northward should be prosecuted, as far as possible, upon the surface of
the sea; and the _Flying Fish_ was accordingly put in motion on the
required course immediately upon her descent. Their rate of progress
was particularly slow, not exceeding, on the average, a speed of six
miles per hour, as drift ice was remarkably abundant, mostly in small
detached blocks, though they occasionally encountered a floe of several
acres in extent; and, far away to the northward, quite a large
assemblage of bergs were seen. This slow rate of progress would have
been wearisome to a veteran Arctic navigator in possession of such means
for the accomplishment of a quick passage as those enjoyed by the
inmates of the _Flying Fish's_ pilot-house; but to them everything was
novel and interesting, and, almost before they knew it, they found
themselves in the immediate vicinity of the bergs. These varied greatly
in size, some of them being no larger than a dwelling-house of moderate
dimensions, whilst others fully equalled, if, indeed, they did not
exceed, the proportions of the monsters seen on the previous evening.
They were grouped so closely together that a passage between them seemed
to be not wholly unattended with danger; and the party were in the act
of discussing the question which channel it would be most prudent to
take, their eyes being meanwhile fixed on the huge towering cliffs of
ice before them, when a gigantic overhanging mass was seen to detach
itself from its parent berg and plunge, a distance of some two hundred
and fifty feet, with a terrific splash into the water and disappear.
The deep thunderous roar of its plunge smote the ears of the watchers
next moment, and they looked on with breathless interest to see what
would follow. The mass, from its enormous size, would weigh, they
considered, fully five thousand tons; and they were not surprised to see
that the loss of so much weight had seriously disturbed the balance of
the berg, which at once began to rock ponderously to and fro, creating a
terrific commotion in the water when conjoined with that caused by the
plunge into the sea and the reappearance a second or two later of the
detached mass. The sea was seen to heap itself up in a long well-
defined ridge, similar--though, of course, on a tremendously magnified
scale--to that caused by the plunge of a stone into the water. This
ridge spread out in a circular form all round the spot where the mass
had fallen, and at once began to travel outward in the form of an
immense breaker some six or seven feet in height. Onward it rolled, its
smooth glassy front capped with a foaming crest presenting a singular
and somewhat alarming spectacle. The fears of the beholders, however,
if they had any, were groundless, for, though the threatening wave swept
forward with a velocity of some twelve knots per hour, it swept
harmlessly enough over and along the cylindrical sides of the _Flying
Fish_, hissing and roaring most ominously, but failing to throw so much
as a single drop of spray on her deck. This wave was quickly followed
by several others, each of which, however, was less formidable than the
preceding one. Meanwhile, the drama, it appeared, had only begun. The
oscillation of the parent berg, though it was probably quite unaffected
by the portion of the circular wave which dashed furiously against its
sides, became momentarily more and more violent, accompanied by a
rapidly increasing agitation of the sea in its neighbourhood, an
agitation so great that the surface of the ocean soon assumed the
appearance of a boiling cauldron, the foaming surges leaping wildly
hither and thither with a continuous roar like that of the surf beating
on a rocky shore, and soon assuming such dimensions that they even broke
over the deck of the _Flying Fish_, and dashed themselves into a cloud
of spray against the strong walls of the pilot-house. Other fragments
now began to detach themselves with dull heavy roaring crashes from the
rocking berg; and, as though the action were contagious--or more
probably, in consequence of the jarring vibration of the air from such a
strong volume of sound--one after the other, the remaining bergs began
to go to pieces. Then, indeed, the sight and the accompanying sounds
became truly awe-inspiring. The air resounded with the continuous roar
of the dismembering bergs; the eye grew dizzy and bewildered as it
watched their swaying forms; and the surface of the ocean was
momentarily stirred into a wilder frenzy as the surges swept madly
hither and thither, and, meeting in mid-career, shattered each other
into a wild tempest of leaping foam, in the midst of which huge masses
of ice were seen every now and then to be tossed high into the air as
though they had been fragments of cork. So mad was the commotion, and
so furiously were even the larger masses of ice dashed to and fro, that
it was deemed prudent to remove the _Flying Fish_ out of harm's way; and
she was accordingly raised a few fathoms above the surface of the raging
commotion which leaped and roared around her. Scarcely had this been
accomplished--the whole of the drama occupying not one-tenth part of the
time which it takes to describe it--when the largest of the bergs was
seen to roll completely over, raising in the act so awful a surge that
it visibly affected even the immense masses of the other bergs, which,
in their turn, rolled slowly over one after the other, to the
accompaniment of one long loud echoing roar of rending ice as their
dismemberment thus became accelerated. The resulting ocean disturbance
was, as may easily be imagined, appallingly grand and utterly
indescribable; and it no doubt contributed in no inconsiderable degree
to the total destruction of the bergs, which, once started, continued to
roll over and over, every lurch causing a further dismemberment until
the fragments became so small as to be incapable of further division.
Then ensued comparative silence, the only sounds being those of the
hoarse roar of the angry surges and the grinding crash of ice-blocks
dashed violently together. Gradually these too subsided; and, in half
an hour from the commencement of the spectacle, the ice-strewn waters
were again rippling crisply under the influence of a moderate breeze,
and no sign remained to tell a new arrival upon the scene--had there
been one--what an awful tempest of destruction had raged there so short
a time before.
Pushing northward, the travellers sighted the coast of Greenland about
noon; the land made being a lofty snow-covered mountain, the conical
summit of which gleamed like silver in the brilliant sunshine. As they
neared the coast the water became more open; and at length they emerged
into a broad channel completely free of ice, up which the _Flying Fish_
was urged at a trifle less than half-speed, or at the rate of about
sixty miles per hour. At eight o'clock that night they crossed,
according to their "dead reckoning," the Arctic circle; and midnight
found them abreast of Disko Island, gazing with delighted eyes upon the
glorious spectacle of the midnight sun, the lower edge of his ruddy disc
just skimming the northern horizon.
At this point the channel between the Greenland coast and the pack-ice
narrowed very considerably; and their rate of progress northward next
day was reduced to a speed of between two and three miles per hour; the
engines needing to be just started, and then stopped again for a few
minutes in order to keep the speed down to this very low limit. But
they were all as yet so new to Arctic scenery--everything was so
entirely novel to them--that even this snail's pace failed to prove
wearisome, especially as the weather continued gloriously fine.
Strange to say, up to this time they had not set eyes on a single Arctic
animal; but now, as they were busily threading their way through a
narrow channel in the ice, a white bear was seen about half a mile ahead
rapidly making his way across the pack toward them, whilst, a quarter of
a mile nearer, an animal which they at once took for a seal was seen
basking in the sun on the ice close to the water. It speedily became
evident that the bear was after the seal, which, seemingly all
unconscious of the proximity of its enemy, raised its head now and then
as though in keen enjoyment of the warm glow. The colonel hurried below
for rifles, as eager as a schoolboy, to obtain a shot at one or both of
the animals; and when he returned to the pilot-house with the weapons
both the seal and the bear were within range. He raised one of the
rifles to his shoulder, and was covering the seal with it, when Sir
Reginald, who was watching the animals through a telescope, said:
"Do not fire, Lethbridge; there is something very curious about this;
_that seal is armed with a bow_."
The colonel stared incredulously at his companion, and then, dropping
the rifle, took and applied to his eye the telescope which Sir Reginald
handed to him.
"By George, you are right!" he exclaimed. "What a very extraordinary
thing. Why," he continued, "it is not a seal at all, it is a man, an
Esquimaux. Now, look out and you will see some sport; the fellow is
fitting an arrow to his string, and how cautiously he is doing it, too.
It is my belief that he has got himself up as a seal and has been
simulating the actions of the animal in order to entice that deluded
bear within range. There! he has shot his arrow and hit the mark, but
the bear does not seem to be very much the worse. Aha! now you have to
run for it, my good fellow. By Jove, the matter grows exciting!"
The Esquimaux had indeed been compelled to "run for it," the only
apparent effect of the arrow being to irritate the bear. The man ran
fairly well, although hampered with an immense amount of clothing, but
the bear proved the faster of the two. He rapidly gained upon the man,
and seemed about to spring upon him when the party in the pilot-house
poured in a general fusillade from their rifles. There was just a
perceptible click from the locks of the weapons, but neither fire nor
smoke appeared, neither was there any report. At that moment the bear
rose upon his hind-legs and, reaching forward with his fore-paws, aimed
a terrific blow at the flying hunter. The man, who had been intently
watching his enemy all the while, nimbly leaped aside, and, quick as
thought, plunged a light lance fairly under the creature's armpit and
deep into his body. The bear uttered a single roar of pain and baffled
rage, staggered a moment, and fell upon the ice, dead.
"Bravo! very cleverly done, indeed," exclaimed the colonel,
apostrophising the distant Esquimaux; "that was a lucky stroke for you,
my man. But, I say, professor, what in the world is the matter with
these wretched rifles? Every one of them missed fire, and, so far as we
are concerned, that unfortunate Esquimaux might have been killed."
"He might--yes, that is quite true," answered the professor with
provoking composure; "but if he had been it would have been our fault,
not that of the rifles; it was we who missed, not they. Every one of
them duly discharged its bullet, and we simply missed our mark. But had
we--or rather had _I_--preserved my presence of mind, I could still have
saved the man, for each of these weapons is a magazine rifle, firing
twenty shots--a fact which I had forgotten for the moment, and which it
now seems I have never yet explained to you. Fortunately, the poor man
has proved quite able to take care of himself; but the shameful way in
which we all missed the bear, and our failure to fire again, is a lesson
on the folly of using untried weapons in an emergency. We must
practise, gentlemen; we must practise."
And, without troubling themselves further as to what became of the
Esquimaux and his game, the deeply mortified party set themselves
forthwith first to listen to the professor's explanation of the
peculiarities of the weapons, and next, to practise diligently with them
for a full hour; at the expiration of which, as the rifles were really a
splendid arm and simple enough to handle when their action had been
clearly explained, the quartette had fully regained their confidence in
themselves and each other, having done some most excellent shooting.
Meanwhile the channel hourly grew more narrow and intricate; and, to add
still further to the difficulties of the passage, the wind shifted round
and began to blow freshly from the northward, bringing with it a dense
and bitterly cold fog. The travellers struggled gallantly against these
adverse circumstances as long as any progress northward was at all
possible, being desirous of realising, as fully as might be, for
themselves the difficulties experienced by explorers in these high
latitudes; but at length they found themselves so completely hemmed in
by vast floes and drifting masses of pack-ice that to prolong the
struggle would only be endangering the ship, and they were reluctantly
compelled to own themselves beaten and to rise into the air.
They rose to a height of five hundred feet above the sea-level, and, at
this elevation, found themselves entirely free of the fog. So far this
was well, but the dense masses of heavy grey snow-laden cloud which
obscured the heavens above them, and the threatening aspect of the sky
to windward, told them that their holiday weather was, at all events for
the present, gone, and that they were about to experience the terrors of
a polar gale. The temperature fell with astounding rapidity; and they
were compelled to beat a rapid retreat to their state-rooms, there to
don additional garments. This done, they sallied out on deck, to find
that during the short period of their retirement a heavy snow-storm had
set in, the air being so full of the great white blinding flakes that,
standing abreast the pilot-house, it was impossible to see either end of
the ship. Floating in the air as they were it was, of course,
impossible for them to estimate the strength of the gale, the only
apparent movement of the atmosphere being that due to their own passage
through it. Though heading to the northward, with the engines making a
sufficient number of revolutions per minute to propel them through still
air at the rate of thirty miles per hour, it was quite on the cards that
the adverse wind might be travelling at a higher speed than this, in
which event they would actually be driving more or less rapidly astern,
notwithstanding their apparent forward motion. It thus became necessary
to post a look-out at each end of the ship, in order to avoid all
possibility of collision with some towering iceberg, unless they chose
to rise high enough in the air to be clear of all danger; and this they
were reluctant to do, as they wished to experience, for at least once in
their lives, all the terrors of a polar gale. The baronet accordingly
volunteered to look out forward and the colonel to do the same aft, and
they hastened at once to their respective stations, Mildmay and the
professor superintending meanwhile the engine levers and other
appliances controlling the motion of the ship. It was well for them
that these precautions were so promptly taken, for the colonel had
scarcely reached his post when, through the thick whirling snow which
scurried past him, he descried a huge white ghostly mass looming vaguely
up in the semi-darkness directly astern, and before he well had time to
make up his mind that he actually saw something, the top of a gigantic
berg revealed itself close at hand, and his prompt warning cry was only
raised in barely sufficient time to prevent the _Flying Fish_ driving
stern foremost into it, when the loss of her propeller must inevitably
have resulted. Mildmay, however, whose quick ear first caught the
sound, promptly sent the engines at full speed ahead, and the danger was
averted.
Meanwhile, though the snow whirled so thickly around them and the fog
was so dense beneath that they were unable to see anything, they were
not allowed to remain entirely in ignorance of what was happening in
their near proximity. The howling of the bitter blast over the frozen
waste beneath resounded in their ears like the diapason of some huge
organ played by giant fingers, and mingled with these deeper tones there
rose up to them a constant grinding crunching sound with occasional
rifle-like reports, telling of the tremendous destruction going on among
the ice-floes beneath.
Suddenly the snow ceased, the fog was swept away upon the wings of the
gale, and the entire scene in all its terrific grandeur burst at once
upon their gaze. They were hovering immediately over the spot where two
immense floes had come into collision, and for miles to the right and
left of them the contiguous margins were being ground to pieces by the
enormous pressure, and the splintered fragments heaped up one above
another in the wildest confusion, to a height of from fifty to eighty
feet above the surface of the floe. The ice, which was about fifteen
feet thick, crumbled away like fragile glass, and it was only by
observing the manner in which masses weighing hundreds of tons were
wildly tossed hither and thither like corks that even an approximate
idea of the tremendous power at work could be obtained.
A mile ahead another grand sight presented itself. The northern and
larger of the two floes, acted strongly upon by the gale, and opposed by
the smaller floe, was slowly but irresistibly swinging round, and in its
sweep it had come into contact with a very large berg, which, influenced
apparently by some undercurrent, was with equally irresistible force
actually making its way to windward in the teeth of the gale. The
result was a scene of wild chaos and confusion and destruction compared
with which that upon which they had just looked was as nothing. The
berg simply tore its way through the floe as a plough does through a
furrow, splitting up the thick ice before it, and tossing the huge
fragments hither and thither until its path through the field was marked
by a black band of open water churned into fleecy froth by the breath of
the tempest, and bordered on either side by an immense wall of ice-
blocks, each of which constituted a small berg in itself.
The cold had by this time so increased in intensity that the colonel and
the baronet were only too glad to abandon their posts, now that there
was no further necessity for maintaining them, and retreat to the
friendly shelter of the pilot-house, where they lost no time in closing
themselves in.
CHAPTER NINE.
AN EXCITING ADVENTURE AND A RESCUE.
It was at this moment that Mildmay caught a momentary glimpse of an
object far away on the northern horizon, which his practised eye at once
told him was a sail of some sort. He instantly seized one of the
telescopes suspended in the pilot-house, and brought the instrument to
bear in her direction. For nearly a minute he was unsuccessful in his
endeavour to find her; but at length she reappeared from behind an
intervening berg; and it appeared to him that she was in a situation of
considerable peril. She was a barque, under close-reefed topsails,
reefed courses, fore topmast staysail, and mizzen; and she appeared to
be embayed in the bight of a huge floe, with a whole fleet of bergs in
dangerous proximity and apparently bearing down upon her. Perhaps the
strangest peculiarity about her was that, notwithstanding her perilous
position, she was dressed with flags, from her mast-heads downward, as
though it were a gala day on board.
Mildmay's anxious attitude and expression of face, together with his
earnest devotion to his telescope, soon attracted the notice of the rest
of the party; and the baronet asked him what object it was that so
riveted his attention.
He withdrew his eyes for a moment from the instrument, and, pointing out
the small and scarcely distinguishable dark spot on the horizon, said:
"Do you see that object, gentlemen? Well, that is a barque embayed in
the ice, and evidently making a supreme effort to free herself--an
effort which to me, and at this distance, appears quite hopeless. It is
my opinion that, unless the wind changes, or something equally
unforeseen occurs, she will within the next half hour be smashed into
matchwood--unless, indeed, _we_ can help her."
"Help her? Of course we can," said the professor; and without waiting
for further discussion, he laid his hand on the engine lever and sent
the machinery ahead at nearly half-speed.
The _Flying Fish_ darted forward like a swallow in full flight; and the
professor, leaving the baronet in charge of the engines and the
steering-gear, summoned Mildmay and the colonel to follow him. The trio
hastened to the after part of the deck, and, raising a trap-door which
the professor indicated, withdrew therefrom a thin pliant wire hawser--
made, like almost everything else in the ship, of aethereum--which,
having secured one end of it to a ring-bolt in the after extremity of
the deck, they coiled down in readiness for use as a tow-line.
"There!" ejaculated the professor in a gratified tone of voice, "we will
give her the end of that rope; and it shall go hard with us, but we will
tow her into some place of at least temporary safety."
"That is all right," responded Mildmay; "but how are we going to get it
on board her? Its weight is a mere nothing, it is true, but it is
rather too bulky to heave on board. Have you nothing smaller that we
can bend on to the eye of the hawser and use as a heaving-line?"
"Certainly I have," replied the professor. "I had not thought of that.
`Every man to his trade.'" And, diving down the hatchway, he rummaged
about for a few minutes and finally reappeared with a small coil of very
thin light pliant wire line, which Mildmay, pronouncing it to be exactly
the thing, proceeded at once to attach to the eye of the hawser.
Meanwhile, the baronet had been anxiously watching the barque through
the telescope, and had seen so much to increase his anxiety for her
safety that, forgetful of the exposed situation of his companions, he
had gradually increased the pace of the _Flying Fish_ until he had
brought it up to full speed. This, of course, created so tremendous a
draught that not only was it quite impossible for the party aft to make
headway against it and thus regain the pilot-house, but they actually
had to fling themselves flat on the deck to avoid being blown overboard;
and even thus it was only with the utmost difficulty that they were able
to save themselves.
And this, unfortunately, was not the worst of it. The light hawser,
acted upon by so powerful a draught, was for an instant slightly lifted
off the deck, and that slight lift did the mischief. The next moment
the coils went streaming away astern one after the other, and, almost
before those who witnessed the accident could tell what had happened,
the propeller had been fouled and the hawser snapped like a thread.
The powerful jerk thus occasioned caused the baronet to turn his head;
and he then saw in a moment what mischief he had done. He, luckily, had
presence of mind enough to stop the engines at once; the _Flying Fish's_
course was stayed, and she immediately began to drive swiftly astern in
apparently a dead calm, but actually swept along upon the wings of the
gale.
The professor at once scrambled to his feet, and, followed by his
companions, hurried to the pilot-house, where, without wasting time in
useless words, he at once set himself to look out for a suitable spot
upon which to alight, it being absolutely necessary to clear the
propeller before again moving the engines, lest in doing so a complete
break-down should result.
A favourable spot was at length found--but not until they had drifted
completely out of sight of the apparently doomed barque--and the _Flying
Fish_ was carefully lowered to the surface of a large floe, her anchor
being first let go in order to "bring her up" and prevent her being
driven along by the wind over the smooth surface. It was a task more
difficult of accomplishment than they had anticipated, the anchor for
some time refusing to bite, but it caught at last in a crevice, and
immediately on the vessel touching, the grip-anchors were extended and
the ship secured.
No sooner was the _Flying Fish_ fairly settled on the ice than Mildmay,
who knew exactly what ought to be done, descended to the lower recesses
of the ship, and, opening the trap-door in her bottom, made his way out
on the ice, dragging with him a ladder which was always kept in the
diving-room. He soon reached the stern of the vessel, and, rearing the
ladder in a suitable position against the propeller, nimbly ran aloft
and began to throw off the convolutions of the entangled hawser. Twenty
minutes sufficed, not only to complete the work, but also to assure him
that no damage had been done to the hull of the vessel; and, his three
companions having followed him and removed the hawser to the interior of
the vessel, he re-entered the hull, secured the trap-door after him, and
ascended to the deck. He here found Sir Reginald and the colonel busily
engaged in adjusting a new hawser ready for use, and, with his
assistance, this task was completed in another five minutes, and the
ship was once more ready for service.
As the _Flying Fish_ was in the act of rising from off the ice, Sir
Reginald asked:
"Should we not make better speed by taking at once to the water,
professor?"
"Undoubtedly we should," was the answer. "Such a course would also have
the additional advantage of enabling us to immerse the hull to the
proper depth as we go along, thus giving us that hold upon the water
necessary to cope successfully with the weight of a large ship like the
one of which we are going in search. We _might_, whilst floating in the
air, be able to tow her out of danger, but I am a little doubtful on the
point; and, as this is a case in which it will not do to incur any risk
by trying experiments, we will take to the water as soon as we can
discover a suitable channel. It appears to me that there is something
of the kind about six miles ahead and a little to our right."
There certainly was a channel through the ice at the point indicated by
the professor, but whether it was a true channel, or merely a _cul de
sac_, they were for the moment unable to decide. On nearing it to
within a mile, however, they found it to be the latter; but about a
couple of miles beyond it another streak of water was seen extending,
unbroken, as far as the eye could reach. For this they steered, and in
a very few minutes afterwards the _Flying Fish_ was once more afloat,
with her water-chambers full and her air-compressor working to the full
extent of its power.
The hawser being this time temporarily secured in such a manner as to
render a repetition of their late accident impossible, and the entire
party being, moreover, safely ensconced in the pilot-house, there was no
hesitation about again pressing the ship forward at full speed, the
channel, luckily, being straight enough to allow of this; and very soon
the group of icebergs in which the unfortunate barque was entangled once
more appeared in view. Mildmay was at the helm, with the professor
standing by the engines; but Sir Reginald and the colonel no sooner saw
the bergs than they seized their telescopes and began at once to look
out for the barque.
At first they could see nothing of her, but presently she glided into
view from behind an intervening berg, and a single glance was sufficient
to assure them that another five minutes would decide her fate. She had
gradually set down into the triangular extremity of the bight in which
she was embayed, so that every tack she made became shorter than the one
preceding it, and very soon the water space would become so
circumscribed as to leave no room for her to manoeuvre. But this was
not the worst feature of the case. As desperate diseases are sometimes
combated with desperate remedies, so in her desperate condition the
hazardous and almost hopeless expedient of berthing her alongside one of
the edges of the floe might have been attempted. But this last resource
was denied to the despairing seamen, from the fact that two enormous
bergs, the vanguard of the fleet, had already reached the edge of the
floe, on opposite sides of the bay, to windward of the entrapped barque,
and were rapidly rasping their way down toward the apex of the triangle
where the whaler was already shooting into stays for what must evidently
be her last tack. This would be so short that she could scarcely fail
to miss stays on her next attempt, when she would drift helplessly down
into the corner of the bight, and be ground out of existence by the berg
which first happened to reach that point.
It was at this critical moment that a cry of dismay arose simultaneously
from the lips of the party in the _Flying Fish's_ pilot-house. A slight
turn in the channel had revealed to them the appalling fact that it,
also, terminated in a _cul de sac_, a neck of solid ice, some fifty
yards in width, dividing it from the open water in which the barque was
still battling for her life.
What was to be done? There was no time to discuss the question; but a
happy inspiration flashed through the baronet's brain.
"We must _leap_ the barrier!" he exclaimed.
"Right! I understand," was the professor's brief reply; and, turning
the compressed air into the water-chambers, he forced out the water and
succeeded in raising the sharp nose of the _Flying Fish_ just above the
level of the floe a single instant before she reached it.