Chapter Twenty Five.

Chapter Twenty Five.The Dead Leviathan—The Mate of the “Trefoil” Makes a Proposal—A Rich Harvest—Christmas Cheer—Something like a Dinner.The mate of theTrefoilwas a quiet and sober-minded man, as old travellers in the Arctic regions are sometimes wont to be, but when Allan McGregor told him the story of the bears and the dead whale stranded in the frozen bay, he evinced a considerable deal of genuine excitement. He sought out the captain.“I would fain see the fish, captain.”(Greenland sailors always call a whale a “fish,” although, as must be well-known, it is a gigantic mammal.)“Well, my dear sir,” said McBain, “that is a desire that can very easily be gratified. We can start for the bay to-morrow early.”“I shall be so pleased,” said the mate.This expedition consisted of three guns—McBain himself, Allan, and the mate of theTrefoil.There were still one or two bears prowling around the spot where the dead leviathan lay, but they seemed to scent danger from afar, and made off as soon as the expedition hove in sight. Probably they remembered the events of yesterday, and cared not to renew so unequal a combat.The mate was evidently a man of business, for no sooner had they got on to the ice alongside the whale, than he proceeded to open a small parcel he carried, and to extract therefrom a pair of spiked sandals.“I’m going on board of her,” he said to McBain, with a quiet smile.Next moment, pole in hand, he was walking about on top of the dead leviathan, probing here and probing there with as much coolness as though he had been a fanner taking stock in a patch of potatoes.He smiled as he jumped on shore again.“That is what doctors would call a post-mortem examination,” said McBain, smiling too. “Now, sir, can you tell us the cause of death?”“Oh! bother the cause of death,” said the mate, laughing, as he stooped down to undo his sandals. “Do you think I came all this way to ascertain the cause of death in a dead fish? But if you really want to know, I’ll tell you. You see from the state of the ice there has been a heavy swell on here, and the ice has been knocked about anyhow; that shows there has been a gale away out at sea. Well then, the fish,”—here the mate poked his stick at the whale’s ribs in a manner that, had the monster been alive, must have tickled him immensely—“this fish, lookyou, came nearer land to avoid the broken water, and ran ashore in the dark; he hadn’t got any steam, you know, to help him to back astern, and he couldn’t hoist sail, so he had to be content to lie on his little stomach until—”“Until death relieved him of his sufferings,” put in McBain.The conversation concerning the whale was renewed after dinner that evening, the mate and Mr Stevenson having been, as was usual when anything extra was on thetapis, invited to partake of that meal.Since they left the bay the mate had been unusually silent; he had been thinking, and now his thoughts took the form of speech. He spoke slowly, and with many a pause, as one speaks who well weighs his words, toying with his coffee as he did so, and often changing the position of the cup. Indeed, it was the cup he seemed to be addressing when he did speak.“Gentlemen,” he said, “as man and boy, as harpooner, second officer, or mate, I have been back and fore to Greenland for little less than twenty years. I’ve been shipwrecked a time or two, you may easily guess, and I’ve come through many a strange danger in the wild, mysterious regions around the Pole. But it is not of these things I would now speak, it is about the last sad affair—my poor dear shipTrefoil, whose charred ribs lie deep in the Arctic Ocean. Oh, gentlemen! oh, men! that was a sad blow to me. Had we been a full ship we would have been home ere now, and I would have been wedded to one of the sweetest girls in all England. Now she is mourning for me as for one dead. But blessed be our great Protector that sent theSnowbirdto our assistance in our dire extremity! Where, now, would we—the survivors of theTrefoil—have been else? Our fate would have been more terrible, than the fate of those that went down in that doomed ship.“I can assure you, my dear friends,” he continued, “I have felt very grateful, and have longed for some way of showing that gratitude. I can never prove it sufficiently. But I have a suggestion to make.”“Well, we are willing to hear it,” said McBain; “but really, sir, you owe us no gratitude, we only did our duty.”“That ‘fish,’” said the mate—“what do you reckon its value to be?”“I know,” said McBain, smiling, “that if we could tow it along to London it would fetch a long price; but if we could tow an iceberg there about ten millions of people would come to see it?”“How romantic that would be?” said Rory; “and fancy the Union Jack floating proudly from the top of it!”“Charge them a shilling a head,” said Allan, “and land 500,000 pounds!”“And spoil the romance!” said our boy-bard.“Oh, bother the romance!” said Ralph, “think of the cash!”“Well, but,” said McBain, laughing, “we can no more tow the whale than we can the iceberg.”“That fish,” said the mate, “myself and my men can flensh, cut up, and refine. The produce will be worth three thousand pounds in the English market; and beside, it will be work for the men for the winter months.”“But you and your men must accept a share,” said McBain.“If,” replied the mate of theTrefoil, “you but hint at such a thing again, that fish may lie there till doomsday. No, captain, it is but a poor way of showing our gratitude.”Once convinced of the feasibility of the mate’s proposal, McBain lost no time in setting about carrying the plan into execution. It would be a sin, he argued, to leave so much wealth to waste, when they had ample room for carrying it. Even romantic Rory came to the same conclusion at last.“Had it been base blubber now,” he said, “you’d have had to excuse me, Captain McBain, from sailing in the same ship with it I’d have asked you to have built me a cot in these beautiful wilds, and here I’d have stopped, sketching and shooting, until you returned with a clean ship to take me back to bonnie Scotland. But refined oil, sweet and pure,—indeed I agree with you, it would be a sin entirely to leave it to the bears.”A busy time now ensued for the officers and men of theSnowbird; they had to be up early and to work late. Nor was the work free from hardship. Had the bay where lay the monster leviathan—which the mate of theTrefoilaverred was one of the largest “fishes” he had ever seen—lain anywhere near them, the task would have been mere play to what it was. First and foremost, sledges had to be built—large, light, but useful sledges. The building of these occupied many days, but they were finished at last, and then the working party started on its long journey to Bear Point, as our heroes had named the place—Bear Point and Good Luck Bay.As during the flenshing and the landing of the cakes of blubber, the men would have to remain all night near their work, every precaution was taken to protect them from cold in the camping-ground. Rory, Allan, and Ralph must needs make three of the party, with Seth to guide them in the woods, where they meant to spend the short day shooting.By good fortune, the weather all the time remained settled and beautiful, and the four guns managed easily enough to keep the camp well supplied with game of various kinds. The cold at night time, however, was intense, and the roaring fires kept up in the hastily-constructed huts, could scarcely keep the men warm. This was the only time during the whole cruise of theSnowbirdthat McBain deemed it necessary to serve out to his men a rum ration. The time at which it was partaken may seem to some of my readers an odd one, but it was, nevertheless, rational, and it was suggested by the men in camp themselves. It was served at night, just at that hour when Arctic cold becomes almost insupportable. They did not require it by day, they could have hot coffee whenever they cared to partake of it, but at half-past two in the morning all hands seemed to awake suddenly. This was the coldest time, and the fires, too, had died low, and the men’s spirits, like the thermometer, were below zero. But when more logs were heaped upon the fires, and the coffee urn heated, and the ration mixed with a smoking bowl of it and handed round, then the life-blood seemed to return to their hearts, and re-wrapping themselves in their skins, they dropped off to sleep, and by seven o’clock were once more astir.Several days were spent in the work of landing the treasure-trove, then the tedious and toilsome labour of conveying it to theSnowbirdcommenced. There was in all nearly thirty tons of it to be dragged in the sledges over a rough and difficult country, yet at last this was safely accomplished, and the mate of theTrefoilhad the satisfaction of seeing it stored in one immense bin, where it could await the process of boiling down and refining, previously to being conveyed into the tanks of the yacht.“I feel happier now,” said Mr Hill, as he quietly contemplated the result of their labours. “It is a goodly pile, thirty tons there if there is an ounce; it will take us two good months’ hard work to refine it.”“Meanwhile,” said McBain, “we must not forget one thing.”“What is that?” said Mr Hill.“Why,” replied the captain, “that to-morrow is Christmas. You must rest from your labours for a few days at least, there is plenty of time before us. It will be well on to the middle of May ere the ice lifts sufficiently to permit us to bear up for the east once more.”“Well,” said the mate, “the truth is, I had forgotten the season was so far advanced.”“You have been thinking about nothing but your ‘fish,’” said McBain, laughing.“I have been full of that fish,” replied the mate; “full of it, and that is a curious way to speak. Why, that fish is a fortune in itself. And I do think, captain, it is a sad thing to go home in a half-empty ship.”“Ah!” McBain added, “thanks to you, and thanks to our own good guns, we won’t do that.”“Talking about fortunes,” said Allan, who had just come on deck, “we ought to have a small fortune in skins alone.”“In fur and feather,” said Rory.“There is more of that to come,” quoth McBain. “As soon as the days begin to lengthen out we will have some glorious hunting expeditions, and the animals our good Seth will lead us against, are never in better condition than they are during the early spring months.”Christmas Day came. McBain resolved it should be spent as much as possible in the same way as if they were at home. There was service in the morning on shore in the hall. Was there one soul in that rough log hut, who did not feel gratitude to Him who had brought them through so many dangers? I do not think there was.After service preparations for dinner were commenced. It was to be a banquet. There was to be no sitting below the salt at this meal; all should be welcome, all should be equal. I am afraid my powers of description would utterly fail me if I attempted to give the reader an idea of the decorations of the new hall. Almost every lamp in theSnowbirdwas pressed into the service. The hall was a galaxy of light then, it was a galaxy of evergreens too, and everywhere on the walls were hung trophies of the chase, and the part of the room in which the table stood was bedded with skins. But how Peter, the steward, managed to get the tablecloth up to such a pitch of snowy whiteness, or how he succeeded in getting the crystal to sparkle and the silver to shine in the marvellous manner they did, is more than I can tell you. And if you asked me to describe the viands, or the glorious juiciness of the giant joints, or the supreme immensity of the lofty pudding, I should simply beg to be excused. Why that pudding took two men to carry it in and to place it on the table, and when it was there it quite hid the smiling face of Captain McBain, whose duty it was to confront it. If you had been sitting at the other end of the table you couldn’t have seen him. Ah! but McBain was quite equal to the occasion, and I can assure you that the hearty way he attacked that pudding soon brought him into view again.Well, everybody seemed, and I’m surefelt, as happy as happy could be. Old man Magnus looked twenty years younger, old Ap’s face was wreathed in smiles, and Seth looked as bright as the silver. I can’t say more. Rory was in fine form, his merry sallies kept the table in roars, his droll sayings were side-splitting; and Ralph and Allan kept him at it, you may be sure. Yes, that was something like a dinner. And after the more serious part of the business was over, mirth and music became the order of the evening; songs were sung and stories told, songs that brought them back once more in heart and mind to old Scotland, where they knew that at that very time round many a fireside dear friends were thinking of them and wondering how they fared.

The mate of theTrefoilwas a quiet and sober-minded man, as old travellers in the Arctic regions are sometimes wont to be, but when Allan McGregor told him the story of the bears and the dead whale stranded in the frozen bay, he evinced a considerable deal of genuine excitement. He sought out the captain.

“I would fain see the fish, captain.”

(Greenland sailors always call a whale a “fish,” although, as must be well-known, it is a gigantic mammal.)

“Well, my dear sir,” said McBain, “that is a desire that can very easily be gratified. We can start for the bay to-morrow early.”

“I shall be so pleased,” said the mate.

This expedition consisted of three guns—McBain himself, Allan, and the mate of theTrefoil.

There were still one or two bears prowling around the spot where the dead leviathan lay, but they seemed to scent danger from afar, and made off as soon as the expedition hove in sight. Probably they remembered the events of yesterday, and cared not to renew so unequal a combat.

The mate was evidently a man of business, for no sooner had they got on to the ice alongside the whale, than he proceeded to open a small parcel he carried, and to extract therefrom a pair of spiked sandals.

“I’m going on board of her,” he said to McBain, with a quiet smile.

Next moment, pole in hand, he was walking about on top of the dead leviathan, probing here and probing there with as much coolness as though he had been a fanner taking stock in a patch of potatoes.

He smiled as he jumped on shore again.

“That is what doctors would call a post-mortem examination,” said McBain, smiling too. “Now, sir, can you tell us the cause of death?”

“Oh! bother the cause of death,” said the mate, laughing, as he stooped down to undo his sandals. “Do you think I came all this way to ascertain the cause of death in a dead fish? But if you really want to know, I’ll tell you. You see from the state of the ice there has been a heavy swell on here, and the ice has been knocked about anyhow; that shows there has been a gale away out at sea. Well then, the fish,”—here the mate poked his stick at the whale’s ribs in a manner that, had the monster been alive, must have tickled him immensely—“this fish, lookyou, came nearer land to avoid the broken water, and ran ashore in the dark; he hadn’t got any steam, you know, to help him to back astern, and he couldn’t hoist sail, so he had to be content to lie on his little stomach until—”

“Until death relieved him of his sufferings,” put in McBain.

The conversation concerning the whale was renewed after dinner that evening, the mate and Mr Stevenson having been, as was usual when anything extra was on thetapis, invited to partake of that meal.

Since they left the bay the mate had been unusually silent; he had been thinking, and now his thoughts took the form of speech. He spoke slowly, and with many a pause, as one speaks who well weighs his words, toying with his coffee as he did so, and often changing the position of the cup. Indeed, it was the cup he seemed to be addressing when he did speak.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “as man and boy, as harpooner, second officer, or mate, I have been back and fore to Greenland for little less than twenty years. I’ve been shipwrecked a time or two, you may easily guess, and I’ve come through many a strange danger in the wild, mysterious regions around the Pole. But it is not of these things I would now speak, it is about the last sad affair—my poor dear shipTrefoil, whose charred ribs lie deep in the Arctic Ocean. Oh, gentlemen! oh, men! that was a sad blow to me. Had we been a full ship we would have been home ere now, and I would have been wedded to one of the sweetest girls in all England. Now she is mourning for me as for one dead. But blessed be our great Protector that sent theSnowbirdto our assistance in our dire extremity! Where, now, would we—the survivors of theTrefoil—have been else? Our fate would have been more terrible, than the fate of those that went down in that doomed ship.

“I can assure you, my dear friends,” he continued, “I have felt very grateful, and have longed for some way of showing that gratitude. I can never prove it sufficiently. But I have a suggestion to make.”

“Well, we are willing to hear it,” said McBain; “but really, sir, you owe us no gratitude, we only did our duty.”

“That ‘fish,’” said the mate—“what do you reckon its value to be?”

“I know,” said McBain, smiling, “that if we could tow it along to London it would fetch a long price; but if we could tow an iceberg there about ten millions of people would come to see it?”

“How romantic that would be?” said Rory; “and fancy the Union Jack floating proudly from the top of it!”

“Charge them a shilling a head,” said Allan, “and land 500,000 pounds!”

“And spoil the romance!” said our boy-bard.

“Oh, bother the romance!” said Ralph, “think of the cash!”

“Well, but,” said McBain, laughing, “we can no more tow the whale than we can the iceberg.”

“That fish,” said the mate, “myself and my men can flensh, cut up, and refine. The produce will be worth three thousand pounds in the English market; and beside, it will be work for the men for the winter months.”

“But you and your men must accept a share,” said McBain.

“If,” replied the mate of theTrefoil, “you but hint at such a thing again, that fish may lie there till doomsday. No, captain, it is but a poor way of showing our gratitude.”

Once convinced of the feasibility of the mate’s proposal, McBain lost no time in setting about carrying the plan into execution. It would be a sin, he argued, to leave so much wealth to waste, when they had ample room for carrying it. Even romantic Rory came to the same conclusion at last.

“Had it been base blubber now,” he said, “you’d have had to excuse me, Captain McBain, from sailing in the same ship with it I’d have asked you to have built me a cot in these beautiful wilds, and here I’d have stopped, sketching and shooting, until you returned with a clean ship to take me back to bonnie Scotland. But refined oil, sweet and pure,—indeed I agree with you, it would be a sin entirely to leave it to the bears.”

A busy time now ensued for the officers and men of theSnowbird; they had to be up early and to work late. Nor was the work free from hardship. Had the bay where lay the monster leviathan—which the mate of theTrefoilaverred was one of the largest “fishes” he had ever seen—lain anywhere near them, the task would have been mere play to what it was. First and foremost, sledges had to be built—large, light, but useful sledges. The building of these occupied many days, but they were finished at last, and then the working party started on its long journey to Bear Point, as our heroes had named the place—Bear Point and Good Luck Bay.

As during the flenshing and the landing of the cakes of blubber, the men would have to remain all night near their work, every precaution was taken to protect them from cold in the camping-ground. Rory, Allan, and Ralph must needs make three of the party, with Seth to guide them in the woods, where they meant to spend the short day shooting.

By good fortune, the weather all the time remained settled and beautiful, and the four guns managed easily enough to keep the camp well supplied with game of various kinds. The cold at night time, however, was intense, and the roaring fires kept up in the hastily-constructed huts, could scarcely keep the men warm. This was the only time during the whole cruise of theSnowbirdthat McBain deemed it necessary to serve out to his men a rum ration. The time at which it was partaken may seem to some of my readers an odd one, but it was, nevertheless, rational, and it was suggested by the men in camp themselves. It was served at night, just at that hour when Arctic cold becomes almost insupportable. They did not require it by day, they could have hot coffee whenever they cared to partake of it, but at half-past two in the morning all hands seemed to awake suddenly. This was the coldest time, and the fires, too, had died low, and the men’s spirits, like the thermometer, were below zero. But when more logs were heaped upon the fires, and the coffee urn heated, and the ration mixed with a smoking bowl of it and handed round, then the life-blood seemed to return to their hearts, and re-wrapping themselves in their skins, they dropped off to sleep, and by seven o’clock were once more astir.

Several days were spent in the work of landing the treasure-trove, then the tedious and toilsome labour of conveying it to theSnowbirdcommenced. There was in all nearly thirty tons of it to be dragged in the sledges over a rough and difficult country, yet at last this was safely accomplished, and the mate of theTrefoilhad the satisfaction of seeing it stored in one immense bin, where it could await the process of boiling down and refining, previously to being conveyed into the tanks of the yacht.

“I feel happier now,” said Mr Hill, as he quietly contemplated the result of their labours. “It is a goodly pile, thirty tons there if there is an ounce; it will take us two good months’ hard work to refine it.”

“Meanwhile,” said McBain, “we must not forget one thing.”

“What is that?” said Mr Hill.

“Why,” replied the captain, “that to-morrow is Christmas. You must rest from your labours for a few days at least, there is plenty of time before us. It will be well on to the middle of May ere the ice lifts sufficiently to permit us to bear up for the east once more.”

“Well,” said the mate, “the truth is, I had forgotten the season was so far advanced.”

“You have been thinking about nothing but your ‘fish,’” said McBain, laughing.

“I have been full of that fish,” replied the mate; “full of it, and that is a curious way to speak. Why, that fish is a fortune in itself. And I do think, captain, it is a sad thing to go home in a half-empty ship.”

“Ah!” McBain added, “thanks to you, and thanks to our own good guns, we won’t do that.”

“Talking about fortunes,” said Allan, who had just come on deck, “we ought to have a small fortune in skins alone.”

“In fur and feather,” said Rory.

“There is more of that to come,” quoth McBain. “As soon as the days begin to lengthen out we will have some glorious hunting expeditions, and the animals our good Seth will lead us against, are never in better condition than they are during the early spring months.”

Christmas Day came. McBain resolved it should be spent as much as possible in the same way as if they were at home. There was service in the morning on shore in the hall. Was there one soul in that rough log hut, who did not feel gratitude to Him who had brought them through so many dangers? I do not think there was.

After service preparations for dinner were commenced. It was to be a banquet. There was to be no sitting below the salt at this meal; all should be welcome, all should be equal. I am afraid my powers of description would utterly fail me if I attempted to give the reader an idea of the decorations of the new hall. Almost every lamp in theSnowbirdwas pressed into the service. The hall was a galaxy of light then, it was a galaxy of evergreens too, and everywhere on the walls were hung trophies of the chase, and the part of the room in which the table stood was bedded with skins. But how Peter, the steward, managed to get the tablecloth up to such a pitch of snowy whiteness, or how he succeeded in getting the crystal to sparkle and the silver to shine in the marvellous manner they did, is more than I can tell you. And if you asked me to describe the viands, or the glorious juiciness of the giant joints, or the supreme immensity of the lofty pudding, I should simply beg to be excused. Why that pudding took two men to carry it in and to place it on the table, and when it was there it quite hid the smiling face of Captain McBain, whose duty it was to confront it. If you had been sitting at the other end of the table you couldn’t have seen him. Ah! but McBain was quite equal to the occasion, and I can assure you that the hearty way he attacked that pudding soon brought him into view again.

Well, everybody seemed, and I’m surefelt, as happy as happy could be. Old man Magnus looked twenty years younger, old Ap’s face was wreathed in smiles, and Seth looked as bright as the silver. I can’t say more. Rory was in fine form, his merry sallies kept the table in roars, his droll sayings were side-splitting; and Ralph and Allan kept him at it, you may be sure. Yes, that was something like a dinner. And after the more serious part of the business was over, mirth and music became the order of the evening; songs were sung and stories told, songs that brought them back once more in heart and mind to old Scotland, where they knew that at that very time round many a fireside dear friends were thinking of them and wondering how they fared.

Chapter Twenty Six.Hockey with Snow-Shoes on—The Ice Breaks up—Change of Quarters—Going on a Big Shoot—The Great Snow Lake—Indians—The Fight in the Forest.Winter wore away. Did our people in theSnowbirdthink it long and dreary? They certainly did not. To begin with, every one on board was as healthy as a summer’s day is long. It was mindful and provident of McBain to have laid in a good supply of medicines, and these were about the only stores in the ship that had never been as yet applied to.The captain was a good and a wise disciplinarian, however. He well knew the value of exercise in keeping illness far away, so he kept his men at work. On dry days they would be sent in parties to the forest, to cut down and drag home wood to keep up roaring fires in the ship and in the hall as well. When snow was falling, which was less often than might be imagined, he had them under cover in the hall, where there was room enough for games of many kinds, and these were varied by regular exercise with clubs in lieu of dumb-bells. In open weather games were not forgotten out of doors, you may be quite sure. Rory proposed lawn tennis.“We could easily get it up, you know,” he said.“Nothing would be more simple,” was McBain’s reply, “but it is far too slow with the thermometer at zero. There isn’t chase enough in it.”“I have it,” cried Allan, joyously.“What?” asked Rory, eagerly.“Why,hockey, to be sure; what we in Scotland call shinty, or shinny.”“It is shinny enough at times,” added McBain, laughing; “but how would you set about it? You’d need a large ball, a small one would get lost in the snow.”“Yes,” said Allan, “a large cork ball as big as a football, covered with laced twine. Ap can make the balls, I know.”“And we can go off to the woods and cut our hockey sticks,” said Rory; “it will be capital fun.”There was no mistake about it, it was capital fun, Hockey is at all times a glorious game, but hockey on the snow with snow-shoes on! Why it beggars description. No wonder all hands entered into it with a will. The amusement and excitement were intense, the fun and the frolic immense, the tumbling and the scrimmaging and scrambling were something to see, and having seen, to go to sleep and dream about and awake laughing, and long to go to sleep and dream about it all over again. The game ended at the goal in a madmêlée, a medley of laughter and shouting, a mixture of legs in the air, arms in the air, snow-shoes and hockey clubs in the air, and heads and bodies anywhere. No wonder the short winter’s day wore to a close before they knew where they were. No wonder that at the end of the games Allan McGregor, the inventor, was dubbed the hero of the day, that he was cheered until the welkin rang, that he was mounted shoulder high, and borne triumphantly back to theSnowbird, Rory marching on in front with brandished hockey club, leading a chorus which he had composedonthe spot andforthe occasion.But it must not be supposed that their life was all play; no, for independent of long hours spent in the forest in quest of game, Rory, Ralph, and Allan set themselves with a will to clean, dress, and arrange the many hundreds of beautiful and valuable skins they had possessed themselves of. This was a labour of love. These skins were part of the cargo with which they hoped to reach their native land once more in safety. Some of the smallest and prettiest of them Rory took extra pains with, and when he had got them as soft and pliable as silk, he perfumed them and stowed them in the big box Ap had made for him, and where his sketch-book—well-filled by this time—lay, and a host of curious nameless pebbles and crystals, polished horns, strange moths, butterflies and beetles, beautifully-stuffed birds and rare eggs. It was a splendid collection, and Rory’s eyes used to sparkle as he gazed upon them, and thought of the time when in the old castle he would show all these things to Helen McGregor and her mother.“Just look at him,” Ralph would say at times like these; “he hasn’t got the pack-merchant idea out of his head yet.”Winter wore away. It was nearly three months since they had all sat down together to their Christmas dinner in the hall. The mate of theTrefoil, and the men more immediately under his command, hadn’t been idle all this time. They had been busy refining the oil, and a grand lot they made of it, and it was now carefully stowed away in theSnowbird’stanks. The mate had not been disappointed in the size of his fish, it had turned out even better than he expected, and would greatly add to the wealth of the cargo of the lucky yacht. The water had to be pumped from the tanks to make room for it, but that was no loss, for fresh-water ice was procurable in any quantity. It lay on the decks of theSnowbirdabaft the foremast in gigantic pieces, and a very pretty sight it looked when the sun shone on it.Fresh food and game of various kinds were now to be had in abundance. Ay, and fish as well. Old Seth still continued to act as fisherman. He caught them in that mysterious pool, which all the winter long had never shown a single sign of freezing.When all was quiet of a night, probably in the moonlight or under the light from the splendid aurora, our heroes used to take a walk sometimes towards the strange pool. They took their guns with them, but only to protect themselves from prowling bears. Awful-looking heads used to appear over the surface of the pool. In daylight these creatures never showed—only when all was still at night. What they were they could not tell; nor can I. Probably they were merely gigantic specimens of bearded seals or sea-lions come up to breathe, and looked larger and more dreadful in the uncertain light of moon or aurora.Many though our heroes’ adventures were, and thoroughly though they enjoyed themselves, when the days began to get longer, when the snow began to melt, and whistling winds blew softer through the forest trees, and everything told them spring was on ahead, the thoughts that ere long theSnowbirdwould burst her icy bounds, that they would be once more free, once more at sea, were very far from unpleasant to them.On days now when there was but little frost in the air, and a breeze of wind with sunlight, theSnowbird’ssails would be unstowed, bent, and partially unfurled, to air them. Even this made the saucy yacht look quite coquettish again. “Ho! ho!” she seemed to say to herself, “so thereisa possibility, is there, that some of these days I may once more sport my beauty in waters blue? Oh! then, blow, breezes, blow, and melt the ice and snow, for indeed I’m heartily tired of it.”It would almost seem that the country around where theSnowbirdlay was chosen as a winter residencepar excellencefor the great Polar bear. Perhaps the winter in the faraway and desolate regions around the Pole is too rigorous for even his constitution; be this as it may, here they were by the score, and all in all, well-nigh a hundred fleeces were bagged in little over two months.These snow-bears got more chary at last, however, and when the March winds blew they entirely disappeared.One day the beginning of the end of the ice came; a wind blew strong from the east, and by noon all the bay behind the yacht was one heaving mass of snow-clad pieces. It was well for theSnowbirdshe was sturdy and strong; the grinding bergs, small though they were, tried her stability to the utmost, but the wind went down and the swell ceased; yet fearing a repetition of the rough treatment, McBain determined to seek a less exposed position farther to the west. The ice was now loose, so as soon as there was enough wind to fill her sails progress was commenced. It was slow hard work, but by dint of great exertion and no little skill, aportus salutiswas found at last fifty miles farther west, and here the captain determined to rest until the spring was more advanced, and there was a likelihood of getting safely out to sea:The region in which they now found themselves was even more romantic and wild than that which they had left. There was still room for more skins in theSnowbird, so a big shoot was organised—quite a big shoot in fact, for it would probably be the last they would enjoy in this strange country.The season was now sufficiently mild to render camping out to such weather-beaten wanderers as the people of theSnowbirdpracticable, not to say enjoyable. So everything being got in readiness, the start was made for up country, McBain himself taking charge of the expedition, which mustered twenty men in all, ten or more of whom carried rifles, but every one of whom was well armed. The principal tent was taken, and the largest camping-kettle, a wonderfulmultum-in-parvo, that Seth described as “a kind of invention that went by spirits-o’-wine, and was warranted to cook for fifty hands, and wash up the crockery arterwards.”Rory did not forget his sketch-book, nor his wonderful boat, which one man could carry—not in his waistcoat pocket, as Rory banteringly averred, but on his back, and three men could row in.They followed a gorge or canon, which led them gradually upwards and inland. I call it “gorge,” because I cannot call it glen or valley. The bottom of it was in width pretty uniformly about the eighth part of a mile, almost level, though covered with boulders and scanty scrub, which rendered walking difficult. At each side rose, towering skywards, black, wet, beetling cliffs, so perpendicular that not even a shrub, nor grass itself, could find roothold on them, but on the top tall weird pine-trees fringed the cliffs all along, and as they ascended, this Titanic cutting so wound in and out, that on looking either back or away ahead, nothing could be seen but the bare pine-fringed wall of rocks.Seth laughed.“You never seed such a place before, I reckon,” he said, “but I have; many’s the one. You ain’t likely to lose your way in a place like this, anyhow.”It was almost nightfall ere the cliffs began to get lower and lower at each side of them, and soon after they cleared the gorge, and came out upon a broad buffalo-grass prairie, which must have been over a thousand feet above the level of the sea.And not far from the head of the gorge, near a clump of spruce firs, the tent was pitched and the camp fire built, and Seth set about preparing a wonderfully savoury stew. Seth’s dinners always had the effect of putting the partakers thereof on the best of terms with themselves. After dinner you did not want to do much more that evening, but, well wrapped in your furs, recline around the log fire, listen to stories and sing songs, till sleep began to take your senses away, and then you did not know a whit more until next morning, when you sprang from your couch as fresh as a mountain trout.If they had meant this expedition for a big shoot they were not disappointed. The country all around was everything a sportsman could wish. There was hill and dale, woodland, jungle, and plain, and there was beauty in the landscape, too, and, far away over the green and distant forest rose the grand old hills, raising their snowy heads skywards, crag over crag and peak over peak, as far as eye could reach.A week flew by, a fortnight passed, and the pile of skins got bigger and bigger. They only now shot the more valuable furs, but skin of bear, nor deer, nor lordly elk, was to be despised, while the smaller game were killed for food.Another week and it would be time to be returning, for spring comes all at once in the latitudes they were now in. There was still a portion of the country unexplored. Rory, from a hill-top, had caught sight of a distant lake, and was fired with the ambition to launch his fairy boat on its waters. On the very morning that Seth, Rory, and Allan set out to seek for this lake, with two of the brawniest hands of the crew to bear the boat, McBain came a little way with them.“Take care of the boys, Seth,” he said, with a strange, melancholy smile playing over his face. “I had a queer dream last night. Be back to-morrow, mind, before nightfall.” The little party had their compasses, and therefore struck a bee-line through the forest in the direction in which they fancied the lake lay. On and on they went for miles upon miles, and at last reached the banks of a broad river, and here they encamped for lunch. Feeling refreshed, and hearing the roar of a cataract, apparently some way down the stream, they took their road along the banks to view it. They had not gone very far when they stood, thunderstruck, by the brink of a tremendous subterranean cavern. Thence came the roar of the cataract. The whole river disappeared suddenly into the bowels of the earth (a phenomenon not unknown to travellers in the wilds of America).Marvelling much, they started off up-stream now, to seek for the lake.After an hour’s walking, the forest all at once receded a good mile from the river, and the banks were no longer green, but banks of boulders mixed with silver sand and patches of snow. Here and there a bridge of solid snow spanned the river to great banks and hills of snow on the other side. As they climbed higher and higher, the river by their right met them with nearly all the speed of a cataract. But they can see the top of the hill at last, and yonder is the half-yellow, half-transparent stream leaping downwards as if over a weir.And now they are up and the mystery is solved; the river is bursting over the lip of a great lake, which stretches out before them for many miles—forest on one side, hills beyond, and on the right a gigantic ridge of snow. They call the lake the Great Snow Lake.They took their way to the left along its banks, going on through the woods that grew on its brink, until they came at last to an open glade, green and moss-covered. Here they encamped for rest, and soon after embarked on the strange lake, leaving the men to look after the preparation of dinner against the time of their return.Rory was charmed with his boat; he sat in the bows sketching. Allan rowed, and Seth was busy fishing—no,tryingto fish; but he soon gave up the attempt in despair, and almost at the same time Rory closed his sketch-book. Silence, and a strange indefinable gloom, seemed to settle down on the three. But there is silence everywhere around. Not a ripple is on the leaden lake, not a breath sighs through the forest. But, hark! a sullen plash in the water just round the point, and soon another and another.“There is some water-monster bathing round yonder,” said Rory; “and indeed I believe it’s the land of enchantment we’re in altogether.”They rounded the point, and found themselves in a bay surrounded by high banks of sand and gravel, portions of the sides of which, loosened by the thaw, were every now and then falling with a melancholy boom into the deep black water beneath. Sad, and more silent than ever, with a gloom on their hearts which they could not account for, they rowed away back to the spot where they had left their men.There was no smoke to welcome them, and when they pushed aside the branches and rushed into the open, their hearts seemed to stand still with dread at the sight that met their eyes. Only the embers of a smouldering fire, and near it and beside it the two poor fellows they had left happy and well—dead andscalped!They say that some of the Highlanders of Scotland possess the strange gift, second sight. I know not, but McBain began to feel uneasy the very moment his party had gone, and as the day wore on he became more so.“Ralph, boy,” he said at last, “let us break up camp at once and follow the boys.”“I’m ready now!” cried Ralph, alarmed at his captain’s manner.A meal was hastily served out, and in ten minutes more the start was commenced.The men marched in silence, partaking in a measure of the gloom of their leader. There was no thought of shooting the game that crossed their pathway. But the trail was easy. They reached the Great Snow Lake, and bore round to the right, and soon entered the dark forest. Here in the gloom the trail was more difficult to follow, and they soon lost it. While they were waiting and doubting, the stillness of the forest was broken by a yell, that not only startled the listeners, but chilled them to the very marrow. Again and again it was repeated, mingled with shouting and the sharp ring of rifles. It was a dread sound; it was as—“Though men fought upon the earth,And fiends in upper air.”“On, men, on!” cried McBain; “our boys are yonder; they are being foully massacred!”As he spoke he dashed forward in the direction whence the sound proceeded, followed by his brave fellows, and in a few minutes more had cleared the forest and gained the glade where the unequal strife was proceeding. And none too soon. Here were brave young Allan and stately Seth, their backs against a tree, defending themselves, with rifles clubbed, against a cloud of skin-clad savages armed with bows and arrows, but brandishing only spear and tomahawk.High o’er the din of the strife rang our people’s British cheer. One well-aimed volley, then McBain charged the very centre of the crowd, and blows fell and men fell like wintry rain.So quick and unexpected had been the onslaught that the savages were beaten back in less time almost than it takes me to describe it—beaten back into the forest and pursued as far as their own encampment. Here they made a stand, and the battle raged for a whole hour; but when did ever savages hold their own very long against the white man?Let us draw a curtain on the scene that followed—the rout and the pursuit, and the return to the glade where the fight commenced. Stillness once more prevailed as our people re-entered it.McBain glanced hastily and anxiously around. Where was Rory? Alas! he had not far to look. Yonder he lay, where the fight had raged the fiercest, on his back, quiet and still, with purple upturned face.It was a painful scene, and down from the sky looked the round rising moon, while daylight slowly faded into gloaming.As the giant oak is bent before the gale, so bowed was McBain in his grief. He knelt him down beside poor Rory and covered his face with his hands. “My boy! my poor boy!” was all he could say.Seth had taken but one glance at Rory’s dark swollen face and another at the rising moon. “I guess,” he muttered, “there has been pizened arrows flying around.”Then he disappeared in the forest.

Winter wore away. Did our people in theSnowbirdthink it long and dreary? They certainly did not. To begin with, every one on board was as healthy as a summer’s day is long. It was mindful and provident of McBain to have laid in a good supply of medicines, and these were about the only stores in the ship that had never been as yet applied to.

The captain was a good and a wise disciplinarian, however. He well knew the value of exercise in keeping illness far away, so he kept his men at work. On dry days they would be sent in parties to the forest, to cut down and drag home wood to keep up roaring fires in the ship and in the hall as well. When snow was falling, which was less often than might be imagined, he had them under cover in the hall, where there was room enough for games of many kinds, and these were varied by regular exercise with clubs in lieu of dumb-bells. In open weather games were not forgotten out of doors, you may be quite sure. Rory proposed lawn tennis.

“We could easily get it up, you know,” he said.

“Nothing would be more simple,” was McBain’s reply, “but it is far too slow with the thermometer at zero. There isn’t chase enough in it.”

“I have it,” cried Allan, joyously.

“What?” asked Rory, eagerly.

“Why,hockey, to be sure; what we in Scotland call shinty, or shinny.”

“It is shinny enough at times,” added McBain, laughing; “but how would you set about it? You’d need a large ball, a small one would get lost in the snow.”

“Yes,” said Allan, “a large cork ball as big as a football, covered with laced twine. Ap can make the balls, I know.”

“And we can go off to the woods and cut our hockey sticks,” said Rory; “it will be capital fun.”

There was no mistake about it, it was capital fun, Hockey is at all times a glorious game, but hockey on the snow with snow-shoes on! Why it beggars description. No wonder all hands entered into it with a will. The amusement and excitement were intense, the fun and the frolic immense, the tumbling and the scrimmaging and scrambling were something to see, and having seen, to go to sleep and dream about and awake laughing, and long to go to sleep and dream about it all over again. The game ended at the goal in a madmêlée, a medley of laughter and shouting, a mixture of legs in the air, arms in the air, snow-shoes and hockey clubs in the air, and heads and bodies anywhere. No wonder the short winter’s day wore to a close before they knew where they were. No wonder that at the end of the games Allan McGregor, the inventor, was dubbed the hero of the day, that he was cheered until the welkin rang, that he was mounted shoulder high, and borne triumphantly back to theSnowbird, Rory marching on in front with brandished hockey club, leading a chorus which he had composedonthe spot andforthe occasion.

But it must not be supposed that their life was all play; no, for independent of long hours spent in the forest in quest of game, Rory, Ralph, and Allan set themselves with a will to clean, dress, and arrange the many hundreds of beautiful and valuable skins they had possessed themselves of. This was a labour of love. These skins were part of the cargo with which they hoped to reach their native land once more in safety. Some of the smallest and prettiest of them Rory took extra pains with, and when he had got them as soft and pliable as silk, he perfumed them and stowed them in the big box Ap had made for him, and where his sketch-book—well-filled by this time—lay, and a host of curious nameless pebbles and crystals, polished horns, strange moths, butterflies and beetles, beautifully-stuffed birds and rare eggs. It was a splendid collection, and Rory’s eyes used to sparkle as he gazed upon them, and thought of the time when in the old castle he would show all these things to Helen McGregor and her mother.

“Just look at him,” Ralph would say at times like these; “he hasn’t got the pack-merchant idea out of his head yet.”

Winter wore away. It was nearly three months since they had all sat down together to their Christmas dinner in the hall. The mate of theTrefoil, and the men more immediately under his command, hadn’t been idle all this time. They had been busy refining the oil, and a grand lot they made of it, and it was now carefully stowed away in theSnowbird’stanks. The mate had not been disappointed in the size of his fish, it had turned out even better than he expected, and would greatly add to the wealth of the cargo of the lucky yacht. The water had to be pumped from the tanks to make room for it, but that was no loss, for fresh-water ice was procurable in any quantity. It lay on the decks of theSnowbirdabaft the foremast in gigantic pieces, and a very pretty sight it looked when the sun shone on it.

Fresh food and game of various kinds were now to be had in abundance. Ay, and fish as well. Old Seth still continued to act as fisherman. He caught them in that mysterious pool, which all the winter long had never shown a single sign of freezing.

When all was quiet of a night, probably in the moonlight or under the light from the splendid aurora, our heroes used to take a walk sometimes towards the strange pool. They took their guns with them, but only to protect themselves from prowling bears. Awful-looking heads used to appear over the surface of the pool. In daylight these creatures never showed—only when all was still at night. What they were they could not tell; nor can I. Probably they were merely gigantic specimens of bearded seals or sea-lions come up to breathe, and looked larger and more dreadful in the uncertain light of moon or aurora.

Many though our heroes’ adventures were, and thoroughly though they enjoyed themselves, when the days began to get longer, when the snow began to melt, and whistling winds blew softer through the forest trees, and everything told them spring was on ahead, the thoughts that ere long theSnowbirdwould burst her icy bounds, that they would be once more free, once more at sea, were very far from unpleasant to them.

On days now when there was but little frost in the air, and a breeze of wind with sunlight, theSnowbird’ssails would be unstowed, bent, and partially unfurled, to air them. Even this made the saucy yacht look quite coquettish again. “Ho! ho!” she seemed to say to herself, “so thereisa possibility, is there, that some of these days I may once more sport my beauty in waters blue? Oh! then, blow, breezes, blow, and melt the ice and snow, for indeed I’m heartily tired of it.”

It would almost seem that the country around where theSnowbirdlay was chosen as a winter residencepar excellencefor the great Polar bear. Perhaps the winter in the faraway and desolate regions around the Pole is too rigorous for even his constitution; be this as it may, here they were by the score, and all in all, well-nigh a hundred fleeces were bagged in little over two months.

These snow-bears got more chary at last, however, and when the March winds blew they entirely disappeared.

One day the beginning of the end of the ice came; a wind blew strong from the east, and by noon all the bay behind the yacht was one heaving mass of snow-clad pieces. It was well for theSnowbirdshe was sturdy and strong; the grinding bergs, small though they were, tried her stability to the utmost, but the wind went down and the swell ceased; yet fearing a repetition of the rough treatment, McBain determined to seek a less exposed position farther to the west. The ice was now loose, so as soon as there was enough wind to fill her sails progress was commenced. It was slow hard work, but by dint of great exertion and no little skill, aportus salutiswas found at last fifty miles farther west, and here the captain determined to rest until the spring was more advanced, and there was a likelihood of getting safely out to sea:

The region in which they now found themselves was even more romantic and wild than that which they had left. There was still room for more skins in theSnowbird, so a big shoot was organised—quite a big shoot in fact, for it would probably be the last they would enjoy in this strange country.

The season was now sufficiently mild to render camping out to such weather-beaten wanderers as the people of theSnowbirdpracticable, not to say enjoyable. So everything being got in readiness, the start was made for up country, McBain himself taking charge of the expedition, which mustered twenty men in all, ten or more of whom carried rifles, but every one of whom was well armed. The principal tent was taken, and the largest camping-kettle, a wonderfulmultum-in-parvo, that Seth described as “a kind of invention that went by spirits-o’-wine, and was warranted to cook for fifty hands, and wash up the crockery arterwards.”

Rory did not forget his sketch-book, nor his wonderful boat, which one man could carry—not in his waistcoat pocket, as Rory banteringly averred, but on his back, and three men could row in.

They followed a gorge or canon, which led them gradually upwards and inland. I call it “gorge,” because I cannot call it glen or valley. The bottom of it was in width pretty uniformly about the eighth part of a mile, almost level, though covered with boulders and scanty scrub, which rendered walking difficult. At each side rose, towering skywards, black, wet, beetling cliffs, so perpendicular that not even a shrub, nor grass itself, could find roothold on them, but on the top tall weird pine-trees fringed the cliffs all along, and as they ascended, this Titanic cutting so wound in and out, that on looking either back or away ahead, nothing could be seen but the bare pine-fringed wall of rocks.

Seth laughed.

“You never seed such a place before, I reckon,” he said, “but I have; many’s the one. You ain’t likely to lose your way in a place like this, anyhow.”

It was almost nightfall ere the cliffs began to get lower and lower at each side of them, and soon after they cleared the gorge, and came out upon a broad buffalo-grass prairie, which must have been over a thousand feet above the level of the sea.

And not far from the head of the gorge, near a clump of spruce firs, the tent was pitched and the camp fire built, and Seth set about preparing a wonderfully savoury stew. Seth’s dinners always had the effect of putting the partakers thereof on the best of terms with themselves. After dinner you did not want to do much more that evening, but, well wrapped in your furs, recline around the log fire, listen to stories and sing songs, till sleep began to take your senses away, and then you did not know a whit more until next morning, when you sprang from your couch as fresh as a mountain trout.

If they had meant this expedition for a big shoot they were not disappointed. The country all around was everything a sportsman could wish. There was hill and dale, woodland, jungle, and plain, and there was beauty in the landscape, too, and, far away over the green and distant forest rose the grand old hills, raising their snowy heads skywards, crag over crag and peak over peak, as far as eye could reach.

A week flew by, a fortnight passed, and the pile of skins got bigger and bigger. They only now shot the more valuable furs, but skin of bear, nor deer, nor lordly elk, was to be despised, while the smaller game were killed for food.

Another week and it would be time to be returning, for spring comes all at once in the latitudes they were now in. There was still a portion of the country unexplored. Rory, from a hill-top, had caught sight of a distant lake, and was fired with the ambition to launch his fairy boat on its waters. On the very morning that Seth, Rory, and Allan set out to seek for this lake, with two of the brawniest hands of the crew to bear the boat, McBain came a little way with them.

“Take care of the boys, Seth,” he said, with a strange, melancholy smile playing over his face. “I had a queer dream last night. Be back to-morrow, mind, before nightfall.” The little party had their compasses, and therefore struck a bee-line through the forest in the direction in which they fancied the lake lay. On and on they went for miles upon miles, and at last reached the banks of a broad river, and here they encamped for lunch. Feeling refreshed, and hearing the roar of a cataract, apparently some way down the stream, they took their road along the banks to view it. They had not gone very far when they stood, thunderstruck, by the brink of a tremendous subterranean cavern. Thence came the roar of the cataract. The whole river disappeared suddenly into the bowels of the earth (a phenomenon not unknown to travellers in the wilds of America).

Marvelling much, they started off up-stream now, to seek for the lake.

After an hour’s walking, the forest all at once receded a good mile from the river, and the banks were no longer green, but banks of boulders mixed with silver sand and patches of snow. Here and there a bridge of solid snow spanned the river to great banks and hills of snow on the other side. As they climbed higher and higher, the river by their right met them with nearly all the speed of a cataract. But they can see the top of the hill at last, and yonder is the half-yellow, half-transparent stream leaping downwards as if over a weir.

And now they are up and the mystery is solved; the river is bursting over the lip of a great lake, which stretches out before them for many miles—forest on one side, hills beyond, and on the right a gigantic ridge of snow. They call the lake the Great Snow Lake.

They took their way to the left along its banks, going on through the woods that grew on its brink, until they came at last to an open glade, green and moss-covered. Here they encamped for rest, and soon after embarked on the strange lake, leaving the men to look after the preparation of dinner against the time of their return.

Rory was charmed with his boat; he sat in the bows sketching. Allan rowed, and Seth was busy fishing—no,tryingto fish; but he soon gave up the attempt in despair, and almost at the same time Rory closed his sketch-book. Silence, and a strange indefinable gloom, seemed to settle down on the three. But there is silence everywhere around. Not a ripple is on the leaden lake, not a breath sighs through the forest. But, hark! a sullen plash in the water just round the point, and soon another and another.

“There is some water-monster bathing round yonder,” said Rory; “and indeed I believe it’s the land of enchantment we’re in altogether.”

They rounded the point, and found themselves in a bay surrounded by high banks of sand and gravel, portions of the sides of which, loosened by the thaw, were every now and then falling with a melancholy boom into the deep black water beneath. Sad, and more silent than ever, with a gloom on their hearts which they could not account for, they rowed away back to the spot where they had left their men.

There was no smoke to welcome them, and when they pushed aside the branches and rushed into the open, their hearts seemed to stand still with dread at the sight that met their eyes. Only the embers of a smouldering fire, and near it and beside it the two poor fellows they had left happy and well—dead andscalped!

They say that some of the Highlanders of Scotland possess the strange gift, second sight. I know not, but McBain began to feel uneasy the very moment his party had gone, and as the day wore on he became more so.

“Ralph, boy,” he said at last, “let us break up camp at once and follow the boys.”

“I’m ready now!” cried Ralph, alarmed at his captain’s manner.

A meal was hastily served out, and in ten minutes more the start was commenced.

The men marched in silence, partaking in a measure of the gloom of their leader. There was no thought of shooting the game that crossed their pathway. But the trail was easy. They reached the Great Snow Lake, and bore round to the right, and soon entered the dark forest. Here in the gloom the trail was more difficult to follow, and they soon lost it. While they were waiting and doubting, the stillness of the forest was broken by a yell, that not only startled the listeners, but chilled them to the very marrow. Again and again it was repeated, mingled with shouting and the sharp ring of rifles. It was a dread sound; it was as—

“Though men fought upon the earth,And fiends in upper air.”

“Though men fought upon the earth,And fiends in upper air.”

“On, men, on!” cried McBain; “our boys are yonder; they are being foully massacred!”

As he spoke he dashed forward in the direction whence the sound proceeded, followed by his brave fellows, and in a few minutes more had cleared the forest and gained the glade where the unequal strife was proceeding. And none too soon. Here were brave young Allan and stately Seth, their backs against a tree, defending themselves, with rifles clubbed, against a cloud of skin-clad savages armed with bows and arrows, but brandishing only spear and tomahawk.

High o’er the din of the strife rang our people’s British cheer. One well-aimed volley, then McBain charged the very centre of the crowd, and blows fell and men fell like wintry rain.

So quick and unexpected had been the onslaught that the savages were beaten back in less time almost than it takes me to describe it—beaten back into the forest and pursued as far as their own encampment. Here they made a stand, and the battle raged for a whole hour; but when did ever savages hold their own very long against the white man?

Let us draw a curtain on the scene that followed—the rout and the pursuit, and the return to the glade where the fight commenced. Stillness once more prevailed as our people re-entered it.

McBain glanced hastily and anxiously around. Where was Rory? Alas! he had not far to look. Yonder he lay, where the fight had raged the fiercest, on his back, quiet and still, with purple upturned face.

It was a painful scene, and down from the sky looked the round rising moon, while daylight slowly faded into gloaming.

As the giant oak is bent before the gale, so bowed was McBain in his grief. He knelt him down beside poor Rory and covered his face with his hands. “My boy! my poor boy!” was all he could say.

Seth had taken but one glance at Rory’s dark swollen face and another at the rising moon. “I guess,” he muttered, “there has been pizened arrows flying around.”

Then he disappeared in the forest.

Chapter Twenty Seven.The Search for an Antidote—Can Rory be Dead?—Seth to the Rescue—Seth as Doctor and Nurse.“I reckon,” said Seth to himself, “that there’ll be just about light enough to find ’em. Good thing now that the moon is full, for they do say that gathered under the full moon their virtue is increased fourfold, and what is more, old Seth believes it. Hullo! it strikes me Rory is in luck. Here they grow as large as life, and twice as natural.”They were a deal bigger than Seth at all events. Tall and graceful stems with an immensity of leaf, probably a plant belonging to theSolanaceaefamily.“I won’t spare you,” continued this curious Yankee trapper.Nor did he. He quite filled his arms with both stems and leaves, and hastened back to the glade where lay poor Rory, to all appearance dead, and surrounded by his sorrowing friends.“Clear the course,” cried Seth, “for once in a way, gentlemen; Seth will save the boy if there be a save in him. Carry him along to the lake. Gently with him.”There was little need of the latter precaution. McBain, hoping against hope, took him up in his arms as tenderly as if he had been a child, and apparently with as much ease, and carried him after Seth to the Great Snow Lake. Here he was laid softly down, and the trapper proceeded in the most masterly manner to bathe and rinse Rory’s terrible wounds. The white milky juice from the fleshy stem of the curious plant was then dropped into them, and they were carefully covered over with bruised leaves.“There is little else we can do now,” said Seth, “but set us down to watch.”“And pray,” murmured McBain. Then he said aloud, “I do not doubt your skill, friend Seth, but here I fear there is more to contend with than mortal power can hope to cope with. The poor boy is dead.”For well-nigh an hour they sat beside him; gloaming had deepened into night, and a fire had been lighted which brought forth Rembrandtine shadows from the woods, and cast its beams far over the broad lake, until they were swallowed up in the darkness. An hour, and yet no signs of returning life—a whole hour, and they still seemed to look on poor Rory as on the face of the dead.But see! can they be mistaken? Did not his lips move? They did, and now they move again. A sigh is breathed, and presently one faint word is ejaculated.The word was “Water.”“He’ll live,” cried Seth; “he’ll live! This is the proudest day for the old trapper in the whole course of his born existence.”And the cry of Rory for water was indeed the first sign of returning life. A few drops of the juice of that wonderful plant were squeezed into the wounded boy’s mouth, and, ten minutes after, the colour had returned to his face, and he was sleeping as sweetly and soundly as ever he had slept in his life.McBain squeezed the hand of the honest trapper. In silence he pressed the trapper’s hand. Perhaps he could not have spoken at that moment had he wished to do so, for there was a moisture in his eyes that he had no need to be ashamed of.While Rory sleeps calmly by the rude log fire, there is other and sadly mournful work to be attended to, for three of theSnowbird’sbrave crew lie stark and stiff. So the dead had to be laid out, and the graves dug, where, as soon as sunrise, they would lie side by side with those who had so lately been their foes.Two more men were wounded, but none so severely as Rory.There was little sleep for any one in the camp that night, for they were constantly in dread of a renewed attack by the savages. Even the luxury of a fire was a danger, and yet upon this depended Rory’s very existence; but patrols were kept constantly moving through the forest near to prevent surprises.“Yet I don’t think,” said Seth, “that them bothering blueskins will come around again. We’ve given them such a taste of our steel and our shooting-irons that it ain’t likely they’ll have an appetite for more for some days to come.”“Shall you hunt them up in the morning,” asked Allan, “and have revenge?”“No,” said McBain; “no, Allan. The principle is a bad one. People should fight in defence of their homesteads, fight for life and honour, but never to simply show their superiority or for mere revenge.”Very simple was the service conducted by McBain by the graves of the fallen men. Very simple, and yet, methinks, none the less impressive. A psalm from the metrical version of Israel’s sweetest singer, and a prayer—that was all; then the graves were covered in and left, and there they lie by the side of that Great Snow Lake, with never a stone to mark the spot. Oh! but those three poor fellows will live for many a day and many a year in the memory of their messmates.The march back to theSnowbirdwas a mournful one. The skins they had collected did not seem to have the same value now. McBain would not leave them behind, however. Duty must not be neglected, even in the midst of grief.And Rory? Would he live? Would the blood ever bound again through his veins as of yore? Would he ever again be the bright-smiling, sunny-faced lad he had been? For weeks this was doubted. He lay on his bed, so pallid and worn that every one save Seth thought he was wearing away to the land o’ the leal. Seth would not give him up, though, and many a herb and balsam he gathered for him in the forest, and many a strange fish, cooked by Seth himself, was brought to tempt his appetite.Seth came on board one day rejoicing.“I have it now,” he cried; “the old trapper has done it at last. Now, boy Rory, as everybody calls you, you have nothing earthly to do in this wide world but get well. And you’ll eat what I brings, and nice you’ll find them, too.” And Seth proceeded to open a handkerchief and display to the astonished gaze of our heroes a lovely collection of large truffles.“Why, truffles, I do declare!” exclaimed McBain. “I never imagined, friend Seth, that the geographical disposition of the truffle extended to these wild regions.”“The trapper don’t speak a word o’ Greek,” said Seth, looking at McBain amusedly; “but them’s the truffles, right enough, and they are bound to send the last remnant o’ that vile blueskin’s pisen out o’ boy Rory’s blood.”It was a magical stew that Seth concocted that day with those truffles. It even made Rory smile. Something of the old good-humour and happiness began to settle down on the hearts of the people of theSnowbirdfrom that very hour, and when, a day or two after, Rory joined his mess mates at dinner, reclining on a sofa, all doubts for his safety were completely dispelled. Dr Seth, as he insisted upon calling the trapper, was invited to join the party, and not only he, but the three mates, and a pleasant evening, if not a merry one, was passed.

“I reckon,” said Seth to himself, “that there’ll be just about light enough to find ’em. Good thing now that the moon is full, for they do say that gathered under the full moon their virtue is increased fourfold, and what is more, old Seth believes it. Hullo! it strikes me Rory is in luck. Here they grow as large as life, and twice as natural.”

They were a deal bigger than Seth at all events. Tall and graceful stems with an immensity of leaf, probably a plant belonging to theSolanaceaefamily.

“I won’t spare you,” continued this curious Yankee trapper.

Nor did he. He quite filled his arms with both stems and leaves, and hastened back to the glade where lay poor Rory, to all appearance dead, and surrounded by his sorrowing friends.

“Clear the course,” cried Seth, “for once in a way, gentlemen; Seth will save the boy if there be a save in him. Carry him along to the lake. Gently with him.”

There was little need of the latter precaution. McBain, hoping against hope, took him up in his arms as tenderly as if he had been a child, and apparently with as much ease, and carried him after Seth to the Great Snow Lake. Here he was laid softly down, and the trapper proceeded in the most masterly manner to bathe and rinse Rory’s terrible wounds. The white milky juice from the fleshy stem of the curious plant was then dropped into them, and they were carefully covered over with bruised leaves.

“There is little else we can do now,” said Seth, “but set us down to watch.”

“And pray,” murmured McBain. Then he said aloud, “I do not doubt your skill, friend Seth, but here I fear there is more to contend with than mortal power can hope to cope with. The poor boy is dead.”

For well-nigh an hour they sat beside him; gloaming had deepened into night, and a fire had been lighted which brought forth Rembrandtine shadows from the woods, and cast its beams far over the broad lake, until they were swallowed up in the darkness. An hour, and yet no signs of returning life—a whole hour, and they still seemed to look on poor Rory as on the face of the dead.

But see! can they be mistaken? Did not his lips move? They did, and now they move again. A sigh is breathed, and presently one faint word is ejaculated.

The word was “Water.”

“He’ll live,” cried Seth; “he’ll live! This is the proudest day for the old trapper in the whole course of his born existence.”

And the cry of Rory for water was indeed the first sign of returning life. A few drops of the juice of that wonderful plant were squeezed into the wounded boy’s mouth, and, ten minutes after, the colour had returned to his face, and he was sleeping as sweetly and soundly as ever he had slept in his life.

McBain squeezed the hand of the honest trapper. In silence he pressed the trapper’s hand. Perhaps he could not have spoken at that moment had he wished to do so, for there was a moisture in his eyes that he had no need to be ashamed of.

While Rory sleeps calmly by the rude log fire, there is other and sadly mournful work to be attended to, for three of theSnowbird’sbrave crew lie stark and stiff. So the dead had to be laid out, and the graves dug, where, as soon as sunrise, they would lie side by side with those who had so lately been their foes.

Two more men were wounded, but none so severely as Rory.

There was little sleep for any one in the camp that night, for they were constantly in dread of a renewed attack by the savages. Even the luxury of a fire was a danger, and yet upon this depended Rory’s very existence; but patrols were kept constantly moving through the forest near to prevent surprises.

“Yet I don’t think,” said Seth, “that them bothering blueskins will come around again. We’ve given them such a taste of our steel and our shooting-irons that it ain’t likely they’ll have an appetite for more for some days to come.”

“Shall you hunt them up in the morning,” asked Allan, “and have revenge?”

“No,” said McBain; “no, Allan. The principle is a bad one. People should fight in defence of their homesteads, fight for life and honour, but never to simply show their superiority or for mere revenge.”

Very simple was the service conducted by McBain by the graves of the fallen men. Very simple, and yet, methinks, none the less impressive. A psalm from the metrical version of Israel’s sweetest singer, and a prayer—that was all; then the graves were covered in and left, and there they lie by the side of that Great Snow Lake, with never a stone to mark the spot. Oh! but those three poor fellows will live for many a day and many a year in the memory of their messmates.

The march back to theSnowbirdwas a mournful one. The skins they had collected did not seem to have the same value now. McBain would not leave them behind, however. Duty must not be neglected, even in the midst of grief.

And Rory? Would he live? Would the blood ever bound again through his veins as of yore? Would he ever again be the bright-smiling, sunny-faced lad he had been? For weeks this was doubted. He lay on his bed, so pallid and worn that every one save Seth thought he was wearing away to the land o’ the leal. Seth would not give him up, though, and many a herb and balsam he gathered for him in the forest, and many a strange fish, cooked by Seth himself, was brought to tempt his appetite.

Seth came on board one day rejoicing.

“I have it now,” he cried; “the old trapper has done it at last. Now, boy Rory, as everybody calls you, you have nothing earthly to do in this wide world but get well. And you’ll eat what I brings, and nice you’ll find them, too.” And Seth proceeded to open a handkerchief and display to the astonished gaze of our heroes a lovely collection of large truffles.

“Why, truffles, I do declare!” exclaimed McBain. “I never imagined, friend Seth, that the geographical disposition of the truffle extended to these wild regions.”

“The trapper don’t speak a word o’ Greek,” said Seth, looking at McBain amusedly; “but them’s the truffles, right enough, and they are bound to send the last remnant o’ that vile blueskin’s pisen out o’ boy Rory’s blood.”

It was a magical stew that Seth concocted that day with those truffles. It even made Rory smile. Something of the old good-humour and happiness began to settle down on the hearts of the people of theSnowbirdfrom that very hour, and when, a day or two after, Rory joined his mess mates at dinner, reclining on a sofa, all doubts for his safety were completely dispelled. Dr Seth, as he insisted upon calling the trapper, was invited to join the party, and not only he, but the three mates, and a pleasant evening, if not a merry one, was passed.

Chapter Twenty Eight.One Last Day on Shore—Bearing up for the East and North—Farewell, Old Seth; Farewell, Plunket.When at last Rory was so far recovered that he could go on deck with safety, he gazed around him with delight. And well he might, for a more wildly beautiful scene it has been the lot of very few travellers to feast their eyes upon.“Why,” he cried, with the old glad smile in his eyes, “summer has come again while I have been ill. Oh! such beauty! such grandeur! All the trees in leaf and the flowers in bloom, and not a bit of ice to be seen in the bay. Shouldn’t I like to go on shore once more before we start, to cull a flower, or make a sketch.”“Well, Rory,” said McBain, smiling at his enthusiasm, “that is a wish we can easily gratify if you really think you are strong enough.”“Strong!” said Rory, “why, I’m strong enough to fell an ox. You’ve no idea how strong I feel; nor how happy at being strong again.”“Happy and thankful at the same time, I trust,” said McBain.“Ay,” put in Allan, “and you’ve no idea, Rory, how delighted we all are to have you on deck again, and really with us, you know.”Rory smiled with pleasure. He felt the genuineness of the words spoken.They spent that day on shore quietly, and very pleasurably. They sought for no wild adventures, they sought but to saunter about and enjoy the beauties of the landscape; it would be the last ever they would spend in that lovely land, and they meant to leave it in peace. They would neither draw a bead upon a bird, nor fire at a bear, nor lure a fish from the river.It was not without a certain feeling of sadness they embarked at last, when the day was far spent; and the same feeling stole over them when, next day, they got the anchor up and slowly sailed away a-down the bay with the jibboom pointing east and by north. By mid-day they were opposite the spot where they had anchored all the winter. The new hall which Ap had been so proud of constructing still stood there in all its pristine beauty and pride.“It does seem a pity,” said Ap, “to leave it to the Indians.”“Ah! but,” said McBain, who had overheard him, “it would be a greater pity to land and burn it, wouldn’t it, Ap?”“Yes, look, you see,” was Ap’s reply, his eyes still fondly resting on the building, “I wouldn’t think of that for a moment. Better the Indians than that. Yes, yes.”When the sun set that day the land was far away on the lee quarter; by morning it had entirely disappeared, and all the adventures they had enjoyed on shore seemed to our heroes like one long wild romantic dream. Ere the second day had come to a close every one on board had quite settled down again to the old yachting roving life, at once so jolly and so free. Watches were kept as before, the dinner-hour was changed to an earlier one, as it usually is at sea and a regular lookout was kept at the bows, as well as a man at the mast-head in the crow’s-nest.There was need for this, too, for the ice they soon found themselves among was both heavy and dangerous. On this account theSnowbird’shead was changed a few points nearer to the west, and very soon afterwards the sea became more open and clear.A goodly ten-knot breeze blew steadily for days from the east, and carried them well over to the land that bounds the opposite shores of the Hudson Bay, and the course had once more to be changed for a northerly one, to seek for the straits, and the icebergs again towered around, mountains high, great gomerils of snow, that at times took the wind quite out of their sails. This passage through the straits was at once exciting and dangerous, and for three whole days and nights McBain never slept, and very seldom did he sit more than a few minutes at table.But open water came at last, and they would probably see no more of the ice until they rounded Cape Farewell, and neared the shores of Iceland. But something had to be done long before then. It must not be forgotten that on the far northern coast of Labrador, in a wild and mountainous lonely land, was the home of honest but eccentric old trapper Seth. McBain had promised to take him back, and a sailor’s promise is, or ought to be at all events, a sacred thing. McBain’s was.“But, for all that,” said McBain, addressing Seth, “we shall be unfeignedly sorry to part with you; we would far rather you came home with us, and took up your abode at Arrandoon. We’d find you something to do, something to shoot at times, though nothing to compare with the glorious sport we’ve enjoyed in your society.”“And, thanking you a thousand times,” replied Seth, “but I guess and calculate that at his time of life, civilisation would kind o’ go against the grain of old Seth.”“And yet,” persisted McBain, “it does seem sad for you to go away back again to that lone wilderness into voluntary exile. What will you do when you fall ill? We all must die, you know.”“Bless you, sir,” said Seth, “we old trappers don’t mind dying a bit. We’re just like the deer of the forest. We seldom sicken for more than about an hour. We simply falls quietly asleep and wakes no more under the moon.”So no more was said to Seth in order to dissuade him from his intention of going home, as he called it. But when Seth’s cape was sighted at last, it was quite evident that our heroes had no intention of permitting him to go away empty-handed. They could not pay him for his services in coin. That would have been of little avail for a man in his position.But a boat-load of stores of every kind was sent on shore with him, and Seth found himself richer by far than ever he had expected to be in his life.“Hurrah!” cried Seth, when he had reached his clearing and found his cot still standing, “hurrah! the blueskins have been here, I can see their trails all about. What a blessing I buried my waliables. They hain’t been near the place.”The crew of theSnowbirdhelped the old man to dig up “his waliables,” and he pronounced them all intact and untouched. They also did all they could to reinstate him in comfort in his cottage.Then, with three ringing cheers, and many a hearty good-bye and hand-shake, away they went to their yacht, and left poor Seth and Plunket to their loneliness.

When at last Rory was so far recovered that he could go on deck with safety, he gazed around him with delight. And well he might, for a more wildly beautiful scene it has been the lot of very few travellers to feast their eyes upon.

“Why,” he cried, with the old glad smile in his eyes, “summer has come again while I have been ill. Oh! such beauty! such grandeur! All the trees in leaf and the flowers in bloom, and not a bit of ice to be seen in the bay. Shouldn’t I like to go on shore once more before we start, to cull a flower, or make a sketch.”

“Well, Rory,” said McBain, smiling at his enthusiasm, “that is a wish we can easily gratify if you really think you are strong enough.”

“Strong!” said Rory, “why, I’m strong enough to fell an ox. You’ve no idea how strong I feel; nor how happy at being strong again.”

“Happy and thankful at the same time, I trust,” said McBain.

“Ay,” put in Allan, “and you’ve no idea, Rory, how delighted we all are to have you on deck again, and really with us, you know.”

Rory smiled with pleasure. He felt the genuineness of the words spoken.

They spent that day on shore quietly, and very pleasurably. They sought for no wild adventures, they sought but to saunter about and enjoy the beauties of the landscape; it would be the last ever they would spend in that lovely land, and they meant to leave it in peace. They would neither draw a bead upon a bird, nor fire at a bear, nor lure a fish from the river.

It was not without a certain feeling of sadness they embarked at last, when the day was far spent; and the same feeling stole over them when, next day, they got the anchor up and slowly sailed away a-down the bay with the jibboom pointing east and by north. By mid-day they were opposite the spot where they had anchored all the winter. The new hall which Ap had been so proud of constructing still stood there in all its pristine beauty and pride.

“It does seem a pity,” said Ap, “to leave it to the Indians.”

“Ah! but,” said McBain, who had overheard him, “it would be a greater pity to land and burn it, wouldn’t it, Ap?”

“Yes, look, you see,” was Ap’s reply, his eyes still fondly resting on the building, “I wouldn’t think of that for a moment. Better the Indians than that. Yes, yes.”

When the sun set that day the land was far away on the lee quarter; by morning it had entirely disappeared, and all the adventures they had enjoyed on shore seemed to our heroes like one long wild romantic dream. Ere the second day had come to a close every one on board had quite settled down again to the old yachting roving life, at once so jolly and so free. Watches were kept as before, the dinner-hour was changed to an earlier one, as it usually is at sea and a regular lookout was kept at the bows, as well as a man at the mast-head in the crow’s-nest.

There was need for this, too, for the ice they soon found themselves among was both heavy and dangerous. On this account theSnowbird’shead was changed a few points nearer to the west, and very soon afterwards the sea became more open and clear.

A goodly ten-knot breeze blew steadily for days from the east, and carried them well over to the land that bounds the opposite shores of the Hudson Bay, and the course had once more to be changed for a northerly one, to seek for the straits, and the icebergs again towered around, mountains high, great gomerils of snow, that at times took the wind quite out of their sails. This passage through the straits was at once exciting and dangerous, and for three whole days and nights McBain never slept, and very seldom did he sit more than a few minutes at table.

But open water came at last, and they would probably see no more of the ice until they rounded Cape Farewell, and neared the shores of Iceland. But something had to be done long before then. It must not be forgotten that on the far northern coast of Labrador, in a wild and mountainous lonely land, was the home of honest but eccentric old trapper Seth. McBain had promised to take him back, and a sailor’s promise is, or ought to be at all events, a sacred thing. McBain’s was.

“But, for all that,” said McBain, addressing Seth, “we shall be unfeignedly sorry to part with you; we would far rather you came home with us, and took up your abode at Arrandoon. We’d find you something to do, something to shoot at times, though nothing to compare with the glorious sport we’ve enjoyed in your society.”

“And, thanking you a thousand times,” replied Seth, “but I guess and calculate that at his time of life, civilisation would kind o’ go against the grain of old Seth.”

“And yet,” persisted McBain, “it does seem sad for you to go away back again to that lone wilderness into voluntary exile. What will you do when you fall ill? We all must die, you know.”

“Bless you, sir,” said Seth, “we old trappers don’t mind dying a bit. We’re just like the deer of the forest. We seldom sicken for more than about an hour. We simply falls quietly asleep and wakes no more under the moon.”

So no more was said to Seth in order to dissuade him from his intention of going home, as he called it. But when Seth’s cape was sighted at last, it was quite evident that our heroes had no intention of permitting him to go away empty-handed. They could not pay him for his services in coin. That would have been of little avail for a man in his position.

But a boat-load of stores of every kind was sent on shore with him, and Seth found himself richer by far than ever he had expected to be in his life.

“Hurrah!” cried Seth, when he had reached his clearing and found his cot still standing, “hurrah! the blueskins have been here, I can see their trails all about. What a blessing I buried my waliables. They hain’t been near the place.”

The crew of theSnowbirdhelped the old man to dig up “his waliables,” and he pronounced them all intact and untouched. They also did all they could to reinstate him in comfort in his cottage.

Then, with three ringing cheers, and many a hearty good-bye and hand-shake, away they went to their yacht, and left poor Seth and Plunket to their loneliness.

Chapter Twenty Nine.The Consultation—Bearing up for Home—The Wanderers’ Return.On the twentieth day of July, eighteen hundred and ever so much, but just one month from the day they had landed the Yankee trapper in the wild country in which he was monarch of all he surveyed, the brave yachtSnowbird, after many never-to-be-forgotten dangers and trials, had reached the latitude of 81 degrees north, and was far to the east of Spitzbergen. It is a month since we have seen her, and how she is lying-to in front of a tremendous bar of ice, through which she has tried, but tried in vain, to force a passage. All that men could do has been done to penetrate farther towards the mysterious regions around the Pole, and now a group of anxious men are assembled deep in consultation in the saloon. The centre figures of this group are McBain and weird old Magnus. The former is standing, with arms folded and lowered brow, gazing calmly down on the table, where is spread out an old and tattered chart,—an old and tattered chart, tapped fiercely by the thin skinny fingers of Magnus, as leaning over the table he gazes up almost wildly at the deep, thoughtful countenance of his commander.Allan and Ralph are leaning over the backs of chairs, and Rory is leaning on the shoulder of Ralph, but every eye is fixed upon the captain.Stevenson and the mate of theTrefoilform a portion of the group; they are seated a little way from the others, but are none the less earnest in looks and appearance.“Behold what we have already borne!” Magnus was saying excitedly, in fierce, fast words. “See what we have already come through in our good yacht; storms have howled around us; tempests have raged; the sea has been churned into foam, blown into whitest smoke, like the surf of the wild Atlantic when the storm spirit shrieks among the crags of Unst, but has she not come bravely through it all? Mighty bergs have tried to clutch her, but she has eluded their slippery grasp, and now, though her planks are scraped by their sides, till, fore and aft, she is as white as theSnowbirdyou call her, is she not as strong and as dauntless as ever? What is there to come through, that we have not already come through? What is it the yacht has to dare, that she has not already dared? You sent for old Magnus to ask his advice; he gives it. Here in that spot lies the Isle of Alba in a sea of open water. And wealth untold lies there! Eastward—I say eastward still—and eastward, for only by going eastward as heretofore, can you get north. Magnus has spoken.”“I will weigh all you have said, my good friend Magnus,” was McBain’s reply. He spoke quietly and distinctly, with head a little on one side; “but, before coming to a conclusion of any kind, I should like to hear the opinions of our shipmates. The mate of the unfortunateTrefoilthere has had longer experience of these regions than any of us, bar yourself, bold Magnus. What says he? Does he think there is a sea of open water around the Pole?”“It is my humble belief there is,” said the mate; “and, leaving aside all selfish reasons, I am with you, heart and soul, if you attempt to reach it this season.”“Spoken like a man,” said McBain; “but do you think that, with ice before us, like what you see, there is a possibility of reaching it in a sailing-ship?”“You ask me a straightforward question,” said the mate, “and in the same fashion I answer you. I do not believe there is the slightest chance of our doing so. Brave hearts can do a great deal in this world, but, unaided by science, they cannot do everything. Hannibal, when he crossed the Alps, didnotmelt the rocks with vinegar. Science alone can aid us in reaching the Pole. Sledges we need, balloons are needed, and last, but not least, a ship withsteam.”“I entirely concur with you,” said McBain. “What say you, boys?”“I think the mate of theTrefoilis right,” said Ralph and Allan.“’Tis not in mortals to command success,” said Rory; “but I think we’ve done rather more—we’ve deserved it.”“Well said,” cried Allan.“Yes, well said,” added McBain; “and, after all, who shall say that we may not return to these seas again. None of us are very old, and wonders never cease. Why, I do declare that bold Magnus here looks fully ten years younger with the good the cruise has done him?”“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed the weird old man, gathering up that chart that seemed so sacred a thing in his eyes; “and if ever you do, and old man Magnus is still alive, and has one leg left to hop upon, if it’s only a wooden one, he’ll trust to sail with you for the land he loves so well.”“The land we all love so well,” said McBain; “the seas to which no one ever yet sailed without wishing to revisit them.”There was a faint double knock at the saloon door as the captain ceased speaking, and Mitchell entered.“Well, Mr Mitchell, come in, but not so doubtingly; we have done talking, and have come to the unanimous conclusion that the time has arrived for us to bear up.”“Hurrah! to that,” said Mitchell, striking his left palm with his right fist in a very solid manner indeed.“And now, sir,” continued Mitchell, “I come to tell you that quite a wall of mist is rolling down upon us from the nor’-east. It is as close and black as factory smoke, and it is now close aboard of us.”“Any wind?”“Not much, sir, but what little there is is coming down along with the mist.”“Then fill the foreyard, Mr Mitchell. Set every stitch she’ll bear, studding-sails if you like, so long as it isn’t too dark and close, and the bergs are anything like visible. I’ll be on deck myself presently.”“Well, Rory,” said Captain McBain, entering the snuggery that same night, rubbing his hands and beaming with smiles, “so we have borne up at last; how do you like the idea of returning to your native land after all your long journeyings and wild adventures?”“Indeed, I like it immensely,” replied Rory, “barring the difference that it isn’t my native land I’ll be going to after all, but the land o’ the mountain and the flood. Oh! won’t I be happy to meet Allan’s dear mother and sister again! And even Janet, the dear old soul!”“Well,” said McBain, taking up Rory’s fiddle and thoughtfully bringing some very discordant notes out of it, “I sincerely hope they will be all alive to meet us: if the meeting be all right I don’t fear for the greeting.” Then brightening up and putting down the instrument, he continued, “I’ve been leaning over the bows for the last hour, and thinking, and I’ve come to the conclusion that we haven’t done so badly by our cruise after all.”“We haven’t filled up with ivory from the mammoth caves though,” said Ralph, with a sigh.“Why that plaintive sigh, poor soul?” asked Rory.“Ah! because, you know,” replied Ralph, pinching Rory’s ear, “we haven’t made wealth untold, and I’ll have to marry my grandmother after all.”“Oh!” cried McBain, “your somewhat antiquated cousin; I had forgotten all about her.”“I hadn’t,” said Ralph.“Never mind,” said Rory, “something may turn up, and even if the worst comes to the worst, I’ll be at the wedding, and play the Dead March in Saul.”“Ah!” said Ralph, “it is just as well for you that you moved out of my reach, you saucy boy?”“There are two thousand pounds to a share,” continued McBain, “if we sell our furs and oils only indifferently well.”“And sure,” said Rory, “even that is better than a stone behind the ear. And look at all the fun we have had, and all the adventures; troth, we’ll have stories to tell all our lives, if we never go to sea any more, and live till we’re as old as the big hill o’ Howth.”“But I think, you know, boys,” McBain went on, “we have gained a deal more than the simple pecuniary value of what lies in our tanks and lockers. Increased health and strength, for instance.”“Ah?” added Allan, “strength of mind as well as body, for, positively, before I left Glentroom, I did little else but mope—now, I think I won’t do anything of the kind again. With the little capital I have obtained, I will begin and cultivate my glen—it is worth more than rabbits’ food.”“Yes,” said McBain, “there is gold in the glen.”“Speaking figuratively, yes.”“It only needs perseverance to make it yield it. What a grand thing that perseverance is! I think, boys, we’ve learned a little of its virtue, even in this cruise of ours, though we haven’t done everything we had hoped. But perseverance builds names and fortunes—it builds cities too.”“It builds continents,” said Rory, looking very wise—for him; “just look what a midge of a creature the coral zoophyte is, but look at the work it is doing every day, the worlds it is throwing up almost, for future millions to inhabit.”Thus continued our heroes talking till long past midnight; and even after they had retired, one at least did not fall all at once asleep. That one was Allan. He began to believe that his dreams of restoring his dear old roof-tree, Arrandoon Castle, would yet be realised. That a time would soon come when his mother and sister would sit in halls as noble as any his forefathers had occupied, and mingle among a peasantry as happy and content as they were in the good old years of long, long ago. Perseverance would do it; and, happy thought, he would adopt a new badge, and it would neither be a flower, nor a fern, nor a feather, but simply a piece of coral. Then presently he found himself deep down in the green translucent waters of the Indian Ocean, in a cave, in a coral isle, conversing with a mermaid as freely as if it were the most natural thing in all the world; then he awoke, and behold it was broad daylight.At least it was just as broad daylight as it was likely to be, while the good yacht was still enveloped in the bosom of that dense mist.TheSnowbirdevidently did not think herself the best used yacht in the world. They would not give her sail enough to let her fly along as she wanted to, and, more than that, she was constantly being checked by the pieces of ice that struck and hammered at her on both bow and quarter. Sometimes she seemed to lose her temper and stop almost dead still, as much as to say, “I do think such treatment most ungrateful after all I’ve gone through, and, if it continues, I declare I won’t go another step of my toe towards home.”Ah! but when a week passed away, and when all at once the yacht sailed out from this dark and pitiless mist, and found herself in a blue rippling sea, with a blue and cloudless sky overhead, and never a bit of ice to be seen, then shedidregain her temper.“Well,” she said, “thisisnice, this is perfectly jolly; now for a trifle more sail, and won’t I go rolling home!”Sunlight seemed to bring joy to every heart. Our heroes walked the deck arrayed in their best, walked erect with springy steps and smiling faces. They had laid aside their winter and donned their summer clothing, and summer was in their hearts as well.But theSnowbird, the once beautifulSnowbird, now all scraped with ice and bare, should she have holiday attire likewise? She was not forgotten, I do assure you. For days and days men were slung in ropes overboard, on all sides of her, scraping, and painting, and polishing; men were hung like herrings aloft, scraping and varnishing there; and soon the decks were scrubbed to a snowy whiteness, and every bit of brass about her shone like burnished gold. She seemed a spick-and-span newSnowbird, and, what is more, she seemed to feel it too, and give herself all the additional airs and graces she could think of.At long last the seagulls came sailing to meet her, and a day or two thereafter,—“Land, ho!” was the glad cry from the outlook aloft. Only a long blue mist on the distant horizon, developing itself soon however, into a black line capped with green. Presently the dark line grew bigger, and then it became fringed beneath with a line of snowy white.Shetland once again; and when it opened out more, and began to fall off to the bow, the primitive cottages could be descried, and the diminutive cattle and the sheep that browsed on its braes.Even great Oscar, the Saint Bernard, must needs put his paws on the bulwarks, and gaze with a longing sniff towards the land, then jumping on deck go bounding along, barking for very joy; and as the little Skye looked so miserable because he could only have a sniff through the lee scuppers, Rory lifted him on to the capstan, and pointed out the land to him.Then rough sea-dogs of men pulled off from a little village to greet them, dressed in jackets like the coats of bears. Rough though they looked, the foreyard was hauled aback all the same.“No,” they said, “they didn’t think the country was at war.” That was all they could say; but they gave the captain a week-old newspaper and fish for all hands, in return for a few cakes of tobacco.Then away they pulled, and theSnowbirdsailed on. Lerwick was reached in good time, and here they cast anchor for five hours; here weird old Magnus bade them all an affectionate adieu, and here our heroes landed to telegraph to their friends.How anxiously the replies were waited for, and with what trembling hands and beating hearts they opened them when they did arrive, only those can know who have been years absent from their native shores, without hearing from those they hold dear.The gist of the despatches was as follows:—Number 1 to Allan from Arrandoon. “All alive and well.” Number 2 to Ralph. “Father alive and well, will meet you at Oban. Your cousin, alas! no more. Fortune falls to you.”“Hurrah!” cried Ralph, “my cousin is dead!”McBain could not restrain a smile.“What a strange equivocal way of expressing your grief!” he said.“Och!” said Rory, “excuse the poor boy; he won’t have to marry his grandmother nevermore.”Rory’s own telegram was the least satisfactory. It was from his agents. It was all about rents, and they didn’t advise him to return to Ireland “just yet.”“I’m right glad of that,” said Allan; “you shall stop with me till ‘just yet’ blows over.”There was nothing to keep them much longer at Shetland. Yet the moors were all purple with heather. Allan suggested gathering a garland to hang at theSnowbird’smain truck, where the crow’s-nest had been through all the Arctic winter.“So romantic a proposal,” said Rory, “deserves seconding, though ’deed and in troth, when you spoke, Allan, of gathering heather, I fancied it would be a broom you’d be after making. Thereisa spice of poetry in you after all.”Two days after this, on a lovely balmy August afternoon, with just wind enough to fill the sails, theSnowbird, looking as white in canvas as her namesake, looking as clean and as taut and as trim as though she had never left the Scottish shores, rounded the point of Ardnamurchan, and stood in towards Loch Sunart. Hardly had they opened out the broad blue lake when McBain exclaimed, with joyous excitement in his every tone,—“Boys, come here, quick!”The boys came bounding.“Look yonder, what is that?” As she spoke he pointed towards a tidy little cutter yacht that came rushing towards them over the water as if she couldn’t come quickly enough.“TheFlower of Arrandoon!” every one said in a breath. And so it was. Too impatient to remain any longer at Oban, our heroes’ friends had set sail to meet them. In fifteen minutes more they were all together on board theSnowbird.I would much rather leave it to the reader’s imagination than tell of the joyous greetings that followed, of the pleasant passage up the canal and through the lake, till once more anchored in sight of the dear old castle, surrounded with its hills of glorious purple heather; of the return to Arrandoon, and the wildness of the dogs, and the ecstasies of poor old Janet, for as the chain rattles over the bows and the anchor drops in the waters of the lake—the Cruise of the “Snowbird” ends.It remains only for me, the author, to briefly breathe that little word, which never yet was spoken without some degree of tender sorrow, and say Adieu.

On the twentieth day of July, eighteen hundred and ever so much, but just one month from the day they had landed the Yankee trapper in the wild country in which he was monarch of all he surveyed, the brave yachtSnowbird, after many never-to-be-forgotten dangers and trials, had reached the latitude of 81 degrees north, and was far to the east of Spitzbergen. It is a month since we have seen her, and how she is lying-to in front of a tremendous bar of ice, through which she has tried, but tried in vain, to force a passage. All that men could do has been done to penetrate farther towards the mysterious regions around the Pole, and now a group of anxious men are assembled deep in consultation in the saloon. The centre figures of this group are McBain and weird old Magnus. The former is standing, with arms folded and lowered brow, gazing calmly down on the table, where is spread out an old and tattered chart,—an old and tattered chart, tapped fiercely by the thin skinny fingers of Magnus, as leaning over the table he gazes up almost wildly at the deep, thoughtful countenance of his commander.

Allan and Ralph are leaning over the backs of chairs, and Rory is leaning on the shoulder of Ralph, but every eye is fixed upon the captain.

Stevenson and the mate of theTrefoilform a portion of the group; they are seated a little way from the others, but are none the less earnest in looks and appearance.

“Behold what we have already borne!” Magnus was saying excitedly, in fierce, fast words. “See what we have already come through in our good yacht; storms have howled around us; tempests have raged; the sea has been churned into foam, blown into whitest smoke, like the surf of the wild Atlantic when the storm spirit shrieks among the crags of Unst, but has she not come bravely through it all? Mighty bergs have tried to clutch her, but she has eluded their slippery grasp, and now, though her planks are scraped by their sides, till, fore and aft, she is as white as theSnowbirdyou call her, is she not as strong and as dauntless as ever? What is there to come through, that we have not already come through? What is it the yacht has to dare, that she has not already dared? You sent for old Magnus to ask his advice; he gives it. Here in that spot lies the Isle of Alba in a sea of open water. And wealth untold lies there! Eastward—I say eastward still—and eastward, for only by going eastward as heretofore, can you get north. Magnus has spoken.”

“I will weigh all you have said, my good friend Magnus,” was McBain’s reply. He spoke quietly and distinctly, with head a little on one side; “but, before coming to a conclusion of any kind, I should like to hear the opinions of our shipmates. The mate of the unfortunateTrefoilthere has had longer experience of these regions than any of us, bar yourself, bold Magnus. What says he? Does he think there is a sea of open water around the Pole?”

“It is my humble belief there is,” said the mate; “and, leaving aside all selfish reasons, I am with you, heart and soul, if you attempt to reach it this season.”

“Spoken like a man,” said McBain; “but do you think that, with ice before us, like what you see, there is a possibility of reaching it in a sailing-ship?”

“You ask me a straightforward question,” said the mate, “and in the same fashion I answer you. I do not believe there is the slightest chance of our doing so. Brave hearts can do a great deal in this world, but, unaided by science, they cannot do everything. Hannibal, when he crossed the Alps, didnotmelt the rocks with vinegar. Science alone can aid us in reaching the Pole. Sledges we need, balloons are needed, and last, but not least, a ship withsteam.”

“I entirely concur with you,” said McBain. “What say you, boys?”

“I think the mate of theTrefoilis right,” said Ralph and Allan.

“’Tis not in mortals to command success,” said Rory; “but I think we’ve done rather more—we’ve deserved it.”

“Well said,” cried Allan.

“Yes, well said,” added McBain; “and, after all, who shall say that we may not return to these seas again. None of us are very old, and wonders never cease. Why, I do declare that bold Magnus here looks fully ten years younger with the good the cruise has done him?”

“Ha! ha! ha!” laughed the weird old man, gathering up that chart that seemed so sacred a thing in his eyes; “and if ever you do, and old man Magnus is still alive, and has one leg left to hop upon, if it’s only a wooden one, he’ll trust to sail with you for the land he loves so well.”

“The land we all love so well,” said McBain; “the seas to which no one ever yet sailed without wishing to revisit them.”

There was a faint double knock at the saloon door as the captain ceased speaking, and Mitchell entered.

“Well, Mr Mitchell, come in, but not so doubtingly; we have done talking, and have come to the unanimous conclusion that the time has arrived for us to bear up.”

“Hurrah! to that,” said Mitchell, striking his left palm with his right fist in a very solid manner indeed.

“And now, sir,” continued Mitchell, “I come to tell you that quite a wall of mist is rolling down upon us from the nor’-east. It is as close and black as factory smoke, and it is now close aboard of us.”

“Any wind?”

“Not much, sir, but what little there is is coming down along with the mist.”

“Then fill the foreyard, Mr Mitchell. Set every stitch she’ll bear, studding-sails if you like, so long as it isn’t too dark and close, and the bergs are anything like visible. I’ll be on deck myself presently.”

“Well, Rory,” said Captain McBain, entering the snuggery that same night, rubbing his hands and beaming with smiles, “so we have borne up at last; how do you like the idea of returning to your native land after all your long journeyings and wild adventures?”

“Indeed, I like it immensely,” replied Rory, “barring the difference that it isn’t my native land I’ll be going to after all, but the land o’ the mountain and the flood. Oh! won’t I be happy to meet Allan’s dear mother and sister again! And even Janet, the dear old soul!”

“Well,” said McBain, taking up Rory’s fiddle and thoughtfully bringing some very discordant notes out of it, “I sincerely hope they will be all alive to meet us: if the meeting be all right I don’t fear for the greeting.” Then brightening up and putting down the instrument, he continued, “I’ve been leaning over the bows for the last hour, and thinking, and I’ve come to the conclusion that we haven’t done so badly by our cruise after all.”

“We haven’t filled up with ivory from the mammoth caves though,” said Ralph, with a sigh.

“Why that plaintive sigh, poor soul?” asked Rory.

“Ah! because, you know,” replied Ralph, pinching Rory’s ear, “we haven’t made wealth untold, and I’ll have to marry my grandmother after all.”

“Oh!” cried McBain, “your somewhat antiquated cousin; I had forgotten all about her.”

“I hadn’t,” said Ralph.

“Never mind,” said Rory, “something may turn up, and even if the worst comes to the worst, I’ll be at the wedding, and play the Dead March in Saul.”

“Ah!” said Ralph, “it is just as well for you that you moved out of my reach, you saucy boy?”

“There are two thousand pounds to a share,” continued McBain, “if we sell our furs and oils only indifferently well.”

“And sure,” said Rory, “even that is better than a stone behind the ear. And look at all the fun we have had, and all the adventures; troth, we’ll have stories to tell all our lives, if we never go to sea any more, and live till we’re as old as the big hill o’ Howth.”

“But I think, you know, boys,” McBain went on, “we have gained a deal more than the simple pecuniary value of what lies in our tanks and lockers. Increased health and strength, for instance.”

“Ah?” added Allan, “strength of mind as well as body, for, positively, before I left Glentroom, I did little else but mope—now, I think I won’t do anything of the kind again. With the little capital I have obtained, I will begin and cultivate my glen—it is worth more than rabbits’ food.”

“Yes,” said McBain, “there is gold in the glen.”

“Speaking figuratively, yes.”

“It only needs perseverance to make it yield it. What a grand thing that perseverance is! I think, boys, we’ve learned a little of its virtue, even in this cruise of ours, though we haven’t done everything we had hoped. But perseverance builds names and fortunes—it builds cities too.”

“It builds continents,” said Rory, looking very wise—for him; “just look what a midge of a creature the coral zoophyte is, but look at the work it is doing every day, the worlds it is throwing up almost, for future millions to inhabit.”

Thus continued our heroes talking till long past midnight; and even after they had retired, one at least did not fall all at once asleep. That one was Allan. He began to believe that his dreams of restoring his dear old roof-tree, Arrandoon Castle, would yet be realised. That a time would soon come when his mother and sister would sit in halls as noble as any his forefathers had occupied, and mingle among a peasantry as happy and content as they were in the good old years of long, long ago. Perseverance would do it; and, happy thought, he would adopt a new badge, and it would neither be a flower, nor a fern, nor a feather, but simply a piece of coral. Then presently he found himself deep down in the green translucent waters of the Indian Ocean, in a cave, in a coral isle, conversing with a mermaid as freely as if it were the most natural thing in all the world; then he awoke, and behold it was broad daylight.

At least it was just as broad daylight as it was likely to be, while the good yacht was still enveloped in the bosom of that dense mist.

TheSnowbirdevidently did not think herself the best used yacht in the world. They would not give her sail enough to let her fly along as she wanted to, and, more than that, she was constantly being checked by the pieces of ice that struck and hammered at her on both bow and quarter. Sometimes she seemed to lose her temper and stop almost dead still, as much as to say, “I do think such treatment most ungrateful after all I’ve gone through, and, if it continues, I declare I won’t go another step of my toe towards home.”

Ah! but when a week passed away, and when all at once the yacht sailed out from this dark and pitiless mist, and found herself in a blue rippling sea, with a blue and cloudless sky overhead, and never a bit of ice to be seen, then shedidregain her temper.

“Well,” she said, “thisisnice, this is perfectly jolly; now for a trifle more sail, and won’t I go rolling home!”

Sunlight seemed to bring joy to every heart. Our heroes walked the deck arrayed in their best, walked erect with springy steps and smiling faces. They had laid aside their winter and donned their summer clothing, and summer was in their hearts as well.

But theSnowbird, the once beautifulSnowbird, now all scraped with ice and bare, should she have holiday attire likewise? She was not forgotten, I do assure you. For days and days men were slung in ropes overboard, on all sides of her, scraping, and painting, and polishing; men were hung like herrings aloft, scraping and varnishing there; and soon the decks were scrubbed to a snowy whiteness, and every bit of brass about her shone like burnished gold. She seemed a spick-and-span newSnowbird, and, what is more, she seemed to feel it too, and give herself all the additional airs and graces she could think of.

At long last the seagulls came sailing to meet her, and a day or two thereafter,—

“Land, ho!” was the glad cry from the outlook aloft. Only a long blue mist on the distant horizon, developing itself soon however, into a black line capped with green. Presently the dark line grew bigger, and then it became fringed beneath with a line of snowy white.

Shetland once again; and when it opened out more, and began to fall off to the bow, the primitive cottages could be descried, and the diminutive cattle and the sheep that browsed on its braes.

Even great Oscar, the Saint Bernard, must needs put his paws on the bulwarks, and gaze with a longing sniff towards the land, then jumping on deck go bounding along, barking for very joy; and as the little Skye looked so miserable because he could only have a sniff through the lee scuppers, Rory lifted him on to the capstan, and pointed out the land to him.

Then rough sea-dogs of men pulled off from a little village to greet them, dressed in jackets like the coats of bears. Rough though they looked, the foreyard was hauled aback all the same.

“No,” they said, “they didn’t think the country was at war.” That was all they could say; but they gave the captain a week-old newspaper and fish for all hands, in return for a few cakes of tobacco.

Then away they pulled, and theSnowbirdsailed on. Lerwick was reached in good time, and here they cast anchor for five hours; here weird old Magnus bade them all an affectionate adieu, and here our heroes landed to telegraph to their friends.

How anxiously the replies were waited for, and with what trembling hands and beating hearts they opened them when they did arrive, only those can know who have been years absent from their native shores, without hearing from those they hold dear.

The gist of the despatches was as follows:—Number 1 to Allan from Arrandoon. “All alive and well.” Number 2 to Ralph. “Father alive and well, will meet you at Oban. Your cousin, alas! no more. Fortune falls to you.”

“Hurrah!” cried Ralph, “my cousin is dead!”

McBain could not restrain a smile.

“What a strange equivocal way of expressing your grief!” he said.

“Och!” said Rory, “excuse the poor boy; he won’t have to marry his grandmother nevermore.”

Rory’s own telegram was the least satisfactory. It was from his agents. It was all about rents, and they didn’t advise him to return to Ireland “just yet.”

“I’m right glad of that,” said Allan; “you shall stop with me till ‘just yet’ blows over.”

There was nothing to keep them much longer at Shetland. Yet the moors were all purple with heather. Allan suggested gathering a garland to hang at theSnowbird’smain truck, where the crow’s-nest had been through all the Arctic winter.

“So romantic a proposal,” said Rory, “deserves seconding, though ’deed and in troth, when you spoke, Allan, of gathering heather, I fancied it would be a broom you’d be after making. Thereisa spice of poetry in you after all.”

Two days after this, on a lovely balmy August afternoon, with just wind enough to fill the sails, theSnowbird, looking as white in canvas as her namesake, looking as clean and as taut and as trim as though she had never left the Scottish shores, rounded the point of Ardnamurchan, and stood in towards Loch Sunart. Hardly had they opened out the broad blue lake when McBain exclaimed, with joyous excitement in his every tone,—

“Boys, come here, quick!”

The boys came bounding.

“Look yonder, what is that?” As she spoke he pointed towards a tidy little cutter yacht that came rushing towards them over the water as if she couldn’t come quickly enough.

“TheFlower of Arrandoon!” every one said in a breath. And so it was. Too impatient to remain any longer at Oban, our heroes’ friends had set sail to meet them. In fifteen minutes more they were all together on board theSnowbird.

I would much rather leave it to the reader’s imagination than tell of the joyous greetings that followed, of the pleasant passage up the canal and through the lake, till once more anchored in sight of the dear old castle, surrounded with its hills of glorious purple heather; of the return to Arrandoon, and the wildness of the dogs, and the ecstasies of poor old Janet, for as the chain rattles over the bows and the anchor drops in the waters of the lake—the Cruise of the “Snowbird” ends.

It remains only for me, the author, to briefly breathe that little word, which never yet was spoken without some degree of tender sorrow, and say Adieu.

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