In the great white land

by Gordon Stables

In the good old barque the Walrus went not only Captain Mayne Brace himself with our American hero Ingomar, and our two British boys, but the spectioneer, with Dumpty, and a picked crew of sealers or whalers, who hailed from Dundee or Hull. Then there were the Yak-Yaks, or wild Innuits, under the immediate command of Slap-dash himself, who also commanded the bears, Gruff, Growley, Grumpey, and Meg. The sub-chief of the Yak-Yaks had charge of the dogs—the Eskimo dogs, I mean, for there was one other dog to be mentioned presently, who would have scorned to be classed as an Eskimo, just as an Englishman would resent being looked upon as a cannibal from the Congo.

Milton the mate was the only man missing from the Walrus. He had been appointed to the Sea Elephant as second lieutenant, and was very proud indeed of the honour, for this splendid barque was to all intents and purposes the flag-ship. Her commander—Captain Bell, of the United States Navy—had seen much service in the Arctic, while Curtis, first lieutenant, was a daring and very clever young fellow, specially lent from the British Royal Navy for the expedition. He was, as a sailor, your beau-ideal of a Navy man, and Navy men, you know, are warranted to go anywhere and do anything. Although Curtis was a most exemplary officer, a botanist and hydrographer, with a penchant for meteorology, he was the reverse of proud. One doesn’t look for, nor expect, pride in a true gentleman, and although Arnold Curtis came of a very ancient English family, and had blue blood in his veins, and though he had reached the very advanced age of twenty and five, he was out-and-out a boy at heart, and had never been much more happy than when in the cricket-field or making one in a game of footer. At such times, hydrography and meteorology and all the rest of the sciences, except that which was needed for the game, were banished, and he was a boy all over, from his fair hair and laughing blue eyes right away down to his shoes or boots.

Months and months before the two ships sailed, Ingomar and he had been inseparable, while Charlie and Walt often dined with him on board the Sea Elephant.

Well, I was going to say that Captain Bell, or the “Admiral,” as he was more often called, was, like most of his crew, a thorough iceman. The crew were chiefly Americans, and every man Jack of them had braved dangers innumerable on the sea of ice before this.

On the flag-ship were three well-known men of science—a Scot, a German, and an Englishman, but they were just as jolly as anybody. I will not permit my reader to associate long faces, solemnity, and humdrumness with scientists.

Let me add that the British and American flags in this enterprise, instead of being tacked and tagged together as at first proposed, were hoisted, when any occasion demanded their hoisting, one at the peak and another at the fore, or main, as the case might be.

Almost every hour during the voyage to Gibraltar the two barques kept as close together as possible. But here, after a farewell dinner, they parted, the flag-ship bearing up for the Suez Canal, to cruise and make scientific but brief observations all the way down through the Indian Ocean, until she should meet once again with the Walrus at the lonesome and wildly rugged island of Kerguelen, which lies further than 50° South, and in 70° East longitude, or, roughly speaking, about midway ’twixt the Cape of Good Hope and New Zealand.

Both ships carried as much coal as possible, but each had a noble spread of canvas, and so steam was never up while the wind blew fair. The Trades carried the Walrus well and fairly towards the equator, and when these began to fail them, the order was given to get up steam. So no time was lost, the chief object being to get into far Southern seas as soon as possible, and to commence therein the true work of the expedition.

Ingomar had one great, one only ambition. It was to make a noble record that should eclipse that of every nation which had attempted before this, the circumnavigation of the Southern Pole.

The finding of the real pole, as people phrase it, was something which might certainly be dreamt of but never probably accomplished. Yet manly ambition is a noble thing. Let us aim high. If we fire an arrow at the moon, we shall not hit it, but we shall hit a mark far higher than if we had fired at a bush of furze or broom.