or two every day for weeks back. Sly Rory!”

“Yes,” said Rory; “sly if you like, but it would have been such fine fun, you know; and there isn’t one of the three of you that wouldn’t have followed my example and gone in for ice-yachts too. And from all I can learn it is the rarest sport in existence. Seth knows all about it, and he says skating isn’t a circumstance to it. Fancy gliding along over the ice, on the wings of the wind, boys, at the rate of twenty knots an hour!”

“It would have been nice, I must confess,” said Ralph. “Something else will turn up, though,” McBain said. “What?” cried Rory, all excitement; “are you going to invent a new pleasure for us, captain?”

“Your ice-yacht,” replied McBain, “would have been a glorious idea if the snow hadn’t fallen, and in calm days I had meant to have got up games of curling on the ice; and that, you know, is the most charming game in the world.”

“Without exception,” said Allan, enthusiastically. “But the snow, the snow!” sighed Rory. “The beautiful snow has fallen and spoiled everything.”

“Not quite so bad as that,” said McBain, with an amused smile. “In a day or two the snow will harden; we can then go long journeys and resume our hunting expeditions.” Walking on snow-shoes soon became not only easy to our heroes, but positively pleasurable, so that they were able to enjoy their rambles over the snow-clad country very much indeed.

As for the dogs, they seemed to feel that they could not possibly get enough of the snow. The exuberance of great Oscar’s joy when he went out with his mister for a walk, the first thing every morning, was highly comical to witness. Out for a walk, did I say? Nay, dear reader, that word but poorly expresses the nature of Oscar’s pedal progression. It was not a walk, but a glorious compound of dance, scamper, race, run; gallop, and gambol. Had you been ever so old it would have made you feel young again to behold him. He knew while Allan was dressing that he meant to go out, and begin at once to exhibit signs of impatience. He would yawn and stretch himself and wriggle and shake; then he would open his mouth and endeavour to round a sentence in real verbal English, and, failing in this, fall back upon dog language pure and simple. Or he would stand as steady as a pointer, looking up at Allan with his beautiful head turned on one side, and his mouth a little open, just sufficiently so to show the tip of his bright pink tongue, and his brown eyes would speak to his master. “Couldn’t you,” the dog would seem to ask – “couldn’t you get on your coat a little – oh, ever so little! – faster? What can you want with a muffler? I don’t wear a muffler. And now you are looking for your fur cap, and there it is right before your very eyes!”

“And,” the dog would add, “I dare say we are out at last,” and he would hardly give his mister time to open the companion door for him.

But once over the side, “Hurrah!” he would seen to cry, then away he would bound, and away, and away, and away, straight ahead as crow could fly, through the snow and through the snow, which rose around him in feathery clouds, till he appeared but a little dark speck in the distance. This race straight ahead was meant to get rid of his super-extra steam. Having expended this, back he would come with a rush and a run, make pretence to jump his master down, but dive past him at the very last moment. Then he would gambol in front of his master in such a daft and comical fashion that made Allan laugh aloud; and, seeing his master laughing, Oscar would laugh too, showing such a double regiment of white, flashing, pearly teeth, that, with the quickness of the dog’s motions, they seemed to begin at his lips and go right away down both sides of him as far as the tail.

Hurroosh! hurroosh! Each exclamation, reader, is meant to represent a kind of a double-somersault, which I verily believe Oscar invented himself. He performed it by leaping off the ground, bending sideways, and going right round like a top, without touching the snow, with a spring like that of a five-year-old salmon getting over a weir.

Hurroosh! hurroosh!

Then Allan would make a grab at his tail.

“Oh, that’s your game!” Oscar would say; “then down you go!”

And down Allan would roll, half-buried in the powdery snow, and not be able to get up again for laughing; then away Oscar would rush, wildly round and round in a complete circle, having a radius of some fifty yards, with Allan McGregor on his broad back for a centre.

After half-an-hour of such furious fun, is it any wonder that Allan and Oscar returned to breakfast with appetites like hunters?

The Skye terrier enjoyed the snow quite as much in his own little way as Oscar did, and, indeed, he used to live in under it a goodly part of his time every day. He in a manner buried himself alive. Plunket, the mastiff, on the other hand, was always in the habit of taking his pleasures in a quiet and dignified manner.

“Now, gentlemen,” said old Seth one day, “I guess I can a kind o’ prove to you that my dog Plunket is useful, if he ain’t ornamental.”

And so the trapper set himself to manufacture a light sledge, and when he had done so, and harnessed the great dog thereto, and seated himself among the skins, it seemed about the most natural thing in the world for that dog to draw the sledge, and Seth had never seemed so much at home before as he did sitting behind him.

Oscar took very great interest in the yoking of the sledge-dog, as Plunket soon came to be called, so much so that the happy thought occurred to Rory to try him in harness too, and this was accordingly done. He was made tracer to Plunket, and although he managed sometimes to capsize the sledge in the snow, he soon became less rash, and settled quietly down to the work.

A larger and very lightly-constructed sledge was then made, and in this both Allan and Rory could travel over the snow with great ease, dragged along by the two faithful dogs.

“What a glorious thing it would be,” said Allan one day, “if we could tame and harness a real caribou!”

“We can if we try, I think,” said McBain. “Love and kindness will tame almost any animal.”

“First catch your hare,” said Ralph.

But through Seth’s skill a week had not passed before they were in possession of not only one, but a pair of deer. A rude kind of a stable was built for them on shore, and the taming commenced, and with such good results that in little over three weeks they were both broken to harness. Sledging now became quite a pastime, and great fun they found it.

Although, owing to the rugged nature of the ground, it was impracticable to venture far inland with the deer-sledge, they were able to take quite long journeys along the seashore, and here many strange birds and beasts fell to their guns, and they met with many adventures.

It is doubtful whether there is any animal in the world, that, for strength and ferocity combined can be compared, to the polar bear, the king of the sea of ice. I do not say that he is the bravest animal ever I have met, but he is nevertheless daring enough in all conscience. Daring and cunning too. A bear will attack one man, and even come out of his way a long distance to do so, but I have never known an instance of a single bear attacking a party of even two, unless he were chased, and had to stand at bay.

Hitherto our heroes had not met, nor ever seen, this gigantic monster. But the time came.

Allan and Rory were one morning very early astir, for in the company of trapper Seth they were to make a long journey in pursuit of game, the game in question being a smaller kind of seal, to be found in abundance some distance along the coast to the east. So sledges were got out and harnessed, a long time before the stars paled before the light of the short Arctic winter day. The deer had been well fed, and were consequently in fine form; they tossed their tall antlers in the air, and seemed to spurn the very ground on which they trod.

It was a glorious morning for a sledge-drive; the snow was hard, and just sufficiently packed to make an easy path. They skirted a great forest that at times grew almost close to the edge of the sea, and long before the sun gleamed up from the north-east, to sink again in the north-west in little over an hour, they had put twenty goodly miles between them and the Snowbird.

They were now at the scene of action – their shooting-ground – and, much to their joy, they found the creatures they had come so far to seek. The seals had come up out of the water to bask in the sun, and therefore lay close, so that in little over an hour they had possessed themselves of as many skins as they could conveniently carry, and were on the eve of returning to the wood, where they had tied up their deer and left their sledges.

“I wonder,” said Rory, “what is at the other side of that far-off point of land yonder, and what we would see if we rounded it.”

“What a fellow you are for wondering, Rory!” said Allan. “Suppose now, instead of wondering, we go and have a look?”

“Agreed,” said Rory; and off they set, Seth preferring to stay behind and get the skins packed.

It was a long road and a rough one; the snow was deeper than they could have believed, but they had donned their snow-shoes, and so they reached the point at last, just as the setting sun was tipping the far-off hills with gold.

The scene beyond the point was indeed a strange one; as far as the eye could reach it was a sea of ice, but ice entirely different from the smooth unbroken snow-clad plain that lay around the Snowbird. For here the ice, exposed to the whole force of the heaving billows, had been broken up into a chaos of pieces of every conceivable size and shape. Nor was this ice quite untenanted. On the contrary, Allan and Rory had arrived in time to be witnesses of a very busy scene indeed, and one that they would be unlikely ever to forget. Half-a-dozen enormous bears were feasting on the body of an immense whale, not fifty yards from where Rory and Allan now stood.

“Down, Rory!” cried Allan, throwing himself on his face; “here is a chance for a bag, the like of which we never even dreamt of.”

It was evident that the bears had not become aware of their presence, either by sight, or scent, or sound; they kept on with their ghastly feast.

Not quietly, though, but with much snarling and growling.

“Just hear them,” whispered Rory. “Wouldn’t you think they’d be content with a whole whale? But, big and all as they are, it will be many a day before they finish their dinner.”

“They never will finish it,” said Allan, “unless I have lost the art of holding my rifle straight. Are you ready, Rory? Well, you take the nearest Mr Bruin; aim straight for the skull. I mean to give that centre gourmand a pill to aid his digestion.”

They both fired at once, and with this result – the centre bear sprang into the air, then fell dead on the snow; the near bear was only wounded, he sprang on one of his fellows, and a most desperate combat ensued. Another volley from behind the rock put a different complexion on the matter, and one more bear dropped never to rise.

“Hand me a cartridge,” said Rory, “I’ve just fired my last.”

“In that case,” cried Allan, in some alarm, “let us be off, for I have only two more cartridges; and look you, we have irritated these monsters, they are making directly for us.”

This was true. A polar bear is at no time an animal of a very sweet temper, but only just interrupt him at his dinner, and he will have revenge if he possibly can.

“Shall we fire again?” said Rory.

“No, Rory, no. Come on quick, boy, there isn’t a moment to lose.”

Even as he spoke the foremost bear had gained the shore, and as soon as he spied our heroes he uttered a growl of rage that seemed to awaken every echo in the rocks, and with head down he came ferociously and quickly on to the attack.

It was to be a race for life, that was evident from the first. On level ground I think the advantage would have been all on the side of the men, but here on the snow, and encumbered with their snow-shoes, the odds were all on the side of the pursuers. Before they had run a hundred yards this was evident. The bears were gaining, and there was fully a mile to be covered.

“Come on quicker if you can,” said Allan, who was the better runner.

“Couldn’t we stop and drop the foremost?” said Rory.

“No, no; that would be madness. The others would have all the more time to come up.”

Presently Allan had recourse to a ruse which he had read of, but never thought he would have to put in practice in order to save his life. He took off his jacket and threw it upon the snow. The bears stopped to sniff at it, and the temptation was now strong to fire, but he resisted it. They had only two cartridges between them and death, so to speak, and they did well to reserve them.

When old Seth had quietly stowed away the skins, he sat down to rest himself on the edge of one of the sledges, and so, dreaming and musing, a whole half-hour passed away. Then he began to get uneasy at the non-appearance of the boys.

“And it’s getting late, too,” he said, as he shouldered his rifle. “Seth will even go and seek them. Why,” he added, after he had gone some distance, “if yonder isn’t both on ’em coming runnin’. And what is that behind them? Why, may I be skivered if it ain’t b’ars! Hurrah! Seth to the rescue!”

And, so saying, the old trapper increased his walk to a run, and the distance between him and the boys was rapidly lessened.

And dire need too, for both Allan and Rory were well-nigh exhausted, and the foremost bear was barely forty yards behind them.

But Allan’s time had come for decisive action. He threw himself on his face, the better to make sure of his aim, and almost immediately after the foremost bear came tumbling down. And now Seth came up, and another Bruin speedily followed his companion into the land of darkness. The others escaped into the forest.

It had been a very narrow escape, but McBain told Allan that very evening that he was not sorry for it, as the adventure would surely teach him caution.

Chapter Twenty Five

The Dead Leviathan – The Mate of the “Trefoil” Makes a Proposal – A Rich Harvest – Christmas Cheer – Something like a Dinner

The mate of the Trefoil was a quiet and sober-minded man, as old travellers in the Arctic regions are sometimes wont to be, but when Allan McGregor told him the story of the bears and the dead whale stranded in the frozen bay, he evinced a considerable deal of genuine excitement. He sought out the captain.

“I would fain see the fish, captain.”

(Greenland sailors always call a whale a “fish,” although, as must be well-known, it is a gigantic mammal.)

“Well, my dear sir,” said McBain, “that is a desire that can very easily be gratified. We can start for the bay to-morrow early.”

“I shall be so pleased,” said the mate.

This expedition consisted of three guns – McBain himself, Allan, and the mate of the Trefoil.