Chapter Twelve.
Another Startling Discovery.
Notwithstanding the state of excitement which the travellers had been thrown into by the successful accomplishment of this, the first, and, perhaps, the most difficult part of their novel enterprise, they managed to secure a tolerably sound night’s rest—if one may venture to term night any part of the twenty-four hours at that season and in that region, where the sun had never once sunk beneath the horizon since the twenty-first of the preceding March, and where the day had still two months more to run before it should wane into the long six-months’ night of winter. But, as might be expected, they were up bright and early on the following morning, eager to explore this strange new polar land, and scarcely patient enough to sit down and consume with becoming leisure the appetising breakfast which the still imperturbable George had provided for them.
The meal, however, like most other matters, had an end at last; and the travellers felt themselves free to follow the bent of their impatient inclinations. But the expedition upon which they were about to enter was one not to be undertaken without due foresight and preparation. It was only to be a preliminary exploration, it is true, only a journey of some three or four miles into the interior; but the country and the climate having already proved so extraordinarily at variance with all their preconceived ideas, who could say what new and strange forms of animal life might not possibly be lurking within those vast forest depths? It therefore behoved them to adopt at least a reasonable amount of precaution, and so to equip themselves that, in the event of their encountering new and hitherto unsuspected dangers, they might not find themselves in a wholly defenceless condition.
The question of the kind of clothing to be worn was soon settled. The temperature stood at the extraordinary height (for that latitude) of fifty-seven degrees Fahrenheit; and the air, actually cool and bracing, felt almost oppressively warm to them after the rigours of the paleocrystic ice-field; they therefore donned a suit of rough serviceable cloth of moderate thickness, and stout waterproof leather walking boots. Then, for arms, as they were merely going on a reconnoitring and not a hunting expedition, they decided to take their large-bore repeating rifles, which, with the explosive shells constituting their ammunition, would enable the explorers to face anything. And lastly, as accident or design might cause them to extend their ramble beyond its originally intended limits, they adopted the precaution of providing themselves each with a small light knapsack of provisions. Thus equipped they proceeded on deck, raised the two boats with their davits out of the snug below-deck compartments in which they had hitherto been concealed, and, lowering the smaller boat of the two, stepped into her, and were quickly conveyed to the shore.
It was with a curiously mingled feeling of awe and exultation that they sprang from the boat to the strand, and planted their feet for the first time upon this hitherto unknown and unvisited ground.
“Behold!” exclaimed the baronet, pointing to their footprints in the sand; “behold the first human footprints ever impressed upon this soil.” And stepping rapidly forward until he had passed beyond the high-water mark, he unfurled a small union-jack which he carried in his hand, and, forcing the butt-end of the staff into the yielding sand, exclaimed:
“In the name of her most gracious majesty Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, I annex this land as a dependency of the British crown!”
Then they all took off their hats and gave three cheers for the queen; after which Colonel Lethbridge proposed that the newly-discovered country be called “Elphinstone Land,” a proposition which was carried with acclamation by a majority of three to one, the dissenting voice being that of the baronet, who modestly disclaimed the honour of having the country named after himself.
But were theirs, after all, the first human footprints which had ever been impressed upon that soil? A decided answer in the negative awaited them; for they had not advanced very many yards from the shore when they came upon an object which, upon examination, proved to be an ancient and much-rusted spear-head broken short off but with some six inches of the haft still attached to it. The travellers felt, greatly disconcerted at this discovery; it robbed them at once irretrievably of the honour of being the first discoverers of the North Pole, and showed them that, at some unknown period in the remote past, there must have existed a man, or more probably a body of men, who, not only without the exceptional facilities offered by the possession of such a ship as the Flying Fish, but with, in all probability, ships infinitely inferior to the worst of those used by modern explorers, had actually achieved the hitherto deemed impossible feat of piercing the great ice-barrier and actually reaching the northern pole of the earth.
Who were they? Of what country could they possibly have been natives? And why was the fact of their important discovery suffered to sink into oblivion? Such were the questions which at once rose to the minds of the baronet and his companions, and to which their lips spontaneously gave utterance.
“I think there can be little doubt as to who and what they were,” remarked the professor. “They were Vikings; and their leader it must unquestionably have been who drew the chart found by us in the Viking ship buried in the ice of the paleocrystic sea. It is his ship which we see delineated upon the chart; this is the land from which she is represented as sailing triumphantly away; and it was doubtless this land which the Viking ship, discovered by us, was making so desperate an effort to reach when death claimed her crew as its prey. The other question, as to why the discovery of this land was suffered to remain an unknown fact, is not by any means so easy to answer. Perhaps the man before whose dead body the chart lay spread open upon the table may have been its author and the original discoverer of this land; perhaps the ship represented on the chart and the ship discovered by us may have been one and the same; she may have been on her homeward voyage; and, finding the channels to the southward completely blocked with ice, may have been attempting to force her way back into the open Polar Sea when her fate overtook her.”
“But, admitting for the moment that such may possibly have been the case,” remarked the baronet, “how do you account for the fact that, whilst she must necessarily have forced her way twice through the ancient ice, she should have failed in her third attempt?”
“Her third attempt may have been made late in the season,” answered the professor. “But it is just possible that her final attempt may have been to force not a third but a second passage through the ice. She may have been attempting to return southward instead of northward, as I just now suggested. My impression, with respect to the vast field of paleocrystic ice, is that at certain seasons—as when, for instance, two or three very mild winters have occurred in succession in the Arctic circle, followed possibly by exceptionally hot summers—it undergoes partial disruption, splitting up, in fact, into several lesser fields which drift for longer or shorter distances out into the open Polar Sea. The fact that Scoresby, Penny, and Kane all beheld, at different periods, an open Polar sea, tends to confirm this impression; and the circumstance that the bows of the galley discovered by us were pointing to the northward may be due, not to the fact that she was actually making her way north when finally frozen in, but to the accident of that portion of the field by which she was surrounded being subsequently turned completely round whilst adrift. But what object do I see yonder? Surely it is not a human habitation?”
It was, however, or at least had been, at some more or less distant period. It was the roofless ruin of a once most substantially built log-hut, measuring some twenty-five feet long by sixteen feet broad. The roof had fallen in; the log sides were decayed and moss-grown; and the interior was overgrown with long grass and brambles, with a stately pine springing to a height of some ninety feet from the very centre of the structure—all of which incontestably proved its antiquity; but that it was the work of man—most probably those who had left behind them the rusty spear-head—there could be no possible doubt.
The party minutely inspected this interesting ruin, but without making any further discovery, and then pressed forward through the heart of a belt of pine forest which they had by this time reached.
The walking was not difficult and they made tolerably rapid progress. That the country was not absolutely tenantless they soon had abundant proof, for they had not advanced more than half a mile before an Arctic fox was discovered gliding rapidly away before them. A little further on they came unexpectedly upon a herd of moose-deer. The behaviour of these animals—naturally extremely shy—conclusively proved that they had never before met such an enemy as man, for, instead of bounding rapidly away, as is their wont, they merely ceased feeding for a moment to stand and gaze curiously upon the new-comers, and then went on browsing again with the utmost composure. Their fearlessness offered a strong temptation to such inveterate sportsmen as Sir Reginald and the colonel; but not being in actual need of their flesh, and being, moreover, anxious not to disturb them just then, the party passed quietly on without firing a shot. A huge brown bear was the next animal encountered, and this time the baronet’s love of sport overcame his humanity, bruin falling an easy victim to the noiseless but deadly percussion shell of Sir Reginald’s large-bore rifle. A solitary prowling wolf next fell before the equally deadly weapon of the colonel; and then the explorers emerged on the other side of the forest-belt, and found themselves on the borders of an extensive tract of tolerably level country intersected here and there by low hills, with occasional patches of marshy land, the high flat table-land, which had been the first object sighted by them when approaching these shores from the southward, looming up, still misty and grey, at a long distance in the extreme background of the landscape.
Heading directly for this mountain, as a conspicuous landmark, the party again pressed forward, and were speedily delighted to observe several flocks of ptarmigan busily feeding on the crests of the low hills which here and there crossed the route. These birds proved rather shy, though not so much so as to have prevented the sportsmen making a very decent bag had they been provided with fowling-pieces. As it was, however, the birds were, of course, permitted to go free and undisturbed. A mile further on a small drove of musk-oxen were seen grazing in the distance, and, whilst some of the party were watching the animals and discussing the possibility of stalking them, Mildmay, who had been intently gazing through his binocular in another direction, startled his companions by exclaiming, in an almost horrified tone of voice:
“What on earth are those immense creatures moving slowly about in the valley away yonder? Surely they can’t be elephants?”
“Elephants! my dear fellow, don’t be absurd,” remonstrated the baronet. “Where are they? Oh, ah! now I have them,” as he brought his glass to bear in the right direction. “By George, they are elephants, though, and monsters into the bargain. And, I declare, it seems to me that they are covered with a thick coat of shaggy hair. Why, I never saw such a thing in my life.”
“Elephants? Covered with hair?” exclaimed the professor in a voice so eager that it almost amounted to a scream. “Lend me a binocular, somebody; with my usual luck I have left mine at home—on board, I mean. A thousand thanks, Mildmay, my dear fellow. Now, where are these elephants of yours? Quick, show me where to look for them. Good heavens! if it should really be so. Ah! now I see them. Yes—yes—they are—they must be—Gentlemen, as I am a man of science, I solemnly declare to you the stupendous fact that those extraordinary animals are neither more nor less than living Mammoths. I congratulate you, gentlemen—I congratulate myself. Ach, himmel! to think that it should ever be my good fortune to actually behold, not only one, but a whole herd of living mammoths! I cannot believe it—yet—yes, there they are; it is no freak of a disordered imagination, but an actual, positive, undeniable reality.”
The worthy professor was so excited that he could scarcely hold the binocular firmly enough to look through it, and it was really laughable—to his companions—to hear his “Ach’s” and “Pish’s” of impatience as he vainly strove to steady his trembling hands and get another good look at the herd of hitherto believed extinct monsters, which were quietly feeding at a distance of about two miles away. At length he, with a comical gesture of despair, restored the borrowed binocular to Mildmay, and, turning to his companions, exclaimed in a voice of feverish earnestness:
“Come, my dear friends, why do we stand idly gaping here and wasting valuable time, when we really have not a moment to lose? We may never have such a priceless opportunity again. Let us press forward, then, and at all risks secure a specimen of so unique an animal as the mammoth. If we were to achieve this and nothing more our success would be ample repayment for all the anxious thought devoted to the designing of our vessel, and all the money spent in her construction.”
His excitement was contagious, and the baronet, after briefly arranging with the colonel a plan of operations, invited von Schalckenberg to follow him; Lethbridge and Mildmay going off in another direction, with the object of getting on the other side of the animals, and, in co-operation with the other party, driving them, if possible, within easy distance of the harbour in which the Flying Fish lay at anchor.
To do this a wide détour was necessary, and it was nearly an hour and a half later when the four men found themselves in a proper position to commence the operation of “driving.” They had arranged themselves in the form of a semicircle round the herd, at a distance of about a quarter of a mile away, and, at a signal from the baronet, all hands advanced toward the huge creatures, shouting and gesticulating to the utmost extent of their several powers.
The mammoths, utterly unsuspicious of danger, had been quietly feeding among the long grass during the approach of their enemies; but on the baronet’s first signal shout they paused, and, facing rapidly round in the direction of the noise, raised their trunks in the air and waved them slowly from side to side as though scenting the air. The hunters now redoubled their exertions, fully expecting that, on seeing them, the animals would wheel about and shamble off in the required direction. But, to their dismay, the creatures, instead of doing this, no sooner caught sight of the party than, with upraised trunks and harsh trumpet-like screams of rage and defiance, they charged furiously straight down upon them. The herd numbered ten individuals, four of which appeared to instantly constitute themselves the defenders of the party; and each of these promptly selected his own particular enemy, occupying his attention so fully that the remaining members of the herd were afforded every facility for escape.
It was a nervous moment for the hunters, who, never having faced such a creature before, had not the most remote idea of its fighting tactics; moreover, the aspect of the monsters, with their towering stature of fully fifteen feet, their thick shaggy coats of rusty brown hair, their enormous spirally curving tusks, and their small eyes blazing with fury as they rushed forward to the attack, all combined to produce such a hideous tout ensemble as might well strike terror to the boldest heart. But neither Sir Reginald nor the colonel were the men to shrink from an encounter when game was before them; Mildmay possessed all the cool daring and recklessness of the British seaman; and as for the professor, he would willingly have faced a thousand deaths to secure so new and rare a specimen of natural history as the creature before him.
The four sportsmen pulled trigger almost simultaneously. The baronet and the colonel had each selected the same spot, the eye, as the object of their aim, and both had been equally successful, the shell in each case passing upward through the eyeball into the brain, exploding there and causing instant death. The professor’s fascinated gaze being riveted upon the wide-open mouth of his own particular adversary, he seemed to think that the yawning cavern thus revealed would be as good a place as any to empty his rifle into; and he did so—just in bare time to bring down his game and save himself from being trampled to a jelly. Mildmay, however, was not so fortunate. He seemed to think that it mattered very little where he directed his aim, so long as he made sure of hitting the brute somewhere, and he therefore fired point-blank at the chest of the mammoth which was menacing him. The shell sped true, but, encountering the thick shaggy coat and the enormously tough hide of the creature, failed to penetrate the body, and, exploding outside, only inflicted such wounds as further excited the already angry monster to a perfect frenzy of rage. Even at this critical moment there was time for another shot; but Mildmay most unfortunately forgot that he had nine loaded chambers still available, and instead of firing again he flung away his piece and ran for his life. The race was a disastrously short one, however; he had not run more than twenty yards when the huge creature was upon him. The great uplifted trunk gave one whirl in the air and descended with force enough to slay an ox. It struck poor Mildmay on his right side, and, but for the fortunate accident of his having at that moment tripped and fallen forward, the lieutenant would there and then have lost the number of his mess. As it was, he was sent whirling through the air like a cricket-ball, to fall senseless, and bleeding from the nose and mouth, fully forty feet away. The vindictive brute instantly turned short off with the evident intention of trampling his victim to death; but before he could reach the prostrate body a shell from the colonel’s rifle sent him crashing lifeless to the ground. The remainder of the herd, evidently dismayed at the slaughter of their companions, now abandoned a half-formed intention which they had at first manifested to stay and fight it out, and went off in full retreat with horrible trumpetings of anger and alarm.
The colonel was the first to reach the side of his unfortunate friend, the professor and the baronet joining him as speedily as their legs could convey them to the spot. Very fortunately von Schalckenberg, among his other multitudinous acquirements, possessed a very fair knowledge of medicine and surgery; and his skilful fingers were soon at work removing the lieutenant’s clothing so far as was necessary to investigate the nature and extent of his injuries. Singularly enough these were found to be comparatively trifling, a fractured rib and several very severe bruises being the sum of them. A little brandy forced between the lips of the sufferer soon restored him to consciousness, and he was able to sit up.
On attempting to rise to his feet, however, he experienced such severe pain that it was then and there resolved to let him remain where he was, two of his companions also remaining to mount guard over him and see that he came to no harm; whilst the third was to hurry back with all speed to the ship and bring her out on to the plain close by the spot where the accident occurred, when it would be a comparatively easy matter to convey the lieutenant from the spot where he then lay to his own bed on board the Flying Fish.
The professor, having first made Mildmay as easy and comfortable as circumstances permitted, volunteered for the service of moving the ship, explaining to his companions that, in the event of an attack of any kind, they, as seasoned sportsmen, would be able to far more effectually defend the wounded man than he could possibly hope to do; and then, Sir Reginald and the colonel quite concurring in this view, he set off for the bay, shouting back an assurance as he went that he would not be absent one moment longer than should prove absolutely necessary.
The worthy scientist was as good as his word; for in less than an hour from the moment of his departure the immense bulk of the Flying Fish was seen to rise into the air beyond the tops of the distant pine-trees, and, with her polished hull gleaming and flashing in the rays of the sun, to sweep gracefully round until she was heading straight in the direction of the anxious watchers. Under the professor’s able pilotage she was soon brought to the ground and secured within a dozen yards of the spot occupied by them, when it was the work of a few minutes only to convey the injured man to his own stateroom, where his hurts were at once properly attended to and himself made thoroughly comfortable.
As soon as luncheon was over Sir Reginald and the colonel set out for the spot were they had shot the bear in the morning, one of them being armed with a large-bore rifle and the other carrying a fowling-piece; and on their return somewhat late in the afternoon they bore not only the skin, skull, and claws of the defunct bruin, but also a goodly bag of ptarmigan. During their absence the professor had also been very busy, dividing his attention pretty evenly between Mildmay and the finest specimen of the slain mammoths, the latter of which he had succeeded in nearly half-denuding of its skin. With the assistance of his two able-bodied friends this task was completed by dinner-time; and by the corresponding hour next evening not only was the enormous hide undergoing the first stage of preparation for the taxidermist, but the indefatigable labourers had also succeeded in hewing out the tusks of the other slaughtered mammoths. For health’s sake the ship was then moved about a mile further inland, and the carcasses were left to the wolves, which had already gathered in large numbers in the vicinity.
Under the skilful treatment of the professor Mildmay made steady and rapid progress toward recovery from the very first; the baronet and the colonel had therefore no hesitation about carrying out a project which had been under discussion between them for the last two or three days, and which was neither more nor less than a pedestrian excursion to the far distant table-land which they had first sighted from the sea. They estimated that this goal of their journey, upon which they expected to find the actual site of the Northern Pole of the earth, must be about sixty miles distant from the ship; and they considered that the trip there and back would occupy them about six days. It would of course have been very much easier, and more convenient in every way, to have made the journey on board the Flying Fish; but the professor was busy with the preparation of his mammoth, the skin of which he had carefully stretched and pegged out on the ground alongside the ship, and was so averse to the losing sight of it, even for a few hours, that it was soon decided the Flying Fish must not be moved for the present. After all, the journey would probably not involve any very great amount of hardship; it simply meant camping out for five or six nights, or at least those hours of the twenty-four which did duty for night. And this the two seasoned hunters looked forward to as rather a pleasant change than otherwise.
The necessary preparations were all made on the previous evening, and after breakfast on the appointed day the two adventurers set out, taking leave of Mildmay—who was already out of bed again—and of the professor, who, to tell the truth, was heartily glad to be left to the uninterrupted prosecution of his task.
They were in light marching order, having resolved to carry nothing which they could possibly do without; their previous experience of the country had taught them that game was pretty plentiful, and that they might safely depend upon their guns for the supply of their larder; and their stock of provisions consisted solely, therefore, of a few biscuits and a substantial flask of brandy each. The temperature was decidedly mild, and had been so ever since their arrival at “Elphinstone Land,” with settled fine weather, and they therefore carried nothing in the shape of extra clothing save a light macintosh each, which they bore securely strapped on the top of their knapsacks. The remainder of their impedimenta consisted of a double-barrelled gun for each man—one barrel being rifled and the other a smooth bore—two cartridge belts, one for the waist and the other for the shoulder, fully stocked; a formidable double-edged hunting knife each; a capacious waterproof bag containing a reserve supply of cartridges, and a small stock of matches and tobacco.
Their road for the first five or six miles led up a gentle acclivity, just sufficient to make itself felt, but not steep enough to render walking difficult or fatiguing. Then came a stretch of flat country, bounded on each side by the projecting spurs of a range of rugged hills of fantastic outline which stretched immediately across their path at a distance of some three or four miles or so. The pedestrians had not progressed very far across this plain before their attention became arrested by a curious phenomenon. The atmosphere immediately behind the range of hills last mentioned was thick with fleecy vapour, now so thin that the distant table-land could be dimly seen through it as through a veil, and anon so dense that it assumed a decided cloud-like shape upon which the unsetting sun shone with dazzling brilliancy. This thickening of the vapour seemed to occur at tolerably regular intervals of about twenty minutes each, and was immediately preceded by a sudden silvery gleam succeeded by a most brilliant and perfectly formed rainbow. The periodical recurrence of this singular phenomenon under a perfectly cloudless sky of course greatly excited the curiosity of the pedestrians, and they pushed rapidly forward, eager to ascertain the cause.
As they advanced, the encircling hills thrust their projecting spurs further and further into the narrowing plain, their slopes became steeper and more rugged, and rocks began to crop out here and there with increasing frequency through the lessening soil. A corresponding change of course occurred in the character of the landscape; it grew increasingly picturesque and wild at every step, and at length the travellers found themselves at the mouth of a narrow rocky boulder-strewn gorge bounded on either side by titanic masses of volcanic rock, rugged and moss-grown, with little patches of herbage here and there, or an occasional stunted pine growing out of an almost imperceptible fissure. The only signs of life in this wild spot consisted of a diminutive musk-ox here and there cropping the scanty herbage half-way up the apparently inaccessible height in spots from which it appeared equally impossible for the creature to advance or to retreat.
Plunging into this defile, the travellers advanced with steadily increasing difficulty, the boulders with which their path was strewed growing ever larger and more numerous until at length the narrowing road became completely choked with them, and the only mode of progression was that of a slow, toilsome, dangerous scramble. Still the pair pushed resolutely on, every minute hoping that the difficulties of the journey would come to an end, and every minute less willing to turn back and again encounter the obstacles already surmounted. At length the path became so narrow that one enormous boulder sufficed to completely block the way, whilst the perpendicular rocky walls of the chasm towered so far aloft that only the merest thread of sky was visible; the air grew chill and damp, and so deep a twilight gloom pervaded the place that it was difficult to distinguish any object more than half a dozen yards distant.
The weary travellers looked at each other in dismay. Was this to be the ineffectual ending of that long and toilsome scramble through the ravine? There was just one single narrow crevice between the huge boulder which blocked their way, and one of the precipitous walls which pressed so closely in upon them—a crevice left by the irregular shape of the block, and affording barely space enough for a man of robust proportions to squeeze himself through—and they determined that, before retracing their steps, they would at least satisfy their curiosity so far as to creep through this crevice and see what lay on the farther side. The baronet with some little difficulty squeezed through first, and his exclamation of astonishment quickly took the colonel to his side.
The pair found themselves in a narrow rent between the two vertical faces of rock—the projections of the one accurately corresponding with the indentations of the other, and clearly demonstrating that, at some distant period of the earth’s history, that mighty chasm had been suddenly torn open by a great natural convulsion awful in its intensity beyond all power of imagination. The rent was roofed in as it were by boulders which thickly hung suspended and jammed in at varying heights between the almost touching walls of the rift; and the adventurous explorers could not repress a shudder as they glanced aloft at these huge masses and thought of the consequences to themselves which would ensue should a projecting corner just then yield and suffer its parent rock to come crashing down to the bottom. Their first impulse was to beat a precipitate retreat; their second, to go forward; for at only a few yards’ distance before them the rift closed altogether, except at the very bottom, where a low cavern-like fissure dimly appeared. A hasty consultation passed between them, resulting in a determination to go forward and explore the fissure.
Fortunately for their purpose they had, at an early stage of their difficulties, provided themselves with a couple of stoutish pine branches—wrenched from their parent stems and hurled into the ravine perchance by some winter storm—to aid them in surmounting the difficulties of the way, and these they now determined to utilise if possible as torches.
With some little difficulty the smaller ends of these brands were induced to kindle; but, once fairly ignited, they blazed up bravely, and thus provided with the necessary lights the adventurers boldly pushed forward and plunged into the recesses of the fissure.