Wild Adventures round the Pole Part 14

"Bless you, Magnus! Give us your hand, my old sea-dad. You always gave me comfort, even when I was a boy in the wilds of Spitzbergen. You taught me to splice, and reef, and steer. Bless you, Magnus! I couldn't have sailed without you."

"But stay, my son, stay," continued this weird little man, holding up a warning finger; "those rus.h.i.+ng winds--"

"Yes, Magnus?"

"They will bring danger on their wings."

"I'll welcome it, Magnus," laughed McBain.

"Those rus.h.i.+ng winds will tear down on us, hurricane-high, tempest-strong. The great bergs, impelled by force of wind and might of wave, will dash each other to atoms."

"All the better for us, Daddy Magnus," said the captain.

"Were your voice as loud as cannon's roar you will be as one dumb amid the turmoil."

"Then I'll steer by signs," said McBain.

"Should our s.h.i.+p escape destruction, we will be enveloped by fogs, encircled by a darkness that will be felt."

"Then we'll heave-to and wait till they evaporate. But there, my good Magnus, you see I'm not afraid of anything. I'd be unworthy of such a sea-dad as you if I were; so no more tragic airs, please. Thou mindest me, old Magnus, of the scene between Lochiel and the Wizard.

"'Lochiel, Lochiel, beware of the day When the Lowlands shall meet you in battle array,'

"says the Wizard, and so on and so forth.

"'False wizard, avaunt!' replies Lochiel, and all the rest of it, you know. But, beloved Magnus, I don't _say_ 'avaunt!' to you. But just see how the cold spray is das.h.i.+ng inboard. So, not to put too poetic a point on it, I simply say, 'Go down below, old man, and don't get wet, else your joints will ache in the morning with the rheumatiz.'"

The morning broke beautifully fine and clear, the reefs were shaken out of the topsails, topgallant-sails and royals were set, and, indeed, all the square cloth she could carry, and away went the _Arrandoon_ before the wind, as happy, to all appearance, as the malleys and gulls that seemed to play at hide-and-seek with her, behind the comb-crested seas of olive-green.

Ralph and Allan, arm-in-arm, were marching rapidly up and down one side of the quarter-deck, Rory and McFlail on the other, and ever and anon a merry laugh from some one of them rang out bright and joyously on the fresh frosty air.

Towards noon stunsails were set, and the _Arrandoon_ looked more like a sea-bird than ever; she even seemed to sing to herself--so thought Rory and so thought the doctor--as she went nodding and curtseying along over the waves, with now a bend to starboard, and now a lean to port; now lowering her bows till the seas ahead looked mountains high, and anon giving a dip waterwards till her waist was wet with the seething spray, and her lower stunsail-booms seemed to tickle the very breast of old mother ocean.

The wind was increasing, and there were times when our boys had to pause in their walk and grapple the mizzen rigging, laughing at each other as they did so.

"Wo ho, my beauty?" said McBain. "Mr Mitch.e.l.l, I daresay we must take in sail."

"I'm afraid so, sir," replies Mitch.e.l.l; "but--" and here he eyes the bellowing canvas--"it do seem a pity, sir, don't it?"

But here "my beauty" gives a vicious plunge forwards, elevating herself aft like a kicking mare, and s.h.i.+pping tons of water over her bows.

"I don't want to be wicked," the s.h.i.+p seems to say, "and I don't want to lose a spar, though I _could_ kick one off as easy as a daddy-longlegs gets rid of a limb; but if you don't ease me a bit I'll--"

A bigger and more decided plunge into the sea, followed by a rising of her jibboom zenithwards, and the water comes roaring aft in one great bore, which seeks exit by the quarter-deck scupper-holes, and goes tumbling down the companion ladder, to the indignation of Peter and the disgust of Freezing Powders, who is standing on his head in an att.i.tude of contemplation, and s.h.i.+ps a green sea down his nostrils. Our heroes leap in time on to the top of the skylight, and there sit grinning delightedly as the waters go roaring past them, and floating thereon evidence enough that the men had been preparing dinner when Neptune boarded them, for yonder float potatoes and turnips and cabbages, to say nothing of a leg of Highland mutton and a six-pound piece of bacon.

"Hands, shorten sail!"

But next day--so changeable is a sailor's life--the wind had all got bottled up again or gone back to its cave; the sea was smooth as gla.s.s, and steam was up, but the sky was still clear, and the sun undimmed by the slightest haze.

Just before lunch came the first signs that ice was not far ahead. The _Arrandoon_ encountered a great "stream," as it is called, of deep, snowy slush--I do not know what else to call it. It stretched away eastwards to westwards, as far as the eye from the crow's-nest could reach, and it was probably nine or ten miles wide. It lessened the good s.h.i.+p's way considerably, you may be sure. Her bows clove through it with a brus.h.i.+ng sound; her screw revolved in it with a noise like dead leaves stirred by autumn winds.

"Los.h.!.+" cried Sandy, the surgeon, looking curiously overboard, "what's this noo? Wonders will never cease!"

"Och, sure!" replied Rory, mischievously, "you know well enough what it is; it's only speaking for speaking's sake you are."

"The ne'er a bone o' ma knows, I do a.s.sure ye," said Sandy.

"Well, doctor dear," said Rory, "it is simply the belt, or zone, that geographers call the 'Arctic circle.'"

But Sandy looked at him with a pitying smile. "Man--Rory?" he said, "I'm no' so sea-green as you tak me to be. I've a right good mind to pu' your lugs. Young men, sir, dinna enter Aberdeen University stirks and come out cuddies?"

"Mon!" cried Rory, imitating Sandy's brogue, "if ye want to pu' my lugs you'll hae to catch me first;" and off he went round the deck, with the doctor after him. But Ralph caught him, if Sandy couldn't, and handed him over to justice.

"Now," cried the surgeon, catching him by the ear, "whistle, and I'll let you free."

It is no easy matter to whistle when you want to laugh, but when Rory at long last did manage to emit a l.a.b.i.al note that pa.s.sed muster as a whistle, the doctor was as good as his word, and Rory was free.

Luncheon was barely finished, when down from the crow's-nest rang the welcome hail, "Ice ahead!"

Our heroes rushed on deck, McBain was there before them, and when they stepped on to the "lid" of the s.h.i.+p, as Sandy once called the deck, they found the captain half-way up to the nest.

There wasn't a bit of ice to be seen from the deck.

"Hurrah for the foretop?" cried Rory, laying hold of a stay. "Who's coming?"

"I will!" cried Allan.

"I'm going below to finish lunch," said Ralph.

"I'll be safer on deck, I think," said the canny doctor.

But when Rory on the foretop struck an att.i.tude of wonderment, and pointing away ahead, exclaimed, in rapture, "Oh, boys, what a scene is here!" the doctor thought he would give anything for a peep, so he summoned up his courage and began to ascend the rigging, slowly, and with about as much grace in his actions as a mud turtle would exhibit under the like circ.u.mstances.

Allan roared, "Good doctor! good! Bravo, old man! Heave round like a brick! Don't look down."

Rory was in a fit of merriment, and trying to stifle himself with his handkerchief. Suddenly down dropped that handkerchief; and this was just the signal four active lads were waiting for. Up they sprang like monkeys behind the surgeon, who had hardly reached the lubber-hole.

Alas! the good medico didn't reach it that day, for before you could have said "cutla.s.s" he was seized, hand and foot, and lashed to the rigging, Saint Andrew's-cross fas.h.i.+on.

The surgeon of the _Arrandoon_ was spread-eagled, and Rory, the wicked boy! had his revenge.

"My conscience!" cried Sandy; "what next, I wonder?"

"It's a vera judeecious arrangement," sung Rory from the top.

But the men were not hard on the worthy doctor, and the promise of several ounces of n.i.g.g.e.r-head procured him his freedom, and he soon regained the deck, a sadder and a wiser man.

They were quickly among the ice--not bergs, mind you, only a stream of bits and pieces, of every shape and form, some like sheep and some like swans, and some like great white oxen. Here was a piece like a milking-pail; here was a lump like a hay-c.o.c.k; yonder a gondola; yonder a boat; and yonder a couch on which the Naiades might recline and float, or Ino slumber.