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Chapter Thirteen
The Long Dead Arctic Night – The Battle of the Snow-Squalls

The scene was changed. Summer had fled from the shores and from the braelands around the inland sea, where our travellers have taken up their abode.

 
“Away hath passed the heather-bell
That bloomed so rich on Needpath fell.”
 

Thus sweetly sang the Scottish bard. But here no heather-bell bloomed to vanish. But the lovely little stonecrops, white or yellow, the crimson ranunculus, the dark-tufted grasses, the wild dwarf poppies, and even the mosses and the hardy shrubs that blossomed for a time in the sloping rays of the sun – all have gone or lie deeply buried under the snow; they will appear no more till June again melts their covering and awakens them to sunshine and life.

Claude and his crew have not been idle. Every preparation is already made to mitigate the rigours of a winter that is even now commenced. Boats had been despatched to the inlet of the creek, to land and bury ship’s stores in a sheltered nook not far from the sea. This was done with all despatch. Captain Watson’s men of the Kittywake working with a will born of the knowledge that, as soon as their labours were over, they would once more embark and bear up for their own dear home in England.

They had the good luck to find a cave large enough to contain all the provisions and ammunition on board the store-ship. There was accordingly no digging to be done, except the quarrying from the hillsides of great stones to build up the entrance to the cave. This done, it but remained for Mr Lloyd, who was in charge of the working party, to take his bearings, in order to easily find the place again, and deliver to Captain Watson his written orders to return south.

Lloyd’s boats towed the Kittywake out to sea, or, rather, steered her, for the tide was running rapidly out. He remained on board the store-ship until the turn of the tide, then there were farewells said, and ringing cheers were re-echoed from the hills and from tall floating icebergs, and, sail being set, away went the Kittywake southward ho! the crew as merry as schoolboys at play.

They were to bear tidings to the savants in London of the successful voyage made by the Icebear, the strange discovery of the inland sea, and the prospects Claude and Dr Barrett entertained of the perfect success of the expedition.

It may be as well to state here, and state it once for all, that the Kittywake was never more heard of, never more seen by mortal eye.

Whether she had sprung a leak in a gale, and foundered; been caught a-back in a squall, and thrown on her beam-ends, never to recover; or been crushed like a nut between some awful bergs, will never be known until —

“The sea gives up its dead.”

Had our heroes known aught of the disaster to the store-ship, it would have cast a gloom over them that nothing could have dispelled.

As it was they had nothing in their hearts but hope – hope that, when the long, dreary winter wore away, having more than accomplished the object of their cruise, the ice would break up, their imprisonment would be over, and, laden with riches and crowned with honour, they would bid farewell to the land of the aurora, and reach England in peace and safety.

They could, therefore, mark with complacency the ever-shortening days, and the oncoming mists, and mists succeeded by stormy winds, and curling clouds of drifting snow. The sooner winter came the sooner it would be over.

There came a day when these intrepid travellers were to look their last upon the sun for months to come. It was towards the end of October, but not severely frosty. Indeed, the sky was altogether overcast, with the exception of a space on the southern horizon It was here that the sun last showed. Red, large, and angry looking, he but deigned to cast a glance or two across the dreary landscape, then slowly sank to rest, but for two hours after he had gone down, a long stripe of bare, lurid, orange sky remained over the spot. It gradually assumed the appearance of the reflection of some great fire or burning mountain. The clouds above were purple red, mingled with leaden grey, but all this soon faded. There was neither moon nor stars, and the blackness of darkness was over the land. About noon every day for nearly a week there was a kind of twilight. It was even more than this, for when the sky was partially clear there was all the appearance of coming sunrise, the cloudlets grew crimson, and even the tall mountains were tipped with rosy red, and all between the glens were of a strange blue colour.

But even this mid-day twilight ceased at last, then all was night.

All the way north Meta’s gulls had been kept on deck in an aviary built for the purpose, and two had already been despatched with little messages in sealed quills, fastened to their legs. Only one of these reached Iceland. The other probably preferred his freedom.

Claude seldom doubted but that the gulls he sent off would eventually find Meta’s home.

Even before the daylight had entirely gone, and the long dead Arctic night had descended upon the land, the birds and beasts migrated southwards, the malleys, and gulls, and terns, and skuas going first; then the guillemot the eider ducks, grebes, and divers. Next went the bears, the wild oxen, and the foxes; finally even the inland sea itself seemed deserted. The walrus and seal no longer popped their whiskered faces above the water, nor courted the sun’s rays on the rocky shore, and the lonesome unicorn was seen no more ploughing through the waves.

The blackness of desolation and a silence deep as death was over all the scene.

Think not, reader, that the beautiful stars were always shining, or that even when a full moon was in the sky there was somewhat of light and cheerfulness. No, for there were days – ay, and weeks – when neither moon, stars, nor aurora were visible for the dark clouds and whirling drift and snow.

At other times, perhaps, after a fall of silent snow, without as much wind as would serve to move one downy fleck, the clouds would disperse, and the stars would glitter like a million diamonds, when suddenly a murmuring roar would be heard among the mountains, and on looking in that direction from the ship’s deck, or from the huts on shore, a sight would be presented to the wondering gaze of Claude and his crew that my poor feeble pen would struggle in vain to describe. It seemed as if a wind from every point of the compass had marched forth to meet and do battle with each other among the hills, and that each wind was accompanied by a ghostly storm spirit. High as the stars were those whirling sheeted ghosts; if they crossed the moon’s disc they looked unearthly and fearful; but see! they meet in fury, and all is a bewildering chaos. Describe to me the foam of Atlantic billows dashing high in the air after striking a black, bare rock in the sea; describe to me in words the smoky spray of a geyser, and I will try to paint to you the battle of the snow-squalls. But, behold! while we yet look, half awed at the rage of elements among the jagged mountain peaks, the chaotic tempest comes nearer and nearer, other ghosts arise and whirl along on the plains, and a moaning sound as if nature were in pain falls upon the ear. This may be but momentary, and ere you can dive below, the tempest is on the vessel, the war of elements is raging around it. The very masts bend and crack and yield, and high above the roar of the wind is heard wild shrieks and yells and groans, as if demons really danced and fought on every side. These latter sounds are emitted by the ice rubbing against the ship’s hull.

Then, even while one is expecting every moment that some jagged edge of ice will penetrate through the vessel’s timbers – lo! all becomes hushed and silent. You creep on deck as quickly as the drifted snow will permit you, and look around. The stars are all out again, the moon’s rays throwing shadows from the mountain peaks, and all is still. And such a stillness! It is the silence of space – the silence of a dead and buried universe. You can almost fancy the stars are near enough to whisper to; that the flickering aurora borealis will presently emit some sound. If you talk aloud your own voice seems harsh, and you find yourself talking in a strangely subdued tone, as if Nature were asleep – as, indeed, she seems – and you dreaded to wake her. At all times in Greenland, when no wind is blowing, the silence is fearfully impressive; but it is after a snow-squall such as I have endeavoured to depict that it is most so.

“Do you think,” said Claude to Dr Barrett one day – “do you think, doctor, I might venture to send off another seagull?”

“I think,” was the reply, “that the bird will be far more likely to fly southward now – to seek the sun – than it would in summer.”

So a little fond note was attached as usual to a seagull’s thigh.

“Go!” whispered Claude, pressing his lips to the soft, warm head for a moment.

 
“Go, beautiful and gentle bird,
Oh! southwards quickly go;
Though moon and stars shine bright above.
How sad is all below!
 
 
“No longer drooping here, confined
In this cold prison, dwell;
Go, free to sunshine and to wind,
Sweet bird, go forth – farewell!
 
 
“Oh! beautiful and gentle bird,
Thy welcome sweet will be.
And yonder thou shalt hear the voice
Of Love’s fond melody.”
 

I trust my hero may be forgiven for slightly altering the words of the gentle poet Bowles.

The graceful bird went tacking and tacking for a time around the ship as if he could not quite believe he had obtained his freedom, or were loath to leave his quarters; then, as if memories of a sunnier south had suddenly awakened in his breast, away he darted, and was lost in the darkness.

Chapter Fourteen
In Winter Quarters – Football among the Snow

One portion of the cargo of the unfortunate Kittywake– and a very important one it proved to be – was a pack of Yack or Eskimo sledge dogs. Uncouth-looking rascals they are at the best of times, much given to quarrelling and fighting among themselves, and by no means inclined to be over-friendly to mankind.

With them came two native keepers, who professed to, and I dare say did, know something about their uncouth pets, although their rule of the road proved to be a rough one, as far as the dogs were concerned.

Fingal was at first inclined to regard these animals with extreme distrust. He asked Claude, in his own way of speaking, whether he mightn’t begin the fun by charging the pack.

“I am sure, master,” said Fingal, “I would soon make short work with one or two of them.”

“No,” said Claude, holding up a warning finger; “you must never attempt to molest them, Fingal; you will come to love them yet.”

“I don’t believe that,” Fingal seemed to reply.

The dogs were taken on shore at once, and though the Icebear was anchored some little distance from the land, giving her plenty of room to swing round, the row these animals made the first night seemed unearthly. The men could not sleep, and roundly rated the new-comers. Had the noise been a continuous one it would not have been so bad, but it was not so. The deep, deep silence of the Arctic regions would be allowed to remain unbroken for, say, the space of fifteen minutes, then all at once such a chorus of barking, howling, and screaming arose as only the pen of a Dante could describe adequately. This would continue for five minutes, mingled with the cracking of the keepers’ whips and their wild shouting, then gradually the unearthly Babel of sounds would die away, the men and officers on board would give sighs of relief and go to sleep once more, only to be disturbed again in the same fashion ere slumber had well sealed their eyelids.

“Frightful!” said Claude, next morning, at the breakfast-table; “I’ll put a stop to it.”

“You’ll be very clever if you do,” said the surgeon.

“Don’t go meddling near them with a whip, captain,” Lloyd remarked. “Poor Sanderson of ours got drunk one night, and went on shore with a rope’s end to settle, as he thought, a rumpus like what those beggars made last night. He was never seen again.”

“They killed him?”

“Yes, sir, and ate him afterwards, every bone of him. We never found a vestige of him, except the soles of his sea-boots, and we couldn’t bury those in a Christian way, you know, so we were saved the trouble of a funeral.”

“Call the carpenter, steward,” cried Claude. “Carpenter Jones,” he continued, when that worthy appeared, “build comfortable kennels for those dogs half a mile from the spot where our shore quarters are going to stand.”

“Ay, ay, sir.”

“To the lee of a rock, you know.”

“Yes, sir.”

And so the pack was soon disposed of, to the great satisfaction of every one.

By the time, then, that the sun had set for the last time, and the long, icy, Arctic winter had fairly commenced, the Icebear and her gallant crew were fairly settled in their winter quarters, and everybody felt as happy and jolly as possible under the circumstances. Nor was their lot to be despised, after all. Had they not every creature comfort that heart could wish? Had not clever Dr Barrett found coals enough to keep fires burning constantly – fires big enough to roast a whole bear or a small ox, were they so inclined? Had he not also discovered a gold and silver mine? Not that much had yet been taken out of it, to be sure. But it gave them hope. Well, they had never a care, although it must not be supposed they did not often think of home, for ah! the sailor does.

To crown all, was there not a kind Providence above them whose eyes could penetrate the darkness of even this dreary land, and watch over them?

One thing, I believe, that contributed greatly to their happiness was this, everybody seemed determined to do the best he could, not for himself only, but for his shipmates as well.

They had built a house of general entertainment on shore. Also a store for extra provision and other things, in case the ship might be destroyed.

In the storehouse one or other of the Indian keepers always slept as sentry, or rather on guard. Not that there was much fear of an attack on the stores by bears, for most of them had gone south, and the others were curled up asleep in caves and corners among the rocks. But Bruin does not– in my poor judgment and experience – sleep all the winter through. When the weather is milder, even to a few degrees, he awakes, yawns, out-stretches himself, and goes for a turn round in the moonlight and on the snow. He is but the ghost of his former self; like the ghost of a bear revisiting scenes of a former existence. He stalks about, shaking his mighty head, and looking as melancholy as a barn owl.

“How changed is everything!” he appears to soliloquise. “How dead and drear! How hungry I am too. Shouldn’t I like just one pawful out of the back of a fine fat seal now.⁶ Ah! I would eat a whole seal, even the flippers, though there’s not much on those, to be sure. But, mercy on me, how cold it is! Bed’s the best place, after all.” And away he trots.

But Mr Lloyd knew right well from experience what a hungry rascal like this could do even in a single night.

“It isn’t what they eat so much,” he explained to Claude, “as what they destroy. A bear will stave in the head of half a dozen casks of flour, perhaps, before he comes to a barrow of beef. And that doesn’t satisfy him, for he argues that there may be something better in the other casks, and goes clawing away like an evil spirit.”

“Talking about spirits,” put in the second mate, “he is a strict teetotaller; he won’t touch rum.”

“Tins of soupe-en-bouilli, I suppose,” said Claude, “would also defy him.”

“Not if he gets a tooth in one,” replied Warren; “and as for sardines – my conscience! sir, he is fond of them; if once he tastes them he’ll swallow the boxes at a single bite.”

“Boxes and all?” inquired Claude, laughing.

“Well, I never saw the empty boxes left about anywhere.”

“Must be a capital tonic, anyhow!” said Dr Barrett; “but a rather indigestible one.”

There had been wood enough brought on purpose to build huts on shore – simply rough planks. The house of amusement was a famous one. Built with stone as to its chimney, and with wood, filled in with dry moss, as to its walls. There was a capital fireplace, too, in it.

The general routine of the day was somewhat as follows – that is, when there was any kind of bright star, or moonlight, or aurora gleams; though these last were very intermittent, and, like some of our electric lights, would go out without a moment’s warning. There was breakfast at eight; muster to prayers afterwards, on the upper deck, which was almost entirely covered over.

Prayers are seldom more impressive than when repeated away out in the middle of the boundless ocean, but there is even more solemnity in them when heard amid the eternal silence of Greenland wilds. I don’t think there was one poor soul on board the Icebear who would have missed those morning prayers for anything.

Jack-the-Sailor is a rough stick, I must confess, and, as a rule, a very jolly stick. Yet, nevertheless, he has his solemn moments, as well as you, reader, who, maybe, never were afloat on blue water, have.

“I feels some sentences o’ them prayers, that the captain reads, go kind o’ round my heart,” said Chips one day down in the half-deck mess. “That bit, for instance, ‘O God, at whose command the wind blows, and lifts up the waves of the sea and stills the raging thereof.’”

“You hain’t got the words what you might say altogether correct,” said Bos’n Bowman; “but, howsomedever, you’ve got the main thing, and that’s the sense.”

“Well, Pipes,” replied Chips, “you’re more of a scollard than me.”

“And,” put in Spectioneer Wray, “there’s that bit, you know, ‘When we gave up all for lost, our ship, our goods, our lives, Thou didst mercifully look upon us, and wonderfully command a deliverance.’”

“I’ve often found the truth of that,” said Pipes. “So ’as most on us,” said Chips, solemnly. “But,” continued Pipes, “there’s these words: ‘That we may return in safety to enjoy the blessings of the land.’ Don’t they bring old England up before your mind, with her green valleys and flowery fields, and all that kind of thing, eh, maties?”

“Ay, and there’s those as follows,” said Chips, who was a married man and hailed from Rotherhithe, “‘Enjoy the fruits of our labours,’ which means, o’ course, take the missus and the children to Margate for a whole month.”

After prayers, till “pipe for dinner,” there were the various duties of the ship to be carried on, and there was not an officer or man, from Claude himself to little saucy Boy Bounce, who emptied the cook’s ashes, helped to clean the coppers, and attended to the aviary and the wants of Fingal, who did not find something to do. Dinner and smoking done, if the weather permitted, a pleasure party for the shore would be told off.

The doctor and his merry men could do but little exploring now, and his mines lay some distance in the interior among the wild hills, and, from its colour, the ore could not easily be worked by lamplight.

Sometimes for whole weeks the darkness would be intense⁷, then the Icebear’s crew had to seek their pleasures indoors or on board the ship. That house on shore was an incalculable boon to these forlorn adventurers. It was devoted, not to games – these could be played on board – but to music, dancing, acting, and to lectures. The musicians were several, and therefore a by no means bad ship’s band was formed. Those, therefore, who could not play could listen; moreover, many of those who could not play, could spin a yarn, dance, or sing.

The lectures were given by good Dr Barrett, whose gentleness and thoughtfulness of the men had rendered him a very great favourite.

These lectures of his, although often on such abstract subjects as chemistry, botany, geology, or astronomy, were always simple and always interesting, and often amusing.

But there were games on the snow-covered ice – frolics we might call them – invented by the men themselves, but none the less exhilarating on that account. The sea about them might be as deep as the hills around were high, but no fear could be entertained of any one falling through – a band of elephants might have frolicked and floundered on it without the least danger.

The snow in some places had been swept off the ice by the wind, leaving it but a few inches deep. These were just the spots for a right roaring game of genuine football. But there was another game, invented by Paddy O’Connell, who was the life and soul of his mess, if not of the whole ship. It was carried on among deep snow, and was very amusing and exciting.

Paddy called it “football.” Well, it was “Irish football,” for the only man in the ship who could kick the thing a yard was gigantic Byarnie. “It was as large as the biggest pumpkin ever you saw, and quite as big as the largest,” so said Paddy. You had to throw it to begin with, and when you got it you had to run with it, and you did not run many yards before you fell with half a dozen on top of you. But the cream of the game lay in the fact that, however much light there might be, before you had played many minutes you could not tell who was your opponent and who not, everybody being as white as the dustiest of millers. When you were struggling for the ball, it was just as likely as not that you were trying to trip up a friend Besides, often when you got it, and could have a fair shy, then, as you could not see well, what with the uncertain light, and what with the powdery snow, you perhaps threw it the wrong way. It was a rare game, and oh! did it not make you hungry!

No wonder that on returning on board you could eat a hot supper with all the appetite of a Highland drover.

“Paddy,” said Dr Barrett once, as he patted him on the back, “you’re a genius!”

“Thrue for you, sorr,” says Paddy, “and it’s just that same me mother towld me. ‘Paddy,’ says she, ‘you’re a born ganious, and there ain’t the likes o’ ye ’twixt Killarney and Cork.’”