CHAPTER XXV.ONE OF JAMES ROSS'S FOXES.
On that day the thermometer fell to three degrees below zero. The daywas calm; the cold was very endurable in the absence of wind. Hatterastook advantage of the clearness of the air to reconnoitre thesurrounding plains; he ascended one of the highest icebergs to thenorth, but even with his glass he could make out nothing but a seriesof ice-mountains and ice-fields. There was no land in sight, nothingbut gloomy confusion. He returned, and tried to calculate the probablelength of their imprisonment.
The hunters, and among them the doctor, James Wall, Simpson, Johnson,and Bell, kept them supplied with fresh meat. The birds haddisappeared, seeking a milder climate in the south. The ptarmigansalone, a sort of rock-partridge peculiar to this latitude, did notflee the winter; it was easy to kill them, and there were enough topromise a perpetual supply of game.
Hares, foxes, wolves, ermines, and bears were plentiful; a French,English, or Norwegian hunter would have had no right to complain; butthey were so shy that it was hard to approach them; besides, it washard to distinguish them on the white plain, they being whitethemselves, for in winter they acquire that colored fur. In oppositionto the opinions of some naturalists, the doctor held that this changewas not due to the lowering of the temperature, since it took placebefore October; hence it was not due to any physical cause, but ratherprovidential foresight, to secure these animals against the severityof an arctic winter.
Often, too, they saw sea-cows and sea-dogs, animals included under thename of seals; all the hunters were specially recommended to shootthem, as much for their skins as for their fat, which was very goodfuel. Besides, their liver made a very good article of food; theycould be counted by hundreds, and two or three miles north of the shipthe ice was continually perforated by these huge animals; only theyavoided the hunter with remarkable instinct, and many were wounded whoeasily escaped by diving under the ice.
Still, on the 19th, Simpson succeeded in getting one four hundredyards distant from the ship; he had taken the precaution to close itshole in the ice, so that it could not escape from its pursuers. Hefought for a long time, and died only after receiving many bullets. Hewas nine feet long; his bull-dog head, the sixteen teeth in his jaw,his large pectoral fins shaped like little wings, his little tail withanother pair of fins, made him an excellent specimen. The doctorwished to preserve his head for his collection of natural history, andhis skin for future contingences, hence he prepared both by a rapidand economical process. He plunged the body in the hole, and thousandsof little prawns removed the flesh in small pieces; at the end of halfa day the work was half finished, and the most skilful of thehonorable corporation of tanners at Liverpool could not have donebetter.
When the sun had passed the autumn equinox, that is to say, September23d, the winter fairly begins in the arctic regions. The sun, havinggradually sunk to the horizon, disappeared at last, October 23d,lighting up merely the tops of the mountains with its oblique rays.The doctor gave it his last farewell. He could not see it again tillthe month of February.
Still the darkness was not complete during this long absence of thesun; the moon did its best to replace it; the stars were exceedinglybrilliant, the auroras were very frequent, and the refractionspeculiar to the snowy horizons; besides, the sun at the time of itsgreatest southern declension, December 21st, approaches withinthirteen degrees of the polar horizon; hence, every day there was acertain twilight for a few hours. Only the mist and snow-storms oftenplunged these regions in the deepest obscurity.
Still, up to this time the weather was very favorable; the partridgesand hares alone had reason to complain, for the hunters gave them norest; a great many traps were set for foxes, but these crafty animalscould not be caught; very often they scraped the snow away beneath thetrap and took the bait without running any risk; the doctor cursedthem, being very averse to making them such a present.
October 25th, the thermometer fell as low as -4 degrees. A violenthurricane raged; the air was filled with thick snow, which permittedno ray of light to reach the _Forward_. For several hours there wassome anxiety about the fate of Bell and Simpson, who had gone somedistance away hunting; they did not reach the ship till the next day,having rested for a whole day wrapped up in their furs, while thehurricane swept over them and buried them under five feet of snow.They were nearly frozen, and the doctor found it very hard to restoretheir circulation.
The tempest lasted eight days without interruption. No one could setfoot outside. In a single day there were variations in the temperatureof fifteen or twenty degrees.
During this enforced leisure every one kept to himself, some sleeping,others smoking, others again talking in a low tone and stopping at theapproach of Johnson or the doctor; there was no moral tie between themen of the crew; they only met at evening prayers and at Sundayservices.
Clifton knew perfectly well that when the seventy-eighth parallel waspassed, his share of the pay would amount to three hundred andseventy-five pounds; he thought it a good round sum, and his ambitiondid not go any further. His opinion was generally shared, and alllooked forward to the day when they should enjoy this hardly-earnedfortune.
Hatteras kept almost entirely out of sight. He never took part in thehunts or the walks from the ship. He took no interest in themeteorological phenomena which kept the doctor in a constant state ofadmiration. He lived with but a single idea; it consisted of threewords,--The North Pole. He only thought of when the _Forward_, free atlast, should resume her bold course.
In fact, the general feeling on board was one of gloom. Nothing was sosad as the sight of this captive vessel, no longer resting in itsnatural element, but with its shape hidden beneath thick layers ofice; it looks like nothing; it cannot stir, though made for motion; itis turned into a wooden storehouse, a sedentary dwelling, this shipwhich knows how to breast the wind and the storms. This anomaly, thisfalse situation, filled their hearts with an indefinable feeling ofdisquiet and regret.
During these idle hours the doctor arranged the notes he had taken,from which this book is made up; he was never out of spirits, andnever lost his cheerfulness. Yet he was glad to see the end of thestorm, and prepared to resume his hunting.
November 3d, at six o'clock in the morning, with a temperature of -5degrees, he set off in company with Johnson and Bell; the expanse ofice was unbroken; all the snow which had fallen so abundantly duringthe preceding days was hardened by the frost, and made good walking;the air was keen and piercing; the moon shone with incomparablepurity, glistening on the least roughness in the ice; their footprintsglowed like an illuminated trail, and their long shadows stood outalmost black against the brilliant ice.
"The moon shone with incomparable purity, glistening onthe least roughness in the ice."]
The doctor had taken Duke with him; he preferred him to the Greenlanddogs to hunt game, and he was right; for they are of very little useunder such circumstances, and they did not appear to possess thesacred fire of the race of the temperate zone. Duke ran along with hisnose on the ground, and he often stopped on the recent marks of bears.Still, in spite of his skill, the hunters did not find even a hare intwo hours' walking.
"Has all the game felt it necessary to go south?" said the doctor,stopping at the foot of a hummock.
"I should fancy it must be so, Doctor," answered the carpenter.
"I don't think so," said Johnson; "the hares, foxes, and bears areaccustomed to this climate; I think this last storm must have driventhem away; but they will come back with the south-winds. Ah, if youwere to talk about reindeer and musk-deer, that might be different!"
"And yet at Melville Island numberless animals of this sort arefound," resumed the doctor; "it lies farther south, it is true, andduring the winters he spent there Parry always had plenty of thismagnificent game."
"We have much poorer luck," answered Bell; "if we could only getenough bear's meat, we would do very well."
"The difficulty is," said the doctor, "the bears seem to me very rareand very wild; th
ey are not civilized enough to come within gun-shot."
"Bell is talking about the flesh of the bear," said Johnson, "but hisgrease is more useful than his flesh or his fur."
"You are right, Johnson," answered Bell; "you are always thinking ofthe fuel."
"How can I help it? Even with the strictest economy, we have onlyenough for three weeks!"
"Yes," resumed the doctor, "that is the real danger, for we are nowonly at the beginning of November, and February is the coldest monthin the frigid zone; still, if we can't get bear's grease, there's nolack of seal's grease."
"But not for a very long time, Doctor," answered Johnson; "they willsoon leave us; whether from cold or fright, soon they won't come uponthe ice any more."
"Then," continued the doctor, "we shall have to fall back on the bear,and I confess the bear is the most useful animal to be found in thesecountries, for he furnishes food, clothing, light, and fuel to men. Doyou hear, Duke?" he said, patting the dog's head, "we want some bears,my friend, bears! bears!"
Duke, who was sniffing at the ice at that time, aroused by the voices,and caresses of the doctor, started off suddenly with the speed of anarrow. He barked violently and, far off as he was, his loud barksreached the hunters' ears.
The extreme distance to which sound is carried when the temperature islow is an astonishing fact; it is only equalled by the brilliancy ofthe constellations in the northern skies; the waves of light and soundare transmitted to great distances, especially in the dry cold of thenights.
The hunters, guided by his distant barking, hastened after him; theyhad to run a mile, and they got there all out of breath, which happensvery soon in such an atmosphere. Duke stood pointing about fifty feetfrom an enormous mass which was rolling about on the top of a smalliceberg.
"Just what we wanted!" shouted the doctor, cocking his gun.
"A fine bear!" said Bell, following the doctor's example.
"A curious bear!" said Johnson, who intended to fire after hiscompanions.
Duke barked furiously. Bell advanced about twenty feet, and fired; butthe animal seemed untouched, for he continued rolling his head slowly.
Johnson came forward, and, after taking careful aim, he pulled thetrigger.
"Good!" said the doctor; "nothing yet! Ah, this cursed refraction! Weare too far off; we shall never get used to it! That bear is more thana mile away."
"Come on!" answered Bell.
The three companions hastened toward the animal, which had not beenalarmed by the firing; he seemed to be very large, but, withoutweighing the danger, they gave themselves up already to the joy ofvictory. Having got within a reasonable distance, they fired; the bearleaped into the air and fell, mortally wounded, on the level icebelow.
Duke rushed towards him.
"That's a bear," said the doctor, "which was easily conquered."
"Only three shots," said Bell with some scorn, "and he's down!"
"That's odd," remarked Johnson.
"Unless we got here just as he was going to die of old age," continuedthe doctor, laughing.
"Well, young or old," added Bell, "he's a good capture."
Talking in this way they reached the small iceberg, and, to theirgreat surprise, they found Duke growling over the body of a white fox.
"Upon my word," said Bell, "that's too much!"
"Well," said the doctor, "we've fired at a bear, and killed a fox!"
Johnson did not know what to say.
"Well," said the doctor with a burst of laughter in which there was atrace of disappointment, "that refraction again! It's always deceivingus."
"What do you mean, Doctor?" asked the carpenter.
"Yes, my friend; it deceived us with respect to its size as well asthe distance! It made us see a bear in a fox's skin! Such a mistake isnot uncommon under similar circumstances! Well, our imagination alonewas wrong!"
"At any rate," answered Johnson, "bear or fox, he's good eating. Let'scarry him off."
But as the boatswain was lifting him to his shoulders:--
"That's odd," he said.
"What is it?" asked the doctor.
"See there, Doctor, he's got a collar around his neck."
"A collar?" asked the doctor again, examining the fox.
In fact, a half-worn-out copper collar appeared under his white fur;the doctor thought he saw letters engraved upon it; he unfastened itfrom the animal's neck, about which it seemed to have been for a longtime.
"What does that mean?" asked Johnson.
"That means," said the doctor, "that we have just killed a fox morethan twelve years old,--a fox who was caught by James Ross in 1848."
"Is it possible?" said Bell.
"There's no doubt about it. I'm sorry we killed him! While he was inwinter-quarters, James Ross thought of trapping a large number ofwhite foxes; he fastened on their necks copper collars on which wasengraved the position of his ships, the _Enterprise_ and_Investigator_, as well as where the supplies were left. These animalsrun over immense distances in search of food, and James Ross hopedthat one of them might fall into the hands of one of the men of theFranklin expedition. That's the simple explanation; and this poorbeast, who might have saved the life of two crews, has fallenuselessly beneath our guns."
"Well, we won't eat it," said Johnson, "especially if it's twelveyears old. But we shall keep the skin as a memento."
Johnson raised it to his shoulders. The hunters made their way to theship, guiding themselves by the stars; their expedition was not whollywithout result; they were able to bring back several ptarmigans.
An hour before reaching the _Forward_, there was a singular phenomenonwhich greatly interested the doctor. It was a real shower ofshooting-stars; they could be counted by thousands, flying over theheavens like rockets; they dimmed the light of the moon. For hoursthey could have stood gazing at this beautiful sight. A similarphenomenon was observed in Greenland in 1799, by the Moravians. Itlooked like an exhibition of fireworks. The doctor after his return tothe ship spent the whole night gazing at the sight, which lasted tillseven o'clock in the morning, while the air was perfectly silent.