Chapter Twenty Seven.
Working along the Pack Edge—Among the Seals again—A Bumper Ship—Adventures on the Ice—Ted Wilson’s Promotion.
The Arrandoon was steaming slowly along the pack edge, wind still westerly, the Canny Scotia, with all canvas exposed, a mile or more to leeward of her. Both were heading in the same direction, north and by east, for McBain and our heroes had determined not to desert Silas until he really had what he called a voyage—in other words, a full ship.
“We can spare the time, you know,” the captain had said to Ralph; “a fortnight, will do it, and I dare say Rory here doesn’t object to a little more sport before going away to the far north.”
“That I don’t,” Rory had replied.
“If we fall among the old seals, a fortnight will do it.”
“Ay,” Allan had said, “and won’t old Silas be happy!”
“Yes,” from McBain; “and, after all, to be able to give happiness to others is certainly one of the greatest pleasures in this world.”
Dear reader, just a word parenthetically. I am so sure that what McBain said is true, that I earnestly advise you to try the experiment suggested by his words, for great is the reward, even in this world, of those who can conquer self and endeavour to bring joy to others.
The Arrandoon steamed along the pack edge, but it must not be supposed that this was a straight line, or anything like it. Indeed it was very much like any ordinary coastline, for here was a bay and yonder a cape, and yonder again, where the ice is heavier, a bold promontory. But Greenlandmen call a bay a “bight,” and a cape they call a “point-end.” Let us adopt their nomenclature.
The Canny Scotia, then, avoided these point-ends; she kept well out to sea, well away from the pack, for there was not over-much wind, and Silas Grig had no wish to be beset again. But the Arrandoon, on the other hand, steamed, as I have said, in a straight line. She scorned to double a point, but went steadily on her course, ploughing her way through the bergs. There was one advantage in this: she could the more easily discover the seals, for in the month of May these animals, having done their duty by their young, commence their return journey to the north, the polar regions being their home par excellence. They are in no hurry getting back, however. They like to enjoy themselves, and usually for every one day’s progress they make, they lie two or three on the ice. The capes, or point-ends, are favourite positions with them, and on the bergs they may be seen lying in scores, nor if the sun be shining with any degree of strength are they at all easily disturbed. It is their summer, and they try to make the best of it. Hark now to that shout from the crow’s-nest of the Arrandoon.
“A large patch of seals in sight, sir.”
Our heroes pause in their walk, and gaze upwards; from the deck nothing is visible to windward save the great ice-pack.
“Where away?” cries Stevenson.
“On the weather bow, sir, and a good mile in through the pack.”
“What do you think, sir?” says Stevenson, addressing his commander. “Shall we risk taking the ice again?”
“Risk, Stevenson?” is the reply. “Why, man, yes; we’ll risk anything to do old Silas a good turn. We’ll risk more yet, mate, before the ship’s head is turned homewards.”
Then the ship is stopped, and signals are made to Silas, who instantly changes his course, and, after a vast deal of tacking and half-tacking, bears down upon them, and being nearly alongside, gets his main-yard aback, and presently lowers a boat and comes on board the Arrandoon.
Our heroes crowd around him.
“Why,” they say, “you are a perfect stranger; it is a whole week since we’ve seen you.”
“Ay,” says Silas, “and a whole week without seeing a seal—isn’t it astonishing?”
“Ah! but they’re in sight now,” says McBain. “I’m going to take the ice, and I’ll tow you in, and if you’re not a bumper ship before a week, then this isn’t the Arrandoon, that’s all.”
Silas is all smiles; he rubs his hands, and finally laughs outright, then he claps his hand on his leg, and,—
“I was sure of it,” says Silas, “soon as ever I saw your signal. ‘Matie,’ says I, ‘yonder is a signal from the Arrandoon. I’m wanted on board; seals is in sight, ye maybe sure. Matie,’ says I, ‘luck’s turned again;’ and with that I gives him such a dig in the ribs that he nearly jumped out of the nest.”
“Make the signal to the Scotia, Stevenson,” says McBain, “to clew up, and to get all ready for being taken in tow. Come below, Captain Grig, lunch is on the table.”
Fairly seated at the table, honest Silas rubbed his hands again and looked with a delighted smile at each of his friends in turn. There was a bluff heartiness about this old sailor which was very taking.
“I declare,” he said, “I feel just like a schoolboy home for a holiday?”
Rory and Silas were specially friendly.
“Rory, lad,” he remarked, after a pause, “we won’t be long together now.”
“No,” replied Rory; “and it isn’t sorry I am, but really downright sad at the thoughts of your going away and leaving us. I say, though—happy thought!—send Stevenson home with your ship and you stay with us in place of him.”
Silas laughed. “What would my owners say, boy? and what about my little wife, eh?”
“Ah! true,” said Rory; “I had forgotten.” Then, after a pause, he added, more heartily, “But we’ll meet again, won’t we?”
“Please God!” said Silas, reverently. “I think,” Rory added, “I would know your house among a thousand, you have told me so much about it—the blue-grey walls, the bay windows, the garden, with its roses and—and—”
“The green paling,” Silas put in. “Ah, yes! the green paling, to be sure; how could I have forgotten that? Well, I’ll come and see you; and won’t you bring out the green ginger that day, Silas!”
“And the bun,” added Silas. “And the bun,” repeated Rory after him. “And won’t my little wife make you welcome, too! you may bet your fiddle on that!”
Then these two sworn friends grasped hands over the table, and the conversation dropped for a time.
But there perhaps never was a much happier Greenland skipper than Silas Grig, when he found his ship lying secure among the ice, with thousands on thousands of old seals all around him. The weather continued extremely fine for a whole week. The little wind there had been, died all away, and the sun shone more warmly and brightly than it had done since the Arrandoon came to the country. The seals were so cosy that they really did not seem to mind being shot, and those that were scared off one piece of ice almost immediately scrambled on to another. “Fire away!” they seemed to say; “we are so numerous that we really won’t miss a few of us. Only don’t disturb us more than you can help.”
So the seals hugged the ice, basking in the bright sunshine, either sleeping soundly or gazing dreamily around them with their splendid eyes, or scratching their woolly ribs with their flippers for want of something to do.
And bang, bang, bang! went the rifles; they never seemed to cease from the noon of night until mid-day, nor from mid-day until the noon of night again.
The draggers of skins went in pairs for safety, and thus many a poor fellow who tumbled into the sea between the bergs, escaped with a ducking when otherwise he would have lost his life.
Ralph—long-legged, brawny-chested Saxon Ralph—was among “the ducked,” as Rory called the unfortunates. He came to a space of water which was too wide even for him. He would not be beaten, though, so he pitched his rifle over first by way of beginning the battle. Then he thought, by swinging his heavy cartridge-bag by its shoulder-strap the weight would help to carry him over. He called this jumping from a tangent. It was a miserable failure. But the best of the fun—so Rory said, though it could not have been fun to Ralph—was this: when he found himself floundering in the water he let go the bag of cartridges, which at once began to sink, but in sinking caught his heel, and pulled him for the moment under water. Poor Ralph! his feelings may be better imagined than described.
“I made sure a shark had me!” he said, quietly, when by the help of his friend Rory, he had been brought safely to bank.
It was not very often that Ralph had a mishap of any kind, but, having come to grief in this way, it was not likely that Rory would throw away so good a chance of chaffing him.
He suddenly burst out laughing at luncheon that day, at a time when nobody was speaking, and when apparently there was nothing at all to laugh about.
“What now, Rory? what now, boy?” said McBain, with a smile of anticipation.
“Oh!” cried Rory, “if you had only seen my big English brother’s face when he thought the shark had him!”
“Was it funny?” said Allan, egging him on.
“Funny!” said Rory. “Och I now, funny is no name for it. You should have seen the eyes of him!—and his jaw fall!—and that big chin of his. You know, Englishmen have a lot of chin, and—”
“And Irishmen have a lot of cheek,” cried Ralph. “Just wait till I get you on deck, Row boy.”
“I’d make him whustle,” suggested the doctor.
“Troth,” Rory went on, “it was very nearly the death o’ me. And to see him kick and flounder! Sure I’d pity the shark that got one between the eyes from your foot, baby Ralph.”
“Well,” said Ralph, “it was nearly the death of me, anyhow, having to take off all my clothes and wring them on top of the snow.”
“Oh! but,” continued Rory, assuming seriousness, and addressing McBain, “you ought to have seen Ralph just then, sir. That was the time to see my baby brother to advantage. Neptune is nobody to him. Troth, Ray, if you’d lived in the good old times, it’s a gladiator they’d have made of you entirely.”
Here came a low derisive laugh from Cockie’s cage, and Ralph pitched a crust of bread at the bird, and shook his fingers at Rory.
But Rory kept out of Ralph’s way for a whole hour after this, and by that time the storm had blown clean away, so Rory was safe.
Allan had his turn next day. The danger in walking on the ice was chiefly owing to the fact that the edges of many of the bergs had been undermined by the waves and the recent swell, so that they were apt to break off and precipitate the unwary pedestrian into the water.
Here is Allan’s little adventure, and it makes one shudder to think how nearly it led him to being an actor in a terrible tragedy. He was trudging on after the seals with rifle at full cock, for he expected a shot almost immediately, when, as he was about to leap, the snowy edge of the berg gave way, and down he went. Instinctively he held his rifle out to his friend, who grasped it with both hands, the muzzle against his breast, and thus pulled him out. It seemed marvellous that the rifle did not go off.
(Both these adventures are sketched from the life.)
When safe to bank, and when he noticed the manner in which he had been helped out, poor Allan felt sick, there is no other name for it.
“Oh, Ralph, Ralph!” he said, clutching his friend by the shoulder to keep himself from falling, “what if I had killed you?”
When told of the incident that evening after dinner, McBain, after a momentary silence, said quietly,—
“I’m not sorry such a thing should have happened, boys; it ought to teach you caution; and it teaches us all that there is Some One in whose hands we are; Some One to look after us even in moments of extremest peril.”
But I think Allan loved Ralph even better after this.
Two weeks’ constant sealing; two weeks during which the crews of the Arrandoon and Canny Scotia never sat down to a regular meal, and never lay down for two consecutive hours of repose, only eating when hungry and sleeping when they could no longer keep moving; two weeks during which nobody knew what o’clock it was at any particular time, or which was east or west, or whether it were day or night. Two weeks, then the seals on the ice disappeared as if by magic, for the frost was coming.
“Let them go,” said Silas, shaking McBain warmly by the hand. “Thanks to you, sir, I’m a bumper ship. Why, man, I’m full to the hatches. Low freeboard and all that sort of thing. Plimsoll wouldn’t pass us out of any British harbour. But, with fair weather and God’s help, sir, we’ll get safely home.”
“And now,” McBain replied, “there isn’t a moment to lose. We must get out of here, Captain Grig, or the frost will serve us a trick as it did before.”
With some difficulty the ships were got about and headed once more for the open sea.
None too soon, though, for there came again that strange, ethereal blue into the sky, which, from their experiences of the last black frost, they had learned to dread. The thermometer sank, and sank, and sank, till far down below zero.
The Arrandoon took her “chummy ship” in tow.
“Go ahead at full speed,” was the order.
No, none too soon, for in two hours’ time the great steam-hammer had to be set to work to break the newly-formed bay ice at the bows of the Arrandoon, and fifty men were sent over the side to help her on. With iron-shod pikes they smashed the ice, with long poles they pushed the bergs, singing merrily as they worked, working merrily as they sang, laughing, joking, stamping, shouting, and cheering as ever and anon the great ship made another spurt, and tore along for fifty or a hundred yards. Handicapped though she was by having the Scotia in tow, the Arrandoon fought the ice as if she had been some mighty giant, and every minute the distance between her and the open water became less, till at last it could be seen even from the quarter-deck. But the frost seemed to grow momentarily more intense, and the bay- ce stronger and harder between the bergs. Never mind, that only stimulated the men to greater exertions. It was a battle for freedom, and they meant to win. With well-meaning though ridiculous doggerel, Ted Wilson led the music,—
“Work and keep warm, boys; heave and keep hot,
Jack Frost thinks he’s clever; we’ll show him he’s not.
Beyond is the sea, boys;
Let us fight and get free, boys;
One thing will keep boiling, and that is the pot.
With a heave O!
Push and she’ll go.
To work and to fight is the bold sailor’s lot.
Heave O—O—O!
“Go fetch me the lubber who won’t bear a hand,
We’ll feed him on blubber, we’ll stuff him with sand.
But yonder our ships, boys,
Ere they get in the nips, boys,
We’ll wrestle and work, as long’s we can stand,
Then cheerily has it, men,
Heave O—O—O!
Merrily has it, men,
Off we go, O—O—O!”
Yes, reader, and away they went, and in one more hour they were clear of the ice, the Arrandoon had cast the Scotia off, and banked her fires, for, together with her consort, she was to sail, not steam, down to the island of Jan Mayen, where they were to take on board the sleigh-dogs, and bid farewell to Captain Cobb, the bold Yankee astronomer.—There was but little wind, but they made the most of what there was. Silas dined on board that day, as usual. They were determined to have as much of the worthy old sailor as they could. But before dinner one good action was performed by McBain in Captain Grig’s presence. First he called all hands, and ordered them aft; then he asked Ted Wilson to step forward, and addressed him briefly as follows:
“Mr Wilson, I find I can do with another mate, and I appoint you to the post.”
Ted was a little taken aback; a brighter light came into his eyes; he muttered something—thanks, I suppose—but the men’s cheering drowned his voice. Then our heroes shook hands with him all around, and McBain gave the order,—
“Pipe down.”
But as soon as Ted Wilson returned to his shipmates they shouldered him, and carried him high and dry right away forward, and so down below.