The Cruise of the Snowbird: A Story of Arctic Adventure

“Talking about fortunes,” said Allan, who had just come on deck, “we ought to have a small fortune in skins alone.”

“In fur and feather,” said Rory.

“There is more of that to come,” quoth McBain. “As soon as the days begin to lengthen out we will have some glorious hunting expeditions, and the animals our good Seth will lead us against, are never in better condition than they are during the early spring months.”

Christmas Day came. McBain resolved it should be spent as much as possible in the same way as if they were at home. There was service in the morning on shore in the hall. Was there one soul in that rough log hut, who did not feel gratitude to Him who had brought them through so many dangers? I do not think there was.

After service preparations for dinner were commenced. It was to be a banquet. There was to be no sitting below the salt at this meal; all should be welcome, all should be equal. I am afraid my powers of description would utterly fail me if I attempted to give the reader an idea of the decorations of the new hall. Almost every lamp in the Snowbird was pressed into the service. The hall was a galaxy of light then, it was a galaxy of evergreens too, and everywhere on the walls were hung trophies of the chase, and the part of the room in which the table stood was bedded with skins. But how Peter, the steward, managed to get the tablecloth up to such a pitch of snowy whiteness, or how he succeeded in getting the crystal to sparkle and the silver to shine in the marvellous manner they did, is more than I can tell you. And if you asked me to describe the viands, or the glorious juiciness of the giant joints, or the supreme immensity of the lofty pudding, I should simply beg to be excused. Why that pudding took two men to carry it in and to place it on the table, and when it was there it quite hid the smiling face of Captain McBain, whose duty it was to confront it. If you had been sitting at the other end of the table you couldn’t have seen him. Ah! but McBain was quite equal to the occasion, and I can assure you that the hearty way he attacked that pudding soon brought him into view again.

Well, everybody seemed, and I’m sure felt, as happy as happy could be. Old man Magnus looked twenty years younger, old Ap’s face was wreathed in smiles, and Seth looked as bright as the silver. I can’t say more. Rory was in fine form, his merry sallies kept the table in roars, his droll sayings were side-splitting; and Ralph and Allan kept him at it, you may be sure. Yes, that was something like a dinner. And after the more serious part of the business was over, mirth and music became the order of the evening; songs were sung and stories told, songs that brought them back once more in heart and mind to old Scotland, where they knew that at that very time round many a fireside dear friends were thinking of them and wondering how they fared.

Chapter Twenty Six

Hockey with Snow-Shoes on – The Ice Breaks up – Change of Quarters – Going on a Big Shoot – The Great Snow Lake – Indians – The Fight in the Forest

Winter wore away. Did our people in the Snowbird think it long and dreary? They certainly did not. To begin with, every one on board was as healthy as a summer’s day is long. It was mindful and provident of McBain to have laid in a good supply of medicines, and these were about the only stores in the ship that had never been as yet applied to.

The captain was a good and a wise disciplinarian, however. He well knew the value of exercise in keeping illness far away, so he kept his men at work. On dry days they would be sent in parties to the forest, to cut down and drag home wood to keep up roaring fires in the ship and in the hall as well. When snow was falling, which was less often than might be imagined, he had them under cover in the hall, where there was room enough for games of many kinds, and these were varied by regular exercise with clubs in lieu of dumb-bells. In open weather games were not forgotten out of doors, you may be quite sure. Rory proposed lawn tennis.

“We could easily get it up, you know,” he said.

“Nothing would be more simple,” was McBain’s reply, “but it is far too slow with the thermometer at zero. There isn’t chase enough in it.”

“I have it,” cried Allan, joyously.

“What?” asked Rory, eagerly.

“Why, hockey, to be sure; what we in Scotland call shinty, or shinny.”

“It is shinny enough at times,” added McBain, laughing; “but how would you set about it? You’d need a large ball, a small one would get lost in the snow.”

“Yes,” said Allan, “a large cork ball as big as a football, covered with laced twine. Ap can make the balls, I know.”

“And we can go off to the woods and cut our hockey sticks,” said Rory; “it will be capital fun.”

There was no mistake about it, it was capital fun, Hockey is at all times a glorious game, but hockey on the snow with snow-shoes on! Why it beggars description. No wonder all hands entered into it with a will. The amusement and excitement were intense, the fun and the frolic immense, the tumbling and the scrimmaging and scrambling were something to see, and having seen, to go to sleep and dream about and awake laughing, and long to go to sleep and dream about it all over again. The game ended at the goal in a mad mêlée, a medley of laughter and shouting, a mixture of legs in the air, arms in the air, snow-shoes and hockey clubs in the air, and heads and bodies anywhere. No wonder the short winter’s day wore to a close before they knew where they were. No wonder that at the end of the games Allan McGregor, the inventor, was dubbed the hero of the day, that he was cheered until the welkin rang, that he was mounted shoulder high, and borne triumphantly back to the Snowbird, Rory marching on in front with brandished hockey club, leading a chorus which he had composed on the spot and for the occasion.

But it must not be supposed that their life was all play; no, for independent of long hours spent in the forest in quest of game, Rory, Ralph, and Allan set themselves with a will to clean, dress, and arrange the many hundreds of beautiful and valuable skins they had possessed themselves of. This was a labour of love. These skins were part of the cargo with which they hoped to reach their native land once more in safety. Some of the smallest and prettiest of them Rory took extra pains with, and when he had got them as soft and pliable as silk, he perfumed them and stowed them in the big box Ap had made for him, and where his sketch-book – well-filled by this time – lay, and a host of curious nameless pebbles and crystals, polished horns, strange moths, butterflies and beetles, beautifully-stuffed birds and rare eggs. It was a splendid collection, and Rory’s eyes used to sparkle as he gazed upon them, and thought of the time when in the old castle he would show all these things to Helen McGregor and her mother.

“Just look at him,” Ralph would say at times like these; “he hasn’t got the pack-merchant idea out of his head yet.”

Winter wore away. It was nearly three months since they had all sat down together to their Christmas dinner in the hall. The mate of the Trefoil, and the men more immediately under his command, hadn’t been idle all this time. They had been busy refining the oil, and a grand lot they made of it, and it was now carefully stowed away in the Snowbird’s tanks. The mate had not been disappointed in the size of his fish, it had turned out even better than he expected, and would greatly add to the wealth of the cargo of the lucky yacht. The water had to be pumped from the tanks to make room for it, but that was no loss, for fresh-water ice was procurable in any quantity. It lay on the decks of the Snowbird abaft the foremast in gigantic pieces, and a very pretty sight it looked when the sun shone on it.

Fresh food and game of various kinds were now to be had in abundance. Ay, and fish as well. Old Seth still continued to act as fisherman. He caught them in that mysterious pool, which all the winter long had never shown a single sign of freezing.

When all was quiet of a night, probably in the moonlight or under the light from the splendid aurora, our heroes used to take a walk sometimes towards the strange pool. They took their guns with them, but only to protect themselves from prowling bears. Awful-looking heads used to appear over the surface of the pool. In daylight these creatures never showed – only when all was still at night. What they were they could not tell; nor can I. Probably they were merely gigantic specimens of bearded seals or sea-lions come up to breathe, and looked larger and more dreadful in the uncertain light of moon or aurora.

Many though our heroes’ adventures were, and thoroughly though they enjoyed themselves, when the days began to get longer, when the snow began to melt, and whistling winds blew softer through the forest trees, and everything told them spring was on ahead, the thoughts that ere long the Snowbird would burst her icy bounds, that they would be once more free, once more at sea, were very far from unpleasant to them.

On days now when there was but little frost in the air, and a breeze of wind with sunlight, the Snowbird’s sails would be unstowed, bent, and partially unfurled, to air them. Even this made the saucy yacht look quite coquettish again. “Ho! ho!” she seemed to say to herself, “so there is a possibility, is there, that some of these days I may once more sport my beauty in waters blue? Oh! then, blow, breezes, blow, and melt the ice and snow, for indeed I’m heartily tired of it.”

It would almost seem that the country around where the Snowbird lay was chosen as a winter residence par excellence for the great Polar bear. Perhaps the winter in the faraway and desolate regions around the Pole is too rigorous for even his constitution; be this as it may, here they were by the score, and all in all, well-nigh a hundred fleeces were bagged in little over two months.

These snow-bears got more chary at last, however, and when the March winds blew they entirely disappeared.

One day the beginning of the end of the ice came; a wind blew strong from the east, and by noon all the bay behind the yacht was one heaving mass of snow-clad pieces. It was well for the Snowbird she was sturdy and strong; the grinding bergs, small though they were, tried her stability to the utmost, but the wind went down and the swell ceased; yet fearing a repetition of the rough treatment, McBain determined to seek a less exposed position farther to the west. The ice was now loose, so as soon as there was enough wind to fill her sails progress was commenced. It was slow hard work, but by dint of great exertion and no little skill, a portus salutis was found at last fifty miles farther west, and here the captain determined to rest until the spring was more advanced, and there was a likelihood of getting safely out to sea:

The region in which they now found themselves was even more romantic and wild than that which they had left. There was still room for more skins in the Snowbird, so a big shoot was organised – quite a big shoot in fact, for it would probably be the last they would enjoy in this strange country.

The season was now sufficiently mild to render camping out to such weather-beaten wanderers as the people of the Snowbird practicable, not to say enjoyable. So everything being got in readiness, the start was made for up country, McBain himself taking charge of the expedition, which mustered twenty men in all, ten or more of whom carried rifles, but every one of whom was well armed. The principal tent was taken, and the largest camping-kettle, a wonderful multum-in-parvo, that Seth described as “a kind of invention that went by spirits-o’-wine, and was warranted to cook for fifty hands, and wash up the crockery arterwards.”

Rory did not forget his sketch-book, nor his wonderful boat, which one man could carry – not in his waistcoat pocket, as Rory banteringly averred, but on his back, and three men could row in.

They followed a gorge or canon, which led them gradually upwards and inland. I call it “gorge,” because I cannot call it glen or valley. The bottom of it was in width pretty uniformly about the eighth part of a mile, almost level, though covered with boulders and scanty scrub, which rendered walking difficult. At each side rose, towering skywards, black, wet, beetling cliffs, so perpendicular that not even a shrub, nor grass itself, could find roothold on them, but on the top tall weird pine-trees fringed the cliffs all along, and as they ascended, this Titanic cutting so wound in and out, that on looking either back or away ahead, nothing could be seen but the bare pine-fringed wall of rocks.

Seth laughed.

“You never seed such a place before, I reckon,” he said, “but I have; many’s the one. You ain’t likely to lose your way in a place like this, anyhow.”

It was almost nightfall ere the cliffs began to get lower and lower at each side of them, and soon after they cleared the gorge, and came out upon a broad buffalo-grass prairie, which must have been over a thousand feet above the level of the sea.

And not far from the head of the gorge, near a clump of spruce firs, the tent was pitched and the camp fire built, and Seth set about preparing a wonderfully savoury stew. Seth’s dinners always had the effect of putting the partakers thereof on the best of terms with themselves. After dinner you did not want to do much more that evening, but, well wrapped in your furs, recline around the log fire, listen to stories and sing songs, till sleep began to take your senses away, and then you did not know a whit more until next morning, when you sprang from your couch as fresh as a mountain trout.

If they had meant this expedition for a big shoot they were not disappointed. The country all around was everything a sportsman could wish. There was hill and dale, woodland, jungle, and plain, and there was beauty in the landscape, too, and, far away over the green and distant forest rose the grand old hills, raising their snowy heads skywards, crag over crag and peak over peak, as far as eye could reach.

A week flew by, a fortnight passed, and the pile of skins got bigger and bigger. They only now shot the more valuable furs, but skin of bear, nor deer, nor lordly elk, was to be despised, while the smaller game were killed for food.

Another week and it would be time to be returning, for spring comes all at once in the latitudes they were now in. There was still a portion of the country unexplored. Rory, from a hill-top, had caught sight of a distant lake, and was fired with the ambition to launch his fairy boat on its waters. On the very morning that Seth, Rory, and Allan set out to seek for this lake, with two of the brawniest hands of the crew to bear the boat, McBain came a little way with them.

“Take care of the boys, Seth,” he said, with a strange, melancholy smile playing over his face. “I had a queer dream last night. Be back to-morrow, mind, before nightfall.” The little party had their compasses, and therefore struck a bee-line through the forest in the direction in which they fancied the lake lay. On and on they went for miles upon miles, and at last reached the banks of a broad river, and here they encamped for lunch. Feeling refreshed, and hearing the roar of a cataract, apparently some way down the stream, they took their road along the banks to view it. They had not gone very far when they stood, thunderstruck, by the brink of a tremendous subterranean cavern. Thence came the roar of the cataract. The whole river disappeared suddenly into the bowels of the earth (a phenomenon not unknown to travellers in the wilds of America).

Marvelling much, they started off up-stream now, to seek for the lake.

After an hour’s walking, the forest all at once receded a good mile from the river, and the banks were no longer green, but banks of boulders mixed with silver sand and patches of snow. Here and there a bridge of solid snow spanned the river to great banks and hills of snow on the other side. As they climbed higher and higher, the river by their right met them with nearly all the speed of a cataract. But they can see the top of the hill at last, and yonder is the half-yellow, half-transparent stream leaping downwards as if over a weir.

And now they are up and the mystery is solved; the river is bursting over the lip of a great lake, which stretches out before them for many miles – forest on one side, hills beyond, and on the right a gigantic ridge of snow. They call the lake the Great Snow Lake.

They took their way to the left along its banks, going on through the woods that grew on its brink, until they came at last to an open glade, green and moss-covered. Here they encamped for rest, and soon after embarked on the strange lake, leaving the men to look after the preparation of dinner against the time of their return.

Rory was charmed with his boat; he sat in the bows sketching. Allan rowed, and Seth was busy fishing – no, trying to fish; but he soon gave up the attempt in despair, and almost at the same time Rory closed his sketch-book. Silence, and a strange indefinable gloom, seemed to settle down on the three. But there is silence everywhere around. Not a ripple is on the leaden lake, not a breath sighs through the forest. But, hark! a sullen plash in the water just round the point, and soon another and another.

“There is some water-monster bathing round yonder,” said Rory; “and indeed I believe it’s the land of enchantment we’re in altogether.”

They rounded the point, and found themselves in a bay surrounded by high banks of sand and gravel, portions of the sides of which, loosened by the thaw, were every now and then falling with a melancholy boom into the deep black water beneath. Sad, and more silent than ever, with a gloom on their hearts which they could not account for, they rowed away back to the spot where they had left their men.

There was no smoke to welcome them, and when they pushed aside the branches and rushed into the open, their hearts seemed to stand still with dread at the sight that met their eyes. Only the embers of a smouldering fire, and near it and beside it the two poor fellows they had left happy and well – dead and scalped!

They say that some of the Highlanders of Scotland possess the strange gift, second sight. I know not, but McBain began to feel uneasy the very moment his party had gone, and as the day wore on he became more so.