A good many more faces fell also, but when Claude explained that he would make such representations as would ensure a goodly percentage of the gold or silver dug out being given to the finders, the enthusiasm was restored, and all hands went to work with a will. For months the gold fever raged among the Icebear’s crew, from February till nearly the end of May, and even sports would have been forgotten in the excitement; but about twice a week Claude ordered all hands to play, if the weather was at all propitious. Then football was resumed, and Paddy’s wild game of tobogganing also, to say nothing of fishing. Fishing? you may repeat, in some surprise. Yes, dear reader. It was done so: a hole was made in the ice, and baited hooks were lowered through. But Jack and Joe despised such cultivated plans of proceeding to business, and, if the truth must be told, they were quite as successful, if not more so, than the British sailors. The tackle these Indians used and their method of using it were of the most primitive description. Each had his own ice-hole, each had a short gut line with a strong strangely shaped bone hook. This was lowered into the water, and if fish even snapped at it—and many did, for the fish are hungry in Greenland during winter—out they came, and they never got back.
The days got longer and longer now, and the weather got sensibly less cold, till lo, and behold! about the middle of April the sun rose one morning and announced his intention of not going to bed again for three months and more to come. At all events, he did not set that night. He only made pretence he would. He went so low on the northern horizon that our heroes fancied he meant disappearing altogether, then he began slowly climbing round again.
Do not imagine, however, that it was all sunshine even now. Far from it. There were terrible gales of wind now, and whirling, drifting snow that seemed to rise as high as the highest mountain peaks.
Some of these hills were evidently extinct volcanoes, but how long ago it might have been since fire and smoke belched from their lofty summits, even Dr Barrett himself would hardly have dared to guess. But working down in their mine one day, about the end of April, the men were startled at hearing a hollow, rumbling sound apparently far down beneath them; it was like the noise of waggon wheels rattling over a rough road, only muffled.
The surgeon and Claude were both in the mine at the time.
“Don’t be alarmed, men,” said the former; “you may safely go on with your work. It is the noise of steam you hear, or rather of water and steam combined. That sound was sent to tell us summer is coming. It is a way the earth has in Greenland.”
“You have heard something similar before?” asked Claude.
“I have, only not in Greenland proper, but in caves among the hills in Spitzbergen.”
Now, giant cataracts began to tumble down from the cliffs of the mountains, and roaring rivers and torrents appeared where rivers had not been suspected before. Water overflowed the inland sea all around the Icebear, making the snow slush, and rendering the passage to and from the shore not only difficult but even dangerous.
And this state of things increased, the sky being meanwhile thickly covered over with dark rolling cumulus, drifting onwards on the wings of a southern breeze. But in a day or two the wind fell flat, the clouds were lifted like a veil from east to west; in half an hour’s time there was not a cloud in the sky, and the sun shone down cold and clear. Strange adjectives to use when speaking of the sun, but none other could express my meaning, for this silver shield of a sun seemed shorn of its rays; you could look at it without pain or inconvenience, just as, raising my eyes, I now gaze upon the flame of the oil lamp by which I am writing.