Among the Esquimaux; or Adventures under the Arctic Circle

Among the Esquimaux or Adventures under the Arctic Circle

CHAPTER I

TWO PASSENGERS ON THE "NAUTILUS"

The good ship "Nautilus" had completed the greater part of her voyage from London to her far-off destination, deep in the recesses of British America. This was York Factory, one of the chief posts of the Hudson Bay Company.

Among the numerous streams flowing into Hudson Bay, from the frozen regions of the north, is the Nelson River. Near the mouth of this and of the Hayes River was erected, many years ago, Fort York, or York Factory. The post is not a factory in the ordinary meaning of the word, being simply the headquarters of the factors or dealers in furs for that vast monopoly whose agents have scoured the dismal regions to the north of the Saskatchewan, in the land of Assiniboine, along the mighty Yukon and beyond the Arctic Circle, in quest of the fur-bearing animals, that are found only in their perfection in the coldest portions of the globe.

The buildings which form the fort are not attractive, but they are comfortable. They are not specially strong, for, though the structure has stood for a long time in a country which the aborigines make their home, and, though it is far removed from any human assistance, its wooden walls have never been pierced by a hostile bullet, and it is safe to say they never will be. Somehow or other, our brethren across the northern border have learned the art of getting along with the Indians without fighting them.

The voyageurs and trappers, returning from their journeys in canoes or on snow-shoes to the very heart of frozen America, first catch sight of the flag floating from the staff of York Factory, and they know that a warm welcome awaits them, because the peltries gathered amid the recesses of the frigid mountains and in the heart of the land of desolation are sure to find ready purchasers at the post, for the precious furs are eagerly sought for in the marts of the Old and of the New World.

It is a lonely life for the inhabitants of the fort, for it is only once a year that the ship of the company, after breasting the fierce storms and powerful currents of the Atlantic, sails up the great mouth of Baffin Bay, glides through Hudson Strait, and thence steals across the icy expanse of Hudson Bay to the little fort near the mouth of the Nelson.

You can understand how welcome the ship is, for it brings the only letters, papers, and news from home that can be received until another twelvemonth shall roll around. Such, as I have said, is the rule, though now and then what may be termed an extra ship makes that long, tempestuous voyage. Being unexpected, its coming is all the more joyful, for it is like the added week's holiday to the boy who has just made ready for the hard work and study of the school-room.

You know there has been considerable said and written about a railway to Hudson Bay, with the view of connection thence by ship to Europe. Impracticable as is the scheme, because of the ice which locks up navigation for months every year, it has had strong and ingenious advocates, and considerable money has been spent in the way of investigation. The plan has been abandoned, for the reasons I have named, and there is no likelihood that it will ever be attempted.

The "Nautilus" had what may be called a roving commission. It is easy to understand that so long as the ships of the Hudson Bay Company have specific duties to perform, and that the single vessel is simply ordered to take supplies to York Factory and bring back her cargo of peltries, little else can be expected from her. So the staunch "Nautilus" was fitted out, placed under the charge of the veteran navigator, Captain McAlpine, who had commanded more than one Arctic whaler, and sent on her westward voyage.

The ultimate destination of the "Nautilus" was York Factory, though she was to touch at several points, after calling at St. John, Newfoundland, one of which was the southern coast of Greenland, where are located the most famous cryolite mines in the world, belonging, like Greenland itself, to the Danish Government.

There is little to be told the reader about the "Nautilus" itself or the crew composing it, but it so happened that she had on board three parties, in whose experience and adventures I am sure you will come to feel an interest. These three were Jack Cosgrove, a bluff, hearty sailor, about forty years of age; Rob Carrol, seventeen, and Fred Warburton, one year younger.

Rob was a lusty, vigorous young man, honest, courageous, often to rashness, the picture of athletic strength and activity, and one whom you could not help liking at the first glance. His father was a director in the honorable Hudson Bay Company, possessed considerable wealth, and Rob was the eldest of three sons.

Fred Warburton, while displaying many of the mental characteristics of his friend, was quite different physically. He was of much slighter build, not nearly so strong, was more quiet, inclined to study, but as warmly devoted to the splendid Rob as the latter was to him.

Fred was an orphan, without brother or sister, and in such straitened circumstances that it had become necessary for him to find some means of earning his daily bread. The warm-hearted Rob stated the case to his father, and said that if he didn't make a good opening for his chum he himself would die of a broken heart right on the spot.

"Not so bad as that, Rob," replied the genial gentleman, who was proud of his big, manly son; "I have heard so much from you of young Mr. Warburton that I have kept an eye on him for a year past."

"I may have told you a good deal about him," continued Rob, earnestly, "but not half as much as he deserves."

"He must be a paragon, indeed, but, from what I can learn, my son, he has applied himself so hard to his studies while at school that he ought to have a vacation before settling down to real hard work; what do you think about it, Robert?"

"A good idea, provided I take it with him," added the son, slyly.

"I see you are growing quite pale and are losing your appetite," continued the parent, with a grave face, which caused the youth to laugh outright at the pleasant irony.

"Yes," said the big boy, with the same gravity; "I suffer a great loss of appetite three or four times every day; in fact, I feel as though I couldn't eat another mouthful."

"I have observed that phenomenon, my son, but it never seems to attack you until the table has been well cleared of everything on it. Ah, my boy!" he added, tenderly, laying his hand on his head; "I am thankful that you are blessed with such fine health. Be assured there is nothing in this world that can take its place. With a conscience void of offense toward God and man, and a body that knows no ache nor pain, you can laugh at the so-called miseries of life; they will roll from you like water from a duck's back."

"But, father, have you thought of any way of giving Fred a vacation before he goes to work? You know he is as poor as he can be, and can't afford to do nothing and pay his expenses."

"The plan I have in mind," replied the father, leaning back in his chair and twirling his eyeglasses, "is this: next week the 'Nautilus,' one of the company's ships, will leave London for York Factory, which is a station deep in the heart of British America. She will touch at St. John, Greenland, and several other points on her way, and may stop several weeks or months at York Factory, according to circumstances. If it will suit your young friend to go with her, I will have him registered as one of our clerks, which will entitle him to a salary from the day the 'Nautilus' leaves the dock. The sea voyage will do him good, and when he returns, at the end of a year or less, he can settle down to hard work in our office in London. Of course, if Fred goes, you will have to stay at home."

Rob turned in dismay to his parent, but he observed a twitching at the corners of his mouth, and a sparkle of the fine blue eyes, which showed he was only teasing him.

"Ah, father, I understand you!" exclaimed the big boy, springing forward, throwing an arm about his neck and kissing him. "You wouldn't think of separating us."

"I suppose not. There! get along with you, and tell your friend to make ready to sail next week, his business being to look after you while away from home."

And that is how Rob Carrol and Fred Warburton came to be fellow-passengers on the ship "Nautilus" on the voyage to the far North.

CHAPTER II

A COLOSSAL SOMERSAULT

The voyage of the "Nautilus" was uneventful until she was far to the northward in Baffin Bay. It was long after leaving St. John that our friends saw their first iceberg. They should have seen them before, as Captain McAlpine explained, for, as you well know, those mountains of ice often cross the path of the Atlantic steamers, and more than once have endangered our great ocean greyhounds. No doubt numbers of them were drifting southward, gradually dissolving as they neared the equator, but it so happened that the "Nautilus" steered clear of them until many degrees to the north.

The captain, who was scanning the icy ocean with his glass, apprised the boys that the longed-for curiosity was in sight at last. As he spoke, he pointed with his hand to the north-west, but though they followed the direction with their eyes, they were disappointed.

"I see nothing," said Rob, "that looks like an iceberg."

"And how is it with you, Mr. Warburton?" asked the skipper, lowering his instrument, and turning toward the younger of the boys, who had approached, and now stood at his side.

"We can make out a small white cloud in the horizon, that's all," said Fred.

"It's the cloud I'm referring to, boys; now take a squint at that same thing through the glass."

Fred leveled the instrument and had hardly taken a glance, when he cried:

"Oh! it's an iceberg sure enough! Isn't it beautiful?"

While he was studying it, the captain added: "Turn the glass a little to the left."

"There's another!" added the delighted youth.

"I guess we've struck a school of 'em," remarked Rob, who was using his eyes as best he could; "I thought we'd bring up the average before reaching Greenland."

"It's a sight worth seeing," commented Fred, handing the glass to his friend, whose pleasure was fully as great as his own.

The instrument was passed back and forth, and, in the course of a half-hour, the vast masses of ice could be plainly discerned with the unaided eye.

"That proves they are coming toward us, or we are going toward them," said Rob.

"Both," replied Captain McAlpine; "we shall pass within a mile of the larger one."

"Suppose we run into it?"

The old sea-dog smiled grimly, as he replied:

"I tried it once, when whaling with the 'Mary Jane.' I don't mean to say I did it on purpose, but there was no moon that night, and when the iceberg, half as big as a whole town, loomed up in the darkness, we hadn't time to get out of its path. Well, I guess I've said enough," he remarked, abruptly.

"Why, you've broken off in the most interesting part of the story," said the deeply interested Fred.

"Well, that was the last of the 'Mary Jane.' The mate, Jack Cosgrove, and myself were all that escaped out of a crew of eleven. We managed to climb upon a small shelf of ice, just above the water, where we would have perished with cold had not an Esquimau fisherman, named Docak, seen us. We were nearer the mainland than we dared hope, and he came out in his kayak and took us off. He helped us to make our way to Ivignut, where the cryolite mines are, and thence we got back to England by way of Denmark. No," added Captain McAlpine, "a prudent navigator won't try to butt an iceberg out of his path; it don't pay."

"It must be dangerous in these waters, especially at night."

"There is danger everywhere and at all times in this life," was the truthful remark of the commander; "and you know that the most constant watchfulness on the part of the great steamers cannot always avert disaster, but I have little fear of anything from icebergs."

You need to be told little about those mountains of ice which sometimes form a procession, vast, towering, and awful, that stream down from the far North and sail in all their sublime grandeur steadily southward until they "go out of commission" forever in the tepid waters of the tropic regions.

It is a strange spectacle to see one of them moving resistlessly against the current, which is sometimes dashed from the corrugated front, as is seen at the bow of a steamboat, but the reason is simple. Nearly seven-eighths of an iceberg is under water, extending so far down that most of the bulk is often within the embrace of the counter current below. This, of course, carries it against the weaker flow, and causes many people to wonder how it can be thus.

While the little group stood forward talking of icebergs, they were gradually drawing near the couple that had first caught their attention. By this time a third had risen to sight, more to the westward, but it was much smaller than the other two, though more unique and beautiful. It looked for all the world like a grand cathedral, whose tapering spire towered fully two hundred feet in air. It was easy to imagine that some gigantic structure had been submerged by a flood, while the steeple still reared its head above the surrounding waters as though defying them to do their worst.

The other two bergs were much more enormous and of irregular contour. The imaginative spectator could fancy all kinds of resemblances, but the "cold fact" remained that they were simply mountains of ice, with no more symmetry of outline than a mass of rock blasted from a quarry.

"I have read," said Fred, "that in the iceberg factories of the north, as they are called, they are sometimes two or three years in forming, before they break loose and sweep off into the ocean."

"That is true," added Captain McAlpine; "an iceberg is simply a chunk off a frozen river, and a pretty good-sized one, it must be admitted. Where the cold is so intense, a river becomes frozen from the surface to the ground. Snow falls, there may be a little rain during the moderate season, then snow comes again, and all the time the water beneath is freezing more and more solid. Gravity and the pressure of the inconceivable weight beyond keeps forcing the bulk of ice and snow nearer the ocean, until it projects into the clear sea. By and by it breaks loose, and off it goes."

"But why does it take so long?"

"It is like the glaciers of the Alps. Being solid as a rock while the pressure is gradual as well as resistless, it may move only a few feet in a month or a year; but all the same the end must come."

The captain had grown fond of the boys, and the fact that the father of one of them was a director of the company which employed him naturally led him to seek to please them so far as he could do so consistent with his duty. He caused the course of the "Nautilus" to be shifted, so that they approached within a third of a mile of the nearest iceberg, which then was due east.

Sail had been slackened and the progress of the mass was so slow as to be almost imperceptible. This gave full time for its appalling grandeur to grow upon the senses of the youths, who stood minute after minute admiring the overwhelming spectacle, speechless and awed as is one who first pauses at the base of Niagara.

Naturally the officers and crew of the "Nautilus" gave the sight some attention, but it could not impress them as it did those who looked upon it for the first time.

The second iceberg was more to the northward, and the ship was heading directly toward it. It was probably two-thirds the size of the first, and, instead of possessing its rugged regularity of outline, had a curious, one-sided look.

"It seems to me," remarked Rob, who had been studying it for some moments, "that the centre of gravity in that fellow must be rather ticklish."

"It may be more stable than the big one," said Fred, "for you don't know what shape they have under water; a good deal must depend on that."

Jack Cosgrove, the sailor, who had joined the little party at the invitation of the captain, ventured to say:

"Sometimes them craft get top-heavy and take a flop; I shouldn't be s'prised if that one done the same."

"It must be a curious sight; I've often wondered how Jumbo, the great elephant, would have looked turning a somersault. An iceberg performing a handspring would be something of the same order, but a hundred thousand times more extensive. I would give a good deal if one of those bergs should take it into his head to fling a handspring, but I don't suppose – "

"Look!" broke in Fred, in sudden excitement.

To the unbounded amazement of captain, crew, and all the spectators, the very thing spoken of by Rob Carrol took place. The vast bulk of towering ice was seen to plunge downward with a motion, slow at first, but rapidly increasing until it dived beneath the waves like some enormous mass of matter cast off by a planet in its flight through space. As it disappeared, two-fold as much bulk came to view, there was a swirl of water, which was flung high in fountains, and the waves formed by the commotion, as they swept across the intervening space, caused the "Nautilus" to rock like a cradle.

The splash could have been heard miles away, and the iceberg seemed to shiver and shake itself, as though it were some flurried monster of the deep, before it could regain its full equilibrium. Then, as the spectators looked, behold! where was one of those mountains of ice they saw what seemed to be another, for its shape, contour, projections, and depressions were so different that no resemblance could be traced.

"She's all right now," remarked Jack Cosgrove, whose emotions were less stirred than those of any one else; "she's good for two or three thousand miles' voyage, onless she should happen to run aground in shoal water."

"What then would take place, Jack?" asked Fred.

"Wal, there would be the mischief to pay gener'ly. Things would go ripping, tearing, and smashing, and the way that berg would behave would be shameful. If anybody was within reach he'd get hurt."

Rob stepped up to the sailor as if a sudden thought had come to him. Laying his hand on his arm, he said, in an undertone:

"I wonder if the captain won't let us visit that iceberg?"

CHAPTER III

AN ALARMING SITUATION

The boldness of the proposition fairly took away the breath of the honest sailor. He stared at Rob as though doubting whether he had heard aright. He looked at the smiling youth from head to foot, and stared a full minute before he spoke.

"By the horned spoon, you're crazy, younker!"

"What is there so crazy about such an idea?" asked Fred, as eager to go on the excursion as his friend.

Jack removed his tarpaulin and scratched his head in perplexity. He voided a mouthful of tobacco spittle over the taffrail, heaved a prodigious sigh, and then muttered, as if to himself:

"It's crazy clean through, from top to bottom, sideways, cat-a-cornered, and every way; but if the captain says 'yes' I'll take you."

Rob stepped to where the skipper stood, some paces away, and said:

"Captain McAlpine, being as this is the first time Fred and I ever had a good look at an iceberg, we would be much obliged if you will allow Jack to row us out to it. We want to get a better view of it than we can from the deck of the ship. Jack is willing, and we will be much obliged for your permission."

Fred was listening breathlessly for the reply, which, like Rob, he expected would be a curt refusal. Great, therefore, was the surprise of the two when the good-natured commander said:

"The request doesn't strike me as very sensible, but, if your hearts are set on it, I don't see any objection. Yes, Jack has my permission to take you to that mass of ice, provided you don't stay too long."

"He's crazy, too!" was the whispered exclamation of the sailor, who, nevertheless, was pleased to gratify his young friends.

The preparations were quickly made. Fred had heard that polar bears are occasionally found on the icebergs which float southward from the Arctic regions, and he insisted that they ought to take their rifles and ammunition along. Rob laughed, but fortunately he followed his advice, and thus it happened that the couple were as well supplied in that respect as if starting out on a week's hunt in the interior of the country.

When Jack was urged to do the same he resolutely shook his head, and then turned about and accepted a weapon from the captain, who seemed in the mood for humoring every whim of the youths that afternoon.

"Take it along, Jack," he said; "there may be some tigers, leopards, boa-constrictors, and hyenas prowling about on the ice. They may be on skates, and there is nothing like being prepared for whatever comes. Good luck to you!"

Rob placed himself in the bow of the small boat, and Fred in the stern, while the sailor, sitting down near the middle, grasped the oars and rowed with that long, steady stroke which showed his mastery of the art. There was little wind stirring, and the waves were so slight that they were easily ridden. The sea was of a deep green color, and when the spray occasionally dashed over the lads it was as cold as ice itself. By this time the iceberg had drifted somewhat to the southward, but its progress was so slow as to suggest that the two currents which swept against it were nearly of the same strength. Had it been earlier in the day it would probably have remained visible to the "Nautilus" until sunset.

Meanwhile, a fourth mass rose to sight in the rim of the eastern horizon, so that there seemed some truth in Rob's suggestion that they had run into a school of them. They felt no interest, however, in any except the particular specimen before them.

How it grew upon them as they neared it! It seemed to spread right and left, and to tower upward toward the sky, until even the reckless Rob was hushed into awed silence and sat staring aloft, with feelings beyond expression. It was much the same with Fred, who, sitting at the stern, almost held his breath, while the overwhelming grandeur hushed the words trembling on his lip.

The mass of ice was hundreds of feet in width and length, while the highest portion must have been, at the least, three hundred feet above the surface of the sea. What, therefore, was the bulk below. Its colossal proportions were beyond imagination.

The part within their field of vision was too irregular and shapeless to admit of clear description. If the reader can picture a mass of rock and débris blown from the side of a mountain, multiplied a million times, he may form some idea of it.

The highest portion was on the opposite side. About half-way from the sea, facing the little party, was a plateau broad enough to allow a company of soldiers to camp upon it. To the left of this the ice showed considerable snow in its composition, while, in other places, it was as clear as crystal itself. In still other portions it was dark or almost steel blue, probably due to some peculiar refraction of light. There were no rippling streams of water along and over its side, for the weather was too cold for the thawing which would be plentiful when it struck a warmer latitude.

But there were caverns, projections, some sharp, but most of them blunt and misshapen, steps, long stretches of vertical wall as smooth as glass, up which the most agile climber could never make his way.

Courageous as Rob Carrol unquestionably was, a feeling akin to terror took possession of him when they were quite near the iceberg. He turned to suggest to Jack that they had come far enough, when he observed that the sailor had turned the bow of the boat to the right, though he was still rowing moderately.

He was the only one that was not impressed by the majesty of the scene. Squinting one eye up the side of the towering mass, he remarked:

"There's enough ice there to make a chap's etarnal fortune, if he could only hitch on and tow it into London or New York harbor; but being as we've sot out to take a view of it, why we'll sarcumnavigate the thing, as me cousin remarked when he run around the barn to dodge the dog that was nipping at his heels."

The voice of the sailor served to break the spell that had held the tongues of the boys mute until then, and they spoke more cheerily, but unconsciously modulated their voices, as a person will do when walking through some great gallery of paintings or the aisles of a vast cathedral.