"That sealing trip," I said, "I shall never forget. My particular
friend the Scotch doctor, myself, and Brick the dog, were nearly always
hungry; many a midnight supper we went in for, cooked and eaten under
the rose and forecastle."
Friday night was sea-pie night, by the universal custom of the service.
The memory of that delicious sea-pie makes my month water even now, when
I think of it.
The captain came down one morning from the crow's-nest--a barrel placed
up by the main truck, the highest position in the ship from which to
take observations--and entered the saloon, having apparently just taken
leave of his senses. He was "daft" with excitement; his face was
wreathed in smiles, and the tears of joy were standing in his eyes.
"On deck, my boys, on deck with you, and see the seals!"
The scene we witnessed on running aloft into the rigging was peculiarly
Greenlandish. The sun had all the bright blue sky to himself--not the
great dazzling orb that you are accustomed to in warmer countries, but a
shining disc of molten silver hue, that you can look into and count the
spots with naked eye. About a quarter of a mile to windward was the
main icepack, along the edge of which we were sailing under a gentle
topsail breeze. Between and around us lay the sea, as black as a basin
of ink. But everywhere about, as far as the eye could see from the
quarter-deck, the surface of the water was covered with large beautiful
heads, with brilliant earnest eyes, and noses all turned in one
direction--that in which our vessel was steering, about south-west and
by south. Nay, but I must not forget to mention one peculiar feature in
the scene, without which no seascape in Greenland would be complete.
Away on our lee-bow, under easy canvas, was the _Green Dutchman_. This
isn't a phantom ship, you must know, but the most successful of all
ships that ever sailed the Northern Ocean. Her captain--and owner--has
been over twenty years in the came trade, and well deserves the fortune
that he has made by his own skill and industry.
If other proof were wanting that we were among the main body of seals,
the presence of that _Green Dutchman_ afforded it; besides, yonder on
the ice were several bears strolling up and down, great yellow monsters,
with the ease and self-possession of gentlemen waiting for the sound of
the last dinner gong or bugle. Skippers of ships might err in their
judgment, the great _Green Dutchman_ himself might be at fault, but the
knowledge and the instinct of Bruin is infallible.
We were now in the latitude of Jan Mayen; the tall mountain cone of that
strange island we could distinctly see, raised like an immense shining
sugar-loaf against the sky's blue. To this lonely spot come every year,
through storm and tempest, in vessels but little bigger or better than
herring-boats, hardy Norsemen, to hunt the walrus for its skin and
ivory, but by other human feet it is seldom trodden. It is the throne
of King Winter, and the abode of desolation, save for the great bear
that finds shelter in its icy caves, or the monster seals and strange
sea-birds that rest on its snow-clad rocks. At this latitude the sealer
endeavours to fall in with the seals, coming in their thousands from the
more rigorous north, and seeking the southern ice, on which to bring
forth their young. They here find a climate which is slightly more
mild, and never fail to choose ice which is low and flat, and usually
protected from the south-east swell by a barrier of larger bergs. The
breeding takes place as soon as the seals take the ice, the males in the
meantime removing in a body to some distant spot, where they remain for
three weeks or so, looking very foolish--just, in truth, as human
gentlemen would under like circumstances--until joined by the ladies.
The seal-mothers are, I need hardly say, exceedingly fond of their
young. At all other times timid in the extreme, they will at this
season defend them with all the ferocity of bears. The food of the
seals in nursing season consists, I believe, of the small shrimps with
which the sea is sometimes stained for miles, like the muddy waters of
the Bristol Channel, and also, no doubt, of the numerous small fishes to
be found burrowing, like bees in a honeycomb, on the under surface of
the pieces of ice. The wise sealer "dodges" outside, or lies aback,
watching and wary, for a fortnight at least, until the young seals are
lumpy and fat, then the work of death begins. I fear I am digressing,
but these remarks may be new to some readers.
"The _Green Dutchman_ has filled her fore-yard, sir, and is making for
the ice;" thus said the first mate to the captain one morning.
"Let the watch make sail," was the order, "and take the ice to windward
of her."
The ship is being "rove" in through the icebergs, as far and fast as
sail will take her. Meanwhile, fore and aft, everybody is busy on
board, and the general bustle is very exciting. The steward is serving
out the rum, the cook's coppers are filled with hams, the hands not on
deck are busy cleaning their guns, sharpening their knives, getting out
their "lowrie tows" (dragging-ropes), and trying the strength of their
seal-club shafts by attempts to break them over their hardy knees. The
doctor's medical preparations are soon finished; he merely pockets a
calico bandage and dossel of lint, and straps a tourniquet around his
waist, then devotes his attention exclusively to his accoutrements.
Having thus arranged everything to his entire satisfaction, he fills a
sandwich-case, then a brandy-flask and baccy-pouch, and afterwards eats
and drinks as long as he can--to pass the time, he says--then, when he
can't eat a morsel more, he sits and waits and listens impatiently,
beating the devil's tattoo with his boot on the fender. Presently it is
"Clew up," and soon after, "All hands over the side."
The day was clear and bright and frosty, and the snow crisp and hard.
There was no sinking up to the knees in it. You might have walked on it
with wooden legs. Besides, there was but little swell on, so the
movement of the bergs was slow, and leaping easy.
Our march to the sealing-ground was enlivened by a little logomachy, or
wordy war, between the first mate and the doctor. The latter began it:
"Harpooneers and clubmen," he cried, "close up behind me, here; I'm gaun
to mak' a speech; but keep movin' a' the time--that's richt. Well,
first and foremost, I tell ye, I'm captain and commander on the ice;
d'ye hear?"
"_You_ commander!" exclaimed the mate; "I'll let ye ken, my lad, that
I'm first officer o' the ship."
"Look here, mate," said the doctor, "I'll no lose my temper wi' ye, but
if ye interrupt me again, by ma sang, ye'll ha' to fecht me, and ye ken
ye havena the biceps o' a daddy-lang-legs, nor the courage o' a cockney
weaver, so keep a calm sough.--Now, men," he continued, "I, your
lawfully constituted commander, tell ye this: there is to be nae
cruelty, this day, to the innocent lambs we're here to kill. Mind ye,
God made and cares for a' His creatures. But I'm neither going to
preach or pray, but I'll put it to ye in this fashion. If I see one man
Jack of ye put a knife in a seal that he hasna previously clubbed and
killed, I'll simply ca' that man's harns oot [dash his brains out] to
begin wi', and if he does it again, I'll stop his 'bacca for the entire
voyage, and his grog besides."
Probably the last threat was more awful to a sailor than actual
braining. At all events, it had the desired effect, for during the
whole of that day I saw nothing among our men but slaughter as humane as
slaughter could be made. Even then, however, there was much to harrow
the feelings of any one at all sensitive. For the young Greenland seal
is such an innocent little thing, so beautiful, so tender-eyed, and so
altogether like a baby in a blanket, that killing it is revolting to
human nature. Besides, they are so extremely confiding. Raise one in
your arms--it will give a little petted grumble, like a Newfoundland
puppy, and suck your fingers; not finding its natural sustenance in that
performance, it will open its mouth, and give vent to a plaintive scream
for its ma, which will never fail in bringing that lady from the depths
beneath, eager-eyed and thirsting for your life.
Towards the middle of the day I strolled among the crew of the _P--e_.
The men were wildly excited, half-drunk with rum, and wholly with
spilling blood, singing and shouting and blaspheming, striking home each
blow with a terrible oath, flinching before the blood had ceased to
flow, and sometimes, horrible to say, flinching the unhappy innocents
alive. All sorts of shocking cruelties were perpetrated, in order to
make puppies scream, and thus entice the mother to the surface to be
shot or clubbed. I saw one fellow--Pah! I can't go on.
Blood shows to advantage on ice. Here there were oceans of it. The
snow was pure and white and dazzling in the morning--I leave it to the
imagination of the sentimental to guess its appearance at eventide. The
stout Shetlandmen, with their lowrie tows, dragged the skins to the
ship. There were no regular meals any day during sealing. The crew fed
and drank alike, _when_ they could and _what_ they could. There was but
little sport in all this--a certain wild excitement, to be sure, quite
natural under the circumstances, for were we not engaged in one of the
lawful pursuits of commerce and making money? The bears were having
fine times of it, for there was but little inclination on our part to
pursue them, while there were seals to slay; and Bruin seemed to know
this, and was correspondingly bold and impertinent, although never
decidedly aggressive; for compared to seals men are merely skin and
bone, and Bruin has a _penchant_ for adiposity.
In ten days there was not a seal left, for ships had collected from all
quarters--like war-horses scenting the battle from afar, or like
sea-gulls on "making-off" days--to assist in the slaughter. By-the-by,
what peculiar instinct or what sense is it that enables those sea-gulls
to determine the presence of carrion in the water at almost incredible
distances? On making-off days--that is, idle days at sea--when, there
being nothing else to do, the hands are employed in separating the
blubber from the skins, putting them in different tanks and casting the
offal overboard, there shall not be a single gull in sight from the
crow's-nest, even within ken of the telescope; but when, twenty minutes
afterwards, the work is well begun, the sea shall be white with those
gulls, singly or in clusters fighting for the dainty morsels of flesh
and blubber.
We got frozen in after this, and in a fortnight's time we found
ourselves forsaken by the bears, and even by the birds, both of which
always follow the seals.
What a lonely time we had of it for the next month, in the centre of
that silent, solitary icepack! But for the ships that lay here and
there, frozen in like ourselves, it might have been mistaken for some
snow-clad moorland in the dead of winter. And all the time there never
was a cloud in the blue sky, even as big as a man's hand; the sun shone
there day and night but gave no heat, and the silence was like the
silence of space--we could have heard a snow-flake fall.
Once a week, at least, a gale of wind might be blowing, hundreds of
miles away from where we were--it was always calm in the pack--then the
great waves would come rolling in beneath the ice, though of course we
could not see them, lifting up the giant bergs, packing and pitching the
light bay-ice over the heavy, and grinding one against the other or
against our seemingly doomed ship with a shrieking, deafening noise,
that is quite indescribable. We thus lived in a constant state of
suspense, with our traps always packed and ready to leave the vessel if
she were "nipped." One ship had gone down before our very eyes, and
another lay on the top of the ice on her beam ends, with the keel
exposed.
But clouds and thaw came at last, and we managed, by the aid of ice-saws
and gunpowder, to cut a canal and so get free and away into the blue
water once more.
"Were you not glad?" said Maggie May.
"Yes, glad we all were, yet I do not regret my experience, for in that
solitary ice-field we were indeed alone with Nature. And, Maggie May,
being alone with Nature is being alone with God."
"Ah! Frank," I added, "it is amid such scenes as these, and while
surrounded with danger, that one learns to pray."
"True, lad, true," said Uncle Frank solemnly, "and strange and many are
the wonders seen by those who go down to the sea in ships."