Wild Adventures in Wild Places

Well would it have been for the Grampus had Captain Anderson followed her example; but he would not.

“She can go,” he said; “she is a full ship, and only a sailing ship. Now let us get but two other ‘fish,’ then hey for the sunny south, boys.”

For a whole month they remained dodging about in that open sea, but without seeing another whale. All their good luck seemed to have gone with the Dutchman, and the captain was about to bear up, and force his way once more out through the southern ice to the open sea beyond, when suddenly a change came o’er the spirit of the scene. To their surprise, if not to their horror, the ice began to close in around them in all directions. Nearer and nearer came the mighty floes. They came from the north; they came from the south and the east; they even deployed into two long lines, or horns, that crept along the land until they met. At the same time a heavy swell began to roll in from seawards.

“There is a gale of wind outside,” the captain said to Chisholm, “and this is the result; but come, I don’t mean to be caught like a mouse in a trap.” Then, addressing the mate, “Call all hands, Mr Lewis. Get out the ice-saws and anchors.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” replied the mate.

“Now, my lads,” continued the captain, when the men came aft in a body, “you’ve all been to Greenland before, and you know the danger we are in as well as I can tell you. If we are caught between two floes in that heaving pack, we’ll be crunched like a walnut-shell. So we’ll have to work to make a harbour. That alone can save us. Call the steward. Steward! we’ll splice the main brace.”

The men gave a cheer; they stripped off coats and jackets, and even their gloves. They meant business, and looked it. Meanwhile the Grampus was going ahead at full speed, straight towards the ice in shore. Why, it looked to our heroes as if the captain was positively courting destruction; for he was steering for the very largest berg he could find, and presently he was alongside it. The ship was stopped, and every man that could be spared sent over the side. The anchors were got out speedily, and made fast to the berg. Then the men began to work.

The iceberg against which they directed their operations was indeed a mighty one. Although not very high close to the edge, it towered above them many hundreds of feet, a snow-clad mountain of ice, its green and rugged sides glittering in the beams of the mid-day sun. It was soon evident to Chisholm O’Grahame that the captain’s object was to hollow out a temporary harbour in the side of the berg, sufficiently wide to enable the ship to fit into it, so that she might be safe from being ground into matchwood when the whole pack was joined.

“Come,” he cried, to his comrades, “three hands of us here idle! We can work too, captain. Only tell us what to do, and we’ll do it.”

“Bravo! my lads,” said the captain, cheerily. “Over the side with you then, and help with the ice-saws.”

Those great ice-saws were about twenty feet long, and had four cross handles at the top, so that when let down, on the perpendicular, against the piece, four men standing above could work one saw. Frank and his two friends, with Mr Lewis, the mate, took charge of a saw, and the work went on cheerily. The men sang as they laboured, and there was as much laughing and joking as if they had been husbandmen working together in the harvest-field, instead of men working for their dear lives. By eight o’clock the harbour was complete.

By eight o’clock the ice had almost closed upon them.

And now to get the ship into this portus salutis. There was so little time; other giant bergs were close aboard of them, rising and falling on the swelling waves with a noise that was simply appalling. The captain had to give his orders through the speaking-trumpet, and even then his voice was often drowned by the grinding, shrieking din of the heaving floes. But at last they have worked her in, and now for a time at least she is safe, for she rises and falls with the ice; and, though hemmed in on all sides, has nothing to fear.

The Grampus was “beset;” and from that very hour began one of the dreariest seasons of imprisonment that ever a beleaguered ship’s crew experienced. They were far away from aid of any kind that they knew of, the ice was terribly heavy, and, worse than all, the summer season was far advanced, and already the sun dipped very close to the northern horizon at midnight.

The storm abated; in twelve hours the ice had ceased to rise and fall, and a silence, deep as death, reigned once more over the frozen sea.

“We must do the best we can,” said brave Captain Anderson, “to amuse ourselves and each other. God only knows when we may get clear, but we can trust in Him who rules the sea as well as the dry land.”

“Amen!” said Chisholm, in a quiet and earnest voice.

“We’ll make off skins now for a week or two,” said the captain; “that will help to pass the time.”

So it did, reader, and it also brought the birds around them in millions. These, as usual, they shot for feathers and fresh meat. Bears in twos, and sometimes in threes, prowled round the ship to pick up the offal. Ugly customers they looked, and ugly customers they were. Poor Tom Reid, the cooper’s mate, sat on a bit of ice one day smoking, not far from the ship. A monster bear crept round a corner and clawed his heart and lungs out with one stroke of his mighty paw. The carpenter and captain were both on the ice one day, when they were suddenly confronted with the man-eater. They had no arms, and would have been instantly killed had not the danger been perceived by Fred Freeman; he fired from the deck of the Grampus, wounded the bear, and saved their lives. After this it was determined to hunt and kill the bears, and many good skins were thus procured. One day Fred surprised the man-eater in a corner, licking his wounded foot. The bear bellowed like a bull, and prepared to spring. Fred was too fast for him, and rolled him over at ten paces distance. Poor Fred! he did not see that this bear had a companion within hail, and that he was coming up fast and furiously and intent on revenge, not fifty yards away. Men are behind him, but they fear to fire, lest they kill Fred. Chisholm is on an adjoining floe, but the warning he shouts comes all too late; for next moment his poor friend lies helpless and bleeding in the talons of the terrible ice-king. Chisholm kneels to fire. It is a fearful risk, but it is Fred’s only chance. The sound of the rifle rings out on the silent air, the bear quits his victim, springs upwards with a convulsive start, then falls dead beside the man he would have slain. It is three weeks ere Fred can crawl again.

Meanwhile the whole of the skins have been “made off.” (The seal-skins, with blubber about three inches thick, are spread on boards on idle days in Greenland ships, and the fat pared off. The skins are then rubbed in salt and stowed away in a tank; the blubber also is put in tanks by itself. This is called “off.”) There are no more bits of flesh and fat thrown overboard, so the birds all leave them, then the bears; and, except that a wondering seal sometimes lifts its black head for a moment out of a pool of water to stare at the ship, there is no sign or sound of animal life on all the dreary pack. They feel more lonely now than ever, but they play games on the ice and games on board, and they read much and talk a great deal about home. This last makes them feel the time still more long and monotonous, but one day —

“Happy thought!” says Fred, “let us get up theatricals.”

Well, this passed the time away pleasantly enough for a whole month, but they tired at last even of theatricals; and then a dense fog rolled in from the south and the west, and enveloped the whole pack as with a dark pall. They saw no more of the sun for two weary months, but they knew he set now, and that the order of day and night had been restored; but alas! they knew likewise that it would, in a few weeks more, be all one long night, and their hearts sank at the very thoughts of it.

The mist rolled away at last, but shorter and shorter grew the days and colder and colder the weather. I hesitated before I wrote that last word “weather,” for really in that ice-pack there was no weather. Never a cloud in the blue vault of heaven, and never a breath of wind – not even as much as would suffice to raise one feathery flake of the starry snow. But the silence – it was a silence that was felt at the heart; you could have heard a whisper almost a mile away, there was nothing to break it. Nature seemed asleep, and all things seemed to fear to wake her. No wonder that poor Frank said one day, as he closed his book —

“Heigho! boys, it is such a treat to hear the clock tick.”

Night was the most trying, cheerless time; for after they had turned into their box-like bunks, they would lie for hours before it was possible to get warm. Then in the morning each bunk looked like a little cave of snow, the breath of the occupant during the night having been frozen into hoar-frost, which covered the sides and the top, and lay half-an-inch thick on the coverlet. It was, indeed, a dreary time.

Chapter Six

Winter in the Ice-fields – The Ice breaks up – Sailing South – A Sledge Adventure – The Storm and Shipwreck – Afloat on an Iceberg – Land! land! – A terrible Journey – Cronstadt

Was it always so silent and still in that lonely ice-pack as I have tried to describe it? Not always: there were times when the floes around the ship began to move slowly up and down, telling of a swell beneath them; then the rending, shrieking, and groaning noises were indescribable. But only twice during the months of darkness did a breeze blow, and, when it did, snow fell, or rather was borne along on the wings of the wind, with a fierce bitterness that no living being could be exposed to for an hour and live. A snow-house was built over the decks, and this served in some slight measure to mitigate the terrible cold.

And so the winter wore away, for the longest time has an end. Our heroes had borne their privations and their deprivations nobly. They did not even let down their hearts when the captain told them they would have to go on “short commons,” and only laughed when the steward reported the eggs finished, and the last potato vanished. The biscuits held out, however, and the soup in bouilli, so they rejoiced accordingly, and were thankful.

But when the sun showed face one day, there were no bounds to the joy that every one on board manifested. They even manned the rigging, and gave him three times three heartfelt cheers. Even Rouskia, the ship’s dog, seemed glad to see the light of day again, and joined in the cheering with a kind of half hysterical bark, as if the tears were in his throat and partially stopped his utterance. The sun did not stop to look at them long, but, like an invalid in the stage of convalescence, he stayed up longer and longer every day, and his presence soon began to work a change in the appearance of the ice; the snow on the top of it became less dry, and the cold to a large extent left the air. Then the ice began to float farther apart, and, on taking the reckoning one day, the captain found, to his joy, that the whole pack was moving slowly southwards.

After many days the Grampus left her harbour, and began “boring” her way through the ice. It was slow, tedious work; but slow as it was they were homeward bound, so there was happiness at the hearts of all on board. But their hopes of escape were doomed to be blighted; for once again the light wind which had begun to blow from the gentle south fell to a dead calm, winter once more resumed his sway, and the good ship Grampus was beset a second time. Although the ice was not heavy, but hummock-covered or flat, it was dangerous enough in all conscience.

One day they were surprised by a visit from some natives, with sledges drawn by dogs. They brought fish with them, and the carcase of a reindeer, and begged, in their strange but musical labial language, for blankets and tobacco. They came from land that was visible on the starboard bow, and this country, or island, or whatever it was, Chisholm begged leave of the captain to be allowed, with his friends, to visit.

“It must be at your own risk, then, gentlemen,” the captain replied; “for, although we are most likely to lie here for six weeks to come, the ice may break up at any moment.”

But our heroes did risk it. They packed a sledge with many things which they knew the natives would appreciate, and off they started, the captain waving his hand and wishing them luck. It was more pleasant to run for a little way on first starting; but having by this means succeeded in starting the circulation of the blood, as Chisholm phrased it, they handed the whips to the natives, and squatted on the tops of the curious and primitive sledges.

They found the Esquimaux very friendly, and willing to barter. Their huts were mere mole-hills, and far from cleanly inside, and were built with no attempt at architecture; but they were strong, nevertheless. The only kind of religion these people had was a kind of sun worship. They were expert in hunting and fishing, and very brave and daring. Chisholm soon found that he could accomplish the journey from the ship to the village of Redinvolsk in an hour; so he started a sledge, drawn by two dogs, and, great though the risk was, went on shore almost every day. But these little trips of his had a sad and all but fatal ending. His team one day took fright, and, instead of running directly for the village, dashed over a precipice. Half-way down the crevasse the sledge was brought up by a snow-covered shelf of rock. But kindly aid was at hand, a rope was lowered by some friendly natives, and a sheathed knife. With the latter he cut the poor plunging dogs adrift, sorry in his manly heart that he had to leave them to their fate. He was then drawn to bank much bruised and shaken, but thankful to escape with life.

One morning clouds began to bank up in the sky, and that very day the ice broke up, steam was got up, and, more quickly than before, the Grampus headed homewards.

There was an air of greater gravity about the captain, as he came below to dinner that day, than ever Frank and his friends had seen.

“I hope there is nothing serious the matter, captain?” Chisholm inquired.

“Not as yet, gentlemen,” replied the captain, with an uneasy kind of a smile, “but the glass is going tumbling down, and the ice grows heavier and more dangerous the nearer to the open sea we get. I fear we’re going to have a blow.”

He soon after went on deck, whither our heroes followed him. The floes were of great size, heavy, mischievous-looking pieces, covered with snow on the top, but with a deal of hard green stuff under water. Against these the ship was constantly bumping, with a violence that made every one on deck stagger and reel. The captain himself was on the bridge giving constant orders, for the ship was being steered by the ice; the object being to strike the pieces stem on, and so save the more vulnerable bows or quarters.

The day wore gloomily away, and the night closed in dark and stormy. No one cared to lie down or seek for rest; there was a cloud on the heart of every one on board – a strange foreboding of evil to come. The wind soon increased to all the fury of a gale; the waves dashed over the ship with such violence that when struck you couldn’t have told whether it was with a piece of ice or a green sea.

It was just two bells in the morning watch, and the night was at its darkest, when the good ship was caught with tremendous force between two mighty floes, which, as soon as they had done the mischief, began to part and leave the sinking ship to her sad fate. The next moment the engineer had rushed on deck to say the engines had stopped. All was now confusion on board, for there was a strange steadiness about the vessel that told she was sinking fast.

Boats were of no use in that terrible tempest-tossed ocean, so orders were given to get ready the ice-anchors. By dint of courage and strength, the anchors were thrown, and the ship made fast for a time, to the nearest berg. It was but for a time, alas! And now commenced all the hurry and horror of this pitiful disembarkation. The waves washed over both ship and berg, making the former quiver all over like some creature in the throes of death, and causing the berg itself to heel over like a great raft.

Morning broke grey and cold and dismal; but hours before, the Grampus had slipped her ice-anchors, and gone down head foremost; and, out of all her crew of fifty men, fifteen only were alive to see the sunrise, and thank the God who had spared their lives – fifteen, and the ship’s dog. Our heroes were saved, or this story would not be written; but, with the exception of Captain Anderson, every other officer met with a watery grave.

I have not the heart to harrow the feelings of my youthful readers with a relation of the horrors the survivors of the foundered ship had to endure on that floating iceberg. For a whole week they were tossed about among the stormy waves of that cold ocean, drifting before an eastern gale that blew with almost the force of a hurricane. But if their half-frozen hearts were still capable of feeling one atom of joy, they must surely have beat faster when the captain, glass in hand, but half buried in spray, shouted – “Land, land! I see it, I see it!”

Ah! there were hearts on that berg that would never beat again, for at that moment six of the original fifteen lay dead on the berg.

The storm now abated, and the sea went down; but yet another danger had to be encountered, for strange black monsters, with fierce eyes, rose up from the depth of ocean and sought to scale the berg. Was it after the dead they had come?

Boats at last! – only the boats of native Indians, but they came with friendly intentions.

So they committed the bodies of their late comrades to the deep, and, embarking with the Indians, were rowed on shore to a new land. Frank was in a sad way: he was carried to the hut of a chief; medicine men were sent for to look upon him and administer to him herbs strangely compounded, and wise old squaws uttered their spells over his prostrate form; but it was the nursing he received, after all, from Chisholm and Fred that at last brought him round.

Their fare while they lived among the Indians was very poor of its kind; but then, a gift-horse should not be looked in the mouth. These poor people gave them a portion of all they possessed, and they gave it, too, with right good will. Captain Anderson could speak their language – a kind of Yack patois– and held many long conversations with the chief – a great man in the estimation of the tribe, and in reality a true man, although only a savage. Anderson held him spell-bound, as he told of some of the strange cities and countries there were in the world. He liked to hear the captain talk, and still, from the sinister look and incredulous smile on his face as he listened, you could see that he thought the narrator was drawing largely on his imagination.

It was very kind of this chief to invite the captain, our heroes, and the survivors of the melancholy shipwreck to stay with him for the rest of their lives.

“Blubber,” he said, “would never fail them; salt fish and seal’s flesh could always be had in abundance, with now and then a bit of a whale as a treat. Then they could take them wives from the daughters of his people, and the smoke from their wigwams would ascend for ever.”

It was a pretty picture, Anderson allowed; but – there is no accounting for taste; he loved his own home in England better.

“Then in that case,” said Kit Chak – and here spoke the noble savage – “I and my brother will guide you through the great forest to Inchboon, where lies a Danish whaler. The journey will take us one moon.”

One moon! – nearly thirty days. It was a fearful undertaking; but what will not men do for home and country? So all preparations were made for the march, and in three days they were ready to start.

“You do well to wrap up, Frank, my boy,” said Chisholm to his young friend; “but, beside the captain, you do look odd.”

In twenty-five days, after sufferings and hardships that they never forgot, they arrived at Inchboon, and sure enough they found the Danish ship. She was bound to Russia, though; if that would suit them, said the captain, his vessel was at their service.

They gladly accepted his offer, bade brave Kit Chak and his brother adieu (not without well rewarding them), and in six weeks’ time they were landed at Cronstadt.

Our travellers now were as happy as kings; but where, they wondered, would they turn up next?

Chapter Seven

Part III – The Russian Steppes

Quiet days on the Kyra – Captain Varde’s happy Home – Fred Freeman’s Rustic Russian – The Captain tells a tale of Adventure

The captain of the Danish barque, who had brought our three heroes safely into Russian waters, was one of those individuals who are never so happy as when ministering to the comfort and pleasure of others.

“Having landed you in Europe,” he said, on the very last day they dined together on board, “I dare say I ought to let you go, but I assure you, gentlemen, I am not tired of you, and if you will accept of a few weeks of the kind of rude hospitality I can offer you, at my little country home on the banks of the Kyra, I shall be delighted.”

“Stop,” he continued, smilingly, holding up his hand as Chisholm was about to speak, “I know everything you would say, so there is no occasion to say anything. I have been kind to you, and you feel so much indebted to me already, that you are unwilling to trespass further on my goodness. That is what you would say; but, dear gentlemen, if you do feel under an obligation to me, you can amply repay me, and even confer a favour on me, by giving me a few weeks of your company.”

“What say you, Fred?” asked Chisholm.

“Oh!” Fred replied, “I am delighted at finding such a pleasant ‘new way of paying old debts.’ Let us go by all means.”

“As for me, my friends,” said Captain Anderson, “I must leave you to-morrow. Although the loss of my ship was no fault of mine, it was a terrible misfortune, and one which it will be long ere I can forget, and longer still ere it will be forgotten against me.”

“We need not tell you,” said Chisholm, “how truly sorry we are to part with you. We will live in the hopes of meeting you some day in England, and renewing our acquaintance with one in whose ship we sailed so long and spent so many happy hours.”

So next day the captain of the lost brig Grampus and our friends parted. They stayed just one week in Cronstadt, communicating by telegraph with those at home, then, in company with their new friend, started for his cottage on the Kyra. They were not sorry when, three days after leaving Saint Petersburg, they found themselves down in the very heart of the cool green country, and in a spot which, but for the different dress and language of the people they met, they could easily have fancied was a part of England itself. If they were delighted with the country, they were not less so with the house and home itself of Captain Varde, their kindly host. Half buried in trees, it was approached by a broad and beautiful avenue, which led through well-kept lawns to what you would have been bound to have styled the hall door, or front entrance, but the truth is Captain Varde’s house had no front, or, in other words, it had two; for the spacious hall led you straight through to the wide terraced lawn and flower garden, that skirted the lovely river.

“When we go down to the village,” said Varde, “which is situated about three miles from here, we sometimes go by boat, and sometimes with the horses in the conveyance I have landed you in to-day. But here comes my wife and daughter, the only two beings I love on earth.”

The first greetings betwixt himself and family being ended, Captain Varde introduced our heroes, who were very kindly welcomed, and made to feel perfectly at home; so much so that before the first day of their visit had come to an end, they seemed to have known this family all their lives.

When, after dinner, the ladies had retired, and the gentlemen lingered over the walnuts and wine, —

“Captain Varde,” said Fred Freeman, “I cannot tell you how much astonished I and my comrades feel at all we see around us in this pretty home of yours. It is so different from anything we could have expected to meet with in Russia.”