CHAPTER XXXIV
There being still mist this morning our budget of news can only be described as strictly Local, for we can only see over a few yards of floe and rippling sea. Three hooded-seals appeared astern just now, as I went out for a breath after completing the aforesaid masterpiece of the floe-edge scene. They went off with a splash, as if alarmed at finding themselves near us, and then they came up again and took stock of us at about two hundred yards. We could not see them well, so we did not shoot. What we may call Home news, is of our cubs forward. William the (comparatively) Silent worked through his floor, and it had to be renewed. We call his sister Christabel, for she bit her brother’s face without any reason; but it is rather unfair calling her so, for he certainly threatened her—thought she caused all the troubles he had had in his short life. She refuses to have water. Even when we pull out her water-trough she violently draws it in again and upsets the water. She has strength! I think she will be a great catch in a zoo, where her pretty ways could be studied behind bars with safety. The old Starboard bear is now mastering the material iron; teeth, he has learned, are no use, so he is applying brain. He eats sugar from our fingers, and would eat hand and arm with half a chance. I begin to sympathise with him in regard to confined quarters; even the wide space we have of about three square yards of deck, in which to have our exercise, feels confined after about five weeks’ time.
I forget what we did or did not do in the morning of Sunday, 3rd August. I expect, the same as usual. There is thin mist, with sun shining through, an unhealthy mouldy morning, and we have a feeling as if we had had bad champagne the night before—a slight nasal catarrh, and a little sneezing going on amongst your neighbours and several complaints of rheumatism, cuts, and boils.
I have always heard the Arctic likened to atmospheric champagne, where men’s spirits are said to be high and colds exist not. Well, all I can say is that in this particular vessel in these latitudes (there again, there’s someone else sneezing) there are many such complaints, and smells! Hamilton says “The look of the sea suggests a smell.” It suggests to me London on a November morning. Sea and air are so stagnant and cold, you could lean against the icy smell of our bears or kitchen, and a cigar whiff almost strikes you.
When the sun got up we steered away east and south—a hundred and forty miles we have yet to go, to get out of ice into the open sea, “the rough highway to freedom and to peace,” as Morris puts in his Jason, and all day we passed down lanes and lakes and across belts of deadly still water between floes of flat ice, with few and small hummocks. And seals became plentiful. As far as the eye could reach, occasional black marks could be seen on the floe and little black bullet-heads appeared in calm water at the floe-edge, and some of them came and examined us from thirty or forty yards as we passed, for an instant, and dashed under water again, leaving a swirl like the rise of a ten-pound trout.
Yes, I think that was the whole day’s programme, excepting an alarm for bottle-nose whale. That came in the middle of aften-mad, seven or eight P.M., and we hastily loaded our two bow harpoon-guns, and got all ready and waited and watched, but the bottle-nose did not appear again. In several books on whales I see very misleading drawings of the bottle-nose whale, Hyperoodon diodon. This one is taken from notes of these whales in various seas, alive and dead.
We were about to lay ourselves down to rest when a shout that a bear was in sight came from the mast-head, and all of us became very much alive.
It was on a floe a mile off, and the floe was peppered with seals, and it lay on its back and turned up the black soles of its feet and rolled about, apparently quite pleased with its own company, and indifferent to the seals.
A remarkable thing happened when our little body of hunters set out after it—the seals lay on the ice, without popping into their holes, also other seals came alongside to within ten yards or so of the Fonix. It looked as if they knew that we were men bear-hunting. This struck me as odd up here. Of course in the Antarctic there would have been nothing remarkable; and Gisbert, who has been in Arctic ice scores of times, also thought it unaccountable, unless it was actually the case that the seals knew that we were in pursuit of their enemy.
Still another thing extraordinary happened—we were watching the great old fellow stretching himself, and all his movements through the glass, noting his colour, light warm yellow, lighter than the violet of the floe in shadow! when he raised his black nose and face and went off at a walk to the left. I am sure he had not seen our guns or smelt them, it must have been that extra sense which the black bear also possesses—instinctive knowledge of a presence. Soon he came to a place where two of our men were visible to him and then, Hamilton tells me, he went off at a gallop! A great big male bear! It is a rare thing to see a bear gallop, I just missed doing so—took my glass off to make a note in colour, and he had got to a walk again when I put my glass on again. He made off fast to the left, where the floe ended, and about half-a-mile of calm sea and small bits of floe separated it from the next floe. This manœuvre left the two guns and the men far behind, so, to prevent his escape, we lifted our ice-anchor off the floe and steamed away to cut him off, and we got between him and the next floe when he was about a hundred yards from it, and so turned him back—a great big fellow swimming strongly, making a dark green wake behind him across the smooth bronze colour of the water—his last swim up the golden track of the midnight sun. Poor old man, the orange rays touched his pale face, and he looked anxious. I think the seals knew he was in difficulty, for several swam quite close to him, their natural foe. We dropped a boat for the guns on the floe and they soon came up and opened fire at about twenty yards, and by-and-by a well-aimed shot hit in the neck. It is a male bear of great size—what an ignominious ending! But if you only think of the killing part, what hunting could be called sport? After all, it took Man much work to circumvent this ice bear—a ship built for ice work, then the engine, coaling and provisions for a year, and several weeks’ navigation amongst the risks of sea and ice combined. He weighed eight pounds short of a thousand, stood on his heels from nose or eye nine feet two inches. He bore two old wound marks on his body, possibly made by Eskimos; we wonder if it was the memory of them made him go off so quickly; possibly it was only hunger and thoughts of dinner that at first disturbed him, for he had only a little seal’s skin inside him.
It was the first time I had seen a bear look lighter in tone than the background; the sun being at a low angle, the undulating surface of floe was all lilac and tints of pale green, and yellow, and only the raised hummock and projections and the bear itself caught the golden light. The shadows on the bear’s body were comparatively dark green. So many people paint bears, and so few people see them in their natural surroundings that these colour notes may be pardoned.
From one A.M. to five-thirty P.M. I heard at intervals in my sleep my Spanish friends fighting the battle over again, and occasional shots at seals. Their vitality is extraordinary (the Spaniards); they can talk for hours and hours without evincing the least sign of fatigue, whilst we poor northerners are creatures of habit and feel ready for bed after eighteen or twenty hours’ hunting; and we get tired of talking in a fraction of the time they spend yarning.
They are rather bull-ring enthusiasts and back their bulls against any bear. Gisbert plans capturing one of these full-grown wild bears that are never seen in captivity and taking it to Madrid—more easily done than the reader would at first think, but it would be real sailor’s work. First of all you would find your big bear on a floe, which you could sail round—easily enough done—and by one means or another get him to take to the water, also easily done. Then follow him in two boats, each would throw a lasso over his head, when the interest would begin. Whilst number one boat hauled taut he would probably roll over and thrash with his paws, then number two boat, with loop still fast to his neck, would throw a hitch over a foot, and so haul the foot to his neck, and so on with the other fore foot and hind feet; his head would then sink and hitches could be cast all over him, till, like a fly in spider’s web, he would be helpless. Then the big strop round him and a strong winch chain, a hold lined with iron plates and you would have such a bear as has never been seen in captivity, a floe-bred bear, say twenty years old, of huge dimensions. Gisbert, who knows all about bears as well as about bulls, backs the bear in the ring; so do I. Its four enormous limbs, each with a hand and claws on them, a neck and head and teeth of enormous power, all told three times the weight of a bull, and combined with cat-like activity and quickness of eye. Possibly next year this may come off and Hamilton and I will go down to Madrid and make a book, for all Spain would give any odds on their bull. In Madrid an elephant was pitted against a heroic bull; the bull at once charged and prodded the elephant, which annoyed it so that it swung round and broke the bull’s back with a swipe of its trunk. But a lion or black bear and a tiger the bull has easily mastered. A lion stood the charge and was lifted clean into the air and came down and bolted inside out with its tail between its legs. A tiger ignominiously fled, chivied by the bull all round the ring. So Madrid people are prepared to lay their shirts against any polar bears, or anything under the sun; they are in honour bound to do so.
The bears they have seen in European zoological gardens have been brought as cubs, or at oldest were two years old, when they left their native floes, and are narrow chested and have narrow hips. Wait till they see the enormous proportions of chest and hind-quarters of a full-grown fellow that has lived, say, twenty to forty years, up north, with boundless liberty, on full rations!
Hamilton backs the bear to take a picador and horse under each arm, and the bull in his teeth, and our young Spaniards are a little offended at the picture, mais nous verrons, perhaps as soon as next year, if De Gisbert comes north hunting another season before the Spanish Government expedition starts.
We continue to make our way towards the edge of the ice through the mist, till we come to quite an open space of several miles in width, where the slight roll from south-west tells us of the open sea to come, and we talk of our hopes of a smooth crossing to the north of Norway. The Dons make preparation for retirement, and divide their beer, apples and chocolate, kindly offering us a share. With great forethought they have preserved these provisions against the expected confinement. But I trust it may be sunny and smooth, for their sake.
This day, the 5th of August, it is really hot in the sun, and there is a light air behind us, and there is only a very long, almost imperceptible swell—the sea silky blue, with delicate ripples, and the pans of floe ice are moving visibly, slightly dipping and rising, and the blue sea swells green over their white, as they rise, and hundreds of little streams run off them like icicles. “This end of the garden” is to-day very fresh and delicious, and after all these weeks of fog and nasty weather we hang up our bodies, as it were, to dry, and lay out our souls to the sun and thank the Creator for life. Life in a fog in the Arctic in the part where we have been is small beer, it is impossible to be truly thankful for the permanent possibility of sensation.