Chapter Fifteen.
The “Arrandoon” Anchors to the “Floe”—The Visit to the “Canny Scotia”—Silas Grig—A Sad Scene—Rory Relieves His Feelings—Strangers Coming from the Far West.
Seeing the skipper of the Canny Scotia and his mate come below together smiling, the steward readily guessed what they wanted, so he was not dilatory in producing the rum-bottle and two tumblers. Then the skipper pushed the former towards the mate, and said,—
“Help yourself, matie.”
And the mate dutifully and respectfully pushed it back again, saying,—
“After you, sir.”
This palaver finished, they both half-filled their tumblers with the ruby intoxicant, added thereto a modicum of boiling coffee from the urn that simmered on top of the stove, then, with a preliminary nod towards each other, emptied their glasses at a gulp. After this, gasping for breath, they beamed on each other with a newly-found friendliness.
“Have another,” said the skipper.
They had another, then went on deck.
After ten minutes of attentive gazing at the Arrandoon, “Well,” said the skipper, “I do call that a bit o’ pretty steering; if it ain’t, my name isn’t Silas Grig.”
“But there’s a deal o’ palaver about it, don’t you think so, sir?” remarked the mate.
“Granted, granted,” assented Silas; “granted, matie.”
The cause of their admiration was the way in which the Arrandoon was brought alongside the great ice-floe. She didn’t come stem on—as if she meant to flatten, her bows—and then swing round. Not she. She approached the ice with a beautiful sweep, describing nearly half a circle, then, broadside on to the ice, she neared it and neared it. Next over went the fenders; the steam roared from the pipe upwards into the blue air, like driven snow, then dissolved itself like the ghost of the white lady; the ship was stopped, away went the ice-anchors, the vessel was fast.
And no noise about it either. There may not be much seamanship now-a-days, but I tell you, boys, it takes a clever man to manage a big steamer prettily and well.
The Arrandoon was not two hundred yards from the Canny Scotia. Now round go the davits on the port quarter, outward swings the boat, men and officers spring nimbly into her, blocks rattle, and down goes the first whaler, reaching the water with a flop, but not a plash, and with keel as even and straight as a ruled line.
“I say, matie,” said Silas Grig, in some surprise, “if that boat ain’t coming straight away here, I hope I may never chew cheese again.”
So far as that was concerned, if Silas chose, he would at least have the chance of chewing cheese again, for the Arrandoon’s boat came rippling along towards them with a steady cluck-el-tee cluck-el-tee, which spoke well for the men at the oars.
“Well,” continued Silas, who, rough nut though he was, always meant well enough, “let us do the civil, matie; tell the steward to fill the rum-bottle, and pitch ’em a rope.”
The rope came in very handy; but there was no need for the rum; even in Greenland men can live without it—the officers of the Arrandoon had found that out.
McBain, with Allan and Rory,—the latter, by the way, seemed to have registered a vow to go everywhere and see everything,—stood on the quarter-deck of the Canny Scotia, the skipper of which craft was in front of him, a comical look of admiration on his round brick-coloured countenance, and his two hands deep in the pockets of his powerful pilot coat.
“Ay, sir! ay!” he was saying; “well, I must say ye do surprise me.”
He put such an emphasis on the “me” that one would have thought that to surprise Silas Grig was something to be quite boastful of ever after.
“All the way to the North Pole? Well, well; but d’ye think you’ll find it?”
“We mean to,” said Rory, boldly.
“Perseverando!” said Allan.
“The Perseverance!” cried the skipper. “I know the ship, a Peterheader. Last time I saw her she had got in the nips, and was lying keel up on the ice, yards and rigging all awry of course; and, bother her, I hope she’ll lie there till Silas Grig gets a voyage (a cargo), then when the Scotia is full ship, the Perseverance can get down off the shelf, and cabbage all the rest. Them’s my sentiments. But come below, gentlemen, come below; there is room enough in the cabin of the old Scotia for every man Jack o’ ye. Come below.”
Silas was right. There was room, but not much to spare, and, squeezed in between Allan and McBain, poor Rory was hardly visible, and could only reach the table with one hand.
The cabin of this Greenlandman can be described with a stroke of the pen, so to speak. It was square and not very lofty—a tall man required to duck when under a beam; the beams were painted white, the bulkheads and cabin doors—four in number—were grey picked out with green. One-half at least of the available space was occupied by the table; close around it were cushioned lockers; the only other furniture was the captain’s big chair and a few camp-stools, a big square stove with a roaring fire, and a big square urn fixed on top thereof, which contained coffee, had never been empty all the voyage, and would not be till the end thereof. I suppose a bucket of water could hardly be called furniture, but there it stood close to the side of the stove, and the concentric rings of ice inside it showed the difficulty everybody must experience who chose to quench his thirst in the most natural way possible.
Above, in the hollow of the skylight, hung a big compass, and several enormously long sealer’s telescopes.
“No rum, gentlemen?” said Silas; “well, you do astonish me; but you’ll taste my wife’s green ginger wine, and drink her health?”
“That we will,” replied McBain, “and maybe finish a bottle.”
“And welcome to ten,” said Silas; “and the bun, steward, bring the bun. That’s the style! My wife isn’t much to look at, gentlemen, but, for a bun or o’ drop o’ green ginger, I’ll back her against the whole world.”
After our heroes had done justice to the bun, and pledged the skipper’s good lady in the green ginger, that gentleman must needs eye them again and again, with as much curiosity as if they had been some new and wonderful zoological specimens, that he had by chance captured.
“All the way to the North Pole!” he muttered. “Well, well, but that does get over Silas.”
Rory could not help laughing.
“Funny old stick,” said Silas, joining in his merriment, “ain’t I?”
He did look all that and more, with his two elbows on the table, and his knuckles supporting his chin, for his face was as round as a full moon orient, and just the colour of a new flower-pot; then he laughed more with one side of his face than the other, his eyes were nowhere in the folds of his face, and his nose hardly worth mentioning.
After the laugh, beginning with Rory, had spread fairly round the table, everybody felt relieved.
“I’m only a plain, honest blubber-hunter, gentlemen,” said Silas Grig, apologetically, “with a large family and—and a small wife—but—but you do surprise me. There?”
(It is but fair to say that, as a rule, captains of Greenlandmen are far more refined in manner than poor Silas.)
But when McBain informed him that the Arrandoon would lay alongside him for a week or more, and help him to secure a voyage, and wouldn’t ship a single skin herself, Silas was more surprised than ever. Indeed, until this day I could not tell you what would have happened to Silas, had the mate not been providentially beside him to vent his feelings upon. On that unfortunate officer’s back he brought down his great shoulder-of-mutton fist with a force that made him jump, and his breath to come and go as if he had just been popped under a shower-bath.
“Luck’s come,” he cried. “Hey? hey?”
And every “hey?” represented a dig in the mate’s ribs with the skipper’s thumb of iron.
“Told ye it would, hey? Didn’t I? hey?”
“What’ll the old woman say, hey? Hey, boys? Hey, matie? Hey? Hey?”
“You gentlemen,” said Silas, alter his feelings had calmed down a trifle, “are all for sport, and Silas has to make a voyage. But you’ll have sport, gentlemen, that ye will. My men are sealing now. They’re among the young seals. It has been nothing but flay, flay, flay, for the last two rounds of the sun, and there isn’t such a very long night now, is there? And you saw the blood?”
Saw the blood, reader! Indeed, our heroes had. Where was it that that blood was not? All the beautiful snow was encrimsoned with it on the distant field of ice, where the men were carrying on their ghastly work. It was as if a great battle had been fought there, and the dead crangs lay in dozens and hundreds. A crang means a carcass. Is the adjective “dead,” then, not unnecessary? What else can a carcass or crang be but “dead”? Nay, but listen: let me whisper a truth in your ear, and I know your brave young blood will boil when I tell you: I’ve known our men, Englishmen and Scotchmen, flense the lambs while still alive.
From the field of slaughter the skins were being dragged to the ship by men with ropes, so there were streaks of red all the way to the ship, and all the vessel’s starboard side was smeared with blood. Indeed, I do not wish to harrow the feelings of my readers, and I shall but describe a few of the cruelties of sealing—no, on second thoughts, I will not even do that, because I know well you will believe me when I tell you these cruelties are very great, and believing this, if ever you have an opportunity of voting for a bill or signing a petition to get poor Greenland seals fair play, I know you will.
Silas Grig and our heroes took a walk to the field of unequal strife, and Rory and Allan, to whom all they saw was very new, were not a little horrified as well as disgusted.
“This,” said McBain, “is the young-sealing. We are not going to assist you in this; we are sportsmen, not butchers, Captain Grig?”
Silas grasped McBain’s hand. “Your feelings do you credit, sir,” he said—“they do. But I have feelings, too. Yes, a weather-beaten old stick like me has feelings! But I’m sent out here to make a voyage, and what can I do? I’ve a small wife and a large family; and my owners, too, would sack me if I didn’t bring the skins. I say,” he added, after a pause, “you know my mate?”
“Yes,” said McBain.
“Well,” said Silas, “you wouldn’t, imagine that a fellow with such an ugly chunk o’ a figure-head as that had feelings, eh? But he has, though; and during all this young-sealing business we both of us just drowns our feelings in the rum-bottle. Fact, sir! and old Silas scorns a lie. But, gentlemen, when all this wicked work is over, when we are away north from here, among the old seals, and when we can look at that sun again without seeing blood, then my matie and I banishes Black-Jack (the gallon measure from which rum is served is so called) and sticks to coffee and arrowroot; that we do!”
They had turned their backs on the by no means inviting scene, and were walking towards the Canny Scotia as Silas spoke.
“But,” said the Greenland mariner, “come and dine with the old man to-morrow. The last of the young seals will be on board by then, and we’ll have had a wash down; we’ll be clean and tidy like. Then hurrah for the old seals! That’s sport, if you like!—that’s fair play.”
“Ah!” said McBain, “your heart is in the right place, I can see that. I wish there were more like you. Do you seal on Sunday? Many do.”
Silas looked solemn. “I knows they do,” he said, “but Silas hasn’t done so yet, and he prays he never may be tempted to.”
“Captain Grig, we’ll come and dine with you, and we expect you to pay us the same compliment another day.”
“I daresay you fellows are glad to get home?” said Ralph, rising from the sofa and throwing down the volume he had been dreaming over.
“Not a bit of it!” said Rory and Allan, both in one breath; and Rory added, “You don’t know what a funny ship a real Greenlandman is! I declare you’ve lost a treat!”
“Does it smell badly?” asked Ralph, with a slight curl of his upper lip.
“Never a taste!” says Rory; “she’s as sweet as cowslips or clover, or newly-made hay; and the bun was beautiful!”
“The what?” said Ralph.
“Don’t tell him?” cried Allan; “don’t tell him!”
“And the green ginger!” said Rory, smacking his lips. “Ah, yes! the green ginger,” said Allan; “I never tasted anything like that in all my born days!”
“Hi, you, Freezing Powders!” cried Rory, “take my coat and out-o’-doors gear. D’ye hear? Look sharp?”
“I’m coming, sah; and coming plenty quick!”
“De-ah me!” from Cockie.
“Now bring my fiddle, you young rascal, into my cabin;” for Rory, reader, had that young-sealing scene on his brain, and he would not be happy till he had played it away. And a wild, weird lilt it was, too, that he did bring forth. Extempore, did you ask? Certainly, for he played as he thought and felt; all his soul seemed to enter the cremona, and to well forth again from the beautiful instrument, now in tones of plaintive sorrow, now in notes of wrath; and then it stopped all at once abruptly. That was Rory’s way; he had pitched fiddle and bow on the bed, and presently he returned to the saloon.
“Are you better?” inquired Allan. Rory only gave a little laugh, and sat down to read. It had taken McBain nearly a fortnight to get clear away from the Isle of Jan Mayen, for the frost had set in sharp and hard, and the great ice-saws had to be worked, and the aid of dynamite called in to blast the pieces. They were now some ten miles to the north and east of the island, but, so far as he knew on the day of his visit to the Scotia, he had bidden it farewell for ever.
It had not been for the mere sake of sport or adventure he had called in there, he had another reason. Old Magnus, before the sailing—ay, or even the building—of the Arrandoon, had heard that the island was inhabited by a party of wandering Eskimos. Wherever Eskimos were McBain had thought there must be dogs, and that was just what was wanting to complete the expedition—a kennel of sleigh-dogs. But, as we have seen, the Eskimo encampment was deserted, so McBain had to leave it disappointed. But, as it turned out, it was only temporarily deserted after all, and on the very day on which they had arranged to dine with Skipper Grig, two daring men, chiefs of a tribe of Eskimos, drawn in a rude sledge, were making their way towards the island. Their team consisted of over a dozen half-wild dogs, harnessed with ropes of skin and untanned leather. They seemed to fly across the sea of ice. Hardly could you see the dogs for the powdery snow that rose in clouds around them. Well might they hurry, for clouds were banking up in the west, a low wind came moaning over the dreary plain, and a storm was brewing, and if it burst upon them ere they reached the still distant island, then—