CHAPTER XXVI
No whales yet, never a blow, no chance to use our harpoon-guns from the ship’s bows or from the boats, so we keep their covers on. What patience is needed for whaling! Two seasons ago a friend of mine, a captain of a Dundee whaler, was up this north-east coast of Greenland with a big crew for three months, and got only one whale and one bear. Then, with luck, you may get several in one day, I have never yet seen more than three killed in the twenty-four hours; but I have done nine months’ whaling with three whalers and killed none! That is rather a record.
... The wind is easterly, the worst we could have for getting in to North-East Greenland, for it is driving the floes inshore. We are once more anchored to a floe and wait till the weather clears, for it is too windy and misty to make good progress. We are still about seventy-five degrees north and a hundred and thirty miles from the coast, and there is an unusual amount of ice between us and it, so we may not reach it after all.
Whales at last! Narwhals! the fellows with long ivory horns. The steward spotted them first as he was cleaning a dish at the galley door; he came running aft with a blush of excitement on his face, and we saw their backs, three of them, and dashed for the whale-boat, but before we got away the whales had disappeared! It was ever thus. They are the most illusive whales. “A uni, a uni,” I have heard our Dundee whalers shout down south in the Antarctic, and they too disappeared without scathe.
But are there narwhals in the South, you ask. Well, this is all I can say, our men said they saw them. I did not. Their word “uni” stands for unicorn or narwhal.
De Gisbert’s experience is similar; he has only killed females with small horns or no horns. But with the beginner’s luck, a friend of his in his first season in the Arctic—Count Thurn—got one with an immense horn of splendid ivory; we must have patience then. Does the reader know what they do with these horns? No one here can give a definite opinion. Scoresby, the celebrated English Greenland whaler and scientific observer, suggests that it may be used for killing fish for their food. He found a portion of skate inside one, and as they have small mouths and no teeth, he concluded the horn must have been used to kill the skate. His undoubted ability and his education in science in Edinburgh University give considerable weight to his conclusion.
The little excitement of narwhal-hunting broke the stillness of rather a monotonous evening of mist and fine rain. Pretty enough, though, for a little sunlight penetrates the mist, giving the snow the faintest warm flesh tint, a pleasing contrast to the green and blue underside of the snow blocks on the floe to which we are anchored. We can study these delicate snow tints through our cabin door, as we sit at meals, always hoping that a whale may blow in the still water, or a bear may cross the delicate tints of the middle distance. Our language at table is in Spanish, French, and Norwegian. Archie and I sometimes speak in our Doric for a change. The talk is generally about whaling or hunting of various kinds; here and there, east, west, north, south, Norway, Alaska, Bohemia, Arctic or Antarctic, with a certain amount of more or less scientific discussion about natural history and the elements. De Gisbert is the hub or centre of the party; he drops from one language to the other with the greatest ease. We talk a good deal about the coming Spanish National Polar Scientific Expedition which he is to lead, and to which the writer is asked to give a “Scotch escort” to a point with an unpronounceable name east of the Lena river; no polar sprint this, but a serious effort to read the inmost secrets of the North Polar basin, by every means known to modern science. An attempt to find answers to all the riddles put before mankind, the why and wherefore of tides, ocean currents, temperature, colouring, electrical currents and air currents—information about subjects we know a little of, and, possibly, secrets of nature not yet dreamed of.
Then we turned in early for us, for last night’s damp and mist and the quiet of the sea seemed to make us somnolent, so by twelve o’clock we were mostly to bed, except the steward, whose galley is next my bunk. He and the first mate and cook, a female cook we brought from Trömso, were having a quiet concert. They made a group like a picture of the Dutch school; the steward in half light, in a white jacket, trolling out an air to the guitar, our jolly, beamy vivandière and the mate sitting opposite, almost (or as you may say, quite) on each other’s knees in the tiny quarters, cups, dishes, and vegetables round them.