CHAPTER II
“HEAVE ROUND, SIR,” SAID CAPTAIN MAYNE BRACE
When the Walrus, in the shortening days of autumn, had steamed slowly into Incognita Bay, she had to force her way through the pancake ice with which the whole extent of the water was covered. Flat pieces these are, probably no more than a foot thick, covered of course with several inches of snow, and with an average diameter of, say, eight feet. They are really the débris of a baby-floe which the waves, raised by some far-off gale of wind, have broken up. The snow-edge all around them is raised by the constant contact of the pieces of ice with one another, and this gives them a fancied resemblance to gigantic pancakes. Hence their name.
But soon after the Walrus had anchored, the sky had cleared, and in the dead, unbroken silence of an early winter, they were frozen together by strong bay-ice. Then snow had fallen and fallen and fallen, with never a breath of wind strong enough to lift one feathery flake, till, on looking out over the bulwarks one morning after the decks had been cleared, and the sun was shining again, lo! the whole surface of the bay was one unbroken, unwrinkled sheet of dazzling snow.
Had that fall continued it would have buried ship and crew and all.
Then the glass had gone down somewhat, and the snow-field fell and shrank.
Harder frost than ever rendered Nature’s winter winding-sheet after this so solid and hard, that a regiment of artillery could have passed over it and left not a trace behind.
When snow had again fallen, it had been accompanied by such high, wild winds, that the flakes were ground into choking ice-dust, and swept clean off the surface of the bay.
The head of this inlet was about five nautical miles from the ship, but as soon as the advancing natives got on to the level snow-bay, with dogs and sledges, they commenced to make short work of this, and their strange, shrill cries, as the dogs were urged madly onwards, could now be distinctly heard by those on board the Walrus.
They were coming on like a whirlwind!
Faded the rich orange bar on the southern horizon, and the first rays of the great silver shield of a sun fell athwart the bay.