Chapter II: A Giant of the Southern Seas

In the good old barque the _Walrus_ went not only Captain Mayne Brace himself with our American hero Ingomar, and our two British boys, but the spectioneer, with Dumpty, and a picked crew of sealers or whalers, who hailed from Dundee or Hull. Then there were the Yak-Yaks, or wild Innuits, under the immediate command of Slap-dash himself, who also commanded the bears, Gruff, Growley, Grumpey, and Meg. The sub-chief of the Yak-Yaks had charge of the dogs--the Eskimo dogs, I mean, for there was one other dog to be mentioned presently, who would have scorned to be classed as an Eskimo, just as an Englishman would resent being looked upon as a cannibal from the Congo.

Milton the mate was the only man missing from the _Walrus_. He had been appointed to the _Sea Elephant_ as second lieutenant, and was very proud indeed of the honour, for this splendid barque was to all intents and purposes the flag-ship. Her commander--Captain Bell, of the United States Navy--had seen much service in the Arctic, while Curtis, first lieutenant, was a daring and very clever young fellow, specially lent from the British Royal Navy for the expedition. He was, as a sailor, your _beau-ideal_ of a Navy man, and Navy men, you know, are warranted to go anywhere and do anything. Although Curtis was a most exemplary officer, a botanist and hydrographer, with a _penchant_ for meteorology, he was the reverse of proud. One doesn’t look for, nor expect, pride in a true gentleman, and although Arnold Curtis came of a very ancient English family, and had blue blood in his veins, and though he had reached the very advanced age of twenty and five, he was out-and-out a boy at heart, and had never been much more happy than when in the cricket-field or making one in a game of footer. At such times, hydrography and meteorology and all the rest of the sciences, except that which was needed for the game, were banished, and he was a boy all over, from his fair hair and laughing blue eyes right away down to his shoes or boots.

Months and months before the two ships sailed, Ingomar and he had been inseparable, while Charlie and Walt often dined with him on board the _Sea Elephant_.

Well, I was going to say that Captain Bell, or the “Admiral,” as he was more often called, was, like most of his crew, a thorough iceman. The crew were chiefly Americans, and every man Jack of them had braved dangers innumerable on the sea of ice before this.

On the flag-ship were three well-known men of science--a Scot, a German, and an Englishman, but they were just as jolly as anybody. I will not permit my reader to associate long faces, solemnity, and humdrumness with scientists.

Let me add that the British and American flags in this enterprise, instead of being tacked and tagged together as at first proposed, were hoisted, when any occasion demanded their hoisting, one at the peak and another at the fore, or main, as the case might be.

Almost every hour during the voyage to Gibraltar the two barques kept as close together as possible. But here, after a farewell dinner, they parted, the flag-ship bearing up for the Suez Canal, to cruise and make scientific but brief observations all the way down through the Indian Ocean, until she should meet once again with the _Walrus_ at the lonesome and wildly rugged island of Kerguelen, which lies further than 50° South, and in 70° East longitude, or, roughly speaking, about midway ’twixt the Cape of Good Hope and New Zealand.

Both ships carried as much coal as possible, but each had a noble spread of canvas, and so steam was never up while the wind blew fair. The Trades carried the _Walrus_ well and fairly towards the equator, and when these began to fail them, the order was given to get up steam. So no time was lost, the chief object being to get into far Southern seas as soon as possible, and to commence therein the true work of the expedition.

Ingomar had one great, one only ambition. It was to make a noble record that should eclipse that of every nation which had attempted before this, the circumnavigation of the Southern Pole.

The finding of the real pole, as people phrase it, was something which might certainly be dreamt of but never probably accomplished. Yet manly ambition is a noble thing. Let us aim high. If we fire an arrow at the moon, we shall not hit it, but we shall hit a mark far higher than if we had fired at a bush of furze or broom.

I’m afraid that neither Charlie nor Walter cared a very great deal for science for science’s own sake, but they would certainly relish the adventures connected therewith, and all the strange scenes and creatures they were bound to see.

As for young Armstrong, or Ingomar as he still preferred to be called, he chose to consider himself of very little account indeed.

“I am neither a sailor nor a naturalist, nor anything else,” he said one day rather mournfully down in the saloon. “I love Nature, I appreciate beauty, but I’d rather be able to reef topsails or take my trick at the wheel.”

“But, my dear young sir,” said the captain, smiling, “you have found the sinews of war.”

“Found the cash? I have,” he laughed somewhat sarcastically. “Yes, and you may well say I _found_ it. Paddy O’Flynn found a pair of tongs--at the fireside--and got into trouble about it. And I--well, I hadn’t even the honour and glory of making the money we’re spending. I can sing a song, spin a yarn, or recite a piece, and there my utility ends. Why, Humpty Dumpty is a deuced sight more of a real man than I am.”

Charlie and Walt laughed aloud. The idea of comparing himself with Humpty Dumpty seemed very ridiculous!

Long, long ago, crossing the line in a sailing ship used to be a very dreary affair indeed. The doldrums were always a drawback. Is there any real British boy, I wonder, who does not know what is meant by the “doldrums”? If so I trust he will get into them some of these days, in a brig or schooner. It will be an experience he is not likely to forget. His barque may be any time, from two or three weeks to a month, in crossing the line, for the wind may be _nil_. It may come in puffs or cat’s-paws from any direction of the compass, or, if you ask a sailor how it is, he may tell you discontentedly, that it is straight up and down like a cow’s tail.

Meanwhile the sea is as calm as Farmer Hodge’s mill-dam, a sea of oil, or glycerine, or mercury, but it is a sea of great, round, rolling waves all the same. The ship’s motion, therefore, is just about as disagreeable as could well be imagined; there is no “forwardness” about it. Now you go up, up, up, now you go down, down, down. Sea-legs are little good, and in your progress along the deck, if you do not succeed in getting hold of something, then just as often as not you shall find yourself on your back in the scuppers. You could not say “lee-scuppers,” you know, because there is no lee about it, and no windward either. You laugh when the other fellow falls, and perhaps the smile has hardly vanished when down you go yourself. Discomfort is no name for the doldrums. Fiddles are on the table at every meal, of course, but these do not prevent minor accidents, such as finding the fowl you were about to carve squatting on your lap, the potatoes chasing each other all over the floor, your plate of delicious pea-soup upside down on your knees, or your best white breeches soaked with black coffee.

Of course there are strange birds to be seen, and flying fish, and porpoises, and sharks, and, on rare occasions, the sea-serpent himself, but this doesn’t comfort you, with the thermometer over 95° and the pitch boiling in the seams.

On this voyage there was a pretty commotion, when, one evening, Neptune himself, King of the Ocean, with his bodyguard, his lady wife, and his barber, came on board. It was a pretty bit of acting altogether. Ingomar had consented to play Neptune in order to be let off, for he had never crossed the line before, and a splendid Neptune he made, while squat, droll little Humpty Dumpty was the wife. Ten in all had to submit to the terrible ordeal of shaving--an iron hoop was the razor, a tar-brush spread the horrid lather--and the grizzly embrace of Neptune’s bearded wife, to say nothing of the bath to close up with. Neither Charlie nor Walter, who were the first victims, seemed to like it; but when all was over, and they hurried into their dry pyjama suits, they enjoyed the fun as much as anybody else. The whole wild scene was lit up with electric gleams, blue and red and green, with music galore.

The drollest part of the business was this. Gruff the bear, wondering what all the row was about, managed to scramble up from his ice-tank in which he now lived below, and, accompanied by his wife, put in an appearance just as the fun was waxing fast and furious. The fun grew faster and still more furious after this, especially when Gruff capsized Neptune’s throne, and tried to hug Neptune’s wife.

While attempting to escape, Humpty Dumpty went heels over head into the great sail-berth, and Gruff and his wife jumped in next with a coughing roar that shook the ship from bowsprit to binnacle.

This ended the shaving-match, but Slap-dash managed to lead his pets away at last, and then the dancing commenced. The music was faultless and beautiful, but the dancing was--droll, to say the least. Then after the main-brace had been spliced, the affair resolved itself into a concert, and finally a yarn-spinning contest.

But everybody was happy, and that was the best of it.

* * * * *

Long before the ship had rounded the Cape, and stretched east and south away for Kerguelen, bears and Eskimo dogs were quite acclimatized, and most excellent sailors.

The sea had tamed the bears till they were as harmless as kittens, and just about as playful, though in a larger, more lumpy way.

They had become very friendly, too, with all the dogs, and all the Yak-Yaks, and even with the crew.

The Shetland ponies, however, were never permitted to come out of their comfortable quarters when Gruff, and Growley, and Grumpey, and Meg were at their gambols, shuffling round and round the deck with the dogs at their heels, positively playing at leap-frog with their monster yellow companions.

The king of the whole menagerie was Wallace--a most beautiful and intelligent long-haired sable-and-white Scotch collie. He, however, when the fun was going on, always took his perch on the top of the capstan, from which he barked his orders, and seemed to conduct the gambols and fun. Yet sometimes he got so excited and playful that he must jump off his perch and mingle for awhile himself with the strange revellers.

It was a long voyage to Kerguelen, but on the whole a very happy one, and so accustomed by this time were our heroes to stormy winds and raging seas, that the wildest gales did not terrify them, for every one on board, from the captain downwards, had the greatest confidence in the sea-going qualities of the good old _Walrus_.

It was a long voyage to Kerguelen, but they weren’t there just yet; and long before its rugged rocks and hills hove in sight, they experienced a spell of such fearful weather as one seldom meets even in southern seas.

It was dark and wild and fearsome!

Dark, owing to the immensity of the cloud strata above and around, which brought the horizon almost close aboard--a mingled chaos of driving mist and moving water; wild with the terrible force of the wind, which was fully five and ninety miles an hour, and fearsome from the height of the foam-crested waves, and the black abysses into which the _Walrus_ ever and anon plunged, remaining almost motionless for long seconds, while the seas made a clean breach over her.

Captain Mayne Brace himself confessed he had never seen the barometer sink lower.

Every stitch of sail that could be spared was at first taken in, and the ship was battened down; for when the first squall struck her, the _Walrus_ had been in a beam wind, with no fires lit. Orders were now issued to get up steam with all speed, for the gale was from the E.N.E., and although the _Walrus_ lay to, she was being driven rapidly out of her course.

Things reached a crisis when the chief engineer--a sturdy, business-looking Scot--made his way aft as best he could, and reported to the captain that something had gone wrong with the engines.

“We have broken down?” asked Mayne Brace, anxiously.

“I wouldn’t go so far as that, sir,” replied Mr. Watson, cautiously. “Something’s out of gear, and it will be quite impossible to put matters straight till the storm abates and we find ourselves on a level keel.”

“All right, Mr. Watson. You’ll do your best, I know, and so will we.”

And Watson scrambled forward once more, smiling and happy.

The storm, a few hours after this, was at its very height.

Well for all hands was it that the _Walrus_ was sturdily built, tough, and strong, a ship that had weathered many and many a tempest in the frozen North, and could hold her own amidst the wildest waves of the great Antarctic Ocean.

It had been early in the day when the storm came on, but long hours flew by without the slightest signs of its abating.

The noise both above and below in the saloon where Ingomar and the boys were trying to take it easy beside the stove, was fearful. On the deck snow and hail added to the confusion, and when suddenly the vessel entered a stream of small pieces of drifting ice, the heavy rattling bombardment of the ship’s sides rendered all conversation quite impossible.

A dark and starless night followed, but the first strength of the storm was somewhat abated, and when day broke lazily in the east, glimmering red through the froth of the seas, it had settled into a steady gale, which lasted for days and days, and prevented the barque from keeping her course.

In these strange Southern seas sudden changes in the state of the weather are the rule rather than the exception; and so one morning, after quickly veering round to the south’ard, the wind fell almost to calm, and with stu’nsails ’low and aloft, the good ship now bore up for Kerguelen, from which lone isle of the ocean she could not now be very far distant.

The sun shone brightly once again, and every one on board felt happy and hopeful.

To add to their joy, the engineer had managed to repair the machinery, which he vowed was now stronger than ever, so in a few more hours sail was taken in, and every heart was beating time to the pleasant old rick-racket of whirling wheels and revolving screw.

“Land ahead, sir!”

This from the man who was swinging high aloft in the crow’s-nest.

The mate went into the foretop to have a look at it through his glass.

One glance was enough.

“This is no land,” he told the skipper, “but a huge iceberg, that must have floated very far indeed out of its course.”

Then all hands crowded the deck to feast their eyes on the strange sight.

Not a soul on board this ship that had not beheld ice in every shape seen in high Northern altitudes, but none so remarkable in formation as this giant of the Southern seas.