Wild Adventures round the Pole
Page 34
pieces of bay ice about a foot thick, which hasbeen broken up between two bergs, and finally thrown up out of the wateraltogether. They form quite a characteristic feature of a NorthGreenland icescape.] Why, to our own particular heroes it seemedscarcely an hour since they had left their ship, so great is theexcitement of seal-stalking. But Ralph and Rory and Allan had done sowell, and had managed to lay so many splendid seals dead on every pieceof ice, that they earned high encomiums from the mate of the _CannyScotia_; and even the doctor hadn't shot amiss, and proud was he to betold so.
"But, my dear sirs," said Sandy, "I'd like to know why a good surgeonshouldn't be a good sportsman. Don't you know that the great Listonhimself was sometimes summoned to an operation at the hospital, just ashe was mounting his horse to ride off to the hunt, arrayed in scarletand cords?"
"And what did he do?" asked Rory.
"Pass the pie," said Ralph.
"Why," continued the doctor, enthusiastically, "doffed his scarlet coatand donned an old gown, whipped off a leg in one minute ten and a halfseconds, and was in the saddle again five minutes after that."
"Brayvo!" cried Captain Cobb, "doctor, you're a brick, and if ever youcome out to New Jersey, come and see Cobb, and I guess he'll give you agood time of it."
"Ray," said Rory.
"Well, Row," said Ray.
"Your face and hands are begrimed with powder, and there is a kind ofwolfish look about you that is worth studying. You look like afrozen-out blacksmith who hasn't a penny to buy a bit of peas-pudding ora morsel of soap."
"I'm hungry, anyhow," said Ray. "How good of McBain to send such ajolly breakfast! But I say, Row, d'ye remember the proverb aboutClaudius? Well, don't you call my face and hands black till you'vewashed your own. You look like a chimney-sweep who has been out of workfor a week, and got no food since the day before yesterday."
"Well, well," says Row, "but 'deed in troth, my dear big boy, nobody canwonder at your being successful as a seal-stalker, for what with thecolour of your face, and the urgency, so to speak, of the two eyes ofyou, and that big fur cap, why the seals take you for one o' themselves,a big bladder-nose."
"Pass the ham," said Ray; "Allan, some more coffee, I begin to feel likea giant refreshed."
"I do declare upon mine honour," said De Vere, "dat dis is de mostglorious pignig [picnic] I ever have de pleasure to attend. But justyou look at mine friend Seth, how funnily he do dress."
"It may be a funny way," said Allan, "but it is a most effectual one;dear old trapper Seth has killed more seals this morning than any two ofus."
Seth was dressed from top to toe in young seals' skins, the hairoutwards, with the exception of the cap, which was of darker fur, and ablack patch on his back. They were not loose garments, they were almostas tight as a harlequin's; but when Seth drew his fur cap over his faceand threw himself on the ice, and began wriggling along, his resemblanceto a saddle-seal was so preposterous that everybody burst into a heartylaugh.
"That's the way I gets so near them," said Seth, standing once moreerect.
"Look, look!" cried Rory, and every eye was turned in the direction inwhich he pointed; and there, in a pool of dark water not twenty yardsaway, a dozen beautiful heads, with round, wondering eyes, had popped upto gaze at them.
It was a lovely sight, and never a rifle was lifted to shoot. Presentlythey disappeared, but on the mate of the _Scotia_ giving vent to a loudwhistle, up came the heads again, and there they remained as long as themate whistled, for of all wild creatures in the world that I have evercome across, the Greenland seal is the most inquisitive; and no doubtthe experience of some of my old-boy readers who have been to thecountry is the same as my own.
Onwards, steadily onwards, all that day went our sportsmen; they did noteven assemble again for another meal, and at five of the clock theyfound themselves fully four miles from the place where the ships lay.The field of seals which they had attacked was some ten miles square,and although they had worked their way into it for miles, neverthelesswhen the flags were hoisted to recall them, at two bells in the firstdog-watch, the field of seals still remained about ten miles square.This may seem strange, but is thus accounted for. Out of say twentyseals on each berg, fifteen at least would escape, and these swam awayunder the pack, and again took the ice on the far-off edge of the fieldof seals.
It being somewhat too far to drag the skins to the ship, bings had beenmade on the ice during the latter part of the day, so that no dead sealsshould be left unflensed upon the ice. When they wended their wayhomewards at the end of this glorious day's shooting a broom was stuckbesom-side up, on each bing, with the name of the ship on the handles.This is done with the view of preventing other ships from appropriatingthe skins. This is the custom of the country--one of the unwritten lawsof the sea of ice.
While the gunners and their merry men were yet a long way off from theships, there came a hail from the crow's-nest of the _Arrandoon_, which,by the way, McBain had hardly left all the time. Peter had brought himup coffee and food, and he had danced in the interval to keep himselfwarm.
"On deck there?"
"Ay, ay, sir," roared Peter, looking up.
"Is dinner all laid?"
"Ay, sir, and the cook is waiting."
"Well, on with the kilt, Peter, if you're not afraid of getting yourhocks frozen, get the bagpipes, and go and meet the hunters."
Down below dived Peter, and he was up again in what sailors call "abrace of shakes," arrayed in full Highland costume, with the bagpipesover his arm. No wonder the cockatoo cried,--
"De-ah me?" when he saw Peter, and added, "Such a to-do! such a to-do!such a to-do!"
Now the bears had been rather numerous on the pack that day, just as thesharks were in the water. Doubtless the sharks found many a poorwounded seal to close their vengeful jaws upon, for they are either toocowardly or not swift enough to catch a healthy phoca; but the bears hadbehaved themselves unusually well. They had had plenty to eat, at allevents, and seemed to know that the men at work on the ice were layingup a store of provisions for them that would last them all the summer,so they had made no attempt to attack them. But on their way back tothe ship the doctor, who was striding on a little way in advance of therest, startled a huge monster who was sunning himself behind a hummock.It would be difficult to say whether the bear or the doctor was the morestartled; at all events the latter fired and missed, and the former madeoff, running in the direction of the ships. But he hadn't gone abovehalf a mile when who should Bruin meet but Peter, coming swinging alongwith his bagpipes under his arm. Never a gun had Peter, and never aclub--only the pipes. As soon as they saw each other they both stoppedshort.
"I do declare," Bruin seemed to say to himself, "here is a man orsomething all alone. But what a strange dress! I never saw anybodydressed like that before. Never mind, he looks sweet and nice; I'llhave a bit."
"I do declare," said Peter to himself, "if that isn't a big lump of abear coming along, and I haven't even a stone to throw at him. Whatevershall I do at all, at all? Och! and och! this is the end of me now, atlast. Sure enough it is marching to my own funeral I've been all thetime, instead of going to meet the sportsmen. Oh! Peter, Peter! you'llnever see your old mother in this world again, nor Scotland either.Yonder big bear is licking his chops to devour you. Yonder is the bighairy sarcophagus that'll soon contain your mangled remains. Who wouldhave thought that Peter of Arrandoon would have lived to play his owncoronach?" [Coronach--a funeral hymn or wail for the departed.]
Hardly knowing what he did, poor Peter shouldered his pipes, and beganto play a dreary, droning, yelling, squealing lament.
At the same moment Bruin commenced to perform some of the queerestantics ever a bear tried before. He stretched first one leg, thenanother, and he stretched his neck and described circles in the air withhis nose, keeping time with the music. Then he sat up entirely on oneend.
"Oh!" he seemed to say, "flesh and blood couldn't stand that; I must,yes, I must give vent to
a Ho--o--o--o--o--
"And likewise to a Hoo--oo--oo--oo--oo!!"
Reader, the voice of an asthmatical steam-engine, heard at midnight asit enters a tunnel, is a melancholy sound, so is the Welsh hooter, andthe fog-horn of a Newcastle coal brig; but all combined, and soundingtogether, would be but a feeble imitation of the agonising notes of thatgreat white bear as he sat on his haunches listening to Peter's pipes.Peter himself saw the effect his music had produced, and, like the"towsy tike" in _Tam o' Shanter_,--
"He hotched and blew wi' might and main."
And, as if Peter had been a great magician,