CHAPTER XV.
Shows, Among Other Curious Matters, That Two Boys AreBetter Than One, and That Pluck Is a Good Thing,Especially When Polar Bears Are Around.
The next record we have of the doings of the ancient mariner and hislittle friends reads thus:--
"You will tell us to-day what you did with the bears,--won't you,Captain Hardy?" inquired William.
"Well," replied the Captain, laughing in his free-and-easy way, like ajolly old sailor as he was, taking his long pipe out of his mouth thathe might do it all the better, "I think it was pretty near being whatthe bears did with us, my hearties! yes, that would be quite as near themark, I'm thinking."
"No matter, then," said William,--"no matter, Captain Hardy; we ain'tparticular,--any way you like. I'll put the question t' other way,then,--what did the bears do with you?"
The Captain was in great good-humor to-day, and he kept on laughing tillhis pipe went out; and, while he laughed, he said, "Why, to be sure,they frightened us!"
"Tit for tat," exclaimed William; "you frightened them,--that's fair."
"That's so," replied the Captain,--"that's so, sure enough; only theywouldn't stay frightened, while we did, you see."
"What! did they find you out?"
"That they did, my lad, just as soon as they had finished the oldnarwhal. We were sound asleep when they came; and they soon woke us upwith the great noise they made close to the hut.
"But stop a bit!" exclaimed the Captain, reflectively; "my story's gotahead of me, or I've got ahead of the story,--one or the other; so Imust go back a little,"--and he paused, not with his finger to his nosethis time, as usual, but to his forehead, as if feeling in his brain forthe end of the "yarn," as he always called the story.
In a moment the old man appeared to have quite satisfied himself aboutthe matter, for he started off as fast as he could go:--
"I didn't tell you anything about the fort we built, nor the time we hadprovisioning it,--did I?" said he.
"No," answered William, "nothing about a fort."
"Then there's the broken end of the yarn at last," and the old man tookhis finger from his forehead and stopped feeling for it.
* * * * *
"Well, it was a good long time," continued the Captain, "before thebears finished the old narwhal; but, finding how much they were occupiedin that quarter, we went to our storehouses, and brought all our storesaway, and stowed them close to the mouth of the hut, thinking that, ifthey were discovered, we should there be better able to protect them.
"First of all, however, we built up two solid snow-walls, about threefeet apart, and as high as our heads, directly on a line with theentrance to our hut, so that when we went outside we walked rightbetween them. Then, behind these walls, we piled all the birds,seal-flesh and eggs that we had for food, and all the blubber (nowfrozen quite hard) that we had for fuel,--the former on the right-handside (going out), and the latter on the left. Having done this, wecovered the whole over with snow several feet deep; and, as a stillfurther protection against our enemies the bears, we built up a greatwall all around in front of the hut where there were no high rocks.Through this wall we left only one small hole to crawl through when wewent out; and, when we came inside, we carefully closed it up with somelarge blocks of snow. But we did not go outside much, being afraid; andat length, when one of the bears was discovered prowling about very nearthe hut, we drew within our fortification, closed the opening in thewall as tightly as possible, and were prepared for a siege.
"At first we did not sleep much, being all the time fearful of attack;but gaining courage as we found, day after day, that the bears did notcome to molest us, we at length fell asleep both together; and it waswhile we were thus asleep that the bears discovered us. Before either ofus awoke, they had actually scaled the wall of our snow-fort, andadvanced to where our food and fuel were stowed, close to the mouth ofthe hut, and were tearing through the snow to get at it.
"We were, naturally enough, much alarmed, not so much on our ownimmediate account, as on account of our stores, for the bears would, weknew very well, not be likely to trouble us so long as there wasanything else to eat; but then they might just as well eat us first, andthe stores afterward, as to eat the stores first; for then we mustsurely starve and freeze, which would be quite as bad.
"Fully sensible of our unhappy condition, and the first feeling of alarmhaving passed over, we began seriously to speculate upon what we shoulddo; for something had to be done, and that very quickly.
"I looked out through the window, and there were the bears all crowdedtogether in the narrow passage; and one of them had already got amongthe frozen ducks, which were tumbling in the snow about his feet, and hehad one in his mouth, crunching away at it in such a manner as to leaveno doubt that he was either very hungry or was in a violent hurry;growling all the while,--'Ung, ung, ung,'--with each crunch he gave, tokeep away the other two bears. This bear was much the largest of thethree; the smallest one was not, as I said before, larger than aNewfoundland dog,--not larger than Port or Starboard. Thus you see notonly what a destructive, but what a selfish, beast he was.
"From alarm we now got to be angry, as we observed the liberties thesebears were taking with our food, and the little ceremony they made ofeating up, in this wholesale manner, what had cost us so much hard laborto get, and upon which our very lives now depended.
"I seized 'Old Crumply' in very desperation, and asked the Dean if hewould follow me. 'What!' exclaimed he, 'you don't mean to attack them?''That's just what I am going to do,' said I; 'and, if you can doanything with "The Delight," now's your chance.' 'I'll stand by you,'said the Dean, grasping his weapon; 'better to be killed outright by thebears than to let them starve us to death, and then very likely kill usafterwards.'
"Desperate as was our condition, I could not help being amused by theDean's way of putting the matter,--'first starved to death, and thenkilled'; and I think this little speech, turned in that happy way, did agreat deal to stiffen up my courage.
"I crawled out through the doorway of the hut (which I have told youwas not high enough for us to stand upright in), and, upon coming nearthe end of it, there was the bear within three feet of me. His head wasturned away, and his nose was all buried up in the snow; for he had justswallowed a duck, and was getting a fresh one, so that he did not seeme. My heart seemed to be in my mouth,--so close to the dreadfulmonster,--so ferocious and fearful did he appear as I looked up at him.Had I been alone, I think I should have retreated; but here was the Deanbehind me, and I was ashamed to back out, having gone thus far.Summoning all my courage, therefore, I brought forward my spear, graspedit with both hands, and plunged it with all my force into the animal'sneck, just behind the lower jaw and below the ear.
"It was a fortunate stroke. I had evidently, by chance, cut some greatblood-vessel, for the blood spouted from the wound in a regular stream.The bear dropped his duck very quickly, I can tell you. He was probablynever so much astonished in all his life before. I had come upon him sostealthily, and he was so absorbed in what he was about, that he hadnever once suspected the presence of an enemy, but thought himself, nodoubt, a very lucky bear to find such a dinner ready caught for him, andwas quite as little concerned about who the owner might be as mostpeople would be if they found a bag of gold.
"But I caused him to sing another tune than to be constantly going 'Ung,ung, ung,' to frighten off the little bears, for he roared with terror,so that you might have heard him half a mile; and, finding that he couldnot wheel around as quickly as he wanted to, he roared again, louderthan before, which sounded so dreadful that I drew back into the hutquite instinctively, and thus lost the opportunity to give him anotherthrust, which I might very well have done, in the side. When he had gotwheeled round, he rolled over the other two bears, and the threetogether, all roaring in a dreadful way, rolled against the snow-wall ofour fort, and broke it down; and now, as soon as they could scramble totheir legs again, they hurried a
way through the snow down into thevalley,--the smallest one trying hard to keep up, and whining piteouslyall the while, as if he were afraid something terrible was coming tocatch him; and now, just as we had done before, when we had, with ourshouts, frightened the bears away when they had first come to disturbus, we ran after them, little thinking of danger, in the excitement ofthe moment.
"We found that the bear I had wounded held straight down the valley, aswas easily told by the red streak he left behind him on the snow. Theother two turned to the right, and ran over in the direction of the oldnarwhal.
"Following the red streak, we came soon down to the beach; and thenclimbing over the rough ice which the tide had piled up, we were quicklyupon the frozen sea, hurrying on as fast as we could go. Indeed, nofeeling of fear ever crossed our minds; for the great quantity of bloodthat the bear left behind him somehow or other went to convince us,without much reflection, that the bear must be dead, and that we shouldpresently come upon him.
"While hurrying on at this rate, our spirits received as sudden a checkas they had on a previous occasion; for we did at length come upon thebear, sure enough, and, forgetting all our courage immediately, wewheeled about in great alarm, and ran back towards the hut as fast as wecould go.
"Finding, however, that we were not pursued, we turned about again; and,proceeding more cautiously this time, we came, in a little while, insight of the bear again, very near where he was before; but now he wasclearly by no means a formidable enemy; for he was going along veryslowly, and making a crooked track, as if he was drunk. Directly he fellover; and, in a little while afterwards, we went up to him, and foundhim dead,--having bled to death from the wound I had given him.
"You may easily imagine how rejoiced we were; for now we had an enormoussupply of food, and a fine bear-skin besides; so I lost no time inunlashing the knife-blade from the end of 'Old Crumply,' and with thiswe began to butcher him. It was a very cold and tedious operation; butwe got through with it at last, and then, burying all of the flesh inthe snow except a small piece that we wanted for supper, we returned tothe hut, dragging the skin after us, the Dean whistling, all the way,'Bonaparte crossing the Alps,' which he had picked up, as he told me,from a Frenchman in Havana.
"While we were coming up the valley towards the hut, in this livelystate of mind, the Dean stopped suddenly, and said: 'Suppose, Hardy, theother two bears have taken a notion to come back'; and he was right; forwe came presently in sight of one of them, very near the hut, and makingdirectly for it. As soon as he saw us, however, he ran away. So we tooka good laugh at his expense, and, thinking the other one must be nearhim, though not in sight, we proceeded on our way. Fortunately, however,before seeing the bear, we halted long enough to secure the knife-bladeagain on the end of 'Old Crumply'; and it was well that we did this,for, when we arrived at the broken wall where the bears had made theirway out, much to our surprise, we came right upon the other bear, closeup to the mouth of the hut, busy swallowing a duck. This was thesmallest of the three bears, and he could not have been more than ayear or so old. No sooner did he hear us than he, like the other one,became alarmed; but, seeing us in the road by which he had entered, hedid not try to escape in that way, nor did he appear to have the leastidea that he had only to charge upon us to see how quickly he wouldclear the passage; for, instead of doing this, he instantly rushedforward, and plunged into our hut, no doubt thinking that would lead toa place of safety.
"I do not exactly know by what motive I was impelled, but I suppose thesame that governed me on several other occasions; that is, a general onebelonging to almost all human beings, and, indeed, to most animals, thatis, to chase whatever runs away, and to run away from whatever chases.
"At any rate, I rushed up to the doorway of the hut, I believe withoutany idea at all in my head, and without giving much thought about it,and had like to have got into a great scrape; for the bear, having foundthat the hut gave him no chance of escape, had turned about, and wascoming out again. I was wholly unprepared for him, so hasty had I been.I could not run, and therefore, quite mechanically, I hit him in theface with the sharp point of 'Old Crumply,' which sent him back into thehut again, and made him roar in an awful manner, as if he were halfkilled. I knew I must have hit him on some tender spot,--the eye, itproved to be afterwards, so he was half blind as well as half dead.
"It was very unfortunate that I had not let him go, or killed himoutright; for we could now hear him tearing everything to pieces in ourhut, trying to find a place of escape. The wall between oursleeping-place and our closet was first knocked over, as he scrambledabout; and there was no doubt that our pots and lamps were all broken topieces. It was like a great roaring bull in a china shop, and we wishedmany times that he was only out and off; and, if he had only known, ourminds upon the subject, a compromise would have been speedily made, andthe beast might have gone scot-free on condition of his doing no furthermischief.
"The bear was not long in discovering the window. Now, the window beingvery small, it was evident that, if he attempted it, he would do us agreat damage, for he could only pass through by knocking down some partof the wall. No sooner, therefore, had his head appeared in thatquarter, than the Dean charged him most gallantly with the 'Delight,'and gave him such a tremendous blow on the nose that he was glad enoughto draw his head in again, which he did with a great cry. Then he becamequiet for a while, as if meditating what course it was best for him nowto pursue.
"Availing myself of this little pause, I exchanged weapons with theDean, and, fixing the harpoon-head on the end of the 'Delight,' I tiedthe other end of the line which was fast to it around a large stone thatlay across the doorway of the hut. This I did because I thought theremight be a possible chance of catching the bear; and that, if we couldonly get him to run out, I might harpoon him as he passed, and the stonewould hold him until we could find some way of despatching him.
"No sooner had these preparations been made than the bear was again inmotion; and now he gave a roar that seemed loud enough to have rattledthe whole hut down about his ears. This time he had clearly tried thechimney, and had not only scattered the burning moss and fat all aboutthe hut, but had set himself on fire into the bargain; for a greatvolume of smoke came out through the window, which smelled of burninghair.
"The screams of the bear were now pitiful to hear, and in verydesperation he once more tried the window, when the Dean quickly gavehim a crack with 'Old Crumply,' which sent him back again.
"Grown now utterly reckless, he bolted right through the door. I wasready for him, standing on the top of the passageway and on the stone towhich the harpoon line was made fast. As the bear came under me, I letdrive with the harpoon, and stuck him in the back. And then away hedashed like a fiery demon, plunging through the snow, smoking andblazing all over. He had evidently rolled all about in our burning fatand moss, as bits of burning moss were sticking to him, setting his hairall on fire, and no doubt scorching his skin to a degree that must havemade a dive into the snow very comfortable indeed.
"As soon as he had run out all the line, the stone under my feet,instead of holding fast, gave way, pitching me after the bear, andturning me quite upside down. I landed head-foremost in a snow-bank. Theburning bear went rushing and roaring away, dragging the big stone afterhim; but not far, however, for he fell over and died directly,--no doubtpartly from fright, but chiefly, perhaps, from his wounds and his severeburns.
"Having got rid of the bear, we gave him no further thought for thepresent, but rushed into the hut to see what mischief he had done there.The smoke was at first so thick that we were almost smothered by it. Ourcloth coats and part of our fur bedding were all mixed up with theburning moss upon the floor, and were being rapidly destroyed. As we hadfeared, the pots and lamps were all broken; and, in short, the inside ofthe hut was in a most sorry state.
"It was a long time before we fully repaired all the damage the bear haddone, and we suffered much inconvenience and discomfort before wereplaced our pots, cups, and lamp
s. When we had, however, at last doneall this, we were not sorry that the bears had come to disturb us, buton the other hand were rather rejoiced; for we were now in all respectsjust as comfortable as ever, and had besides a great warm bear-skin tosleep on, and one more variety of food added to our list, and that, too,in such large quantity that there was no fear of our coming to want verysoon."
* * * * *
Seeing that the ancient mariner showed signs of breaking off at thisstage of the story, Fred spoke up, and wanted to know more about thebear that had set fire to himself.
"O, it don't much matter about him," replied the Captain. "When we hadlooked after the hut, and had got the fire put out, and found leisurethen to go after the bear, he was dead enough, as I said before; butmuch of the hair was singed off him as nicely almost, in some places, asif he had been shaved, so that the skin was of little use to us, and weonly used the flesh, which we soon grew very fond of; for this bear, asI have said before, was a young one, and his flesh was tender."
"What became of the other bear?" asked William, curious to reach the endof the bear story.
"We never saw anything more of him, nor heard anything more of himeither," answered the Captain; "and indeed we were never troubled anymore with bears at all in that way, but thereafter lived in peace.
"That is to say, we lived in peace so far as the bears were concerned;but the cold and the darkness were now at their greatest, and the windsblew sometimes with such violence that we were often greatly terrified.Indeed, the storms at one time were so constant and so fearful that wecould scarcely stir out of doors. Up to this period the weather had beenmostly calm and very favorable to our course of life; but, as the winterbegan to turn towards the spring, all this was changed.
"Yet we could not but feel thankful for the great privilege of goodweather with which Providence had so far blessed us. Had the stormsraged in the autumn and early winter as they did now, we should havebeen quite unable to provide for our wants, and we must have starved.But now our needs were abundantly supplied, and we had little occasionfor going abroad unless we wanted to and the weather was favorable. Onceonly did we experience any serious danger from the weather; and this,like most evils that befall all human beings, was due to our ownimprudence.
"There being a bright moon, and the air being nearly calm and notunusually cold, we were tempted to take a long walk; and, attracted byone object after another that was upon the frozen sea over which we werewalking,--here an iceberg of peculiar formation or remarkable size,there a snow-drift of singular form,--we found ourselves at last severalmiles away from our hut.
"When we turned about at length to retrace our steps, we discovered thatthe northern sky, which we now faced (for we had walked out in asoutherly direction), showed stormy symptoms, and very quickly afterwarda severe gale of wind broke over the island and the desolate sea, and wefound ourselves overwhelmed with drifting snow.
"The sky was for the most part cloudless, and no snow fell from theheavens, but the light snow that lay upon the ice was picked up, as itwere, by the wind, and whirled through the air in a manner as beautifulas it was terrible; for the drift coming in streams, with the rushingwind, lashed our faces, torturing us in a terrible manner, chilling usthrough and through, and almost overpowering us. Then an aurora borealisburst out before us, as if the heavens were on fire,--and from the topof our little island the snow came whirling above our heads in constantstreams, that went circling about in a most fantastic way.
"You cannot imagine how grand this storm scene was,--the wind howlingaround us, the snowdrifts whirling about and spinning over the icyplain, the moon gleaming brightly upon the snow and the icebergs and theisland, and every now and then a great blaze of many colors that werereflected on everything about us, would start up from the auroral arch,until the light became almost as great for a few moments as if it werebroad day. It was very fearful, and you may be sure that we hastened onto the hut as fast as we could, though we were not in such a great hurryas to be wholly insensible to the magnificence of the scene.
"After we had reached the hut, the Dean repeated some verses which hehad picked up somewhere; and when I recite them for you, you will seehow appropriate they were to what I have been describing, and howstrange seemed to us our situation when we found ourselves in the veryplace where the poet had imagined the Northwest wind to have abeginning.
"The Nor'west wind is a spirit brave, And he cometh from afar; He is cradled far down in the depths that yawn Beneath the polar star.
"Where no mortal foot hath been, he maketh His track o'er the snowy plain; And listens the tread of phantoms dread, With banner and spear and flame.
"Where the billows are booming on frozen shore, O there right kingly is he! His pinnacled throne the iceberg lone, His empire the boundless sea.
"He rideth aloft on the mountain-tops,-- Rare sport doth he meet with there; He spinneth the snow in lightning flow, Till it gleams like a witch's hair."
"O the Nor'west wind is a spirit brave, A conquering hero is he; And his fierce battle song, as he marcheth along, Is the shout of victory."
"O, how beautiful and appropriate!" exclaimed the children.
"But," said William, "how did you get to the island?"
"Without any other accident," replied the Captain, "than with two frozennoses, which were sore for a long time afterwards. But, after it was allover, we would not have missed the sight for anything, it was so grand;yet, had we been caught out on the sea a little farther from the hut, weshould never have got back, but both of us must have perished.
"Thus you see how Providence continued to watch over the two poorcastaways."