“That’s it,” said the captain, laughing. “Sometimes the bergs may be a bit too pressing with their attentions, and then I’ll hang these over. That’s it.”
It took nearly a fortnight to complete the manufacture of these fenders or trusses, for each of them was some twelve feet long by three in diameter composed of compressed straw and shielded by knitted ropework.
To the captain’s foresight in making these fenders, they several times owed the safety of their gallant ship during the winter that followed.
A whole month passed away. The sun now set every night, and the still, long day began to get sensibly shorter.
The progress northward was hindered by dense white fogs, which at times hugged the ship so closely that, standing by the bowsprit, you could not see the jibboom-end. The vessel, as Sandy McFlail expressed it, seemed enveloped in huge sheets of wet lint. Then the fog would lift partially off and away—in other words, it seemed to retire and station itself at some distance, with the ice looming through it in the most magical way. At these times the ship would be stopped, and our heroes were allowed to take boat exercise around the Arrandoon, with strict injunctions not to go beyond a certain distance of the vessel. Their laughing and talking and singing never failed to bring up a seal or two, or a round-eyed wondering walrus, or an inquisitive bladder-nose, but the appearance of these animals, as they loomed gigantic through the fog, was sometimes awful in the extreme. When a malley or gull came sweeping down towards them it looked as big as the fabulous Roc that carried away Sinbad the Sailor, and Rory would throw himself in the bottom of the boat and pretend to be in a terrible fright.
(The optical illusions caused among the ice by these fogs are well and humorously described in a book just to hand called “The Voyage of the Vega” (Macmillan and Co). I myself wrote on the same subject thirteen years ago, in a series of articles on Greenland North.)
“Oh! Ray, boy, look at the Roc,” he would cry. “I’m come for, sure enough. Do catch hold of me, big brother. Don’t let the great baste carry me off. Sure, he’ll fly up to the moon with me, as the eagle did with Daniel O’Rourke.”
I think the fog must have caused delusions in sound as well as sight, else why the following.
They were pulling gently about, one day, in the first whaler, when, borne along on the slight breeze that was blowing, came a sound as of happy children engaged at play. The merry laughter and the occasional excited scream or shout were most distinctly audible.
“Whatever can it be?” cried Allan, looking very serious, his somewhat superstitious nature for a moment gaining the ascendency.