Wild Adventures in Wild Places Read online

seen in moresouthern latitudes. The sky itself was at times of a deep andindescribably dark-blue colour, and the stars were great wheels ofsparkling light. This was in itself a beautiful sight, and our heroesused to linger on deck till far on in the night, as if under somepleasant spell. But what pen can describe the gorgeous splendour of thenorthern lights, or Aurora. Imagine if you can a vast and broad bow, orarc of a circle, stretched athwart the heavens, twenty times as broad asany rainbow, and seeming to be ever so much farther away; imagine thisbow to be composed of spears or needles of light--green, blue, crimson,and yellow--and imagine these spears in constant motion, shootingupwards and downwards, changing places incessantly, changing coloursconstantly, and this too with inconceivable rapidity, and you will beable to form some faint notion of the wonderful sight the Aurorapresented to the eyes of our astonished travellers.

  Reader, I have been alone in the ice-fields by night, while the Aurorawas playing in the heavens above. You cannot conceive of the solitudeand lonesomeness of such a situation, nor can you form any conception ofthe deep, the indescribable silence that reigns in the frozen ocean.Well, upwards as I gazed at the northern lights, I have heard soundsemanating from them. That I do not remember having ever read ofanywhere. A line of spears would advance from the east and another fromthe west; they would meet and commingle with a subdued clashing andhissing noise, such as you might make by rubbing the palms of the handsrapidly together. What this strange sound can be is a mystery that maynever be revealed.

  Captain Anderson told our heroes that he never thought the voyage hadbegun until the crow's-nest, or out-look barrel, was hoisted to themainmast head.

  One morning our travellers were awakened by the sound of singing andshouting, and on going on deck they found the brave skipper rubbing hishands with glee, as he gazed up at the ascending nest.

  "Cheerily does it!" he was crying. "Heave, lads! heave, heave, and shegoes. Now, young gentlemen," he continued, "are your rifles in order?In two days more, if all goes well, I'll show you such sport as youcouldn't even have dreamt of before."

  And sure enough, in two days' time they had made "the country," as theice-fields are termed. If, however, any one on board had expected tofind wealth, in the shape of plump seals, lying thereon ready for thegathering, he was much mistaken. There was the ice, to be sure, butnever a seal in sight, neither in the water nor out of it, for it seemedthat the country was unusually open that year.

  "Well," said Anderson, one day, "I'm tired of this north Greenland work;I'll bear away for the west land."

  A week's steaming through fields of slushy ice and floating snow, andstreams of flat snow-clad bergs, brought them into open water, and theysighted the lofty and desolate shores of Greenland West, and much totheir surprise, found a large three-masted Dutchman quietly lying atanchor in a bay, sails all clewed up, and men away on the ice. It wasnot long ere the _Grampus_ had followed her example, so far as lettinggo the anchor went, and making all snug and ready for action. A greatbear--always a sign seals are about--stood sniffing on the edge of afloe. Perhaps he had never seen a steamship before, or perhaps he waswondering what the crew were having for breakfast. Frank got hisHenri-Martini up, and began potting at him with a long-range sight, andpresently Master Bruin remembered an appointment he had, and made tracksto keep it.

  It was a glorious morning when the boats were called away. All handswere half frantic with joy at the thought they would soon be among theseals. In they trundle, and down go the boats with a splash into thewater, and next moment they are off. Frank and Chisholm are in oneboat, Fred Freeman in another, and there is a grand race between the twoto see who shall first touch the ice and fire the first shot. The boatsseemed to fly over the water, and when they at last ran alongside thefloe and the crew jumped on shore, there was hardly a yard's lengthbetween them; but Fred was declared winner.

  And now the day's work was begun. Warily at first, the riflemen had tocreep towards their prey on hands and knees, taking advantage of everyhummock or boulder to screen themselves from view. On each piece of icesome forty or fifty seals lay, and each "patch" had a sentry set. Whenthey succeeded in killing him, the others were very much at their mercy;but oftentimes the seal on watch would succeed, even before his eyesclosed in death, in giving his companions warning. Then, almost ereanother bullet could reach them, they had leapt helter-skelter into thewater. But when the sun got higher, the seals seemed to get almost toolazy to move; they could then be approached very much more closely, andthe work of death was carried on with an earnestness and energy that wasterrible to behold. Indeed, a kind of madness to shed blood seemed totake possession of every man on the ice. There was no thought but toslay. The excitement was intense--awful in its intensity. The sun wentslowly round and down, and as he set behind the rugged hills, his discseemed to reflect the blood on the ice. Even his parting beams hadborrowed the self-same hue, and the tops of the highest icebergs lookedas if dipped in gore.

  When the shadows fell, tired and weary enough now, our heroes wentslowly back towards the boats.

  "Oh! boys," cried Fred, "don't you remember how bright and lovely thesnow was in the morning? Behold it now!"

  "Ay, behold it now," said Chisholm. "Indeed, Fred, this is murder. Idon't feel I can call it by any other name, and I'm half ashamed ofmyself."

  "So am I," said Frank, "for a seal can't defend itself."

  "But the bladder-nosed seals can," said the first mate, who had justjoined the trio. "They are terrible beasts to deal with. I'd ratherfight a bear single-handed than I would one of these. Once they fillthat kettle-pot-like bladder over their noses, they mean mischief, I cantell you. A rifle bullet has no more effect on it than a pea from apea-shooter."

  "Is that so?" said Fred.

  "Five years ago," continued the mate, "I was one of the crew of a boat,of ten men in all, that were attacked by these monsters of the deep.They seemed mad with rage and fury; they swarmed up from the sea to theice where we stood, with blazing eyes and flashing teeth, by the dozenand by the score. We all fought like fiends; we fought with spears andaxes and our rifles clubbed, but the faster we killed them the faster--they came. Our shouts brought assistance from the ship, but not beforea whole hour was spent in this battle with the bladder-noses, and notuntil we were quite exhausted, with three of our number lying dead onthe ice."

  They were walking over a floe of thick bay ice as the mate told hisstory. No sooner had he spoken the last words than--

  "Down, men, down!" he cried; "the ice is rising ahead."

  They followed the mate's advice, and threw themselves on their faces.

  In two places the ice was heaving and rising. Then all at once it gaveway, with a noise like the firing of great guns, and up from the depthsof the dark sea rose two gigantic forms, with wild eyes and yard-longtusks, and of such fearful aspect that Frank's heart almost stood stillwith dread.

  "By George!" cried Chisholm, "this is playing at Jack in the box with avengeance."

  Bang, bang, bang went the rifles, and down sank the apparitions, leavingthe broken ice all red with blood.

  "They are only wounded," said the mate; "they'll have revenge if it is amonth hence, depend on that."

  The _Grampus_, sealing intent, steamed farther and farther north, andthe nearer to the pole they got, the heavier grew the ice. There wasshooting every day now for three months and more--seals and bears, andsometimes a fox--and, when there was nothing else to go for, theybrought down gulls for their feathers, and looms for the sake of freshmeat. Sometimes they were rewarded by the sight of the lonely narwhal,or giant unicorn of the sea--a creature which always makes direct for aboat as soon as it spies one, and has been known to attack and sink awhaler or gig.

  They were after the looms one day, Chisholm and Frank being as usual inone boat, with the first mate steering.

  Suddenly, "Stand by your clubs and guns, men!" cried the mate; "Herethey come. Now we're in for it. I knew they'd seek revenge."

/>   The sea around them seemed alive with the great tusked heads ofwalruses, coming from all directions and making straight for the boat.

  "In oars, and keep cool, lads," said the mate, seizing an axe; "but formercy's sake keep the boat trimmed. If she capsizes we are all deadmen."

  How long they fought with those desperate brutes Frank could never tell;but it seemed to him an age ere the other boats came to their relief,and poured volley after volley into the midst of the pack of walruses.Then they disappeared, and but for the sea around them, all reddenedwith blood, and the floating corpses--which, however, speedily sank--there was not a sign of the fearful hand-to-hand and all-unequalcontest.

  CHAPTER FIVE.

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