Part 26 (1/2)
An elephant--a tusker--is no joke when he loses his temper and comes after you, nor is a lion or tiger when he thinks he can do you a mischief, but I would rather face either of them twice over than I would an ice bear with his back up, if I myself were unarmed. I was very young, by the way, when I found myself confronted with my first Greenland bear, but I well remember both what my thoughts were at the time, and what were my feelings. The truth is, I had made the captain promise he would give me a chance to go and fight one of these terrible giants of the ice. He did so in good time, and I confess that as the boat neared the pack--I being in the bows--I suddenly discovered that I was not half so brave as I had previously imagined. The bear did not run away, as I fear I had almost wished that he would. He simply waited, looking at us somewhat inquiringly; and when I landed, all alone, mind you, he came along to meet me, and inquire what I wanted, and I hated him while I envied him for his coolness. He seemed to say, ”Why, you're only a boy; just wait till I get alongside you, and I'll show you how I treat boys. I'll turn you inside out.” I had to wait.
Wild horses couldn't have tom me from the spot, where I had dropped on one knee. Oh! I can a.s.sure you, I would have liked, well enough, to run away, but with all the s.h.i.+p's crew looking at me--? No; death rather than live a coward. On came Bruin, much to my disgust; I would have felt as brave as a lion had he only shown me his heels. Then these questions chased each other through my brain: ”How near will I let the beggar come before I fire? Shall I hit him on the head, or shoot him in the chest? and, What shall I do if the rifle misses fire?”
Bruin still advanced at a shambling trot. Then I brought my rifle to the shoulder and took aim, glancing along the glimmering barrel till I could only see the _vise_ at the end, and immediately beyond that Bruin's yellow breast. Bang, bang! I dare say it really was myself who pulled those two triggers of my double-barrelled rifle, but at the time I felt as if I had nothing at all to do with it. Then there was a shout from the boat, and a shout from the s.h.i.+p. Bruin was dead, and I was the hero; but somehow I did not feel that I deserved the praise which I received. Yet, after all, I daresay I only felt in this encounter as most boys would have felt. Doing anything dangerous is always nasty at first, but when one gains confidence in himself, then is the time one knows--
”That strange joy that warriors feel In foemen worthy of their steel.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN.
”SILAS GRIG, HIS YARN”--THE WHITE WHALE--AFLOAT ON AN ICEBERG--A DREARY JOURNEY--BEAR ADVENTURES--”THE SEALS! THE SEALS!”
There was only one subject in the whole world that Silas Grig was thoroughly conversant with, and that was the manners and customs of his friends the seals. Had you started talking upon either politics or science, or the state of Europe or Ireland, Silas would have become silent at once. He would have retired within himself; his soul, so to speak, would have gone indoors, and not come out again until you had done. Such was Silas; and he confessed frankly that he had never sung a song nor made a speech in his lifetime. He was a perfect enthusiast while talking about the natural family _Phocidae_. No naturalist in the world knew half so much about them as Silas. On the evening of the day in which he had chosen his men from the crew of the _Arrandoon_, he was p.r.o.nounced by both Ralph and Rory to be in fine form. He was full of anecdote, and even tales of adventure, so our heroes allowed him to talk, and indeed encouraged him to do so.
”What!” he cried, his honest, fear-nothing face lighting up with smiles as he eyed Rory across the table after dinner. ”Spin you a yarn, d'ye say? ah! boy, and you'll excuse me calling ye a boy. Silas never could tell a story, and I don't suppose he ever had an adventure as signified much to you in his life.”
”Never mind,” insisted Rory, ”you tell us something, and I'll play you that old tune you so dearly love.”
”Ah! but,” said Silas, ”if my matie were only here; now you wouldn't think, gentlemen,”--here he glanced round the table as seriously as if contradiction were most unlikely--”you wouldn't think that a fellow like that, with such an ugly chunk of a head, had any sentiment; but he has, though, and he owns the prettiest wife and the smartest family in all Peterhead.”
”Look here,” cried Rory, ”be quiet about your matie. Sure this is what we're waiting for.”
He exhibited the doctor's slate as he spoke, and on the back thereof, behold! in large letters, the words,--
”Silas Grig, His Yarn.”
Silas laughed till his sides ached, his eyes watered, the chair creaked, and the rafters rang. It was a pleasant sight to see. After this he lit up a huge meerschaum pipe, ”hoping there was no offence,” cleared his throat, turning his face upwards at the pendent compa.s.s, as if seeking help there. Then he began,--
”Of the earlier days of Silas Grig little need be said. I daresay he was no better and no worse than other boys. He nearly plagued the life out of his grandmother, and drove three maiden aunts to the verge of distraction, and made any amount of work for the tailor and the shoemaker; and when they couldn't stand him any longer at home they sent him to school, reminding the teacher ere they left him there, that to spare the rod was to spoil the child. The teacher didn't forget that; he whipped me three times a day, drilled me through the English grammar and Grey's arithmetic, then flogged me into Caesar; and when I translated the pa.s.sage, 'Caesar triduas vias fecit' [Caesar made three days' journey.] into 'Caesar made three roads,' the dominie gave me such a dressing that I followed Caesar's example--I made three days' journey due north, and never returned to my maiden aunts, nor the dominie either.
”I found myself now in the heart of what I then took to be a big town, for I wasn't very big myself, you know. It was only Peterhead, after all. I marched boldly down to the docks, and on board a great raking-masted Greenlandman.
”'What use would you be?' inquired the skipper when I told him what I wanted. 'Bless me!' he added, 'you ain't any size at all; the bears would eat you up.'
”'I'll have him,' said the doctor, 'if you'll let me, captain. He can be my lob-lolly-boy and body-guard.'
”And so, gentlemen, from that day to this I've been a sailor o' the northern seas; and there isn't much to be seen in these regions that old Silas hasn't come across, from Baffin's Bay to Kamschatka, from lonely Spitzbergen in the north to Iceland in the south.”
”And so you've been in Spitzbergen, have you?” said McBain.
”Why, bless you, yes,” replied Silas. ”It was there I was in at the death of the great white whale, and a sad day it was for us, I can tell you. He was white with age. [Very old whales are sometimes found in the far northern seas covered with a kind of parasite, which gives them a white or light-grey appearance.] I should think he couldn't have been much under a hundred years old, and just as sly and wary as a hundred and forty foxes all rolled in to one. Many and many a boat had tried to catch him, but he had a way of diving and doubling to avoid the harpoons that some believed was rather more than natural; then when you thought he was miles and miles away, pop! up he would come among the very midst of the boats, and a funny thing it would be if he didn't knock one o'
them to smithereens with that tail o' his. We killed him though. Our skipper himself speared him, but it was hours after that before he died.
And before he died terrible was the revenge he took on his destroyers.
Gentlemen, Silas Grig has no language in his vocabulary to describe the vicious wrath of that sea-demon. I think I see him now as he rose to the surface, blowing blood and spray, snorting with fury, with fire seeming to flash out of his little evil eyes. We in the boats thought our last hour had come, as he ploughed down through us. But our hearts stood still with fear and dread when he dashed past us and made for the s.h.i.+p itself. Onward with lightning speed went the brute, leaving a wake astern such as a man-o'-war might have left.
”Our craft--a small brig--was lying with her foreyard aback. She looked as if sleeping on the gently rippling water. No one spoke in the boats, every eye was fixed on our s.h.i.+p--our home, and on the fearful monster advancing to attack her. We could see that the people left on the brig knew the whole extent of their danger, for they seemed all on deck.
There were wild shouts, and guns were fired, but nothing availed to avert the catastrophe. Then, oh! the sad, despairing cry that rose to heaven from that doomed s.h.i.+p! It seems to ring in my ears whenever I think of it. The whale struck her right amids.h.i.+ps, and she went over and down at once. No soul was saved; and when we rode up to the spot, there was nothing to be seen, and nothing to be heard, save the body of the great white whale, dead, on his side, with the waves lap-lapping against it as it slowly rose and fell.
”For six long, cold, weary days we lived in the open boats, feeding on the flesh of the seals we happened to kill, and quenching our thirst with the snow we gathered from the ice. When we had almost despaired of being saved, for we were far to the nor'ard and east of the usual fis.h.i.+ng-grounds, a Norwegian walrus-hunter picked us up, and landed us at last, in midwinter, on a dreary sh.o.r.e in Lapland. But, gentlemen, that is nothing to what we, the survivors of the ill-fated _Jonathan Grey_, suffered some years afterwards. The s.h.i.+p got 'in the nips'
coming out o' the pack. We were crushed just as you might crash an egg-sh.e.l.l between your fingers. Thirty of us embarked upon the very iceberg that had caused our ruin, with two casks of biscuit, and hardly clothes enough to cover us. Then it came on to blow, and, huddled together in the centre of the berg, we were blown out to sea, trying in vain to keep each other warm, and defend ourselves from the cruel cold seas that dashed over us, heavier than lead, more remorseless than the grave. Fifteen days were we on the berg, and every day some one dropped off, ay, and the living seemed to envy the quiet, calm sleep of the dead. A sail in sight at last; and how many of us, think you, were alive to see it? Three I only three! It was a year after this before I was fit to brave the Arctic seas again, and meanwhile I had met my Peggy--my little wife that is. Some difference, you will allow, gentlemen, between Silas Grig afloat on a solitary iceberg in a troubled northern sea, and Silas strolling on the top of a breezy cliff in the bright moonlight of midsummer, with Peggy on his arm, and just as happy as the sea-birds.