“Oh, bother the romance!” said Ralph, “think of the cash!”
“Well, but,” said McBain, laughing, “we can no more tow the whale than we can the iceberg.”
“That fish,” said the mate, “myself and my men can flensh, cut up, and refine. The produce will be worth three thousand pounds in the English market; and beside, it will be work for the men for the winter months.”
“But you and your men must accept a share,” said McBain.
“If,” replied the mate of the Trefoil, “you but hint at such a thing again, that fish may lie there till doomsday. No, captain, it is but a poor way of showing our gratitude.”
Once convinced of the feasibility of the mate’s proposal, McBain lost no time in setting about carrying the plan into execution. It would be a sin, he argued, to leave so much wealth to waste, when they had ample room for carrying it. Even romantic Rory came to the same conclusion at last.
“Had it been base blubber now,” he said, “you’d have had to excuse me, Captain McBain, from sailing in the same ship with it I’d have asked you to have built me a cot in these beautiful wilds, and here I’d have stopped, sketching and shooting, until you returned with a clean ship to take me back to bonnie Scotland. But refined oil, sweet and pure,—indeed I agree with you, it would be a sin entirely to leave it to the bears.”
A busy time now ensued for the officers and men of the Snowbird; they had to be up early and to work late. Nor was the work free from hardship. Had the bay where lay the monster leviathan—which the mate of the Trefoil averred was one of the largest “fishes” he had ever seen—lain anywhere near them, the task would have been mere play to what it was. First and foremost, sledges had to be built—large, light, but useful sledges. The building of these occupied many days, but they were finished at last, and then the working party started on its long journey to Bear Point, as our heroes had named the place—Bear Point and Good Luck Bay.
As during the flenshing and the landing of the cakes of blubber, the men would have to remain all night near their work, every precaution was taken to protect them from cold in the camping-ground. Rory, Allan, and Ralph must needs make three of the party, with Seth to guide them in the woods, where they meant to spend the short day shooting.
By good fortune, the weather all the time remained settled and beautiful, and the four guns managed easily enough to keep the camp well supplied with game of various kinds. The cold at night time, however, was intense, and the roaring fires kept up in the hastily-constructed huts, could scarcely keep the men warm. This was the only time during the whole cruise of the Snowbird that McBain deemed it necessary to serve out to his men a rum ration. The time at which it was partaken may seem to some of my readers an odd one, but it was, nevertheless, rational, and it was suggested by the men in camp themselves. It was served at night, just at that hour when Arctic cold becomes almost insupportable. They did not require it by day, they could have hot coffee whenever they cared to partake of it, but at half-past two in the morning all hands seemed to awake suddenly. This was the coldest time, and the fires, too, had died low, and the men’s spirits, like the thermometer, were below zero. But when more logs were heaped upon the fires, and the coffee urn heated, and the ration mixed with a smoking bowl of it and handed round, then the life-blood seemed to return to their hearts, and re-wrapping themselves in their skins, they dropped off to sleep, and by seven o’clock were once more astir.