CHAPTER XIV.
Proves the Ingenuity of Seals, and Shows That the GreatPolar Bear Is No Respecter of Persons.
"When we were last time cruising in the _Alice_, I think I told you allabout the Arctic winter,--did I not?" said the ancient mariner to hislittle friends, when they were met once more.
"Yes," answered William (who was always ready to act as spokesman forthe party),--"yes, Captain Hardy, all about the Arctic winter, and theaurora borealis, and the wonderful moonlight, and the darkness, and howyou and the handsome little Dean lived through it, and what you talkedabout, and how you passed the time, and what a doleful life you led, andwhat a dreadful thing it was, and how it made you shiver now to think ofit; and--all that, and a great deal more."
"Certainly," replied the Captain, "certainly, that's it,--all told offnicely, my lad, just as if you were boxing the compass or repeating themultiplication table;--all about how we protected ourselves from cold,and kept ourselves from hunger, and prepared a home for ourselves on theRock of Good Hope. And this seemed likely to be our home for lifetoo,--so far, at least, as we could see; for it appeared clear enough tous that our condition would never change except with death, which we,like everybody else, whether they have ever been cast away or not,wanted to put off as long as possible, having no wish at all to die, andnot liking either to freeze or starve: so you see we had good motivesfor energy and patience."
Here little Alice, in her quiet way, interrupted the Captain to say thatthe aurora borealis had troubled her dreams all night, and that shewould like to know, if the Captain pleased, why anything should havesuch a strange name.
"That I will tell you with pleasure, my dear," answered the Captain;"I'll tell you all about it,--of course I will. Aurora borealis,--thatmeans northern light; and the name comes from a pagan goddess calledAurora, who was supposed to have rosy fingers, and to ride in a rosychariot, and who opened the gates of the East every morning, and broughtin the light of day; and thus, in course of time, any great flush oflight in the heavens got to be called Aurora. And then there was a pagangod called Boreas, who was the North Wind, and had long wings and whitehair, and made himself generally disagreeable. So you see Boreas, frombeing the pagan name for north wind, got to mean the north; andBorealis, from that, became Northern, and Aurora Borealis becameNorthern Light."
"Thank you, Captain Hardy," said little Alice; and Fred and William said"Thank you" too; while, as for the Captain, he looked very wise andsolemn, like other great philosophers, appearing as if he would say,"Don't be surprised, for that's nothing to what I could do if I had amind," every word of which the children would have believed, you maywell be sure. However, the Captain hastened on with the story (which ismore to our present purpose) without giving any further proof of hislearning.
"When the winter had fairly set in," said he, "our field of operationswas much enlarged; and, although the birds had all flown away, we werehardly worse off than before, as you shall see; for all through thesummer we had been kept close prisoners on the island; but now, whenthe ice was solid all over the sea, we could walk out upon it, and thiswe did as soon as it would bear. Once the Dean broke through, being alittle careless of where he was stepping; but I got him out, with nomore harm coming to him than a cold bath and a fright.
"Soon after this we made a valuable discovery. Some of the seals have ahabit, when the sea is frozen over, of cutting holes through the icewith their sharp claws, in order that they may get their heads above thewater to breathe,--the seals not being able, as I have told you before,to breathe under water, like fish. They can keep their heads under waterabout an hour, by closing up their nostrils, so that not a drop can getin; and, during that time, they do not breathe at all; but at last theymust find the open sea, or a crack in the ice, or else dig a holethrough the ice from below, and thus get their heads to the surface insome way, or they would drown.
"As we did not then know anything about the habits of the seals in thisrespect, I was very much surprised one day, while walking over ice thatwas everywhere apparently very solid, to find one of my feet suddenlybreak through. I was carrying, at the time, our great narwhal horn,which had already been used for so many purposes; and when I had got myfoot, as quickly as possible, out of the water, I pounded with the heavyhorn all about the place, and found that there was a large round holethere that had evidently been made by some animal; and I could think ofnothing else as likely to have made it but a seal. The reason why I hadnot seen it was because the snow had drifted over it in a hard crust,and through this crust the seal kept open with his nose a small orificefor breathing, that was not larger round than a silver dollar.
"This discovery made us very glad and very curious,--for, havingconcluded what it was, we concluded also that there must be more likeit, and we went in search of them immediately. Our search was soonrewarded, for these seal-holes were very numerous.
"How to catch a seal was the question which now most occupied ourthoughts. The difficulty was very great, for we had no weapons of anysort for such a purpose. Once more, however, we fell back upon ournarwhal horn. To this horn we had already become much attached, and, asif to express our gratitude, we had bestowed upon it several names,--as,for instance, 'Life-preserver,' 'Crumply Crowbar,' 'The Castaway'sFriend,' and the like of that; but the title which finally stuck to itwas 'Old Crumply,'--not that it was exactly a crumply horn, like the onethat grew on the head of the cow that tossed the dog, that worried thecat, that killed the rat, that ate the malt, that lay in the house thatJack built,--for it was not crumply at all in that sense, but, on thecontrary, was as straight as an arrow, and was no further crumply thancrumply means wrinkled and twisted; and, indeed, the old horn looked asif it might have been once red-hot, and had been twisted several timesaround before it had cooled off.
"Besides this 'Old Crumply,' we made another weapon, in quite aningenious way, as we thought, though at a great expense of time andlabor. This was called by several names, like the other; but generally Icalled it the 'Dean's Delight,' for it was made after the Dean's idea,and he used to flourish it about at a great rate, and was very proud ofit. It was simply a kind of spear made by lashing together (aftercarefully cutting with our knife, and fitting and overlapping) a greatmany pieces of bones. The lashing was the same string or thong we hadbefore used for the duck-traps. It was very strong, though not half soheavy as 'Old Crumply.'
"But though we had 'Old Crumply,' and the 'Dean's Delight,' we wereapparently just as far off as ever from catching a seal. The 'Delight'was tipped with hard ivory (a piece of walrus tusk carved into propershape with the jack-knife), and 'Crumply' was of the very best kind ofivory throughout, yet we could not sharpen either of them so as to be ofmuch use. But, remembering the general shape of the harpoon-heads usedin whale-ships, I managed to cut one of that pattern out of walrusivory, and this I set on the end of the 'Dean's Delight,' and then,making a hole in the centre of it, I fastened it to the end of one ofour long lines. And thus I had obtained all that was needed, in name atleast, for catching a seal; but only in name, as was soon proved; forthe Dean and I set out at once to try our fortunes in this new line ofadventure, and, discovering a seal-hole, we stood near it (on theleeward side, that the seal might not scent us) until the animalappeared, which was not for a long time, and not until we had grown verycold. The seal had evidently been off breathing in another hole. When hedid come up, we knew it by a little puff he gave, which threw some sprayup through the little orifice in the snow-crust. Quick as thought Iplunged the 'Dean's Delight' down into the very centre of the hole, andstruck the animal; but the ivory harpoon-head that was on the end of itonly glanced off, without penetrating the skin; and the seal, no doubtvery much astonished, got off as quickly as he could, more frightened,probably, than hurt; at least, we heard of him no more. He never cameback to the hole, for it was all frozen over next day, and so itremained. We afterwards discovered that when a seal-hole has been oncetouched, the seal will never go back to it.
"I was now more pu
zzled than ever to know what to do; but I did not giveup trying, determined to succeed, one way or another. Presently itoccurred to me that almost anything that was hard would answer tosharpen the edge and point of the ivory harpoon-head, and, since I couldnot get any kind of metal to make a whole harpoon-head out of, I had totry some other plan. As good luck would have it, I now thought of thebrass buttons on my coat. Some of these I quickly tore off. Then Ihacked my knife with a sharp flint stone until I had made a saw of it,and with this saw I cut a little groove along the tapering point of theivory harpoon-head; and into this groove, which was about a quarter ofan inch deep, I set the buttons, which I had squared with the knife, andthen wedged them firmly. I had now only to grind all these bits of brassdown even, and to sharpen the whole with a stone, and my work was done.And a most tedious work it had been too. The next thing was to put it tothe test, which we quickly did. A seal-hole being soon found, we had notlong to wait before the seal came into it, with a little puff, asbefore; and, as soon as the noise was heard, I let fly with my harpoon,and, striking through the snow-crust, hit the seal fairly in the neck,and drove the harpoon into him.
"Down sank the seal through the hole, taking the harpoon along with him,and spinning out the line which was attached to it at a furious rate.Before the seal was struck, and while I was watching for him, the Deanhad quietly tied the end of the line that was not fast to the harpoonaround the middle of 'Old Crumply,' and when the seal descended intothe sea, 'Old Crumply' was whipped along over the snow until it lodgedright across the hole, and there the seal was,--'brought up with a roundturn,' as the sailors say.
"And now was anybody ever so rejoiced as we? The Dean fairly shoutedwith delight, and danced around the hole as if he were crazy, crying'Bravo, bravo!' and 'Hurrah for Crumply' and 'Hurrah for Old Crumply!'and hurrah for this, and hurrah for that, until he was fairly hoarse.Meanwhile the seal was trying his best to get away. He darted from sideto side, and up and down, without any other result than to tire himselfout; for the harpoon held firmly in his body, and the line held firmlyto 'Old Crumply,' and 'Old Crumply' lay squarely across the hole.
"By and by the seal was forced to come up to breathe; and, since therewas no other place for him, he had to return to the hole where he hadbeen struck. But he did not stay more than a second or so, going down asquickly as he had done before. As soon as the line was loosened,however, we drew in the slack, and wound it around 'Old Crumply,' sothat the seal did not have so much of it now to play with. Nor did heremain under so long the second time. When he came up again, we got inall the slack of the line that we could, as before.
"It was now clear enough that we should be sure of the seal, if we couldonly get something to kill him with; and so the quick-witted Dean ranoff at once to the hut, and brought a walrus tusk that we had saved.This was driven into the hard snow not far from the hole, and, while theDean held it there firmly, I got the line made fast around it. As soonas I saw that this was secure, and that the Dean was holding onbravely, I unfastened the line from 'Old Crumply,' and, when the sealcame next time, I gave him a heavy thrust with the sharp end of it. Butthis did not kill him by any means, nor did he give me another chancefor some time. Then, however, he was almost dead with bleeding, andfright, and hard struggling to get away, to say nothing of holding hisbreath so long; but I wanted him too badly to have any mercy on him, soI worked away as hard as I could to get in all the line, so that theseal could not sink down through the hole any more.
Ingenuity is rewarded, and "Old Crumply" distinguished.]
"At last I was successful, and the seal was fast in the hole, and withall his struggling he could not get away. With the aid of 'Old Crumply,'I now quickly made an end of him. As soon as he was dead, we drew himout on the ice, and rejoiced over him. Such shouting never was beforeknown, at least in that part of the world. If anybody could have heardand seen us, we should have surely been taken up for insane people,especially the Dean, whose joy knew no bounds.
"Having no sledge, we had to drag the dead seal over the ice and snow,for which purpose we made the line fast through his nose. It was no easytask to get him to the hut; and, when we did at last succeed, we foundthat the seal was partly frozen, so that we were obliged to draw itinside the hut, and then thaw it, before we could get the skin off,which made the hut very disagreeable. After the skin and blubber wereremoved, we cut off some of the flesh, and made for ourselves a good hotsupper,--first cooking a stew in our soapstone pot, and then frying somesteaks on a flat stone; and if anything was before wanting to make usperfectly happy over the capture of so great a prize, we had it now,when we discovered what excellent food it was, and what a quantity therewas of it.
"When we had finished butchering the seal, we prepared the skin formaking boots; and we put the blubber and flesh away in our storehousesfor future use,--the flesh for food, and the blubber for our fire andlamp. Then we slept, and the very next day we set out to catch moreseals, without, however, the same success, for we were unfortunate inevery attempt; and it was, indeed, almost a week, I think, before wemade a second capture. Some time afterward we caught a third, and then afourth, and by great good fortune on the very same day a fifth; and notlong after that we caught another, which made the sixth.
"But it would have been well had we been content with five, withoutcoveting a sixth, as this last had like to have been the ruin of us; foras we were going slowly back to the hut, dragging the seal after us, andall unsuspicious of harm, we were set upon by a great white beast, thelike of which we had never seen before, but which we knew must be one ofthose savage animals called polar bears. He was not coming rapidly, butwas rather crawling along cautiously, with mouth wide open, looking veryfierce. As soon as we discovered him, we dropped the line with which wewere dragging the seal, and ran as fast as our legs would carry us,never stopping until we had reached the hut and crawled into it,--notonce having had the courage to look back, for at every step we expectedthat the bear would be atop of us.
"We had left 'Old Crumply' and 'Dean's Delight' where we captured theseal, intending to go for them the next day; and, having no weapon ofany kind, we were in the greatest terror, expecting every moment to hearthe bear coming to tear the hut down, and drag us out, and eat us up.
"But, finding that we were not disturbed, we at length fell asleep. Uponawaking the next day, and finding that we had been suffered to goundisturbed thus long, we began to wonder whether we had not beenneedlessly alarmed, and finally we set to wondering whether we hadreally seen a bear after all, and at length we grew to feel quiteashamed of ourselves. So we put on a little bravado, like the boy thatwhistled in the dark to keep his courage up, and went out, cautiouslyapproaching the spot where we had left the seal. Arriving there, we hadpositive proof enough, if any were wanting, that we had certainly seen abear. The bones of the seal were all strewn about over the snow, pickedas clean as could be. Some foxes were gnawing at them, as we came up;but they all scampered off when they saw us coming.
"Hurrying on, we picked up 'Old Crumply' and 'Dean's Delight,' and thenhastened back to the hut, which we reached without any furtheradventure; but on the day following, upon going out to visit ourfox-traps, we came across the bear's tracks, from which it was evidentto us that the wild beast was prowling round the island, where he hadalready obtained one good meal, and was in hopes, no doubt, of gettinganother; and, as we did not know how soon he might feel disposed tobegin upon us, we ran back to the hut with all speed, imagining, as wewent along, that every rock and snow-drift that we passed was a bear.
"We had now even greater fears than before that we should be attackedand eaten up by the wild beast. It did not once occur to us that thebear would be much more likely to prefer the contents of our storehousesto ourselves, if he came that way, but we thought only of our ownsafety; and this was perhaps not unnatural, for boys and men alike areeverywhere liable to magnify their own importance, even in the eyes of abear.
"We had not been in the hut more than a couple of hours, I should
say,before we heard the tramp of our enemy. We knew it must be the footstepsof the bear, because it could be nothing else. Our fears were now evengreater than ever.
"The bear appeared from the sound of his footsteps, crunching in thesnow, to be making directly for us, sniffing the air as he came along,apparently enjoying in advance a supper that he felt quite sure of. Heseemed to halt at every step or so, as if greatly relishing theprospect.
"At last he came very near, and we expected at every instant to see hishead appear at the window. Resolved to sell our lives as dearly aspossible, we grasped our weapons firmly, the Dean his 'Delight' and I'Old Crumply,' to the end of which I had firmly lashed the jack-knife,after grinding it very sharp on a stone, and giving it a good point. Asthe knife-blade was quite long, I had strong hopes of giving the bearsuch a wound, when he appeared at the window, as might be the death ofhim, or, at any rate, frighten him so badly that he would be glad to runaway, and not come back any more.
"Nearer and nearer came the bear, and greater grew our alarm. Our heartsbeat violently in our breasts; our faces were pale as death; we held ourbreath, as if fearful of making the least noise to give the bearencouragement. At length our enemy gave a sudden start. It seemed to usas if he had now made a dash at the window, so we both rose to our feet,with our weapons ready to meet him; but, to our great joy and relief,the sound of his footsteps showed that the beast was retreating, ratherthan advancing, and was moving more rapidly. A moment afterward we heardthe rattle of stones, and now, from fear for ourselves, we passedinstantly to fear for our stores; for we knew that it was our stores,and not us, that he was after, and that he must be tearing down one ofour principal storehouses. And now, what if he should tear them alldown, and eat up all our food and fuel? It was a fearful thought.
"How often do we pass almost insensibly from the greatest terror to thegreatest courage! Relieved now from all immediate personalapprehension, we felt at once inspired to protect our property, on thesafety of which our lives depended. We ceased at once to feel likestanding passively on the defensive, but immediately crawled out of thehut to do something,--exactly what, we did not know. Our thoughts had,indeed, hardly time to take shape in our minds, so quickly had thechange come in the situation and in our feelings.
"The bear was plainly in sight as soon as we got outside, tearing downour storehouse; but he appeared not to be thinking of us at all. Withoutreflecting in the least what I was about, but filled only with alarm atthe prospect of losing our food and fuel, I set up a loud shout, inwhich the Dean joined; and, to our great surprise, the huge beast, thathad caused us so much terror, took fright himself, and without lookinground, or stopping a moment, he made a great bound, and tore away overthe rocks, plunging through the snowdrifts, and rolling down the hillinto the valley, where we had dug the turf, in a most ridiculous manner.
"We passed now from a state of terror to a feeling of perfect safety,and in such an unexpected manner, too, that we laughed outright, and wethought that we had been very foolish to be so frightened, and lookedupon our enemy as a great coward. So we concluded that an animal who wasso easily scared as that would never attack us, and therefore, gettingour weapons, we followed after him, hoping to drive him from the island.The jumps that he had made were quite immense, showing clearly the stateof his mind.
"Following the tracks of the bear, we came very soon in full view of thebeach where the carcass of the narwhal was lying, half buried in ice andsnow. The tracks led in that direction, and finally pointed straight tothe spot. He had in his flight evidently smelled the old narwhal, and,remembering only that he was hungry, had stopped there; for presently wecaught sight of him, tearing away at the narwhal with as much energy ashe had before wasted upon our storehouse.
"We had come quite near to the bear before we saw him; and now ourspirits underwent another sudden change, and our minds were once morefilled with such feelings of respect for the bear, that we turned aboutimmediately, and beat a hasty retreat; and, when once more under theshelter of the hut, prepared again to stand on the defensive.
"All we could now do was to watch the bear closely. So long as the oldnarwhal lasted, we felt that we were safe enough, even after he hadapparently satisfied himself with a good meal, and had gone away, asseemed likely, to sleep. He would certainly, however, come back to thenarwhal again when he got hungry; but now, worse than ever, when he didcome back, there were two other bears with him, and all three of themwere making a meal off the carcass of the dead narwhal. These last twowere quite small ones,--the smaller not being larger than a bigNewfoundland dog.
"With this discovery all our newly found courage took rapid flight, andwe were overtaken with even greater alarm than before. That the narwhalwould soon all be gone seemed plain enough, with three bears feedingupon it; and then, when this feeding was over, this first bear, knowingwhere our storehouse was, and forgetting his fright, and having twobears, and perhaps by that time even more, to help him, we were sure hewould soon come back again. It seemed as if a great crisis had now comein our fortunes, and what to do we did not know, and what was to becomeof us we could not imagine. We were in great trouble."
"I don't wonder," exclaimed William,--"the horrid brutes!"
"I should have been scared to death," cried Fred; while little Alicethought it was too dreadful to think of; but, "The poor bears, how coldand hungry they must have been!" said she.