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Book Two – Chapter Three
On the Wings of a Westerly Gale

 
“And now the storm-blast came, and he
    Was tyrannous and strong;
He struck with his o’ertaking wings
    And chased us north along.
And the ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
    And northward ay we flew.”
 

Coleridge.

Scene: A ship on her beam ends, not far off the coast of Norway, the seas all around her houses high; their tops cut short off by the force of the wind, and the spray driven over the seemingly doomed ship, like the drift in a moorland snowstorm. The sky is clear, there is a yellow glare in the west where the sun went down. A full moon riding high in a yellow haze.

A gale of wind got out of its cave – for according to the ancients the winds do live in a cave. It was a gale from the west, with something southerly in it, and I feel nearly sure, from the rampancy with which it roared, from the vigour with which it blew, and the capers it cut, that this gale of wind must have taken French leave of its cave.

It seemed to rejoice in its freedom, nevertheless. No schoolboy just escaped from his tasks was ever more full of freaks and mischief.

It came hallooing over the Atlantic Ocean, and every ship it met had to do honour to it on the spot, by furling sails, or even laying to under bare poles.

If these sails were quickly taken in by men who moved in a pretty and sprightly fashion, all right – the gale went on. But if lubbers went to work aloft, or the wheel was badly handled – then “Pah!” the wind would cry, “I’ll shorten sail for you,” and away would go the sails in ribbons, cracking like half a million cart-whips, and perhaps a stick at the same time, a topmast or yard, and if a man or two were lost, the wind took neither blame nor further notice.

The gale came tearing up Channel, and roaring across the Irish Sea, and lucky indeed were those ships that managed to put back and get safely into harbour, where the storm could only scream vindictively through the empty rigging.

The gale went raging over towns and cities, doing rare damage among stalks and spires, ripping and rolling lead off roofs, and tossing the tiles about as one deals cards at whist. It swept along the thoroughfares, too, having fine fun with the unfortunate passengers who happened to be abroad, rending top coats and skirts, running off with the hats of old fogies, and turning umbrellas inside out.

The gale came shrieking over the country, changing a point or two more to the south’ard, so as to shake the British Islands from aft to fore. It picked up great clouds as it went northwards ho! and mixed them all together, so that when it descended on the vale of the Tweed, it came with thunderclap and lightning’s flash, and a darkness that could almost be felt. It tore through the woods and forests, overturning vast rocks, and uprooting mighty trees, that had grown green summer after summer for a hundred years.

In the avenue of Grayling House it spent an extra dose of its fury, it bedded the ground with dead wood, and wrenched off many a lordly limb from elm and chestnut.

Effie heard the voice of the roaring wind, and saw the destruction it was doing, and prayed for her brother and brother’s friend, who were far away at sea.

She stood by the parlour window beside her father, who was gazing outwards across the lawn, and her hands were clasped, as if in fear, around his left arm. Mrs Lyle herself had retired to her room.

Suddenly a flash shot athwart the trees, so dazzling and blinding that Effie was almost deprived of sight. The peal of thunder that followed was terrific.

About ten minutes after this, while the wind still roared, while the rain and hail beat the leaves ground-wards, and the grass was covered as deep almost in white as if it were mid-winter, old Peter – he is looking very old and grey now – staggered into the room. He had not waited even to knock. “Sir, sir, sir!” he cried.

“Well, Peter, what is it? Speak, man! You frighten the child.”

“Oh, sir, sir! Joe, sir, Joe!”

“Is dead?”

“Ay, as dead as a mawk.² The great rock that o’erhung the water is rent in pieces, tons upon tons have fallen into the loch, the palin’ is washed away, Joe is dead, and there is an end to Glen Lyle. You mind the gipsy’s rhyme —

 
“‘When dead yon lordly pike shall float,
While loud and hoarse the ravens call,
Then grief and woe shall be thy lot,
Glen Lyle’s brave house must fall.’”
 

“Hush, hush, hush, man!” cried Captain Lyle; “everything that lives must die; all things on earth must have an end. Why bother yourself about the death of a poor pike, man? Come, Peter; I fear that you are positively getting old.”

“By the way, Effie,” he added, turning to his daughter, “run and see how your mother is.”

Effie went away. She was used to obey. Dearly loved though she was by both her parents, she had many lonely sad hours now that her brother had become a wanderer, only to appear now and then at Glen Lyle to stay for a short time, he and Douglas, then disappear, and leave such a gloom behind that she hardly cared to live.

But she had never felt so sad as she did now. What was going to happen to her father or to her brother? She did not go to her mother’s room. She did not wish to show her tears. But she went to her own, threw herself on her bed, and cried and prayed till she fell asleep.

“Effie, child, are you here?”

It was her mother’s voice, and she started up. The moon was throwing a flood of light into the room.

Next moment she was in her mother’s arms, who was soothing her, and laughingly trying to banish her fears.

We leave them there and follow the gale.

It had gone careering on, over mountain, moorland, and lake, seeming to gather force as it went. It must have been at its height when it swept over the bleak, bare islands of Shetland, and made madly off for the Norwegian coast. Old, old, white-haired men, who had lived their lives in this ultima Thule, never remembered a fiercer storm. On one of the most barren and bleakest islands, next morning, the beach was found bestrewn with wreckage from some gallant ship, and the merciless waves had thrown up more than one dead body, and there they lay as if asleep, with dishevelled hair, in which were sand and weeds, hands half clenched, as if, in the agony of death, they had tried to grasp at something, and cold, hard, wet faces upturned to the morning sun.

The Fairy Queen was trying to round a rocky cape when the white horses of that gale of wind first appeared on the horizon, heading straight for them. Once round the point they would be comparatively safe.

“Look!” cried Leonard to Douglas, whose watch it was. The sun was going down behind the western waves. Wild and red he looked, and shorn of his beams, and tinging all the water ’twixt the barque and the horizon a bright blood-red.

On came the white horses. It was a race between the barque and the gale of wind. Before her loomed the rocky promontory. The cliffs rose straight up out of the sea, and their heads were buried in haze. Close to the wind sailed the barque, as close as ever could be.

On and on she speeds, but the white horses are almost close aboard of her.

“Hands, shorten sail!”

The wind is on her. To shorten sail now were madness. The wind is on her, the brave ship leans over to it, till the water rushes in through the lee scuppers.

The wind increases in force every moment.

The great black rocks are close above her lee bow. Looking upwards, the wild flowers can be seen hanging to the banks and cliffs – saxifrages, heath, broom, and golden gorse. So close is the barque that the sea-birds that have alighted on the cliffs as the sun kissed the waves, startled by the flapping canvas, soar off again and go screaming skywards.

The sun is down now altogether, and the gale has rushed at the vessel like a wild beast seeking its lawful prey; the seas are dashing over her, the spray flying high over the bending masts.

The gale has leapt upon them, too, from a pillar of cloud, and with forked and flashing lightning.

Are they round the point? No one on that deck can tell as yet. The roar and the surge is deafening. The gloom is appalling, men can hardly breathe, the words the captain tries to shout to those at the wheel are carried away on the wind. The crew clutch at the rigging, and feel choking, drowning.

“Keep her away now!” It was Leonard’s voice in a wheelman’s ear. They were round the point!

The barque is flying. The topsails are rent in ribbons. What matters it? The open sea is before them. Yes, but like a tiger baulked of its prey, the squall suddenly increases to the force of a hurricane, and next moment the good ship is helpless on her beam ends.

Had the force of the gale been kept up many minutes the ship would have foundered, none would have been left alive to tell the tale. In some sandy bay in through those rocks and cliffs other dead swollen bodies would have been cast up like those on the Shetland shores, to lie with lustreless eyes in the morning’s sunshine.

The squall abated, the sky cleared, the gale itself has spent its fury, and goes growling away to leeward.

With hatchet and knife in hardy hands the wreck is cleared away at last, and the Fairy Queen rides in the moonlight on an even keel.

The captain shakes hands with Leonard and Douglas. “You saved her,” he said. “My boys, you saved her! It was excellent seamanship. Had you shortened sail when the wind got stiff we never would have rounded that point, and the sharks would have had what was left of us.”

“Captain Blunt,” said Douglas, “take credit to yourself as well, for you superintended the ballasting of the barque. Had that shifted, then – ”

“Davy Jones, eh?” said the skipper, laughing.

He could afford to laugh now.

There was much still to be done, so no more was said. All hands were called to make the barque as snug as could be for the night.

When morning broke in a grey uncertain haze over the sea, and the rocky shore began to loom out to leeward and astern, the extent of the damage was more apparent, but after all the ship had come out of it fairly well. The fore topmast was gone, the mizzen damaged, the bulwarks broken, and more like sheep hurdles than anything else, but there was little other damage worth entering in the log-book.

The sky cleared when the sun rose, and after breakfast the men were set to work repairing damages.

The Fairy Queen had little business on the Norwegian coast at all, but she had been driven far out of her course by adverse winds.

In a few more days the breeze was fair, and the ship was making good way westwards, albeit she was jury-rigged. It was sincerely hoped by all on board that the terrible gale they had just encountered was the worst they would meet. The ship had borne it wonderfully well, and leaked not in the least; for many a day, therefore, everything went as merry as marriage bells on board.

Captain Blunt was happy, so were our heroes, and so, for the matter of that, was every one fore and aft. The crew of the Fairy Queen were all picked men. They were not feather-bed sailors; most of them had been in the Arctic regions before, and knew them well. But albeit a good seaman is not afraid to face danger in every shape and form, he is nevertheless happiest when things are going well.

So now, every night, around the galley fire, songs were sung and stories told, and by day many a jocund laugh around the fo’c’s’le mingling with the scream of the circling sea-birds told of light hearts and minds that were free from care.

Everything in these seas was new to young Douglas and Leonard. They passed the strange-looking Faroe group of islands to the north, and in good time Iceland to the south, and bore up, straight as a bird could fly, for Cape Farewell, the southernmost point of Greenland.

Those Faroe Isles, as seen from the sea, are indescribably fantastic and picturesque. Let me see if I cannot find a simile. Yes, here it is: take a number of pebbles and stones, with a few good-sized smithy cinders. Let these be of all sizes. Next take a broad, shallow basin, which partly fill with water stained dark blue with indigo; now place your stones, etc, in this water, with one end of each sticking up. Paint these ends and tip them and streak them with green, with white, and with crimson, and lo and behold! you have a model of the Faroe Islands.

The Fairy Queen called at Reykjavik, and the good people of that quaint wee “city” came trooping on board. Even the Danish parson came, carrying in his own hands – for he was not proud – a string of firm, delicious-looking rock cod as a present for the captain.

Almost every boat brought a gift of some kind. Well, I daresay they did expect some presents in return, and it is needless to say they got them. This was, after all, only a very pleasant and very justifiable way of doing a barter; much better, in my opinion, than if they had lain on their oars and said, —

“We have fresh fish, and mountain mutton, and eggs and game for sale; how much tobacco, biscuits, knives, hatches, and cooking utensils have you to spare?”

The good little clergyman innocently inquired whether the war betwixt England and France was still going on, and was astonished to be told it was over years ago.

But nothing could exceed the kindness and hospitality of these people to our young heroes when they went on shore. Had they eaten and drunk a hundredth part of what they were pressed to partake of, they would have been cleverer far than the Welsh giant I used to read of in my boyhood in “The Wonderful Adventures of Jack the Giant-killer.”

The Fairy Queen lay at Reykjavik – having to take in water – for three days, and then sailed away. But would it be believed that in this short time Leonard and Douglas won so many hearts among old and young, that there was hardly a dry eye in the village the morning they left, so primitive and simple were those people then?

Book Two – Chapter Four
On Silent Seas

 
“And now there came both mist and snow,
    And it grew wondrous cold,
And ice, mast high, came floating by,
    As green as emerald.
 
 
“And through the drifts the snowy clilts
    Did send a dismal sheen,
Nor shapes of men nor beast we ken —
    The ice was all between.”
 

Coleridge.

Scene: The Arctic Ocean. One solitary ship in sight. Ice all about, against which, in contrast, the water looks black as ink.

Yes, everything they saw in this voyage and in these seas was indeed very new to Leonard and Douglas. They certainly were pleased they had come. It was like being in a new world.

They saw so many icebergs before they reached Cape Farewell that they ceased to fear them. Nothing very tremendous, though, but of all sizes, mostly covered with snow, and of shapes the most fantastic. Everything on earth seemed to be mimicked in shape by these bergs. Churches and houses, or halls with domes and minarets, were common objects. Furniture of all kinds came next in order of frequency; then came animals of all sorts, pigs, sheep, lions, bears, giraffes, geese, swans, horses, cattle, cocks, and hens. And the most amusing part of the business was this: as the ship sailed past them, or through the midst of them, they kept altering their shapes or forms with the greatest coolness, so to speak.

A giraffe, for instance, developed into a ginger-beer bottle, a cow turned into a cab, a church into a chair, a pig became a pigeon, and a hen a horse, while, perhaps, a monster lion or couchant bear became a daft-looking old wife with a flap-cap on. It was funny.

Some of the smaller of these icebergs were tenanted by seals.

What a delightfully easy life those lovely creatures seemed to lead! There goes one, for instance, basking on a bit of ice just like a sofa, pillow and all complete; and his snowy couch is floating quietly away through that blue and sunny summer sea, rising and falling gently on the waves in a way that must be quite delightful. He just raises his head as the ship sails past, and gazes after the Fairy Queen with a kind of dreamy interest, then lets it drop again, and recommences his study of the birds that go wheeling and screaming round in the sky.

Yonder a walrus pops a monster tusked head and goggle eyes out of the water, looking at the ship as fiercely as an angry bull.

“What are you?” he seems to ask, “or why are you disturbing the placid waters of my ocean home?”

Then he disappears, and presently is seen far away to the north.

Yonder, ploughing his lonely way through the silence of the dark sea, is a monster narwhal. He makes no remark. If a boat were to attack him, he might lose his temper, and try to stave her with his mighty ivory horn; but the Fairy Queen is nothing to him, so he looks not to right or to left, but goes on and on and away.

Here comes a shoal of dancing porpoises, all going south. How they dance, and how they plunge, and how they caper, to be sure! They take little heed of the ship, do not even go out of their way to avoid her. Perhaps they are going on a summer holiday, and are so full of their own happiness and joy that they have little time to think of anything else. Bless the innocent creatures! I’ve often and often felt pleasure in beholding their gambols; and thanked God from the bottom of my heart, because He has made them, made the earth and its fulness, the sea and all it contains, so full of life and love and beauty.

But look away down yonder, and you will perceive – for the ship is now becalmed – a triangular, fan-like thing above the water, and a dark line close by it. It is the back of the huge and awful Greenland shark. And look! there is a sea-bird perched on it, just as a starling might be on the back of a sheep. I do not like to think about sharks nor see them, and I could tell you many an ugly story about them – awful enough to make your blood run cold, but that would be a digression; besides, I feel sure the reader does not want his blood to run cold. But there is a more terrible-looking monster far than the Greenland shark in these seas. I allude to the gigantic hammer-head, who is more ugly than any nightmare.

But lo! here comes an honest whale. I do like these great monsters; I have seen quite a deal of their ways and manners. I am sure they have far more sagacity than they get credit for. I should like to own a little private sea of my own, and have it enclosed, with a notice board up, “Trespassers will be prosecuted,” and keep a full-sized whale or two. I feel sure I could teach them quite a host of little tricks. Stay, though – they would not be little tricks. Never mind, I and my whales would get on very well together. But if one did get angry with me, and did open his mouth, why – but it will not bear thinking about.

The whales our heroes saw in the Greenland ocean were leviathans. Leonard could not have believed such monsters existed anywhere in the world, and they had a thorough business air about them, too. Some came near enough the ship to show their eyes. Good-natured, twinkling little eyes, that seemed to say, —

“We know you are not a whaler, so pass on, and molest us not, else with one stroke of our tails we will send you all to Davy Jones.”

Then they would blow, and great fountains of steam would rise into the air, with a roar like that which an engine emits, only louder far. This is not water, as is generally supposed, but the breath of the vast leviathan of the ocean.

A Whale’s Garden Party

This is no joke of mine, because I have been at one, and Leonard and Douglas on this memorable voyage had also the good luck to witness an entertainment of the sort.

It only takes place at certain seasons of the year, always pretty far south of the main ice pack, and always in a spot unfrequented by ships. There is another sine quâ non connected with this garden party – namely, plenty to eat, and whales do not require anything to drink, you know. So the sea where the party is held is so full of a tiny shrimplet that it is tinged in colour. But why do I call it a garden party you may ask; are there any flowers? Does not the sun shimmering on the small icebergs already described, and on the clear ice itself, bring forth a hundred various tints and colours, more gorgeously, more radiantly beautiful than any flowers that ever bloomed and grew? Are there not, too, at the sea bottom flowers of the deep —

“Many a flower that’s born to blush unseen – ”

Lovelier far than those that bloom on land? Yes, I am right in calling it a garden party. But what do the whales do at this garden party of theirs? Sail quietly round and look at each other? Discuss the possibility of uniting in a body, and driving all the whaling fleet to the bottom of the sea? Consider the prospects of the shrimp harvest, or debate upon the best methods of extracting a harpoon from fin or tail, and the easiest method of capsizing a boat? No; nothing of the sort. They have met together to enjoy themselves, and in their own exceedingly cumbersome way they do enjoy themselves. They enjoy themselves with a force and a vengeance that is terrible to witness. The noise and explosions of their wonderful gambols can be heard ten miles away on a still night. To see a porpoise leap high out of the water like a salmon is a fine sight, but to see two or three whales at one and the same time thus disporting themselves, while some lie in the water beating time with their terrible tails, others playing at leap frog, and the sea for acres round them churned into froth and meerschaum, is a sight that once seen can never be forgotten. The boldest harpooner that ever drew breath would not venture near those gambolling whales, and I verily believe that the biggest line-of-battle ships that ever floated would be staved and sunk in the midst of that funny but fearful maelstrom.

This gives you, reader, but the very faintest notion of a whale’s garden party. It is one of the wonders of the world, and one which few have ever seen and lived to tell of, for there is no surety of the huge monsters not shifting ground at any moment, and sweeping down like a whirlwind on some devoted ship.

The Fairy Queen sailed on, and in due time sighted and passed Cape Farewell, then northward ho! through Davis Straits to Baffin’s Sea, and here they had the great good luck to fall in with the vessels they had come to succour.

Some delay was caused in unloading, and as the summer was now far advanced, and Captain Blunt had no desire to winter in these dismal regions, he was naturally anxious to get away south as soon as possible.

They were cleared at last, however, and bidding the research vessels farewell, with three-times-three ringing cheers, all sail was set that the ship could stagger under, and on she rushed through an open sea, although there were plenty of icebergs about.

For a whole week everything went favourably and well. Then, alas! the tide turned with a vengeance. One of those dense fogs so common in these regions came down upon them like a wall, and so enveloped the ship that it was impossible, standing at the windlass, to see the jibboom end; and at the same time.

 
“Down dropt the wind, the sails dropt down,
’Twas sad as sad could be;
And we did speak only to break
The silence of the sea.”
 

But worse was to come.

For now, up-looming through the dismal fog, came great green-ribbed icebergs, the waves lapping at their feet and the spray washing their dripping sides.

In the midst of so great a danger Captain Blunt felt powerless. There was absolutely nothing to be done but wait and wait, and pray the good Father to send a breeze.

When we pray earnestly for anything we should never forget to add the words of Him Who spake as never man spake, and say, “Thy will be done.” No prayer is complete without that beautiful line; and yet, though easy to say it, it is – oh! so hard sometimes to pray it. But then we poor mortals do not know what is best for us.

In the present instance our heroes’ prayers were not heard, and days and weeks flew by; then the sky cleared, and they saw the sun once more, but only to find themselves so surrounded by ice on all quarters that escape was impossible. Besides, the season was now far gone, autumn was wearing through, the sun was far south, and the nights getting long and cold and dreary.

Frost now set in, and snow began to fall.

They were safe from all dangers for six months to come, at the least.

“Never mind,” said Blunt cheerily to Leonard, “we have provisions enough to last us for a year at the very least. So we must do the best to make ourselves comfortable.”

“That we will,” replied Leonard, “though I fear our friends at home will think we are lost.”

“That is the only drawback – my dear wife and child, and your parents, boys. Well, we are in the hands of Providence. God is here in these solitudes, and just as easily found as if we were in the cathedral of old St. Giles’.”

It was indeed a dreary winter they passed in the midst of that frozen sea. No sun, no light save moon or stars and the lovely aurora. Silence deep as the grave, except – which was rare – when a storm came howling over the pack, raising the snow in whirlwinds, and often hurling off the peaked and jagged tops of the weird-looking icebergs.

But the sun appeared at last, and in due time. With a noise and confusion that is indescribable the ice broke up, and the Fairy Queen began to move slowly – oh, so slowly! – through the ice on her way southwards, with danger on every quarter, danger ahead, and danger astern. She sailed for many, many miles without a rudder; for lest it should get smashed it had been unshipped, the men steering ahead by means of boat and hawser, and the ship often being so close to an iceberg that the tips of the yard arms touched, and when the berg moved over with a wave it threw the vessel upwards from the bottom. On these occasions poles were used to edge her off.

It was tedious work all this, but it came to an end at last, and the water being now more open, the rudder was re-shipped, and more sail clapped on, so that much better way was made.

Another week passed by. They were well south now in Davis Straits, albeit the wind had been somewhat fickle.

They had high hopes of soon seeing the last of the ice, and both Douglas and Leonard began to think of home, and talk of it also.

It was spring time once more. The larches, at all events, would be green and tasselled with crimson in the woods around Glen Lyle, primroses would be peeping out in cosy corners in moss-bedded copses, and birds would be busy building, and the trees alive with the voice of song.

“In three weeks more,” said Douglas, “we ought to be stretching away across the blue Atlantic, and within a measurable distance of dear old Scotland.”

“Ay, lad!” replied Leonard, “my heart jumps to my mouth with very joy to think of it.”

In this great chart that lies before me, a chart of the Polar regions, I can point out the very place, or near it, where the Fairy Queen was crushed in the ice as a strong man might crush a walnut, and sank like a stone in the water, dragging down with her, so quickly did she go at last, more than one of her brave crew, whose bones may lie in the black depths of that inhospitable ocean, —

“Till the sea gives up its dead.”

Midway ’twixt Nipzet Sound and Cape Mercy, just a little to the nor’ard of Cumberland Gulf, I mark the point with a plus.

It was in a gale of wind, and at the dead of night, when she was surrounded by an immense shoal of flat bergs, of giant proportions, and staved irremediably. The water came roaring in below. Pumping was of no avail. She must founder, and that very soon. So every effort consonant with safety was made to embark upon the very icebergs that had caused the grief. Stores and water were speedily got out, therefore, and long ere the break of day the end came, the ship was engulphed. There was no longer any Fairy Queen to glide over the seas like a thing of life – only two wave-washed bergs, each with a huddled crew of hopeless shipwrecked mariners.

And these were already separating. They had bade each other adieu.

They were gliding away, or south or north or east or west, they knew not whither.