Wild Adventures round the Pole

“Yes, it is curious,” replied Ralph, musing in silence for a moment. Then he stretched out his hand and grasped Rory’s. He did not speak. There was no need, Rory knew well what he meant.

“Now, boys and men,” cried the captain, “we have to return thanks to Him who has safely guided us through all perils into these distant regions, and pray that He may permit us to return in safety to our native land. Let us pray.”

A more heartfelt prayer than that of those hardy sailors probably never ascended on high. Afterwards a psalm was sung, to a beautiful old melody, and this closed the service; but next morning, ere they started to return to the Arrandoon, another spar was erected on the top of the biggest and highest iceberg. On this the English colours were nailed, and around it the crew assembled, and cheer after cheer rent the air, and, as Sandy McFlail afterwards observed, hats and bonnets were pitched on high, till they positively darkened the air, like a flock o’ craws.

Then “Give us a good bass and tenor, boys,” cried Rory, and he burst into the grand old National Anthem, —

“God save our Gracious Queen,
Long may Victoria reign,
God save the Queen.”

Chapter Thirty Three.

Another Winter at the Pole – Christmas Day – The Curtain rises on the Last Act – Sickness – Death – Despair

The summer was far advanced before Captain McBain and his crew returned to where their vessel lay off the island of Alba. They had fully expected to see some signs of the ice breaking up, so as to allow them to get clear and bear up for home, but the chance of this taking place seemed as far off as ever. If the truth must be told, the captain had counted upon a break-up of the sea of ice shortly after midsummer at the very latest. But midsummer went past, the sun each midnight began to decline nearer and nearer to the northern horizon, and it already seemed sadly probable that another winter would have to be passed in these desolate regions. McBain could not help recalling the words of old Magnus, “Open seasons do not come oftener than once in ten years.” If this indeed were true, then he, his boys and his crew, were doomed to sufferings more terrible than tongue could tell or pen relate – sufferings from which there could be no escape save through the jaws of death. Provisions would hardly last throughout another winter, and until the ice broke up and they were again free, there could be no chance of getting those that had been stored on the northernmost isle of Spitzbergen.

The sky remained clear and hard, and McBain soon began to think he would give all he possessed in life for the sight of one little cloud not bigger than a man’s hand. But that cloud never came, and the sun commenced to set and the summer waned away. The captain kept his sorrow very much to himself; at all events he tried to talk cheerfully and hopefully when in the company of any of our young heroes; but they could mark a change, and well they knew the cause.

The ice-hole was opened, but, strange to say, although they captured sharks and other great fish innumerable, neither seal nor walrus ever showed head above the water.

Bears were pretty numerous on the ice, and now McBain gave orders to preserve not only the skins but even the flesh of those monsters. It was cut in pieces and buried in the ice and snow, well up the braeland near to the mouth of the cave, in which they had found shelter during all the dark months of the former winter.

The fact that no seals appeared at the ice-hole proved beyond a doubt that the open water was very far indeed to the southward of them.

How they had rejoiced to see the sun rise for the first time in the previous spring; how their hearts sank now to see him set!

“Boys,” said McBain one day, after he had remained silent for some time, as if in deep thought – “boys, I fear we won’t get out of this place for many months to come. How do you like the prospect?”

He smiled as he spoke; but they could see the smile was a simulated one.

“Never mind,” said Ralph and Allan; “we’ll keep our hearts up, never fear; don’t you be unhappy on our account.”

“I’ll try not to be,” said McBain, “and I’m sure I shall not be so on my own.”

“Besides, captain dear,” added Rory, “it’s sure to come right in the end.”

McBain laid his hand on boy Rory’s head, and smiled somewhat sadly.

“You’re always hopeful, Rory,” he said. “We must pray that your words may come true.”

And, indeed, besides waiting with a hopeful trust in that all-seeing Providence who had never yet deserted them in their direst need, there was little now to be done.

As the days got shorter and shorter, and escape from another winter’s imprisonment seemed impossible, the crew of the Arrandoon was set to work overhauling stores. It was found that with strict economy the provisions would last until spring, but, with the addition of the flesh of sharks and bears, for a month or two longer. It was determined, therefore, that the men should not be put upon short allowance, for semi-starvation – McBain was doctor enough to know – only opened the door for disease to step in, in the shape perhaps of that scourge called scurvy, or even the black death itself.

When the sun at last sank to rise no more for three long months, so far from letting down their hearts, or losing hope, the officers and crew of our gallant ship once more settled down to their “old winter ways,” as Seth called them. They betook themselves to the cave in the hillside, which, for sake of giving the men exercise, McBain had made double the size, the mould taken therefrom and the rocks being used to erect a terrace near the entrance. This was surrounded by a balustrade or bulwark, with a flagstaff erected at one end, and on this was unfurled the Union Jack. Watches were kept, and meals cooked and served, with as much regularity as if they had been at sea, while the evenings were devoted to reading, music, and story-telling round the many great fires that were lighted to keep the cave warm.

Where, it may be asked, did the fuel come from? Certainly not from the ship. The coals were most carefully stored, and retained for future service; but tons on tons of great pine-logs were dug from the hill-sides. And glorious fires they made, too. It was, as Rory said, raking up the ashes of a long-past age to find fuel for a new one.

Once more the electric light was got under way, and twice a week at least the diving-bell was sunk. This was a source of amusement that never failed to give pleasure; but so intense was the frost at times that it was a matter of no small difficulty to break the ice on the water.

The captain was untiring in his efforts to keep his men employed, and in as happy a frame of mind as circumstances would admit of.

There was no snowstorm this winter, and very seldom any wind; the sky was nearly always clear, and the stars and Aurora brighter than ever they had seen them.

Christmas – the second they had spent together since leaving the Clyde – passed pleasantly enough, though there was no boisterous merriment. Songs and story-telling were in far greater request than dancing. Never, perhaps, was Rory in better spirits for solo-playing. He appeared to know intuitively the class of music the listeners would delight in, and his rendering of some of the old Scottish airs seemed simply to hold them spell-bound. As the wild, weird, plaintive notes of the violin, touched by the master fingers of the young poet, fell on their ears, they were no longer ice-bound in the dreary regions of the pole. It was no longer winter; it was no longer night. They were home once more in their native land; home in dear auld Scotland. The sun was shining brightly in the summer sky, the purple of the heather was on the moorland, the glens and valleys were green, and the music of merle and mavis, mingling with the soft croodle of the amorous cushat, resounded from the groves. No wonder that a few sighs were heard when Rory ceased to play; he had touched a chord in their inmost hearts, and for the time being had rendered them inexpressibly happy.

It is well to let the curtain fall here for a short time; it rises again on the first scene of the last act of this Arctic drama of ours.

Three months have elapsed since that Christmas evening in the cave when we beheld the crew of the Arrandoon listening with happy, hopeful, upturned faces to the sweet music that Rory discoursed from his darling instrument. Only three months, but what a change has come over the prospects of sill on board that seemingly doomed ship! Often and often had our heroes been face to face with death in storms and tempests at sea, in fighting with wild beasts, and even with wild men, but never before had they met the grim king of terrors in the form he now assumed. For several weeks the men had been falling ill, and dying one by one, and already no less than nine graves had been dug and filled under the snow on the mountain’s side.

The disease, whatever it was, resisted all kinds of treatment, and, indeed, though the symptoms in every case were similar at the commencement, no two men died in precisely the same way. At first there was an intense longing for home; this would be succeeded in a few days by loss of all appetite, by distaste for food or exertion of any kind, and by fits of extreme melancholy and depression. The doctor did his best. Alas! there are diseases against which all the might of medical skill is unavailing.

Brandy and other stimulants were tried; but these only kept the deadly ailment at bay for a very short time; it returned with double force, and poor sufferers were doubly prostrated in consequence.

There was no bodily pain, except from a strange hollow cough that in all cases accompanied the complaint, but there was rapid emaciation, hot, burning brow, and hands and feet that scorched like fire, and while some fell into a kind of gentle slumber from which they awoke no more in this world, others died from sheer debility, the mind being clear to the last – nay, even brighter as they neared the bourne from which no traveller ever returns.

As the time went on – the days were now getting long again, for spring had returned – matters got even worse. It was strange, too, that the very best and brightest of the crew were the first to be attacked and to die. I do not think there was a dry eye in the ship when the little procession wound its way round the hillside bearing in its unpretending coffin the mortal remains of poor Ted Wilson. All this long cruise he had been the life and soul of the whole crew. No wonder that the words of the beautiful old song Tom Bowling rose to the mind of more than one of the crew of the Arrandoon when Ted was laid to rest:

“His form was of the manliest beauty,
His heart was warm and soft,
Faithful below he did his duty,
And now he’s gone aloft.”

Just one week after the burial of Ted Wilson, De Vere, the French aeronaut, was attacked, and in three days’ time he was dead. He had never been really well since the journey to the vicinity of the Pole, and the loss of his great balloon was one which he never seemed to be able to get over. He was quite an enthusiast in his profession, and, as he remarked to McBain one day, “I have mooch grief for de loss of my balloon. I had give myself over to de thoughts of mooch pleasant voyaging away up in de regions of de upper air. I s’all soar not again until I reach England.”

It was sad to hear him, as he lay half delirious on the bed of his last illness, muttering, muttering to himself and constantly talking about the home far away in sunny France that he would never see again. Either the doctor or one or other of our young heroes was constantly in the cabin with him. About an hour before his demise he sent for Ralph.

“I vould not,” he said, “send for Rory nor for Allan, dey vill both follow me soon. Oh I do not you look sad, Ralph, dere is nothing but joy vere ve are going. Nothing but joy, and sunshine, and happiness.”

He took a locket from his breast. It contained the portrait of a grey-haired mother.

“Bury dis locket in my grave,” he said.

He took two rings from off his thin white fingers.

“For my sister and my mother,” he said.

He never spoke again, but died with those dear names on his lips.

Ralph showed himself a very hero in these sad times of trouble and death. He was here, there, and everywhere, by night and by day; assisting the surgeon and helping Seth to attend upon the wants of the sick and dying; and many a pillow he soothed, and many a word of comfort he gave to those who needed it. The true Saxon character was now beautifully exemplified in our English hero. He possessed that noble courage which never makes itself uselessly obtrusive, which fritters not itself away on trifles, and which seems at most times to lie dormant or latent, but is ever ready to show forth and burn most brightly in the hour of direst need.

Sorrows seldom come singly, and one day Stevenson, in making his usual morning report, had the sad tidings to add that cask after cask of provisions had been opened and found bad, utterly useless for human food.

McBain got up from his chair and accompanied the mate on deck.

“I would not,” he said, “express, in words what I feel, Mr Stevenson, before our boys; but this, indeed, is terrible tidings.”

“It can only hasten the end,” said Stevenson.