Wild Adventures round the Pole Part 20

"Very, Row, but 'pastures green' and 'quiet waters' aren't much in my way. Repeat _me_ to sleep, Rory boy, and I promise you I won't pull your ears again for a month."

"Well, I'll try," says Row. "Are your eyes shut?"

"To be sure. A likely thing I'd have them open, isn't it?"

"Then we're both going to a ball in old England."

"Glorious," says Ray. "I'm there already."

Then in slow, monotonous, but pleasing tones, Row goes on. He describes the brilliant festive scene, the warmth, the light, the beauty and the music, and the dances, and last but not least the supper table. It is at this point that our Saxon hero gives sundry nasal indications that this strange species of mesmerism had taken due effect, so Row leaves him at the supper table, and goes back to his "pastures green" and "quiet waters," and soon they both are sound enough. Let us leave them there; no need to watch them. Remember what Lover says in his beautiful song,--

"O! watch ye well by daylight, For angels watch at night."

Poor McBain! Worn out with watching, he had sunk at last to sleep in his chair.

And day broke slowly on the sea of ice. The snow-clad crater's peak was the first to welcome glorious aurora with a rosy blush, which stole gradually downwards till it settled on the jagged mountain tips. Then bears began to yawn and stretch themselves, the sly Arctic foxes crept forth from snow-banks, and birds in their thousands--brightest of all the s...o...b..rd--came wheeling around the _Arrandoon_ to s.n.a.t.c.h an early breakfast ere they wended their way westward to fields of blood and phocal carnage.

And their screaming awoke McBain.

He was speedily on deck.

Yonder was the _Perseverando_ slowly descending.

During all the long cruise of the _Arrandoon_ n.o.body referred to the adventure at the crater of Jan Mayen without a feeling akin to sadness and contrition, for all felt that something had been done which ought not to have been done--there had been, as McBain called it, "a tempting of Providence."

"Well, well, well," cried the skipper of the _Canny Scotia_--and he seemed to be in anything but a sweet temper. "Just like my luck. I do declare, mate, if I'd been born a hatter everybody else would have been born without heads. Here have I been struggling away for years against fortune, always trying to get a good voyage to support a small wife and a big family, and now that luck seems to have all turned in our favour, two glorious patches of seals on the ice yonder, a hard frost, and the ice beautifully red with blood, and no s.h.i.+p near us, then you, mate, come down from the crow's-nest with that confoundedly long face of yours, for which you ought to have been smothered at birth--"

"I can't help my face, sir," cried the mate, bristling up like a bantam c.o.c.k.

"Silence!" roared the burly skipper. "Silence! when you talk to your captain. You, I say, _you_ come and report a big steamer in sight to help us at the banquet."

The mate scratched his head, taking his hat off for the purpose.

"Did I make the s.h.i.+p?" he asked with naive innocence.

"Pooh!" the skipper cried; and next moment he was scrambling up the rigging with all the elegance, grace, and speed of a mud turtle.

He was in a better humour when he returned.

"I say, matie," he said, "yonder chap ain't a sealer; too dandy, and not boats enough. No, she is one of they spectioneering kind o' chaps as goes a prowling around lookin' for the North Pole. Ha! ha! ha! Come below, matie, and we'll have a gla.s.s together. She ain't the kind o'

lady to interfere with our blubber-hunting."

The mate was mollified. His face was soaped, and he shone.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

THE "ARRANDOON" ANCHORS TO THE "FLOE"--THE VISIT TO THE "CANNY SCOTIA"-- SILAS GRIG--A SAD SCENE--RORY RELIEVES HIS FEELINGS--STRANGERS COMING FROM THE FAR WEST.

Seeing the skipper of the _Canny Scotia_ and his mate come below together smiling, the steward readily guessed what they wanted, so he was not dilatory in producing the rum-bottle and two tumblers. Then the skipper pushed the former towards the mate, and said,--

"Help yourself, matie."

And the mate dutifully and respectfully pushed it back again, saying,--

"After you, sir."

This palaver finished, they both half-filled their tumblers with the ruby intoxicant, added thereto a modic.u.m of boiling coffee from the urn that simmered on top of the stove, then, with a preliminary nod towards each other, emptied their gla.s.ses at a gulp. After this, gasping for breath, they beamed on each other with a newly-found friendliness.

"Have another," said the skipper.

They had another, then went on deck.

After ten minutes of attentive gazing at the _Arrandoon_, "Well," said the skipper, "I do call that a bit o' pretty steering; if it ain't, my name isn't Silas Grig."

"But there's a deal o' palaver about it, don't you think so, sir?"

remarked the mate.

"Granted, granted," a.s.sented Silas; "granted, matie."

The cause of their admiration was the way in which the _Arrandoon_ was brought alongside the great ice-floe. She didn't come stem on--as if she meant to flatten, her bows--and then swing round. Not she. She approached the ice with a beautiful sweep, describing nearly half a circle, then, broadside on to the ice, she neared it and neared it.

Next over went the fenders; the steam roared from the pipe upwards into the blue air, like driven snow, then dissolved itself like the ghost of the white lady; the s.h.i.+p was stopped, away went the ice-anchors, the vessel was fast.

And no noise about it either. There may not be much seamans.h.i.+p now-a-days, but I tell you, boys, it takes a clever man to manage a big steamer prettily and well.

The _Arrandoon_ was not two hundred yards from the _Canny Scotia_. Now round go the davits on the port quarter, outward swings the boat, men and officers spring nimbly into her, blocks rattle, and down goes the first whaler, reaching the water with a flop, but not a plash, and with keel as even and straight as a ruled line.

"I say, matie," said Silas Grig, in some surprise, "if that boat ain't coming straight away here, I hope I may never chew cheese again."

So far as that was concerned, if Silas chose, he would at least have the chance of chewing cheese again, for the _Arrandoon's_ boat came rippling along towards them with a steady cluck-el-tee cluck-el-tee, which spoke well for the men at the oars.

"Well," continued Silas, who, rough nut though he was, always meant well enough, "let us do the civil, matie; tell the steward to fill the rum-bottle, and pitch 'em a rope."

The rope came in very handy; but there was no need for the rum; even in Greenland men can live without it--the officers of the _Arrandoon_ had found that out.

McBain, with Allan and Rory,--the latter, by the way, seemed to have registered a vow to go everywhere and see everything,--stood on the quarter-deck of the _Canny Scotia_, the skipper of which craft was in front of him, a comical look of admiration on his round brick-coloured countenance, and his two hands deep in the pockets of his powerful pilot coat.

"Ay, sir! ay!" he was saying; "well, I must say ye do surprise _me_."

He put such an emphasis on the "me" that one would have thought that to surprise Silas Grig was something to be quite boastful of ever after.

"All the way to the North Pole? Well, well; but d'ye think you'll find it?"

"We mean to," said Rory, boldly.

"Perseverando!" said Allan.