The Cruise of the Snowbird: A Story of Arctic Adventure

“Ten feet from tip to tip of his wings,” said McBain, as he stood over him about an hour after. Allan, and Ralph, and Rory were all there. “Eagle, eagle,” Rory was saying, —

“Thou hast bowed
From thine empire o’er the cloud;
Thou that hadst ethereal birth,
Thou hast stooped too near the earth,
And the hunter’s shaft hath found thee;
And the toils of Death have bound thee.”

“Hunter’s shaft, indeed,” laughed Ralph; “old Janet’s broom-handle; but come, boys, I know you are both of you game enough for anything, so I propose we go and try to bag the disconsolate widow of this royal bird. We can capture the young ones and rear them.”

“It would indeed be a pity to leave the widow to mourn,” said Rory.

“It’s a sad pity my sheep must mourn,” said Allan. When at the breakfast-table that morning, Allan said, in a seemingly unconcerned voice, —

“Mother, we mean to have a day among the eagles; they have commenced it, you know.” His mother knew well he was asking her consent, and she gave it because she would not see him unhappy. But nevertheless, she whispered to him as he left the room, —

“Oh, child! do take care of yourself, and take care of Rory. I had strange dreams about you last night.”

Our three heroes, accompanied by men carrying the wooden well-windlass with a plank or two, and plenty of length of rope, made their way over the mountain to the top of the precipice before described. McBain with his trusty rifle went down the glen, among the birch-trees at the other side of the lake. He was not only eagle-slayer, but signalman to the expedition. Keeping close to the loch, he walked onwards for fully three-quarters of a mile, then he stopped and fired his rifle in the air. He stood now as still as a statue, and so remained for fully half-an-hour, until his party had fixed the windlass to the brink of the cliff. Had this latter been flat at the top the danger would have been but small, but the ground sloped towards the brink, so that a false step or a slip meant something too awful to contemplate. Right down beneath them is the eyrie, quite one hundred feet from the top. Circling high in air, far, far above them, is the she-eagle. She is watching and wondering. If any one dares descend she will rend them in pieces. But see, something leaves the cliff-top, and goes downwards and downwards nearer and nearer to her nest. With a scream of rage she rushes from her hover, passes our friends swift as a thunderbolt, and is lost to view. She is expending her anger now, she is having revenge, and fragments of a torn garment flutter down towards the lake. McBain has thrown himself on his face; he is no mean marksman, but he will need all his skill and steadiness now, and this he knows right well.

Seconds, long, long seconds of suspense – so at least they seem to those on the cliff. Then a puff of white smoke and at the very moment that the crack of the rifle falls on their ears, McBain is on his legs again, and waving his gun in joy aloft. The eagle is slain, and downwards with drooping head and outstretched pinions is falling lakewards. Then the lure, rent in ribbons, is drawn back, and Rory, the lightest of the three, prepares to descend. He laughs as he puts his limbs through the bight.

“Troth, I’ll have the youngsters up in a brace of shakes,” he says, “now the ould mother of them is slain. And there isn’t a taste of danger in the whole business. Lower away.”

And they do lower away slowly and steadily. Rory disappears, and Allan’s heart sinks and seems to descend with his friend. A thousand times rather would he have gone down himself, but Rory had opposed this wish with the greatest determination; he was the lightest weight, and it was his privilege.

They watch the signalman; he stands with one arm aloft, and they lower away until that arm falls suddenly by his side. Then they stop, and the “pawl” holds the windlass fast. Rory has reached the eyrie, he grasps the rock, and scrambles on to the projecting ledge.

“Shut your mouths now, and be quiet with you,” he says to the woolly young eaglets; “there’s neither bite nor sup shall go into the crops of you until you’re safe in Arrandoon.”

He placed the birds in the basket, tied it to the rope, signalled to McBain, who signalled to the cliff by raising two arms, and up to the brink went the precious burden. A few minutes afterwards and the rope once more dangled before Rory’s eyes.

But why does poor Rory turn so pale, and why does he tremble so, and crouch backward against the wet rock’s side?

The rope dangles before his eyes, it is true, but it dangles a goodly foot beyond his reach. The top of the cliff projects farther than the eyrie itself; in his descent the rope had oscillated with his weight, and he had unknowingly been swung on to the ledge of rock. But who now will swing him the empty bight of rope?

Rory recovered himself in a few moments. “Action, action,” he said aloud, as if the sound of his own voice would help to steel his nerves. “Action alone can save me, I must leap.”

As he spoke he cleared the ledge of rock of the rotting sticks and of the bones, for these might perchance impede his feet, and signalled to McBain to lower the rope still farther. Then he stood erect and firm, leaning backwards, however, against the precipice, for nearly a minute. Rory is no coward, but see, he is kneeling down with his face to the cliff; he is seeking strength from One more powerful than he.

Reader, at five bells in the morning watch on board a man-o’-war, the midshipmen are roused from their hammocks, and many of them kneel beside their sea-chests for some minutes before they dress, and not one of these did I ever know who was not truly brave at heart, or who failed to do his duty in the hour of danger.

Now Rory is erect again, his elbows and back are squared, his hands half open, his face is set and determined, and now he – he springs.

Has he caught it? Yes; but he cannot hold it. It is slipping through his grasp, struggle as he may; but now, oh! joy, his foot gets in the bight, and he is saved!

He is soon to brink, and his comrades receive him with a joyful shout Rory says but little; but when they reach the head of the glen he runs forward at the top of his speed to meet McBain.

“McBain,” he says, quickly, “not one word of what you saw, to either Ralph or Allan.”

“Give me your hand, dear boy,” replied McBain, with a strange moisture in his eyes; “I appreciate your kindly motive as much as I admire the brave heart that prompts it.”

Chapter Six

Cruising round the Hebrides – Caught in a “Puff” – Man Overboard – Dinner on the Cliff – Bright Prospects

Three months have passed away since the adventure at the eagle’s nest. So swiftly, too, they have fled that it seems to our heroes but yesterday that the little cutter spread her white sails to the wind, and headed down the loch for Fort Augustus. And all the time they have been cruising, with varied fortunes, up and down among the Western Isles. When I say that the time has passed swiftly, it is equivalent to telling you that the brave crew of the Flower of Arrandoon have enjoyed themselves, and this again you will readily guess is equivalent to saying that it had not been all plain sailing with them; had it been so, the very monotony of such a cruise, and the lack of adventure, would have rendered it distasteful to them. In this bright, beautiful world of ours you may find seas in which, during the months of summer, you can cruise in the most flimsy of yachts, among islands, too, as lovely as dreamland, where the wind is never higher than a gentle breeze, nor the waves than a ripple, and where danger is hardly ever to be encountered; but such a dolce far niente existence is not for youth; youth should be no lotus-eater, and so McBain had done well in choosing for his young pupils the cruising ground on which they now were sailing. They had had a taste of all kinds of Highland summer weather – true it had been mostly fine – but many a stiff breeze they had had to face nevertheless, and they soon learned to do so cheerily, and to feel just as happy under their glittering oilskins and sou’-westers, with half a gale tearing through the rigging, and the spray dashing most uncomfortably in their teeth and eyes, as they did when, with all sail set, they glided calmly over the rippling sea, the sun shining brightly overhead, and the purple mist of distance half hiding the rugged mountains. McBain knew exactly what the cutter could do, and to use his own phrase, he just kept her at it. In fact he got to love the boat, and he used to talk about her as a living thing. And so she really appeared to be, for although she almost invariably did all that was required of her, there were days when she seemed to evince a will and determination of her own, and to want to shake herself free of all control.

“Wo, my beauty?” McBain would say when she was particularly disobedient, talking to her as if she were a restless hunter; but he would smile quaintly as he spoke, for the vessel’s little eccentricities only served to show off his seamanship. He said he knew how to manage her, and so he did. So he used to play with her, as it were, while in a sea-way or on a wind, and delighted in showing off her good qualities. Not that he did a great deal of the manual labour himself. Was he not master, and were not Ralph, Allan, and Rory not only his crew, but his pupils as well? It would have been unfair to them, then, if they had not been allowed to do all they had a mind to, and that, I assure you, was nearly everything that was to be done. But McBain had all the orders to give when sailing, especially if there was a bit of a blow on.

I am rambling on with my tale now in a kind of a gossiping fashion; but it is not without a purpose. I wish you to know as clearly as possible what manner of man McBain was, because you will see him in several different strange positions before he finally disappears from off the boards.

Well, then, when giving his orders, he never talked a bit louder nor quicker than there was any occasion for. He knew by experience that a command given in a sharp, loud key, was very likely to cause nervousness and slight confusion in obeying it. Woe is me for your officers on board big ships – and there are many of them too – who, while giving orders, strut about the decks, and stamp and yell at their men; they do but excite them, and cause them to give proof of the proverb, “The more hurry the less speed.” More than once have I seen a good ship’s safety jeopardised in a squall, and all through this fault in the officer carrying on duty. But you see McBain loved the crew – he loved “his boys,” as he was fond of calling them, and he was wishful to impart to them in a friendly way all the knowledge of boats that he himself possessed.

If you had called McBain a sailor, he would have replied, —

“No, sir, I’m not a sailor; I’m only a boatman, or a fisherman if you like it better.”

But this was only McBain’s modesty. A sailor by profession he certainly was not, although he had, as I before told you, spent a portion of his younger life at sea; but from his infancy he was used to rough it, not only on the stormy lakes of the inlands, but in open or half-decked boats all along the western shores of romantic Scotland, and that, too, in winter as well as in summer; nor was there a loch, nor cape, nor kyle he did not know every bearing of, from Handa Isle in the north, southwards as far as the Ross of Mull. And that is saying a great deal, for on that wild, indented coast, exposed as it is to the whole force of the wide Atlantic, stormy seas are met with and sudden squalls, such as are happily but little known on the shores of Merrie England.

“He is a good seaman, isn’t he?” Rory had said one day to old Ap, referring, of course, to McBain.

“Is it seamanship you talk of?” old Ap replied. “Look, you see, sir; I’d rather be in a herring boat with McBain in half a gale of wind, although he was managing the sails by himself look, you see, and steering with his teeth or knees, so to speak, than I’d be in a 200-ton schooner, with a score of dandified yachtsmen; yes, yes, indeed.”

Hearing old Ap talk thus enthusiastically about quiet, non-assuming McBain, the latter gained an ascendency in Rory’s estimation that he never after lost.

Often, in fact as a rule, McBain smiled when he gave an order to his boys, but his was not a stereotyped smile. His smile played not only around his lips, but it danced around his eyes and lighted up all his face. It was not, however, so much the smile of mirth as that of genuine good-heartedness.

Often, even when in a difficult position, he would allow the young men to handle the boat according to their own judgment, but at the same time his grave grey eyes would be cautiously watching their every movement, and his hand would be ready at a moment’s notice to grasp a sheet or rectify a foul, and so prevent unpleasantness. I am not sure that McBain’s method of teaching was not somewhat unique in many ways, but it was at times very effective.

“I’m not sorry that this should have happened, my boys,” was one of McBain’s favourite expressions, after any little accident or mishap. His crew knew well that he meant that a lesson given roughly, and sent well home, was likely to be remembered.

One day, for example, with Rory as steersman, their course led them pretty close to the passenger boat Crocodile. Perhaps they needn’t have gone near enough to have most of the wind taken out of their sails, and their way considerably lessened; perhaps, though, Rory was just a little proud of his pretty vessel, and of being looked at by the lady passengers, looked at and probably admired; be this as it may, he forgot a warning that McBain had often given him, to have an easy sheet for the sudden rush of wind that would meet them, immediately after passing to leeward of anything, and so, on this particular day, his pride had a most disagreeable fall, and he himself, with the rest of his companions, had a good wetting, for down went the Flower of Arrandoon on her beam ends as soon as they had cleared the Crocodile. But she was well ballasted, the sliding hatch was on, and when sheets were eased she righted again, though it was a considerable time before Rory righted again.

McBain shook himself a bit, much in the same way that a Newfoundland dog does.

“I’m not sorry that this should have happened,” he said, quietly.

Rory was, though. Especially when Ralph laughed pointedly at, or towards him.

Well, but another day Rory had his revenge, and the laughing was all on the other side.

It happened thus: they were cracking on nicely with every inch of canvas spread, sailing pretty close to the wind. The light breeze was on to the land, from which they were distant about a mile and a half, and although the sea was very far from being rough, there was a bit of a swell rolling in. Now Ralph was tall, and stout, and strong; he was no feather-weight therefore, but for all that the cutter did not require him to sit upon her weather gunwale, in order to keep her from capsizing. She could have done just as well had he kept on the seat, and by so doing he would have been consulting his own safety. Many a time and oft had McBain pointed this out to him, but he seemed forgetful on this particular point, and so, on the day in question, he was lazily occupying the forbidden quarter. One would have thought that the saucy wee yacht had done it on purpose; be that as it may – when down in the trough between two seas she simply gave a kind of a swing – hardly a lurch – in the wrong direction for Ralph’s stability, and over he went, literally speaking, heels over head, into the sea, a most ungraceful and unscientific way of taking to the water.

Both Allan and Rory knew well that their friend could swim, and the latter at all events seemed to treat the affair as a very pretty piece of entertainment.

“Man overboard?” he shouted. “Let go the life-buoy, Allan.”