I am sitting here to tell a story, and not to describe scenery, the yachting, the fishing, hunting, and all the pleasures that make a holiday in Greenland north, during the short summer-time, so enthrallingly delightful—a something that once enjoyed can never be forgotten, while the life-blood circulates in our veins.
Claude himself was a lover of nature. In his soul he had all the poetry of a Wordsworth, though there it remained, for he never wrote verses. He could love and admire every tiny flower, every moss or lichen or tender and beautiful saxifrage that clad the rocky uplands. Neither could he classify them.
Dr Barrett both admired and classified. He was ever on the outlook for new species, and I verily believe he dreamed about them by night. So his cabinet, of the rare and lovely specimens found on shore, grew even bigger than did his deep-sea collection.
Cold? No, it was not cold—these regions at this season. Cool sometimes, but never cold.
The Icebear would be cautiously steered up some of those fiords and the anchor let go, in an inland sea or harbour in which all the navies in the world, both mercantile and man-o’-war, could easily have ridden.
While the doctor and his assistants would be prospecting among the hills, leaving the ship in charge of the mate, and, accompanied only by the faithful Fingal and giant Byarnie, Claude would start in a small boat, a kind of elegant dingy, which he had had made on purpose, and go off up the fiords for miles with gun and fishing-rod.
The snow-bird, strange to say, always remained on board. What truth there may be in the statement I do not know, but they say that a snow-bird, or tern, that has once been domesticated by mankind dare not return to its kindred birds under pain of death.
Claude used to enjoy those excursions on the fiords very much. Here is how he generally spent the day: First, Byarnie would pull him slowly about close to the rocks, where the fish were most numerous. A few dozen were speedily caught and thrown in the bottom of the boat. Fingal used to take them in charge, apparently delighting in doing so, for his wise eyes never left them, and if one flopped Fingal held it down with an air of seriousness on his rough hairy face that was highly amusing.
But Claude soon got tired of fishing, and put up the rod. Then he told Byarnie to pull him away out into the centre of the fiord, and let the boat float as she liked in the sweet sunshine. Claude would have a book, perhaps, and very often, when his eyes were riveted on it, it was upside down, which showed where his thoughts were.
Just for fun then he would say to Fingal, “Speak, Fingal.”