A CHANGE OF BASE.--BUILDING A SNOW-HUT.--THE VIEW FROM THE BERG.--A
STRANGE MEETING.
Breakfast over, all decided to remove at once to the higher ice of the
vast floe occupied by the seals. There were a number of reasons why this
place was chosen, but the principal ones were, that it would be likely
to be sought by sealers, would supply them for a long time with food and
fire, and would stand almost any pressure and a heavy sea, without
"breaking up."
The boat was accordingly loaded with the weapons, tools, and bedding,
and run over the intervening ice with very little difficulty, although
it took a good half hour to ascend the ice-slopes, which were steep and
slippery. Returning, the party took each a seal-skin, with the hair side
down, and loading them with the remaining decoys, fragments of wood, the
Esquimaux lamp and its chimney, and a part of the fir boughs, returned
again to their new location.
Some convulsion of the ice, had strewed the shores of this field with
piles of young field-ice about a foot thick, and with this material
Regnar at once commenced operations. While Peter rapidly split off cakes
about a foot wide and two or three long, La Salle and Waring slid them
along the ice to Orloff, who, furnished with the other axe and a pail of
water, rapidly built them into walls a foot thick and eight feet square.
A dash of water soon froze the blocks together, and as the material was
near at hand, in the course of the forenoon walls five feet in height,
with a single narrow entrance, had been raised. At this height the
blocks were ordered to be made two feet square, and of but half the
thickness.
These were laid flatways, with their edges not quite plumb with the
outside edge of the wall, and being frozen into place, left an uncovered
space about five feet six inches square. Returning to the old berg, the
party took down the shooting-box from the top of the cave, and filling
it with the remaining boughs, and a part of the seal-skins, blubber,
&c., regained the floe, and unloading the box, placed it as a roof on
the new dwelling. A single layer of "ice-bricks," as Waring termed them,
was placed around its edge, and being thoroughly wetted, formed a strong
and weather-proof joining; and shoveling the _débris_ from the interior,
the lamp was set up and lighted, the twigs spread thickly over the icy
floor, and bringing in their few household goods, the party, tired and
hungry, sat down to a lunch of hard bread and weak coffee.
A final trip of all hands brought over the remainder of their birds,
blubber, and skins, much being drawn back on the bottom of the float,
which, although lessened in width nearly a foot, still retained both its
runners, and made quite a decent sledge.
The wind still blew from the north-west, and the pack began to show
evidences of the pressure of the large body of ice to windward; but La
Salle and Orloff, although much fatigued, still thought it best to try
to get a survey of the scene from the great berg a little over a mile
away. Keeping on the leeward side of the floes, they reached its base
without difficulty, and without delay sought a place to ascend.
Fortunately a large stream of fresh water from above, had worn a deep
gulch in the huge wall, and up this our adventurers managed to climb,
although more than once each had to use his axe to cut steps in the
glassy ice.
Once on the top of the berg, however, they felt repaid for the
additional fatigue of their journey and ascent. Below them to the east,
the floes were like those they had traversed, covered with seals, and
about twenty miles away the highlands of Amherst Island showed plainly
in the crimson light of the declining sun.
[Illustration: ON THE TOP OF THE BERG THEY FELT REPAID FOR THE FATIGUE
OF THEIR JOURNEY AND ASCENT. Page 256.]
To the north and west all was ice, and in neither direction could either
see any signs of the presence of man. To the southward the pack seemed
more open, and as they watched, they saw the leads grow wider, and the
pools becoming more frequent.
"We are passing the islands fast," said Regnar, "and by to-morrow will
be well to the south-east of Deadman's Island. Let us descend, for it
grows colder every moment."
Turning, they sought the gulch, only pausing a moment to view the pond
which fed the streams, which poured continuously from the sides of this
great ice-island. It occupied a large depression in the centre of the
berg, and was estimated by Regnar to occupy an area of at least six
acres.
As they turned to go, Regnar's eye caught sight of a floe at the foot of
the berg.
"Are not those dead seals yonder?" said he. "It seems to me that I see
piles of dead bodies, and skins hung on the pinnacles, and then--yes,
there is a flag on a pole."
Hastily descending, the two friends ran at full speed to the floe. It
proved to be as Regnar had said. There were hundreds of slaughtered
seals, and it was evident that, as far as the eye could reach, the work
of death had been complete.
Still something had occurred to prevent the hunters from securing their
rich booty, for huge piles of skins, with their adhering blubber, were
scattered over the ice, and near one was planted firmly in the floe a
boat-hook, with a small flag at the top. Regnar drew it from the ice,
and looked searchingly at flag and shaft; the pennon was of crimson,
without lettering or private signal, but on the pole was scorched in
deep, black characters, the legend "Str. Mercedes."
"Here has been a good day's work, probably by that steamer whose smoke
we saw the other day," said La Salle; "doubtless she was afraid of being
nipped by this ice in the last southerly gale, and made off in time to
avoid it. If so, she will be back again after her cargo, when the ice
gets south of the islands."
"Is that a seal, Charley?"
The words were simple, but the tone was so unlike the usual voice of the
speaker, so tinged with awe and doubt, that La Salle felt a chill
traverse his frame as he turned to see what had provoked the question.
Regnar stood on the brink of the only pool of open water in sight,
gazing earnestly at a floating object in the centre, which appeared at
first sight like a dead seal, but a second glance at the shape and size
of the body revealed the corpse of a man clad in a seal-skin coat, and
floating on its face.
"It is some poor fellow who has been drowned in passing from one cake to
another," said La Salle, gravely. "Let us examine the body; perhaps
there are papers or valuables on it, which will identify it, or be of
value to its friends. At all events, we can give it a more Christian
sepulture to-morrow."
Regnar gave no answer, but stood motionless as if turned into stone.
"Come, Regnar! wake up, man! Surely you are not afraid of a poor
lifeless body. Bear a hand with that boat-hook, or, if you don't care to
touch it, hand it to me."
[Illustration:]
Starting as if from a trance, Regnar extended the long boat-hook and
gently drew the body to the shore, where La Salle, making a loop of the
rope they carried, dropped it over the head and shoulders, and drawing
it tightly under the arm-pits, gave one end to Regnar.
"His pockets are turned inside out," said La Salle.
"The man has been murdered," almost whispered the lad. "See what a
terrible wound there is in the skull."
"Let us land him, any way, Regnar. We will get him upon the ice, and
to-morrow we can come down here and look into the matter. Gently, now;
that's right. Great Heavens! Regnie, lad, are you mad?"
As the body was landed, turning slowly over on its back, exposing a face
handsome even in death, Regnar started, glanced curiously at the
features, and dropping the line, raised the boat-hook, and with every
muscle and feature alive with rage and fury, seemed about to transfix
the senseless body of the dead. Then a change came over him; he lowered
his arm, dropped the useless weapon, and burst into tears.
"Come, Regnie, you are worn out, and it is growing late; let us hasten
back to our new hut. To-morrow we can return and look after this poor
stranger."
"Stranger! He is no stranger to me. For two years I have sought him in
both hemispheres, urged on by the love of my only relative whom he
betrayed, and hatred of him which could end but with his life or mine.
My fondest hope was to find him, my dearest wish to lay him dead at my
feet; and thus we meet at last."
"This, then, is the man you have sought, and for this you have hidden
your true character from all men. Is this the gift by which you were to
gain, and I to lose?" said La Salle.
"Ask me no more to-night," said the boy, whose powers of self-control,
were only less marvellous than the innate force of his intense nature.
"We have none too much light for our homeward way, and to-morrow's sun
may help us to learn more of the cause of his death, and our own duty in
the premises. We will say nothing to our friends of this dreadful
matter, and at early dawn we will set off alone to return here;" and
taking the boat-hook and his weapons, Orloff set off with his usual firm
step and tireless energy.
It was nearly dusk when they reached the floe, and saw at some hundreds
of feet distant the moving lantern that told that Peter and Waring were
anxious about the safety of their friends. La Salle hardly dared trust
his voice, but Orloff uttered his well-known halloo; and of the four who
were gathered in that dwelling of ice, the most cheerful and kindly, was
he whose dead enemy lay gazing with stony eyeballs at the wintry skies,
amid a golgotha of animal butchery, with the dark impress of a
rifle-bullet in the centre of his forehead.
That night the cold north-wester died away, and a gentle breeze began to
blow from the south. The tired Indian and the delicately-nurtured
merchant's son slept side by side on their leaf-strewn floor, and even
La Salle, excited and surprised as he had been, at last fell into a
broken slumber. But when all were asleep, and no human eye could pry
into his secret sorrows, Regnar seated himself by the flaring lamp, and
drawing from his breast a locket, took from it a small folded paper, and
a closely-curled ringlet of yellow hair, such as St. Olave, the warrior
saint of Norway, laid in the lap of the fair Geyra, princess of
Vendland.
With many a kiss, passionate and sorrowful, he greeted the hidden
love-treasures, and many a falling tear dimmed the bold eyes, and wet
the ruddy cheeks of the youthful watcher, as late into the night he sat
gazing into the flaring flame of that element, in which many a sorrowful
heart, in its agony, seems to find a parallel of the torture it endures,
and to find a saddened pleasure in the contemplation. But at last the
watcher turned to his rude couch, and only the radiance of the lamp,
diffused through the opaline walls of the hut, gave evidence of the
presence of human beings in that desolate, wave-borne, wind-driven,
desert of ice.