In the Land of the Great Snow Bear: A Tale of Love and Heroism

As it was she staggered and began to broach to. It was a moment of the greatest danger, but only a moment. Then it was over, and the Icebear was struggling once more with the stormy head wind and raging sea.

By morning light, though the wind still held, it was less furious, and the seas but broke in froth and spray against the descending bows, and went singing aft on each side, their tops twisting and curling in the gale.

Down in the darkened wardroom at breakfast that morning the talk was naturally about the storm. Although Claude retained his own quarters abaft, still he preferred taking all his meals with his officers.

“What was it we struck, do I think?” said the doctor in answer to a question put by Lloyd. “Some unhappy fishing-boat or walrus-hunter on his way to the east shores of Greenland.”

“Heaven forbid!” said Claude, with a slight shudder. “Would we not have heard a scream or yell?”

“Never a scream or yell in that roaring gale,” replied Dr Barrett, coolly. “Bless you, sir, I’ve run them down before. Steward, another cup of coffee, please.”

“You’ve been often to these regions, doctor?”

“I’ve been often everywhere. I’m the veriest old son of a gun of a sea-dog of a doctor.”

“It’s as well no one else said that about you.”

“I wouldn’t mind. My skin is as hard as tortoise-shell. I’ve been married so often, you know.”

“Have you really now?” said the second mate, a merry-eyed little dark man. “Are all your wives dead?”

“What a question!” said Claude.

“Ah! never mind,” quoth the surgeon; “I’ll answer him, if he’ll only cut me another slice of that delicious corn-beef. Mind, it isn’t for a lady, so you may cut it as thick as you please.”

“But about your wives?”

“Oh yes, the wives. I don’t think many of them are dead.”

“Doctor!” cried Claude, “you dreadful man!”

“Well, you see,” said the doctor, tapping the edge of his cup with the spoon as if counting, “I’ve been married just exactly fifty-nine times. My ships, messmates, are my wives.”

“Well, you’ve had many a honeymoon,” said Lloyd.

“Ay,” replied Dr Barrett; “and many more I hope to have.”

An able seaman popped his head in past the door curtain at this moment, and drew it out again.

“Don’t duck your head out and in like an old turtle, man,” cried the doctor; “come right in. Anybody sick?”

“Which I didn’t know, sir, the cap’n was ’ere. Nobody sick, but knew ye liked curios, doctor, sir.”

“Well?”

“Well, beggin’ yer parding, sir, likus the cap’n’s, but there be a bird wot our cook calls a sea-swallow a-perchin’ on the main yard. Shall one of us go up and fetch him? He’s mighty sea-sick I knows, and couldn’t fly to save his life.”3

“Certainly, bring it down.”

The officers went on with breakfast, and had forgotten all about Tom Scott and his sea-swallow, when suddenly the man appeared again, bearing under one arm a beautiful snow-bird.

It escaped almost at once, and fluttering upwards alighted on the compass that depended from the skylight.

All eyes were fixed on it. It did not seem a bit frightened, but looked downwards with one crimson saucy eye at the table.

“It looks like a spirit,” said Lloyd, half afraid, for, like most sailors, he was superstitious.

“It’s a spirit that will bring us luck. They always do,” said the second mate.

“Are you ill, sir?” exclaimed the doctor, addressing the captain.

One might have thought so. His face was pale, mouth a little open, brows lowered, and eyes riveted on the bird.

“Were such a thing possible,” he muttered, “I’d believe that was my snow-bird Alba.”

To the amazement of every one, no sooner were the words uttered, than with one quick glance of recognition, down flew the bird and nestled, as it was wont to do, on its master’s hand, held close up on his breast.

Yes, every one was astonished, but poor McDonald, the third mate, was frightened; and when, after receiving a few caresses, Alba jumped on to the table and began pattering around and saying, “Poor Alba wants his breakfast; Alba wants a sop of food,” McDonald could stand it no longer: he left the table and hurried on deck.

“It’s no canny,” he said to the steward; “it’s no canny, and if I could steal a boat I’d leave the ship and brave the stormy ocean.”

“Lord Alwyn – I mean sir,” said the mate, “a hundred years ago you’d have been burned for a witch.”

“Or a wizard,” remarked the doctor, laughing. “But I am not astonished. The captain has already told me the story of his snow-bird. The wonderful power of sight, scent, and probably hearing in gulls is scarcely yet known to naturalists; and the same may be said about nearly all sea-birds. They either have an instinct that we possess not, or the faculties they possess, in common with other animals, are most marvellously developed.4 Just look at that lovely bird now, and listen to its marvellous prattle.”

Pattering round the table went Alba, in a very excited condition, only every now and then flying off to Claude’s breast as if he could hardly believe in his own happiness. He jumbled up his sentences, too, as most talking birds do when excited.

“Alba wants – Alba wants – Alba wants Fingal’s Claude – Fingal’s – Fingal – Claude – Alba wants his breakfast.”

“That’s better, Alba,” said Dr Barrett, lifting the cover from a dish of fish.

Next moment Alba was in the third heaven.

“You’ve made that bird your friend for life, doctor,” said Claude.

Fingal, the deerhound, got up from under the table and laid his great head on his master’s knee.

“Of course I won’t forget you, you silly old Fingal, because Alba has come. I have room in my heart for both.”

Towards sunset that day the weather cleared, the wind having gone round to the nor’-east-and-by-east. The sea too went down with the sun, though it still ran high; a morsel of canvas was got up to steady her, and leaning over to it away she went, cutting merrily through the water as if she had been a veritable living thing. The stars shone that night so brilliantly; it was as though you could have stretched out your hand and touched them, so large, lustrous, and near-like were they. A broad white gleam of auroral light was in the north, above it the sky was of a strange sea-green hue. But a whisper had gone around the ship that a spirit had come on board, and an anxious group was seated round the galley fire to discuss the situation.

“If it’s a spirit,” said Tom Scott at last, “it’s a good one. It has brought us good weather. Hurrah, lads! give us a song somebody.”

The good ship Icebear had no more adventures for nearly a fortnight, by which time she had rounded Cape Farewell and reached the north-eastern ice.

“And now there came both mist and snow,    And it grew wondrous cold,And ice, mast-high, came floating by    As green as emerald.”

Chapter Eleven

Summer on the Greenland Ocean

There was not an officer nor able seaman on board the good ship Icebear, who had not been in the Arctic regions before.

Mostly Englishmen they were, with just a sprinkling of Scotch – “the leaven that leavened the lump,” that is how Rab McDonald, the third officer, expressed it, and it is needless to say that Rab himself was a Scot.

Onward went the Icebear, sometimes in a clear sea, though far into Baffin’s Bay – for this was what is called an exceptional year – but at other times she had literally to plough her way through the heavy ice.

When the weather was fine there was but little danger, unless, indeed, a swell rolled in, playing and toying with the monster pieces as schoolboys would with balls.

But when a breeze sprang up, even if only half a gale, then indeed the scene was changed. Then —

“Through the drifts the snowy clifts    Did send a dismal sheen:Nor shapes of man nor beasts they ken —    The ice was all between.“The ice was here, the ice was there,    The ice was all around;It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,    Like noises in a swound.”

During calm weather and in the open water Dr Barrett was busy indeed, taking soundings, deep or otherwise, and dredging for living objects at the sea’s bottom.

Very lovely and interesting indeed was the collection that soon grew up in his cabinet, under his magic spell. What could be in that tangled mass of mud and weed and sand, one would have asked, that was hauled on board, the sea-water dripping and trickling out of the bag?

To Dr Barrett – and to the savants at home – treasures more valuable than gold itself.

And after he had secured a haul, washed them, put them up, perhaps on cards of jet to show their beauties off, the clever surgeon would have handed you his great glass and bade you look. It was like gazing at creatures from fairyland. All shapes and colours, but all so minute that they could not well be seen with the naked eye. Here is a little fairy fish – no bigger is it than this letter ‘f.’ Take that glass, please. Now look. No wonder an expression of amazement steals over your face! It is a perfect fish, yet, strange to say, transparent and colourless – that is, there is no fixed colour any more than there is in the Arctic aurora, but greens dance and crimsons flit and play around it; and, stranger still, with a stronger glass, you can see its internal anatomy, see its heart beat and its pulses move! Could anything be more wonderful? And here are shells that, lying on this morsel of black cardboard, are no bigger than the letters “a,” or “e,” or “c.” Look at these. No wonder you smile with delight; they, too, are faultless in shape and curious in form; they, too, are transparent as glass; they, too, display all the colours of the finest pearl.

Put this one – it is no bigger than a comma to the naked eye – under the microscope in a drop of water. Lo! that drop of water is to it a small ocean, and round and round it crawls, legs all out and its shell high up on its shoulders, and of a bright translucent blue. I could sit here all the livelong night and write, sheet of foolscap after sheet of foolscap should flutter from my desk and fall upon the floor, and yet when the grey dawn of morning crept in through the casement of this red parlour, I should not have told you of one-half the mysterious and beautiful beings that this man of science dredged up from the dark depths of that mysterious sea.

I pause here and listen. There was not a sound in the house when I penned the last sentence, only a mouse nibbling the crumbs that I placed for it in the corner, but now there comes from an adjoining room the voice of some one singing. It is only poor old Janet. She does so every night before retiring; and, old though she be, I know she is very happy – happy with a happiness that can never be taken from her. But to-night the words she sings are so en rapport with my own spirit while writing, that I cannot but give a line or two —

“God moves in a mysterious way,    His wonders to perform;He plants His footsteps on the sea,    And rides upon the storm.”

As much as it was practicable to do so, the Icebear hugged the western shores of Greenland, but here the ice was heaviest. As the summer advanced, however, the land became bare of snow; it was then that delightful excursions were made inland, up through the long, deep fiords that everywhere indent this coast. I do not like the word “indent,” though I use it; for an indentation means fork-like incision, widest at the mouth – a bay, for example, – but these Arctic fiords are, many of them, narrow at the inlet, then spread out as they go inland.

There are thousands and thousands of them yet unexplored, and which never will be explored as long as the world lasts.

Not altogether for the sake of pleasure were these excursions made, but for the purpose of scientific discovery.

I am sitting here to tell a story, and not to describe scenery, the yachting, the fishing, hunting, and all the pleasures that make a holiday in Greenland north, during the short summer-time, so enthrallingly delightful – a something that once enjoyed can never be forgotten, while the life-blood circulates in our veins.

Claude himself was a lover of nature. In his soul he had all the poetry of a Wordsworth, though there it remained, for he never wrote verses. He could love and admire every tiny flower, every moss or lichen or tender and beautiful saxifrage that clad the rocky uplands. Neither could he classify them.

Dr Barrett both admired and classified. He was ever on the outlook for new species, and I verily believe he dreamed about them by night. So his cabinet, of the rare and lovely specimens found on shore, grew even bigger than did his deep-sea collection.

Cold? No, it was not cold – these regions at this season. Cool sometimes, but never cold.

The Icebear would be cautiously steered up some of those fiords and the anchor let go, in an inland sea or harbour in which all the navies in the world, both mercantile and man-o’-war, could easily have ridden.

While the doctor and his assistants would be prospecting among the hills, leaving the ship in charge of the mate, and, accompanied only by the faithful Fingal and giant Byarnie, Claude would start in a small boat, a kind of elegant dingy, which he had had made on purpose, and go off up the fiords for miles with gun and fishing-rod.

The snow-bird, strange to say, always remained on board. What truth there may be in the statement I do not know, but they say that a snow-bird, or tern, that has once been domesticated by mankind dare not return to its kindred birds under pain of death.

Claude used to enjoy those excursions on the fiords very much. Here is how he generally spent the day: First, Byarnie would pull him slowly about close to the rocks, where the fish were most numerous. A few dozen were speedily caught and thrown in the bottom of the boat. Fingal used to take them in charge, apparently delighting in doing so, for his wise eyes never left them, and if one flopped Fingal held it down with an air of seriousness on his rough hairy face that was highly amusing.

But Claude soon got tired of fishing, and put up the rod. Then he told Byarnie to pull him away out into the centre of the fiord, and let the boat float as she liked in the sweet sunshine. Claude would have a book, perhaps, and very often, when his eyes were riveted on it, it was upside down, which showed where his thoughts were.

Just for fun then he would say to Fingal, “Speak, Fingal.”

Fingal would speak with a vengeance, till every hill and every rock re-echoed his bow-wow-wows. But the sound was sure to bring up a great head or two with goggle eyes out of the water, sea-lions, walruses, or saddle-back or bladder-nose seals, for they are all most inquisitive.

Lying very still sometimes, with the oars in, one single seal would pop his head out of the sun-glazed water and have a look at the boat.

“Sit still, Byarnie; don’t move,” Claude would say.

The seal would come nearer and have another look; then down he would go, tail first, and in three minutes more the sea all around would be black with great heads and sweet, soft, wondering eyes.

“Well,” they would seem to say, “we can’t make it out. Never mind, let us have a romp; the sunshine is so delightful. Hurrah!”

Then a scene of diving, and chasing, and splashing, such as it is impossible to describe, would ensue; it was, in fact, a seals’ ball. If Byarnie would suddenly explode with a loud “Ho! ho! ho!” of merriment, or if Fingal barked, then, hey! presto, every head would sink as if by magic, and in a few minutes the sea would be as smooth as usual, with only the gulls, divers, or grebes floating lazily on it.

Next, Claude would make Byarnie tell him some wild old Norse story – he was full of them – with Sagas, or Vikings, or fairies in it, and then sing. Oh! Byarnie could sing well, but a strange, monotonous kind of lilt it was – very pleasant, nevertheless, for it never once failed to put Claude to sleep. So sure, indeed, was Claude of falling asleep when Byarnie began to sing, that he used to lie down in the stern-sheets with a cushion beneath his head.

Sometimes he awoke with such a happy, happy half-dazed look on his handsome face, and say, “Oh! Byarnie, I’ve had such a pleasant dream!”

Next they would land, and Claude would now read in earnest, while poor Byarnie cooked the dinner in gipsy fashion.

Very often after this Claude would keep his companion talking about Iceland, with Meta always the centre figure, for hours, till, when near sundown, they would probably hear the report of a rifle at some distance off. This was Dr Barrett signalling to his men, and not long after the whaler would come sweeping up, and the boats would return together, often enjoying the fun and frolic of a good race, for Byarnie was a splendid oarsman; his skiff was light, and he, if not a feather, had the strength of three ordinary seamen.

Thus pleasantly passed the summer days on that lonesome Greenland ocean.

Chapter Twelve

Among Arctic Fiords – A Strange Discovery

If the reader happens to possess a map of the polar regions, or even a good map of the world, and will take a glance or two at the discovered lands and seas beyond the Arctic circle, he will be struck at once by their nomenclature. It would be interesting to know the why and the wherefore of many of these names, which I do not believe have, in any single instance, been given at random. The origin of some of them is evident enough – “Lady Franklin’s Sound,” for example, or “Hayes’ Inlet,” or “Peabody Bay.”

But I do not wish to be told of the exact reasons that determined these names. Knowing what I do about the Polar regions, I would rather let my imagination have a little play.

A little to the south of Spitzbergen lies Hope Isle, or Sea Horse Island; I happen to know that many walruses, sometimes called sea-horses, frequent the ice or the icy land there; but why called Hope Island? Some ship, perhaps, had been long imprisoned, north of this place, provisions exhausted, and the chances of ever getting clear small indeed; but, behold! the ice opens as if by magic, and by sawing and blasting they struggle as far south as this lone isle, where, though locked up once more in the icy embrace of King Winter, they live in hope, and are eventually rewarded.

Down the east coast of Greenland proper there is a point with an ugly name, “Cape Discord.” Was it mutiny or only mutiny threatened? did men struggle on slippery blood-bespattered decks, or was the discord confined to muttered threats, to black and angry looks and round-robins?5

“Cape Farewell” again – the southernmost point in Greenland. The ship has been wintered in Baffin’s Bay, and the men have undergone cold, misery, and privation; but hurrah! the last land is left behind, the blue open sea is all before them, cheerily sings the wind through the rigging, the sails are full, and the men’s hearts are also so full that if they did not sing they would go mad. So “farewell, old Greenland; our dear wives and sweethearts are waiting us at home in merry England. Farewell, farewell.”

But round that point is Cape Desolation. Look at those bluff, bare crags that overhang the sea, the home of hardly even a wild bird; see afar off the tree-lands covered with snow, leaden clouds athwart the sky, billows dashing in foam against the black rocks, and the cold wind blowing. Ugh! let us leave it. It is pleasant to find a Prince Albert Land and a Victoria Land up in the Arctic ocean, side by side; and a North Lincoln and North Devon, separated only by Jones’s Sound. We have been told that when the North Pole is eventually discovered a Scotchman will be found at the top of it. I should not wonder, for the most northerly land, if my memory serves me aright, is called Grant’s Land, and everybody knows that Grant is the name of a brave old Scottish clan.

Obeying instructions from his employers, Claude worked his ship north and north along the western shores of Greenland, exploring every creek and fiord; the doctor being meanwhile very busy, as we have seen in the last chapter, taking scientific notes and collecting specimens.

In their voyage out, the Icebear had only once spoken the Kittywake. She was a schooner commanded by the ex-skipper of a Dundee whaler, a man who knew the country well, and though but a small craft she was strong, and eminently suited for the work she had to perform, namely, to follow the Icebear with stores. She had received instructions to hug the western land, and, if a flagstaff was seen at the entrance to any creek, there to lay-to until the Icebear came out.

But the Kittywake’s powers of sailing were only of a very limited character, and steam she had none. So, after spoken, she was not seen again for a time.

Very few of these wonderful fiords, as I have already mentioned, are even known. Now, it had occurred to our learned savants at home that it would pay, not in one way, but in two, to explore the largest of them. Untold wealth lies buried in Greenland. Scientific wealth, and the dross called gold, mayhap even diamonds, mayhap precious stones of a kind not yet known to the world. For why? Was not Greenland – that vast country which a single glance at the map tells you is as large in extent, as long and as wide as Africa itself – was it not at one time, ages ago, they argued, an inhabited continent as free from ice as our fair England is at the present day? They believed that the mountains which now shoot their jagged peaks, covered with perpetual snow, up into the blue-green sky were once purple and crimson with gorgeous heath; that green valleys and lovely glens lay below, with placid lakes and rolling rivers, and cascades of sparkling water; that gigantic forest lands covered the greater part of the country, forests in which the bison and wild deer roamed and fed; that, in a word, Greenland was once upon a time – while the torrid zone was but a fiery belt, uncrossable, uninhabitable – a fertile land of beauty, a land of mountain, forest, and stream.

They even went farther. Might not man himself, they said, have dwelt in this beautiful country – primeval man – and might not his remains be found even yet? There is, indeed, no length to which some learned savants will not go, if they once give the reins to their imaginative power.

While not for a moment feeling half so sanguine as his employers, Claude, having undertaken a task, meant to do his duty, his best; and who can do more?

As long as the summer lasted, and before the mists began to rise, Claude continued his explorations. He came at last to a vast wall of solid rock, darkly frowning over the deep. He would have passed along it, never dreaming there could be any opening in there, had he not seen some bears swimming in the water. They disappeared on being followed by a boat, and the officer in charge, on returning, reported having discovered the inlet to a vast fiord. The Icebear was headed for the rock, and found the opening just soon enough to enter with safety.

It was a bright, clear day, with little wind and hardly a cloud in the sky, with every indication that fine weather would continue for a time at least.

All hands were on deck as the Icebear was turned shorewards and headed straight for the rocks. The boat that had gone in pursuit of the bears was ahead, guiding. To go steaming stem on to that adamantine wall seemed courting destruction, but lo! after a progress of a few hundred yards, the cliffs opened up as if by magic, showing a long channel of deep blue water. It got wider inland, but the cliffs were higher; gradually, however, they receded from the water’s edge, and got lower and lower.

The ship was now stopped, and a party sent on shore to climb the highest peak adjoining the sea, and plant thereon the flagstaff that should signal to the Kittywake the whereabouts of her consort.

Slowly on and on steamed the Icebear, two men taking soundings from the chains, lest the water should suddenly shoal, but the beach at each side still continued rocky, though no longer high.

“What do you think of this?” asked Claude of Dr Barrett, who stood near him on the bridge.

“I am rejoiced beyond measure at our discovery,” was the reply. “Why, this would please Professor Hodson, for no slowly descending glaciers ever made this wonderful cutting – it is volcanic entirely. Behold the rocks, Captain Alwyn.”