“It looks a bit squally,” he said to the pilot as he bade him adieu, “and we may have a dirty day or two, but the Grampus can stand it, and I’m not the man to linger in the harbour one half-hour after I’m ready to start. Good-bye, old man.”
The Grampus was a steam brig of some three hundred and fifty tons, fitted with powerful engines, and a screw that could be hoisted up out of the water when sail was on her. Built of wood, she was as stout and strong a ship as ever clove the waves. And she needed all her strength too – there was a wide and stormy ocean to cross, and there was ice to plough through that no fragile ship dare ever face. The captain was the owner of the vessel; and many a voyage, and not unsuccessful ones either, had he made to the polar ice-fields, but the present one was fated to be the most eventful of all.
From the very commencement of the cruise, until the first ice was sighted, the wind kept steadily ahead, and the seas kept washing over the brave brig from stem to stern. But she was not to be daunted, so steadily she steamed on northwards, ever northwards.
A week after the last of the lonely isles of Shetland had sunk like a little cloud beneath the southern horizon they were far away at sea – indeed, there was nothing to be seen from the masthead, only the great tumbling seas that dashed their sprays high over the funnel. Even the birds had left them, all save that strange mysterious creature that is ever seen wheeling around ships sailing over the broad Atlantic, or crossing the northern seas, and which naturalists call the stormy petrel, and mariners Mother Carey’s chicken. No wonder sailors look upon this bird with something akin to superstition and awe, so dark and dusky is the creature, the very little white about it serving but to make its blackness visible; it flits from stormy wave to stormy wave like a veritable evil spirit.
Our friend Frank, in his voyage to the polar ice-fields, suffered somewhat from mal de mer– it sounds far nicer in French than in English – but he bravely stuck to the deck. He was more than once washed into the lee scuppers, but he had on an oilskin suit of fear-nothing dimensions; so he just scrambled up again, or in other words, like the cork leg of the merchant of Rotterdam, he got up “and went on as before.”
The farther north the Grampus got, the shorter grew the days. Indeed, they seemed to be sailing into the home of eternal night, only it must be remembered that the season was yet early, and that in the polar regions for three months of the year the sun never appears above the horizon. If the nights were long, however, it cannot be said they were dark; they were lighted up with a magnificence never seen in more southern latitudes. The sky itself was at times of a deep and indescribably dark-blue colour, and the stars were great wheels of sparkling light. This was in itself a beautiful sight, and our heroes used to linger on deck till far on in the night, as if under some pleasant spell. But what pen can describe the gorgeous splendour of the northern lights, or Aurora. Imagine if you can a vast and broad bow, or arc of a circle, stretched athwart the heavens, twenty times as broad as any rainbow, and seeming to be ever so much farther away; imagine this bow to be composed of spears or needles of light – green, blue, crimson, and yellow – and imagine these spears in constant motion, shooting upwards and downwards, changing places incessantly, changing colours constantly, and this too with inconceivable rapidity, and you will be able to form some faint notion of the wonderful sight the Aurora presented to the eyes of our astonished travellers.
Reader, I have been alone in the ice-fields by night, while the Aurora was playing in the heavens above. You cannot conceive of the solitude and lonesomeness of such a situation, nor can you form any conception of the deep, the indescribable silence that reigns in the frozen ocean. Well, upwards as I gazed at the northern lights, I have heard sounds emanating from them. That I do not remember having ever read of anywhere. A line of spears would advance from the east and another from the west; they would meet and commingle with a subdued clashing and hissing noise, such as you might make by rubbing the palms of the hands rapidly together. What this strange sound can be is a mystery that may never be revealed.
Captain Anderson told our heroes that he never thought the voyage had begun until the crow’s-nest, or out-look barrel, was hoisted to the mainmast head.
One morning our travellers were awakened by the sound of singing and shouting, and on going on deck they found the brave skipper rubbing his hands with glee, as he gazed up at the ascending nest.
“Cheerily does it!” he was crying. “Heave, lads! heave, heave, and she goes. Now, young gentlemen,” he continued, “are your rifles in order? In two days more, if all goes well, I’ll show you such sport as you couldn’t even have dreamt of before.”
And sure enough, in two days’ time they had made “the country,” as the ice-fields are termed. If, however, any one on board had expected to find wealth, in the shape of plump seals, lying thereon ready for the gathering, he was much mistaken. There was the ice, to be sure, but never a seal in sight, neither in the water nor out of it, for it seemed that the country was unusually open that year.
“Well,” said Anderson, one day, “I’m tired of this north Greenland work; I’ll bear away for the west land.”
A week’s steaming through fields of slushy ice and floating snow, and streams of flat snow-clad bergs, brought them into open water, and they sighted the lofty and desolate shores of Greenland West, and much to their surprise, found a large three-masted Dutchman quietly lying at anchor in a bay, sails all clewed up, and men away on the ice. It was not long ere the Grampus had followed her example, so far as letting go the anchor went, and making all snug and ready for action. A great bear – always a sign seals are about – stood sniffing on the edge of a floe. Perhaps he had never seen a steamship before, or perhaps he was wondering what the crew were having for breakfast. Frank got his Henri-Martini up, and began potting at him with a long-range sight, and presently Master Bruin remembered an appointment he had, and made tracks to keep it.
It was a glorious morning when the boats were called away. All hands were half frantic with joy at the thought they would soon be among the seals. In they trundle, and down go the boats with a splash into the water, and next moment they are off. Frank and Chisholm are in one boat, Fred Freeman in another, and there is a grand race between the two to see who shall first touch the ice and fire the first shot. The boats seemed to fly over the water, and when they at last ran alongside the floe and the crew jumped on shore, there was hardly a yard’s length between them; but Fred was declared winner.
And now the day’s work was begun. Warily at first, the riflemen had to creep towards their prey on hands and knees, taking advantage of every hummock or boulder to screen themselves from view. On each piece of ice some forty or fifty seals lay, and each “patch” had a sentry set. When they succeeded in killing him, the others were very much at their mercy; but oftentimes the seal on watch would succeed, even before his eyes closed in death, in giving his companions warning. Then, almost ere another bullet could reach them, they had leapt helter-skelter into the water. But when the sun got higher, the seals seemed to get almost too lazy to move; they could then be approached very much more closely, and the work of death was carried on with an earnestness and energy that was terrible to behold. Indeed, a kind of madness to shed blood seemed to take possession of every man on the ice. There was no thought but to slay. The excitement was intense – awful in its intensity. The sun went slowly round and down, and as he set behind the rugged hills, his disc seemed to reflect the blood on the ice. Even his parting beams had borrowed the self-same hue, and the tops of the highest icebergs looked as if dipped in gore.
When the shadows fell, tired and weary enough now, our heroes went slowly back towards the boats.
“Oh! boys,” cried Fred, “don’t you remember how bright and lovely the snow was in the morning? Behold it now!”
“Ay, behold it now,” said Chisholm. “Indeed, Fred, this is murder. I don’t feel I can call it by any other name, and I’m half ashamed of myself.”
“So am I,” said Frank, “for a seal can’t defend itself.”
“But the bladder-nosed seals can,” said the first mate, who had just joined the trio. “They are terrible beasts to deal with. I’d rather fight a bear single-handed than I would one of these. Once they fill that kettle-pot-like bladder over their