The Cruise of the Snowbird: A Story of Arctic Adventure
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to their guns, and they met with many adventures.
It is doubtful whether there is any animal in the world, that, forstrength and ferocity combined can be compared, to the polar bear, theking of the sea of ice. I do not say that he is the bravest animal everI have met, but he is nevertheless daring enough in all conscience.Daring and cunning too. A bear will attack one man, and even come outof his way a long distance to do so, but I have never known an instanceof a single bear attacking a party of even two, unless he were chased,and had to stand at bay.
Hitherto our heroes had not met, nor ever seen, this gigantic monster.But the time came.
Allan and Rory were one morning very early astir, for in the company oftrapper Seth they were to make a long journey in pursuit of game, thegame in question being a smaller kind of seal, to be found in abundancesome distance along the coast to the east. So sledges were got out andharnessed, a long time before the stars paled before the light of theshort Arctic winter day. The deer had been well fed, and wereconsequently in fine form; they tossed their tall antlers in the air,and seemed to spurn the very ground on which they trod.
It was a glorious morning for a sledge-drive; the snow was hard, andjust sufficiently packed to make an easy path. They skirted a greatforest that at times grew almost close to the edge of the sea, and longbefore the sun gleamed up from the north-east, to sink again in thenorth-west in little over an hour, they had put twenty goodly milesbetween them and the _Snowbird_.
They were now at the scene of action--their shooting-ground--and, muchto their joy, they found the creatures they had come so far to seek.The seals had come up out of the water to bask in the sun, and thereforelay close, so that in little over an hour they had possessed themselvesof as many skins as they could conveniently carry, and were on the eveof returning to the wood, where they had tied up their deer and lefttheir sledges.
"I wonder," said Rory, "what is at the other side of that far-off pointof land yonder, and what we would see if we rounded it."
"What a fellow you are for wondering, Rory!" said Allan. "Suppose now,instead of wondering, we go and have a look?"
"Agreed," said Rory; and off they set, Seth preferring to stay behindand get the skins packed.
It was a long road and a rough one; the snow was deeper than they couldhave believed, but they had donned their snow-shoes, and so they reachedthe point at last, just as the setting sun was tipping the far-off hillswith gold.
The scene beyond the point was indeed a strange one; as far as the eyecould reach it was a sea of ice, but ice entirely different from thesmooth unbroken snow-clad plain that lay around the _Snowbird_. Forhere the ice, exposed to the whole force of the heaving billows, hadbeen broken up into a chaos of pieces of every conceivable size andshape. Nor was this ice quite untenanted. On the contrary, Allan andRory had arrived in time to be witnesses of a very busy scene indeed,and one that they would be unlikely ever to forget. Half-a-dozenenormous bears were feasting on the body of an immense whale, not fiftyyards from where Rory and Allan now stood.
"Down, Rory!" cried Allan, throwing himself on his face; "here is achance for a bag, the like of which we never even dreamt of."
It was evident that the bears had not become aware of their presence,either by sight, or scent, or sound; they kept on with their ghastlyfeast.
Not quietly, though, but with much snarling and growling.
"Just hear them," whispered Rory. "Wouldn't you think they'd be contentwith a whole whale? But, big and all as they are, it will be many a daybefore they finish their dinner."
"They never will finish it," said Allan, "unless I have lost the art ofholding my rifle straight. Are you ready, Rory? Well, you take thenearest Mr Bruin; aim straight for the skull. I mean to give thatcentre gourmand a pill to aid his digestion."
They both fired at once, and with this result--the centre bear spranginto the air, then fell dead on the snow; the near bear was onlywounded, he sprang on one of his fellows, and a most desperate combatensued. Another volley from behind the rock put a different complexionon the matter, and one more bear dropped never to rise.
"Hand me a cartridge," said Rory, "I've just fired my last."
"In that case," cried Allan, in some alarm, "let us be off, for I haveonly two more cartridges; and look you, we have irritated thesemonsters, they are making directly for us."
This was true. A polar bear is at no time an animal of a very sweettemper, but only just interrupt him at his dinner, and he will haverevenge if he possibly can.
"Shall we fire again?" said Rory.
"No, Rory, no. Come on quick, boy, there isn't a moment to lose."
Even as he spoke the foremost bear had gained the shore, and as soon ashe spied our heroes he uttered a growl of rage that seemed to awakenevery echo in the rocks, and with head down he came ferociously andquickly on to the attack.
It was to be a race for life, that was evident from the first. On levelground I think the advantage would have been all on the side of the men,but here on the snow, and encumbered with their snow-shoes, the oddswere all on the side of the pursuers. Before they had run a hundredyards this was evident. The bears were gaining, and there was fully amile to be covered.
"Come on quicker if you can," said Allan, who was the better runner.
"Couldn't we stop and drop the foremost?" said Rory.
"No, no; that would be madness. The others would have all the more timeto come up."
Presently Allan had recourse to a ruse which he had read of, but neverthought he would have to put in practice in order to save his life. Hetook off his jacket and threw it upon the snow. The bears stopped tosniff at it, and the temptation was now strong to fire, but he resistedit. They had only two cartridges between them and death, so to speak,and they did well to reserve them.
When old Seth had quietly stowed away the skins, he sat down to resthimself on the edge of one of the sledges, and so, dreaming and musing,a whole half-hour passed away. Then he began to get uneasy at thenon-appearance of the boys.
"And it's getting late, too," he said, as he shouldered his rifle."Seth will even go and seek them. Why," he added, after he had gonesome distance, "if yonder isn't both on 'em coming runnin'. And what isthat behind them? Why, may I be skivered if it ain't b'ars! Hurrah!Seth to the rescue!"
And, so saying, the old trapper increased his walk to a run, and thedistance between him and the boys was rapidly lessened.
And dire need too, for both Allan and Rory were well-nigh exhausted, andthe foremost bear was barely forty yards behind them.
But Allan's time had come for decisive action. He threw himself on hisface, the better to make sure of his aim, and almost immediately afterthe foremost bear came tumbling down. And now Seth came up, and anotherBruin speedily followed his companion into the land of darkness. Theothers escaped into the forest.
It had been a very narrow escape, but McBain told Allan that veryevening that he was not sorry for it, as the adventure would surelyteach him caution.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE.
THE DEAD LEVIATHAN--THE MATE OF THE "TREFOIL" MAKES A PROPOSAL--A RICHHARVEST--CHRISTMAS CHEER--SOMETHING LIKE A DINNER.
The mate of the _Trefoil_ was a quiet and sober-minded man, as oldtravellers in the Arctic regions are sometimes wont to be, but whenAllan McGregor told him the story of the bears and the dead whalestranded in the frozen bay, he evinced a considerable deal of genuineexcitement. He sought out the captain.
"I would fain see the fish, captain."
[Greenland sailors always call a whale a "fish," although, as must bewell-known, it is a gigantic mammal.]
"Well, my dear sir," said McBain, "that is a desire that can very easilybe gratified. We can start for the bay to-morrow early."
"I shall be so pleased," said the mate.
This expedition consisted of three guns--McBain himself, Allan, and themate of the _Trefoil_.
There were still one or two bears prowling around the spot where thedead leviathan lay, but t
hey seemed to scent danger from afar, and madeoff as soon as the expedition hove in sight. Probably they rememberedthe events of yesterday, and cared not to renew so unequal a combat.
The mate was evidently a man of business, for no sooner had they got onto the ice alongside the whale, than he proceeded to open a small parcelhe carried, and to extract therefrom a pair of spiked sandals.
"I'm going on board of her," he said to McBain, with a quiet smile.
Next moment, pole in hand, he was walking about on top of the deadleviathan, probing here and probing there with as much coolness asthough he had been a fanner taking stock in a patch of potatoes.
He smiled as he jumped on shore again.
"That is what doctors would call a post-mortem examination," saidMcBain, smiling too. "Now, sir, can you tell