Chapter Twenty Nine.

The Consultation—Bearing up for Home—The Wanderers’ Return.

On the twentieth day of July, eighteen hundred and ever so much, but just one month from the day they had landed the Yankee trapper in the wild country in which he was monarch of all he surveyed, the brave yacht Snowbird, after many never-to-be-forgotten dangers and trials, had reached the latitude of 81 degrees north, and was far to the east of Spitzbergen. It is a month since we have seen her, and how she is lying-to in front of a tremendous bar of ice, through which she has tried, but tried in vain, to force a passage. All that men could do has been done to penetrate farther towards the mysterious regions around the Pole, and now a group of anxious men are assembled deep in consultation in the saloon. The centre figures of this group are McBain and weird old Magnus. The former is standing, with arms folded and lowered brow, gazing calmly down on the table, where is spread out an old and tattered chart,—an old and tattered chart, tapped fiercely by the thin skinny fingers of Magnus, as leaning over the table he gazes up almost wildly at the deep, thoughtful countenance of his commander.

Allan and Ralph are leaning over the backs of chairs, and Rory is leaning on the shoulder of Ralph, but every eye is fixed upon the captain.

Stevenson and the mate of the Trefoil form a portion of the group; they are seated a little way from the others, but are none the less earnest in looks and appearance.

“Behold what we have already borne!” Magnus was saying excitedly, in fierce, fast words. “See what we have already come through in our good yacht; storms have howled around us; tempests have raged; the sea has been churned into foam, blown into whitest smoke, like the surf of the wild Atlantic when the storm spirit shrieks among the crags of Unst, but has she not come bravely through it all? Mighty bergs have tried to clutch her, but she has eluded their slippery grasp, and now, though her planks are scraped by their sides, till, fore and aft, she is as white as the Snowbird you call her, is she not as strong and as dauntless as ever? What is there to come through, that we have not already come through? What is it the yacht has to dare, that she has not already dared? You sent for old Magnus to ask his advice; he gives it. Here in that spot lies the Isle of Alba in a sea of open water. And wealth untold lies there! Eastward—I say eastward still—and eastward, for only by going eastward as heretofore, can you get north. Magnus has spoken.”

“I will weigh all you have said, my good friend Magnus,” was McBain’s reply. He spoke quietly and distinctly, with head a little on one side; “but, before coming to a conclusion of any kind, I should like to hear the opinions of our shipmates. The mate of the unfortunate Trefoil there has had longer experience of these regions than any of us, bar yourself, bold Magnus. What says he? Does he think there is a sea of open water around the Pole?”

“It is my humble belief there is,” said the mate; “and, leaving aside all selfish reasons, I am with you, heart and soul, if you attempt to reach it this season.”

“Spoken like a man,” said McBain; “but do you think that, with ice before us, like what you see, there is a possibility of reaching it in a sailing-ship?”

“You ask me a straightforward question,” said the mate, “and in the same fashion I answer you. I do not believe there is the slightest chance of our doing so. Brave hearts can do a great deal in this world, but, unaided by science, they cannot do everything. Hannibal, when he crossed the Alps, did not melt the rocks with vinegar. Science alone can aid us in reaching the Pole. Sledges we need, balloons are needed, and last, but not least, a ship with steam.”

“I entirely concur with you,” said McBain. “What say you, boys?”

“I think the mate of the Trefoil is right,” said Ralph and Allan.

“’Tis not in mortals to command success,” said Rory; “but I think we’ve done rather more—we’ve deserved it.”

“Well said,” cried Allan.

“Yes, well said,” added McBain; “and, after all, who shall say that we may not return to these seas again. None of us are very old, and wonders never cease. Why, I do declare that bold Magnus here looks fully ten years younger with the good the cruise has done him?”

“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed the weird old man, gathering up that chart that seemed so sacred a thing in his eyes; “and if ever you do, and old man Magnus is still alive, and has one leg left to hop upon, if it’s only a wooden one, he’ll trust to sail with you for the land he loves so well.”

“The land we all love so well,” said McBain; “the seas to which no one ever yet sailed without wishing to revisit them.”

There was a faint double knock at the saloon door as the captain ceased speaking, and Mitchell entered.

“Well, Mr Mitchell, come in, but not so doubtingly; we have done talking, and have come to the unanimous conclusion that the time has arrived for us to bear up.”

“Hurrah! to that,” said Mitchell, striking his left palm with his right fist in a very solid manner indeed.

“And now, sir,” continued Mitchell, “I come to tell you that quite a wall of mist is rolling down upon us from the nor’-east. It is as close and black as factory smoke, and it is now close aboard of us.”

“Any wind?”

“Not much, sir, but what little there is is coming down along with the mist.”

“Then fill the foreyard, Mr Mitchell. Set every stitch she’ll bear, studding-sails if you like, so long as it isn’t too dark and close, and the bergs are anything like visible. I’ll be on deck myself presently.”

“Well, Rory,” said Captain McBain, entering the snuggery that same night, rubbing his hands and beaming with smiles, “so we have borne up at last; how do you like the idea of returning to your native land after all your long journeyings and wild adventures?”

“Indeed, I like it immensely,” replied Rory, “barring the difference that it isn’t my native land I’ll be going to after all, but the land o’ the mountain and the flood. Oh! won’t I be happy to meet Allan’s dear mother and sister again! And even Janet, the dear old soul!”

“Well,” said McBain, taking up Rory’s fiddle and thoughtfully bringing some very discordant notes out of it, “I sincerely hope they will be all alive to meet us: if the meeting be all right I don’t fear for the greeting.” Then brightening up and putting down the instrument, he continued, “I’ve been leaning over the bows for the last hour, and thinking, and I’ve come to the conclusion that we haven’t done so badly by our cruise after all.”

“We haven’t filled up with ivory from the mammoth caves though,” said Ralph, with a sigh.

“Why that plaintive sigh, poor soul?” asked Rory.

“Ah! because, you know,” replied Ralph, pinching Rory’s ear, “we haven’t made wealth untold, and I’ll have to marry my grandmother after all.”

“Oh!” cried McBain, “your somewhat antiquated cousin; I had forgotten all about her.”

“I hadn’t,” said Ralph.

“Never mind,” said Rory, “something may turn up, and even if the worst comes to the worst, I’ll be at the wedding, and play the Dead March in Saul.”

“Ah!” said Ralph, “it is just as well for you that you moved out of my reach, you saucy boy?”

“There are two thousand pounds to a share,” continued McBain, “if we sell our furs and oils only indifferently well.”

“And sure,” said Rory, “even that is better than a stone behind the ear. And look at all the fun we have had, and all the adventures; troth, we’ll have stories to tell all our lives, if we never go to sea any more, and live till we’re as old as the big hill o’ Howth.”

“But I think, you know, boys,” McBain went on, “we have gained a deal more than the simple pecuniary value of what lies in our tanks and lockers. Increased health and strength, for instance.”

“Ah?” added Allan, “strength of mind as well as body, for, positively, before I left Glentroom, I did little else but mope—now, I think I won’t do anything of the kind again. With the little capital I have obtained, I will begin and cultivate my glen—it is worth more than rabbits’ food.”

“Yes,” said McBain, “there is gold in the glen.”

“Speaking figuratively, yes.”

“It only needs perseverance to make it yield it. What a grand thing that perseverance is! I think, boys, we’ve learned a little of its virtue, even in this cruise of ours, though we haven’t done everything we had hoped. But perseverance builds names and fortunes—it builds cities too.”

“It builds continents,” said Rory, looking very wise—for him; “just look what a midge of a creature the coral zoophyte is, but look at the work it is doing every day, the worlds it is throwing up almost, for future millions to inhabit.”

Thus continued our heroes talking till long past midnight; and even after they had retired, one at least did not fall all at once asleep. That one was Allan. He began to believe that his dreams of restoring his dear old roof-tree, Arrandoon Castle, would yet be realised. That a time would soon come when his mother and sister would sit in halls as noble as any his forefathers had occupied, and mingle among a peasantry as happy and content as they were in the good old years of long, long ago. Perseverance would do it; and, happy thought, he would adopt a new badge, and it would neither be a flower, nor a fern, nor a feather, but simply a piece of coral. Then presently he found himself deep down in the green translucent waters of the Indian Ocean, in a cave, in a coral isle, conversing with a mermaid as freely as if it were the most natural thing in all the world; then he awoke, and behold it was broad daylight.

At least it was just as broad daylight as it was likely to be, while the good yacht was still enveloped in the bosom of that dense mist.

The Snowbird evidently did not think herself the best used yacht in the world. They would not give her sail enough to let her fly along as she wanted to, and, more than that, she was constantly being checked by the pieces of ice that struck and hammered at her on both bow and quarter. Sometimes she seemed to lose her temper and stop almost dead still, as much as to say, “I do think such treatment most ungrateful after all I’ve gone through, and, if it continues, I declare I won’t go another step of my toe towards home.”

Ah! but when a week passed away, and when all at once the yacht sailed out from this dark and pitiless mist, and found herself in a blue rippling sea, with a blue and cloudless sky overhead, and never a bit of ice to be seen, then she did regain her temper.

“Well,” she said, “this is nice, this is perfectly jolly; now for a trifle more sail, and won’t I go rolling home!”

Sunlight seemed to bring joy to every heart. Our heroes walked the deck arrayed in their best, walked erect with springy steps and smiling faces. They had laid aside their winter and donned their summer clothing, and summer was in their hearts as well.

But the Snowbird, the once beautiful Snowbird, now all scraped with ice and bare, should she have holiday attire likewise? She was not forgotten, I do assure you. For days and days men were slung in ropes overboard, on all sides of her, scraping, and painting, and polishing; men were hung like herrings aloft, scraping and varnishing there; and soon the decks were scrubbed to a snowy whiteness, and every bit of brass about her shone like burnished gold. She seemed a spick-and-span new Snowbird, and, what is more, she seemed to feel it too, and give herself all the additional airs and graces she could think of.

At long last the seagulls came sailing to meet her, and a day or two thereafter,—

“Land, ho!” was the glad cry from the outlook aloft. Only a long blue mist on the distant horizon, developing itself soon however, into a black line capped with green. Presently the dark line grew bigger, and then it became fringed beneath with a line of snowy white.

Shetland once again; and when it opened out more, and began to fall off to the bow, the primitive cottages could be descried, and the diminutive cattle and the sheep that browsed on its braes.

Even great Oscar, the Saint Bernard, must needs put his paws on the bulwarks, and gaze with a longing sniff towards the land, then jumping on deck go bounding along, barking for very joy; and as the little Skye looked so miserable because he could only have a sniff through the lee scuppers, Rory lifted him on to the capstan, and pointed out the land to him.

Then rough sea-dogs of men pulled off from a little village to greet them, dressed in jackets like the coats of bears. Rough though they looked, the foreyard was hauled aback all the same.

“No,” they said, “they didn’t think the country was at war.” That was all they could say; but they gave the captain a week-old newspaper and fish for all hands, in return for a few cakes of tobacco.

Then away they pulled, and the Snowbird sailed on. Lerwick was reached in good time, and here they cast anchor for five hours; here weird old Magnus bade them all an affectionate adieu, and here our heroes landed to telegraph to their friends.

How anxiously the replies were waited for, and with what trembling hands and beating hearts they opened them when they did arrive, only those can know who have been years absent from their native shores, without hearing from those they hold dear.

The gist of the despatches was as follows:—Number 1 to Allan from Arrandoon. “All alive and well.” Number 2 to Ralph. “Father alive and well, will meet you at Oban. Your cousin, alas! no more. Fortune falls to you.”

“Hurrah!” cried Ralph, “my cousin is dead!”

McBain could not restrain a smile.

“What a strange equivocal way of expressing your grief!” he said.

“Och!” said Rory, “excuse the poor boy; he won’t have to marry his grandmother nevermore.”

Rory’s own telegram was the least satisfactory. It was from his agents. It was all about rents, and they didn’t advise him to return to Ireland “just yet.”

“I’m right glad of that,” said Allan; “you shall stop with me till ‘just yet’ blows over.”

There was nothing to keep them much longer at Shetland. Yet the moors were all purple with heather. Allan suggested gathering a garland to hang at the Snowbird’s main truck, where the crow’s-nest had been through all the Arctic winter.

“So romantic a proposal,” said Rory, “deserves seconding, though ’deed and in troth, when you spoke, Allan, of gathering heather, I fancied it would be a broom you’d be after making. There is a spice of poetry in you after all.”

Two days after this, on a lovely balmy August afternoon, with just wind enough to fill the sails, the Snowbird, looking as white in canvas as her namesake, looking as clean and as taut and as trim as though she had never left the Scottish shores, rounded the point of Ardnamurchan, and stood in towards Loch Sunart. Hardly had they opened out the broad blue lake when McBain exclaimed, with joyous excitement in his every tone,—

“Boys, come here, quick!”

The boys came bounding.

“Look yonder, what is that?” As she spoke he pointed towards a tidy little cutter yacht that came rushing towards them over the water as if she couldn’t come quickly enough.

“The Flower of Arrandoon!” every one said in a breath. And so it was. Too impatient to remain any longer at Oban, our heroes’ friends had set sail to meet them. In fifteen minutes more they were all together on board the Snowbird.

I would much rather leave it to the reader’s imagination than tell of the joyous greetings that followed, of the pleasant passage up the canal and through the lake, till once more anchored in sight of the dear old castle, surrounded with its hills of glorious purple heather; of the return to Arrandoon, and the wildness of the dogs, and the ecstasies of poor old Janet, for as the chain rattles over the bows and the anchor drops in the waters of the lake—the Cruise of the “Snowbird” ends.

It remains only for me, the author, to briefly breathe that little word, which never yet was spoken without some degree of tender sorrow, and say Adieu.