Part 10 (1/2)
”Not redder than yerself, cap'n,” laughed Donovan, who greatly enjoyed their mystification.
”The sea is like blood!” exclaimed Wade. ”You don't suppose the day of judgment has come and caught us away up here in Hudson's Straits, do you?”
”Not quite so bad as that, I guess,” said Raed. ”I have it: it's the aurora borealis; nothing worse, nor more dangerous.”
I had expected Raed would come to it as soon as he had got his eyes open.
”A red aurora!” said the captain. ”Is that the way you explain it?”
”Not a red aurora exactly,” returned Raed, ”but an aurora s.h.i.+ning down through the thick fog. The aurora itself is miles above the fog, up in the sky and probably of the same bright yellow as usual; but the dense mist gives it this red hue.”
”I've heard that the northern lights were caused by electricity,” said Weymouth. ”Is that so?”
”It is thought to be electricity pa.s.sing through the air high up from the earth,” replied Raed. ”That's what the scientific men tell us.”
”They can tell us that, and we shall be just as wise as we were before,” said Kit. ”They can't tell us what electricity is.”
”Why!” exclaimed the captain, ”I thought electricity was”--
”Well, what?” said Kit, laughing.
”Why, the--the stuff they telegraph with,” finished the captain a little confusedly.
”Well, what's that?” persisted Kit.
”What _is it_?” repeated the captain confidently. ”Why, it is--well--Hang it! I don't know!”
We all burst out laughing: the captain himself laughed,--his case was so very nearly like everybody's who undertakes to talk about the wondrous, subtle element. By the by, his definition of it--viz., that it is ”the stuff we telegraph with”--strikes me as being about the best one I ever heard. Kit and Raed, however, have got a theory,--which they expound very gravely,--to the effect that electricity and the luminiferous ether--that thin medium through which light is propagated from the sun, and which pervades all matter--are one and the same thing; which, of course, is all very fine as a theory, and will be finer when they can give the proof of it.
After watching the aurora for some minutes longer, during which it kept waxing and waning with alternate pale-crimson and blood-red flushes, we went back to our bunks; whence we were only aroused by Palmleaf calling us to breakfast.
If there was any wind that morning it must have been from the east, when the crags of the island under which we lay would have interrupted it. Not a breath reached the deck of ”The Curlew;” and we were thus obliged to remain at our anchorage, which, in compliment to the captain, and after the custom of navigators, we named _Mazard's Bay_.
As the inlet bore no name, and was not even indicated on the charts we had with us, we felt at liberty to thus designate it, leaving to future explorers the privilege of rechristening it at their pleasure.
”We shall have a lazy morning of it,” Kit remarked, as we stood loitering about the deck.
”I propose that we let down the boat, and go ash.o.r.e on the island,”
said Wade. ”'Twould seem good to set foot on something firm once more.”
”Well, those ledges look firm enough,” replied Raed. ”See here, captain: here's a chap begging to get ash.o.r.e. Is it safe to trust him off the s.h.i.+p?”
”Hardly,” laughed Capt. Mazard. ”He might desert.”
”Then I move we all go with him,” said Kit. ”Let's take some of those muskets along too. May get a shot at those wild-geese we heard last evening.”
The boat was lowered. We boys and the captain, with Donovan and Hobbs to row us, got over the rail, and paddled to where a broad jetting ledge formed a natural quay, on which we leaped. The rock was worn smooth by the waves of centuries. To let the sailors go ash.o.r.e with us, we drew up the boat on the rock several feet, and made it fast with a line knotted into a crevice between two fragments of flinty sienite rock at the foot of the crags. We then, with considerable difficulty and mutual ”boosting,” clambered up to the top of the cliffs, thirty or forty feet above the boat, and thence made our way up to the summit of a bald peak half a mile from the sh.o.r.e, which promised a good prospect of the surrounding islands. It is hardly possible to give an idea of the desolate aspect of these ledgy islets.
There was absolutely no soil, no earth, on them. More than half the surface was bare as black sienite could be. Huge leathery lichens hung to the rocks in patches; and so tough were they, that one might pull on them with his whole strength without tearing them. In the crevices and tiny ravines between the ledges, there were vast beds of damp moss. In crossing these we went knee-deep, and once waist-deep, into it. The only plant I saw was a trailing shrublet, sometimes seen on high mountains in New England, and known to botanists as Andromeda of the heathworts. It had pretty blue-purple flowers, and was growing quite plentifully in sheltered nooks. Not a bird nor an animal was to be seen. Half an hour's climbing took us to the brown, weather-beaten summit of the peak. From this point eleven small islands were in sight, none of them more than a few miles in extent; and, at a distance of seven or eight leagues, the high mountains of the northern main, their tops white with snow, with glittering glaciers extending down the valleys,--the source of icebergs. There was a strong current of air across the crest of the peak. Sweeping down from the wintry mountains, it made us s.h.i.+ver. The sea was s.h.i.+mmering in the sun, and lay in silvery threads amid the brown isles. Below us, and almost at our feet, was the schooner,--our sole connecting link with the world of men,--her cheery pine-colored deck just visible over the sh.o.r.e cliffs. Suddenly, as we gazed, she swung off, showing her bow; and we saw the sailors jumping about the windla.s.s.
”What does that mean?” exclaimed Capt. Mazard. ”Possible they've got such a breeze as that down there? Why, it doesn't blow enough _here_ to swing the vessel round like that!”