The food of the seal consists of those low forms of marine life known to us as shrimps, and to naturalists as invertebrata, and sometimes certain varieties of mollusca. The former exist in vast numbers in the icy waters of the North; and it is this abundant supply of food which attracts to that quarter of the world not seals alone, but those enormous flights of birds of which we read, and some idea of which was given in former chapters of this book. On the other hand, the food of the bear is the seal. Therefore, wherever ice is seen seals may be expected; and where seals are seen, you may look out for bears.
SEALS.
We had seen seals and we had seen the “pack,” and thus bears were suggested; and the suggestion was peculiarly welcome to the people of the Panther. The anchor was aweigh in almost no time at all, and, steam being up, the Panther was pointed northward, in the calm evening. The sun was in the west, a good way above the horizon, and a pleasant glow was over sea, and land, and glacier.
We steer for Wilcox Point, fifteen miles in a north-easterly direction from the Duck Islands, and it is a very lofty, noble headland. We spread out the map on deck to see what comes next, and where we are to go. Eastward from Wilcox Point we observe that the coast trends some miles, and then comes a mountain called “The Devil’s Thumb;” and as we subsequently see it, it has very much the appearance of a thumb projecting vertically above the hand when it is placed edgewise on the table, with the little finger down. We afterwards discover the hand to be an island, and the thumb the centre of it, but we did not know it then. Why the Devil’s Thumb, rather than the thumb of some more respectable character, might seem puzzling; but I fancy that that dark spirit of evil was complimented with this monument on account of his supposed influence over the neighboring sea. The sea is there, indeed, very perilous, and no part of Baffin’s Bay is so much dreaded as that vicinity. The icebergs are so numerous that the locality is often called “Bergy Hole;” and the currents are so swift that a sailing vessel, once becalmed off “The Thumb,” is very likely to be sucked in and whirled about, as if there were some secret and supernatural influence at work upon the waters; and if the ship escapes without getting battered against an iceberg or so, and being much damaged in consequence, she is very lucky. Dr. Kane’s brig, the Advance, got whirled into this dangerous situation, and I shall not soon forget the struggle of hours at the oars, by which means the brig was saved, though not until every body was thoroughly worn out, and ready to drop down with fatigue.
In a north-westerly direction from the Devil’s Thumb, and distant from it about two hundred miles, lies Cape York, and between these two points the coast makes a deep curve, and the space thus embraced is Melville Bay—though the name has really a wider significance—the term Melville Bay being usually meant to signify that part of Baffin’s Bay west of it, where the “middle ice” is always lying. The entire sweep of Melville Bay is one vast line of glaciers, wholly unapproachable, and from which are cast off an incredible number of icebergs, that are scattered over Baffin’s Bay in all directions, and by accumulating in greater numbers year by year, gather the ice-field about them more and more, and thus render navigation each year more difficult and perilous. Since ships first penetrated Melville Bay a very perceptible change has taken place.
Most of which information we gather from the map; and while gathering it the Panther is coming, bows on, to the very first field-ice we have seen. There it is before us—a great, long, level plain of white and blue, stretching beyond the line of vision. It does not look so very formidable, after all, and is rather disappointing, until the ship takes a projecting tongue, and, by the shock that it gives us, shows there is more body to the ice than first appeared. In fact, from seven-eighths to nine-tenths of it lies below the surface of the water; and not until the Panther had split a fragment off and turned it up on its edge, as the bow slid over it, did we appreciate its really solid quality.
But this was a brush not worth mentioning; and on went the Panther beyond and across clear water until we approached another great field, which had at first appeared to be a part of the one which we had passed; but the event proved that there was a wide streak of open water stretching to the northward, which a whaleman would call a “lead;” and, seeing that our farther progress in the direction we had chosen was cut off, we bore away from Wilcox Point, and steamed north at great speed between the “floes.”
Very soon there was no water to be seen except the lead we were in—everywhere limitless ice—unless we went aloft, when other leads were visible, meandering among the floes in all directions. The lead we had entered was at first at least a mile wide; but as we proceeded it gradually narrowed, then became crooked; loose floes of small size were lying here and there upon it. The mate, who was aloft, kept the man at the wheel busy enough with his “starboards” and “ports” and “steadys,” until it was reported that our lead was a blind one, and we were coming to the end of it. An immense floe lay between the two great floes to right and left of us, jammed tight, and squeezed and broken up upon its sides. This was the report from aloft, and the mate cried, “Starboard!—hard a-starboard!”
“What’s that for?” shouted the captain, with stentorian voice. “What do you want to starboard for?”