COMBAT WITH A SEA-HORSE.
We continued to fish, or rather to hunt, the seals here with
considerable success, warping the brig from day to day along the
outer edge of the ice, between which and her side we placed strong
and soft fenders; and the satisfaction of Hartly and his crew
increased in proportion as the piles of pelt and blubber replaced in
the hold the stone ballast which we had brought from the island of
Newfoundland.
I had shot a few refractory seals, but one evening, when the
atmosphere was singularly clear, I rambled far along the ice-field,
floundering and scrambling among the hummocks, in the hope of finding
worthier game. I was accompanied by one of the crew, a smart and
intelligent lad from North Shields, named Ridly, who was armed only
with an ice-gaff.
One who has been among the countless waves and ridges of a frozen sea
can alone have an idea of the toil of travelling, even for a mile, on
an ice-field.
But on this vast floating waste we failed to discern anything worth
powder and shot, and so, worn with our fruitless and desultory hunt,
after wandering about for an hour or two, we turned our steps towards
the brig, which still lay at anchor by the edge of the field, about
three miles off, and the masts and yards of which formed the chief
and sole feature in the flat and dreary prospect.
The sun had set, but there was a dusky red flush in the sky which
marked the place of his declension; and now the ice began to assume
the cold green tints of salt water when frozen, as the shadows of
night stole over the sky from the eastward like a crape mantle, and
one by one the stars came out in the deep blue dome above us.
Sliding, toiling, and scrambling on, we were endeavouring to reach
the brig, when suddenly Ridly and I uttered a mutual exclamation of
alarm, paused, and shrunk back.
In our front we heard an astounding roar, as of an earthquake, and
lo! between us and the brig--between us and our friends, our home
upon the waters--there yawned a mighty fissure of zigzag form, that
ran east and west, and was about fifteen or twenty feet wide, as the
ice-field split under the influence of some atmospheric change!
We stood and gazed blankly into each other's faces on beholding this
terrible barrier to our progression, and fearing that the ice might
yawn as suddenly under our feet.
"Separated from all succour from the ship--alone upon the ice, and
with night coming on, what will become of us?" said I, thinking aloud.
"God only knows, sir," responded my companion; "but we must endeavour
to reach the brig somehow."
"There goes a lantern up to her mainmast-head," said I, as a light
was hoisted swiftly by the ensign halliards.
"The captain is showing a signal to indicate her whereabouts. He has
heard the noise of the splitting ice."
"If a fog should come on!" said I.
"Don't think of it, sir," said my companion, hastily; "the night is
as clear as if day were overhead. So let us find the end of this
crack; it cannot be very far off."
We proceeded westward for more than a mile, being compelled to make
many detours to avoid falling into the water among the ragged floes
or pieces of ice that lay along the margin of this zigzag fissure;
but, as it extended far away beyond the range of our vision, and
seemed to widen, we were compelled after long consideration, and
suffering great anxiety, to retrace our steps and proceed eastward,
in the hope of gaining the _east end_ of it, or at least of
discovering a place so narrow that we might leap across without the
danger of immersion, which, in such a season and at such an hour,
would have been fatal, as our entire clothing would in an instant
have become a casing of ice.
To favour our efforts the moon now rose, ascending slowly from the
edge of the vast plain of ice, and notwithstanding the peril of our
situation, her beauty filled me with a glow of pleasure and hope.
Far over that waste--so wide, so desolate, and mysterious--fell her
flood of silver light, so bright in its intensity, and redoubled by
reflection from the snow. It glittered on every rounded hummock and
splintered berg, and formed strange fantastic figures in their cold
green shadows, elsewhere making prisms that seemed like fairy
crystals, or gemwork of rubies, emeralds, and silver. Clouds of
fleecy whiteness came up with her from the sea, and as she _waded_
among them, I recalled the words of Sir Walter Scott:--
"There is something peculiarly pleasing to the imagination in
contemplating the Queen of Night when she is wading, as the
expression is, among the vapours which she has not the power to
dispel, and which on their side are unable entirely to quench her
lustre. It is the striking image of patient virtue calmly pursuing
her path through good report and bad report, having that excellence
in herself which ought to command all admiration; but bedimmed in the
eyes of the world by suffering, by misfortune, and by calumny."
While I felt something of the poetry of our situation and the beauty
of the night, my more practical and prosaic companion was sensible
only of the danger we ran, and after a minute reconnaissance, assured
me, with an exclamation of joy, that the split in the ice was
narrowing.
We were then four miles from the brig, the crew of which had sent
more lanterns aloft, and ever and anon burned a brilliant red or blue
light, for Cuffy Snowball was a great pyrotechnist.
"What is that?" said I, as a strange sound reached us.
"I cannot tell," replied my comrade, as he toiled on, supporting
himself with his ice-gaff; "I never heard it before, and don't like
it at all, sir. I wish we were on board," he added, shuddering alike
with cold and superstitious fear, as the sound came again and again
from among the hummocks, and it was as weird and mournful to the ear
as their aspect was to the eye.
It was a strange _mooing_, and gradually swelled into a bellowing as
we proceeded; thus it evidently came from the throat of a large
animal--but what species of animal could it be in such a place?
We were not left long in doubt, for on the centre of a narrow isthmus
of ice, _over which lay our way to the ship_, as the fissure beyond
it opened wider than elsewhere, sat a huge, dark monster of the deep,
in which, on approaching it, I recognised (from pictures I had seen)
a sea-horse, or walrus, which the reader must remember is _not_ a
seal, but a ferocious animal that can defend itself and frequently
destroys its assailants, and this one manifested not the slightest
intention of making way for us.
He was fearfully pre-Adamite, or antediluvian, in his proportions,
being fully twenty feet in length, and having a pair of tusks thirty
inches long protruding from the mass of quill-like bristles which
covered (like a thick moustache and whiskers) his upper lips and
cheeks. Grimly and ferociously he regarded us with his deep-set
eyes, which glittered in the moonlight amid the square mass of his
elephantine visage, and on beholding us, his hollow mooing turned
into a species of grunting bark.
Finding that he obstinately barred our way, and, moreover, seemed
inclined to attack us, I levelled my rifle full at his grizzly front
and fired, while Ridly rashly and fatally charged him in the smoke
with his ice-gaff, which was armed with a sharp pike.
My ball had pierced his great sloping shoulder, pricking him as a pin
might have done, and serving only to incense him, for his bark
changed to a mighty roar, and when the smoke cleared away, I saw poor
Ridly, who had fallen, lying under one of his gigantic fore-flippers.
The foam of rage was frothing on the bristles of the sea-horse, and
with his two enormous tusks, which stood upward through them like two
crooked sabre-blades, he was alternately rending the limbs and body
of his assailant and then great fragments of ice, which he dashed
into the water on each side of him.
Ridly had only power to utter a faint cry, when he expired.
Appalled by this sudden and terrible catastrophe, I reloaded my
rifle, and full of mingled rage and fear--a combination which made me
no longer feel the intensity of the cold--I fired again and again at
the horrid front of the walrus; but every shot seemed only to
redouble his wrath, and he continued to rend to pieces the clothes
and body of Ridly, till in less than five minutes the ice around him
was covered by the blood of his victim and that which gushed from his
own wounds. Ridly's left leg he wrenched completely off, and cast
into the sea.
Rolling about in his wrath, and in his lubberly efforts to reach me,
he at last fell into the water; I then rushed across the narrow
isthmus where my poor companion lay. As I did so, the walrus made
many ineffectual efforts to reach me, grasping the ice with his
forepaws, or dashing his vast shoulders madly against it, while he
plunged and bellowed and covered all the water in the chasm around
him with mingled blood and foam, and, in his impotent fury, tore
great blocks off the ice by the tusks of his lower jaw.
I fired ten shots into his body, point blank, without his strength or
wrath appearing to diminish in the least.
On perceiving this, a species of superstitious dread came over me,
and turning away, I hastened towards the brig, which, as I have
stated, lay about four miles distant, leaving my walrus to flounder,
bellow, and drown in the moonlight.
Anxiety to reach the vessel, lest I might be overcome by fatigue, or
that fatal drowsiness caused at times by intense cold, made me strain
every energy; and thus in a much shorter time than could have deemed
possible, considering the alternately rough or slippery and laborious
nature of the ice-field to be traversed, I found myself among the
carcasses of our slaughtered seals, and within hail of the _Leda_.
Furnished with ice-gaffs, a bottle of rum, a sledge, and plenty of
blankets, so as to be prepared for any emergency, Captain Hartly,
with Hans Peterkin and ten of the crew, met me, just as I was sinking
with fatigue, half sleepy and half delirious with cold. Thus a
considerable time elapsed ere I could relate the story of my
adventure and our shipmate's death.
They had heard the roar of the splitting ice, and knew why we were
wandering so long and so deviously among the hummocks, but the sound
of firing puzzled them extremely; and thus, while Paul Reeves with a
gang was hoisting out the jolly-boat upon a sledge, to have it
launched in the chasm for our conveyance across, Hartly had come on
in advance, and he met me just in time, for in ten minutes more I
must have perished of fatigue and cold!
On returning next morning to collect poor Ridly's remains and commit
them to the deep, we found his great destroyer dead, but floating by
the margin of the ice, to which he was literally anchored, or hooked,
by his two longest tusks.
By this, and the affair with the _Black Schooner_, we had lost two of
our crew.