Part 25 (2/2)
”I'll feel myself o' some kind o' use now,” he said. ”Kennel-man in ordinary to the _Arrandoon_, a free house and victuals found, I guess it ain't half a bad sitivation.”
About a week after this--the Greenland sealer having been made as good as new again--the Jan Mayen fleet sailed away from the island, and directed its course about north-and-by-east. First on the line went the n.o.ble _Arrandoon_ sailing, not steaming, for a nice beam wind was blowing; next came the _Canny Scotia_ with her tall, tapering spars; and the saucy _Highflier_, with her fore-and-aft canvas, brought up the rear.
Nathaniel Cobb was Arctic meteorologist to a private company of American scientists, but his time was pretty much his own, and he didn't mind spending a week or a fortnight of it among the old seals. He wanted a skin or two anyhow, he said, to make a warm carpet for his ”house,” and some oil to burn for fuel, but promised that everything beyond what he really wanted which happened to fall to his gun should be given to Silas.
Silas Grig was never happier in his life than he was now. Luck had indeed turned, fortune was about to favour him for once in a way. His would be a b.u.mper s.h.i.+p, full to the hatches, with a bing of skins on deck that he wouldn't be able to find room for below. And when he returned to Peterhead, flags would fly and bands would play, and his little wife and he would live happy ever after.
McBain wanted to show his young companions a little genuine sport, and at the same time do a good turn to honest Silas, by helping him to a voyage; while the former, on the other hand, were all excitement and bustle, for the _Arrandoon_ was about to be transformed into a sealer; and the idea being such a perfectly new one, was correspondingly appreciated.
The little fleet kept well together; it would not have suited them to part company, although, even on a wind, without the aid of her boilers, the _Arrandoon_ could easily have shown her consorts a pair of clean heels. The doctor himself was led away with enthusiasm, and longed to draw a bead, as Seth called it, on a bear itself. He had chosen a rifle from the box, cleaned and polished it, and called it his own.
”I've never shot a wild beast,” he explained to Rory, ”but, man, if I get the chance, I'll have a try.”
”Bravo!” cried Rory, ”and you're sure to get the chance, you know.”
The ice was loose, although the weather was clear and very frosty.
There was a heaving motion in the main pack that prevented the bergs from getting frozen together, but for all that the fleet kept well clear of it, for fear of getting beset. Patches of old seals might, it is true, have been found far in among the ice, but the risk was too great to run, so McBain kept to the outside edge, and the others followed his example.
Silas Grig was invited on board the _Arrandoon_; and proud he was when the captain told him that he could choose five-and-twenty of his best men, and superintend their preparations for going after the seals. The third mate might be one of the number, but neither Stevenson nor Mitch.e.l.l was to be allowed to go, although McBain did not object to these officers, or even the engineers, having a day's sport now and then.
It was a glorious morning--for Greenland--when Captain McBain called all hands, in order that Silas might choose the men who were to a.s.sist him in making his fortune. The sun was s.h.i.+ning as brightly as ever it does in England, and there wasn't too much wind to blow the cold through and through one. Either of the officers might have pa.s.sed for old men, if white hairs make men look old, for their hair, whiskers, and moustachios were coated with h.o.a.r-frost ice. Our heroes had just finished breakfast, all of them having had a cold sea-bath to give them a glow before they sat down, and were now walking briskly up and down the quarter-deck, talking merrily and laughing.
The _Scotia_ had her foreyard aback, and the _Arrandoon_ had also stopped her way, and yonder was Silas in his boat coming rapidly over the rippling water towards the steamer, the skipper himself standing like a gondolier and steering with an oar in true whaler fas.h.i.+on.
”Now, lads,” cried Silas, when the men of the _Arrandoon_ lay aft in obedience to orders. ”You're a fine lot, I must say; every man Jack o'
ye is better than the other; but I just want the men that have been to the country before. The men among ye that know a seal-club from a toastin'-fork, or a lowrie-tow from a bell-rope, just elevate a hand, will ye?”
[Lowrie-tow--the rope with which the men drag the skins to the s.h.i.+p's side.]
No less than fifteen gloved hands were waved aloft. Silas was delighted, and did not take long to choose the remaining ten.
”You'll go on the ice by twos, you know, men,” he continued, ”and when one o' ye tumbles into the water, why, the other'll simply pull him out.
Nothing easier.”
All these hands were to be clubsmen and draggers, while ”the guns,” as they were called, comprised the following: Ralph, Rory, Allan, Sandy the surgeon, De Vere the aeronaut, Seth trapper, and the third mate, seven in all, and warranted to give a good account of the seals, and keep the men steadily on drag if the sport was anything like good.
Having made these preliminary arrangements, the men were dismissed, and Silas spent the rest of the day forward with old Ap the carpenter and the sail-maker. And very busy the whole four of them were, too, for three dozen daggers or seal-knives had to be fitted with sheaths of leather, and belts to go round the men's waists, and three dozen lowrie-tows, with the same number of seal-clubs, had to be got ready.
I saw the other day an engraving of a sealing scene in Greenland, evidently done by an artist who had never been in the Arctic regions in his life, and who had therefore trusted to his imagination, which had led him far from the truth. In this picture there is a s.h.i.+p under canvas: error Number 1, for sealers always clue or brail up before the men go over the side. The ice is tall and pinnacled: error Number 2, for the ice the old seals lie on is either flat or hummocky. The men on the ice are leaping madly from berg to berg and clubbing _old_ seals: error Number 3, for unless old seals get positively frozen out of the water by the pieces becoming fast together, they will not wait to be clubbed. You may catch a weasel asleep, but never an old seal. Lastly, in this picture, the men are wielding clubs that have evidently been borrowed from some gymnasium: this const.i.tutes error Number 4, for seal-clubs are nothing like these. They are more like an ancient battle-axe; the shaft is about four or five feet long and made of strong, tough wood, while through the top of this terrible weapon is run the part that does the execution--a square piece of iron or steel-- sharpened at one end, hammer-like at the other, and nearly a foot long.
With this instrument a strong man has been known to lay a Greenland bear dead with one blow. No one of course would dare to attack a bear armed with a club alone, but instances have occurred where the bear has been the aggressor, and where the man had to defend himself as best he could.
One word parenthetically about the great Polar or ice bear. Until I had first seen the carca.s.s of one lying flensed on the ice, I could not have believed that any wild beast could attain such gigantic proportions.
The footprints of this monster were as large as an ordinary pair of kitchen bellows. The pastern, or ankle, seemed as wide as the paw, and as near as I could guess about thirty inches round; the forearms and hind-legs were of tremendous strength; so too were the shoulders and loin. An animal like this with one stroke can slay the largest seal in Greenland, and could serve the biggest lion that ever roared in an African jungle precisely the same. As to the voice, it is hardly so fearful as the lion's, but heard, as I heard it one night on the pack, within two yards of me, it is sufficiently appalling, to say the least of it. It is a sort of half-cough, half roar. As trapper Seth described it after his adventure at the cave in Jan Mayen, when little Freezing Powders so nearly lost the number of his mess:
”The roar of a healthy Greenland bear, when the owner of it is so close ye could kick him, is a kind o' confusin'; it shakes your innards considerable, and makes ye think the critter has swallowed the thick end of a thunderstorm and is tryin' to work it up again.”
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