CHAPTER XXXIII
Finding no whales and being unable to get on to Greenland, for some twenty miles of ice now separate us from its shore, we decide to turn back.
Right about wheel then, for we are sick of eternal flat ice-floes. If we had a new boiler, new coal supply, new food supply and unlimited time, we would hang on. The ice may open in ten or twelve days, but we arranged to finish our hunting, if possible, at Trömso, Norway, about the middle of August. So we have just time and no more to get there by that time, granted there is fine weather and little fog.
But as I write, seven P.M., we are again into a fog bank and have to tie up to a floe. It is thin fog, and sun shines through it and we hope it will lift. So it is good-bye to our chances of whales, musk oxen, or walrus, for walrus we can only get along the coast in shallow soundings. One whale, and that only a narwhal, is our poor basket. We must console ourselves with having got a fair number of bears in the time—seventeen in the month, one narwhal and a lot of seals. It will not pay, but we may yet get bottle-nose down about Jan Mayen Island, if the drift takes us southerly in that direction before we get out of the ice easterly.
Perhaps I may here be allowed to put down some notes on the protective coloration of the Arctic fauna.
Evening of the 2nd August. We thought we were in for another bear this evening, because a young man on watch probably mistook a piece of yellow ice for a bear, and we went back on our tracks, but found no bear. We hunted round the floe on which he vowed he had seen it, but did not find even spoor, so I fear his cry of “Wolf” will not be listened to for many a day. Naturalists tell us that the yellowish tint of the bear’s skin is given to it by Nature to allow the bear to secure its prey, the seal—that the seal is green enough to mistake the bear’s skin for a piece of yellow ice, and thus the fittest survives. As these yellow pieces of ice are few and far between, and as there are far more pieces of blue ice, and as the predominating colour of the snow is white, I’d have painted the bear blue and white if I had been Nature, with only a touch perhaps of yellow here and there.
Naturalists have also told me that whilst waiting for a seal at its breathing-hole in the ice, the bear covers its nose with its paws to prevent the seal seeing the conspicuous black of its nostrils. I should think myself this is to keep his hands warm. Five black claws on each foot must be as conspicuous to the seal as the black nose. Again, sometimes a bear covers itself completely with snow, all but its nose! This allows man in his turn to have a chance of proving himself to be the fittest. A case in point was when two men I know up here encountered a bear. It took careful stock of them and did not like their protective smell or the checks of their tweeds, so it did not immediately attempt to eat them (possibly it was not hungry), but it retired, as it thought, out of sight, and with a few grand sweeps of its great forearms and hands covered itself up with snow, only leaving its black nose exposed. But for this wonderful foresight on the part of Nature in making the bear’s nose black, the order of evolution might have been reversed. Man strolling along and seeing nothing but white snow might have slipped out of existence in the warm embrace of Ursus Maritimus. The protective coloration of the black nose, from the man’s point of view, surely proved that Nature originally intended the bear to be cooked with onions for our dinner.
When they spotted the black nose, the two men proceeded to guess in which direction lay the neck and body. (I think only an artist who has studied the drawing of a bear’s nose and head could have told for certain.) So when they did hit it in the neck, it must have been rather a fluke! It was a fighting bear, and came out of the eruption of snow with fearful roars, and in a great hurry, for a bear. But Nature insisted on the evolution and survival of the higher species and wiped out the bear with two 475 decimal bullets, nickel covered, and added, very incidentally, vermilion to the general colour scheme of the floe, tempting one to drag in the trite quotation: “Nature red of tooth and claw.”
We are inclined to dwell at some length on the theory of the protective coloration of the fauna of the Arctic and the Antarctic regions. For in these frost-bound portions of our sphere there is frequently so much fog, or nebulous condition of the atmosphere, of such density that the naturalist observer is compelled either to evolve theories or play cards.
Another of the carnivoræ of these high latitudes, Vulpes lagopus or Arctic fox, has also by Nature been given a remarkable skin as protective colouring of perfect whiteness (value to-day about £12). Beyond doubt, as with the bear, this resemblance of the colour of this skin to the surroundings is in order to allow the fox to secure its prey—namely, the Lagopus hemilencurus or Arctic grouse, of which it is particularly fond, as also of the Lagopus glacialis or white hare of the polar Arctic regions.
Now, seeing that the fox is singularly gifted with cunning, a fact which has been universally admitted by naturalists of all times, Nature, to prevent the complete extinction of the smaller fauna, such as the hare, which has neither wings to fly with nor fins to swim with, has also gifted the hare with a white coat, and so the balance of Nature is preserved. In the case of this Lagopus hemilencurus or Arctic grouse, which, unlike the fox or bear, is unprovided with teeth with which to protect itself, Nature, with its unstinted bounty, has provided it with lateral appendages, one on either side, with which it is enabled to fly; thus it has, besides its protective coloration, another means by which it can escape its natural enemy, so the preservation of the less cunning but more edible species is preserved. We might perhaps have thought that, being provided with wings with which to take flight, the protective coloration for this bird would have been unnecessary, but we must remember that the fogs of these high latitudes, which have already been alluded to as affecting the actions of the higher animal homo, put this bird to a disadvantage. For it has been stated (the writer need hardly quote his authority here) the nebulous conditions referred to in these high latitudes are sometimes of such density that they may actually prevent this bird from seeking safety in flight. This being so, we can the more readily understand the necessity of the protective coloration for this succulent bird.
As an example of how very thick such a fog can be up here, it is related by an explorer (an American, I believe) that the men on watch on a certain occasion on his vessel were sitting on the bulwarks smoking their pipes and were leaning against the mist, when suddenly it rose and they all fell backwards into the sea.
What may seem unaccountable when you consider the bear’s protective coloration is that seals of various kinds in the Arctic regions should have apparently no protective colouring. Whilst lying on the ice beside their holes they form quite conspicuous objects, even at a distance of a mile on a clear day, and less if it is foggy or on a dark night. But the reason for this apparent contradiction is not far to find; for, as we have already explained, owing to the colour of the bear’s coat being of a yellowish tint and occasional pieces of ice being also of a yellowish tint, with a far-away resemblance to the bear’s coat, the seal takes the bear for a lump of ice walking, so Nature here has stepped in and said to the seal: “If you are such a silly fool as to mistake a bear for a piece of yellow ice, why, have a dark brown coat and be blowed to you,” so everyone is pleased—and so on.
The bear, or supposed bear, of last night, interrupted a quiet, misty evening we were spending alongside a small floe of a quarter of a mile in diameter of hard, smooth, frosted ice. Our men were occupied drawing fresh water from the blue pools. Eastward lay mist, north and west a pale orange band just showed beyond the violet-coloured floes and soft grey sky, just the quiet effect for decoration of a silk fan.
On the smooth floe we held various sports, tossing the caber, for example, the caber being the remains of the pine-tree we found on a floe as we came north. Also we had fencing. As there was rather a pretty small blue iceberg alongside, C. A. H. got his camera and photographed the two champions. The too-strong she-cook went a walk with Chee Chee; a little trot, rather; she must weigh about two hundred pounds, but she rather trips than walks. I wonder what a bear will think of her if he meets her. She is broad and deep-chested, with round red cheeks, and has a gentle voice and a gurgling laugh any time in the twenty-four hours of daylight. There was also a little pipe-playing, so the smooth floe with the blue pool was quite lively, till the call came to bear arms! Then everyone but Chee Chee came on board, and it stood alone, with all hands saying endearing things to make it come on board. Whether it was my seizing the lasso, the sight of which it hates, or one of the men circumventing it, I would not like to say, but from one reason or the other it came with a sudden bolt—I think the lasso did it!
I nearly forgot to put our Spanish friends into the picture; here they are, there is just room, right-hand top corner, hilariously shooting skuas, those robber birds. The señors are jolly the clock round; what a fallacy that is, about “solemn as a Spanish Don.”