Chapter XIV: Letter XI (2)

On descending to the shore, I learned the whole story. As Mr. Wyse was pacing the deck, his attention was suddenly attracted by a white speck in the water, swimming across from Prince Charles's Foreland,--the long island which lies over against English Bay. When first observed, the creature, whatever it might be, was about a mile and a half off,--the width of the channel between the island and the main being about five miles. Some said it was a bird, others a whale, and the cook suggested a mermaid. When the fact was ascertained that it was a BONA FIDE bear, a gun was fired as a signal for us to return; but it was evident that unless at once intercepted, Bruin would get ashore. Mr. Wyse, therefore, very properly determined to make sure of him. This was a matter of no difficulty: the poor beast showed very little fight. His first impulse was to swim away from the boat; and even after he had been wounded, he only turned round once or twice upon his pursuers. The honour of having given him his death wound rests between the steward and Mr. Wyse; both contend for it. The evidence is conflicting, as at least half-a-dozen mortal wounds were found in the animal's body; each maybe considered to have had a share in his death. Mr. Grant rests his claim principally upon the fact of his having put two bullets in my new rifle-- which must have greatly improved the bore of that instrument. On the strength of this precaution, he now wears as an ornament about his person one of the bullets extracted from the gizzard of our prize.

All this time, Wilson was at the tent, busily occupied in taking photographs. As soon as the bear was observed, a signal was made to him from the ship, to warn him of the visitor he might shortly expect on shore. Naturally concluding that the bear would in all probability make for the tent as soon as he reached land, it became a subject of consideration with him what course he should pursue. Weapons he had none, unless the chemicals he was using might be so regarded. Should he try the influence of chloroform on his enemy; or launch the whole photographic apparatus at his grisly head, and take to his heels? Thought is rapid, but the bear's progress seemed equally expeditious; it was necessary to arrive at some speedy conclusion. To fly--was to desert his post and leave the camp in possession of the spoiler; life and honour were equally dear to him. Suddenly a bright idea struck him.

At the time the goat had been disembarked to take her pleasure on TERRA FIRMA, our crow's-nest barrel had been landed with her. At this moment it was standing unoccupied by the side of the tent. By creeping into it, and turning its mouth downward on the ground, Wilson perceived that he should convert it into a tower of strength for himself against the enemy, while its legitimate occupant, becoming at once a victim to the bear's voracity, would probably prevent the monster from investigating too curiously its contents. It was quite a pity that the interposition of the boats prevented his putting this ingenious plan into execution. He had been regularly done out of a situation, in which the most poignant agony of mind and dreary anticipations would have been absolutely required of him. He pictured the scene to himself; he lying fermenting in the barrel, like a curious vintage; the bear sniffing querulously round it, perhaps cracking it like a cocoa-nut, or extracting him like a periwinkle! Of these chances he had been deprived by the interference of the crew. Friends are often injudiciously meddling.

Although I felt a little vexation that one of us should not have had the honour of slaying the bear in single combat, which would certainly have been for the benefit of his skin, the unexpected luck of having got one at all, made us quite forget our personal disappointment. As for my people, they were beside themselves with delight. To have killed a polar bear was a great thing, but to eat him would be a greater. If artistically dealt with, his carcase would probably cut up into a supply of fresh meat for many days. One of the hands appened to be a butcher. Whenever I wanted anything a little out of the way to be done on board, I was sure to find that it happened to be the specialite of some one of the ship's company. In the course of a few hours, the late bear was converted into a row of the most tempting morsels of beef, hung about the rigging. Instead of in flags, the ship was dressed in joints. In the meantime it so happened that the fox, having stolen a piece of offal, was in a few minutes afterwards seized with convulsions. I had already given orders that the bear's liver should be thrown overboard, as being, if not poisonous, at all events very unwholesome. The seizure of the fox, coupled with this injunction, brought about a complete revolution in the men's minds, with regard to the delicacies they had been so daintily preparing for themselves. Silently, one by one, the pieces were untied and thrown into the sea: I do not think a mouthful of bear was eaten on board the "Foam." I never heard whether it was in consequence of any prognostics of Wilson's that this act of self-denial was put into practice. I observed, however, that for some days after the slaughter and dismemberment of the bear, my ship's company presented an unaccountably sleek appearance. As for the steward, his head and whiskers seemed carved out of black marble: a varnished boot would not have looked half so bright: I could have seen to shave myself in his black hair. I conclude, therefore, that the ingenious cook must, at all events, have succeeded in manufacturing a supply of genuine bear's grease, of which they had largely availed themselves.

The bagging of the bear had so gloriously crowned our visit to Spitzbergen, that our disappointment about the deer was no longer thought of; it was therefore with light hearts, and most complete satisfaction, that we prepared for departure.

Maid Marian had already carved on a flat stone an inscription, in Roman letters, recording the visit of the "Foam" to English Bay, and a cairn having been erected to receive it, the tablet was solemnly lifted to its resting-place. Underneath I placed a tin box, containing a memorandum similar to that left at Jan Mayen, as well as a printed dinner invitation from Lady --, which I happened to have on board. Having planted a boat's flag beside the rude monument, and brought on board with us a load of driftwood, to serve hereafter as Christmas yule-logs, we bade an eternal adieu to the silent hills around us; and weighing anchor, stood out to sea. For some hours a lack of wind still left us hanging about the shore, in the midst of a grave society of seals; but soon after, a gentle breeze sprang up in the south, and about three o'clock on Friday, the 11th of August, we again found ourselves spanking along before a six-knot breeze, over the pale green sea.

In considering the course on which I should take the vessel home, it appeared to me that in all probability we should have been much less pestered by the ice on our way to Spitzbergen, if, instead of hugging the easterly ice, we had kept more away to the westward; I determined therefore--as soon as we got clear of the land--to stand right over to the Greenland shore, on a due west course, and not to attempt to make any southing, until we should have struck the Greenland ice. The length of our tether in that direction being ascertained, we could then judge of the width of the channel down which we were to beat, for it was still blowing pretty fresh from the southward.

Up to the evening of the day on which we quitted English Bay, the weather had been most beautiful; calm, sunshiny, dry, and pleasant. Within a few hours of our getting under weigh, a great change had taken place, and by midnight it had become as foggy and disagreeable as ever. The sea was pretty clear. During the few days we had been on shore, the northerly current had brushed away the great angular field of ice which had lain off the shore, in a northwest direction; so that instead of being obliged to run up very nearly to the 80th parallel, in order to round it, we were enabled to sail to the westward at once. During the course of the night, we came upon one or two wandering patches of drift ice, but so loosely packed that we had no difficulty in pushing through them. About four o'clock in the morning, a long line of close ice was reported right a-head, stretching south as far as the eye could reach. We had come about eighty miles since leaving Spitzbergen. The usual boundary of the Greenland ice in summer runs, according to Scoresby, along the second parallel of west longitude. This we had already crossed, so that it was to be presumed the barricade we saw before us was a frontier of the fixed ice. In accordance, therefore, with my predetermined plan, we now began working to the southward, and the result fully justified my expectations.

The sea became comparatively clear, as far as could be seen from the deck of the vessel, although small vagrant patches of ice that we came up with occasionally--as well as the temperature of the air and the sea--continued to indicate the proximity of larger bodies on either side of us.

It was a curious sensation with which we had gradually learnt to contemplate this inseparable companion: it had become a part of our daily existence, an element, a thing without which the general aspect of the universe would be irregular and incomplete. It was the first thing we thought of in the morning, the last thing we spoke of at night. It glittered and grinned maliciously at us in the sunshine; it winked mysteriously through the stifling fog; it stretched itself like a prostrate giant, with huge, portentous shoulders and shadowy limbs, right across our course; or danced gleefully in broken groups in the little schooner's wake. There was no getting rid of it, or forgetting it, and if at night we sometimes returned in dreams to the green summer world--to the fervent harvest fields of England, and heard "the murmurs of innumerous bees," or the song of larks on thymy uplands--thump! bump! splash! gra-a-ate!--came the sudden reminder of our friend on the starboard bow; and then sometimes a scurry on deck, and a general "scrimmage" of the whole society, in endeavours to prevent more serious collisions. Moreover, I could not say, with your old French friend, that "Familiar'ty breeds despise." The more we saw of it, the less we liked it; its cold presence sent a chilly sense of discouragement to the heart, and I had daily to struggle with an ardent desire to throw a boot at Wilson's head, every time his sepulchral voice announced the "Ice ALL ROUND!"

It was not until the 14th of August, five days after quitting Spitzbergen, that we lost sight of it altogether. From that moment the temperature of the sea steadily rose, and we felt that we were sailing back again into the pleasant summer.

A sad event which occurred soon after, in some measure marred our enjoyment of the change. Ever since she had left Hammerfest, it had become too evident that a sea-going life did not agree with the goat. Even the run on shore at Spitzbergen had not sufficed to repair her shattered constitution, and the bad weather we had had ever since completed its ruin. It was certain that the butcher was the only doctor who could now cure her. In spite, therefore, of the distress it occasioned Maid Marian, I was compelled to issue orders for her execution. Sigurdr was the only person who regarded the TRAGICAL event with indifference, nay, almost with delight. Ever since we had commenced sailing in a southerly direction, we had been obliged to beat, but during the last four-and-twenty hours the wind kept dodging us every time we tacked, as a nervous pedestrian sets to you sometimes on a narrow trottoir. This spell of ill-luck the Icelander heathenishly thought would only be removed by a sacrifice to Rhin, the goddess of the sea, in which light he trusted she would look upon the goat's body when it came to be thrown overboard.

Whether the change which followed upon the consignment of her remains to the deep really resulted from such an influence, I am not prepared to say. The weather immediately thereafter certainly DID change. First the wind dropped altogether, but though the calm lasted several hours, the sea strangely enough appeared to become all the rougher, tossing and tumbling restlessly UP AND DOWN--(not over and over as in a gale)--like a sick man on a fever bed; the impulse to the waves seeming to proceed from all four quarters of the world at once. Then, like jurymen with a verdict of death upon their lips, the heavy, ominous clouds slowly passed into the north-west.

A dead stillness followed--a breathless pause--until, at some mysterious signal, the solemn voice of the storm hurtled over the deep. Luckily we were quite ready for it; the gale came from the right quarter, and the fiercer it blew the better. For the next three days and three nights it was a scurry over the sea such as I never had before; nine or ten knots an hour was the very least we ever went, and 240 miles was the average distance we made every four-and-twenty hours.

Anything grander and more exciting than the sight of the sea under these circumstances you cannot imagine. The vessel herself remains very steady; when you are below you scarcely know you are not in port. But on raising your head above the companion the first sight which meets your eye is an upright wall of black water, towering, you hardly know how many feet, into the air over the stern. Like a lion walking on its hind legs, it comes straight at you, roaring and shaking its white mane with fury-it overtakes the vessel--the upright shiny face curves inwards--the white mane seems to hang above your very head; but ere it topples over, the nimble little ship has already slipped from underneath. You hear the disappointed jaws of the sea-monster snap angrily together,--the schooner disdainfully kicks up her heel--and raging and bubbling up on either side the quarter, the unpausing wave sweeps on, and you see its round back far ahead, gradually swelling upwards, as it gathers strength and volume for a new effort.

We had now got considerably to the southward of North Cape. We had already seen several ships, and you would hardly imagine with what childish delight my people hailed these symptoms of having again reached more "Christian latitudes," as they called them.

I had always intended, ever since my conversation with Mr. T. about the Malstrom, to have called in at Loffoden Islands on our way south, and ascertain for myself the real truth about this famous vortex. To have blotted such a bugbear out of the map of Europe, if its existence really was a myth, would at all events have rendered our cruise not altogether fruitless. But, since leaving Spitzbergen, we had never once seen the sun, and to attempt to make so dangerous a coast in a gale of wind and a thick mist, with no more certain knowledge of the ship's position than our dead reckoning afforded, was out of the question, so about one o'clock in the morning, the weather giving no signs of improvement, the course I had shaped in the direction of the island was altered, and we stood away again to the southward. This manoeuvre was not unobserved by Wilson, but he mistook its meaning. Having, I suppose, overheard us talking at dinner about the Malstrom, he now concluded the supreme hour had arrived. He did not exactly comprehend the terms we used, but had gathered that the spot was one fraught with danger. Concluding from the change made in the vessel's course that we were proceeding towards the dreadful locality, he gave himself up to despair, and lay tossing in his hammock in sleepless anxiety. At last the load of his forebodings was greater than he could bear, he gets up, steals into the Doctor's cabin, wakes him up, and standing over him--as the messenger of ill tidings once stood over Priam--whispers, "SIR!" "What is it?" says Fitz, thinking, perhaps, some one was ill. "Do you know where we are going?" "Why, to Throndhjem," answered Fitz. "We were going to Throndhjem," rejoins Wilson, "but we ain't now--the vessel's course was altered two hours ago. Oh, Sir! we are going to Whirlpool-to WHIRL-RL-POOO-L! Sir!" in a quaver of consternation,--and so glides back to bed like a phantom, leaving the Doctor utterly unable to divine the occasion of his visit.

The whole of the next day the gale continued. We had now sailed back into night; it became therefore a question how far it would be advisable to carry on during the ensuing hours of darkness, considering how uncertain we were as to our real position. As I think I have already described to you, the west coast of Norway is very dangerous; a continuous sheet of sunken rocks lies out along its entire edge for eight or ten miles to sea. There are no lighthouses to warn the mariner off; and if we were wrong in our reckoning, as we might very well be, it was possible we might stumble on the land sooner than we expected. I knew the proper course would be to lie to quietly until we could take an observation; but time was so valuable, and I was so fearful you would be getting anxious. The night was pretty clear. High mountains, such as we were expecting to make, would be seen, even at night, several miles off. According to our log we were still 150 miles off the land, and, however inaccurate our calculation might be, the error could not be of such magnitude as that amounted to. To throw away so fair a wind seemed such a pity, especially as it might be days before the sun appeared; we had already been at sea about a fortnight without a sight of him, and his appearance at all during the summer is not an act DE RIGUEUR in this part of the world; we might spend yet another fortnight in lying to, and then after all have to poke our way blindfold to the coast; at all events it would be soon enough to lie to the next night. Such were the considerations, which--after an anxious consultation with Mr. Wyse in the cabin, and much fingering of the charts,--determined me to carry on during the night.

Nevertheless, I confess I was very uneasy, Though I went to bed and fell asleep--for at sea nothing prevents that process--my slumbers were constantly agitated by the most vivid dreams that I ever remember to have had. Dreams of an arrival in England, and your coming down to meet us, and all the pleasure I had in recounting our adventures to you; then suddenly your face seemed to fade away beneath a veil of angry grey surge that broke over low, sharp-pointed rocks; and the next moment there resounded over the ship that cry which has been the preface to so many a disaster--the ring of which, none who have ever heard it are likely to forget--"Breakers ahead!"

In a moment I was on deck, dressed--for it is always best to dress,--and there, sure enough, right ahead, about a mile and a half off, through the mist, which had come on very thick, I could distinguish the upward shooting fluff of seas shattering against rocks. No land was to be seen, but the line of breakers every instant became more evident; at the pace we were going, in seven or eight minutes we should be upon them. Now, thought I to myself, we shall see whether a stout heart beats beneath the silk tartan! The result covered that brilliant garment with glory and salt water. To tack was impossible, we could only wear,--and to wear in such a sea was no very pleasant operation. But the little ship seemed to know what she was about, as well as any of us: up went the helm, round came the schooner into the trough of the sea,--high over her quarter toppled an enormous sea, built up of I know not how many tons of water, and hung over the deck,--by some unaccountable wriggle, an instant ere it thundered down she had twisted her stern on one side, and the waves passed underneath. In another minute her head was to the sea, the mainsail was eased over, and all danger was past.

What was now to be done? That the land we had seen was the coast of Norway I could not believe. Wrong as our dead reckoning evidently was, it could not be so wrong as that. Yet only one other supposition was possible, viz., that we had not come so far south as we imagined, and that we had stumbled upon Roost--a little rocky island that lies about twenty miles to the southward of the Loffoden Islands. Whether this conjecture was correct or not, did not much matter; to go straight away to sea, and lie to until we could get an observation, was the only thing to be done. Away then we went, struggling against a tremendous sea for a good nine hours, until we judged ourselves to be seventy or eighty miles from where we had sighted the breakers,--when we lay to, not in the best of tempers. The next morning, not only was it blowing as hard as ever, but all chance of getting a sight that day seemed also out of the question. I could have eaten my head with impatience. However, as it is best never to throw a chance away, about half-past eleven o'clock, though the sky resembled an even sheet of lead, I got my sextant ready, and told Mr. Wyse to do the same.

Now, out of tenderness for your feminine ignorance I must state, that in order to take an observation, it is necessary to get a sight of the sun at a particular moment of the day: this moment is noon. When, therefore, twelve o'clock came, and one could not so much as guess in what quarter of the heavens he might be lying perdu, you may suppose I almost despaired. Ten minutes passed. It was evident we were doomed to remain, kicking our heels for another four-and-twenty hours where we were. No!--yes!--no! By Phoebus! there he is! A faint spongy spot of brightness gleamed through the grey roof overhead. The indistinct outline grew a little clearer; one-half of him, though still behind a cloud, hardened into a sharp edge. Up went the sextant. "52.43!" (or whatever it was) I shouted to Mr. Wyse. "52.41, my Lord!" cried he, in return; there was only the discrepancy of a mile between us. We had got the altitude; the sun might go to bed for good and all now, we did not care,--we knew our position to an inch. There had been an error of something like forty miles in our dead reckoning, in consequence--as I afterwards found--of a current that sets to the northward, along the west coast of Norway, with a velocity varying from one to three miles an hour. The island upon which we had so nearly run WAS Roost. We were still nearly 200 miles from our port. "Turn the hands up! Make sail!" and away we went again in the same course as before, at the rate of ten knots an hour.

"The girls at home have got hold of the tow-rope, I think, my Lord," said Mr. Wyse, as we bounded along over the thundering seas.

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By three o'clock next day we were up with Vigten, and now a very nasty piece of navigation began. In order to make the northern entrance of the Throndhjem Fiord, you have first to find your way into what is called the Froh Havet,--a kind of oblong basin about sixteen miles long, formed by a ledge of low rocks running parallel with the mainland, at a distance of ten miles to seaward. Though the space between this outer boundary and the coast is so wide, in consequence of the network of sunken rocks which stuffs it up, the passage by which a vessel can enter is very narrow, and the only landmark to enable you to find the channel is the head one of the string of outer islets. As this rock is about the size of a dining-table, perfectly flat, and rising only a few feet above the level of the sea, to attempt to make it is like looking for a needle in a bottle of hay. It was already beginning to grow very late and dark by the time we had come up with the spot where it ought to have been, but not a vestige of such a thing had turned up. Should we not sight it in a quarter of an hour, we must go to sea again, and lie to for the night,--a very unpleasant alternative for any one so impatient as I was to reach a port. Just as I was going to give the order, Fitz--who was certainly the Lynceus of the ship's company--espied its black back just peeping up above the tumbling water on our starboard bow. We had hit it off to a yard!

In another half-hour we were stealing down in quiet water towards the entrance of the fiord. All this time not a rag of a pilot had appeared, and it was without any such functionary that the schooner swept up next morning between the wooded, grain-laden slopes of the beautiful loch, to Throndhjem--the capital of the ancient sea-kings of Norway.