huge bull, fully eighty feet in length, and this creature he patiently
watched, hoping for an opportunity to inflict a fatal wound. It soon
came. The animal rolled lazily over on its right side, exposing the
whole of its left fin, and before it could recover itself Sir Reginald
had levelled and discharged his piece. There was a very faint puff of
thin fleecy vapour, but no report or sound of any kind save the by no
means loud click of the hammer, above which could be distinctly heard
the dull thud of the shell. The whale shuddered visibly at the blow,
and made as though about to "sound" or dive; but before it had power to
do so the shell must have exploded, for the immense creature made a
sudden violent writhing motion, half leapt out of the water, and rolled
over on its side, dead. The professor scored the next success, closely
followed by the colonel, Lieutenant Mildmay signalising his first essay
with the new arm by making a palpable miss, much to his disgust. His
failure, however, taught him a valuable lesson, and he succeeded in
killing two whales before either of the others had been able to secure
another shot. In ten minutes eight whales had been killed, and the
professor, who was very rigid in his objection to the wanton sacrifice
of life, then suggested that probably as many had been killed as the
whaler could successfully deal with at one time, especially as the boats
now had signals flying which showed that each had killed her fish. The
_Flying Fish_ was accordingly ranged up close alongside the _Walrus_,
and the baronet hailed:
"_Walrus_ ahoy! how many fish can you `cut in' at one operation?"
"I wish I had the chance of trying my hand upon half a dozen," was the
reply, given, the baronet thought, in rather a sulky tone.
"Well," returned Sir Reginald, "there are eight which we have killed and
three taken by your boats, making eleven altogether. Can you handle any
more? because, if so, we will kill them for you; but, if not, we think
it best not to disturb them further."
"Do you mean to say that you've killed those fish on my account, then?"
asked Hudson with great animation.
"To be sure we did. You surely did not suppose that we wanted them for
ourselves, did you?"
The whaling skipper muttered a few unintelligible words to himself, and
then shouted back in unmistakably hearty tones:
"Thank'ee, gentlemen, thank'ee with all my heart. That's another favour
I'm in your debt. That being the case, I think, if it's all the same to
you, I'd rather that the rest of the school be left to go their ways in
peace. I don't want them to be frightened; and eleven fish is as much
as we can well handle at one time."
"In that case, then," returned Sir Reginald, "we will wish you `Good-
bye,' and a prosperous voyage."
"Thank'ee, gentlemen; the same to you, and best thanks for all favours,"
replied Hudson.
And with mutual hand-wavings and dipping of colours the two craft
separated, the _Walrus_ bearing up to intercept her boats, and the
_Flying Fish_ heading northward at a speed of about twenty knots.
For about a couple of hours the adventurous voyagers were able to
maintain that speed; but toward noon they found themselves once more
surrounded by ice; and they had no choice but either to materially
reduce their speed and slowly thread their way through narrow and
tortuous channels, or once more take flight into the air. They chose
the latter alternative; and for the next two hours the flying ship sped
northward through Smith's Sound, for the most part over an unbroken
field of pack-ice which, to any ordinary vessel, would have opposed an
utterly impassable barrier. At two o'clock in the afternoon, however,
the Greenland shore suddenly trended to the north-eastward; and after
following it for a short time the ice once more began to be intersected
with water channels, short and narrow at first, but wider as they
proceeded, until at length they found themselves once more able to
descend in a water lane some four miles in width.
"And now," said the professor, as they were nearing a bold rocky
headland on their starboard bow, "we are about to be introduced to one
of _the_ sights _par excellence_ of the Arctic regions."
"What is it?" was the question which burst simultaneously from the lips
of his three companions.
"Wait and see," answered the professor, nodding mysteriously.
Sure enough, the moment that the _Flying Fish_ rounded the point a
magnificent spectacle burst upon the travellers' enraptured gaze. It
was neither more nor less than an immense cliff of the clearest crystal
ice, towering some three hundred feet above the water's edge, and
extending so far northward along the coast that its northern extremity
lay far below the horizon. It was the magnificent Humboldt Glacier.
The afternoon sun was shining full upon its rugged face, causing the
enormous mass to flash and gleam like a gigantic diamond. As they
coasted slowly along, at a distance of about half a mile from its face,
the dazzling flashes of light were reproduced one after the other,
changing rapidly from one colour to another through every conceivable
tint of the rainbow, until the beholders' eyes fairly ached with the
contemplation of so much splendour, all of which was reflected with the
most charming variation in the mirror-like surface of the deep still
water below. The wind had died away to a dead calm, as if to give the
bold explorers an opportunity of witnessing this unrivalled sight to the
best advantage; and every now and then the still air resounded with the
sharp rifle-like _crack_ which told that, though apparently so
motionless and solid, hidden forces were at work within the heart of the
glacier, slowly but surely tending to its ultimate dismemberment.
Suddenly a crashing report, so loud that it resembled the simultaneous
discharge of a whole army of rifles, smote upon their ears; and then, as
they stood in a trance of breathless expectation, wondering what was
about to happen, an immense section of the icy cliff was seen to be in
motion. Slowly at first, but with ever-increasing rapidity, it slid
downward into the water, with a continuous roaring reverberating crash,
to which even the awful pealing of thunder was as nothing, until in a
wild turmoil of madly leaping and foaming surges it disappeared entirely
below the water. The sea rushed irresistibly after it from all sides,
pouring like a foaming cataract into the hollow watery basin it had
left, and dragging the _Flying Fish_ helplessly toward the yawning
vortex. Then the inward rush suddenly ceased; a gleaming white crest of
ice reappeared above the foam, and with a mighty upward rush and a
resounding roar the gigantic submerged mass once more upreared itself
above the again maddened waters, swaying heavily to and fro, whilst a
thousand gleaming torrents poured down its sparkling sides. And, as a
fitting _finale_ to the thrilling spectacle, a huge wall of water
suddenly heaped itself up about the rocking mass and began to rush
rapidly outward in an ever-widening circle, its towering crest
surmounted by a roaring curling fringe of snow-white foam. Increasing
in height and in speed as it advanced, it rapidly attained an altitude
of fully sixty feet, bearing down upon the _Flying Fish_ so menacingly
that, for a few seconds, the party in the pilot-house stood paralysed
with consternation, expecting nothing less than that they would be
helplessly overwhelmed. The first to recover his presence of mind was
Mildmay, who, springing to the rods which controlled the air-valves,
pressed them powerfully down, throwing them all wide open and at once
ejecting from the hull both the water and the compressed air, and
causing the ship to rise until she floated lightly as an air-bubble on
the water. He then injected a dense body of vapour into the air and
water chambers, completing the vacuum; and the ship rose into the air
just in time to avoid the gigantic surge, which went hissing and roaring
close beneath them with a power and fury which fully revealed to them
the extent of the disturbance from which they had so narrowly escaped.
Other surges followed in quick rotation; but each was less formidable
than its predecessor, and in another ten minutes the surface had once
more subsided into a state of comparative calm.
As the _Flying Fish_ once more settled down upon the water and the air-
pump was set going, the professor turned to his companions and remarked:
"We have especial reason to congratulate ourselves and each other,
gentlemen, for we have to-day not only looked upon the magnificent
Humboldt Glacier under most highly favourable conditions, but we have
been also permitted to witness that even rarer sight, _the birth of an
iceberg_!"
They had indeed witnessed the birth of an iceberg, and that too of quite
unusual size; for, as soon as they dared, they approached the newly
fallen mass of ice closely enough to make a tolerably accurate
measurement of it; and they found that it was of nearly square shape,
measuring fully three-quarters of a mile along each of its four sides,
and towering to an average height of about three hundred and fifteen
feet above the surface of the water. The visible portion of the berg
constituted, however, only a small portion of its entire bulk, since
fresh-water ice floating in salt water shows above the surface only one-
eighth of its entire depth. This enormous berg, therefore, must have
measured in its entirety about four thousand feet square by about two
thousand five hundred feet deep! And its weight must have approximated
closely upon two thousand millions of tons! Bergs of equal, or even
greater dimensions, have occasionally been encountered in the Arctic
seas; but how few of earth's inhabitants have ever been privileged to
witness the disruption of so enormous a mass from its parent glacier!
After witnessing so thrilling a spectacle as this--probably the grandest
and most impressive which the Arctic regions can exhibit--it is perhaps
not to be wondered at that even the beauties of the glacier itself
appeared somewhat tame and uninteresting to the voyagers. But their
interest was once more awakened when, having at length coasted along the
face of the glacier for a distance of not less than _sixty miles_, they
reached its northern extremity and found the succeeding Greenland coast
to be magnificently picturesque, the greenstone and sandstone cliffs in
some cases towering abruptly from the water's edge to a height of a
thousand feet or more, not in a smooth unbroken face, or even with the
usual everyday rugged aspect of a rocky precipice, but presenting to the
enraptured eye an ever-varying perspective of ruined buttresses,
pinnacles, arches, and even more fantastic architectural semblances. In
one spot which caused them to pause in sheer admiration, the crumbling
_debris_ at the foot of the cliff had shaped itself into the likeness of
a huge causeway such as might have been constructed by one of the giants
of fabulous times, leading into a deep wild rocky gorge rich in soft
purple shadows, at the further edge of which rose a gigantic rock hewn
by the storms of ten thousand winters into the exact similitude of a
castle flanked by three lofty detached towers all bathed in the dreamy
roseate haze of the evening sunshine. And, somewhat further on, they
came to a single greenstone cliff the skyline of which was boldly
chiselled into the likeness of the ruined ramparts of an extensive city,
whilst at its northern extremity, at the edge of a deep ravine, a
solitary column nearly five hundred feet high, and standing upon a base
or pedestal nearly three hundred feet high, shot straight and smooth up
into the deep blue of the northern sky.
Tearing themselves unwillingly away from this region of weird
enchantment, the voyagers pushed onward along Kennedy and Robeson
Channels, sometimes winding their way through intricate water lanes in
the ice, and sometimes skimming lightly a few yards above the surface of
the solid pack, until they reached the latitude of 82 degrees 30 minutes
North, when the land abruptly trended away to their right and left, and
they found themselves hovering over an immense field of pack-ice which
extended in an unbroken mass as far northward as the eye could reach.
Up to the present, from the time of their passing Disko Island, the
voyagers had seen plenty of seals and walruses, with an occasional white
bear, a few Arctic foxes, a herd or two of reindeer, and even a few
specimens of the elk and musk-ox, to say nothing of birds, such as snow-
geese, eider and long-tailed ducks, sea-eagles, divers, auks, and gulls.
Moreover, they had been favoured with, on the whole, exceptionally fine
weather--due as much as anything, perhaps, to the fact that they had
been fortunate enough to enter the Arctic circle during the prevalence
of a "spell" of fine weather, and that they had accomplished in a very
few days a distance which it would occupy an ordinary craft months of
weary toil to cover. But, on passing the edge of this gigantic ice
barrier, they left all life behind them; even the very gulls--which had
followed them in clouds whenever the speed of the _Flying Fish_ was low
enough to permit of such a proceeding--after wheeling agitatedly about
the ship for a few minutes with discordant screams, as of warning to the
travellers not to venture into so vast and gloomy a solitude, forsook
them and retraced their way to the southward. The weather, too,
changed, the sky becoming overcast with a pall of dull grey snow--laden
cloud accompanied by a dismal murky atmosphere and a temperature of ten
degrees below zero. The wind sighed and moaned over the icy waste; but,
excepting for this dreary and depressing sound, there was absolute
silence, the silence of a dead world.
The ice bore at first the same appearance as all the other ice which
they had hitherto encountered, but by the time that they had advanced a
distance of thirty miles into the frozen desert they became conscious of
a change. The hummocks were not so lofty as heretofore, the hollows
between them having the appearance of being to a considerable extent
filled up with hard frozen snow; the ice itself, too, instead of being a
pure white, was tinged with yellow of the hue of very old ivory; the
sharp angles, also, were all worn away as if by long-continued abrasion;
the ice, in fact, bore unmistakable evidence of extreme age.
At the professor's suggestion a pause was made and a descent effected,
in order that he might carefully investigate the nature of the ice; and,
warmly clad in furs, the entire party left the ship for this purpose.
"It is as I feared," said von Schalckenberg, after they had toiled
painfully over the surface for some time; "we have reached the region of
paleocrystic or ancient ice; and my cherished theory of an open sea
about the North Pole vanishes into thin air. Look at this ice here,
where a portion of the original hummock still remains bare--it is yellow
and rotten, not with the rottenness which precedes a thaw, but with
extreme age. See, it crumbles at a kick or a blow, but the fragments do
not melt; it is years--possibly _ages_--since this ice was water. And
look at the edges of the blocks; they are rounded and worn away by the
constant abrading action of the wind, the snow, the hail, and possibly
the rain, which has beaten upon them through unnumbered years. It is no
wonder that this is a lifeless solitude; there is nothing here capable
of sustaining the life of even the meanest insect. Let us return to the
ship, my friends, and hasten over this part of our journey; we shall
meet with nothing worthy of interest until we reach the Pole, which
itself will probably prove to be merely an undistinguishable spot in
just such a waste as this."
The professor was, however mistaken; a most interesting discovery
awaited them at no very great distance ahead. They returned to the ship
oppressed with a vague feeling of melancholy foreboding for which they
could not account, but which was doubtless attributable to the gloomy
cheerless aspect of their surroundings, and, releasing the ship from the
hold of her grip-anchors, resumed their way northward at the _Flying
Fish's_ utmost speed.
Half an hour later, however, they suddenly checked their flight and
diverged a mile to the eastward of their former course to examine an
object which Mildmay's quick eye had detected. The object--or objects
rather, for there were two of them--proved to be short poles or spars
about twenty-five feet apart, projecting about twelve feet out of the
ice, and surmounted by the skeleton framework of what seemed to have
been at one time small bulwarked platforms. Wondering what they could
possibly be, and by whom placed in so out-of-the-way a region, but
thinking they might possibly mark cairns or places of deposit inclosing
the records of some long-lost expedition, they resolved to stop and
institute a thorough examination.
They were fortunate enough to find a smooth and level spot suitable for
grounding the _Flying Fish_ upon, at a distance of barely a quarter of a
mile from the objects of their interest; and it being by that time six
o'clock in the evening, and too late to do any good before dinner, they
secured the ship there for the night--taking the precaution of fully
weighting her down with compressed air in addition to mooring her firmly
to the ice by her four grip-anchors. It was a most happy inspiration
which impelled them to take this precaution; for when they arose next
morning a terrific gale from the northward was blowing, accompanied by a
heavy ceaseless fall of snow; and, well secured as the ship was both by
her weight and by her anchors, she fairly trembled at times with the
violence of the blast. Had she been dependent only upon her anchors and
her own unassisted weight--which the reader will remember was very
trifling notwithstanding her immense dimensions--she would infallibly
have been whirled away like a bubble upon the wings of the gale. The
highly-compressed air, however, held her securely down upon her icy bed,
and, beyond imparting an occasional tremor, as already mentioned, the
tempest, fierce as it was, had no power to move her.
In such terrible weather it was of course useless to think of pursuing
their investigations; it would, indeed, have been the sheerest madness
to have attempted to face the furious gale, with its deadly cold and the
blinding whirling snow. The travellers were therefore compelled to
spend an inactive day. For this, however, they were by no means sorry;
they had been keeping rather late hours since entering the Arctic
circle, and this interval of inaction afforded them an opportunity of
securing their arrears of rest. Besides this there were sketches to
complete, and a thousand little odd matters to attend to--to such an
extent, indeed, that when they once began work they wondered at their
own thoughtlessness in not having attended to them before. Thus
employed, with occasional interludes of meditative gazing out upon the
ceaseless whirling rush of the snow, the day passed rapidly and
pleasantly away, wound up by an hour or two of vocal and instrumental
music after dinner. They retired early to their warm comfortable state-
rooms that night, and were lulled to sweet dreamless slumber by the
howling of the gale outside.
The four following days were spent in the same manner--the gale lasting
all that time with unabated fury, accompanied by an almost ceaseless
fall of snow. But on the fifth day the weather moderated; the snow
ceased, or at all events fell only intermittently; the wind backed round
and blew from the south-west; and the exterior temperature, which during
the gale had fallen to thirty-three degrees below zero, rose twenty
degrees. The sky was still overcast and lowering, it is true, and the
cold was still intense. But notwithstanding this the weather, compared
with that of the preceding five days, seemed positively fine; and,
wrapping themselves up in their warmest clothing, and arming themselves
with pick and shovel, they set out to discover if possible what lay
concealed beneath the two queer-looking poles.
CHAPTER ELEVEN.
AN INTERESTING RELIC.
They issued from the ship through the trap-door in her bottom; and no
sooner did they find themselves in the open air than an almost
uncontrollable impulse seized them to go back again. The contrast
between the warm comfortable temperature of the ship's interior and the
bitter piercing cold without was so great that at first the latter felt
quite unendurable. They, however, persevered; and, after perhaps ten
minutes of intense suffering, the severe exercise of scrambling over the
rotten slippery hummocks somewhat restored their impeded circulation,
and they began to feel that, perhaps, after all, they might be able to
do something toward the execution of their self-imposed task. The mere
act of breathing, however, continued to be exceedingly painful; and when
they at length reached the spot of which they were in search, they were
able to fully realise, for the first time in their lives, the incredible
difficulties attendant upon the exploration of the regions within the
polar circles.
On a nearer inspection of the two poles they proved to be stout spars
about the thickness of a man's leg; and, from the appearance in each of
a sort of sheave-hole, Lieutenant Mildmay declared his conviction that
they were the masts of a small ship. They were very rotten, however,
and, if Mildmay's surmise was indeed correct, the craft must have been
under the ice for a very long time. The mere suggestion was enough to
fully arouse their curiosity; and, forgetful for the moment of the
intense cold, to which they were already in a measure growing
accustomed, they set to work with a will plying pick-axe and shovel upon
the ice with such small dexterity as they possessed.
The task to which they had devoted themselves was, after all, not a very
difficult one, the ice, especially that of ancient formation, yielding
readily before the vigorous strokes of their picks; and it soon became
evident that they could work to greater advantage by dividing themselves
into two gangs of two each; one gang breaking up the ice with the pick,
and the other shovelling away the debris. The low temperature, however,
made the work very exhausting; and by lunch time they had only succeeded
in excavating a hole some twenty-five feet long--or the distance between
the two masts--by six feet wide and four feet deep. They had widened
this excavation by a couple of feet and sunk it some four feet deeper by
six o'clock that evening; and then they knocked off work for the day,
returning to the _Flying Fish_ stiff, and exhausted with their unwonted
exertions, but with more voracious appetites than they ever remembered
experiencing before.
In this way they laboured day after day for ten days; being greatly
hindered in their operations by frequent showers of snow, which filled
up their excavation almost as rapidly as they made it, until, beginning
to lose patience at their slow progress, they resolved to run a little
risk, and the professor was induced to employ a minute portion of his
explosive compound in blowing away the sides of the pit to a sufficient
extent to allow of the snow drifting out with the wind instead of
lodging in the bottom. This engineering feat was successfully
accomplished without apparent damage to the object they sought to bring
to light; and, thus encouraged, they further cautiously employed the
compound in breaking up the ice, with the triumphant result that, on the
evening of the thirteenth day before giving up work, they succeeded in
uncovering the deck of a craft measuring eighty feet long over all by
sixteen feet beam. They were now intensely excited and elated, as they
had every reason to believe that--judging from certain peculiarities of
build which had already revealed themselves--they had discovered a most
interesting relic.
The next morning was most fortunately as fine as they could reasonably
expect it to be in that stormy and desolate region; and, commencing work
at an early hour--having, moreover, by this time acquired quite a
respectable dexterity in the use of their tools--they succeeded by lunch
time in laying completely bare the entire hull of what proved most
unmistakably to be a veritable ancient Viking ship.