had brought them through somany dangers? I do not think there was.
After service preparations for dinner were commenced. It was to be abanquet. There was to be no sitting below the salt at this meal; allshould be welcome, all should be equal. I am afraid my powers ofdescription would utterly fail me if I attempted to give the reader anidea of the decorations of the new hall. Almost every lamp in the_Snowbird_ was pressed into the service. The hall was a galaxy of lightthen, it was a galaxy of evergreens too, and everywhere on the wallswere hung trophies of the chase, and the part of the room in which thetable stood was bedded with skins. But how Peter, the steward, managedto get the tablecloth up to such a pitch of snowy whiteness, or how hesucceeded in getting the crystal to sparkle and the silver to shine inthe marvellous manner they did, is more than I can tell you. And if youasked me to describe the viands, or the glorious juiciness of the giantjoints, or the supreme immensity of the lofty pudding, I should simplybeg to be excused. Why that pudding took two men to carry it in and toplace it on the table, and when it was there it quite hid the smilingface of Captain McBain, whose duty it was to confront it. If you hadbeen sitting at the other end of the table you couldn't have seen him.Ah! but McBain was quite equal to the occasion, and I can assure youthat the hearty way he attacked that pudding soon brought him into viewagain.
Well, everybody seemed, and I'm sure _felt_, as happy as happy could be.Old man Magnus looked twenty years younger, old Ap's face was wreathedin smiles, and Seth looked as bright as the silver. I can't say more.Rory was in fine form, his merry sallies kept the table in roars, hisdroll sayings were side-splitting; and Ralph and Allan kept him at it,you may be sure. Yes, that was something like a dinner. And after themore serious part of the business was over, mirth and music became theorder of the evening; songs were sung and stories told, songs thatbrought them back once more in heart and mind to old Scotland, wherethey knew that at that very time round many a fireside dear friends werethinking of them and wondering how they fared.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX.
HOCKEY WITH SNOW-SHOES ON--THE ICE BREAKS UP--CHANGE OF QUARTERS--GOINGON A BIG SHOOT--THE GREAT SNOW LAKE--INDIANS--THE FIGHT IN THE FOREST.
Winter wore away. Did our people in the _Snowbird_ think it long anddreary? They certainly did not. To begin with, every one on board wasas healthy as a summer's day is long. It was mindful and provident ofMcBain to have laid in a good supply of medicines, and these were aboutthe only stores in the ship that had never been as yet applied to.
The captain was a good and a wise disciplinarian, however. He well knewthe value of exercise in keeping illness far away, so he kept his men atwork. On dry days they would be sent in parties to the forest, to cutdown and drag home wood to keep up roaring fires in the ship and in thehall as well. When snow was falling, which was less often than might beimagined, he had them under cover in the hall, where there was roomenough for games of many kinds, and these were varied by regularexercise with clubs in lieu of dumb-bells. In open weather games werenot forgotten out of doors, you may be quite sure. Rory proposed lawntennis.
"We could easily get it up, you know," he said.
"Nothing would be more simple," was McBain's reply, "but it is far tooslow with the thermometer at zero. There isn't chase enough in it."
"I have it," cried Allan, joyously.
"What?" asked Rory, eagerly.
"Why, _hockey_, to be sure; what we in Scotland call shinty, or shinny."
"It is shinny enough at times," added McBain, laughing; "but how wouldyou set about it? You'd need a large ball, a small one would get lostin the snow."
"Yes," said Allan, "a large cork ball as big as a football, covered withlaced twine. Ap can make the balls, I know."
"And we can go off to the woods and cut our hockey sticks," said Rory;"it will be capital fun."
There was no mistake about it, it was capital fun, Hockey is at alltimes a glorious game, but hockey on the snow with snow-shoes on! Whyit beggars description. No wonder all hands entered into it with awill. The amusement and excitement were intense, the fun and the frolicimmense, the tumbling and the scrimmaging and scrambling were somethingto see, and having seen, to go to sleep and dream about and awakelaughing, and long to go to sleep and dream about it all over again.The game ended at the goal in a mad _melee_, a medley of laughter andshouting, a mixture of legs in the air, arms in the air, snow-shoes andhockey clubs in the air, and heads and bodies anywhere. No wonder theshort winter's day wore to a close before they knew where they were. Nowonder that at the end of the games Allan McGregor, the inventor, wasdubbed the hero of the day, that he was cheered until the welkin rang,that he was mounted shoulder high, and borne triumphantly back to the_Snowbird_, Rory marching on in front with brandished hockey club,leading a chorus which he had composed _on_ the spot and _for_ theoccasion.
But it must not be supposed that their life was all play; no, forindependent of long hours spent in the forest in quest of game, Rory,Ralph, and Allan set themselves with a will to clean, dress, and arrangethe many hundreds of beautiful and valuable skins they had possessedthemselves of. This was a labour of love. These skins were part of thecargo with which they hoped to reach their native land once more insafety. Some of the smallest and prettiest of them Rory took extrapains with, and when he had got them as soft and pliable as silk, heperfumed them and stowed them in the big box Ap had made for him, andwhere his sketch-book--well-filled by this time--lay, and a host ofcurious nameless pebbles and crystals, polished horns, strange moths,butterflies and beetles, beautifully-stuffed birds and rare eggs. Itwas a splendid collection, and Rory's eyes used to sparkle as he gazedupon them, and thought of the time when in the old castle he would showall these things to Helen McGregor and her mother.
"Just look at him," Ralph would say at times like these; "he hasn't gotthe pack-merchant idea out of his head yet."
Winter wore away. It was nearly three months since they had all satdown together to their Christmas dinner in the hall. The mate of the_Trefoil_, and the men more immediately under his command, hadn't beenidle all this time. They had been busy refining the oil, and a grandlot they made of it, and it was now carefully stowed away in the_Snowbird's_ tanks. The mate had not been disappointed in the size ofhis fish, it had turned out even better than he expected, and wouldgreatly add to the wealth of the cargo of the lucky yacht. The waterhad to be pumped from the tanks to make room for it, but that was noloss, for fresh-water ice was procurable in any quantity. It lay on thedecks of the _Snowbird_ abaft the foremast in gigantic pieces, and avery pretty sight it looked when the sun shone on it.
Fresh food and game of various kinds were now to be had in abundance.Ay, and fish as well. Old Seth still continued to act as fisherman. Hecaught them in that mysterious pool, which all the winter long had nevershown a single sign of freezing.
When all was quiet of a night, probably in the moonlight or under thelight from the splendid aurora, our heroes used to take a walk sometimestowards the strange pool. They took their guns with them, but only toprotect themselves from prowling bears. Awful-looking heads used toappear over the surface of the pool. In daylight these creatures nevershowed--only when all was still at night. What they were they could nottell; nor can I. Probably they were merely gigantic specimens ofbearded seals or sea-lions come up to breathe, and looked larger andmore dreadful in the uncertain light of moon or aurora.
Many though our heroes' adventures were, and thoroughly though theyenjoyed themselves, when the days began to get longer, when the snowbegan to melt, and whistling winds blew softer through the forest trees,and everything told them spring was on ahead, the thoughts that ere longthe _Snowbird_ would burst her icy bounds, that they would be once morefree, once more at sea, were very far from unpleasant to them.
On days now when there was but little frost in the air, and a breeze ofwind with sunlight, the _Snowbird's_ sails would be unstowed, bent, andpartially unfurled, to air them. Even this made the saucy yacht lookq
uite coquettish again. "Ho! ho!" she seemed to say to herself, "sothere _is_ a possibility, is there, that some of these days I may oncemore sport my beauty in waters blue? Oh! then, blow, breezes, blow, andmelt the ice and snow, for indeed I'm heartily tired of it."
It would almost seem that the country around where the _Snowbird_ laywas chosen as a winter residence _par excellence_ for the great Polarbear. Perhaps the winter in the faraway and desolate regions around thePole is too rigorous for even his constitution; be this as it may, herethey were by the score, and all in all, well-nigh a hundred fleeces werebagged in little over two months.
These snow-bears got more chary at last, however, and when the Marchwinds blew they entirely disappeared.
One day the beginning of the end of the ice came; a wind blew strongfrom the east, and by
The Cruise of the Snowbird: A Story of Arctic Adventure Page 48