Wild Adventures round the Pole Part 31

Well might he cry "look," for a more terrible or revolting apparition never raises head over the black waters of the Greenland ocean than the zugaena, or hammer-headed shark. The skull is in shape precisely what the name indicates, that of a gigantic hammer, with a great eye at each end, and the mouth beneath. This shark is not unfrequently met with in the northern seas, and he is just as fierce as he is fearful to behold.

Allan and Ralph both saw the brute, and neither could repress a shudder.

It appeared but for a few moments, then dived below again.

Silas and McBain, coming up at the time, were told of the occurrence.

"I know the vile beasts well," said Silas, "and they do say that they never appear in these seas without bringing a big slice o' ill-luck in their wake. That is unless you catches them, and sometimes that doesn't save the s.h.i.+p. When I was skipper o' the _Penelope_, and that is more than ten years ago, there wasn't a lazier chap in the crew than snuffy Sandy Foster. He wasn't a deal o' use down below, he did nothing on deck, and he never went aloft. He had two favourite positions: one was sitting before a joint of junk, with a knife in his hand; t'other was leaning against the bulwarks with a pipe in his mouth, and we never could make out which he liked best.

"'Did ever you do anything clever in your life, Sandy?' I asked one day.

"Sandy took his pipe out of his mouth and eyed the mainmast for fully half a minute. Then he brought his eyes round to my face, and said,--

"'Not that I can remember o', sir.'

"'The first time, Sandy,' says I, 'that you do anything clever, I'll give you a pair of the best canvas trousers in the s.h.i.+p.'

"Sandy's eyes a kind of sparkled; I'd never seen them sparkle before.

"'I'll win them,' said Sandy, 'wait till ye see.'

"And, indeed, gentlemen, I hadn't long to wait. One day the brig was dead before the wind under a crowd o' cloth, for there wasn't much wind, but a nasty rumble-tumble sea; there was no doubt, gentlemen, from the looks o' that sea, that we had just come through a gale o' wind, and there was evidence enough to go to jury on that there was another not far away. Well, it was just in the dusk o' the evening--we were pretty far south--that the cry got up,--

"'Man overboard.'

"It was our bo's'n's boy, a lad of fourteen, who had gone by the run.

Singing out to the mate to lay to, I ran forward, and if ever I forget the expression of the poor bo's'n's face as he wrung his hands and cried, 'Oh, save my laddie! Oh, save my laddie!' my name will change to something else than Silas.

"'I'll save him,' cried a voice behind me. Some one rushed past. There was a splash in the water next moment, and I had barely time to see it was Sandy. Before the boat reached the spot they were a quarter of a mile astern, but they were saved; they found the bo's'n's laddie riding 'c.o.c.kerty-coosie' on Sandy's shoulder, and Sandy spitting out the mouthfuls of salt water, laughing and crying,--

"'I've won the breeks! I've won the canvas breeks, boys!'

"He had won them, and that right n.o.bly, too. Well, after he had worn them for over a month, it became painfully evident even to Sandy that they sorely needed was.h.i.+ng; but, woe is me! Sandy was too lazy to put a hand to them. But he thought of a plan, nevertheless, to save trouble.

He steeped them in a soda ley, attached a strong line to them, and pitched them overboard to tow.

"When, after two hours' towing, Sandy went to haul them up, great was his astonishment to find a great hammer-head spring half out of the water and seize them. Sandy had never seen so awful a monster before; he put it down as an evil spirit.

"'Let go,' he roared; 'let go my breeks, ye beast.'

"Now, maybe, with those hooked teeth of his, the shark could not let go; anyhow, he did not.

"'I dinna ken who ye are, or what ye are,' cried Sandy, 'but ye'll no get my breeks. Ah! bide a wee.'

"Luckily the dolphin-striker lay handy, Sandy made a grab at it, and next minute it was hard and fast in the hammer-head's neck. To see how that monster wriggled and fought, more like a fiend than a fish, when we got him on deck, would have--but look--look--r--"

Seth had not been idle while his companions were talking. He had cut off choice pieces of blubber and thrown them into the sea; he had coiled his rope on the ice close by; then, harpoon in hand, he knelt ready to strike. Nor had he long to wait. The bait took, the bait was taken, the harpoon had left the trapper's hand and gone deep into the monster's body.

I will not attempt to describe the scene that followed--it was a death-scene that no pen could do justice to--the wild struggle of the giant shark in the water, his mad and frantic motions ere clubbed to death on the ice, and his terrible appearance as he snapped his dreadful jaws at everything within reach; but here is a fact, strange and weird though it may read--fully half an hour after the creature seemed dead, and lying on its side, while our heroes stood silently round it, with the wild birds wheeling and screaming closely overhead, the zugaena suddenly threw itself on its stomach as if about to swim away. It was the last of its movements, and a mere spasmodic and painless one, though very distressing to witness.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE.

RORY'S REVERIE--SILAS ON THE SCYMNUS BOREALIS--THE BATTLE WITH THE SHARKS--RORY GETS IN FOR IT AGAIN--THROWN AMONG THE SHARKS.

The s.h.i.+ps still lay hard and fast in the ice-pack, many miles to the nor'ard and eastward of the Isle of Jan Mayen. There was as yet no sign of the frost giving way. Day after day the bay ice between the bergs got thicker and thicker, and the thermometer still stood steadily well down below zero. But the wind never blew, and there never was a speck of cloud in the brilliant sapphire sky, nor even haze itself to shear the sun of his beams; so the cold was hardly felt, and after a brisk walk or scamper over the ice our heroes felt so warm that they were in the habit of throwing themselves down on the snow on the southern side of a hummock of ice. Book in hand, Rory would sometimes lie thus for fully half an hour on a stretch. Not always reading, though; the fact of Rory's having a book in his hand was no proof that he was reading, for just as often he was dreaming; and I'll tell you a little secret-- there were a pair of beautiful eyes which were filled with tears when last he had seen them, there were two rosy lips that had quivered as they parted to breathe the word "good-bye." These, and a soft, small hand that had lain for a moment in his, haunted him by night and by day, and seemed ever present with him through all his wild adventures.

Ah! but they didn't make him unhappy, though; no, but quite the reverse.

He was reclining thus one day all by himself, about a quarter of a mile from his s.h.i.+p, when Ralph and McBain came gently up behind him, walking as silently as the crisp snow, that felt like powdered gla.s.s under their feet, would permit them.

"Hullo! Rory," cried McBain, in a voice of thunder.

Startled from his reverie, Rory sprang to his feet, and instinctively grasped his rifle.

His friends laughed at him.

"It is somewhat late to seize your rifle now, my boy," said McBain; "supposing now we'd been a bear, why, we would be eating you at this present moment."

"Or making a mouse of you," added Ralph, "as the yellow bear did of poor Freezing Powders; and at this very minute you'd be--

"'Dancin' for de dear life Among de Greenland snow.'"

"I was reading," said Rory, smiling, "that beautiful poem of Wordsworth, _We are seven_."

"Wordsworth's _We are seven_?" cried Ralph, laughing. "Oh! Row, Row, you'll be the death of me some day. Since when did you learn to read with your book upside down?"

"Had I now?" said Rory, with an amused look of candour. "In troth I daresay you are right."

"But come on, Row, boy," continued Ralph, "luncheon is all ready, Peter is waiting, and after lunch Silas Grig is going to show as some fun."

"What more malley-shooting?" asked Rory.

"No, Row, boy," was the reply; "he is going to lead us forth to battle against the sharks."

"Against the sharks!" exclaimed Rory, incredulous.

"I'm not in fun, really," replied Ralph. "Silas tells us they are in shoals of thousands at present under us; that the sea swarms with them, some fifteen feet long, others nearer twenty."

"Oh!" said Row; "this _is_ interesting. Come on; I'm ready."

While the trio stroll leisurely s.h.i.+pwards over the snow, let me try to explain to my reader what Rory meant by malley-shooting, as taught them by Silas Grig. The term, or name, "malley," is that which is given by Greenlandmen to the Arctic gull. Although not so charming in plumage as the s...o...b..rd, it is nevertheless a very handsome bird, and has many queer ways of its own which are interesting to the naturalist, and which you do not find described in books. These gulls build their nests early in the season on the cliffs of Faroe and Shetland, and probably, though I have never found them, in sheltered caves of Jan Mayen and Western Greenland as well. Despite the extreme cold, they manage to bring forth and rear their young successfully, and are always ready to follow Greenland s.h.i.+ps in immense flocks. Wherever work is going on, wherever the crack of the rifle is heard on the pack, wherever the snow is stained crimson and yellow with blood, the malleys will be there in daring thousands. The most curious part of the thing is this: they possess a power of either scent or sight, which enables them to discover their quarry, although scores of miles away from it. For example--the Arctic gulls, as a rule, do not follow a s.h.i.+p for sake of the bits of bread and fat that may be thrown overboard. Some of them do, I know, but I look upon these as merely the lazaroni, the beggars of their tribe; your healthy, youthful, aristocratic malley prefers something he considers better. Give him blubber to eat, or the flesh of a new slain seal, and he will follow you far enough. Now a s.h.i.+p may be lying becalmed off this pack, with no seals in sight, and doing nothing; if so she will be deserted by these birds. Not from the crow's-nest, though aided by the most powerful telescope, will you be able to descry a single gull; but no sooner is a sealskin or two hauled on deck to be cleared of their fat, than notice seems to be flashed to the far-off gulls, and in a few minutes they are winging around you, making the welkin ring with their wild, delighted screams. They alight in the water around a morsel of meat in such bunches, that a table-cloth would cover two dozen of them.

Having had enough--and that "enough" means something enormous--they go off for a "fly," just as tumbling pigeons do. You may see them in hundreds high in air, sailing round and round, enjoying themselves apparently to the very utmost, and shrieking with joy. Now is the time for the skua to attack them. A bold, black, hawklike rascal is this skua, a robber and a thief. He never comes within gunshot of a s.h.i.+p.

He is as wild and untamable as the north wind itself; yet, no sooner have the malleys commenced their post-prandial gambols than he is in the midst of them. He does not want to kill them; only some one or more must disgorge their food. On this the skua lives. No wonder that Greenland sailors call him the unclean bird.

The malley-gull floats on the waves as lightly and gently as a child's toy air-ball would. His usual diet is fish, except in sealing times; and of the fish he catches the marauding skua never fails to get his share. It is for the sake of the feathers sailors shoot these birds on the ice, for they are nearly as well feathered as an eider duck.

Getting tired of shooting seals in the water, Rory and Allan one day, leaving the others on the banks of the great ice-hole, determined to make a bag of feathers. And here is how they bagged their game.

Armed with fowling-pieces, they retired to some distance from the water party and lay down behind a hummock of ice. Here they might have lain until this day without a bird looking twice in their direction had they not provided themselves with a lure. This lure was simply a pair of the wings of a gull, which one waved above his head, while the other prepared to fire right and left. And not a minute would these wings be waved aloft ere the gulls, with that strange curiosity inherent in all wild creatures, would begin to circle around, coming nearer and nearer, tack and half-tack, until they were within reach of the guns, when--down they came. But the untimely end of one brace nor twenty did not prevent their companions from trying to solve the mystery of the waving wings.