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Chapter Twenty One
A Terrible Time – The Doctor’s Dream – The Wondrous Mirage

It was the month of mid-winter. Sickness had come at last; the sickness that is born of privation and absence of vegetable food. The younger and more weakly of the men were first to succumb. They lost heart, felt weary, tired, depressed. They refused to work. Even Dr Barrett could not find it in his heart to force them. They grew pale and thin, even to emaciation, and their dilated pupils glittered on their sunken eyeballs.

Their stronger companions tried to cheer them, ay, and many a time went without food themselves to give it to them.

One dropped dead, and was carried away and buried in the ice-hole. “Buried by the light of glaring torches,” buried at sea you may call it, – a sailor’s funeral, but what a sad one!

It was Magnus Jansen, a fair-haired Shetland lad, who had been a great favourite with his messmates, owing to his kind and gentle nature and his ever willingness to oblige.

“We commit his body to the deep,” read Claude, “looking for the resurrection, when the sea shall give up her dead;” and more than one horny hand was raised to brush away a tear, as with deep and sullen plash the body sank into the sea.

Two more died in a week – died apparently of utter despondency and weariness.

“I shall soon see the light,” were the last words of one of these. He just smiled faintly, and passed away.

Three more in a fortnight.

They nearly all seemed to go in the same way, of utter debility and hopelessness.

Byarnie was nurse-in-chief. He was always with them to the last; the great giant kneeling down beside their pallets, and breathing in their dying ears words that it is to be hoped often deprived even death of its victory.

More than one died leaning against Byarnie’s broad breast. I have already said that Byarnie’s big fat face was far from handsome. Ah! but it was so honest; and had you seen him there by the bedsides of those dying sailors, you would have said that his face shone at times with almost a heavenly light.

Another, and still another, was borne slowly away to the ice-hole.

Then it seemed as if Death was for a time satiated, and had claimed victims enough.

For almost the first time this winter, the sky cleared, the stars shone like emeralds through the frosty glow, the moon put in an appearance, casting long shadows across the snowfields, from those who walked out.

There was the aurora, too, a brighter display than any one ever remembered witnessing. Away in the north, and overhead, the ever-changing colours shimmered and danced in a way that was magical, marvellous, and it seemed at times that you had but to put up your hand and touch the broad fringes of light that danced and flickered before your eyes.

The sight of the sky evidently gave the men some heart, some hope.

But after a week the stars and aurora disappeared, and the darkness of a Polar night once more descended on the scene.

With so many ill, with so many dead, it would have been but a mockery now to venture on anything approaching to gaiety or merriment. Even Paddy felt that; and though, like boy Bounce, ever earnest, and energetic, and kind, he went about his work quieter and more subdued than probably he had ever been in his life before.

Instead of lecturing, Dr Barrett used in the evenings now to read books to his people; often books of a religious character, though not of the gloomy kind, but rather those that spoke of a Father’s love, and carried the thoughts away and away to that bright land where there shall be no more sorrow or crying.

One morning in March, Dr Barrett appeared more than usually cheerful.

There were now so many sick that hardly could those in comparative health attend to their wants.

“I’ve had a dream,” the doctor explained. “No,” he added, smiling, “I shall not tell you what it is. You will know by-and-by, for my dream may not come true. Byarnie,” he said, “I’m going mining after breakfast. The morning is still and fine, and there are a lot of stars out. Bring tools and a few men with you.”

“Going mining?” said Claude, in some surprise.

“Yes, mining, captain; but not for gold this time, but for what is ten times more precious – for health. Get ready, Byarnie, and we’ll want torches, as well as a bucket.”

“You excite my curiosity,” said Claude. “May I go along with you?”

“You’ll do me pleasure.”

Straight along the south coast of the inland sea went Dr Barrett, Byarnie following up with his men. For more than half a mile he trudged on without looking either to the right or left. Then he stopped just under a cliff, or rather a rounded braeland.

“Now, men, clear away the snow from the ice close to the edge.”

“I think it was here I saw them in my dream,” he added, turning to Claude.

“I’m all in a fog,” said Claude.

The snow was not very deep, and the ice was soon cleared.

“Now light up your torches, and you other men smash the ice and clear a big hole. No fear of drowning; the tide is well back.”

This was a more difficult task, but it was accomplished at last, all the more easily because there was no water beneath.

“See anything down there?” the doctor asked of a man who had just lifted up a huge piece of ice.

“Only a thickish kind of seaweed, sir.”

“All right,” cried the doctor, quite jubilant now. “Fill this bucket with it.”

This was done, and soon the whole party reached camp again.

“I am to be blamed,” said Dr Barrett, “for not thinking of this marvellous seaweed before. It contains potash in abundance, and while mosses of all kinds are frozen to death on the hillsides, this, you see, survives. Our poor fellows, now almost dead of the scurvy, may yet revive.”

Not only those who were sick, but all hands partook of the esculent weed. The sick revived, those in health grew brighter, calmer, and happier.

“If our food holds out, I think we may now weather the winter,” said Dr Barrett.

“I sincerely trust so,” said Claude, “and that we may all be well to commence the march.”

It seemed, however, that fate had still further affliction in store for them, for one day Byarnie came to the doctor, and very sad he looked.

No less than two casks of meat were found almost putrid, and the store of bears’ flesh had also gone bad.

This was indeed terrible news.

When the third and last cask was opened it was found like the others, unfit even for the food of starving men!

Tinned meat was all they now had to depend upon, and there was very little of that; so they must go on short allowance at once.

The men were far less cheerful after this, and the summer, that but yesterday had appeared so near at hand, was now apparently an illimitable distance away.

Another expedition was made to the caves among the hills, in the endeavour to find another bear.

All in vain.

Hope now sunk in every heart. Even the doctor himself, who had struggled so long, began to feel that the time was not far distant when he too must succumb, must lie down and – die.

It was April, another month, another long, long four weeks – and early summer and sunshine would come and bring back with them the birds – the grebe, the auk, the wild duck and guillemot.

Two more had been added to the list of the dead.

The boy Bounce fell ill.

“We are not going to let the boy die,” said one of the men. “It is food he wants. Let us make a subscription.”

The subscription was made. Everybody gave a morsel of something for the poor boy, and his allowance came to be double instead of half Big Byarnie even gave up his blanket, and just slept a little closer to the fire and hugged Fingal.

Poor boy Bounce lived, and began cooking again, though in this matter, unfortunately, his labour was not now very arduous.

Claude was looking very pallid and worn; he did not speak much, he suffered in silence. The men would have fain had their captain to live better than they did, but he would not hear of such a thing. Besides, he gave away a goodly portion of his meagre allowance to poor Fingal.

For Fingal was ill.

Indeed, Claude knew that Fingal was dying, and the faithful old fellow appeared to know it himself. One day the hound was very much weaker, very much worse, and Claude knew the end was very near. He was sitting by the couch on which the dog lay. Alba, the snow-bird, jealous perhaps of her master’s attentions to Fingal, came and perched upon his shoulder.

Claude took the bird in his hands and slowly rose to his feet.

“For once, Alba,” he said, “I must send you off.” Then he handed her to one of the men. “Take her to the aviary.”

This was all he said. But he went back and knelt by Fingal’s bed.

Why did he put the bird away? Those of my readers who love dogs will understand and appreciate his reasons: there was always a slight rivalry between the bird and the dog, and Claude would have grieved to let Fingal in his last moments feel that aught stood between his master’s heart and his.

As Claude returned, Fingal recognised him. He attempted to rise, tried even to crawl towards him, and in doing so fell. Claude raised him – how light he was! – and replaced him in the softest part of his couch. Then he sat beside his dying favourite with one arm over his shoulder.

Fingal knew he was there. He fell quietly and gently asleep.

It was that sleep from which nor dogs nor men ever awaken.

The time rolled drearily on, and at length the sun rose, and the days got rapidly longer and longer; but starvation had done its work.

Not that more died, but several were down with sheer debility, all were weak and poor, Claude could no longer stand.

Paddy O’Connell held out, so did Byarnie and the doctor, but the latter was quieter far than of yore. “The sooner,” said Claude, one day, “the sooner, doctor, it is all over the better.”

One day from the hill-top, Byarnie saw a sight which suddenly struck him with fear and trembling, and sent him on his knees to pray.

Away in the southern sky, some distance above the horizon, was a wondrous vision.

It faded away at last, and then Byarnie hurried off to the camp, his clothes wet with the sweat of fear, to report the matter to the doctor.

“It is all over with us,” he said, “for I have seen a wonderful vision, even as Ezekiel did in the days of the olden time.”

“Have you been dreaming?” said Dr Barrett.

“I have not even been asleep,” replied Byarnie. “I was there on the mountain-top alone, when suddenly in the sky there appeared before my sight this vision, as of men and sledges and dogs moving rapidly across the sky, among the very clouds.”

“Were they all head-down?”

“They were all head-down,” said Byarnie, “which makes the awful vision still more wondrous strange.”

“Bless you, Byarnie, for this news,” cried the doctor. “Hurrah! Byarnie, we are saved! we are saved! Be they Indians, be they savages, they are coming, and we are saved. What you saw, my faithful fellow, was a mirage.”

Chapter Twenty Two
Meta’s Strange Adventures

We are back once again in Meta’s cottage in Iceland. There is but little change here since the day Claude bade his betrothed a long farewell.

It is evening. Yonder by the fire sits one of Meta’s aunts, working away at her “rock and her reel,” as she seemed always working, spinning, spinning, spinning.

Meta near her, with her zither. She had been playing, but her fingers now lay listlessly on her strings, only now and then some sweet wailing notes and chords were brought out as if the hands were en rapport with her heart.

“And you really say you saw him in your dreams, dear auntie?”

Whirr – whirr – whirr, went the wheel.

“I saw him,” replied the kindly but ancient dame. “I saw him. I can see him now as I saw him in my dream. He is lying on the ground, and his face hardly less pale than the snow.” Whirr – whirr – it – it. “Oh, auntie, don’t frighten me, dear!”

“But kindly men are kneeling by him. They raise him. He revives. The blood returns to his cheeks. He will live!”

“Bless you, auntie, bless you!” Whirr – whirr went the wheel. The snow-flea in his cage twittered fondly. The raven on his log, which he seemed never to leave, stretched himself a leg at a time, then both wings at once. He was very old, that raven, and Poe’s looked not more weird, and —

“His mate long dead, his nestlings flown,
The moss had o’er his eyrie grown,
While all the scenes his youth had known
Were changed and old.”

Meta plays now; she is more happy. Her aunt has given her hope.

But somehow she does not play long; she is easily tired now, so she rises and lays aside the instrument, then stands by the window to watch the snowy mountain peaks changing to pink and to purple in the sun’s parting rays.

Summer has fled from the Norland hills. The songbirds have gone – the martin, and woodlark, and robin; the wild flowers have faded – the blue geraniums, the pink-eyed diapensias, the daisies, and the purple wild thyme; only the green of the creeping saxifrage bedecks the rocks, and hardy sea-pinks and ferns still grow in the glades and by the brook-sides. But autumn winds sigh mournfully through the leafless birch trees and drooping willows, and rustle the withered leaves of the wild myrtle on the braesides.

With a sigh Meta turns away from the window.

Almost at the same time there is a knock at the door, and Guielmyun, brother to Byarnie, and, like himself, a giant, rushed in.

“The bird, the bird?” he cried, “he is – ”

But Meta heard no more. Next minute she was standing by the cage.

Panting, ragged, and wretched-looking and dripping wet was the messenger that had flown so far; but oh, bless it! it bore the little quill that contained the missive of sadness and love.

There was no more weariness in Meta’s looks now, but stern, firm resolve.

“I’ll save him if I can,” she said.

“A young lady in the study wants to see me?” said Professor Hodson to his neat-handed waiting-maid. “Bless my heart, what a strange thing!”

But stranger still, five minutes after this the good old professor was sitting opposite this young lady, and had given orders that no one should come near the door till he rang the bell.

“Dear me, my dear, de-ar me!” he was saying; “and you really tell me that a sea-bird carried this message all the way from the icy north? But there, there, I see, it is his own handwriting. And yours is a strange, not to say a sad story. But it will all come right in the end – perhaps, you know.”

“Oh, sir!” cried Meta, “you will make some effort to save him? You will not let him die in those terrible regions of gloom and desolation?”

“Gloom and desolation, dear? Yes, yes, to be sure, you’re quite right; they must be somewhat gloomy and desolate. No morning paper, no morning rolls or hot toast. Well, well, we will see in a day or two what can be done. The Kittywake, too, she has been posted long ago a lost ship and the insurance paid. But even she might turn up, you know. I only say she might. Stranger things have happened.”

Meta took the professor’s soft white hand as she bade him good-bye in the doorway, and touched it reverently with her lips.

“Good-bye, my dear, good night. You’ve got nice lodgings? Yes, I think you said you had. Good night, good night. God bless you.”

The savants are assembled in the largest room in the professor’s house – a room where lectures are often given and wonderful experiments made, but a cosy room for all that, with two great fires burning in it, and a soft crimson light diffused throughout it from the great candelabra.

There is a stranger here to-night – a stranger to us, I mean – a man about fifty, a sailor evidently, from his build and bronze. He is very pleasant in manner and voice; his face is handsome, and his smile strikes you as coming directly from the heart.

They had been dining; the walnuts and wine were now on the table, and conversation was at its best.

“Well, gentlemen, I shall call the young lady, and you shall hear the marvellous tale from her own lips.”

Somewhat abashed at first to find herself in such august company, and in a room more beautiful than anything she could ever have dreamed about, Meta was soon reassured by the professor’s kindly voice. He sat beside her, and held one hand in his.

Then she told her story, as she had told it to Professor Hodson in his study. She hid nothing, kept nothing back, told all the truth, even about her love and betrothal to Claude, talking low but earnestly, as innocently as a child repeating its prayer by its mother’s knee.

There was no more eager listener than Captain Jahnsen, the sailor I have mentioned. As long as she spoke his eyes were riveted on her face, sometimes he even changed colour in his seeming excitement. When she had finished, he stood up.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I have been all my life a man of action, not of words; and now what I have to say must be said briefly indeed. For the last many years I have been a sailor and adventurer combined. I have dug gold, ploughed the sea, and searched for diamonds; not unsuccessfully, as you are all aware. For years and years previous to that I was a Greenland sailor, not hailing from any British port; not sailing in beautiful barques or full-rigged ships, but in an open boat from Lapland. What made me so? Fate. I once commanded as splendid a little craft as ever sailed the sea. I had on board my wife and my child-daughter. I was wrecked – a sailor’s luck, you say, but mine was a sadder one than falls to the lot of most sailors. My dear wife – ah! gentlemen, the memory of that terrible night almost unmans me even yet – was killed in my arms by a falling spar; my daughter was swept away. Two sailors and I alone were saved by a Lapland walrus boat. We lay-to for hours. No sign of life was visible; again I dropped insensible; I was ill, mad, raving for weeks. Yet calmness and peace came at last. But never more dared I go near that awful coast. To me the very memory of it and of that night has ever been like a nightmare.”

“Where were you wrecked?” asks Professor Hodson.

“On the Icelandic coast, north of Reykjavik.”

Meta has turned suddenly pale, and her eyes fill with tears.

She timidly advances. “Father,” she murmurs.

There is no wild excitement; no melodrama. Captain Jahnsen stoops and kisses his daughter’s brow.

“I’m sure, dear Meta,” he said, “we’ll love each other very much.”

Yet, though lacking melodramatic effect, the scene was touching in the extreme.

Poor Professor Hodson! he was fain to wipe his eyes.

“Dear me, dear me, dear me!” he said, in his quick, sharp way of speaking, “I never thought that I would shed tears again in my life. Dear me, dear me!”

“Now, my child,” said the professor to Meta next morning, “I’m going to ran down to Dunallan Towers, and see her ladyship. No, as you wish me not to, I shall never breathe your name. Good-bye; keep up your heart. I’ll do the best I can.”

Yes, Lady Alwyn was at home, and would see Professor Hodson.

And presently she enters.

Very handsome yet, very stately, very sad withal. She beckons the professor to a seat. “You may not guess what I have come about?”

“Yes, I can,” she says. “You bring no news of my son, but you think of sending a search-party out?”

“That was mooted between my colleagues and me.”

“Professor Hodson, I fear – indeed, I know – I shall never see my son alive or dead again. I live but to mourn for him. I live but to repent the harsh words that drove him from my door – from our door – my boy’s and mine. To see his poor pet dog following him with downcast head; to see even the bird fly away; I – Oh, Professor Hodson!”

Here, woman-like, the poor lady burst into tears, and the tender-hearted professor feels very much inclined to follow suit.

“We may find him yet?”

“Oh! is there a hope, a chance?”

“There is, and we can but try. We have thought of fitting out a yacht.”

“There is his yacht – his own yacht. Take it, and welcome. If not strong enough, do everything for her. And, professor, all the expense must be mine. And I, too, will sail in her in search of my boy.”

“Your ladyship, I – ”

“Deny me not. I will not be denied.”

“Your ladyship little knows the danger – ”

“Talk not of danger. I’ll be happy every day to think I am braving the dangers my boy has braved before me. Professor Hodson,” she says, after a long pause, during which the savant has been musing on many matters, all of which revolve round Meta – “Professor Hodson, I feel younger, happier since you have come.”

“Your ladyship, then, must not be gainsaid. Well, I will accept the terms you so generously propose. We will at once fit up the Alba. All things promise well. We have in Captain Jahnsen a thorough gentleman, a sailor, and one who knows Greenland well. He has a daughter, too, who has been to sea. Might she not – ”

“Oh yes, yes, if she would but come. She would be a companion to me and I to her.”

“Well, well, well. We will consider it all arranged.”

The professor rubs his hands, and laughs a joyous laugh; and the lady, rising, smilingly leads the way to the room where they lunch together.

The Alba is at sea. It is a lovely day in the first week of April. Well off the last of the Shetland Isles is she, and bearing west with a bit of northerly in it. Not steaming, though she has been fitted with engines, and can boast of a funnel elegant and pretty enough for any one to admire.

No, not steaming, for there is a ten-knot beam-wind blowing, and her sails are outfurled to it. White they are, and whiter still they look in the spring sunshine.

The decks are white also, and the very ropes, so neatly coiled thereon, are swirls of snowy-white. Everything about this natty yacht is neat and trim. The capstan is of polished mahogany, the binnacle is fit to be a drawing-room ornament. Whatever ought to be black about her is like polished ebony, and the brasswork shines like burnished gold.

On the deck sit two ladies. One, the elder, leans languidly back in her cane chair; the other – it is Meta – is sitting on a footstool at her knee, reading aloud.

A sailor would say the Alba is a trifle down by the head; only a sailor could notice it. The Alba is heavily fortified with wood and iron around and between the bows. But all water and stores will first be used from the foremost tanks, then she will ride the waves like a sea-bird.

How delightful the breeze! how pleasant the sunshine! and the Alba herself appears to feel the importance of the charge she has on board of her, and is proud in consequence. She nods and curtsies to each passing wave, kisses some, turns coyly away from others, and altogether behaves as if she really were the thing of life the sailors on board half imagine she is.