The Cruise of the Snowbird: A Story of Arctic Adventure

These sounds, I say, fidgeted our poetic Rory; but when half a dozen fantail pigeons would alight outside the window, and strut about and cry, “Coo, coo, troubled with you, troubled with you,” then Rory would become more sensible, and he would open one eye to have a look at the clock on the mantelpiece. Mind you, he wouldn’t open both eyes for the world, lest he should awaken altogether.

“Oh!” he would think to himself, “only five o’clock; gong won’t go for three hours yet. How jolly!”

Then he would turn round on the other side and go to sleep again. The cocks might go on crowing, and the pigeons might preen their feathers and “coo-coo” as much as they pleased now. Rory heard no more until “Ur-ur – R-Rise, Ur-ur – R-Ralph and Rory,” roared the gong.

One particular morning Rory had opened his one eye just as usual, had his look at the clock, had rejoiced that it was still early, and had turned himself round to go off once more to the land of Nod, when, suddenly, there arose from beneath such an inexpressible row, such an indefinable din, as surely never before had been heard around the Castle of Arrandoon. The horses stamped and neighed in their stables, the cattle moaned a double bass, the pigs squeaked a shrill tenor, the fowl all went mad.

“Whack, whack, whack!” roared the ducks.

“Kank, kank, kank?” cried the geese.

“Hubbub – ub – ub – bub!” yelled the turkeys.

Rory sat bolt upright in bed, with both eyes open, more fully awake than ever he had felt in his life before.

“Hubbub, indeed!” says Rory; “indeed, then, I never heard such a hubbub before in all my born days. Ralph, old man, Ralph. Sit up, my boy. I wonder what the matter can be.”

“And so do I,” replied Ralph, without, however, offering to stir; “but surely a fellow can wonder well enough without getting out of bed to wonder.”

“Ooh! you lazy old horse!” cried Rory; “well, then, it’s myself that’ll get up.”

Suiting the action to the word, Rory sprang out of bed, and next moment he had thrown open his “sulky” window and popped his head and shoulders out. He speedily drew them in again and called to Ralph, and the words he used were enough to bring even that matter-of-fact hero to his side with all the speed he cared to expend.

What they saw I’ll try to explain to you.

Eagles had been far more numerous this season than they had been for years. McBain knew this well, and Allan McGregor knew it to his cost, for in an eyrie on a distant part of his estate a pair of these kingly birds had established themselves, and brought forth young, and, judging from the number of lambs they had carried off, a terribly rapacious family they were. Although five miles from the castle, Allan had several times gone to the place at early morn for the purpose of getting a ride-shot at these birds; but although he knew the very ledge on which the nest was laid – there is little building about an eagle’s nest – he had always been unsuccessful, for the favourites of Jove were wary, and could scent danger from afar.

So day by day the lambs went on diminishing, and the shepherds went on grumbling, but they grumbled in vain. Upwards and upwards in circling flight the eagles would soar, as if to hide themselves in the sun’s effulgence, until they were all but invisible to the keenest eye. They would then hover hawk-like over their innocent prey, until chance favoured them, when there would be a swift, unerring, downward rush, and often before the very eyes of the astonished keepers the lamb was seized and borne in triumph to the eyrie.

The glen, or rather gorge, which the eagles had chosen for their home, is one of the wildest and dreariest I ever traversed; at the bottom of it lies a brown and weird-looking loch about two miles long, one side of which is bounded by birch-trees, through which a road runs, and if you gaze across this loch, what think you do you see beyond? Why, a black and beetling wall of rock rising sheerly perpendicular up out of the water, and towering to a height of over one thousand feet. Although the loch is five hundred yards wide, you can hardly get rid of the impression that this immense wall of rock is bending towards you from the top, and about to fall and crush your pigmy body to atoms. No wonder the loch itself is still and dark and treacherous-looking, and no wonder the natives care not to traverse the glen by day, or that they give it a wide berth at night, for the place has an evil name, and they say that often and often at the hour of midnight the water-kelpie’s fiendish laugh is heard at the foot of the rock, followed by the plash and sullen plunging sound which a heavy body always emits when sinking in very deep water.

Remember that I do not myself believe in water-kelpies, nor any other kelpies whatever, and I have fished for char (the Salmo umbla) in the loch, and traversed the glen in the starlight, yet I never came across anything much worse-looking than myself – so there!

Now it was in the middle of this rocky precipice, on a ledge of stone, that the kingly birds had made their nest of sticks and turf, with just as little regard to the laws of avine architecture as the cushat of the English copse evinces. It was an airy abode, yet for all that a prettier pair of young ones than the two that lay therein, both the father and mother eagle averred, had never yet been seen or hatched. It is needless to say that they were very fond of their progeny, and also very fond of each other, so that when one lovely morning the she-eagle said to the he one, —

“What is for breakfast, dear?” it was only natural that the he one should reply, “Anything you like, my love.”

“Well then,” said she, “we’ve been having nothing but mutton, mutton, mutton for weeks. I’m sure the children would like a change, and I know I should.”

Then the royal eagle lowered his eyebrows, and scratched his ear with one great toe, as if very deep in thought, and then his countenance cleared all at once, a grim smile stole over his face, and he said, —

“I have it. Babies are scarce, you know, but I’ll bring you a turkey.”

“Oh!” said her royal highness, “that will be nice, and the feathers will help to keep the children warm.”

So away the eagle soared, and about ten minutes afterwards he alighted with a rush right in the middle of the poultry yard at Arrandoon Castle. Hence the hubbub which had aroused both Ralph and Rory.

Now had the bird of Jove not been so greedy, I feel bound to believe he could have left the yard almost as quickly as he had entered it one turkey the richer, and his royal helpmeet and children would not have been disappointed in their breakfast. But no, “I may just as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb,” he thought to himself, and so he alighted on the back of the oldest and biggest turkey cock he could see. But he did not find this bird so easy a prey as he could have wished; indeed the turkey at once made up his mind to have a tussle for it; he did not mean to accept so hasty an invitation to breakfast – in an eyrie of all places. So by hook and by crook he managed to scramble half-way under the wooden grain-house, eagle and all. Next moment the eagle bitterly repented of his rashness, for every bird in the place attacked him, and Ralph and Rory were roaring success to them from the “sulky” window. An old turkey is usually a tough one, and do what he would the eagle could only disengage one talon from the back of his captive, if captive he could now be called, and with this and his beak he had to do battle.

Now, that discretion is the better part of valour, even an eagle knows, so when at last he did manage to disengage his other talon, although several of his foes lay dead and dying around, the eagle had had quite enough turkey, and prepared to soar.

But behold! quite an unexpected combatant makes his appearance, and goes to work at once on the eagle’s breast, and this was none other than Allan’s pet Skye, a little dog of determination, for whenever he made up his mind to lay hold of anything he did it, and stuck to it. With such a weight attached to him in such a way, rapid flight was out of the question; the eagle had only strength enough left to flutter out of the yard, and fall on the ground on the other side, there to meet – pity me, reader, for how shall I name it? Were I not writing facts this brave but discomfited eagle should have a nobler end – there to meet old Janet with a broom-handle!

“Hold, Janet, hold?” cried our gallant English Ralph from the “sulky” window; “fair play, Janet, fair play.”

Too late! The king of birds lies dead.

“Ten feet from tip to tip of his wings,” said McBain, as he stood over him about an hour after. Allan, and Ralph, and Rory were all there. “Eagle, eagle,” Rory was saying, —

“Thou hast bowedFrom thine empire o’er the cloud;Thou that hadst ethereal birth,Thou hast stooped too near the earth,And the hunter’s shaft hath found thee;And the toils of Death have bound thee.”

“Hunter’s shaft, indeed,” laughed Ralph; “old Janet’s broom-handle; but come, boys, I know you are both of you game enough for anything, so I propose we go and try to bag the disconsolate widow of this royal bird. We can capture the young ones and rear them.”

“It would indeed be a pity to leave the widow to mourn,” said Rory.

“It’s a sad pity my sheep must mourn,” said Allan. When at the breakfast-table that morning, Allan said, in a seemingly unconcerned voice, —

“Mother, we mean to have a day among the eagles; they have commenced it, you know.” His mother knew well he was asking her consent, and she gave it because she would not see him unhappy. But nevertheless, she whispered to him as he left the room, —

“Oh, child! do take care of yourself, and take care of Rory. I had strange dreams about you last night.”

Our three heroes, accompanied by men carrying the wooden well-windlass with a plank or two, and plenty of length of rope, made their way over the mountain to the top of the precipice before described. McBain with his trusty rifle went down the glen, among the birch-trees at the other side of the lake. He was not only eagle-slayer, but signalman to the expedition. Keeping close to the loch, he walked onwards for fully three-quarters of a mile, then he stopped and fired his rifle in the air. He stood now as still as a statue, and so remained for fully half-an-hour, until his party had fixed the windlass to the brink of the cliff. Had this latter been flat at the top the danger would have been but small, but the ground sloped towards the brink, so that a false step or a slip meant something too awful to contemplate. Right down beneath them is the eyrie, quite one hundred feet from the top. Circling high in air, far, far above them, is the she-eagle. She is watching and wondering. If any one dares descend she will rend them in pieces. But see, something leaves the cliff-top, and goes downwards and downwards nearer and nearer to her nest. With a scream of rage she rushes from her hover, passes our friends swift as a thunderbolt, and is lost to view. She is expending her anger now, she is having revenge, and fragments of a torn garment flutter down towards the lake. McBain has thrown himself on his face; he is no mean marksman, but he will need all his skill and steadiness now, and this he knows right well.

Seconds, long, long seconds of suspense – so at least they seem to those on the cliff. Then a puff of white smoke and at the very moment that the crack of the rifle falls on their ears, McBain is on his legs again, and waving his gun in joy aloft. The eagle is slain, and downwards with drooping head and outstretched pinions is falling lakewards. Then the lure, rent in ribbons, is drawn back, and Rory, the lightest of the three, prepares to descend. He laughs as he puts his limbs through the bight.

“Troth, I’ll have the youngsters up in a brace of shakes,” he says, “now the ould mother of them is slain. And there isn’t a taste of danger in the whole business. Lower away.”

And they do lower away slowly and steadily. Rory disappears, and Allan’s heart sinks and seems to descend with his friend. A thousand times rather would he have gone down himself, but Rory had opposed this wish with the greatest determination; he was the lightest weight, and it was his privilege.

They watch the signalman; he stands with one arm aloft, and they lower away until that arm falls suddenly by his side. Then they stop, and the “pawl” holds the windlass fast. Rory has reached the eyrie, he grasps the rock, and scrambles on to the projecting ledge.

“Shut your mouths now, and be quiet with you,” he says to the woolly young eaglets; “there’s neither bite nor sup shall go into the crops of you until you’re safe in Arrandoon.”

He placed the birds in the basket, tied it to the rope, signalled to McBain, who signalled to the cliff by raising two arms, and up to the brink went the precious burden. A few minutes afterwards and the rope once more dangled before Rory’s eyes.

But why does poor Rory turn so pale, and why does he tremble so, and crouch backward against the wet rock’s side?

The rope dangles before his eyes, it is true, but it dangles a goodly foot beyond his reach. The top of the cliff projects farther than the eyrie itself; in his descent the rope had oscillated with his weight, and he had unknowingly been swung on to the ledge of rock. But who now will swing him the empty bight of rope?

Rory recovered himself in a few moments. “Action, action,” he said aloud, as if the sound of his own voice would help to steel his nerves. “Action alone can save me, I must leap.”

As he spoke he cleared the ledge of rock of the rotting sticks and of the bones, for these might perchance impede his feet, and signalled to McBain to lower the rope still farther. Then he stood erect and firm, leaning backwards, however, against the precipice, for nearly a minute. Rory is no coward, but see, he is kneeling down with his face to the cliff; he is seeking strength from One more powerful than he.

Reader, at five bells in the morning watch on board a man-o’-war, the midshipmen are roused from their hammocks, and many of them kneel beside their sea-chests for some minutes before they dress, and not one of these did I ever know who was not truly brave at heart, or who failed to do his duty in the hour of danger.

Now Rory is erect again, his elbows and back are squared, his hands half open, his face is set and determined, and now he – he springs.

Has he caught it? Yes; but he cannot hold it. It is slipping through his grasp, struggle as he may; but now, oh! joy, his foot gets in the bight, and he is saved!

He is soon to brink, and his comrades receive him with a joyful shout Rory says but little; but when they reach the head of the glen he runs forward at the top of his speed to meet McBain.

“McBain,” he says, quickly, “not one word of what you saw, to either Ralph or Allan.”

“Give me your hand, dear boy,” replied McBain, with a strange moisture in his eyes; “I appreciate your kindly motive as much as I admire the brave heart that prompts it.”

Chapter Six

Cruising round the Hebrides – Caught in a “Puff” – Man Overboard – Dinner on the Cliff – Bright Prospects

Three months have passed away since the adventure at the eagle’s nest. So swiftly, too, they have fled that it seems to our heroes but yesterday that the little cutter spread her white sails to the wind, and headed down the loch for Fort Augustus. And all the time they have been cruising, with varied fortunes, up and down among the Western Isles. When I say that the time has passed swiftly, it is equivalent to telling you that the brave crew of the Flower of Arrandoon have enjoyed themselves, and this again you will readily guess is equivalent to saying that it had not been all plain sailing with them; had it been so, the very monotony of such a cruise, and the lack of adventure, would have rendered it distasteful to them. In this bright, beautiful world of ours you may find seas in which, during the months of summer, you can cruise in the most flimsy of yachts, among islands, too, as lovely as dreamland, where the wind is never higher than a gentle breeze, nor the waves than a ripple, and where danger is hardly ever to be encountered; but such a dolce far niente existence is not for youth; youth should be no lotus-eater, and so McBain had done well in choosing for his young pupils the cruising ground on which they now were sailing. They had had a taste of all kinds of Highland summer weather – true it had been mostly fine – but many a stiff breeze they had had to face nevertheless, and they soon learned to do so cheerily, and to feel just as happy under their glittering oilskins and sou’-westers, with half a gale tearing through the rigging, and the spray dashing most uncomfortably in their teeth and eyes, as they did when, with all sail set, they glided calmly over the rippling sea, the sun shining brightly overhead, and the purple mist of distance half hiding the rugged mountains. McBain knew exactly what the cutter could do, and to use his own phrase, he just kept her at it. In fact he got to love the boat, and he used to talk about her as a living thing. And so she really appeared to be, for although she almost invariably did all that was required of her, there were days when she seemed to evince a will and determination of her own, and to want to shake herself free of all control.

“Wo, my beauty?” McBain would say when she was particularly disobedient, talking to her as if she were a restless hunter; but he would smile quaintly as he spoke, for the vessel’s little eccentricities only served to show off his seamanship. He said he knew how to manage her, and so he did. So he used to play with her, as it were, while in a sea-way or on a wind, and delighted in showing off her good qualities. Not that he did a great deal of the manual labour himself. Was he not master, and were not Ralph, Allan, and Rory not only his crew, but his pupils as well? It would have been unfair to them, then, if they had not been allowed to do all they had a mind to, and that, I assure you, was nearly everything that was to be done. But McBain had all the orders to give when sailing, especially if there was a bit of a blow on.

I am rambling on with my tale now in a kind of a gossiping fashion; but it is not without a purpose. I wish you to know as clearly as possible what manner of man McBain was, because you will see him in several different strange positions before he finally disappears from off the boards.

Well, then, when giving his orders, he never talked a bit louder nor quicker than there was any occasion for. He knew by experience that a command given in a sharp, loud key, was very likely to cause nervousness and slight confusion in obeying it. Woe is me for your officers on board big ships – and there are many of them too – who, while giving orders, strut about the decks, and stamp and yell at their men; they do but excite them, and cause them to give proof of the proverb, “The more hurry the less speed.” More than once have I seen a good ship’s safety jeopardised in a squall, and all through this fault in the officer carrying on duty. But you see McBain loved the crew – he loved “his boys,” as he was fond of calling them, and he was wishful to impart to them in a friendly way all the knowledge of boats that he himself possessed.

If you had called McBain a sailor, he would have replied, —

“No, sir, I’m not a sailor; I’m only a boatman, or a fisherman if you like it better.”

But this was only McBain’s modesty. A sailor by profession he certainly was not, although he had, as I before told you, spent a portion of his younger life at sea; but from his infancy he was used to rough it, not only on the stormy lakes of the inlands, but in open or half-decked boats all along the western shores of romantic Scotland, and that, too, in winter as well as in summer; nor was there a loch, nor cape, nor kyle he did not know every bearing of, from Handa Isle in the north, southwards as far as the Ross of Mull. And that is saying a great deal, for on that wild, indented coast, exposed as it is to the whole force of the wide Atlantic, stormy seas are met with and sudden squalls, such as are happily but little known on the shores of Merrie England.

“He is a good seaman, isn’t he?” Rory had said one day to old Ap, referring, of course, to McBain.

“Is it seamanship you talk of?” old Ap replied. “Look, you see, sir; I’d rather be in a herring boat with McBain in half a gale of wind, although he was managing the sails by himself look, you see, and steering with his teeth or knees, so to speak, than I’d be in a 200-ton schooner, with a score of dandified yachtsmen; yes, yes, indeed.”

Hearing old Ap talk thus enthusiastically about quiet, non-assuming McBain, the latter gained an ascendency in Rory’s estimation that he never after lost.

Often, in fact as a rule, McBain smiled when he gave an order to his boys, but his was not a stereotyped smile. His smile played not only around his lips, but it danced around his eyes and lighted up all his face. It was not, however, so much the smile of mirth as that of genuine good-heartedness.

Often, even when in a difficult position, he would allow the young men to handle the boat according to their own judgment, but at the same time his grave grey eyes would be cautiously watching their every movement, and his hand would be ready at a moment’s notice to grasp a sheet or rectify a foul, and so prevent unpleasantness. I am not sure that McBain’s method of teaching was not somewhat unique in many ways, but it was at times very effective.

“I’m not sorry that this should have happened, my boys,” was one of McBain’s favourite expressions, after any little accident or mishap. His crew knew well that he meant that a lesson given roughly, and sent well home, was likely to be remembered.

One day, for example, with Rory as steersman, their course led them pretty close to the passenger boat Crocodile. Perhaps they needn’t have gone near enough to have most of the wind taken out of their sails, and their way considerably lessened; perhaps, though, Rory was just a little proud of his pretty vessel, and of being looked at by the lady passengers, looked at and probably admired; be this as it may, he forgot a warning that McBain had often given him, to have an easy sheet for the sudden rush of wind that would meet them, immediately after passing to leeward of anything, and so, on this particular day, his pride had a most disagreeable fall, and he himself, with the rest of his companions, had a good wetting, for down went the Flower of Arrandoon on her beam ends as soon as they had cleared the Crocodile. But she was well ballasted, the sliding hatch was on, and when sheets were eased she righted again, though it was a considerable time before Rory righted again.

McBain shook himself a bit, much in the same way that a Newfoundland dog does.

“I’m not sorry that this should have happened,” he said, quietly.

Rory was, though. Especially when Ralph laughed pointedly at, or towards him.

Well, but another day Rory had his revenge, and the laughing was all on the other side.

It happened thus: they were cracking on nicely with every inch of canvas spread, sailing pretty close to the wind. The light breeze was on to the land, from which they were distant about a mile and a half, and although the sea was very far from being rough, there was a bit of a swell rolling in. Now Ralph was tall, and stout, and strong; he was no feather-weight therefore, but for all that the cutter did not require him to sit upon her weather gunwale, in order to keep her from capsizing. She could have done just as well had he kept on the seat, and by so doing he would have been consulting his own safety. Many a time and oft had McBain pointed this out to him, but he seemed forgetful on this particular point, and so, on the day in question, he was lazily occupying the forbidden quarter. One would have thought that the saucy wee yacht had done it on purpose; be that as it may – when down in the trough between two seas she simply gave a kind of a swing – hardly a lurch – in the wrong direction for Ralph’s stability, and over he went, literally speaking, heels over head, into the sea, a most ungraceful and unscientific way of taking to the water.

Both Allan and Rory knew well that their friend could swim, and the latter at all events seemed to treat the affair as a very pretty piece of entertainment.