Part 6 (1/2)
”'Seek, mangled wretch, some place of wonted rest-- No more of rest, but now thy dying bed!
The sheltering rushes whistling o'er thy head, The cold earth with thy bleeding body prest.'”
”And what,” said Frank, ”can equal the pitiful pathos and simplicity of his address to the mouse whose nest in autumn has been turned up by the ploughshare?
”'Thy wee bit housie too in ruin, It's silly wa's, the winds are strewin', An' naething, now to big a new ane O' foggage green, An bleak December's winds ensuin', Both snell and keen.'”
[Big means build; snell means keen.]
”Yes, Frank, and he says in that same sweet and tender poem:
”'I'm truly sorry man's dominion, Has broken Nature's social union, An' justifies that ill-opinion Which makes thee startle At me, thy poor earth-born companion, An' fellow-mortal!'”
”Well,” replied Frank, ”I'm very much of Burns's way of thinking; I would like to be friends with all my fellow-mortals, and have reason to believe it is really man's cruelty that has broken the spell that should bind us.
”Why, away up in the north, the biggest beast in the sea is the simplest and the best-natured. I mean the whale. The birds are so tame you can almost catch them alive, and even bears will pa.s.s you by if you do not seek to molest them.”
”Tell us some bear stories, Frank.”
Frank accordingly cleared his throat.
”What I tell you, then, about Polar bears,” he said, ”you may believe.
My facts are true facts, not ordinary facts, and I gained my experience myself, and neither from books nor from imagination. But talking about books,” he continued, pulling one down from the shelf and spreading it open before him, ”here is one on natural history, and as there are pictures in it, it will be sure to please you. The book is not an old one, and is a reputed authority. Well, look at _that_. That is supposed to be a Polar bear just come out of a cave, and having a sniff round. It is more the shape of a dormouse that has lost its tail in a trap.
”Here again is the picture of a dismantled barque, apparently stranded on the top of Mount Ararat, and in the foreground a lot of very ordinary looking men with billyc.o.c.k hats and very ordinary looking axes and spades, making an ice-ca.n.a.l to the water, at the edge of which another bear or dormouse is standing up quietly to be shot.
”One more ill.u.s.tration. Glance at this! three bears close under the bows of a s.h.i.+p among the ice; one lies dead beside a spit-kid; another is sitting thinking; and a third is walking on his hind-legs towards a group of men, who are evidently poised to receive cavalry, with duck-guns and old-fas.h.i.+oned battle-axes.
”The text is quite on a keeping with the ill.u.s.trations--that is, hardly in accordance with Nature.
”We read in travellers' tales wonderful accounts of the size, strength, cunning, and extreme ferocity of the Polar bear. I used to believe all I read, even _Jack the Giant-Killer_. But nevertheless, as to ferocity and strength, there is no doubt that our Arctic friend is king of the ursine race. It took me a whole year to settle in my own mind whether this bear was actually a bold, brave beast or the reverse. From all I have seen and heard he undoubtedly possesses bravery, but it is tempered with a deal of discretion. He is not like the old Norse kings; he does not kill men for the mere sake of making a record. He fights for food and not for glory. If a man and seal were both lying asleep on the ice, I believe a hungry bear would prefer his customary diet, and leave the man in peaceful possession of his dreams. But if the man awoke while the bear was having his mouthful or two--he does not eat much of a seal--then I guess the consequences would be rather serious for one of the party. Yet I came upon a bear once behind a hummock of ice that, I am sure, had been fast asleep till I fired my rifle at something else quite close to him. He might have killed me then easily, but I a.s.sure you he did not. He emitted a sound as if he had swallowed about three yards of trombone and was trying to cough it up again. Then he ran away.
”But another day _I_ ran away. I was two miles from my s.h.i.+p and burst my gun. I wasn't going to stop and fight that bear with the b.u.t.t-end-- not likely; but he followed me nearly halfway. Our spectioneer, dear old man, saw the race from the crow's-nest, and sent men out to meet us.
He said at dinner that he had saved my life; but according to him, he saved my life more than once and in more ways than one. He must have been always saving my life, I suppose; but then I was young and headstrong. That spectioneer of ours, although he must have been nearly fifty years of age, was a kind of Donald Dinnie in strength. He fought an Arctic bear once single-handed and with no other weapon save a seal-club. The man is still alive; the bear isn't.
”The spectioneer did not force the fighting, remember. He rounded the corner of a large hummock of ice, and came upon the foe quite unexpectedly. One lucky but fearful blow pierced the upper part of the brute's neck close behind the ear, and he fell dead. A seal-club is a terrible weapon in the hands of a strong man. It is in shape somewhat like a pole-axe, only the iron or steel portion is sharp, and not blunt.
Our spectioneer was one of the best and bravest seamen ever I sailed with, and one of the most modest of men. I remember laughing once when he told me that he would as soon fight a bear with a seal-club as a bladder-nosed seal. I did not know much about this species of seal then. I believe there is some Irish blood in the brute, for at any time, whether in the water or out of it, he will as soon fight as not, and woe be to you when he c.o.c.ks his crest if you have only a club, and no rifle wherewith to defend yourself!
”Ever hear tell of the mad surgeon who fought the Polar bear? I'll tell you the story, then, as it was told to me, and I have no reason to doubt its accuracy in the main details.
”Dr C--was a young medical man, just newly pa.s.sed. He was to have been married very shortly after the capping and gowning ceremony, but had a few hasty words with his affianced, bade her an angry farewell, and took steamer to Lerwick some weeks before the arrival of the Greenland fleet at that ancient place, in the hopes of finding a s.h.i.+p that was in want of a surgeon. He was not disappointed; one of the doctors wished to go back; the voyage from Hull to Lerwick had been quite enough for him, so Dr C--took his place.
”Now Dr C--was reckless; he confessed that he cared very little what he did, or what became of him; he had loved the girl that he had meant to make his wife very dearly, and now that he had lost her he didn't mind, he said, although a whale swallowed him, and he thought he could sleep as comfortably, and far more soundly, in Davy Jones's locker than anywhere else.
”He showed he was reckless even before he left Lerwick. It was usual in those days for the youthful surgeons of the fleet to a.s.semble for the purpose of eating, drinking, and carousing at the only respectable hotel in the town, and having well primed themselves, to march in a body through the narrow streets. This used to lead to cruel fights, in which the medicos were very often worsted. But on this particular year Dr C--went in for organisation, as he called it. He armed and drilled the fleet surgeons, and in person he used to lead them out to fight, and in consequence the riots lasted often long into the night, despite the efforts of the police and military--five men and a sergeant--to quell them.
”After his s.h.i.+p sailed, Dr C--took to vinous imbibition--in plain English, he drank rum to excess. The s.h.i.+p got frozen in about a week after arrival 'in the country,' and by this time the surgeon was so ill that he was confined to bed. Literally speaking, confined to bed, for he had to be strapped to it. One day he heard the captain and first mate talking about the large number of bears that were about, and so quiet did he become after this that restraint was thought no longer necessary. It was early in the season, and the sun still set, and the night, or rather dusk, was of about two hours' duration. When a s.h.i.+p is beset in the ice the commander naturally enough is anxious in mind, and spends a good deal of his time in the crow's-nest with his eye at the gla.s.s. The commander of Dr C--'s s.h.i.+p was in the crow's-nest very early one morning, and, somewhat to his surprise, saw what he took to be a seal lying on a hummock about half a mile off. It lay very still and motionless, and was very black. It was not long before he noticed something else--an immense bear coming stalking down towards the dark object on the ice.
”So intently was he watching the movements of the bear that he did not notice the trap-door of the nest move. It was the steward that had run up to tell him that the doctor was not to be found anywhere in the s.h.i.+p.
”In a moment the truth flashed upon the captain's mind. He hailed the deck below, and in less than a minute a party of ten men, rifle-armed, were over the side and away to the surgeon's a.s.sistance.