Wild Adventures round the Pole
Page 39
example--theArctic gulls, as a rule, do not follow a ship for sake of the bits ofbread and fat that may be thrown overboard. Some of them do, I know,but I look upon these as merely the lazaroni, the beggars of theirtribe; your healthy, youthful, aristocratic malley prefers something heconsiders better. Give him blubber to eat, or the flesh of a new slainseal, and he will follow you far enough. Now a ship may be lyingbecalmed off this pack, with no seals in sight, and doing nothing; if soshe will be deserted by these birds. Not from the crow's-nest, thoughaided by the most powerful telescope, will you be able to descry asingle gull; but no sooner is a sealskin or two hauled on deck to becleared of their fat, than notice seems to be flashed to the far-offgulls, and in a few minutes they are winging around you, making thewelkin ring with their wild, delighted screams. They alight in thewater around a morsel of meat in such bunches, that a table-cloth wouldcover two dozen of them.
Having had enough--and that "enough" means something enormous--they gooff for a "fly," just as tumbling pigeons do. You may see them inhundreds high in air, sailing round and round, enjoying themselvesapparently to the very utmost, and shrieking with joy. Now is the timefor the skua to attack them. A bold, black, hawklike rascal is thisskua, a robber and a thief. He never comes within gunshot of a ship.He is as wild and untamable as the north wind itself; yet, no soonerhave the malleys commenced their post-prandial gambols than he is in themidst of them. He does not want to kill them; only some one or moremust disgorge their food. On this the skua lives. No wonder thatGreenland sailors call him the unclean bird.
The malley-gull floats on the waves as lightly and gently as a child'stoy air-ball would. His usual diet is fish, except in sealing times;and of the fish he catches the marauding skua never fails to get hisshare. It is for the sake of the feathers sailors shoot these birds onthe ice, for they are nearly as well feathered as an eider duck.
Getting tired of shooting seals in the water, Rory and Allan one day,leaving the others on the banks of the great ice-hole, determined tomake a bag of feathers. And here is how they bagged their game.
Armed with fowling-pieces, they retired to some distance from the waterparty and lay down behind a hummock of ice. Here they might have lainuntil this day without a bird looking twice in their direction had theynot provided themselves with a lure. This lure was simply a pair of thewings of a gull, which one waved above his head, while the otherprepared to fire right and left. And not a minute would these wings bewaved aloft ere the gulls, with that strange curiosity inherent in allwild creatures, would begin to circle around, coming nearer and nearer,tack and half-tack, until they were within reach of the guns, when--downthey came. But the untimely end of one brace nor twenty did not preventtheir companions from trying to solve the mystery of the waving wings.
Luncheon was on the table, and our friends were seated around it, alllooking happy and hungry. Rory would have liked to have asked SilasGrig right straight away about the expedition against the sharks but forone thing--he didn't like to appear too inquisitive; and, for another,he was not quite sure even now that it was not one of Ralph's prettyjokes. But when everybody had been served, when weather and futureprospects, the state of the thermometer and height of the barometer, hadbeen discussed, Rory found he could not contain himself any longer.
"What are you going to be doing after lunch?" he asked Silas, pointedly.
"Aha, boy Rory!" was the reply; "we'll have such sport as you never sawthe likes o' before!"
Rory now began to see there really was no joke about the matter; andRalph, who was sitting next to him, pinched him for his doubt andmisbelief. The two young men could read each other's thoughts likebooks.
"Do you mean to say you are going to catch sharks in earnest, you know?"asked Rory.
"Well," said Silas, with a bit of a laugh, "I'm going to have as good atry at it as ever I had. And as for catching 'em in earnest, I'mthinking it won't be fun--for the sharks!"
"It is the _Scymnus borealis_, isn't it?" said Dr Sandy McFlail,"belongin', if my memory serves me, to the natural family _Squalidae_--apowerful brute, and a vera dangerous, too."
"You may call him the _Aurora borealis_ if you like, doctor," saidSilas; "and as for his family connections I know nought, but I daresayhe comes from a jolly bad stock."
"Natural history books," said Allan, "don't speak of their being so verynumerous."
"Natural history books!" reiterated Silas, with some warmth of disdain."What do they know? what can they teach a man? Write a complete historyof all the creatures that move about on God's fair earth, that fly inHis air or swim in His sea, and you'd fill Saint Paul's with books fromtop to bottom--from the mighty cellars beneath to the golden crossitself. No, take my advice, boy Rory; if you want to study nature, putlittle faith in books. The classification is handy, say you? Yes,doctor; and I've seen a stripling fresh from college look as proud as atwo-year-old peacock because he could spin you off the Greek names of afew specimens in the British Museum, though he couldn't have told youthe ways and habits of any one of them to save him from having his leavestopped. There is only one way, gentlemen, to study natural history;you must go to the great book of Nature itself--ay, and be content, andthankful, too, if, during even a long lifetime, you are able to learnthe contents of even a single page of it."
Rory, and the doctor, too, looked at Silas with a kind of new-bornadmiration; there was more in this man, with his weather-beaten,flower-pot-coloured face, than they had had any idea of.
"If I had time, gentlemen," Silas added, "I could tell you some queerstories about sharks. `I reckon,' as poor old Cobb used to say, thatsome o' them would raise your hair a bit, too!"
"And what kind of a monster is this Greenland shark?" asked Allan.
"No more a monster," said Silas, "than I am. God made us both, and wehave each some end to fulfil in life. But if you want me to tell yousomething about him, I'll confess to you I love the animal about as muchas I do an alligator. He comes prowling around the icebergs when we aresealing to see what he can pick up in the shape of a dead or woundedseal, a chunk o' blubber, or a man's leg. He is neither dainty norparticular, he has the appetite of a healthy ostrich, and about as muchconscience as a coal-carter's horse. He is as wary as a five-seasonfox, and when he pays your ship a visit when out at sea, he looks ashumble and unsophisticated as a bull trout. He'll take whatever youlike to throw him, though--anything, in fact, from a cow's-heel to thecabin boy--and he'll swallow a red-hot brick rather than go away with anempty stomach. But when he comes around the ice at old-sealing time hedoesn't come alone, he brings his father and mother with him, and hisuncles and aunts, and apparently all his natural family, as the doctorcalls it. And fine fun they have, though they don't agree particularlywell even _en famille_. I've seen five of them on to one seal crang,and there was little interchange of courtesies, I can tell you. He'snot a brave fish, the Greenland shark, big and all as he is. If youfall into the water among a score of them your best plan is to keep cooland kick. Yes, gentlemen, by keeping cool and kicking plenty I've knownmore than one man escape without a bite. The getting out is the worst,though, for as long as you splash they keep at a distance and look on;they don't quite know what to make of you; but as soon as you get a holdof the end of the rope, and are being drawn out, look sharp, that's all,or it will be `Snap!' and you will be minus one leg before you can wink,and thankful you may be it isn't two. A mighty tough skin has theGreenland shark," continued Silas; "I've played upon the back of one forover half an hour with a Colt's revolver, and it just seemed to ticklehim--nothing more. I don't think sharks have much natural affection,and they are no respecters of persons. I do believe they would just assoon dine off little Freezing Powders here as they would off a leg ofMcBain."
"Oh, oh, Massa Silas!" cried Freezing Powders, "don't talk like dat; youmakes my flesh all creep like nuffin' at all!"
"They are slow in their movements, aren't they?" said the doctor.
"Ay!" said Silas, "when they get eve
rything their own way; but they arefierce, revengeful, and terrible in their wrath. An angry shark willbite a bit out of your boat, collar an oar, or do anything to spite you,though it generally ends in his having his own head split in the longrun."
[Silas Grig's description of the Greenland shark is a pretty correctone, so far as my own experience goes.--G.S.]
"The men are all ready, sir," said Stevenson, entering the cabin at thatmoment, "to go over the side, sir."
"Thank you," said the captain; "send them on to the ice, then, for ageneral skylark till