Part 4 (1/2)
Well would it have been for the _Grampus_ had Captain Anderson followed her example; but he would not.
”She can go,” he said; ”she is a full s.h.i.+p, and only a sailing s.h.i.+p.
Now let us get but two other 'fish,' then hey for the sunny south, boys.”
For a whole month they remained dodging about in that open sea, but without seeing another whale. All their good luck seemed to have gone with the Dutchman, and the captain was about to bear up, and force his way once more out through the southern ice to the open sea beyond, when suddenly a change came o'er the spirit of the scene. To their surprise, if not to their horror, the ice began to close in around them in all directions. Nearer and nearer came the mighty floes. They came from the north; they came from the south and the east; they even deployed into two long lines, or horns, that crept along the land until they met.
At the same time a heavy swell began to roll in from seawards.
”There is a gale of wind outside,” the captain said to Chisholm, ”and this is the result; but come, I don't mean to be caught like a mouse in a trap.” Then, addressing the mate, ”Call all hands, Mr Lewis. Get out the ice-saws and anchors.”
”Ay, ay, sir,” replied the mate.
”Now, my lads,” continued the captain, when the men came aft in a body, ”you've all been to Greenland before, and you know the danger we are in as well as I can tell you. If we are caught between two floes in that heaving pack, we'll be crunched like a walnut-sh.e.l.l. So we'll have to work to make a harbour. That alone can save us. Call the steward.
Steward! we'll splice the main brace.”
The men gave a cheer; they stripped off coats and jackets, and even their gloves. They meant business, and looked it. Meanwhile the _Grampus_ was going ahead at full speed, straight towards the ice in sh.o.r.e. Why, it looked to our heroes as if the captain was positively courting destruction; for he was steering for the very largest berg he could find, and presently he was alongside it. The s.h.i.+p was stopped, and every man that could be spared sent over the side. The anchors were got out speedily, and made fast to the berg. Then the men began to work.
The iceberg against which they directed their operations was indeed a mighty one. Although not very high close to the edge, it towered above them many hundreds of feet, a snow-clad mountain of ice, its green and rugged sides glittering in the beams of the mid-day sun. It was soon evident to Chisholm O'Grahame that the captain's object was to hollow out a temporary harbour in the side of the berg, sufficiently wide to enable the s.h.i.+p to fit into it, so that she might be safe from being ground into matchwood when the whole pack was joined.
”Come,” he cried, to his comrades, ”three hands of us here idle! We can work too, captain. Only tell us what to do, and we'll do it.”
”Bravo! my lads,” said the captain, cheerily. ”Over the side with you then, and help with the ice-saws.”
Those great ice-saws were about twenty feet long, and had four cross handles at the top, so that when let down, on the perpendicular, against the piece, four men standing above could work one saw. Frank and his two friends, with Mr Lewis, the mate, took charge of a saw, and the work went on cheerily. The men sang as they laboured, and there was as much laughing and joking as if they had been husbandmen working together in the harvest-field, instead of men working for their dear lives. By eight o'clock the harbour was complete.
By eight o'clock the ice had almost closed upon them.
And now to get the s.h.i.+p into this _portus salutis_. There was so little time; other giant bergs were close aboard of them, rising and falling on the swelling waves with a noise that was simply appalling. The captain had to give his orders through the speaking-trumpet, and even then his voice was often drowned by the grinding, shrieking din of the heaving floes. But at last they have worked her in, and now for a time at least she is safe, for she rises and falls with the ice; and, though hemmed in on all sides, has nothing to fear.
The _Grampus_ was ”beset;” and from that very hour began one of the dreariest seasons of imprisonment that ever a beleaguered s.h.i.+p's crew experienced. They were far away from aid of any kind that they knew of, the ice was terribly heavy, and, worse than all, the summer season was far advanced, and already the sun dipped very close to the northern horizon at midnight.
The storm abated; in twelve hours the ice had ceased to rise and fall, and a silence, deep as death, reigned once more over the frozen sea.
”We must do the best we can,” said brave Captain Anderson, ”to amuse ourselves and each other. G.o.d only knows when we may get clear, but we can trust in Him who rules the sea as well as the dry land.”
”Amen!” said Chisholm, in a quiet and earnest voice.
”We'll make off skins now for a week or two,” said the captain; ”that will help to pa.s.s the time.”
So it did, reader, and it also brought the birds around them in millions. These, as usual, they shot for feathers and fresh meat.
Bears in twos, and sometimes in threes, prowled round the s.h.i.+p to pick up the offal. Ugly customers they looked, and ugly customers they were.
Poor Tom Reid, the cooper's mate, sat on a bit of ice one day smoking, not far from the s.h.i.+p. A monster bear crept round a corner and clawed his heart and lungs out with one stroke of his mighty paw. The carpenter and captain were both on the ice one day, when they were suddenly confronted with the man-eater. They had no arms, and would have been instantly killed had not the danger been perceived by Fred Freeman; he fired from the deck of the _Grampus_, wounded the bear, and saved their lives. After this it was determined to hunt and kill the bears, and many good skins were thus procured. One day Fred surprised the man-eater in a corner, licking his wounded foot. The bear bellowed like a bull, and prepared to spring. Fred was too fast for him, and rolled him over at ten paces distance. Poor Fred! he did not see that this bear had a companion within hail, and that he was coming up fast and furiously and intent on revenge, not fifty yards away. Men are behind him, but they fear to fire, lest they kill Fred. Chisholm is on an adjoining floe, but the warning he shouts comes all too late; for next moment his poor friend lies helpless and bleeding in the talons of the terrible ice-king. Chisholm kneels to fire. It is a fearful risk, but it is Fred's only chance. The sound of the rifle rings out on the silent air, the bear quits his victim, springs upwards with a convulsive start, then falls dead beside the man he would have slain. It is three weeks ere Fred can crawl again.
Meanwhile the whole of the skins have been ”made off.” [The seal-skins, with blubber about three inches thick, are spread on boards on idle days in Greenland s.h.i.+ps, and the fat pared off. The skins are then rubbed in salt and stowed away in a tank; the blubber also is put in tanks by itself. This is called ”off.”] There are no more bits of flesh and fat thrown overboard, so the birds all leave them, then the bears; and, except that a wondering seal sometimes lifts its black head for a moment out of a pool of water to stare at the s.h.i.+p, there is no sign or sound of animal life on all the dreary pack. They feel more lonely now than ever, but they play games on the ice and games on board, and they read much and talk a great deal about home. This last makes them feel the time still more long and monotonous, but one day--
”Happy thought!” says Fred, ”let us get up theatricals.”
Well, this pa.s.sed the time away pleasantly enough for a whole month, but they tired at last even of theatricals; and then a dense fog rolled in from the south and the west, and enveloped the whole pack as with a dark pall. They saw no more of the sun for two weary months, but they knew he _set_ now, and that the order of day and night had been restored; but alas! they knew likewise that it would, in a few weeks more, be all one long night, and their hearts sank at the very thoughts of it.
The mist rolled away at last, but shorter and shorter grew the days and colder and colder the weather. I hesitated before I wrote that last word ”weather,” for really in that ice-pack there was no weather. Never a cloud in the blue vault of heaven, and never a breath of wind--not even as much as would suffice to raise one feathery flake of the starry snow. But the silence--it was a silence that was felt at the heart; you could have heard a whisper almost a mile away, there was nothing to break it. Nature seemed asleep, and all things seemed to fear to wake her. No wonder that poor Frank said one day, as he closed his book--