THE SEAL-FISHERS.
Some days after this event, we saw the dark blue of the sea flecked
at the horizon by white spots. These increased in size as we
approached, and proved to be the floes, or detached portions of a
vast field of ice, coming down from Davis' Straits, and with them
came masses of strange sea-weed, uprooted from the bottom of the
ocean, as some writers aver, by the mighty tusk of the male narwhal
when searching for food.
We were soon amid the floes, and after passing through them, Paul
Reeves from the fore-crosstrees announced that he could discern the
field of ice, extending along the whole line of the horizon; and we
soon became sensible of its vicinity by a very perceptible increase
of the cold, which ere long became almost unbearable. But our
seal-fishers prepared with alacrity for the great work of our little
expedition, by getting up their wooden clubs, their long
sealing-guns, and shot-pouches; their knives, sledges, and
rue-raddies or collar-ropes, by which to drag the loads of skins to
the brig, as they might have to pursue and slaughter the seals for
some miles from where she would anchor by the outer edge of the ice.
The inner, Hartly knew by his observations, partly rested on Wolf
Island, off the coast of Labrador.
On the detached floes, we saw a few seals like black dots; but on the
ice nearing the brig they always disappeared.
"There they go, souse into the water, tail up for old Greenland!"
said Hans Peterkin. "Now, Cuffy, get your fiddle in order."
"A fiddle!" said I; "for what?"
"That you shall soon see, Jack," said Hartly. "Paul Reeves, get
ready a gang with the ice-anchor and cable!"
As we neared the scene of our operations, we passed ten or twelve
gigantic icebergs, the bases of which were merged deep in the icy
sea. Solemnly still, and intensely cold and pure they seem, to those
who first behold these voiceless floating mountains, so terrible in
their form and whiteness, the shades of which are blue.
By a telescope, I perceived that some of them bore masses of gravel,
frozen mud, and even enormous boulder-stones, torn from the
shore--but from what shore?
From unknown and untrodden lands beyond the Arctic Circle--shores
where, perhaps, the last of Franklin's fated crew are lying unburied
save by the eternal snow; and while I gazed on these floating
islands, so awful in their aspect and solitude and so mysterious in
their formation, there came to memory the oft-quoted words of the
Psalmist, how "they who go down to the sea in ships, and occupy their
business in great waters, see the works of the Lord, and His wonders
in the deep."
No small care, skill, and seamanship were requisite to avoid those
perilous "wonders;" but erelong we were close to the mighty field of
ice which covered all the ocean to the far horizon--a white and
desolate expanse, like a snow-covered moorland--varied only by the
incessant hummocks, as those ridges of broken ice formed by the
collision of ice-fields, are named; or by the wavy outline or sharp
spiral pinnacles of bergs which were wedged in the floating mass, and
seemed to form the crags and mountains of this white and desolate
world of ice and snow.
We considered it singular, that up to this time we had not seen a
single ship bent on the same errand, either of those which sailed
with us on St. Patrick's Day through the Narrows of St. John, or any
of the steam sealers which leave the northern ports of Scotland about
the same season of the year.
Now the quarter-boat was lowered, and Paul Reeves with her crew took
off the cable and ice-anchor, which is formed like a pick-axe; the
courses were hauled up, the fore and aft mainsail brailed, the
topsails and topgallant sails handed, and we warped close to the
ice-field, fairly coming to anchor alongside its edge, just as we
might have warped close to a quay or wharf.
This was about ten in the morning of the 25th of March, and after
receiving a glass of stiff rum-grog per man, the whole of our
seal-fishers "landed," as they phrased it, on the ice, with all their
apparatus, including Cuffy with his violin; and, after, three hearty
hurrahs for Captain Hartly, proceeded in quest of their prey, scores
of which were seen dotting the white ice-scape (if I may so term it)
within the distance of a mile from the brig.
Seals of every species live or consort in droves along those desolate
shores where the bergs and ice-fields float; and they are often found
basking in the rays of the sun. Thus, when falling asleep they
easily become a prey, though, when reposing, the seal is cunning
enough to open its large black eyes from time to time, to see whether
all is quiet around it. The female produces two or three at a
litter, and feeds them for a fortnight or so on the shore where she
has brought them forth, suckling them in a position nearly upright,
till the fattened cubs depart to see the Arctic world upon the
ice-floes, and are old enough to search the waves for food.
Armed with my double-barrelled rifle and a sheathed knife that
dangled at my shot-belt, and well prepared to encounter the cold by a
suit of the warmest clothing (Flushing lined with English blanket), I
set out alone in quest of adventures, feeling a strange emotion of
mingled alarm and delight on finding myself afoot upon that frozen
sea. The intense purity and rarity of the atmosphere carried the
voices of our scattered men to a vast distance. I could hear Cuffy
vigorously scraping a hornpipe on his violin half a mile off; and
thus won by the lyre of our sable Orpheus, the seals with their hairy
paws (usually known as flippers), their round black heads, soft
gleaming eyes, and spotted skins, from which the brine was dripping,
began to appear in herds from subtle holes in the ice--holes through
which I was frequently in terror of vanishing from mortal ken; and as
these strange amphibious animals rolled upon the field, turning up
their full round bellies, which reminded me of those of gorged swine,
I could see their bodies steaming in the frosty sunshine, for being
warm-blooded they emit at times a vapour.
Seated on a sledge, under the lee of a hummock, Cuffy played
vigorously; but how his black fingers could handle his instrument in
such an atmosphere was beyond my comprehension, for though the glare
of the noonday sun, as he shone through a cloudless sky, was almost
blinding, the degree of cold was indescribable. Ere long Snowball
had a numerous auditory, for music allures and fascinates these
animals, as it does many others; we are told how
"Rude Heiskar's seal through surges dark,
Will long pursue the minstrel's bark;"
but the moment our treacherous musician replaced his violin in its
canvas bag, an appalling scene of butchery began.
The batmen rushed about as if a frenzy had seized them, striking the
seals on their round bullet-like heads, knocking them over, stunned
and motionless. Others followed, with long sharp knives, by _five_
slashes of which the expert hunter will denude the largest cub of his
smooth glossy skin, to which the thick white fat adheres, and after
being thus denuded, on more than one occasion I have seen the
miserable animal, bared to its slender ribs, when stung, as it were,
by the intense frost reaching its vitals, revive for a minute, and
make efforts to crawl along the ice, or drop into the sea!
The whole ice-field, which a moment before had been so white in its
spotless and untrodden purity, now, within the radius of a mile,
presented the aspect of a battle-field, strewn with gashed carcases
and heaps of bloody skins that were steaming in the sunshine. Cuffy
seemed in his element--in his glory! Flourishing his long knife, he
uttered yells as if every seal he stripped had been the Chenoo wife
who sold him into slavery, or the Yankee taskmaster whose whip had
skinned _him_ more than once.
This wholesale butchery sickened me.
The attachment of the mother-seal to her offspring is very great; and
here I saw a great hooded one carrying off a little wounded cub in
her mouth toward the edge of the ice-field, where they dropped into
the sea, escaping Cuffy, who pursued them. There are times when the
mother turns fiercely with tusks and claws upon the destroyers of her
young, and then the long gun with its charge of slugs is brought into
action; for on the _old_ seals (Buffon avers that some of them live
for more than a hundred years) the sturdiest batman's arm would swing
the knotted club in vain. The membrane of the hooded seal can be
drawn over the nose, and inflated, so as to protect the head like a
helmet of gutta-percha.
Leaving our people engaged in the work of slaughter, halloing,
shouting, and encouraging each other, as they threw their bloody and
greasy spoil upon little sledges, to be dragged by ropes alongside
the brig, I proceeded over the hummocks in search of--I scarcely knew
what.
Our men seldom fired their guns, as shot destroys the skin, which,
after the cargo is brought into port, has the fat or blubber
carefully removed and placed in the great wooden tanks or vats of the
oil-merchant; while the pelts are cleaned, spread, and, after having
layers of coarse salt placed between them, are packed in bales for
transport to other countries.