Chapter Ten.
In Norland Seas.
“I shouldn’t wonder if we get it from out yonder,” said Dr Barrett, pointing away south and by west, the very direction in which the Icebear was steaming.
There was a great billowy heave on the blue sea, blue everywhere, except where the light shadow of some white fleecy cloud made a patch of fleeting grey or grey-green. There was not a breath of wind “to swear by,” as Jack Scott unpoetically put it, so the long rolling swell was as smooth as glass. This swell was meeting them too, and the ship rose and fell on it with a gentle dipping motion; only now and then, when a taller wave than usual dipped in under bows and keel, she gave a quick plunge forward.
Along the horizon ahead was a bank of rock-and-castle clouds, while far away astern the jagged snowcapped peaks of Iceland were just visible above the rolling seas.
Flocks of malleys, shrill-screaming kittywakes, and different kinds of seagulls were tacking and half-tacking round the vessel, afar off, and the dark and ominous-like skua waited his chance to rob the malleys of whatever they might happen to pick up.
“Yes,” the surgeon said; “I think we’ll have it out of yonder.”
“Seems so to me, too,” said Claude. “We are all ready for a blow, Mr Lloyd?”
Mr Lloyd gave one glance forward and smiled.
“Ay, sir,” he replied, “all ready for a buster; and many is the sneezer, sir, I’ve come through in these latitudes, and higher up North too.”
These officers were on the bridge.
This latter was not the great elevated deck you see on passenger steamers right amidships. No, the Icebear’s bridge was but a plank, comparatively speaking. Not more than three feet wide, with a rope railing at one side, and a brass one at the other, with a step-ladder leading up to it from the quarter-deck, for it was between the bulwarks near the mizzen mast.
The glass was going down, and the day was far spent. Already the sun’s rays were beginning to fall aslant the waves.
“Had we started sooner,” remarked the doctor, “we would have been farther off the land ere now.”
“True, my good Dr Barrett, true,” replied Claude; “but could we have done so?”
“It would certainly have been difficult I admit; but if anything short of a hurricane comes along we can face it, and the night is short.”
No, it had not been easy getting away from Reykjavik indeed. It so happens that the good people of that town are exceedingly hospitable, and it is a hospitality that comes straight away from the heart. So there had been a kind of farewell levée on board Claude’s ship, and as there happened to lie in the roadstead a French merchantman and a Danish man-of-war, and the officers from both attended it and talked much, this made matters worse—or better.
But down went the sun, and ugly and angry were his parting gleams. He sank in a coppery haze, which lit up all the sea between. He seemed to squint and to leer at our heroes as much as to say, “You’ll catch it before long; something’s brewing. Good night; I’m off to bed, for bed is the best place.”
Down went the sun and up rose the wind. Twilight is very long in these regions, and before it had quite given place to night, the sea from being rippled got rough. The breeze seemed uncertain at first where to come from, and went puffing about from three to four points of the compass. Then it appeared to say to itself, “First thoughts are best; I’ll follow the swell; I’ll soon blow that down.” So it came roaring out of the north-west. Long before it did blow “a stiffener,” as the mate called it, looking up ahead through the gloaming air, you could have seen mysterious-looking great grey blankets of clouds, drifting fast and furiously towards the south-east. They might have been a few miles high, but soon the stream of clouds was lowered and thickened and darkened, till the horizon was hardly three cables’ length away all round. Then it was night—night with an ever-increasing breeze and a choppy, frothy sea.
The wind did blow the swell pretty flat, but substituted in its place genuine waves, as ragged and jagged as the mountain peaks of Iceland.
And the good ship by-and-by creaked and groaned in every timber, and thick darkness fell, and Claude had to trust to Providence, to steam, and the compass. There were two men at the wheel at midnight, and at that time probably the gale was at its worst, for on heaving the log it was found she was barely making one knot an hour. The seas—whole water—were coming in over the bows by tons, and sweeping right aft like a miniature Niagara; but the hatches had been battened down early in the evening, and the boats secured, so there was little injury done, though the load of water sadly hampered the vessel’s motion: it was not able to get away fast enough.
About two bells in the middle watch the Icebear struck.
Struck? But what or where? I know not; I cannot tell; it was no island, no rock. It may have been the carcase of some floating monster of the deep; or—who knows?—some wretched derelict or a portion of a wreck. It was a mystery. But she struck with a dull thud that quite stopped her way, and for a time made every heart beat with fear for her safety. She must have struck not only on the bows, but gone over something; all along her keel was the quivering grating felt, as if of a substance underneath.
For a while, too, the rudder and screw were hampered and the vessel’s way all but stopped.
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.” (Note 1.)
“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. (Note 2.) 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.”
Note 1. Sea-birds are usually unable to fly after they alight. A Cape pigeon, for example, gets giddy and frightened at once when put on deck.
Note 2. The author could adduce very many instances in proof of the good surgeon’s statement.