The Cruise of the Snowbird: A Story of Arctic Adventure

“And it’s getting late, too,” he said, as he shouldered his rifle. “Seth will even go and seek them. Why,” he added, after he had gone some distance, “if yonder isn’t both on ’em coming runnin’. And what is that behind them? Why, may I be skivered if it ain’t b’ars! Hurrah! Seth to the rescue!”

And, so saying, the old trapper increased his walk to a run, and the distance between him and the boys was rapidly lessened.

And dire need too, for both Allan and Rory were well-nigh exhausted, and the foremost bear was barely forty yards behind them.

But Allan’s time had come for decisive action. He threw himself on his face, the better to make sure of his aim, and almost immediately after the foremost bear came tumbling down. And now Seth came up, and another Bruin speedily followed his companion into the land of darkness. The others escaped into the forest.

It had been a very narrow escape, but McBain told Allan that very evening that he was not sorry for it, as the adventure would surely teach him caution.

Chapter Twenty Five

The Dead Leviathan – The Mate of the “Trefoil” Makes a Proposal – A Rich Harvest – Christmas Cheer – Something like a Dinner

The mate of the Trefoil was a quiet and sober-minded man, as old travellers in the Arctic regions are sometimes wont to be, but when Allan McGregor told him the story of the bears and the dead whale stranded in the frozen bay, he evinced a considerable deal of genuine excitement. He sought out the captain.

“I would fain see the fish, captain.”

(Greenland sailors always call a whale a “fish,” although, as must be well-known, it is a gigantic mammal.)

“Well, my dear sir,” said McBain, “that is a desire that can very easily be gratified. We can start for the bay to-morrow early.”

“I shall be so pleased,” said the mate.

This expedition consisted of three guns – McBain himself, Allan, and the mate of the Trefoil.

There were still one or two bears prowling around the spot where the dead leviathan lay, but they seemed to scent danger from afar, and made off as soon as the expedition hove in sight. Probably they remembered the events of yesterday, and cared not to renew so unequal a combat.

The mate was evidently a man of business, for no sooner had they got on to the ice alongside the whale, than he proceeded to open a small parcel he carried, and to extract therefrom a pair of spiked sandals.

“I’m going on board of her,” he said to McBain, with a quiet smile.

Next moment, pole in hand, he was walking about on top of the dead leviathan, probing here and probing there with as much coolness as though he had been a fanner taking stock in a patch of potatoes.

He smiled as he jumped on shore again.

“That is what doctors would call a post-mortem examination,” said McBain, smiling too. “Now, sir, can you tell us the cause of death?”

“Oh! bother the cause of death,” said the mate, laughing, as he stooped down to undo his sandals. “Do you think I came all this way to ascertain the cause of death in a dead fish? But if you really want to know, I’ll tell you. You see from the state of the ice there has been a heavy swell on here, and the ice has been knocked about anyhow; that shows there has been a gale away out at sea. Well then, the fish,” – here the mate poked his stick at the whale’s ribs in a manner that, had the monster been alive, must have tickled him immensely – “this fish, look you, came nearer land to avoid the broken water, and ran ashore in the dark; he hadn’t got any steam, you know, to help him to back astern, and he couldn’t hoist sail, so he had to be content to lie on his little stomach until – ”

“Until death relieved him of his sufferings,” put in McBain.

The conversation concerning the whale was renewed after dinner that evening, the mate and Mr Stevenson having been, as was usual when anything extra was on the tapis, invited to partake of that meal.

Since they left the bay the mate had been unusually silent; he had been thinking, and now his thoughts took the form of speech. He spoke slowly, and with many a pause, as one speaks who well weighs his words, toying with his coffee as he did so, and often changing the position of the cup. Indeed, it was the cup he seemed to be addressing when he did speak.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “as man and boy, as harpooner, second officer, or mate, I have been back and fore to Greenland for little less than twenty years. I’ve been shipwrecked a time or two, you may easily guess, and I’ve come through many a strange danger in the wild, mysterious regions around the Pole. But it is not of these things I would now speak, it is about the last sad affair – my poor dear ship Trefoil, whose charred ribs lie deep in the Arctic Ocean. Oh, gentlemen! oh, men! that was a sad blow to me. Had we been a full ship we would have been home ere now, and I would have been wedded to one of the sweetest girls in all England. Now she is mourning for me as for one dead. But blessed be our great Protector that sent the Snowbird to our assistance in our dire extremity! Where, now, would we – the survivors of the Trefoil– have been else? Our fate would have been more terrible, than the fate of those that went down in that doomed ship.

“I can assure you, my dear friends,” he continued, “I have felt very grateful, and have longed for some way of showing that gratitude. I can never prove it sufficiently. But I have a suggestion to make.”

“Well, we are willing to hear it,” said McBain; “but really, sir, you owe us no gratitude, we only did our duty.”

“That ‘fish,’” said the mate – “what do you reckon its value to be?”

“I know,” said McBain, smiling, “that if we could tow it along to London it would fetch a long price; but if we could tow an iceberg there about ten millions of people would come to see it?”

“How romantic that would be?” said Rory; “and fancy the Union Jack floating proudly from the top of it!”

“Charge them a shilling a head,” said Allan, “and land 500,000 pounds!”

“And spoil the romance!” said our boy-bard.

“Oh, bother the romance!” said Ralph, “think of the cash!”

“Well, but,” said McBain, laughing, “we can no more tow the whale than we can the iceberg.”

“That fish,” said the mate, “myself and my men can flensh, cut up, and refine. The produce will be worth three thousand pounds in the English market; and beside, it will be work for the men for the winter months.”

“But you and your men must accept a share,” said McBain.

“If,” replied the mate of the Trefoil, “you but hint at such a thing again, that fish may lie there till doomsday. No, captain, it is but a poor way of showing our gratitude.”

Once convinced of the feasibility of the mate’s proposal, McBain lost no time in setting about carrying the plan into execution. It would be a sin, he argued, to leave so much wealth to waste, when they had ample room for carrying it. Even romantic Rory came to the same conclusion at last.

“Had it been base blubber now,” he said, “you’d have had to excuse me, Captain McBain, from sailing in the same ship with it I’d have asked you to have built me a cot in these beautiful wilds, and here I’d have stopped, sketching and shooting, until you returned with a clean ship to take me back to bonnie Scotland. But refined oil, sweet and pure, – indeed I agree with you, it would be a sin entirely to leave it to the bears.”

A busy time now ensued for the officers and men of the Snowbird; they had to be up early and to work late. Nor was the work free from hardship. Had the bay where lay the monster leviathan – which the mate of the Trefoil averred was one of the largest “fishes” he had ever seen – lain anywhere near them, the task would have been mere play to what it was. First and foremost, sledges had to be built – large, light, but useful sledges. The building of these occupied many days, but they were finished at last, and then the working party started on its long journey to Bear Point, as our heroes had named the place – Bear Point and Good Luck Bay.

As during the flenshing and the landing of the cakes of blubber, the men would have to remain all night near their work, every precaution was taken to protect them from cold in the camping-ground. Rory, Allan, and Ralph must needs make three of the party, with Seth to guide them in the woods, where they meant to spend the short day shooting.

By good fortune, the weather all the time remained settled and beautiful, and the four guns managed easily enough to keep the camp well supplied with game of various kinds. The cold at night time, however, was intense, and the roaring fires kept up in the hastily-constructed huts, could scarcely keep the men warm. This was the only time during the whole cruise of the Snowbird that McBain deemed it necessary to serve out to his men a rum ration. The time at which it was partaken may seem to some of my readers an odd one, but it was, nevertheless, rational, and it was suggested by the men in camp themselves. It was served at night, just at that hour when Arctic cold becomes almost insupportable. They did not require it by day, they could have hot coffee whenever they cared to partake of it, but at half-past two in the morning all hands seemed to awake suddenly. This was the coldest time, and the fires, too, had died low, and the men’s spirits, like the thermometer, were below zero. But when more logs were heaped upon the fires, and the coffee urn heated, and the ration mixed with a smoking bowl of it and handed round, then the life-blood seemed to return to their hearts, and re-wrapping themselves in their skins, they dropped off to sleep, and by seven o’clock were once more astir.

Several days were spent in the work of landing the treasure-trove, then the tedious and toilsome labour of conveying it to the Snowbird commenced. There was in all nearly thirty tons of it to be dragged in the sledges over a rough and difficult country, yet at last this was safely accomplished, and the mate of the Trefoil had the satisfaction of seeing it stored in one immense bin, where it could await the process of boiling down and refining, previously to being conveyed into the tanks of the yacht.

“I feel happier now,” said Mr Hill, as he quietly contemplated the result of their labours. “It is a goodly pile, thirty tons there if there is an ounce; it will take us two good months’ hard work to refine it.”

“Meanwhile,” said McBain, “we must not forget one thing.”

“What is that?” said Mr Hill.

“Why,” replied the captain, “that to-morrow is Christmas. You must rest from your labours for a few days at least, there is plenty of time before us. It will be well on to the middle of May ere the ice lifts sufficiently to permit us to bear up for the east once more.”

“Well,” said the mate, “the truth is, I had forgotten the season was so far advanced.”

“You have been thinking about nothing but your ‘fish,’” said McBain, laughing.

“I have been full of that fish,” replied the mate; “full of it, and that is a curious way to speak. Why, that fish is a fortune in itself. And I do think, captain, it is a sad thing to go home in a half-empty ship.”

“Ah!” McBain added, “thanks to you, and thanks to our own good guns, we won’t do that.”