Chapter Ten.
The “Humboldt” Glacier.
The two ships were at this time floating in a tolerably broad expanse of open water; but at a distance of some seven miles ahead the pack-ice stretched, apparently unbroken, across their track for miles. The skipper of the whaler, however, shouted down to them from his elevated perch the intelligence that a somewhat intricate but continuous channel extended through this ice in a northerly direction as far as the eye could reach. Toward this channel, then, away they went at a speed of something like sixteen knots per hour, the barque with her string of colours still fluttering bravely in defiance of the adverse gale, and the Flying Fish with the white ensign of the Royal Yacht Squadron, of which Sir Reginald was a member, streaming from her ensign staff in honour of little Florrie. It was a strange sight, even in that region of fantastic phantasmagoria, to see the two ships, one of which, moreover, wore such an unaccustomed shape, dashing rapidly along through the black foam-flecked water, with ice in every conceivable form heaped and piled around them, and their bright-hued flags fluttering against the dark and dismal background of a stormy sky; and the skipper of the whaler possesses to this day a spirited water-colour sketch of the scene, executed on the spot by the colonel, which he exhibits with becoming pride whenever he relates the story of his wonderful escape from the threatening icebergs.
Half an hour later they entered the channel through the ice. Narrow and tortuous at first, it gradually widened out, and, after a journey of some fourteen or fifteen miles, turned sharply off in a direction almost due west. About the same time the gale broke, the sun made his appearance through the rifted clouds, and by seven o’clock that evening, at which hour Florrie’s father duly put in an appearance on board the Flying Fish, the engines having been temporarily stopped to receive him, they found themselves in open water, or rather in a straight channel some twelve miles in width and entirely free from ice, with a clear sky overhead, a light easterly wind blowing, and the evening sun lighting up the snow-clad peaks of the extensive island called North Devon. An hour later, dinner having been postponed on account of their near proximity to the land, the two vessels entered a commodious natural harbour called Hyde Bay, and anchored there for the night, in order to give the whaler’s exhausted crew an opportunity to snatch a few hours of much-needed rest.
The master of the Walrus, who answered, by the way, to the name of Hudson, though only a bluff hearty seaman, and somewhat shy for the first half-hour or so in such unaccustomed company as that of his four well-bred easy-mannered entertainers, gradually thawed out under the genial influence of the baronet’s champagne, and proved himself a tolerably well informed and by no means disagreeable companion. He possessed a fund of interesting anecdote and information with respect to the peculiarities of the region his hosts were now visiting for the first time, and imparted to them many valuable hints as to the best means of protecting themselves from the ice; but, as they did not see fit to inform him of the aerial capabilities of the Flying Fish, he laughed to scorn their project of reaching the North Pole, which he assured them most solemnly was an utter impossibility. They duly drank the unconscious Florrie’s health, treated her father to some excellent music, gave him a file of the latest newspapers they had brought with them, and sent him back to his own ship at midnight a thoroughly happy man.
On the following morning about half-past eight, whilst the party on board the Flying Fish were sitting down to breakfast, the sound of oars was heard close alongside; and a minute later Captain Hudson, ushered by George, made his appearance in the saloon. He was in a great hurry and almost breathlessly explained that he had come on board to repeat his thanks and those of his crew for their rescue of the previous day, and to say “Good-bye,” as he was about to weigh and proceed to sea in chase of a large school of whales which had just been seen spouting at a distance of some twelve miles in the offing. The baronet was good-natured enough to offer to tow him to the scene of action; but this service he gratefully declined, saying that there was a fine fair wind blowing and that his anchor was already a-trip. The party therefore shook hands heartily with him, wishing him “Good luck,” and he departed, leaving Sir Reginald and his friends to finish their meal at their leisure.
An hour later the Flying Fish also weighed and stood out to sea after the Walrus, now nearly hull down, to witness the sport.
The engines had scarcely begun to move when the whaler was seen to heave to; and when the Flying Fish ranged up alongside her, some ten minutes afterwards, three whale-boats were in the water and pulling lustily toward a school of some forty whales which were lazily sporting, apparently quite unconscious of danger, about two miles away.
“Those whales do not appear in the least alarmed at the presence of the boats,” remarked Mildmay; “evidently they have not been chased for a considerable period. If we only had the means of killing a few, now, what a splendid opportunity there would be to do that poor fellow Hudson a good turn.”
“Well thought of!” exclaimed the professor. “Follow me, gentlemen; we can do our friend a good turn, and, at the same time, test the powers of our large-bore rifles with explosive shells for big game.”
The party hurried below to the armoury, and each selected one of the weapons indicated by the professor, providing himself at the same time with a supply of cartridges from a large chest near at hand.
The rifles were truly formidable, being repeating weapons each capable of firing ten shots without reloading. The barrels were not very long, measuring only three feet from breech to muzzle, but they were of one-and-a-half-inch bore and fired a conical shell four and a half inches in length. Notwithstanding their somewhat ponderous appearance they were very light, being constructed of aethereum throughout.
When the party returned to the deck they had the satisfaction of seeing that, though each of the whale-boats had succeeded in fastening to a fish, the remainder of the school manifested very little alarm, the stricken whales having started to “run” in different directions and quite away from their companions.
The Flying Fish was moved as gently as possible into the very centre of the herd, the huge monsters taking no apparent notice of her, and perhaps mistaking her for one of themselves. They were swimming lazily about, rolling over on their sides until their pectoral fins appeared above the surface, and occasionally throwing themselves entirely out of the water.
The engines being stopped the four sportsmen took up their positions, two on each side of the deck, and, having loaded their weapons, waited for a favourable opportunity to use them.
The baronet was the first to fire. He had selected for his victim a huge bull, fully eighty feet in length, and this creature he patiently watched, hoping for an opportunity to inflict a fatal wound. It soon came. The animal rolled lazily over on its right side, exposing the whole of its left fin, and before it could recover itself Sir Reginald had levelled and discharged his piece. There was a very faint puff of thin fleecy vapour, but no report or sound of any kind save the by no means loud click of the hammer, above which could be distinctly heard the dull thud of the shell. The whale shuddered visibly at the blow, and made as though about to “sound” or dive; but before it had power to do so the shell must have exploded, for the immense creature made a sudden violent writhing motion, half leapt out of the water, and rolled over on its side, dead. The professor scored the next success, closely followed by the colonel, Lieutenant Mildmay signalising his first essay with the new arm by making a palpable miss, much to his disgust. His failure, however, taught him a valuable lesson, and he succeeded in killing two whales before either of the others had been able to secure another shot. In ten minutes eight whales had been killed, and the professor, who was very rigid in his objection to the wanton sacrifice of life, then suggested that probably as many had been killed as the whaler could successfully deal with at one time, especially as the boats now had signals flying which showed that each had killed her fish. The Flying Fish was accordingly ranged up close alongside the Walrus, and the baronet hailed:
“Walrus ahoy! how many fish can you ‘cut in’ at one operation?”
“I wish I had the chance of trying my hand upon half a dozen,” was the reply, given, the baronet thought, in rather a sulky tone.
“Well,” returned Sir Reginald, “there are eight which we have killed and three taken by your boats, making eleven altogether. Can you handle any more? because, if so, we will kill them for you; but, if not, we think it best not to disturb them further.”
“Do you mean to say that you’ve killed those fish on my account, then?” asked Hudson with great animation.
“To be sure we did. You surely did not suppose that we wanted them for ourselves, did you?”
The whaling skipper muttered a few unintelligible words to himself, and then shouted back in unmistakably hearty tones:
“Thank’ee, gentlemen, thank’ee with all my heart. That’s another favour I’m in your debt. That being the case, I think, if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather that the rest of the school be left to go their ways in peace. I don’t want them to be frightened; and eleven fish is as much as we can well handle at one time.”
“In that case, then,” returned Sir Reginald, “we will wish you ‘Good-bye,’ and a prosperous voyage.”
“Thank’ee, gentlemen; the same to you, and best thanks for all favours,” replied Hudson.
And with mutual hand-wavings and dipping of colours the two craft separated, the Walrus bearing up to intercept her boats, and the Flying Fish heading northward at a speed of about twenty knots.
For about a couple of hours the adventurous voyagers were able to maintain that speed; but toward noon they found themselves once more surrounded by ice; and they had no choice but either to materially reduce their speed and slowly thread their way through narrow and tortuous channels, or once more take flight into the air. They chose the latter alternative; and for the next two hours the flying ship sped northward through Smith’s Sound, for the most part over an unbroken field of pack-ice which, to any ordinary vessel, would have opposed an utterly impassable barrier. At two o’clock in the afternoon, however, the Greenland shore suddenly trended to the north-eastward; and after following it for a short time the ice once more began to be intersected with water channels, short and narrow at first, but wider as they proceeded, until at length they found themselves once more able to descend in a water lane some four miles in width.
“And now,” said the professor, as they were nearing a bold rocky headland on their starboard bow, “we are about to be introduced to one of the sights par excellence of the Arctic regions.”
“What is it?” was the question which burst simultaneously from the lips of his three companions.
“Wait and see,” answered the professor, nodding mysteriously.
Sure enough, the moment that the Flying Fish rounded the point a magnificent spectacle burst upon the travellers’ enraptured gaze. It was neither more nor less than an immense cliff of the clearest crystal ice, towering some three hundred feet above the water’s edge, and extending so far northward along the coast that its northern extremity lay far below the horizon. It was the magnificent Humboldt Glacier. The afternoon sun was shining full upon its rugged face, causing the enormous mass to flash and gleam like a gigantic diamond. As they coasted slowly along, at a distance of about half a mile from its face, the dazzling flashes of light were reproduced one after the other, changing rapidly from one colour to another through every conceivable tint of the rainbow, until the beholders’ eyes fairly ached with the contemplation of so much splendour, all of which was reflected with the most charming variation in the mirror-like surface of the deep still water below. The wind had died away to a dead calm, as if to give the bold explorers an opportunity of witnessing this unrivalled sight to the best advantage; and every now and then the still air resounded with the sharp rifle-like crack which told that, though apparently so motionless and solid, hidden forces were at work within the heart of the glacier, slowly but surely tending to its ultimate dismemberment.
Suddenly a crashing report, so loud that it resembled the simultaneous discharge of a whole army of rifles, smote upon their ears; and then, as they stood in a trance of breathless expectation, wondering what was about to happen, an immense section of the icy cliff was seen to be in motion. Slowly at first, but with ever-increasing rapidity, it slid downward into the water, with a continuous roaring reverberating crash, to which even the awful pealing of thunder was as nothing, until in a wild turmoil of madly leaping and foaming surges it disappeared entirely below the water. The sea rushed irresistibly after it from all sides, pouring like a foaming cataract into the hollow watery basin it had left, and dragging the Flying Fish helplessly toward the yawning vortex. Then the inward rush suddenly ceased; a gleaming white crest of ice reappeared above the foam, and with a mighty upward rush and a resounding roar the gigantic submerged mass once more upreared itself above the again maddened waters, swaying heavily to and fro, whilst a thousand gleaming torrents poured down its sparkling sides. And, as a fitting finale to the thrilling spectacle, a huge wall of water suddenly heaped itself up about the rocking mass and began to rush rapidly outward in an ever-widening circle, its towering crest surmounted by a roaring curling fringe of snow-white foam. Increasing in height and in speed as it advanced, it rapidly attained an altitude of fully sixty feet, bearing down upon the Flying Fish so menacingly that, for a few seconds, the party in the pilot-house stood paralysed with consternation, expecting nothing less than that they would be helplessly overwhelmed. The first to recover his presence of mind was Mildmay, who, springing to the rods which controlled the air-valves, pressed them powerfully down, throwing them all wide open and at once ejecting from the hull both the water and the compressed air, and causing the ship to rise until she floated lightly as an air-bubble on the water. He then injected a dense body of vapour into the air and water chambers, completing the vacuum; and the ship rose into the air just in time to avoid the gigantic surge, which went hissing and roaring close beneath them with a power and fury which fully revealed to them the extent of the disturbance from which they had so narrowly escaped. Other surges followed in quick rotation; but each was less formidable than its predecessor, and in another ten minutes the surface had once more subsided into a state of comparative calm.
As the Flying Fish once more settled down upon the water and the air-pump was set going, the professor turned to his companions and remarked:
“We have especial reason to congratulate ourselves and each other, gentlemen, for we have to-day not only looked upon the magnificent Humboldt Glacier under most highly favourable conditions, but we have been also permitted to witness that even rarer sight, the birth of an iceberg!”
They had indeed witnessed the birth of an iceberg, and that too of quite unusual size; for, as soon as they dared, they approached the newly fallen mass of ice closely enough to make a tolerably accurate measurement of it; and they found that it was of nearly square shape, measuring fully three-quarters of a mile along each of its four sides, and towering to an average height of about three hundred and fifteen feet above the surface of the water. The visible portion of the berg constituted, however, only a small portion of its entire bulk, since fresh-water ice floating in salt water shows above the surface only one-eighth of its entire depth. This enormous berg, therefore, must have measured in its entirety about four thousand feet square by about two thousand five hundred feet deep! And its weight must have approximated closely upon two thousand millions of tons! Bergs of equal, or even greater dimensions, have occasionally been encountered in the Arctic seas; but how few of earth’s inhabitants have ever been privileged to witness the disruption of so enormous a mass from its parent glacier!
After witnessing so thrilling a spectacle as this—probably the grandest and most impressive which the Arctic regions can exhibit—it is perhaps not to be wondered at that even the beauties of the glacier itself appeared somewhat tame and uninteresting to the voyagers. But their interest was once more awakened when, having at length coasted along the face of the glacier for a distance of not less than sixty miles, they reached its northern extremity and found the succeeding Greenland coast to be magnificently picturesque, the greenstone and sandstone cliffs in some cases towering abruptly from the water’s edge to a height of a thousand feet or more, not in a smooth unbroken face, or even with the usual everyday rugged aspect of a rocky precipice, but presenting to the enraptured eye an ever-varying perspective of ruined buttresses, pinnacles, arches, and even more fantastic architectural semblances. In one spot which caused them to pause in sheer admiration, the crumbling débris at the foot of the cliff had shaped itself into the likeness of a huge causeway such as might have been constructed by one of the giants of fabulous times, leading into a deep wild rocky gorge rich in soft purple shadows, at the further edge of which rose a gigantic rock hewn by the storms of ten thousand winters into the exact similitude of a castle flanked by three lofty detached towers all bathed in the dreamy roseate haze of the evening sunshine. And, somewhat further on, they came to a single greenstone cliff the skyline of which was boldly chiselled into the likeness of the ruined ramparts of an extensive city, whilst at its northern extremity, at the edge of a deep ravine, a solitary column nearly five hundred feet high, and standing upon a base or pedestal nearly three hundred feet high, shot straight and smooth up into the deep blue of the northern sky.
Tearing themselves unwillingly away from this region of weird enchantment, the voyagers pushed onward along Kennedy and Robeson Channels, sometimes winding their way through intricate water lanes in the ice, and sometimes skimming lightly a few yards above the surface of the solid pack, until they reached the latitude of 82 degrees 30 minutes North, when the land abruptly trended away to their right and left, and they found themselves hovering over an immense field of pack-ice which extended in an unbroken mass as far northward as the eye could reach.
Up to the present, from the time of their passing Disko Island, the voyagers had seen plenty of seals and walruses, with an occasional white bear, a few Arctic foxes, a herd or two of reindeer, and even a few specimens of the elk and musk-ox, to say nothing of birds, such as snow-geese, eider and long-tailed ducks, sea-eagles, divers, auks, and gulls. Moreover, they had been favoured with, on the whole, exceptionally fine weather—due as much as anything, perhaps, to the fact that they had been fortunate enough to enter the Arctic circle during the prevalence of a “spell” of fine weather, and that they had accomplished in a very few days a distance which it would occupy an ordinary craft months of weary toil to cover. But, on passing the edge of this gigantic ice barrier, they left all life behind them; even the very gulls—which had followed them in clouds whenever the speed of the Flying Fish was low enough to permit of such a proceeding—after wheeling agitatedly about the ship for a few minutes with discordant screams, as of warning to the travellers not to venture into so vast and gloomy a solitude, forsook them and retraced their way to the southward. The weather, too, changed, the sky becoming overcast with a pall of dull grey snow—laden cloud accompanied by a dismal murky atmosphere and a temperature of ten degrees below zero. The wind sighed and moaned over the icy waste; but, excepting for this dreary and depressing sound, there was absolute silence, the silence of a dead world.
The ice bore at first the same appearance as all the other ice which they had hitherto encountered, but by the time that they had advanced a distance of thirty miles into the frozen desert they became conscious of a change. The hummocks were not so lofty as heretofore, the hollows between them having the appearance of being to a considerable extent filled up with hard frozen snow; the ice itself, too, instead of being a pure white, was tinged with yellow of the hue of very old ivory; the sharp angles, also, were all worn away as if by long-continued abrasion; the ice, in fact, bore unmistakable evidence of extreme age.
At the professor’s suggestion a pause was made and a descent effected, in order that he might carefully investigate the nature of the ice; and, warmly clad in furs, the entire party left the ship for this purpose.
“It is as I feared,” said von Schalckenberg, after they had toiled painfully over the surface for some time; “we have reached the region of paleocrystic or ancient ice; and my cherished theory of an open sea about the North Pole vanishes into thin air. Look at this ice here, where a portion of the original hummock still remains bare—it is yellow and rotten, not with the rottenness which precedes a thaw, but with extreme age. See, it crumbles at a kick or a blow, but the fragments do not melt; it is years—possibly ages—since this ice was water. And look at the edges of the blocks; they are rounded and worn away by the constant abrading action of the wind, the snow, the hail, and possibly the rain, which has beaten upon them through unnumbered years. It is no wonder that this is a lifeless solitude; there is nothing here capable of sustaining the life of even the meanest insect. Let us return to the ship, my friends, and hasten over this part of our journey; we shall meet with nothing worthy of interest until we reach the Pole, which itself will probably prove to be merely an undistinguishable spot in just such a waste as this.”
The professor was, however mistaken; a most interesting discovery awaited them at no very great distance ahead. They returned to the ship oppressed with a vague feeling of melancholy foreboding for which they could not account, but which was doubtless attributable to the gloomy cheerless aspect of their surroundings, and, releasing the ship from the hold of her grip-anchors, resumed their way northward at the Flying Fish’s utmost speed.
Half an hour later, however, they suddenly checked their flight and diverged a mile to the eastward of their former course to examine an object which Mildmay’s quick eye had detected. The object—or objects rather, for there were two of them—proved to be short poles or spars about twenty-five feet apart, projecting about twelve feet out of the ice, and surmounted by the skeleton framework of what seemed to have been at one time small bulwarked platforms. Wondering what they could possibly be, and by whom placed in so out-of-the-way a region, but thinking they might possibly mark cairns or places of deposit inclosing the records of some long-lost expedition, they resolved to stop and institute a thorough examination.
They were fortunate enough to find a smooth and level spot suitable for grounding the Flying Fish upon, at a distance of barely a quarter of a mile from the objects of their interest; and it being by that time six o’clock in the evening, and too late to do any good before dinner, they secured the ship there for the night—taking the precaution of fully weighting her down with compressed air in addition to mooring her firmly to the ice by her four grip-anchors. It was a most happy inspiration which impelled them to take this precaution; for when they arose next morning a terrific gale from the northward was blowing, accompanied by a heavy ceaseless fall of snow; and, well secured as the ship was both by her weight and by her anchors, she fairly trembled at times with the violence of the blast. Had she been dependent only upon her anchors and her own unassisted weight—which the reader will remember was very trifling notwithstanding her immense dimensions—she would infallibly have been whirled away like a bubble upon the wings of the gale. The highly-compressed air, however, held her securely down upon her icy bed, and, beyond imparting an occasional tremor, as already mentioned, the tempest, fierce as it was, had no power to move her.
In such terrible weather it was of course useless to think of pursuing their investigations; it would, indeed, have been the sheerest madness to have attempted to face the furious gale, with its deadly cold and the blinding whirling snow. The travellers were therefore compelled to spend an inactive day. For this, however, they were by no means sorry; they had been keeping rather late hours since entering the Arctic circle, and this interval of inaction afforded them an opportunity of securing their arrears of rest. Besides this there were sketches to complete, and a thousand little odd matters to attend to—to such an extent, indeed, that when they once began work they wondered at their own thoughtlessness in not having attended to them before. Thus employed, with occasional interludes of meditative gazing out upon the ceaseless whirling rush of the snow, the day passed rapidly and pleasantly away, wound up by an hour or two of vocal and instrumental music after dinner. They retired early to their warm comfortable state-rooms that night, and were lulled to sweet dreamless slumber by the howling of the gale outside.
The four following days were spent in the same manner—the gale lasting all that time with unabated fury, accompanied by an almost ceaseless fall of snow. But on the fifth day the weather moderated; the snow ceased, or at all events fell only intermittently; the wind backed round and blew from the south-west; and the exterior temperature, which during the gale had fallen to thirty-three degrees below zero, rose twenty degrees. The sky was still overcast and lowering, it is true, and the cold was still intense. But notwithstanding this the weather, compared with that of the preceding five days, seemed positively fine; and, wrapping themselves up in their warmest clothing, and arming themselves with pick and shovel, they set out to discover if possible what lay concealed beneath the two queer-looking poles.