The second boat threw a line on board, which was made fast, and with this help and the stout arms in their own boat, the dead walrus was towed along the open waterway to where the bear had been found. Then busy hands went to work skinning and flensing with such good will that at last, with both boats most unpleasantly loaded, as the doctor called it, they rowed back to the chasm and reached the ship in safety, well satisfied with their day’s work.
There was no aggressive walrus herd to make its appearance now, for, in spite of an occasional wail from the captive, none of its relatives attempted to enter the passage through to the fiord, and so the tremendous uproar which arose as soon as an attempt was made to get the captive on board the steamer, and which echoed loudly from the sides of the cliffs, was laughed at merrily, the men thoroughly enjoying the task of hoisting the slippery, yielding creature on deck. This was achieved by laying a tarpaulin in the bottom of the boat, rolling the cub over, lashing the corners together, and hoisting and hauling it up to the gangway, where a little more snorting and barking of a pig-like nature resulted in the little animal settling down in the bows penned up by a couple of gratings, and going to sleep in the warm sun, evidently thoroughly appreciating the dry nature of its new bed.
Chapter Twenty Nine.
The Healing of a Feud.
Upon the principle of making hay while the sun shone, the little imprisoned party worked hard amongst the walrus, and with so much success, that there seemed to be no doubt about the cargo defraying the expenses of the expedition, and, if it should prove necessary, paying for a second voyage the next year.
“If we can get out,” said Steve one day, when the subject was being discussed in the cabin.
“We must take that for granted, my lad,” said the captain. “There are many reasons why it is possible for the mass of ice at the bottom of the fiord to give way. The outside must always be weakening, and the pressure on the inner increasing by the constant flow of water into the fiord, which is rising day by day. That passage does not take off half as much as appears to come in somewhere from the rocks, and sooner or later this must break through the ice. If it comes to the worst, we must turn engineers and block the passage by blasting down stones in that narrowest part till we have dammed the way out. We should then turn this fiord into a lake, which would, sooner or later, burst down its southern bank.”
There was a little talk that evening, too, about the sun, whose career above the horizon was coming to an end, the height at noon being far less, and at midnight so close down to the horizon that it ceased to shine down into the glen, the rays being hid by the glacier. This fact brought forth serious thoughts, for it suggested the time when the brief summer would be drawing to a close, and the approach of that long period during which the arc described by the sun grew lower and lower until it ceased to appear at all, and then came the worst of the wintry time—that when, saving the rays of the moon, stars, and aurora, there was no light.