CHAPTER XXXII
“Ugh—ugh!” our starboard bear shouts to-day; not a roar now, it is a hopeless complaint. “Ugh! let me out—ugh! look at my coat, all stained and soiled.... Ugh! let me out, I don’t want to go to a zoo”—then almost silence, only a steady chawing of timber and scrape, scrape, for hours on end.
The above labour ended in his getting his head and one paw out this morning early, and the skipper and Hamilton only being about—the rest of the crew were afloat in the boats—they had a lively time. The skipper anxiously shouted: “All hands on board!” and they came and all bore a hand, and there were timbers, nails, hatchets and hammers all about, and bears’ roars, till it was subdued. Hamilton got his hand hurt. It is a wily fellow this starboard bear, waiting his opportunity till all were overboard hunting, and again I expected to have to use my pistol. Almost all hands were in the boats securing two bear cubs, about a third of the size of the bear referred to. We spotted them and their mother on a floe about five A.M., playing together, poor things, and they took to the water and we pursued. Dauntlessly we approached, Don José in the bow, rifle in hand. Without tremor he calmly held his fire till within a few yards; the first shot went extremely close, a second actually touched the bear, but the range gradually shortening allowed of greater accuracy and the third shot hit it in the neck and killed it.
A boat followed the two youngsters, and after a number of ineffective throws they were at last roped. From board-ship we rather smiled at the ineffective attempt to lasso, but we gather that several casts were well thrown and over their necks, but each time the cunning little beggars threw the noose off their heads with their paws so quickly that there was not time to haul taut.
Now there is a frightful row going on; the two cubs are roped alongside and the two seniors on board, all are shouting: “B-e-a-r, b-e-a-r, w-augh, w-augh, b-e-a-r.” Holy smoke! It is as if half-a-dozen zoos were in chorus and were shouting for dinner; it is a frightfully tiresome, irritating sound, arranged so by Nature, I suppose. No mother bear could shut her ears to it, were she alive. The two cubs, each on a line, are swimming; they seem to prefer the water to the floe-edge. A huge mushroom of ice, pale blue and of exquisite form, drifted alongside, and the young male cub got on to it and it slowly turned over—how he swore and gnashed at his rope; but what exquisite delicate colours, the bears, the ice, and the reflections make. They are brother and sister; the brother is the stronger and makes, if possible, more row than his sister in their struggles for liberty. But he threatened his sister, thought it was all her fault. He was swimming behind her and made a pretence at biting her; she did not argue, simply turned, and in a second put her four white teeth into his cheek and the yellow face flushed with blood and he said no more. So they go on complaining together or alternately to us and to all nature. Now the little woman goes on to the floe-edge blown, wheezing and puffing—how she tugs violently at the rope, a faint primrose heap of impotent anger and wretchedness spurning the white snow. “Bear” or “Bé-waugh” in bear language must mean “Mother, why don’t you come to help us?” The sea is red with poor mother from our scuppers. Her skin is off her pathetic-looking red body, to decorate the boudoir of some lady of Spain.
To condescend to the base commercial aspect of our hunting, a living bear is undoubtedly of much greater value than a dead bear’s skin, yet I believe our joy would emphatically be greater were our four live bears dead, for apart from the natural fear of our lives, should either of the larger couple get out, we have to endure their ghastly chorus at all hours.
Towing Two Bear Cubs to the “Fonix”
Captive Polar Bear Cub Climbing on to a Drift Ice
Hamilton, being nearest, perhaps suffers more than some of us; we try to encourage him by pointing out the opportunity there is of developing his taste for natural history, and the Seton-Thomson effect at a lecture he might make with even a fair imitation of the language of these large carnivoræ. He and I agree to differ about the qualities of our first two bears. Because our Port bear was evidently interested in the very large male bear which he shot, he thinks it is the biggest, strongest and altogether the most perfect bear for a zoo, and because I lassoed the Starboard bear, I naturally think its dimensions and spirit are superb, and I point out that its three almost successful attempts for freedom are proof of this. Yes, I still back “Starboard” for trouble. Hamilton says Port bear has eaten through more wood than my Starboard bear. I think he is wrong by an inch or two; at any rate my bear has required tons more iron chain, and sacks of nails.
The drifted pine, which we found on the floe weeks ago, is all used up for Starboard’s cage; he has torn through three plies of one-and-a-half-inch battens, now over the remains he has chains, baulks of the pine-tree and other bits of timber. At some places the wood is a foot thick, and yet I still back him against the field to get out first.
Getting the bears on deck and into cages, even though they are just cubs and a third of the size of Port and Starboard, was an interesting sight; pathetic if you look at it in a way. Fancy the strength of these little heroes that look about the size of a man. They took six men each and a powerful steam-winch to overcome them. Fluff went the steam and up came the kicking, roaring, yellow-white bundle of strength and teeth, with a strop round its waist, and a line round its neck. Lower away! and the winch reverses and the ice-bear comes down from the sky and is guided to the open top of his cage by the line on his neck led through the lowest bar of the front of his cage, and as he is lowered by the winch two men haul on it, so his head is kept down and his mind occupied with the rope on his neck; whilst other men rapidly nail on battens above his back, then the rope to his neck is cut and he quickly rids himself of the noose—brother and sister are side by side—or end on, in one cage, with a partition between them....
Already they take seal blubber, and Gisbert has put a tin of preserved milk into their drinking water. Their poor gums were bleeding with efforts to chaw the wicked ropes that held them by the neck....
Four P.M. The children are now more quiet, one condescends to lick my finger and has accepted several slices of fresh seal blubber, with every manifestation of pleasure, and it carefully licks each paw afterwards, toe by toe.
Now it is my watch for a bear, and I do not feel in the least inclined for more bear, on the floe in orthodox style, or in the water style, which Scoresby cautiously observes “presents a certain amount of safety.” He studied in Edinburgh University. A belt of mist is down again to westward and there is a fine fog bow; we are in the sun, but cannot proceed, blindfolded, as it were. We might get into some cul-de-sac in the floe ice.
Odd, is it not, that only a few minutes after writing expressions of disinclination for bear I was working at a poor attempt to get effect of a fog bow in water-colour, and someone shouted “Bear!” and I had to dive for rifle and pistol, tumbled into the boat with four men and rowed away into the sun’s glitter. Sure enough the bear was there, swimming across from one tiny floe to another, so there was the chance in the water recommended by Scoresby. We swung along at a good rate and I got it, first shot, in the centre of the brain, at about twenty yards with the pistol, which made up a little for the absence of a stalk. Great was the joy of the men over the ·38 automatic and its deadly effect. To anyone who has not had the excitement of shooting a sitting rabbit, I would recommend polar bear shooting in the water: on a floe in difficult ground there is a chance for the bear, a definite chance, and quite a good chance too for the bear, if the hunter is a duffer. But of course, as compared with rabbit-shooting, there is the difficulty of getting to a floe with a bear on it, and you may be nipped in the ice, or you may die of scurvy, so rabbit-shooting taking it all round may be safer.
One of the bears on board, the poor little female cub, was most touching, when this pistolled bear was brought on board. She longed for a mother, and tore at her cage to get out to this last bear, a female, but in no time it was skinned and cut up to become our daily food, for we must eat bear now three times a day, our fresh food from Trömso having gone bad and tasteless some time ago.
The mist lifted in bands, and strips of colour came into the sky where the sun ought to have set, but obstinately swung round high above the horizon, and the sea became literally as calm as a mill-pond, and now all the scraps of floe, separating in the stillness, are perfectly reflected. One piece of ice in particular we notice against the vivid lavender with deep bottle-green transparency when the midnight sun shines through it.
As we enjoyed the stillness and mystery of the rising mist, Hamilton said he thought—no, he said he did see land; and we said, “Oh!” and “Really!” and doubted, but it was!—a little hard point above the low bank of mist on the horizon, and everyone got their glasses out and gradually Greenland became more distinct—no doubt now, mountain-tops, heaven be praised, hills again. We have only been about four weeks away from land; still, that gives one a deep heart-longing for it. We had almost made up our minds that we were not to see Greenland this year, possibly never, but we have seen its mountains! Even supposing the floes close up and gales come, and we are driven back, still, we have seen these icy mountains we promised to see long ago. I wish there were several artists here—there is beauty, delicacy and colour enough to keep all busy.
Possibly the colour and reflections, and the view of mountains appeal to us on account of the many days we have spent in the misty plains of flat ice floe. It will be difficult now to sleep with the thought of land and rocks under foot, saxifrage, Arctic poppies, and possibly musk oxen, and possibly even a mosquito or two, and ptarmigan, and possibly great walrus on the land ice. I certainly greatly desire one splendid pair of walrus tusks. That and a musk ox’s head and a narwhal’s horn will satisfy me. I do not want a museum; still, there is always some small corner in a house or studio where such things may be stowed to serve as reminders of days in the open.
There is very fine ice forming on the still water; the surface looks as if it had a scum of liquid like melted sugar in an imperceptible form of ice. Other parts are covered with more developed ice-crystals. There is a pleasant, soft, rustling sound, or hissing, as we go through it.
We have a seal or two in view—a hooded-seal we have just got. Don Luis Velasquez made a very pretty shot at its neck at a hundred yards. Now there is a larger kind, a mile or two off in our line of route; Gisbert will have a shot at it. This thin ice forming now is pleasant enough, but the same formation, if we were here a little later, would make us anxious to get out and off home before it got too strong.
There is really colouring in the sky this midnight, sun reflections, salmon and pink—the first decidedly warm colours we have seen since leaving Trömso. Some of the ice-blocks assume strange tints, one piece with dark lilac pillars supporting the portal of a cave with three arched entrances each fringed with icicles—inside a glory of greens and blues. Did fairies live in this cold land, such should be their palace.
To-day, 31st of July, in the early morning, we got to within a few miles of Shannon Island, North-East Greenland, and could see the snowy lomonds behind it. Though the land is almost entirely snow-clad, it looks comforting after a month at sea. But the pack ice is too jammed to the west to allow us to land, so we steer slowly south, winding in and out amongst the ice-islands, sometimes shoving a small one aside. We picked up a big seal this morning, a bearded seal, P. Barbata; it is the biggest seal of the Arctic. Still steering southerly, Greenland faint to the westward, with glasses we see fiords and glaciers. Sky and sea silky and still, the only sound the faint pulsation of our little engine. It is hot in the sun! I can hardly believe it, and yet huge icicles are forming round the edges of the ice-tables. The endless floes grow wearisome. There is too little life. There are only a few seals, only a few sea-birds and not a sign of a whale. The pensive sunlit stillness of the day and the mirror-like surface of the ocean were scarcely disturbed this afternoon by the slaughter of two great blue seals. The largest showed that a bear had lately paid it attention, by the cuts on its enormous body. It weighed on the steelyard three hundred kilos, equal to six hundred and sixty-seven pounds; about the weight of four policemen. A big bear with one paw can lift such a seal out of the water and throw it several yards on to the floe. The blue seal is rather like the Barbata or bearded seal, excepting the colour of its coat, which is more brown than the blue seal’s. Each has a very small head in proportion to the bulk of the body, both have only rudimentary teeth, they eat crabs and seaweed. Whether the teeth are provided for the purpose or whether the seal is restricted to such small fry because it has such poor teeth, is perhaps a matter which would be best discussed at the Royal Physical Society in Edinburgh or London after lunch.
Phoca Barbata
It may seem discontented, but I must confess this prolonged fine weather (we have had seventy-two hours of the same white sunlight) begins to get a little on our nerves. Nature here is so extremely mathematically laid out. The sea is polished to a high point, all the little cloudlets are arranged in such order that ribbed sea-sand would be quite irregular in comparison. So of course you have these cloudlets, level bands of pale blue and some faint yellows, all repeated in the mirror. Very high-toned delicate colour, but, if I may criticise, just a little sickly. I think with the advance of years one does not find these extremely delicate harmonies quite satisfying, one rather longs for ruddy, tawny colours and tropic blues in their deepest notes.
It is so calm, so stagnant, if I may say so, that our thin brown smoke hangs in wisps where we left it many hours ago. And yet for all the smoothness and polish there is an untidy aspect, for there are little and great bits of ice floating all over the place. There being no wind, little scraps of ice and big bits get all separated, and each takes up a bit of sea to itself. When there is any wind these pieces herd or pack together. We trust that the ice along the shore may soon follow this example, for it is only pack ice, not the fixed shore ice of winter. We hope it will disperse in a day or two and let us inshore to see “the saxifrage and poppies.”
With the glass we frequently look at the faint far-away mountains and glaciers. A little while ago I thought in the silence I heard a shot from away over there, thirty or twenty-five miles off—no, it must have been a glacier cracking, a berg calving, perhaps. That sound carries in such weather a tremendous distance, and so too does the wave made in the sea by the ice-cliffs falling.
Vessels lying in calm several miles away from such glaciers have been nearly swamped with the wave raised by a calving berg.
The evenings are now, on the 1st of August, just distinguishable from the day by a little increase of yellow in the sky and pink on the snow. To-night the sea froze over with a thin coat of ice and we go rustling through it.
Later, about twelve o’clock, we were in an open lane, between floes and no thin ice, where a family of narwhals seemed to be working for their living. So we lowered a whale-boat as quietly as possible and rowed gently after them, and as usual, just as we got, say, to within forty yards, and held the harpoon aimed ready to drive it into the biggest bull, say at twenty yards, for they show very little above water, they quietly slipped under for other ten or twenty minutes, and then appeared several hundred yards away. With modern big harpoon-gun from the bow of the small whaling steamer, we can harpoon from thirty to forty yards, but in shooting from the bow of small boat close to water’s level the range is more limited. We tried waiting, following, and circumvention, and when we tried to cut across their course, one of them broke water actually between the oar blades and the boat and made a great swirl; and evidently this too close contact scared the family party, and they all disappeared, and we went on board, still hopeful, however, for three times at least we had been within a second, or say two yards, of our chance of securing a great white ivory horn.
... Our patience was tried again and the writer’s was found wanting. I had turned in and heard the boat being lowered away, and let a crew go without me, and never heard them come back, though there must have been thunderous treading of sea-boots on deck a foot above my head, ropes falling and blocks rattling—you can sleep soundly here when you get the chance.
But C. A. H. complains that he cannot, for, poor man, the two new bear cubs are almost touching his bunk, and their scrape, if not very loud, is pretty constant, and bear perfume permeates his cabin even more than the rest of the ship. But praise be, there is a light breeze to-day from landward. I have not yet observed any scent of saxifrage or Arctic poppies, but it has freshened the too still atmosphere and we hope it will help to open up the land pack and let us land for musk oxen.
PAZE
EL CATHARO VALIENTE
Note.—For description of above drawings see [pp. 274-275].
Shows Captive Bear Cubs, Brother and Sister, and Ice Beginning to Form on the Sea Water
Our starboard bear raised Cain! almost all the wood of his cage is chawed up, so round the inside of the remainder we have hung heavy iron furnace bars and other round bars, holding the furnace bars more or less in position, there are ropes, chains and wire round all—a horrible sight, for the poor fellow inside, with all his struggles and the black of the furnace bars, is quite black, and he has lost a lot of hair. I would give a good deal to see him free again and over the side. But I pray heaven he does not settle his account with me before he goes for having roped him into his present sad condition. I believe it was the noise of the fight he put up that awakened me this morning, at least what I heard made me look out, and sure enough there were six men struggling with crowbars, hammers, axes, etc., etc., and then poor Bruin’s black head appeared between timbers and nails for a moment, till he was again closed up. It would take a couple of months of the ice and snow to clean his coat again.
In the afternoon—now he is almost quiet, for when he tries to claw at the wood through the cast-iron bars they fall back into place again, and he cannot eat iron! So he is thinking now which is the weak point; in a day or two he will attack it. I am very sorry for him, now he is quiet and a little red shows where he has been scratched. I can imagine, like the old Scottish fighting Admiral Barton, that he murmurs:
“A little I’m hurt but not yet slain,
I’ll but lie down and bluid a while
And then I’ll rise and ficht again.”
A mist came over the scene this afternoon, with light shining through, but enough to stop us making progress, even should the ice-pack allow us. So we moor fore and aft alongside a small floe and set to work with pails to fill our fresh-water tanks from the three blue pools on it, pale blue flushed with lilac, cobalt round the rim of each. We stroll on the hard snow, stuff like coarse salt laid down on a blue translucent carpet, and play the pipes, and play with Chee Chee, the ship’s pet. The only game she does not like is being lassoed. Finding a mit hidden in the snow suits her, and a great many other games taught by various instructors.
Our youngest Spanish señor ventured to row away from the ship a little this morning, and this the youngest Don Luis Herrero told me a fine yarn about how he had come on a splendid saddle-seal unexpectedly—that is a dappled brown and white kind we have not got as yet; he described it vividly as seen from five yards. Gisbert at lunch told me it was a make-up, therefore the writer tried to pull his leg in return by illustrating his pretended encounter with the famous seal as per marginal notes. ([See p. 272-273.])
You may not think it, but such a small attempt at an amusing drawing caused laughter on board. You see a little joke goes a long way in the ice-pack, as for instance the drawing below.
The only mild excitement to-day, 2nd August, was a boat expedition, with los señores, two rifles in the bow, and two pairs of oars, against a large harp-seal, with a splendid white skin and large black spots, suggestive of an A1 carriage-rug. Fire opened at a hundred yards (the first shot was accidental), but several struck the water quite close and in front of the seal, which made it take up a very indignant attitude, and for an instant it seemed to hesitate as if it thought a retreat on to the floe would be its safest course. But a bullet finally hit it in the back and it acted on its first intention and dived off the floe. The two Don Josés were rather disconsolate, for certainly it had a very beautiful skin. We hoped to get quite a lot of these large harp-seal skins and their blubber to fill our casks.
The harp blows his nose up in a remarkable way, so hard that it inflates the fore part of its head. Naturalists assure us that, like the shark’s fin, this has an awe-inspiring effect on their opponents. We accept this cum grano salis. This is what I remember of the harp’s attitude and expression (1) before he was actually fired at, (2) its attitude of astonishment, and we may call the next his adieu. These designs are executed, you observe, with a certain chaste economy of lines. ([See p. 274.])
An Incident from “Bearing Straights.”