Wild Adventures in Wild Places Read online

abroad, Duncan and his dogs were there to meetthem. But their first day was a blank, and they returned very tired andsomewhat disheartened to the keeper's house, where, putting up withHighland fare, they determined to stay all night. The next day theywere rewarded with the sight of deer in hundreds, but that was all; thedeer were too wild and wary to reach. More than once that day, as somenoble stag stood for a moment on knoll or brae-top, scenting the wind,then dashing wildly off adown the glen, the words of Walter Scott cameto Frank's mind--

  "The crested leader, proud and high, Tossed his beamed frontlet to the sky, A moment gazed adown the dale, A moment snuffed the tainted gale; Then, as the headmost foe appeared. With one brave bound the copse he cleared, And stretching forward free and far, Sought the wild heaths of Uam Var."

  But the third was a never-to-be-forgotten day, for Frank brought downhis first stag, and it was a "royal." Luck seemed to set in after this.It never rains but it pours, you know, and nobody had any reason to bedissatisfied with that week spent among the red deer in the wilds ofCairntree.

  I wish I had space wherein to tell you of one-half of the delightfulsporting adventures our heroes had during the many months Frank was"bein' broke," or of the many happy, pleasant days they had to look backto, when afterwards sojourning with wild beasts and wilder men--of daysspent among the partridges, or with the cockers at work, or followingthe pheasants. They all agreed that there was but little true sportattached to pheasant-shooting, the birds are so tame.

  "It's just like shooting hens," Chisholm remarked.

  But perhaps their dearest recollections went back to the time they spentin duck shooting. These were days they might have marked in theirdiaries with a red cross--spent entirely under canvas they were, in truegipsy fashion; for although the season was autumn, the weather was stillbright and warm, and the nights just cool enough to be pleasant. Bymarshes or lonely moorlands, by inland lakes and ponds, or by woodedfriths and estuaries, following up the wild-fowl never failed to givethem the very greatest of pleasure and sport. In these adventures theirchief companion was a dog of the Irish water-spaniel type, and Pattie byname. Red all over was Pattie, and one mass of ringlets, which even awhole day's swimming in sea or river failed to unravel; he even had afringe or top-knot over his bonnie brow, which quite set off hispeculiar style of beauty. Pattie's style of beauty was what would bedesignated in Scotland "the daft." Mind, you couldn't help lovingPattie--I defy you not to love him if you tried; but he had such queerways, and such a funny face, that you couldn't look at him long withoutlaughing. Pattie was truly Irish, but grand at his work nevertheless,whether retrieving a dead duck or a maimed one. When plunging into thewater after the latter, "Be quiet wid yer skraiching," Pattie would seemto say. "Sure I'll fetch you out, and you'll never feel it at all, atall." But you ought to have seen Pattie coming up out of the river witha dead duck that he probably had had to swim a long distance against thetide for; there was a pride in his beaming eye that my pen would attemptin vain to depict. "What do ye think av me now?" Pattie would seem tosay.

  But summer and autumn and the first months of winter wore away, and,after spending a whole fortnight at the white hare-shooting among themountains of Perthshire--and harder work I defy you to find--Frank wasat last declared thoroughly broken in, completely hardened off.

  "A man," said Chisholm, "that can stand a week or two among white hares,and not feel too tired to sleep at night, is fit for anything. Now,boys," he added, "what do you say to a run right away up to the polarice-fields?"

  "I'm in," said Fred quietly.

  "Oh!" said Chisholm, "you're always in for anything. If I asked you totake a trip to the moon you'd jump at it."

  "Or over it," said Fred, smiling, "like the cow in the poem of `Hey,diddle diddle;' but are you in earnest about the ice-fields?"

  "Downright."

  "Well," said Frank, with assumed modesty, "if you think I'm `broke'enough, please I'd like to go too."

  "Bravo!" cried Chisholm O'Grahame, "that settles the question."

  They made arrangements to sail in a seal-and-whale ship in February.They got an introduction to a captain of one of these, and he gladlyundertook to convey them to Greenland and back, "free, gratis, and fornothing, except the pleasure of their company, and the skins and blubberthey would no doubt kill." That was how the captain expressed it."But, mind you," he said, "you'll have to rough it a bit."

  "We don't mind that," said Chisholm.

  Before he left for the far distant north, Frank Willoughby spent someweeks at General Lyell's castle. Happy, happy weeks they were, and howquickly, too, they fled away! I could make you feel very sentimentaland "gushive," reader, if I told you all that passed between the lovelyyoung Eenie and our hero Frank, but I never tell tales out of school, sothere. I may just say, however, that, when the last moment _did_ come,poor Eenie could hardly breathe the fond "good bye" for the tears thatshe could not repress.

  The General's adieu was a hearty one.

  "Good-bye," he said, "keep up a good heart, and," he added laughingly,as he patted Frank on the back, "remember--

  "`None but the brave deserve the fair.'"

  CHAPTER FOUR.

  PART II--THE POLAR ICE-FIELDS.

  OUTWARD BOUND--NIGHT IN THE PACK--THE AURORA--THE AWFUL SILENCE OF THEICE-FIELDS--SEALS! SEALS!--THE BATTLE WITH THE BLADDER-NOSES--JACK INTHE BOX WITH A VENGEANCE--A FIGHT WITH WALRUSES.

  The good ship _Grampus_ slipped away from her moorings on the 13th ofFebruary, 18--, and steamed slowly seaward from the port of Peterhead,North Britain, hound for the wild and desolate regions that surround thepole. She steamed slowly away in the very teeth of a breeze of windsthat might have frightened a man of less daring and pluck than CaptainAnderson, for the sea was grey and stormy, the sky was leaden andthreatening, and the very sea-birds that screamed around the vessel'sbows seemed to warn him that there was danger on the deep. But theCaptain heeded them not. He had said he would sail on this day, and hedid, for well he knew what his vessel could now do, and had done before;besides, he was a true sailor, and had all a sailor's impatience tobegin the voyage.

  "It looks a bit squally," he said to the pilot as he bade him adieu,"and we may have a dirty day or two, but the _Grampus_ can stand it, andI'm not the man to linger in the harbour one half-hour after I'm readyto start. Good-bye, old man."

  The _Grampus_ was a steam brig of some three hundred and fifty tons,fitted with powerful engines, and a screw that could be hoisted up outof the water when sail was on her. Built of wood, she was as stout andstrong a ship as ever clove the waves. And she needed all her strengthtoo--there was a wide and stormy ocean to cross, and there was ice toplough through that no fragile ship dare ever face. The captain was theowner of the vessel; and many a voyage, and not unsuccessful oneseither, had he made to the polar ice-fields, but the present one wasfated to be the most eventful of all.

  From the very commencement of the cruise, until the first ice wassighted, the wind kept steadily ahead, and the seas kept washing overthe brave brig from stem to stern. But she was not to be daunted, sosteadily she steamed on northwards, ever northwards.

  A week after the last of the lonely isles of Shetland had sunk like alittle cloud beneath the southern horizon they were far away at sea--indeed, there was nothing to be seen from the masthead, only the greattumbling seas that dashed their sprays high over the funnel. Even thebirds had left them, all save that strange mysterious creature that isever seen wheeling around ships sailing over the broad Atlantic, orcrossing the northern seas, and which naturalists call the stormypetrel, and mariners Mother Carey's chicken. No wonder sailors lookupon this bird with something akin to superstition and awe, so dark anddusky is the creature, the very little white about it serving but tomake its blackness visible; it flits from stormy wave to stormy wavelike a veritable evil spirit.

  Our friend Frank, in his voyage to the polar ice-fields, sufferedsomewhat from _mal de mer_--it sounds far nicer in French than inEngli
sh--but he bravely stuck to the deck. He was more than once washedinto the lee scuppers, but he had on an oilskin suit of fear-nothingdimensions; so he just scrambled up again, or in other words, like thecork leg of the merchant of Rotterdam, he got up "and went on asbefore."

  The farther north the _Grampus_ got, the shorter grew the days. Indeed,they seemed to be sailing into the home of eternal night, only it mustbe remembered that the season was yet early, and that in the polarregions for three months of the year the sun never appears above thehorizon. If the nights were long, however, it cannot be said they weredark; they were lighted up with a magnificence never