Chapter Five.The West Land of Greenland—A Fall! a Fall!—Danger on all Sides—“Man the Ice-saws”—Working for Life—Beset in the Dreary Pack.“I feel,” said the captain one day, at breakfast, “that I am making a dangerous experiment. I am keeping far in to the west land; I am all but hugging the shore; and if it were to come on to blow from seawards, we would—Steward, I’ll have another cup of coffee.”“You think,” said Chisholm, “our chances of further cups of coffee wouldn’t be very great, eh?”“I don’t think they would,” said the captain. “Well, lads, I’ve shown you a bit of sport, haven’t I? And if we had only a little more blubber in her, troth, I’d bear up for bonnie Scotland. I’ve just come down from the crow’s-nest, and what do you think I’ve spied? Why, open water for miles ahead, stretching away to the north as far as eyes can reach. There are whales there, boys, if we can but wait for them.”After breakfast it was, “All hands assist ship!”Up sprang the men, and ere one could wink, so to speak, half the crew were at the side with poles, pressing on the ice to make room for theGrampus. It was strange work, and it seemed at first impossible that twenty men with a spar could move a floe. But they did, and three hours afterwards they were in this mysterious open sea.“Why,” cried Frank, “I declare there is the Dutchman dodging yonder with foreyard aback. A sailing ship beat a steamer!”“Ay, she’s got the pull on us, boys,” the captain said. “And see, she is flenshing (skinning) a whale; the crang (the skinned corpse) lies beside her. She has met with a lane of open water, and taken advantage of it.”Just at that moment came the cry, “A fall! a fall! on the weather quarter!”“A fall! a fall!” Surely never was excitement seen like this before, thought Frank.There was no waiting for orders. The ship seemed to stop of her own accord, and the escaping steam roared uselessly through the funnel.“A fall! a fall!” Up tumble the men, many undressed, with their clothes in a bundle. They spring to the boats, our heroes follow the example, and in three minutes more are tearing through the water towards the coveted leviathan. The Dutchman has spied the monster too, and her boats are soon afloat. Who shall be first?(The origin of this cry is this, I think. “Whaol” is the ordinary Scotch for “whale,” but Aberdonians use the “f” instead of the “wh” in such words as “what,” “where,” etc, which they pronounce “fat” and “far.” Hence “whale” would become “faul,” or “fall.”)“Pull, lads, pull! Hurrah, lads, hurrah! We’ll never let a Dutchman beat us!”Is the whale asleep, that she lies so quietly? Nay, for now she scents the danger, and, lashing her tail madly skywards, is off; but not before the roar of the harpoon gun from the foremost boat has awakened the echoes of the Greenland sea.“A fall! a fall! She is struck! she is struck!” Vainly now she dashes through the surging sea; another boat pulls around to intercept her, and again she is struck; the lines whirl over the gunwale of Frank’s boat till it smokes again. There is blood now in the great beast’s wake, and her way is not so swift; she dives and dives again, but she is breathless now. Dreadful her wound must be—for see, she is spouting water mingled with blood; and now she lies still on the surface of the ocean.“In line, men!” cries the mate, springing up and seizing his long lance, and standing bravely up in the bows. “Pull gently alongside, and stand by to back water the moment I spear the fall.”“How bold and daring he looks!” thinks Frank; all thought of danger swallowed up in admiration of the man who stands, spear in hand, in the boat’s bows.They are close now. Swish! Quick as lightning the spear is sent home; quickly it is turned, to sever the carotid; next moment the backing boat is almost swamped in blood. But not quickly enough can they back, I fear, to save the boat from destruction, themselves from speedy death. High, high in air is raised that dreadful tail; half the animal seems out of the water; they are under the shadow of it; and now it descends, and every oar on the port-side of the boat is broken off close to the rowlocks. But the boat is saved. For fully half an hour the whale flaps the sea in her dying agony, and the noise may be heard for miles around, while the waters around her are churned into crimson foam. Then there is one more terrible convulsion; her great jaw opens and shuts again. The leviathan is dead. The men of the brig and the men in the boats answer each other with boisterous cheers; but the Dutchman fills her sails, puts about, and bears sullenly up for the south.Well would it have been for theGrampushad Captain Anderson followed her example; but he would not.“She can go,” he said; “she is a full ship, and only a sailing ship. Now let us get but two other ‘fish,’ then hey for the sunny south, boys.”For a whole month they remained dodging about in that open sea, but without seeing another whale. All their good luck seemed to have gone with the Dutchman, and the captain was about to bear up, and force his way once more out through the southern ice to the open sea beyond, when suddenly a change came o’er the spirit of the scene. To their surprise, if not to their horror, the ice began to close in around them in all directions. Nearer and nearer came the mighty floes. They came from the north; they came from the south and the east; they even deployed into two long lines, or horns, that crept along the land until they met. At the same time a heavy swell began to roll in from seawards.“There is a gale of wind outside,” the captain said to Chisholm, “and this is the result; but come, I don’t mean to be caught like a mouse in a trap.” Then, addressing the mate, “Call all hands, Mr Lewis. Get out the ice-saws and anchors.”“Ay, ay, sir,” replied the mate.“Now, my lads,” continued the captain, when the men came aft in a body, “you’ve all been to Greenland before, and you know the danger we are in as well as I can tell you. If we are caught between two floes in that heaving pack, we’ll be crunched like a walnut-shell. So we’ll have to work to make a harbour. That alone can save us. Call the steward. Steward! we’ll splice the main brace.”The men gave a cheer; they stripped off coats and jackets, and even their gloves. They meant business, and looked it. Meanwhile theGrampuswas going ahead at full speed, straight towards the ice in shore. Why, it looked to our heroes as if the captain was positively courting destruction; for he was steering for the very largest berg he could find, and presently he was alongside it. The ship was stopped, and every man that could be spared sent over the side. The anchors were got out speedily, and made fast to the berg. Then the men began to work.The iceberg against which they directed their operations was indeed a mighty one. Although not very high close to the edge, it towered above them many hundreds of feet, a snow-clad mountain of ice, its green and rugged sides glittering in the beams of the mid-day sun. It was soon evident to Chisholm O’Grahame that the captain’s object was to hollow out a temporary harbour in the side of the berg, sufficiently wide to enable the ship to fit into it, so that she might be safe from being ground into matchwood when the whole pack was joined.“Come,” he cried, to his comrades, “three hands of us here idle! We can work too, captain. Only tell us what to do, and we’ll do it.”“Bravo! my lads,” said the captain, cheerily. “Over the side with you then, and help with the ice-saws.”Those great ice-saws were about twenty feet long, and had four cross handles at the top, so that when let down, on the perpendicular, against the piece, four men standing above could work one saw. Frank and his two friends, with Mr Lewis, the mate, took charge of a saw, and the work went on cheerily. The men sang as they laboured, and there was as much laughing and joking as if they had been husbandmen working together in the harvest-field, instead of men working for their dear lives. By eight o’clock the harbour was complete.By eight o’clock the ice had almost closed upon them.And now to get the ship into thisportus salutis. There was so little time; other giant bergs were close aboard of them, rising and falling on the swelling waves with a noise that was simply appalling. The captain had to give his orders through the speaking-trumpet, and even then his voice was often drowned by the grinding, shrieking din of the heaving floes. But at last they have worked her in, and now for a time at least she is safe, for she rises and falls with the ice; and, though hemmed in on all sides, has nothing to fear.TheGrampuswas “beset;” and from that very hour began one of the dreariest seasons of imprisonment that ever a beleaguered ship’s crew experienced. They were far away from aid of any kind that they knew of, the ice was terribly heavy, and, worse than all, the summer season was far advanced, and already the sun dipped very close to the northern horizon at midnight.The storm abated; in twelve hours the ice had ceased to rise and fall, and a silence, deep as death, reigned once more over the frozen sea.“We must do the best we can,” said brave Captain Anderson, “to amuse ourselves and each other. God only knows when we may get clear, but we can trust in Him who rules the sea as well as the dry land.”“Amen!” said Chisholm, in a quiet and earnest voice.“We’ll make off skins now for a week or two,” said the captain; “that will help to pass the time.”So it did, reader, and it also brought the birds around them in millions. These, as usual, they shot for feathers and fresh meat. Bears in twos, and sometimes in threes, prowled round the ship to pick up the offal. Ugly customers they looked, and ugly customers they were. Poor Tom Reid, the cooper’s mate, sat on a bit of ice one day smoking, not far from the ship. A monster bear crept round a corner and clawed his heart and lungs out with one stroke of his mighty paw. The carpenter and captain were both on the ice one day, when they were suddenly confronted with the man-eater. They had no arms, and would have been instantly killed had not the danger been perceived by Fred Freeman; he fired from the deck of theGrampus, wounded the bear, and saved their lives. After this it was determined to hunt and kill the bears, and many good skins were thus procured. One day Fred surprised the man-eater in a corner, licking his wounded foot. The bear bellowed like a bull, and prepared to spring. Fred was too fast for him, and rolled him over at ten paces distance. Poor Fred! he did not see that this bear had a companion within hail, and that he was coming up fast and furiously and intent on revenge, not fifty yards away. Men are behind him, but they fear to fire, lest they kill Fred. Chisholm is on an adjoining floe, but the warning he shouts comes all too late; for next moment his poor friend lies helpless and bleeding in the talons of the terrible ice-king. Chisholm kneels to fire. It is a fearful risk, but it is Fred’s only chance. The sound of the rifle rings out on the silent air, the bear quits his victim, springs upwards with a convulsive start, then falls dead beside the man he would have slain. It is three weeks ere Fred can crawl again.Meanwhile the whole of the skins have been “made off.” (The seal-skins, with blubber about three inches thick, are spread on boards on idle days in Greenland ships, and the fat pared off. The skins are then rubbed in salt and stowed away in a tank; the blubber also is put in tanks by itself. This is called “off.”) There are no more bits of flesh and fat thrown overboard, so the birds all leave them, then the bears; and, except that a wondering seal sometimes lifts its black head for a moment out of a pool of water to stare at the ship, there is no sign or sound of animal life on all the dreary pack. They feel more lonely now than ever, but they play games on the ice and games on board, and they read much and talk a great deal about home. This last makes them feel the time still more long and monotonous, but one day—“Happy thought!” says Fred, “let us get up theatricals.”Well, this passed the time away pleasantly enough for a whole month, but they tired at last even of theatricals; and then a dense fog rolled in from the south and the west, and enveloped the whole pack as with a dark pall. They saw no more of the sun for two weary months, but they knew hesetnow, and that the order of day and night had been restored; but alas! they knew likewise that it would, in a few weeks more, be all one long night, and their hearts sank at the very thoughts of it.The mist rolled away at last, but shorter and shorter grew the days and colder and colder the weather. I hesitated before I wrote that last word “weather,” for really in that ice-pack there was no weather. Never a cloud in the blue vault of heaven, and never a breath of wind—not even as much as would suffice to raise one feathery flake of the starry snow. But the silence—it was a silence that was felt at the heart; you could have heard a whisper almost a mile away, there was nothing to break it. Nature seemed asleep, and all things seemed to fear to wake her. No wonder that poor Frank said one day, as he closed his book—“Heigho! boys, it issucha treat to hear the clock tick.”Night was the most trying, cheerless time; for after they had turned into their box-like bunks, they would lie for hours before it was possible to get warm. Then in the morning each bunk looked like a little cave of snow, the breath of the occupant during the night having been frozen into hoar-frost, which covered the sides and the top, and lay half-an-inch thick on the coverlet. It was, indeed, a dreary time.
“I feel,” said the captain one day, at breakfast, “that I am making a dangerous experiment. I am keeping far in to the west land; I am all but hugging the shore; and if it were to come on to blow from seawards, we would—Steward, I’ll have another cup of coffee.”
“You think,” said Chisholm, “our chances of further cups of coffee wouldn’t be very great, eh?”
“I don’t think they would,” said the captain. “Well, lads, I’ve shown you a bit of sport, haven’t I? And if we had only a little more blubber in her, troth, I’d bear up for bonnie Scotland. I’ve just come down from the crow’s-nest, and what do you think I’ve spied? Why, open water for miles ahead, stretching away to the north as far as eyes can reach. There are whales there, boys, if we can but wait for them.”
After breakfast it was, “All hands assist ship!”
Up sprang the men, and ere one could wink, so to speak, half the crew were at the side with poles, pressing on the ice to make room for theGrampus. It was strange work, and it seemed at first impossible that twenty men with a spar could move a floe. But they did, and three hours afterwards they were in this mysterious open sea.
“Why,” cried Frank, “I declare there is the Dutchman dodging yonder with foreyard aback. A sailing ship beat a steamer!”
“Ay, she’s got the pull on us, boys,” the captain said. “And see, she is flenshing (skinning) a whale; the crang (the skinned corpse) lies beside her. She has met with a lane of open water, and taken advantage of it.”
Just at that moment came the cry, “A fall! a fall! on the weather quarter!”
“A fall! a fall!” Surely never was excitement seen like this before, thought Frank.
There was no waiting for orders. The ship seemed to stop of her own accord, and the escaping steam roared uselessly through the funnel.
“A fall! a fall!” Up tumble the men, many undressed, with their clothes in a bundle. They spring to the boats, our heroes follow the example, and in three minutes more are tearing through the water towards the coveted leviathan. The Dutchman has spied the monster too, and her boats are soon afloat. Who shall be first?
(The origin of this cry is this, I think. “Whaol” is the ordinary Scotch for “whale,” but Aberdonians use the “f” instead of the “wh” in such words as “what,” “where,” etc, which they pronounce “fat” and “far.” Hence “whale” would become “faul,” or “fall.”)
“Pull, lads, pull! Hurrah, lads, hurrah! We’ll never let a Dutchman beat us!”
Is the whale asleep, that she lies so quietly? Nay, for now she scents the danger, and, lashing her tail madly skywards, is off; but not before the roar of the harpoon gun from the foremost boat has awakened the echoes of the Greenland sea.
“A fall! a fall! She is struck! she is struck!” Vainly now she dashes through the surging sea; another boat pulls around to intercept her, and again she is struck; the lines whirl over the gunwale of Frank’s boat till it smokes again. There is blood now in the great beast’s wake, and her way is not so swift; she dives and dives again, but she is breathless now. Dreadful her wound must be—for see, she is spouting water mingled with blood; and now she lies still on the surface of the ocean.
“In line, men!” cries the mate, springing up and seizing his long lance, and standing bravely up in the bows. “Pull gently alongside, and stand by to back water the moment I spear the fall.”
“How bold and daring he looks!” thinks Frank; all thought of danger swallowed up in admiration of the man who stands, spear in hand, in the boat’s bows.
They are close now. Swish! Quick as lightning the spear is sent home; quickly it is turned, to sever the carotid; next moment the backing boat is almost swamped in blood. But not quickly enough can they back, I fear, to save the boat from destruction, themselves from speedy death. High, high in air is raised that dreadful tail; half the animal seems out of the water; they are under the shadow of it; and now it descends, and every oar on the port-side of the boat is broken off close to the rowlocks. But the boat is saved. For fully half an hour the whale flaps the sea in her dying agony, and the noise may be heard for miles around, while the waters around her are churned into crimson foam. Then there is one more terrible convulsion; her great jaw opens and shuts again. The leviathan is dead. The men of the brig and the men in the boats answer each other with boisterous cheers; but the Dutchman fills her sails, puts about, and bears sullenly up for the south.
Well would it have been for theGrampushad Captain Anderson followed her example; but he would not.
“She can go,” he said; “she is a full ship, and only a sailing ship. Now let us get but two other ‘fish,’ then hey for the sunny south, boys.”
For a whole month they remained dodging about in that open sea, but without seeing another whale. All their good luck seemed to have gone with the Dutchman, and the captain was about to bear up, and force his way once more out through the southern ice to the open sea beyond, when suddenly a change came o’er the spirit of the scene. To their surprise, if not to their horror, the ice began to close in around them in all directions. Nearer and nearer came the mighty floes. They came from the north; they came from the south and the east; they even deployed into two long lines, or horns, that crept along the land until they met. At the same time a heavy swell began to roll in from seawards.
“There is a gale of wind outside,” the captain said to Chisholm, “and this is the result; but come, I don’t mean to be caught like a mouse in a trap.” Then, addressing the mate, “Call all hands, Mr Lewis. Get out the ice-saws and anchors.”
“Ay, ay, sir,” replied the mate.
“Now, my lads,” continued the captain, when the men came aft in a body, “you’ve all been to Greenland before, and you know the danger we are in as well as I can tell you. If we are caught between two floes in that heaving pack, we’ll be crunched like a walnut-shell. So we’ll have to work to make a harbour. That alone can save us. Call the steward. Steward! we’ll splice the main brace.”
The men gave a cheer; they stripped off coats and jackets, and even their gloves. They meant business, and looked it. Meanwhile theGrampuswas going ahead at full speed, straight towards the ice in shore. Why, it looked to our heroes as if the captain was positively courting destruction; for he was steering for the very largest berg he could find, and presently he was alongside it. The ship was stopped, and every man that could be spared sent over the side. The anchors were got out speedily, and made fast to the berg. Then the men began to work.
The iceberg against which they directed their operations was indeed a mighty one. Although not very high close to the edge, it towered above them many hundreds of feet, a snow-clad mountain of ice, its green and rugged sides glittering in the beams of the mid-day sun. It was soon evident to Chisholm O’Grahame that the captain’s object was to hollow out a temporary harbour in the side of the berg, sufficiently wide to enable the ship to fit into it, so that she might be safe from being ground into matchwood when the whole pack was joined.
“Come,” he cried, to his comrades, “three hands of us here idle! We can work too, captain. Only tell us what to do, and we’ll do it.”
“Bravo! my lads,” said the captain, cheerily. “Over the side with you then, and help with the ice-saws.”
Those great ice-saws were about twenty feet long, and had four cross handles at the top, so that when let down, on the perpendicular, against the piece, four men standing above could work one saw. Frank and his two friends, with Mr Lewis, the mate, took charge of a saw, and the work went on cheerily. The men sang as they laboured, and there was as much laughing and joking as if they had been husbandmen working together in the harvest-field, instead of men working for their dear lives. By eight o’clock the harbour was complete.
By eight o’clock the ice had almost closed upon them.
And now to get the ship into thisportus salutis. There was so little time; other giant bergs were close aboard of them, rising and falling on the swelling waves with a noise that was simply appalling. The captain had to give his orders through the speaking-trumpet, and even then his voice was often drowned by the grinding, shrieking din of the heaving floes. But at last they have worked her in, and now for a time at least she is safe, for she rises and falls with the ice; and, though hemmed in on all sides, has nothing to fear.
TheGrampuswas “beset;” and from that very hour began one of the dreariest seasons of imprisonment that ever a beleaguered ship’s crew experienced. They were far away from aid of any kind that they knew of, the ice was terribly heavy, and, worse than all, the summer season was far advanced, and already the sun dipped very close to the northern horizon at midnight.
The storm abated; in twelve hours the ice had ceased to rise and fall, and a silence, deep as death, reigned once more over the frozen sea.
“We must do the best we can,” said brave Captain Anderson, “to amuse ourselves and each other. God only knows when we may get clear, but we can trust in Him who rules the sea as well as the dry land.”
“Amen!” said Chisholm, in a quiet and earnest voice.
“We’ll make off skins now for a week or two,” said the captain; “that will help to pass the time.”
So it did, reader, and it also brought the birds around them in millions. These, as usual, they shot for feathers and fresh meat. Bears in twos, and sometimes in threes, prowled round the ship to pick up the offal. Ugly customers they looked, and ugly customers they were. Poor Tom Reid, the cooper’s mate, sat on a bit of ice one day smoking, not far from the ship. A monster bear crept round a corner and clawed his heart and lungs out with one stroke of his mighty paw. The carpenter and captain were both on the ice one day, when they were suddenly confronted with the man-eater. They had no arms, and would have been instantly killed had not the danger been perceived by Fred Freeman; he fired from the deck of theGrampus, wounded the bear, and saved their lives. After this it was determined to hunt and kill the bears, and many good skins were thus procured. One day Fred surprised the man-eater in a corner, licking his wounded foot. The bear bellowed like a bull, and prepared to spring. Fred was too fast for him, and rolled him over at ten paces distance. Poor Fred! he did not see that this bear had a companion within hail, and that he was coming up fast and furiously and intent on revenge, not fifty yards away. Men are behind him, but they fear to fire, lest they kill Fred. Chisholm is on an adjoining floe, but the warning he shouts comes all too late; for next moment his poor friend lies helpless and bleeding in the talons of the terrible ice-king. Chisholm kneels to fire. It is a fearful risk, but it is Fred’s only chance. The sound of the rifle rings out on the silent air, the bear quits his victim, springs upwards with a convulsive start, then falls dead beside the man he would have slain. It is three weeks ere Fred can crawl again.
Meanwhile the whole of the skins have been “made off.” (The seal-skins, with blubber about three inches thick, are spread on boards on idle days in Greenland ships, and the fat pared off. The skins are then rubbed in salt and stowed away in a tank; the blubber also is put in tanks by itself. This is called “off.”) There are no more bits of flesh and fat thrown overboard, so the birds all leave them, then the bears; and, except that a wondering seal sometimes lifts its black head for a moment out of a pool of water to stare at the ship, there is no sign or sound of animal life on all the dreary pack. They feel more lonely now than ever, but they play games on the ice and games on board, and they read much and talk a great deal about home. This last makes them feel the time still more long and monotonous, but one day—
“Happy thought!” says Fred, “let us get up theatricals.”
Well, this passed the time away pleasantly enough for a whole month, but they tired at last even of theatricals; and then a dense fog rolled in from the south and the west, and enveloped the whole pack as with a dark pall. They saw no more of the sun for two weary months, but they knew hesetnow, and that the order of day and night had been restored; but alas! they knew likewise that it would, in a few weeks more, be all one long night, and their hearts sank at the very thoughts of it.
The mist rolled away at last, but shorter and shorter grew the days and colder and colder the weather. I hesitated before I wrote that last word “weather,” for really in that ice-pack there was no weather. Never a cloud in the blue vault of heaven, and never a breath of wind—not even as much as would suffice to raise one feathery flake of the starry snow. But the silence—it was a silence that was felt at the heart; you could have heard a whisper almost a mile away, there was nothing to break it. Nature seemed asleep, and all things seemed to fear to wake her. No wonder that poor Frank said one day, as he closed his book—
“Heigho! boys, it issucha treat to hear the clock tick.”
Night was the most trying, cheerless time; for after they had turned into their box-like bunks, they would lie for hours before it was possible to get warm. Then in the morning each bunk looked like a little cave of snow, the breath of the occupant during the night having been frozen into hoar-frost, which covered the sides and the top, and lay half-an-inch thick on the coverlet. It was, indeed, a dreary time.
Chapter Six.Winter in the Ice-fields—The Ice breaks up—Sailing South—A Sledge Adventure—The Storm and Shipwreck—Afloat on an Iceberg—Land! land!—A terrible Journey—Cronstadt.Was it always so silent and still in that lonely ice-pack as I have tried to describe it? Not always: there were times when the floes around the ship began to move slowly up and down, telling of a swell beneath them; then the rending, shrieking, and groaning noises were indescribable. But only twice during the months of darkness did a breeze blow, and, when it did, snow fell, or rather was borne along on the wings of the wind, with a fierce bitterness that no living being could be exposed to for an hour and live. A snow-house was built over the decks, and this served in some slight measure to mitigate the terrible cold.And so the winter wore away, for the longest time has an end. Our heroes had borne their privations and their deprivations nobly. They did not even let down their hearts when the captain told them they would have to go on “short commons,” and only laughed when the steward reported the eggs finished, and the last potato vanished. The biscuits held out, however, and the soup in bouilli, so they rejoiced accordingly, and were thankful.But when the sun showed face one day, there were no bounds to the joy that every one on board manifested. They even manned the rigging, and gave him three times three heartfelt cheers. Even Rouskia, the ship’s dog, seemed glad to see the light of day again, and joined in the cheering with a kind of half hysterical bark, as if the tears were in his throat and partially stopped his utterance. The sun did not stop to look at them long, but, like an invalid in the stage of convalescence, he stayed up longer and longer every day, and his presence soon began to work a change in the appearance of the ice; the snow on the top of it became less dry, and the cold to a large extent left the air. Then the ice began to float farther apart, and, on taking the reckoning one day, the captain found, to his joy, that the whole pack was moving slowly southwards.After many days theGrampusleft her harbour, and began “boring” her way through the ice. It was slow, tedious work; but slow as it was they were homeward bound, so there was happiness at the hearts of all on board. But their hopes of escape were doomed to be blighted; for once again the light wind which had begun to blow from the gentle south fell to a dead calm, winter once more resumed his sway, and the good shipGrampuswas beset a second time. Although the ice was not heavy, but hummock-covered or flat, it was dangerous enough in all conscience.One day they were surprised by a visit from some natives, with sledges drawn by dogs. They brought fish with them, and the carcase of a reindeer, and begged, in their strange but musical labial language, for blankets and tobacco. They came from land that was visible on the starboard bow, and this country, or island, or whatever it was, Chisholm begged leave of the captain to be allowed, with his friends, to visit.“It must be at your own risk, then, gentlemen,” the captain replied; “for, although we are most likely to lie here for six weeks to come, the ice may break up at any moment.”But our heroes did risk it. They packed a sledge with many things which they knew the natives would appreciate, and off they started, the captain waving his hand and wishing them luck. It was more pleasant to run for a little way on first starting; but having by this means succeeded in starting the circulation of the blood, as Chisholm phrased it, they handed the whips to the natives, and squatted on the tops of the curious and primitive sledges.They found the Esquimaux very friendly, and willing to barter. Their huts were mere mole-hills, and far from cleanly inside, and were built with no attempt at architecture; but they were strong, nevertheless. The only kind of religion these people had was a kind of sun worship. They were expert in hunting and fishing, and very brave and daring. Chisholm soon found that he could accomplish the journey from the ship to the village of Redinvolsk in an hour; so he started a sledge, drawn by two dogs, and, great though the risk was, went on shore almost every day. But these little trips of his had a sad and all but fatal ending. His team one day took fright, and, instead of running directly for the village, dashed over a precipice. Half-way down the crevasse the sledge was brought up by a snow-covered shelf of rock. But kindly aid was at hand, a rope was lowered by some friendly natives, and a sheathed knife. With the latter he cut the poor plunging dogs adrift, sorry in his manly heart that he had to leave them to their fate. He was then drawn to bank much bruised and shaken, but thankful to escape with life.One morning clouds began to bank up in the sky, and that very day the ice broke up, steam was got up, and, more quickly than before, theGrampusheaded homewards.There was an air of greater gravity about the captain, as he came below to dinner that day, than ever Frank and his friends had seen.“I hope there is nothing serious the matter, captain?” Chisholm inquired.“Not as yet, gentlemen,” replied the captain, with an uneasy kind of a smile, “but the glass is going tumbling down, and the ice grows heavier and more dangerous the nearer to the open sea we get. I fear we’re going to have a blow.”He soon after went on deck, whither our heroes followed him. The floes were of great size, heavy, mischievous-looking pieces, covered with snow on the top, but with a deal of hard green stuff under water. Against these the ship was constantly bumping, with a violence that made every one on deck stagger and reel. The captain himself was on the bridge giving constant orders, for the ship was being steered by the ice; the object being to strike the pieces stem on, and so save the more vulnerable bows or quarters.The day wore gloomily away, and the night closed in dark and stormy. No one cared to lie down or seek for rest; there was a cloud on the heart of every one on board—a strange foreboding of evil to come. The wind soon increased to all the fury of a gale; the waves dashed over the ship with such violence that when struck you couldn’t have told whether it was with a piece of ice or a green sea.It was just two bells in the morning watch, and the night was at its darkest, when the good ship was caught with tremendous force between two mighty floes, which, as soon as they had done the mischief, began to part and leave the sinking ship to her sad fate. The next moment the engineer had rushed on deck to say the engines had stopped. All was now confusion on board, for there was a strange steadiness about the vessel that told she was sinking fast.Boats were of no use in that terrible tempest-tossed ocean, so orders were given to get ready the ice-anchors. By dint of courage and strength, the anchors were thrown, and the ship made fast for a time, to the nearest berg. It was but for a time, alas! And now commenced all the hurry and horror of this pitiful disembarkation. The waves washed over both ship and berg, making the former quiver all over like some creature in the throes of death, and causing the berg itself to heel over like a great raft.Morning broke grey and cold and dismal; but hours before, theGrampushad slipped her ice-anchors, and gone down head foremost; and, out of all her crew of fifty men, fifteen only were alive to see the sunrise, and thank the God who had spared their lives—fifteen, and the ship’s dog. Our heroes were saved, or this story would not be written; but, with the exception of Captain Anderson, every other officer met with a watery grave.I have not the heart to harrow the feelings of my youthful readers with a relation of the horrors the survivors of the foundered ship had to endure on that floating iceberg. For a whole week they were tossed about among the stormy waves of that cold ocean, drifting before an eastern gale that blew with almost the force of a hurricane. But if their half-frozen hearts were still capable of feeling one atom of joy, they must surely have beat faster when the captain, glass in hand, but half buried in spray, shouted—“Land, land! I see it, I see it!”Ah! there were hearts on that berg that would never beat again, for at that moment six of the original fifteen lay dead on the berg.The storm now abated, and the sea went down; but yet another danger had to be encountered, for strange black monsters, with fierce eyes, rose up from the depth of ocean and sought to scale the berg. Was it after the dead they had come?Boats at last!—only the boats of native Indians, but they came with friendly intentions.So they committed the bodies of their late comrades to the deep, and, embarking with the Indians, were rowed on shore to a new land. Frank was in a sad way: he was carried to the hut of a chief; medicine men were sent for to look upon him and administer to him herbs strangely compounded, and wise old squaws uttered their spells over his prostrate form; but it was the nursing he received, after all, from Chisholm and Fred that at last brought him round.Their fare while they lived among the Indians was very poor of its kind; but then, a gift-horse should not be looked in the mouth. These poor people gave them a portion of all they possessed, and they gave it, too, with right good will. Captain Anderson could speak their language—a kind of Yackpatois—and held many long conversations with the chief—a great man in the estimation of the tribe, and in reality a true man, although only a savage. Anderson held him spell-bound, as he told of some of the strange cities and countries there were in the world. He liked to hear the captain talk, and still, from the sinister look and incredulous smile on his face as he listened, you could see that he thought the narrator was drawing largely on his imagination.It was very kind of this chief to invite the captain, our heroes, and the survivors of the melancholy shipwreck to stay with him for the rest of their lives.“Blubber,” he said, “would never fail them; salt fish and seal’s flesh could always be had in abundance, with now and then a bit of a whale as a treat. Then they could take them wives from the daughters of his people, and the smoke from their wigwams would ascend for ever.”It was a pretty picture, Anderson allowed; but—there is no accounting for taste; he loved his own home in England better.“Then in that case,” said Kit Chak—and here spoke the noble savage—“I and my brother will guide you through the great forest to Inchboon, where lies a Danish whaler. The journey will take us one moon.”One moon!—nearly thirty days. It was a fearful undertaking; but what will not men do for home and country? So all preparations were made for the march, and in three days they were ready to start.“You do well to wrap up, Frank, my boy,” said Chisholm to his young friend; “but, beside the captain, youdolook odd.”In twenty-five days, after sufferings and hardships that they never forgot, they arrived at Inchboon, and sure enough they found the Danish ship. She was bound to Russia, though; if that would suit them, said the captain, his vessel was at their service.They gladly accepted his offer, bade brave Kit Chak and his brother adieu (not without well rewarding them), and in six weeks’ time they were landed at Cronstadt.Our travellers now were as happy as kings; but where, they wondered, would they turn up next?
Was it always so silent and still in that lonely ice-pack as I have tried to describe it? Not always: there were times when the floes around the ship began to move slowly up and down, telling of a swell beneath them; then the rending, shrieking, and groaning noises were indescribable. But only twice during the months of darkness did a breeze blow, and, when it did, snow fell, or rather was borne along on the wings of the wind, with a fierce bitterness that no living being could be exposed to for an hour and live. A snow-house was built over the decks, and this served in some slight measure to mitigate the terrible cold.
And so the winter wore away, for the longest time has an end. Our heroes had borne their privations and their deprivations nobly. They did not even let down their hearts when the captain told them they would have to go on “short commons,” and only laughed when the steward reported the eggs finished, and the last potato vanished. The biscuits held out, however, and the soup in bouilli, so they rejoiced accordingly, and were thankful.
But when the sun showed face one day, there were no bounds to the joy that every one on board manifested. They even manned the rigging, and gave him three times three heartfelt cheers. Even Rouskia, the ship’s dog, seemed glad to see the light of day again, and joined in the cheering with a kind of half hysterical bark, as if the tears were in his throat and partially stopped his utterance. The sun did not stop to look at them long, but, like an invalid in the stage of convalescence, he stayed up longer and longer every day, and his presence soon began to work a change in the appearance of the ice; the snow on the top of it became less dry, and the cold to a large extent left the air. Then the ice began to float farther apart, and, on taking the reckoning one day, the captain found, to his joy, that the whole pack was moving slowly southwards.
After many days theGrampusleft her harbour, and began “boring” her way through the ice. It was slow, tedious work; but slow as it was they were homeward bound, so there was happiness at the hearts of all on board. But their hopes of escape were doomed to be blighted; for once again the light wind which had begun to blow from the gentle south fell to a dead calm, winter once more resumed his sway, and the good shipGrampuswas beset a second time. Although the ice was not heavy, but hummock-covered or flat, it was dangerous enough in all conscience.
One day they were surprised by a visit from some natives, with sledges drawn by dogs. They brought fish with them, and the carcase of a reindeer, and begged, in their strange but musical labial language, for blankets and tobacco. They came from land that was visible on the starboard bow, and this country, or island, or whatever it was, Chisholm begged leave of the captain to be allowed, with his friends, to visit.
“It must be at your own risk, then, gentlemen,” the captain replied; “for, although we are most likely to lie here for six weeks to come, the ice may break up at any moment.”
But our heroes did risk it. They packed a sledge with many things which they knew the natives would appreciate, and off they started, the captain waving his hand and wishing them luck. It was more pleasant to run for a little way on first starting; but having by this means succeeded in starting the circulation of the blood, as Chisholm phrased it, they handed the whips to the natives, and squatted on the tops of the curious and primitive sledges.
They found the Esquimaux very friendly, and willing to barter. Their huts were mere mole-hills, and far from cleanly inside, and were built with no attempt at architecture; but they were strong, nevertheless. The only kind of religion these people had was a kind of sun worship. They were expert in hunting and fishing, and very brave and daring. Chisholm soon found that he could accomplish the journey from the ship to the village of Redinvolsk in an hour; so he started a sledge, drawn by two dogs, and, great though the risk was, went on shore almost every day. But these little trips of his had a sad and all but fatal ending. His team one day took fright, and, instead of running directly for the village, dashed over a precipice. Half-way down the crevasse the sledge was brought up by a snow-covered shelf of rock. But kindly aid was at hand, a rope was lowered by some friendly natives, and a sheathed knife. With the latter he cut the poor plunging dogs adrift, sorry in his manly heart that he had to leave them to their fate. He was then drawn to bank much bruised and shaken, but thankful to escape with life.
One morning clouds began to bank up in the sky, and that very day the ice broke up, steam was got up, and, more quickly than before, theGrampusheaded homewards.
There was an air of greater gravity about the captain, as he came below to dinner that day, than ever Frank and his friends had seen.
“I hope there is nothing serious the matter, captain?” Chisholm inquired.
“Not as yet, gentlemen,” replied the captain, with an uneasy kind of a smile, “but the glass is going tumbling down, and the ice grows heavier and more dangerous the nearer to the open sea we get. I fear we’re going to have a blow.”
He soon after went on deck, whither our heroes followed him. The floes were of great size, heavy, mischievous-looking pieces, covered with snow on the top, but with a deal of hard green stuff under water. Against these the ship was constantly bumping, with a violence that made every one on deck stagger and reel. The captain himself was on the bridge giving constant orders, for the ship was being steered by the ice; the object being to strike the pieces stem on, and so save the more vulnerable bows or quarters.
The day wore gloomily away, and the night closed in dark and stormy. No one cared to lie down or seek for rest; there was a cloud on the heart of every one on board—a strange foreboding of evil to come. The wind soon increased to all the fury of a gale; the waves dashed over the ship with such violence that when struck you couldn’t have told whether it was with a piece of ice or a green sea.
It was just two bells in the morning watch, and the night was at its darkest, when the good ship was caught with tremendous force between two mighty floes, which, as soon as they had done the mischief, began to part and leave the sinking ship to her sad fate. The next moment the engineer had rushed on deck to say the engines had stopped. All was now confusion on board, for there was a strange steadiness about the vessel that told she was sinking fast.
Boats were of no use in that terrible tempest-tossed ocean, so orders were given to get ready the ice-anchors. By dint of courage and strength, the anchors were thrown, and the ship made fast for a time, to the nearest berg. It was but for a time, alas! And now commenced all the hurry and horror of this pitiful disembarkation. The waves washed over both ship and berg, making the former quiver all over like some creature in the throes of death, and causing the berg itself to heel over like a great raft.
Morning broke grey and cold and dismal; but hours before, theGrampushad slipped her ice-anchors, and gone down head foremost; and, out of all her crew of fifty men, fifteen only were alive to see the sunrise, and thank the God who had spared their lives—fifteen, and the ship’s dog. Our heroes were saved, or this story would not be written; but, with the exception of Captain Anderson, every other officer met with a watery grave.
I have not the heart to harrow the feelings of my youthful readers with a relation of the horrors the survivors of the foundered ship had to endure on that floating iceberg. For a whole week they were tossed about among the stormy waves of that cold ocean, drifting before an eastern gale that blew with almost the force of a hurricane. But if their half-frozen hearts were still capable of feeling one atom of joy, they must surely have beat faster when the captain, glass in hand, but half buried in spray, shouted—“Land, land! I see it, I see it!”
Ah! there were hearts on that berg that would never beat again, for at that moment six of the original fifteen lay dead on the berg.
The storm now abated, and the sea went down; but yet another danger had to be encountered, for strange black monsters, with fierce eyes, rose up from the depth of ocean and sought to scale the berg. Was it after the dead they had come?
Boats at last!—only the boats of native Indians, but they came with friendly intentions.
So they committed the bodies of their late comrades to the deep, and, embarking with the Indians, were rowed on shore to a new land. Frank was in a sad way: he was carried to the hut of a chief; medicine men were sent for to look upon him and administer to him herbs strangely compounded, and wise old squaws uttered their spells over his prostrate form; but it was the nursing he received, after all, from Chisholm and Fred that at last brought him round.
Their fare while they lived among the Indians was very poor of its kind; but then, a gift-horse should not be looked in the mouth. These poor people gave them a portion of all they possessed, and they gave it, too, with right good will. Captain Anderson could speak their language—a kind of Yackpatois—and held many long conversations with the chief—a great man in the estimation of the tribe, and in reality a true man, although only a savage. Anderson held him spell-bound, as he told of some of the strange cities and countries there were in the world. He liked to hear the captain talk, and still, from the sinister look and incredulous smile on his face as he listened, you could see that he thought the narrator was drawing largely on his imagination.
It was very kind of this chief to invite the captain, our heroes, and the survivors of the melancholy shipwreck to stay with him for the rest of their lives.
“Blubber,” he said, “would never fail them; salt fish and seal’s flesh could always be had in abundance, with now and then a bit of a whale as a treat. Then they could take them wives from the daughters of his people, and the smoke from their wigwams would ascend for ever.”
It was a pretty picture, Anderson allowed; but—there is no accounting for taste; he loved his own home in England better.
“Then in that case,” said Kit Chak—and here spoke the noble savage—“I and my brother will guide you through the great forest to Inchboon, where lies a Danish whaler. The journey will take us one moon.”
One moon!—nearly thirty days. It was a fearful undertaking; but what will not men do for home and country? So all preparations were made for the march, and in three days they were ready to start.
“You do well to wrap up, Frank, my boy,” said Chisholm to his young friend; “but, beside the captain, youdolook odd.”
In twenty-five days, after sufferings and hardships that they never forgot, they arrived at Inchboon, and sure enough they found the Danish ship. She was bound to Russia, though; if that would suit them, said the captain, his vessel was at their service.
They gladly accepted his offer, bade brave Kit Chak and his brother adieu (not without well rewarding them), and in six weeks’ time they were landed at Cronstadt.
Our travellers now were as happy as kings; but where, they wondered, would they turn up next?
Chapter Seven.Part III—The Russian Steppes.Quiet days on the Kyra—Captain Varde’s happy Home—Fred Freeman’s Rustic Russian—The Captain tells a tale of Adventure.The captain of the Danish barque, who had brought our three heroes safely into Russian waters, was one of those individuals who are never so happy as when ministering to the comfort and pleasure of others.“Having landed you in Europe,” he said, on the very last day they dined together on board, “I dare say I ought to let you go, but I assure you, gentlemen, I am not tired of you, and if you will accept of a few weeks of the kind of rude hospitality I can offer you, at my little country home on the banks of the Kyra, I shall be delighted.”“Stop,” he continued, smilingly, holding up his hand as Chisholm was about to speak, “I know everything you would say, so there is no occasion to say anything. I have been kind to you, and you feel so much indebted to me already, that you are unwilling to trespass further on my goodness. That is what you would say; but, dear gentlemen, if you do feel under an obligation to me, you can amply repay me, and even confer a favour on me, by giving me a few weeks of your company.”“What say you, Fred?” asked Chisholm.“Oh!” Fred replied, “I am delighted at finding such a pleasant ‘new way of paying old debts.’ Let us go by all means.”“As for me, my friends,” said Captain Anderson, “I must leave you to-morrow. Although the loss of my ship was no fault of mine, it was a terrible misfortune, and one which it will be long ere I can forget, and longer still ere it will be forgotten against me.”“We need not tell you,” said Chisholm, “how truly sorry we are to part with you. We will live in the hopes of meeting you some day in England, and renewing our acquaintance with one in whose ship we sailed so long and spent so many happy hours.”So next day the captain of the lost brigGrampusand our friends parted. They stayed just one week in Cronstadt, communicating by telegraph with those at home, then, in company with their new friend, started for his cottage on the Kyra. They were not sorry when, three days after leaving Saint Petersburg, they found themselves down in the very heart of the cool green country, and in a spot which, but for the different dress and language of the people they met, they could easily have fancied was a part of England itself. If they were delighted with the country, they were not less so with the house and home itself of Captain Varde, their kindly host. Half buried in trees, it was approached by a broad and beautiful avenue, which led through well-kept lawns to what you would have been bound to have styled the hall door, or front entrance, but the truth is Captain Varde’s house had no front, or, in other words, it had two; for the spacious hall led you straight through to the wide terraced lawn and flower garden, that skirted the lovely river.“When we go down to the village,” said Varde, “which is situated about three miles from here, we sometimes go by boat, and sometimes with the horses in the conveyance I have landed you in to-day. But here comes my wife and daughter, the only two beings I love on earth.”The first greetings betwixt himself and family being ended, Captain Varde introduced our heroes, who were very kindly welcomed, and made to feel perfectly at home; so much so that before the first day of their visit had come to an end, they seemed to have known this family all their lives.When, after dinner, the ladies had retired, and the gentlemen lingered over the walnuts and wine,—“Captain Varde,” said Fred Freeman, “I cannot tell you how much astonished I and my comrades feel at all we see around us in this pretty home of yours. It is so different from anything we could have expected to meet with in Russia.”“It is, indeed,” added Chisholm, “there is an air of refinement everywhere, and, if you will excuse me for saying so, captain, the English spoken by Mrs and Miss Varde, with the exception of a slight foreign accent, which, in my opinion, adds a charm to it, is as perfect as any you will hear in London.”“We have travelled a good deal, even in your country,” said the Danish captain, with a smile.“Yes, but,” said Fred, “you would travel a very long way in England without meeting with a family who could talk the Russian language. As linguists, the people of this country undoubtedly beat us. Now, my idea of a Russian peasant, or small farmer, was somewhat as follows—shall I offend you if I describe my beau-ideal rustic Russian?”“Certainly not; though my wife and child are Russians by birth, I myself am a Dane.”“Well, then,” said Fred, “the rustic Russian that I had on the brain, and whose prototype I look for here in vain, was indeed a sorry lout—a short, stout, rough, and unkempt fellow, with less appearance of good breeding about him than a Nottingham cowherd, and less manners than a Newcastle navvy, with a good deal of reverence about him for the aristocracy, and an extraordinary relish for rum. He was guiltless of anything resembling ablution; dressed in sheep’s skins, with the hairy side next the skin; slept in this same jacket, and never changed it from one year’s end to another, except for the purpose of taking a bath, which operation he performed by getting inside the stove and raking the hot ashes all about him; his principal diet was the blackest of bread, and the greatest treat you could give him a basin of train-oil and a horn spoon.”Captain Varde laughed. “Anyhow,” he said, “I am glad you have already found yourselves undeceived, and I do not doubt but that, in your intercourse with the people of this country, you will find many of them brave, generous, and gentlemanly fellows, and quite worthy of being reckoned among the number of your friends.”And Captain Varde was right.The first two or three months of their life at the house of their newly-found friend was quite idyllic in its simplicity. Much of their time was spent in fishing and shooting, or in climbing the hills to obtain a view of the wild but beautiful country around them; but in whatever way the day had been passed, the afternoon always found them gathered around the hospitable board of their worthy host. Then the evening would be spent in pleasant conversation, with music and story-telling, the stories nearly all coming from the captain himself. He had spent a great deal of his life at sea, and had come through innumerable adventures both on the ocean and on land.“Old sailors,” said Varde, once, “are sometimes accused of spinning yarns, with less of facts about them than there might be; but, for my own part, I think that a man who has knocked about the world for about twenty years has little occasion to draw upon his imagination.”“I fought a bear one time,” he continued, “single-handed, face to face—ay, and I may say breast to breast.”“No easy task that, I should say,” remarked Chisholm, “if he were of any size.”“He was a monster,” said Varde, “of Herculean strength; yonder is his skin on the couch. You may be sure though that I did not court the struggle, nor am I ever likely to forget it, for two reasons—the first is that in my right leg I still carry the marks of the brute’s talons; the other reason is a far dearer one.”Captain Varde paused, and took his wife’s hand in his, gazing at her with a look of inexpressible tenderness.“But for that bear adventure I never should have met with my wife. How my Adeline’s father came to settle down for life in the wild unpeopled district where I first made his acquaintance and hers, I can hardly tell. In his youth he had been a merchant and a dweller in cities; in his old age he built himself a house many many versts even from a village of any pretensions, on the confines of a great gloomy forest, and close by a lake that people say is far deeper than the great hills around it are high. Here he lived the life of a recluse and a bookworm.“In the summer of 1845, myself and a few friends had encamped in the neighbourhood of this lake, chiefly to enjoy the excellent fishing there to be obtained. Not that we did not find work for our guns as well, for there was abundance of both fur and feather; but my chief delight lay in the gentler art. One of my friends, Satiesky by name, could do enough gunning for the whole camp, so I at least was content, and the time was spent most pleasantly until it set in for settled wet weather.“At last after several days’ rain it was evident the weather was broken, and the summer gone; so, very reluctantly, we prepared to pack our horses and trudge back again to the distant city. Packing did not take us long, and, having packed, we started. A march of six or eight versts brought us to the little village or hamlet of Odstok. We had just reached its first house—a small outlying farm built on a wooded eminence. It was well for us we had, for in less than ten minutes the low land that we had just passed was completely covered with water. What had been fields before was now an inland sea. Swollen by the mountain torrents, the river had burst its bounds and swept down the valley with terrible force, carrying before it fences and trees, and even the scattered houses which stood in its way, and drowning oxen, horses, sheep, and alas! human beings as well.“For three whole weeks we were in a state of siege. Not that we wanted food, however; Jerikoff the farmer’s larder was well stored, and he was very good to us indeed. He found his old boat, in which he used to paddle about in a little canal before the floods, very handy now. I shouldn’t have cared to risk my life in the ricketty tub; but Jerikoff did, and used to make voyages to a distant shop, and return laden with many a little Russian dainty. Once he brought in a haul of hares and rabbits from the flood. They had doubtless taken refuge on a tree as an extemporised island; but when that island itself became flooded, down the stream,nolens volens, they had to float. It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, and Jerikoff set out in great glee to reap this rich harvest of living fur. His face was a study while so engaged. ‘Oh! my pretty dears,’ he said, addressing his victims; ‘I couldn’t think of seeing you drown before my very face. Come into my boat; there is room for you all.’ But when the old man, before landing, began to knock them on the head, I daresay the little mariners thought they had got out of the frying pan into the fire.“But about my bear, gentlemen. Well, I am coming to that.”
The captain of the Danish barque, who had brought our three heroes safely into Russian waters, was one of those individuals who are never so happy as when ministering to the comfort and pleasure of others.
“Having landed you in Europe,” he said, on the very last day they dined together on board, “I dare say I ought to let you go, but I assure you, gentlemen, I am not tired of you, and if you will accept of a few weeks of the kind of rude hospitality I can offer you, at my little country home on the banks of the Kyra, I shall be delighted.”
“Stop,” he continued, smilingly, holding up his hand as Chisholm was about to speak, “I know everything you would say, so there is no occasion to say anything. I have been kind to you, and you feel so much indebted to me already, that you are unwilling to trespass further on my goodness. That is what you would say; but, dear gentlemen, if you do feel under an obligation to me, you can amply repay me, and even confer a favour on me, by giving me a few weeks of your company.”
“What say you, Fred?” asked Chisholm.
“Oh!” Fred replied, “I am delighted at finding such a pleasant ‘new way of paying old debts.’ Let us go by all means.”
“As for me, my friends,” said Captain Anderson, “I must leave you to-morrow. Although the loss of my ship was no fault of mine, it was a terrible misfortune, and one which it will be long ere I can forget, and longer still ere it will be forgotten against me.”
“We need not tell you,” said Chisholm, “how truly sorry we are to part with you. We will live in the hopes of meeting you some day in England, and renewing our acquaintance with one in whose ship we sailed so long and spent so many happy hours.”
So next day the captain of the lost brigGrampusand our friends parted. They stayed just one week in Cronstadt, communicating by telegraph with those at home, then, in company with their new friend, started for his cottage on the Kyra. They were not sorry when, three days after leaving Saint Petersburg, they found themselves down in the very heart of the cool green country, and in a spot which, but for the different dress and language of the people they met, they could easily have fancied was a part of England itself. If they were delighted with the country, they were not less so with the house and home itself of Captain Varde, their kindly host. Half buried in trees, it was approached by a broad and beautiful avenue, which led through well-kept lawns to what you would have been bound to have styled the hall door, or front entrance, but the truth is Captain Varde’s house had no front, or, in other words, it had two; for the spacious hall led you straight through to the wide terraced lawn and flower garden, that skirted the lovely river.
“When we go down to the village,” said Varde, “which is situated about three miles from here, we sometimes go by boat, and sometimes with the horses in the conveyance I have landed you in to-day. But here comes my wife and daughter, the only two beings I love on earth.”
The first greetings betwixt himself and family being ended, Captain Varde introduced our heroes, who were very kindly welcomed, and made to feel perfectly at home; so much so that before the first day of their visit had come to an end, they seemed to have known this family all their lives.
When, after dinner, the ladies had retired, and the gentlemen lingered over the walnuts and wine,—
“Captain Varde,” said Fred Freeman, “I cannot tell you how much astonished I and my comrades feel at all we see around us in this pretty home of yours. It is so different from anything we could have expected to meet with in Russia.”
“It is, indeed,” added Chisholm, “there is an air of refinement everywhere, and, if you will excuse me for saying so, captain, the English spoken by Mrs and Miss Varde, with the exception of a slight foreign accent, which, in my opinion, adds a charm to it, is as perfect as any you will hear in London.”
“We have travelled a good deal, even in your country,” said the Danish captain, with a smile.
“Yes, but,” said Fred, “you would travel a very long way in England without meeting with a family who could talk the Russian language. As linguists, the people of this country undoubtedly beat us. Now, my idea of a Russian peasant, or small farmer, was somewhat as follows—shall I offend you if I describe my beau-ideal rustic Russian?”
“Certainly not; though my wife and child are Russians by birth, I myself am a Dane.”
“Well, then,” said Fred, “the rustic Russian that I had on the brain, and whose prototype I look for here in vain, was indeed a sorry lout—a short, stout, rough, and unkempt fellow, with less appearance of good breeding about him than a Nottingham cowherd, and less manners than a Newcastle navvy, with a good deal of reverence about him for the aristocracy, and an extraordinary relish for rum. He was guiltless of anything resembling ablution; dressed in sheep’s skins, with the hairy side next the skin; slept in this same jacket, and never changed it from one year’s end to another, except for the purpose of taking a bath, which operation he performed by getting inside the stove and raking the hot ashes all about him; his principal diet was the blackest of bread, and the greatest treat you could give him a basin of train-oil and a horn spoon.”
Captain Varde laughed. “Anyhow,” he said, “I am glad you have already found yourselves undeceived, and I do not doubt but that, in your intercourse with the people of this country, you will find many of them brave, generous, and gentlemanly fellows, and quite worthy of being reckoned among the number of your friends.”
And Captain Varde was right.
The first two or three months of their life at the house of their newly-found friend was quite idyllic in its simplicity. Much of their time was spent in fishing and shooting, or in climbing the hills to obtain a view of the wild but beautiful country around them; but in whatever way the day had been passed, the afternoon always found them gathered around the hospitable board of their worthy host. Then the evening would be spent in pleasant conversation, with music and story-telling, the stories nearly all coming from the captain himself. He had spent a great deal of his life at sea, and had come through innumerable adventures both on the ocean and on land.
“Old sailors,” said Varde, once, “are sometimes accused of spinning yarns, with less of facts about them than there might be; but, for my own part, I think that a man who has knocked about the world for about twenty years has little occasion to draw upon his imagination.”
“I fought a bear one time,” he continued, “single-handed, face to face—ay, and I may say breast to breast.”
“No easy task that, I should say,” remarked Chisholm, “if he were of any size.”
“He was a monster,” said Varde, “of Herculean strength; yonder is his skin on the couch. You may be sure though that I did not court the struggle, nor am I ever likely to forget it, for two reasons—the first is that in my right leg I still carry the marks of the brute’s talons; the other reason is a far dearer one.”
Captain Varde paused, and took his wife’s hand in his, gazing at her with a look of inexpressible tenderness.
“But for that bear adventure I never should have met with my wife. How my Adeline’s father came to settle down for life in the wild unpeopled district where I first made his acquaintance and hers, I can hardly tell. In his youth he had been a merchant and a dweller in cities; in his old age he built himself a house many many versts even from a village of any pretensions, on the confines of a great gloomy forest, and close by a lake that people say is far deeper than the great hills around it are high. Here he lived the life of a recluse and a bookworm.
“In the summer of 1845, myself and a few friends had encamped in the neighbourhood of this lake, chiefly to enjoy the excellent fishing there to be obtained. Not that we did not find work for our guns as well, for there was abundance of both fur and feather; but my chief delight lay in the gentler art. One of my friends, Satiesky by name, could do enough gunning for the whole camp, so I at least was content, and the time was spent most pleasantly until it set in for settled wet weather.
“At last after several days’ rain it was evident the weather was broken, and the summer gone; so, very reluctantly, we prepared to pack our horses and trudge back again to the distant city. Packing did not take us long, and, having packed, we started. A march of six or eight versts brought us to the little village or hamlet of Odstok. We had just reached its first house—a small outlying farm built on a wooded eminence. It was well for us we had, for in less than ten minutes the low land that we had just passed was completely covered with water. What had been fields before was now an inland sea. Swollen by the mountain torrents, the river had burst its bounds and swept down the valley with terrible force, carrying before it fences and trees, and even the scattered houses which stood in its way, and drowning oxen, horses, sheep, and alas! human beings as well.
“For three whole weeks we were in a state of siege. Not that we wanted food, however; Jerikoff the farmer’s larder was well stored, and he was very good to us indeed. He found his old boat, in which he used to paddle about in a little canal before the floods, very handy now. I shouldn’t have cared to risk my life in the ricketty tub; but Jerikoff did, and used to make voyages to a distant shop, and return laden with many a little Russian dainty. Once he brought in a haul of hares and rabbits from the flood. They had doubtless taken refuge on a tree as an extemporised island; but when that island itself became flooded, down the stream,nolens volens, they had to float. It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, and Jerikoff set out in great glee to reap this rich harvest of living fur. His face was a study while so engaged. ‘Oh! my pretty dears,’ he said, addressing his victims; ‘I couldn’t think of seeing you drown before my very face. Come into my boat; there is room for you all.’ But when the old man, before landing, began to knock them on the head, I daresay the little mariners thought they had got out of the frying pan into the fire.
“But about my bear, gentlemen. Well, I am coming to that.”
Chapter Eight.The Captain’s tale continued—Winter brings the Bears from the Mountains—The Tragedy in the Forest—Bears at Bay—Breast to breast with Bruin—Fred Freeman falls in love!“Kind and all as our host Jerikoff was,” continued the captain, “none of us were sorry when the floods began to abate and finally disappeared. But hardly had they gone when yet another change came over the landscape; for hard frost set in, then small powdery snow began to fall, followed shortly by great flakes, and before twenty-four hours were over our heads the whole country was locked in the embrace of an early winter. We weren’t altogether sorry for this, for we could now prolong our stay with prospects of good duck and wild-goose shooting, for both these and many other kinds of game would visit the running streams. We would also have an opportunity of doing old Jerikoff a favour by filling his larder for him. Your Russian rustic, Mr Freeman, is oftentimes as proud as a prince. Jerikoff was, at all events; and we dared not insult him by the offer of a single rouble.“Our host used to do a little shooting himself. One day he met a young peasant leading his horse from the forest, where he had been for wood. The little lad’s eyes were as round and apparently as big as saucers—he had seen a bear. Jerikoff made haste home to tell us, and we determined to go in search of Mr Bruin. Hardly had we made up our minds and got ready our guns when another report, and that a very singular one indeed—although we had no reason to doubt the truth of it—reached us.“A farmer’s sledge drawn by three horses, and on its way to the very hamlet in which we now dwelt, had been attacked by a bear of monstrous size and terrible ferocity. It was not the horses, however, but human flesh on which this brute made up his mind to regale himself. He had sprung from an ambush, alighting in the very centre of the sledge. The poor kyoorshik’s struggles I trust were brief, but very dreadful nevertheless; his screams were heard by more than one individual—powerless, however, to render aught of assistance—as the terrified horses plunged madly through the forest, a tragedy being acted behind them which it makes one’s blood run cold even to think of. The poor beasts pulled up at last with the shattered remains of the sledge, and the mutilated body of the unhappy driver, at the very door of the little village inn; but of the bear there were no signs save the ghastly work he had accomplished.“News like this only served to stimulate our desire for revenge on this bold and ferocious bear, and we set out in all haste to seek him in the forest. There were four of us, all told, with two moudjiks in two sledges drawn by six horses. We were all armed to the teeth, but this did not prevent us from taking proper precautions to avoid a sudden surprise. Farther than the confines of the great forest it was impractical to take our sledges; but the horses were unlimbered, and accompanied us until we came upon the trail of our first bear. They were then fastened to trees, and left in the charge of the moudjiks.“‘Now,’ said Satiesky, one of my friends, ‘these tracks are very recent. Mr Bruin cannot therefore be very far away, and as it will be unsafe to go a long distance from our horses, let us try the effects of a little ruse. I have come all prepared to carry it out.’“To build a fire, camp-fashion, was with Satiesky the work of but a few minutes. He piled it in an open space or glade in the forest, so that the heat should not bring down the snow from the pines over it. Having got it well alight, he hung from the tripod above a three-pound piece of ham, which was soon frizzling away in fine style, and making us all hungry with its fragrance.“‘Let us get under cover, now,’ said Satiesky; ‘if a bear is any where within six versts, you’ll soon see him prowl round, licking his chops, and looking for dinner, which pray Providence we will serve up to him hot.’“We took up a position, as he spoke, as well screened as possible by the snow-laden branches, and waited. Half-an-hour went wearily past, and after that every minute seemed interminable. We were rewarded at last, though, but in a way we little expected. Some of us know, to our cost, the terrible bull-like bellow which a bear emits from his stentorian lungs, when he is suddenly disturbed and means mischief. This is intended, no doubt, to startle and paralyse the victim on which he means to spring. Be this as it may, such was now the sound we heard, yet not anywhere near the fire, but close in the rear of our position. It was an immense bear, probably the very same that had attacked and killed the poor sledge-driver; for, as Satiesky afterwards said, having once tasted human flesh, he would prefer it to the best bit of bacon that ever was frizzled.“He gave us little time now for consideration. But Satiesky was quick; he discharged his rifle almost point-blank at the charging beast. Down rolled Bruin, not dead, but so dreadfully wounded that it was an easy enough matter for us to dispatch him with our pikes.“Hardly had he ceased to writhe, when down the wind came the sharp ring of another rifle.“‘Hark!’ cried Satiesky, springing out into the open; ‘that sound comes not from the direction where we left our horses. There is another party in the forest as well as ourselves.’“Satiesky’s surmise was right, as he knew a moment afterwards to his sorrow. The strange hunting party had wounded a bear, and were following him up, and, in his desperation, he charged our companion. He had no power or time for defence, and next moment we saw him laid senseless on the snow; while over him stood his terrible antagonist, his eyes flashing fire, his jaws dripping blood.“I will not attempt to describe to you, gentlemen, the wildmeléethat followed. Bar a shot at close quarters with a revolver, there was no time for using fire-arms. With pikes and axes and rifles clubbed, we fought the giant beast until strength succumbed to skill, and he lay dead beside Satiesky. With the exception of a few scratches, nobody was any the worse, and we found, to our delight, that our fallen companion was merely stunned.“You should have seen the spread that Jerikoff placed before us that evening, on our return. Jerikoff excelled himself for once; and it needed but little wine-drinking, I can tell you, to make the feast pass merrily by.“Jerikoff would have bear hams all the winter. That was the reason he was so pleased; that was the reason he invited a pair of inseparable companions, in the shape of an old fiddler and a dancing bear, to minister to our amusement after dinner was over.“Next day we bagged three more bears. We had, however, no adventure to speak of; they succumbed to their fate with a kind of sleepy dignity, after they had been pitted by some peasants hired for the occasion.“On this particular day I had wandered some distance away from my companions. I had got clear out of the forest, and had climbed an eminence, where I could see well about me, accompanied by an armed servant; but certainly apprehending no danger, for the coast all around seemed well clear. I had reckoned without my host, however. My host on this occasion was an enormous bear, who had probably been asleep in the sun behind a boulder, and a very disagreeable entertainment he had provided for me.”“He wasn’t very hospitable, then?” said Chisholm, smiling.“Rather much so, I might say,” said the captain; “indeed, he received me with open arms. He was too affectionate altogether, and even now I think I hear the roar of delight he gave vent to as he commenced the fearful hug. I tried to prick him under the ribs with my knife. It broke on a bone, which caused the brute to increase rather than diminish the pressure. I could feel my bones crack, and my breath was squeezed out of me. Why at this awful moment my scared moudjik should hand me his knife, instead of using it himself, I never could tell; but God gave me strength to handle it, gentlemen. I had one hand free, and with that I plunged the weapon into the animal’s chest, and we both rolled down together.“That evening two sledges in particular left the forest, going in different directions. One dashed along as fast as three horses could carry it, towards the house of my dear Adeline’s father. It was the nearest house to the forest; therefore thither was I borne, all but lifeless from loss of blood. The other sledge went more slowly, of course, towards the village we had that morning left so merrily together. That sledge brought Bruin home. Gentlemen,” said the captain, concluding his narrative, and once more taking his wife’s hand, “I need not tell you how kind the old merchant was to me. Here is a proof of it.“The house where he and Adeline used to reside is now tenanted by some relations of ours, for my father-in-law has long since crossed the bourne whence no traveller ever returns; but we often visit the dear old home by the lake, and spend a few weeks there. We hope to do so this Christmas, and if you will but prolong your stay till then and accompany us, I think I can show you some nice sport.”What could our heroes reply to so kind an invitation, but that they would be delighted to do so? One of them, indeed, was much more delighted than either of the other two; and that was Fred Freeman. Would you know the reason why, reader? You may learn it, then, from the following fragment of a conversation which took place between the trio one evening when they were alone together:—“Chisholm O’Grahame,” said Fred, “we used to laugh at poor Frank for being so deeply in love with his beautiful Eenie Lyell. You must laugh alone now, my boy, for I can feel for him.”“What!” cried Chisholm, delightedly, “Are you too in for it?”“I fear it’s a fact,” said Fred; “and so you two can leave me here to my fate, if you choose, and go on with your adventures by yourselves—that is, if Miss Varde will look kindly on me.”“Ridiculous!” said Chisholm. “No, no, Fred, my lad, engage yourself if you like, and return some other day for this charming girl; but round the world with us you come, and, indeed, I think the sooner we start the better.”“Heigho!” sighed Fred, and Frank felt for him if Chisholm did not.
“Kind and all as our host Jerikoff was,” continued the captain, “none of us were sorry when the floods began to abate and finally disappeared. But hardly had they gone when yet another change came over the landscape; for hard frost set in, then small powdery snow began to fall, followed shortly by great flakes, and before twenty-four hours were over our heads the whole country was locked in the embrace of an early winter. We weren’t altogether sorry for this, for we could now prolong our stay with prospects of good duck and wild-goose shooting, for both these and many other kinds of game would visit the running streams. We would also have an opportunity of doing old Jerikoff a favour by filling his larder for him. Your Russian rustic, Mr Freeman, is oftentimes as proud as a prince. Jerikoff was, at all events; and we dared not insult him by the offer of a single rouble.
“Our host used to do a little shooting himself. One day he met a young peasant leading his horse from the forest, where he had been for wood. The little lad’s eyes were as round and apparently as big as saucers—he had seen a bear. Jerikoff made haste home to tell us, and we determined to go in search of Mr Bruin. Hardly had we made up our minds and got ready our guns when another report, and that a very singular one indeed—although we had no reason to doubt the truth of it—reached us.
“A farmer’s sledge drawn by three horses, and on its way to the very hamlet in which we now dwelt, had been attacked by a bear of monstrous size and terrible ferocity. It was not the horses, however, but human flesh on which this brute made up his mind to regale himself. He had sprung from an ambush, alighting in the very centre of the sledge. The poor kyoorshik’s struggles I trust were brief, but very dreadful nevertheless; his screams were heard by more than one individual—powerless, however, to render aught of assistance—as the terrified horses plunged madly through the forest, a tragedy being acted behind them which it makes one’s blood run cold even to think of. The poor beasts pulled up at last with the shattered remains of the sledge, and the mutilated body of the unhappy driver, at the very door of the little village inn; but of the bear there were no signs save the ghastly work he had accomplished.
“News like this only served to stimulate our desire for revenge on this bold and ferocious bear, and we set out in all haste to seek him in the forest. There were four of us, all told, with two moudjiks in two sledges drawn by six horses. We were all armed to the teeth, but this did not prevent us from taking proper precautions to avoid a sudden surprise. Farther than the confines of the great forest it was impractical to take our sledges; but the horses were unlimbered, and accompanied us until we came upon the trail of our first bear. They were then fastened to trees, and left in the charge of the moudjiks.
“‘Now,’ said Satiesky, one of my friends, ‘these tracks are very recent. Mr Bruin cannot therefore be very far away, and as it will be unsafe to go a long distance from our horses, let us try the effects of a little ruse. I have come all prepared to carry it out.’
“To build a fire, camp-fashion, was with Satiesky the work of but a few minutes. He piled it in an open space or glade in the forest, so that the heat should not bring down the snow from the pines over it. Having got it well alight, he hung from the tripod above a three-pound piece of ham, which was soon frizzling away in fine style, and making us all hungry with its fragrance.
“‘Let us get under cover, now,’ said Satiesky; ‘if a bear is any where within six versts, you’ll soon see him prowl round, licking his chops, and looking for dinner, which pray Providence we will serve up to him hot.’
“We took up a position, as he spoke, as well screened as possible by the snow-laden branches, and waited. Half-an-hour went wearily past, and after that every minute seemed interminable. We were rewarded at last, though, but in a way we little expected. Some of us know, to our cost, the terrible bull-like bellow which a bear emits from his stentorian lungs, when he is suddenly disturbed and means mischief. This is intended, no doubt, to startle and paralyse the victim on which he means to spring. Be this as it may, such was now the sound we heard, yet not anywhere near the fire, but close in the rear of our position. It was an immense bear, probably the very same that had attacked and killed the poor sledge-driver; for, as Satiesky afterwards said, having once tasted human flesh, he would prefer it to the best bit of bacon that ever was frizzled.
“He gave us little time now for consideration. But Satiesky was quick; he discharged his rifle almost point-blank at the charging beast. Down rolled Bruin, not dead, but so dreadfully wounded that it was an easy enough matter for us to dispatch him with our pikes.
“Hardly had he ceased to writhe, when down the wind came the sharp ring of another rifle.
“‘Hark!’ cried Satiesky, springing out into the open; ‘that sound comes not from the direction where we left our horses. There is another party in the forest as well as ourselves.’
“Satiesky’s surmise was right, as he knew a moment afterwards to his sorrow. The strange hunting party had wounded a bear, and were following him up, and, in his desperation, he charged our companion. He had no power or time for defence, and next moment we saw him laid senseless on the snow; while over him stood his terrible antagonist, his eyes flashing fire, his jaws dripping blood.
“I will not attempt to describe to you, gentlemen, the wildmeléethat followed. Bar a shot at close quarters with a revolver, there was no time for using fire-arms. With pikes and axes and rifles clubbed, we fought the giant beast until strength succumbed to skill, and he lay dead beside Satiesky. With the exception of a few scratches, nobody was any the worse, and we found, to our delight, that our fallen companion was merely stunned.
“You should have seen the spread that Jerikoff placed before us that evening, on our return. Jerikoff excelled himself for once; and it needed but little wine-drinking, I can tell you, to make the feast pass merrily by.
“Jerikoff would have bear hams all the winter. That was the reason he was so pleased; that was the reason he invited a pair of inseparable companions, in the shape of an old fiddler and a dancing bear, to minister to our amusement after dinner was over.
“Next day we bagged three more bears. We had, however, no adventure to speak of; they succumbed to their fate with a kind of sleepy dignity, after they had been pitted by some peasants hired for the occasion.
“On this particular day I had wandered some distance away from my companions. I had got clear out of the forest, and had climbed an eminence, where I could see well about me, accompanied by an armed servant; but certainly apprehending no danger, for the coast all around seemed well clear. I had reckoned without my host, however. My host on this occasion was an enormous bear, who had probably been asleep in the sun behind a boulder, and a very disagreeable entertainment he had provided for me.”
“He wasn’t very hospitable, then?” said Chisholm, smiling.
“Rather much so, I might say,” said the captain; “indeed, he received me with open arms. He was too affectionate altogether, and even now I think I hear the roar of delight he gave vent to as he commenced the fearful hug. I tried to prick him under the ribs with my knife. It broke on a bone, which caused the brute to increase rather than diminish the pressure. I could feel my bones crack, and my breath was squeezed out of me. Why at this awful moment my scared moudjik should hand me his knife, instead of using it himself, I never could tell; but God gave me strength to handle it, gentlemen. I had one hand free, and with that I plunged the weapon into the animal’s chest, and we both rolled down together.
“That evening two sledges in particular left the forest, going in different directions. One dashed along as fast as three horses could carry it, towards the house of my dear Adeline’s father. It was the nearest house to the forest; therefore thither was I borne, all but lifeless from loss of blood. The other sledge went more slowly, of course, towards the village we had that morning left so merrily together. That sledge brought Bruin home. Gentlemen,” said the captain, concluding his narrative, and once more taking his wife’s hand, “I need not tell you how kind the old merchant was to me. Here is a proof of it.
“The house where he and Adeline used to reside is now tenanted by some relations of ours, for my father-in-law has long since crossed the bourne whence no traveller ever returns; but we often visit the dear old home by the lake, and spend a few weeks there. We hope to do so this Christmas, and if you will but prolong your stay till then and accompany us, I think I can show you some nice sport.”
What could our heroes reply to so kind an invitation, but that they would be delighted to do so? One of them, indeed, was much more delighted than either of the other two; and that was Fred Freeman. Would you know the reason why, reader? You may learn it, then, from the following fragment of a conversation which took place between the trio one evening when they were alone together:—
“Chisholm O’Grahame,” said Fred, “we used to laugh at poor Frank for being so deeply in love with his beautiful Eenie Lyell. You must laugh alone now, my boy, for I can feel for him.”
“What!” cried Chisholm, delightedly, “Are you too in for it?”
“I fear it’s a fact,” said Fred; “and so you two can leave me here to my fate, if you choose, and go on with your adventures by yourselves—that is, if Miss Varde will look kindly on me.”
“Ridiculous!” said Chisholm. “No, no, Fred, my lad, engage yourself if you like, and return some other day for this charming girl; but round the world with us you come, and, indeed, I think the sooner we start the better.”
“Heigho!” sighed Fred, and Frank felt for him if Chisholm did not.