Chapter Twenty Two.
Captain Cobb Retires—More Torpedoing—The Great Ice-Hole—Strange Sport—The Terrible Zugaena—The Death Struggle.
Both Captain McBain and Silas Grig felt more easy in their minds when they had got fairly rid of the green-rooted monsters of icebergs that had lain so placidly yet so threateningly alongside their respective ships. And oh! by the way, how very calm, harmless, and gentle bergs like these can look, when there is no disturbing element beneath them, their snow-clad tops asleep and glistening in the sunlight; but I have seen them angry, grinding and crashing together, each upheaval representing a height of from fifteen to thirty feet; each upheaval representing a strength hydraulic equal in force to the might of the great ocean itself.
Our heroes had taken time by the forelock. They had “guncottoned the bergs,” as Captain Cobb termed it, and lay for the time being in square ice-locked harbours, and could bid defiance to almost any ordinary occurrence, whether gale of wind in the pack or swell from the distant sea.
As the days went by the black frost seemed only to increase in severity.
“How long d’ye think,” said Captain Cobb, one morning, while at breakfast in the Arrandoon—“how long d’ye think this state of affairs’ll last? ’cause, mind ye, I begin to feel a kind o’ riled already.”
McBain looked inquiringly at Silas.
“If it’s asking me you are,” said the latter, “I makes answer and says, it may be for months, but it can’t be for ever.”
“But the frost isn’t likely to go for a week, is it now?”
“That it won’t, worse luck,” was the reply.
“Well, then, gentlemen,” said Cobb, “this child is going off, straight away out o’ here back to Jan Mayen.”
“Back to Jan Mayen?”
“Back to Jan Mayen!” everybody said, or seemed to say, in one breath.
“I reckon ye heard aright,” said the imperturbable Yankee.
“It’s just like this, ye see,” he continued. “I’m paid by my employers to make observations on the old island down yonder; stopping here ain’t taking sights, but it’s taking the company’s dollars for nothing, so if you’ll—either o’ ye—lend me a hand or two, and promise to hoist up Cobb’s cockle-shell in the event of a squeeze, Cobb himself is off home, ’tain’t mor’n fifty miles.”
The journey was a dangerous one, nobody knew that better than the bold American himself, and it was a true sense of duty to his employers that caused him to undertake it. But having once made up his mind to a thing, Cobb was not the man to be deterred from accomplishing it.
So, with many a good wish for his safety, accompanied by only three men, he set out on his long journey over the snow. Rory, from the deck of the Arrandoon, and McBain from the nest, watched them as long as they were in sight. Indeed, I am not at all sure that Rory did not feel a little sorry he had not asked leave to accompany them, so fond was he of adventure in every shape and form.
It was a relief for him—and not for him alone—when McBain, in order to break the monotony of existence, and by way of doing something, proposed trying the effects of his torpedoes again at some distance from the ship, and forming a great ice-hole.
“Things will come up to breathe, and look about them, you know,” he explained, “and then we may get some sport, and Silas may bag a seal or two.”
Our heroes were overjoyed when the working party was called away. At last there was a prospect of doing something, and seeing an animal of some kind, for not only the bears, but the very birds had deserted them. Sometimes, indeed, a solitary snowbird would come flying around the ships. It would hover for awhile in the air, giving vent to many a peevish, mournful chirp, then fly away again.
“No, no, no!” it seemed to say, “there is nothing good to eat down there—no raw flesh, no blood—and so I’m off again to the distant sealing ground, where the yellow bear prowls, and the snow is red with blood.”
A few hours’ work with torpedoes, picks, and ice-saws, was enough to form an opening big enough for the purpose required. The broken pieces were either “landed high and dry,” or sunk beneath the pack, and so the work was completed.
“It’ll entail a deal of trouble, gentlemen,” said Dr McFlail, “to keep that hole clear with the temperature which we are at present enjoying—or rather enduring.”
“There is that in the sea, doctor,” said Silas, with a knowing nod, “which will save us the trouble.”
He wasn’t wrong. Not an hour elapsed ere a few black heads, with great wondering eyes, appeared above the surface and peered around them, and blinked at the sun, and seemed to enjoy mightily a sniff of the fresh air and a blink of the daylight.
“This is nice, now,” they said, “and ever so much better than being down there in the dark—quite an oasis in the desert.”
Bang! bang!
Two of them slowly sank to rise no more.
“This won’t do,” said Allan; “it is only murder to shoot poor seals that we cannot land and make some good out off. What is to be done?”
“Be quiet with ye!” said Rory. “Sure yonder is Seth himself, coming straight from the ship, in his suit of skins, and if he isn’t up to some manoeuvre then my name isn’t Roderick, that is all.”
Seth was up to something; he had a coil of rope with him, and the nattiest little harpoon that ever was handled.
“Fire away, gentlemen!” he said, lying down on the sunny side of a small hummock pretty close to the water’s edge, “only don’t hit the old trapper; he’d rather die in his bed if it be all the same to you.”
Undeterred by the fate that had befallen their companions, it was not long before other seals popped up to breathe. Our heroes were ready for them, and two again were killed, one being missed. Seth was ready for them, too. He sprang to his feet, and ere the smoke had melted in the thin air, one of the seals was neatly harpooned and dragged to the edge. Here it was gaffed, and lifted or pulled bodily on to the ice by help of Ralph’s powerful arm. The harpoon was released, and before the other seal had time to sink it was served in precisely the same manner.
The sport was exceedingly novel, and combined, as Rory said, “all the pleasures of shooting and fishing in one glorious whole.”
No work on natural history, so far as my reading goes, remarks upon the exceedingly great speed exhibited by the Greenland seal in his flight—it is in reality a flight—through and beneath the water. I have often been astonished at the rapidity of their movements; so swiftly do they dart along that the eye can barely follow them for the moment or two they are visible. This power of swimming enables them to pursue their finny prey for many miles under an ice-pack; it doubtless also enables them to escape the fangs of their natural enemy, the great Greenland shark (Scymnus borealis), and on the present occasion it accounted for their appearance at the great breathing-hole made for them by the torpedoes and ice-saws of the Arrandoon. The water under the pack would be everywhere else as black and dark as midnight, but through this opening the sunshine would stream in straight and powerful rays, and not seals alone, but fishes and monsters of the deep of many kinds, would naturally come towards the light, as the salmon does to the glimmer from the torch of the Highland poacher.
The sport obtained at the opening was not of a very exciting character on the first day, but next morn, to their joy, they found that a bear had been around, and had left the marks of his broad soles in the snow. Many more seals, too, came up to breathe, and more harpoons had to be requisitioned. Silas was once more in his glory at the prospect of adding a few more skins, and a few more tons of oil, to the cargo he had already shipped.
Towards afternoon the fun grew fast and furious, and when Peter came in person to announce dinner, he could hardly get his officers to pay any heed to the summons. Even Cockie down in the saloon heard the noise, and must needs inquire, as he stretched his neck and fastened one bead of an eye on his little black master.
“What’s all the to-do about? What’s all the to-do about?”
“I don’t know,” was the reply of Freezing Powders. “I don’t know no more nor you do, Cockie. I tinks dey has gone to blow derselves all to pieces again.”
Dinner was partaken of in a merrier mood that day than it had been for weeks. Silas was there, of course; in fact, he had become an honorary member of the Arrandoon mess.
“You see, Captain Grig,” McBain had observed, “we must have you as much with as now as we can, for we soon go different roads, don’t we?”
“Ah! yes,” replied Silas, with a bit of a sigh; “you go north; God send you safe back; and I go back to my little wife and large family.”
“Happy reunion, won’t it be?” said Allan.
The eyes of Silas sparkled, but his heart was too full of happy thoughts to say more than simply,—
“Yes.”
“Won’t the green ginger fly?” said Rory.
“I say, boys,” Ralph put in, “this sort of thing positively gives a man a kind of an appetite.”
Rory looked at him with such a mischievous twinkle in his eyes that Ralph longed to pinch him.
“Just as if ever you lost yours,” said Rory.
At this moment the sound of a rifle was heard, apparently close to the ship.
“It’s the trapper,” cried Rory; “it’s friend Seth. Sure enough I know the charming music of his long gun. Now, Ray, I’ll wager my fiddle he has bagged a bear.”
Rory was right for once, and here is how it fell out. Several bears had that day scented the battle from afar, or were attracted by the noise of the malleys and gulls that were now wheeling around the ships in thousands. They stood aloof while shooting was going on, sitting on their haunches licking their chops, greedy, hungry, expectant; but as soon as the sportsmen went off to dine,—
“Now is our time,” said one, “to get a bit of fresh meat.”
“Come on, then,” cried another; “there are a hundred seals lying on the ice. Hurrah?”
So down they came to the feast. They had not had such a treat for a whole day, and that is a long time for a bear to fast, and they made good use of their time, you may be sure, and so earnest were they, that they did not perceive a long, hairy creature that came creeping stealthily towards them. When at last one of them did observe this strange animal “with the tail of his eye,” he said to himself,—
“Oh! it is only a tiny bit of a young seal, hunting for a lost mother, perhaps. Well, I’ll have it presently by way of dessert.”
And almost immediately after, the sound that had startled our friends at their dessert rang out in the clear, frosty air, and Bruin’s head dropped never more to rise. His brother bears suddenly discovered they had eaten enough; anyhow, they remembered that it was always best to rise up from the table feeling that you could eat a little more, so they shambled away across the pack as fast as four legs could carry them.
“Bravo, Seth, old boy,” cried Rory and Allan, coming on the scene.
Ralph only waited to finish some pastry, then he too joined them.
“Why,” said the latter, “it is the biggest bear we have seen yet.”
In true trapper fashion, Seth was already on his knees beside the enormous carcass, engaged with knife and fist and elbow, “working the rascal out of his jacket,” as he called it, when Rory, who was not far from the edge of the water, started, or rather sprang back in horror.
“Oh! Allan, Allan! Ray, Ray! look!” he cried.
Well might he cry “look,” for a more terrible or revolting apparition never raises head over the black waters of the Greenland ocean than the zugaena, or hammer-headed shark. The skull is in shape precisely what the name indicates, that of a gigantic hammer, with a great eye at each end, and the mouth beneath. This shark is not unfrequently met with in the northern seas, and he is just as fierce as he is fearful to behold.
Allan and Ralph both saw the brute, and neither could repress a shudder. It appeared but for a few moments, then dived below again.
Silas and McBain, coming up at the time, were told of the occurrence.
“I know the vile beasts well,” said Silas, “and they do say that they never appear in these seas without bringing a big slice o’ ill-luck in their wake. That is unless you catches them, and sometimes that doesn’t save the ship. When I was skipper o’ the Penelope, and that is more than ten years ago, there wasn’t a lazier chap in the crew than snuffy Sandy Foster. He wasn’t a deal o’ use down below, he did nothing on deck, and he never went aloft. He had two favourite positions: one was sitting before a joint of junk, with a knife in his hand; t’other was leaning against the bulwarks with a pipe in his mouth, and we never could make out which he liked best.
“‘Did ever you do anything clever in your life, Sandy?’ I asked one day.
“Sandy took his pipe out of his mouth and eyed the mainmast for fully half a minute. Then he brought his eyes round to my face, and said,—
“‘Not that I can remember o’, sir.’
“‘The first time, Sandy,’ says I, ‘that you do anything clever, I’ll give you a pair of the best canvas trousers in the ship.’
“Sandy’s eyes a kind of sparkled; I’d never seen them sparkle before.
“‘I’ll win them,’ said Sandy, ‘wait till ye see.’
“And, indeed, gentlemen, I hadn’t long to wait. One day the brig was dead before the wind under a crowd o’ cloth, for there wasn’t much wind, but a nasty rumble-tumble sea; there was no doubt, gentlemen, from the looks o’ that sea, that we had just come through a gale o’ wind, and there was evidence enough to go to jury on that there was another not far away. Well, it was just in the dusk o’ the evening—we were pretty far south—that the cry got up,—
“‘Man overboard.’
“It was our bo’s’n’s boy, a lad of fourteen, who had gone by the run. Singing out to the mate to lay to, I ran forward, and if ever I forget the expression of the poor bo’s’n’s face as he wrung his hands and cried, ‘Oh, save my laddie! Oh, save my laddie!’ my name will change to something else than Silas.
“‘I’ll save him,’ cried a voice behind me. Some one rushed past. There was a splash in the water next moment, and I had barely time to see it was Sandy. Before the boat reached the spot they were a quarter of a mile astern, but they were saved; they found the bo’s’n’s laddie riding ‘cockerty-coosie’ on Sandy’s shoulder, and Sandy spitting out the mouthfuls of salt water, laughing and crying,—
“‘I’ve won the breeks! I’ve won the canvas breeks, boys!’
“He had won them, and that right nobly, too. Well, after he had worn them for over a month, it became painfully evident even to Sandy that they sorely needed washing; but, woe is me! Sandy was too lazy to put a hand to them. But he thought of a plan, nevertheless, to save trouble. He steeped them in a soda ley, attached a strong line to them, and pitched them overboard to tow.
“When, after two hours’ towing, Sandy went to haul them up, great was his astonishment to find a great hammer-head spring half out of the water and seize them. Sandy had never seen so awful a monster before; he put it down as an evil spirit.
“‘Let go,’ he roared; ‘let go my breeks, ye beast.’
“Now, maybe, with those hooked teeth of his, the shark could not let go; anyhow, he did not.
“‘I dinna ken who ye are, or what ye are,’ cried Sandy, ‘but ye’ll no get my breeks. Ah! bide a wee.’
“Luckily the dolphin-striker lay handy, Sandy made a grab at it, and next minute it was hard and fast in the hammer-head’s neck. To see how that monster wriggled and fought, more like a fiend than a fish, when we got him on deck, would have—but look—look—r—”
Seth had not been idle while his companions were talking. He had cut off choice pieces of blubber and thrown them into the sea; he had coiled his rope on the ice close by; then, harpoon in hand, he knelt ready to strike. Nor had he long to wait. The bait took, the bait was taken, the harpoon had left the trapper’s hand and gone deep into the monster’s body.
I will not attempt to describe the scene that followed—it was a death-scene that no pen could do justice to—the wild struggle of the giant shark in the water, his mad and frantic motions ere clubbed to death on the ice, and his terrible appearance as he snapped his dreadful jaws at everything within reach; but here is a fact, strange and weird though it may read—fully half an hour after the creature seemed dead, and lying on its side, while our heroes stood silently round it, with the wild birds wheeling and screaming closely overhead, the zugaena suddenly threw itself on its stomach as if about to swim away. It was the last of its movements, and a mere spasmodic and painless one, though very distressing to witness.