The Cruise of the Snowbird: A Story of Arctic Adventure

“We haven’t filled up with ivory from the mammoth caves though,” said Ralph, with a sigh.

“Why that plaintive sigh, poor soul?” asked Rory.

“Ah! because, you know,” replied Ralph, pinching Rory’s ear, “we haven’t made wealth untold, and I’ll have to marry my grandmother after all.”

“Oh!” cried McBain, “your somewhat antiquated cousin; I had forgotten all about her.”

“I hadn’t,” said Ralph.

“Never mind,” said Rory, “something may turn up, and even if the worst comes to the worst, I’ll be at the wedding, and play the Dead March in Saul.”

“Ah!” said Ralph, “it is just as well for you that you moved out of my reach, you saucy boy?”

“There are two thousand pounds to a share,” continued McBain, “if we sell our furs and oils only indifferently well.”

“And sure,” said Rory, “even that is better than a stone behind the ear. And look at all the fun we have had, and all the adventures; troth, we’ll have stories to tell all our lives, if we never go to sea any more, and live till we’re as old as the big hill o’ Howth.”

“But I think, you know, boys,” McBain went on, “we have gained a deal more than the simple pecuniary value of what lies in our tanks and lockers. Increased health and strength, for instance.”

“Ah?” added Allan, “strength of mind as well as body, for, positively, before I left Glentroom, I did little else but mope – now, I think I won’t do anything of the kind again. With the little capital I have obtained, I will begin and cultivate my glen – it is worth more than rabbits’ food.”

“Yes,” said McBain, “there is gold in the glen.”

“Speaking figuratively, yes.”

“It only needs perseverance to make it yield it. What a grand thing that perseverance is! I think, boys, we’ve learned a little of its virtue, even in this cruise of ours, though we haven’t done everything we had hoped. But perseverance builds names and fortunes – it builds cities too.”

“It builds continents,” said Rory, looking very wise – for him; “just look what a midge of a creature the coral zoophyte is, but look at the work it is doing every day, the worlds it is throwing up almost, for future millions to inhabit.”

Thus continued our heroes talking till long past midnight; and even after they had retired, one at least did not fall all at once asleep. That one was Allan. He began to believe that his dreams of restoring his dear old roof-tree, Arrandoon Castle, would yet be realised. That a time would soon come when his mother and sister would sit in halls as noble as any his forefathers had occupied, and mingle among a peasantry as happy and content as they were in the good old years of long, long ago. Perseverance would do it; and, happy thought, he would adopt a new badge, and it would neither be a flower, nor a fern, nor a feather, but simply a piece of coral. Then presently he found himself deep down in the green translucent waters of the Indian Ocean, in a cave, in a coral isle, conversing with a mermaid as freely as if it were the most natural thing in all the world; then he awoke, and behold it was broad daylight.

At least it was just as broad daylight as it was likely to be, while the good yacht was still enveloped in the bosom of that dense mist.

The Snowbird evidently did not think herself the best used yacht in the world. They would not give her sail enough to let her fly along as she wanted to, and, more than that, she was constantly being checked by the pieces of ice that struck and hammered at her on both bow and quarter. Sometimes she seemed to lose her temper and stop almost dead still, as much as to say, “I do think such treatment most ungrateful after all I’ve gone through, and, if it continues, I declare I won’t go another step of my toe towards home.”

Ah! but when a week passed away, and when all at once the yacht sailed out from this dark and pitiless mist, and found herself in a blue rippling sea, with a blue and cloudless sky overhead, and never a bit of ice to be seen, then she did regain her temper.

“Well,” she said, “this is nice, this is perfectly jolly; now for a trifle more sail, and won’t I go rolling home!”

Sunlight seemed to bring joy to every heart. Our heroes walked the deck arrayed in their best, walked erect with springy steps and smiling faces. They had laid aside their winter and donned their summer clothing, and summer was in their hearts as well.

But the Snowbird, the once beautiful Snowbird, now all scraped with ice and bare, should she have holiday attire likewise? She was not forgotten, I do assure you. For days and days men were slung in ropes overboard, on all sides of her, scraping, and painting, and polishing; men were hung like herrings aloft, scraping and varnishing there; and soon the decks were scrubbed to a snowy whiteness, and every bit of brass about her shone like burnished gold. She seemed a spick-and-span new Snowbird, and, what is more, she seemed to feel it too, and give herself all the additional airs and graces she could think of.

At long last the seagulls came sailing to meet her, and a day or two thereafter, —

“Land, ho!” was the glad cry from the outlook aloft. Only a long blue mist on the distant horizon, developing itself soon however, into a black line capped with green. Presently the dark line grew bigger, and then it became fringed beneath with a line of snowy white.

Shetland once again; and when it opened out more, and began to fall off to the bow, the primitive cottages could be descried, and the diminutive cattle and the sheep that browsed on its braes.

Even great Oscar, the Saint Bernard, must needs put his paws on the bulwarks, and gaze with a longing sniff towards the land, then jumping on deck go bounding along, barking for very joy; and as the little Skye looked so miserable because he could only have a sniff through the lee scuppers, Rory lifted him on to the capstan, and pointed out the land to him.

Then rough sea-dogs of men pulled off from a little village to greet them, dressed in jackets like the coats of bears. Rough though they looked, the foreyard was hauled aback all the same.

“No,” they said, “they didn’t think the country was at war.” That was all they could say; but they gave the captain a week-old newspaper and fish for all hands, in return for a few cakes of tobacco.

Then away they pulled, and the Snowbird sailed on. Lerwick was reached in good time, and here they cast anchor for five hours; here weird old Magnus bade them all an affectionate adieu, and here our heroes landed to telegraph to their friends.

How anxiously the replies were waited for, and with what trembling hands and beating hearts they opened them when they did arrive, only those can know who have been years absent from their native shores, without hearing from those they hold dear.

The gist of the despatches was as follows: – Number 1 to Allan from Arrandoon. “All alive and well.” Number 2 to Ralph. “Father alive and well, will meet you at Oban. Your cousin, alas! no more. Fortune falls to you.”

“Hurrah!” cried Ralph, “my cousin is dead!”

McBain could not restrain a smile.

“What a strange equivocal way of expressing your grief!” he said.

“Och!” said Rory, “excuse the poor boy; he won’t have to marry his grandmother nevermore.”

Rory’s own telegram was the least satisfactory. It was from his agents. It was all about rents, and they didn’t advise him to return to Ireland “just yet.”

“I’m right glad of that,” said Allan; “you shall stop with me till ‘just yet’ blows over.”

There was nothing to keep them much longer at Shetland. Yet the moors were all purple with heather. Allan suggested gathering a garland to hang at the Snowbird’s main truck, where the crow’s-nest had been through all the Arctic winter.

“So romantic a proposal,” said Rory, “deserves seconding, though ’deed and in troth, when you spoke, Allan, of gathering heather, I fancied it would be a broom you’d be after making. There is a spice of poetry in you after all.”

Two days after this, on a lovely balmy August afternoon, with just wind enough to fill the sails, the Snowbird, looking as white in canvas as her namesake, looking as clean and as taut and as trim as though she had never left the Scottish shores, rounded the point of Ardnamurchan, and stood in towards Loch Sunart. Hardly had they opened out the broad blue lake when McBain exclaimed, with joyous excitement in his every tone, —

“Boys, come here, quick!”

The boys came bounding.

“Look yonder, what is that?” As she spoke he pointed towards a tidy little cutter yacht that came rushing towards them over the water as if she couldn’t come quickly enough.

“The Flower of Arrandoon!” every one said in a breath. And so it was. Too impatient to remain any longer at Oban, our heroes’ friends had set sail to meet them. In fifteen minutes more they were all together on board the Snowbird.

I would much rather leave it to the reader’s imagination than tell of the joyous greetings that followed, of the pleasant passage up the canal and through the lake, till once more anchored in sight of the dear old castle, surrounded with its hills of glorious purple heather; of the return to Arrandoon, and the wildness of the dogs, and the ecstasies of poor old Janet, for as the chain rattles over the bows and the anchor drops in the waters of the lake —the Cruise of the “Snowbird” ends.

It remains only for me, the author, to briefly breathe that little word, which never yet was spoken without some degree of tender sorrow, and say Adieu.