Wild Adventures round the Pole Part 32

Luncheon was on the table, and our friends were seated around it, all looking happy and hungry. Rory would have liked to have asked Silas Grig right straight away about the expedition against the sharks but for one thing--he didn't like to appear too inquisitive; and, for another, he was not quite sure even now that it was not one of Ralph's pretty jokes. But when everybody had been served, when weather and future prospects, the state of the thermometer and height of the barometer, had been discussed, Rory found he could not contain himself any longer.

"What are you going to be doing after lunch?" he asked Silas, pointedly.

"Aha, boy Rory!" was the reply; "we'll have such sport as you never saw the likes o' before!"

Rory now began to see there really was no joke about the matter; and Ralph, who was sitting next to him, pinched him for his doubt and misbelief. The two young men could read each other's thoughts like books.

"Do you mean to say you are going to catch sharks in earnest, you know?"

asked Rory.

"Well," said Silas, with a bit of a laugh, "I'm going to have as good a try at it as ever I had. And as for catching 'em in earnest, I'm thinking it won't be fun--for the sharks!"

"It is the _Scymnus borealis_, isn't it?" said Dr Sandy McFlail, "belongin', if my memory serves me, to the natural family _Squalidae_--a powerful brute, and a vera dangerous, too."

"You may call him the _Aurora borealis_ if you like, doctor," said Silas; "and as for his family connections I know nought, but I daresay he comes from a jolly bad stock."

"Natural history books," said Allan, "don't speak of their being so very numerous."

"Natural history books!" reiterated Silas, with some warmth of disdain.

"What do they know? what can they teach a man? Write a complete history of all the creatures that move about on G.o.d's fair earth, that fly in His air or swim in His sea, and you'd fill Saint Paul's with books from top to bottom--from the mighty cellars beneath to the golden cross itself. No, take my advice, boy Rory; if you want to study nature, put little faith in books. The cla.s.sification is handy, say you? Yes, doctor; and I've seen a stripling fresh from college look as proud as a two-year-old peac.o.c.k because he could spin you off the Greek names of a few specimens in the British Museum, though he couldn't have told you the ways and habits of any one of them to save him from having his leave stopped. There is only one way, gentlemen, to study natural history; you must go to the great book of Nature itself--ay, and be content, and thankful, too, if, during even a long lifetime, you are able to learn the contents of even a single page of it."

Rory, and the doctor, too, looked at Silas with a kind of new-born admiration; there was more in this man, with his weather-beaten, flower-pot-coloured face, than they had had any idea of.

"If I had time, gentlemen," Silas added, "I could tell you some queer stories about sharks. 'I reckon,' as poor old Cobb used to say, that some o' them would raise your hair a bit, too!"

"And what kind of a monster is this Greenland shark?" asked Allan.

"No more a monster," said Silas, "than I am. G.o.d made us both, and we have each some end to fulfil in life. But if you want me to tell you something about him, I'll confess to you I love the animal about as much as I do an alligator. He comes prowling around the icebergs when we are sealing to see what he can pick up in the shape of a dead or wounded seal, a chunk o' blubber, or a man's leg. He is neither dainty nor particular, he has the appet.i.te of a healthy ostrich, and about as much conscience as a coal-carter's horse. He is as wary as a five-season fox, and when he pays your s.h.i.+p a visit when out at sea, he looks as humble and unsophisticated as a bull trout. He'll take whatever you like to throw him, though--anything, in fact, from a cow's-heel to the cabin boy--and he'll swallow a red-hot brick rather than go away with an empty stomach. But when he comes around the ice at old-sealing time he doesn't come alone, he brings his father and mother with him, and his uncles and aunts, and apparently all his natural family, as the doctor calls it. And fine fun they have, though they don't agree particularly well even _en famille_. I've seen five of them on to one seal crang, and there was little interchange of courtesies, I can tell you. He's not a brave fish, the Greenland shark, big and all as he is. If you fall into the water among a score of them your best plan is to keep cool and kick. Yes, gentlemen, by keeping cool and kicking plenty I've known more than one man escape without a bite. The getting out is the worst, though, for as long as you splash they keep at a distance and look on; they don't quite know what to make of you; but as soon as you get a hold of the end of the rope, and are being drawn out, look sharp, that's all, or it will be 'Snap!' and you will be minus one leg before you can wink, and thankful you may be it isn't two. A mighty tough skin has the Greenland shark," continued Silas; "I've played upon the back of one for over half an hour with a Colt's revolver, and it just seemed to tickle him--nothing more. I don't think sharks have much natural affection, and they are no respecters of persons. I do believe they would just as soon dine off little Freezing Powders here as they would off a leg of McBain."

"Oh, oh, Ma.s.sa Silas!" cried Freezing Powders, "don't talk like dat; you makes my flesh all creep like nuffin' at all!"

"They are slow in their movements, aren't they?" said the doctor.

"Ay!" said Silas, "when they get everything their own way; but they are fierce, revengeful, and terrible in their wrath. An angry shark will bite a bit out of your boat, collar an oar, or do anything to spite you, though it generally ends in his having his own head split in the long run."

[Silas Grig's description of the Greenland shark is a pretty correct one, so far as my own experience goes.--G.S.]

"The men are all ready, sir," said Stevenson, entering the cabin at that moment, "to go over the side, sir."

"Thank you," said the captain; "send them on to the ice, then, for a general skylark till we come up."

When the officers did come up they found all the men on the ice, and a pretty row they were having. They were running, racing, jumping high leap and low leap, boxing, and fencing with single-sticks, quarter-staves, and foils; and last but not least, a party were dancing the wild and exciting reels of Scotland, with Peter playing to them just as loudly as he knew how to, although his eyes seemed starting from his head, and his face was as red as a dorking's comb in laying season.

Then it was "Hurrah for the ice-hole!" and "Hurrah for the sharks!"

Silas did not take very long to get his party--his fis.h.i.+ng-party, as he called it--into working order. He evidently meant business, and expected it, too. He had seven or eight long lines, to each of which was attached a piece of chain and an immense shark-hook. These were baited with pieces of blubber; the men were armed with long knives and clubs. So sure was Silas Grig of capturing a big haul of these sea-fiends, the Greenland sharks, that he had a large fire of wood lighted on the ice at some little distance, and over it, suspended by a kind of shears, hung an immense cauldron. In this it was intended to boil the livers of the sharks in order to extract the oil, which is the most valuable part of the animal.

Until tempted by huge pieces of seal-flesh hardly a shark showed fin; but when once their appet.i.tes were wetted then--!

I cannot, nor will I attempt to describe this battle with the sharks, although such a fight I have been eyewitness to. Sometimes as many as two were hauled out at once; it required the united strength of fifteen or twenty men to land them. Then came the struggle on the ice, the clubbing, the axing, and the death, during which many a man bit the snow, though none were grievously wounded. Before the sun pointed to midnight, between thirty and forty immense sharks had been captured, and the oil from their livers weighed nearly a ton.

Poor Rory--to whom all the best of the fun and all the worst misfortunes seemed always to fall--had a terrible adventure during the battle.

Carried away by his enthusiasm, with club in hand, he was engaging one of the largest sharks landed. The brute bent himself suddenly, then as suddenly straightened himself out, and away went boy Rory, like an arrow from a cross-bow, alighting in the very centre of the pool. For a moment every one was struck dumb with horror!

But Rory himself never lost his presence of mind. He remembered what Silas had said about splas.h.i.+ng and kicking to keep the sharks at bay.

Splash? I should think he did splash, and kick, too; indeed, kicking is hardly any name for his antics. He made a wheel of himself in the water. He seemed all arms and legs, and as for his head, it was just as often up as down, and _vice versa_; and all the while he was issuing orders to those on the bank--a word or two at a time, whenever his head happened to be uppermost, so that in the midst of the splas.h.i.+ng and spluttering his speech ran like this:

"Stand by"--(splutter, splutter)--"you fellows"--(splash, splash)--"up there"--(splutter) "to pull quick"--(splash)--"as soon as!"--(splutter, splutter)--"catch the rope."--(splash, splash)--"Now lads, now!"--(splutter, splutter, splash, splash, splutter, splutter, splash).

"Hurrah!" he cried, when he found himself on the ice. "Hurrah! boys.

Cheer, boys, cheer. Safe to bank! Hurrah! and both my legs as sound as a bell, and never a toe missing from any single one of the two o' them.

Hurrah! Sure it's myself'll be Queen o' the May to-morrow. Hurrah!"

Yes, reader, the very next day was May-day, and on that day there are such doings on Greenland s.h.i.+ps as you never see in England.

CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR.

MAY-DAY IN THE ARCTIC REGIONS.

May-day! May-day in England! Surely, even to the minds of the youngest among us, these words bring some pleasant recollections.

"Ah! but," I think I hear you complain, "the May-days are not now what they were in the good old times; not the May-days we read of in books; not the May-days of merrie England. Where are the may-poles, with their circles of rosy-cheeked children dancing gleesomely around them? Where are the revels? Where are the games? Where is the little maiden persistent, who plagued her mother so lest she should forget to wake and call her early--

"'Because I'm to be Queen o' the May, mother, I'm to be Queen o' the May?'

"And echo answers, 'Where?'"

These things, maiden included, have pa.s.sed away; they have fled like the fairies before the shriek of engine and rattle of railway wheels.

But May-day in England! Why, there is some pleasure and some joy left in it even yet. Summer comes with it, or promises it will soon be on the wing. Already in the meadows the cattle wade knee-deep in dewy gra.s.s, and cull sweet cowslips and daisies. A balmier air breathes over the land; the rising sun is rosy with hope; the lark springs from his nest among the tender corn, and mounts higher to sing than he has ever done before; flowers are blooming on every brae; the mossy banks are redolent of wild thyme; roses begin to peep coyly out in the hedgerows, and b.u.t.terflies spread their wings, as a sailor spreads a sail, and go fluttering away through the gladsome suns.h.i.+ne. And yonder--why, yonder _is_ a little maiden, and a very pretty one, too, though she isn't going to be Queen o' the May. No, but she is tripping along towards the glade, where the pink-blossomed hawthorn grows, and the yellow scented furze. She is going to--

Bathe her sweet face in May-morn dew, To make her look lovely all the year through.

She glances shyly around her, hoping that no one sees her. You and I, dear reader, are far too manly to stand and stare so.

Hey! presto! and the scene is changed.

May-day! May-day in Greenland! An illimitable ocean of ice, stretching away on all sides towards every point of the compa.s.s from where those s.h.i.+ps are lying beset. It looks like some measureless wold covered with the snows of midwinter. It is early morning, though the sun s.h.i.+nes brightly in a sky of cloudless blue, and, save for the footfall of the solitary watchman who paces the deck of the _Arrandoon_, there is not a sound to be heard, the stillness everywhere is as the stillness of death. An hour or two goes slowly by, then the watchman approaches the great bell that hangs amids.h.i.+ps.

Dong-dong! dong-dong! dong-dong! dong-dong! Eight bells. The men spring up from hatch and companion-way, and soon the decks are crowded and the crew are busy enough. They have discussed their breakfast long ago, and have since been hard at work on the May-day garland, which they now proceed to hoist on high, 'twixt fore and main masts. That garland is quite a work of art, and a very gay one, too. Not a man in the s.h.i.+p that has not contributed a few ribbons to aid in decorating it. Those ribbons had been kept for this special purpose, and were the last loving gifts of sisters, wives, or sweethearts ere the vessel set sail for the sea of ice. But there is more to be done than hoisting the garland.

The s.h.i.+p has to be dressed, and when this is finished, with her flags all floating around her, she will look as beautiful as a bride on her marriage morning.

None the worse for the ducking and fright of the previous day, Rory was first up on this particular May-day, and tubbed and dressed long before either Allan or Ralph was awake.

"Get up, Ray!" cried Rory, entering his friend's cabin.

"Ray, _Ray_, Ray!"

The last "Ray" was shouted.