Wild Adventures round the Pole

“Now, maybe, with those hooked teeth of his, the shark could not let go; anyhow, he did not.

“‘I dinna ken who ye are, or what ye are,’ cried Sandy, ‘but ye’ll no get my breeks. Ah! bide a wee.’

“Luckily the dolphin-striker lay handy, Sandy made a grab at it, and next minute it was hard and fast in the hammer-head’s neck. To see how that monster wriggled and fought, more like a fiend than a fish, when we got him on deck, would have – but look – look – r – ”

Seth had not been idle while his companions were talking. He had cut off choice pieces of blubber and thrown them into the sea; he had coiled his rope on the ice close by; then, harpoon in hand, he knelt ready to strike. Nor had he long to wait. The bait took, the bait was taken, the harpoon had left the trapper’s hand and gone deep into the monster’s body.

I will not attempt to describe the scene that followed – it was a death-scene that no pen could do justice to – the wild struggle of the giant shark in the water, his mad and frantic motions ere clubbed to death on the ice, and his terrible appearance as he snapped his dreadful jaws at everything within reach; but here is a fact, strange and weird though it may read – fully half an hour after the creature seemed dead, and lying on its side, while our heroes stood silently round it, with the wild birds wheeling and screaming closely overhead, the zugaena suddenly threw itself on its stomach as if about to swim away. It was the last of its movements, and a mere spasmodic and painless one, though very distressing to witness.

Chapter Twenty Three.

Rory’s Reverie – Silas on the Scymnus Borealis – The Battle with the Sharks – Rory Gets in for it again – Thrown among the Sharks

The ships still lay hard and fast in the ice-pack, many miles to the nor’ard and eastward of the Isle of Jan Mayen. There was as yet no sign of the frost giving way. Day after day the bay ice between the bergs got thicker and thicker, and the thermometer still stood steadily well down below zero. But the wind never blew, and there never was a speck of cloud in the brilliant sapphire sky, nor even haze itself to shear the sun of his beams; so the cold was hardly felt, and after a brisk walk or scamper over the ice our heroes felt so warm that they were in the habit of throwing themselves down on the snow on the southern side of a hummock of ice. Book in hand, Rory would sometimes lie thus for fully half an hour on a stretch. Not always reading, though; the fact of Rory’s having a book in his hand was no proof that he was reading, for just as often he was dreaming; and I’ll tell you a little secret – there were a pair of beautiful eyes which were filled with tears when last he had seen them, there were two rosy lips that had quivered as they parted to breathe the word “good-bye.” These, and a soft, small hand that had lain for a moment in his, haunted him by night and by day, and seemed ever present with him through all his wild adventures.

Ah! but they didn’t make him unhappy, though; no, but quite the reverse.

He was reclining thus one day all by himself, about a quarter of a mile from his ship, when Ralph and McBain came gently up behind him, walking as silently as the crisp snow, that felt like powdered glass under their feet, would permit them.

“Hullo! Rory,” cried McBain, in a voice of thunder.

Startled from his reverie, Rory sprang to his feet, and instinctively grasped his rifle.

His friends laughed at him.

“It is somewhat late to seize your rifle now, my boy,” said McBain; “supposing now we’d been a bear, why, we would be eating you at this present moment.”

“Or making a mouse of you,” added Ralph, “as the yellow bear did of poor Freezing Powders; and at this very minute you’d be —

“‘Dancin’ for de dear life

Among de Greenland snow.’”

“I was reading,” said Rory, smiling, “that beautiful poem of Wordsworth, We are seven.”

“Wordsworth’s We are seven?” cried Ralph, laughing. “Oh! Row, Row, you’ll be the death of me some day. Since when did you learn to read with your book upside down?”

“Had I now?” said Rory, with an amused look of candour. “In troth I daresay you are right.”

“But come on, Row, boy,” continued Ralph, “luncheon is all ready, Peter is waiting, and after lunch Silas Grig is going to show as some fun.”

“What more malley-shooting?” asked Rory.

“No, Row, boy,” was the reply; “he is going to lead us forth to battle against the sharks.”

“Against the sharks!” exclaimed Rory, incredulous.

“I’m not in fun, really,” replied Ralph. “Silas tells us they are in shoals of thousands at present under us; that the sea swarms with them, some fifteen feet long, others nearer twenty.”

“Oh!” said Row; “this is interesting. Come on; I’m ready.”

While the trio stroll leisurely shipwards over the snow, let me try to explain to my reader what Rory meant by malley-shooting, as taught them by Silas Grig. The term, or name, “malley,” is that which is given by Greenlandmen to the Arctic gull. Although not so charming in plumage as the snowbird, it is nevertheless a very handsome bird, and has many queer ways of its own which are interesting to the naturalist, and which you do not find described in books. These gulls build their nests early in the season on the cliffs of Faroe and Shetland, and probably, though I have never found them, in sheltered caves of Jan Mayen and Western Greenland as well. Despite the extreme cold, they manage to bring forth and rear their young successfully, and are always ready to follow Greenland ships in immense flocks. Wherever work is going on, wherever the crack of the rifle is heard on the pack, wherever the snow is stained crimson and yellow with blood, the malleys will be there in daring thousands. The most curious part of the thing is this: they possess a power of either scent or sight, which enables them to discover their quarry, although scores of miles away from it. For example – the Arctic gulls, as a rule, do not follow a ship for sake of the bits of bread and fat that may be thrown overboard. Some of them do, I know, but I look upon these as merely the lazaroni, the beggars of their tribe; your healthy, youthful, aristocratic malley prefers something he considers better. Give him blubber to eat, or the flesh of a new slain seal, and he will follow you far enough. Now a ship may be lying becalmed off this pack, with no seals in sight, and doing nothing; if so she will be deserted by these birds. Not from the crow’s-nest, though aided by the most powerful telescope, will you be able to descry a single gull; but no sooner is a sealskin or two hauled on deck to be cleared of their fat, than notice seems to be flashed to the far-off gulls, and in a few minutes they are winging around you, making the welkin ring with their wild, delighted screams. They alight in the water around a morsel of meat in such bunches, that a table-cloth would cover two dozen of them.

Having had enough – and that “enough” means something enormous – they go off for a “fly,” just as tumbling pigeons do. You may see them in hundreds high in air, sailing round and round, enjoying themselves apparently to the very utmost, and shrieking with joy. Now is the time for the skua to attack them. A bold, black, hawklike rascal is this skua, a robber and a thief. He never comes within gunshot of a ship. He is as wild and untamable as the north wind itself; yet, no sooner have the malleys commenced their post-prandial gambols than he is in the midst of them. He does not want to kill them; only some one or more must disgorge their food. On this the skua lives. No wonder that Greenland sailors call him the unclean bird.

The malley-gull floats on the waves as lightly and gently as a child’s toy air-ball would. His usual diet is fish, except in sealing times; and of the fish he catches the marauding skua never fails to get his share. It is for the sake of the feathers sailors shoot these birds on the ice, for they are nearly as well feathered as an eider duck.

Getting tired of shooting seals in the water, Rory and Allan one day, leaving the others on the banks of the great ice-hole, determined to make a bag of feathers. And here is how they bagged their game.

Armed with fowling-pieces, they retired to some distance from the water party and lay down behind a hummock of ice. Here they might have lain until this day without a bird looking twice in their direction had they not provided themselves with a lure. This lure was simply a pair of the wings of a gull, which one waved above his head, while the other prepared to fire right and left. And not a minute would these wings be waved aloft ere the gulls, with that strange curiosity inherent in all wild creatures, would begin to circle around, coming nearer and nearer, tack and half-tack, until they were within reach of the guns, when – down they came. But the untimely end of one brace nor twenty did not prevent their companions from trying to solve the mystery of the waving wings.

Luncheon was on the table, and our friends were seated around it, all looking happy and hungry. Rory would have liked to have asked Silas Grig right straight away about the expedition against the sharks but for one thing – he didn’t like to appear too inquisitive; and, for another, he was not quite sure even now that it was not one of Ralph’s pretty jokes. But when everybody had been served, when weather and future prospects, the state of the thermometer and height of the barometer, had been discussed, Rory found he could not contain himself any longer.

“What are you going to be doing after lunch?” he asked Silas, pointedly.

“Aha, boy Rory!” was the reply; “we’ll have such sport as you never saw the likes o’ before!”

Rory now began to see there really was no joke about the matter; and Ralph, who was sitting next to him, pinched him for his doubt and misbelief. The two young men could read each other’s thoughts like books.

“Do you mean to say you are going to catch sharks in earnest, you know?” asked Rory.

“Well,” said Silas, with a bit of a laugh, “I’m going to have as good a try at it as ever I had. And as for catching ’em in earnest, I’m thinking it won’t be fun – for the sharks!”

“It is the Scymnus borealis, isn’t it?” said Dr Sandy McFlail, “belongin’, if my memory serves me, to the natural family Squalidae– a powerful brute, and a vera dangerous, too.”

“You may call him the Aurora borealis if you like, doctor,” said Silas; “and as for his family connections I know nought, but I daresay he comes from a jolly bad stock.”

“Natural history books,” said Allan, “don’t speak of their being so very numerous.”

“Natural history books!” reiterated Silas, with some warmth of disdain. “What do they know? what can they teach a man? Write a complete history of all the creatures that move about on God’s fair earth, that fly in His air or swim in His sea, and you’d fill Saint Paul’s with books from top to bottom – from the mighty cellars beneath to the golden cross itself. No, take my advice, boy Rory; if you want to study nature, put little faith in books. The classification is handy, say you? Yes, doctor; and I’ve seen a stripling fresh from college look as proud as a two-year-old peacock because he could spin you off the Greek names of a few specimens in the British Museum, though he couldn’t have told you the ways and habits of any one of them to save him from having his leave stopped. There is only one way, gentlemen, to study natural history; you must go to the great book of Nature itself – ay, and be content, and thankful, too, if, during even a long lifetime, you are able to learn the contents of even a single page of it.”

Rory, and the doctor, too, looked at Silas with a kind of new-born admiration; there was more in this man, with his weather-beaten, flower-pot-coloured face, than they had had any idea of.

“If I had time, gentlemen,” Silas added, “I could tell you some queer stories about sharks. ‘I reckon,’ as poor old Cobb used to say, that some o’ them would raise your hair a bit, too!”

“And what kind of a monster is this Greenland shark?” asked Allan.

“No more a monster,” said Silas, “than I am. God made us both, and we have each some end to fulfil in life. But if you want me to tell you something about him, I’ll confess to you I love the animal about as much as I do an alligator. He comes prowling around the icebergs when we are sealing to see what he can pick up in the shape of a dead or wounded seal, a chunk o’ blubber, or a man’s leg. He is neither dainty nor particular, he has the appetite of a healthy ostrich, and about as much conscience as a coal-carter’s horse. He is as wary as a five-season fox, and when he pays your ship a visit when out at sea, he looks as humble and unsophisticated as a bull trout. He’ll take whatever you like to throw him, though – anything, in fact, from a cow’s-heel to the cabin boy – and he’ll swallow a red-hot brick rather than go away with an empty stomach. But when he comes around the ice at old-sealing time he doesn’t come alone, he brings his father and mother with him, and his uncles and aunts, and apparently all his natural family, as the doctor calls it. And fine fun they have, though they don’t agree particularly well even en famille. I’ve seen five of them on to one seal crang, and there was little interchange of courtesies, I can tell you. He’s not a brave fish, the Greenland shark, big and all as he is. If you fall into the water among a score of them your best plan is to keep cool and kick. Yes, gentlemen, by keeping cool and kicking plenty I’ve known more than one man escape without a bite. The getting out is the worst, though, for as long as you splash they keep at a distance and look on; they don’t quite know what to make of you; but as soon as you get a hold of the end of the rope, and are being drawn out, look sharp, that’s all, or it will be ‘Snap!’ and you will be minus one leg before you can wink, and thankful you may be it isn’t two. A mighty tough skin has the Greenland shark,” continued Silas; “I’ve played upon the back of one for over half an hour with a Colt’s revolver, and it just seemed to tickle him – nothing more. I don’t think sharks have much natural affection, and they are no respecters of persons. I do believe they would just as soon dine off little Freezing Powders here as they would off a leg of McBain.”

“Oh, oh, Massa Silas!” cried Freezing Powders, “don’t talk like dat; you makes my flesh all creep like nuffin’ at all!”

“They are slow in their movements, aren’t they?” said the doctor.

“Ay!” said Silas, “when they get everything their own way; but they are fierce, revengeful, and terrible in their wrath. An angry shark will bite a bit out of your boat, collar an oar, or do anything to spite you, though it generally ends in his having his own head split in the long run.”

(Silas Grig’s description of the Greenland shark is a pretty correct one, so far as my own experience goes. – G.S.)

“The men are all ready, sir,” said Stevenson, entering the cabin at that moment, “to go over the side, sir.”