Chapter Eleven.
Summer on the Greenland Ocean.
There was not an officer nor able seaman on board the good ship Icebear, who had not been in the Arctic regions before.
Mostly Englishmen they were, with just a sprinkling of Scotch—“the leaven that leavened the lump,” that is how Rab McDonald, the third officer, expressed it, and it is needless to say that Rab himself was a Scot.
Onward went the Icebear, sometimes in a clear sea, though far into Baffin’s Bay—for this was what is called an exceptional year—but at other times she had literally to plough her way through the heavy ice.
When the weather was fine there was but little danger, unless, indeed, a swell rolled in, playing and toying with the monster pieces as schoolboys would with balls.
But when a breeze sprang up, even if only half a gale, then indeed the scene was changed. Then—
“Through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of man nor beasts they ken—
The ice was all between.
“The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around;
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound.”
During calm weather and in the open water Dr Barrett was busy indeed, taking soundings, deep or otherwise, and dredging for living objects at the sea’s bottom.