The ox I had slain was one of the largest of the Musk species, and might have weighed, perhaps, seven hundredweight. It would, I knew, prove a most acceptable addition to our scanty stores on board the Leda; moreover, I was not a little vain of having slain, by a single ball, an animal so large and so little known by Europeans; but how to get it conveyed to the brig, or how to guide any of our crew to the spot where it lay, were puzzling queries.
I observed that at the distance of a hundred yards from it, there rose a steep and rugged rock, cleft into three singular peaks, so lofty as to be visible from a great distance. Conceiving this to be a sufficient landmark, I reloaded my gun, and resolved, if possible, to discover Cunninghame's Haven, where our boat lay. Without a track, a road, or native to guide me, I toiled over the steep and rugged mountains, and through ravines and hollows half filled with drifted snow, steering my way by the stars in that direction which I conceived might lead me to our boat.
To enhance the wildness and gloomy grandeur of the scenery, there now came a wondrous and fan-shaped light over all the clear cold blue of the northern sky—a glorious Aurora Borealis. This light, sent by Heaven to cheer the lone denizens of that frozen wilderness, spread a rich and wavering glow over all the northern firmament, playing in streaks or lines that alternately faded away, and resumed their dazzling brilliance. These alternations fill with awe the simple Greenlander, who calls them the Merry Dancers, and who deems,
"By the streamers that shoot so bright,
The spirits are riding the Northern light."
At times, the whole sky seemed a blaze of diamond-like light, tinged with rainbow hues, and in front of these, the stern rocks, crags, and mountains stood forth in sharp black outline. Ever and anon, an electrical meteor shot athwart the sky, leaving, as these falling stars always do, a train of momentary light.
Frequently the long streamers played across this luminous white radiance as if a mighty fan were being opened and shut, or like the spokes of some revolving wheel whose axle was at the Pole. Then a burst of glory would open in the zenith, and for a moment every feature in the desolate landscape and the far-stretching vista of the Whale Strait between its walls of rocks would be distinctly visible.
Alone in that sterile solitude, I gazed upon the Aurora with emotions of mingled awe and wonder, turning again and again to the north, as I stumbled over rocks and frozen snow piles in my efforts to discover a path that led to Cunninghame's Haven; so the result was this—that after more than an hour of toil, I found that I had been proceeding in a circle, and came back to the place from whence I had set out, the bluff with the three pinnacles, at the foot of which my musk-ox was lying; but there a very singular scene presented itself, for my property had already been converted into a banquet by two denizens of the wilderness.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE FOUR BEARS.
On first approaching, I imagined that a heap of snow had fallen from the upper rocks on the dead ox, and advanced so close that I was only twenty paces from it before discovering in my supposed snow-heap two enormous white bears who were rending the body asunder with their giant claws as one might rend a chicken, and were devouring it with all the gusto of an appetite whetted by the frosty air.