Chapter Eight.
“Till Frozen Seas do Meet.”
“Mr Lloyd,” said Claude to his first mate, the morning after the Icebear sailed away from the Orkneys on the wings of a favouring breeze, “I am not going to call my men together and make a speech. That style of thing is far too stagey. We have picked our crew, and I believe they will be good men and true, every one of them. Well, I will try to be a kind and considerate captain; and I’ll tell you now what I should like. I want, then, in a word, all the discipline and cleanliness of a man-o’-war, with a good deal of the cheerfulness and light-heartedness you find on a well-appointed yacht or best class of merchantmen. Let them sing below if they like, or even on deck for’ard during smoking hours: I won’t object to a little music. You understand?”
“Perfectly, my lord.”
Claude held up a finger.
“My lord is too formal for a ship’s quarter-deck,” he said.
“Beg pardon, sir. I really had forgotten for the moment.”
The captain and mate were on the quarter-deck, the latter taking his orders for the day.
As shrewd and sturdy a sailor as ever faced the billows was Lloyd. And not only a sailor, but a thorough iceman. He had been going “back and fore,” as he phrased it, to Greenland ever since he was a boy of ten, and he was now nearly thirty. He had come through every peril that one can think of; he had been cast away as often as he had fingers on his left hand—there were only four, one had been shot off—his ship had been burned at sea, and he had drifted for weeks on an iceberg, with nothing to eat at last except boot leather; he had once even been dragged under water by a shark, and was saved by his sea-boot coming off—one of the best pairs of boots he ever had, he used to tell his mates;—but, for all the dangers he had come through, he dearly loved the regions round the Pole.
“Greenland has been like a mother to me,” he had been heard to say; “and I hope to die there, and be frozen up in an iceberg, where I’ll keep fresh till the crack of doom.” (Note 1.)
That first day at sea—for these hardy mariners had not considered themselves afloat till now—was a very busy one. It was a very beautiful one too, for the matter of that, when one had time to look around him.
When any one did, it was when the breeze slackened a bit, or blew stiffer, or changed its course a point or two, or did any one of the score of things that the wind that wafts a ship along is constantly doing.
The captain walked all round the ship about eight bells, and found everything taut and trim and clear, and no complaints.
The second and third officers had been with Claude before for many voyages. The surgeon was a man of over forty, and as grey as a badger. It was not years alone that had changed the colour of his hair, however, but a lifetime of abstruse study. His studies had been of a very mixed nature—better call him a scientist at once and be done with it; but he was a musician and poet also. By the way, every naturalist is a poet, whether he writes or not; for true poetry consists, not in writing verses, but in being and in feeling yourself part and parcel of all the life and loveliness around you, of loving all things and all creatures, and thus, unwittingly it may be, worshipping in the truest Way the great Being who made them.
But the surgeon’s character will come out as we go on in our story; suffice it to say here that although Claude had known him but a very few months, he already liked and respected him very much.
Claude felt happy and contented in having so good a crew, and officers he could trust by night or day. For though I may have seemed in my last chapter to be sneering at good Professor Hodson and his brother savants, they really were men who had the interests of science at heart, and this ship was going on no insignificant errand to the land of the snow bear.
The sea got up towards evening, and sail was taken in; and as the breeze still freshened, still more sail, and she was practically made snug for the night.
Before leaving Aberdeen—some days indeed—Claude had written to his mother, filially and affectionately bidding her good-bye. Thus far he had bent his pride; yes, and had she asked him to come home for a day—well, perhaps he would have thrown all his pride to the winds and obeyed.
But the time flew by, and there came no reply of any kind, and Claude was sad About an hour before he sailed, a telegram was put into his hand. It was brief, thus—
“Lady Alwyn wishes her son well.”
So far the proud Lady of the Towers had melted. Claude put the telegram in his Bible. It was something precious, for he could read between the words. So he was happy.
But he would not write again.
The ship was steered for the nor’-nor’-west; and as it neared Iceland, Claude grew more and more impatient. How would Meta look when she heard the news?—for in the few letters he had written—there were few mails to Iceland—he had not told her all the truth.
When at length the Icebear cast anchor before the quaint, old-fashioned town of Reykjavik, after what had appeared to Claude an interminable time, they found their store-ship in waiting. Claude boarded her; and finding that everything had gone all right, directed his men to pull him on shore.
Burning with impatience though he was to get away from the town—the reader will guess whither—it was hours before he could leave old friends, so warmly did they welcome him.
Free at last! Free and away, and fleet was the sturdy pony that carried him. Only an Iceland horse could have done so, for even in summer the country is dangerous. Summer had not yet come, and the hills still wore the garb of winter, and the higher paths were often slippery with melting ice.
He sees the strange old cottage at last, and faster still he rides, for it is nearly night. He sees Byarnie. Byarnie sees him, and, after one wave of the arm to bid him welcome, rushes indoors. Poor, innocent, beautiful Meta had had no thought of his coming that night, but, strange to say, she was dressed exactly as he had first seen her. But now the love-light was in her eyes, and tear-drops quivered on their long lashes.
“I thought,” she said, “you would never, never come again.”
Claude remembered his dream.
The quaint old room when it was lit up looked cosier than ever, with the great fire of turf and wood burning on the hearth, the raven nodding on a log, the great cat on a stool, the snow-flea in its cage, the table laid for supper, the aunts—still witch-like and ugly—one sitting spinning like Fate in a picture, the other with book and spectacles in a high-backed chair, and great, awkward Byarnie laying supper.
It was all like a vision of happiness to Claude. He thought he should like to stay here all his life.
Perhaps Meta could read his thoughts in his eyes. I do not myself believe in thought-reading; but if there be such a faculty, it surely is the gift of true lovers.
“Oh! stay with us for ever,” she whispered.
“Would I could,” he answered. “Would that I could.”
“But you will for months?”
“Nay, but for one short week.”
The bright face fell, and tears again bedimmed the eyes.
“Dearest Meta,” he murmured—
“‘I could not love thee half so much
Loved I not honour more.’”
Next day, when alone with her, he bravely told her all. She was convulsed with grief. He knew she would be so. He let her weep on for a time. Tears bring such relief.
“I love you just the same, and will marry you on my return.”
She turned to him, her face very pale and wet with tears, but calmness and heroic determination in her eyes.
“Lord Alwyn,” she said. Then she noticed the pain the words gave him. “Claude, then,” she continued, “I will never marry you without the consent of your mother. That consent will not be given. So I will never marry you—never.”
There was a mournful cadence in her voice that rang through his heart.
“Then,” he said, “you do not, you cannot lo—”
“Stay!” she interrupted; “stay, Claude, stay!” She put her little hand on his as she spoke, and looked into his face with that holy truthful gaze of hers. “I love you. I will never love another. I will love you till frozen seas do meet.”
The earnestness of her voice and manner held poor Claude spellbound for a time—spellbound and speechless. He could only gaze entranced on her lovely face, and never had it seemed to him more lovely than now.
“Sit down, dear Meta,” he said at last; “we still are lovers.”
“Yes,” in a low, sad voice.
“Tell me, Meta, what did you mean by the strange words, ‘Till frozen seas do meet’?”
“There is a legend,” she replied, “that long, long ago there dwelt among the rocks of the hills hereby an ancient but good man. He was called the hermit; he never courted the acquaintance of any one, never left the fastnesses where he dwelt; but people often went to seek advice from him, and brought him gifts of roots and milk. He taught them many things, and many believed him supernatural. I do not think he was so, because his teachings were not all from the Good Book. He told them that the world was very old, but would be ages and ages older yet; that there lay at the South Pole an ocean of ice just as at the North; that the world was cooling down by imperceptibly slow degrees; that these frozen seas were creeping nearer, advancing south and north; that they would encroach on Southern Africa and on Europe; that the torrid zone would become temperate; that nearer and nearer the oceans of ice would creep, till at last they would all but meet on the equator; that ships would then cease to float; that men would even degenerate, and finally live for warmth in caves in the earth; and then the frozen seas would meet, and this world would be all one shining ball of ice-clad snow. But he said that a day would soon afterwards come when the elements would melt—the lost, the final day. That is the legend of the strange words I used. And,”—here she turned once more towards him, for she had been talking hitherto like one in a dream—“and I will love you, Claude, till frozen seas do meet.”
Note 1. Bodies have been found frozen, and in perfect condition, after a lapse of nearly half a century.