WINTER COMES APACE--NEW VISITORS FROM THE NORTH--A "PERWISION O'
NATUR'"--A MAD BUT MERRY SCENE--THE DOWNFALL OF SNOW-STARS--AN
ADVENTURE, BUT WHERE WILL IT END?
In the far north--up in the high latitudes, as sailors are wont to call
them--winter often comes on with startling rapidity. Nobody
unaccustomed to these regions would believe that there could be so short
an interval between the beautiful Indian summer, and the stern and
rigorous Arctic winter. A few bright and almost balmy windless days,
perhaps, herald its approach--days when there is a deep-abiding silence
on mountain, plain, and sea, and silence in the great forests
themselves, where all nature seems to be breathless, expectant, waiting
for something to happen, something to come. The softer-leaved trees,
the willows and water-ashes, the planes and the mountain mahoganies,
that erst clad the glens in a cloud-land of green, are now stripped and
bare, and the few brown leaves that cling here and there on some of the
branches, tremble in the uncertain air, just as if the trees were things
of life and were nervous, and were whispering to each other and saying,
"Oh! we all know what is coming; would that we could be up and be off
like the beasts and the birds of the forest that have all fled south!
But we cannot, and our branches will be rent, our limbs will be torn and
severed by the stormy breath of swift-advancing winter!" But those
giants of the woodlands and hilltops, the cedars and tamaracs, the
spruces and pines, stood forth bold and stately as in summer. No
nervousness about them, their roots were fixed in the rocks themselves,
and their sturdy limbs, still clothed in black and green, could bid
defiance to every blast that could blow.
The beasts had not all gone away, though; there were bears in the woods,
and wolves, and many kinds of smaller game, still left to afford sport
for our wanderers; and there were gulls and guillemots, and innumerable
wild fowl as well: and lo! here were several new visitors from the
regions of the Pole itself; an Arctic fox or two might sometimes be seen
skipping hither and thither, and in the water four or five different
kinds of seals often came up to stare and marvel at the _Snowbird_, A
whale, with her calf, was seen ploughing through the still waters of the
bay, probably going still farther south for the winter months. A
narwhal came quite a mile out of his lonely way to gaze at the yacht.
He did not like her; he tossed his ivory spear angrily in the air, and
plunged sullenly down into the depths again; and giant walruses would
suddenly pop their terrible tusked and bearded heads, high out of the
water to have a look at the intruder. But there were many more signs
and wonders that told our heroes, in language that could not be
mistaken, that King Winter would soon sweep down from his icy caves in
the frozen north, and claim all the land and the sea round them as his
own. Many of the denizens of the forest, for instance, got greyer in
colour, and some even white, while every bird and every beast became
sensibly larger.
"You see, young gentlemen," said Seth, explainingly, to Allan and Rory,
"here is how it be: soon's they sniffs the change in the air they kinder
knows winter is coming, so they just begins to tuck in and tuck in, and
the more they tucks in the fatter they grows; and the fatter they grows,
the longer and softer the fur or the feather grows. It's a sort of a
perwision o' Natur', ye see, to help them to stand the cold."
"But," said Rory, "this development of fat and fur or feather isn't
confined to wild animals and birds; just look at our dogs!"
The great Saint Bernard was coming trotting along the deck as Rory
spoke, and all eyes were immediately bent upon him. Oscar seemed
intensely pleased about something, but he really had got fat, and the
coat which he had developed--all in one week, apparently--was simply
marvellous to behold. And now Seth's wolf, as he was called, came aft,
and Oscar seemed actually to laugh all over, so did everybody else when
they saw him; Plunket was no longer a wolf, all gaunt and lean and grim,
there was not a rib to be seen in him, his skin was soft and sheeny, his
gait no longer an ambling shamble, but a stately "pedal progression."
No wonder Oscar laughed; but when Spunkie joined the group, the Saint
Bernard could not contain himself, and he must needs roll the terrier
into the lee scuppers. "Just look at him!" Oscar seemed to cry; "why,
he's all coat together; no eyes, no tail, no nothing! Who's for a game
at football? Hurrah!" At this moment Ralph came on deck, and joined
the group to see what all the fun was about. He had been down below
having a bit of lunch. His presence seemed at once to bring the
merriment to a sudden climax, for there was no mistake about it, Ralph
had been getting stouter of late, though it had never struck anybody
before. But now the moment they glanced at him both his friends went
into fits. Allan laughed till the tears ran out of his eyes, and he had
to lean against the bulwarks and hold his sides. Rory was worse; he was
bent double like a jack-knife, and had to raise his right leg and slap
his knee a dozen times before he was anything like composed. Meanwhile,
poor quiet Ralph's face, as he gazed wonderingly first at one and then
at the other, was a perfect study.
"Have you _both_ gone out of your minds?" he inquired at last.
"No, no?" cried Rory, "we're laughing at you; you've got so fa--fa--fat!
Ha! ha! ha!"
"You're perfectly obese?" laughed Allan.
"He's perfectly podgy, bedad!" cried Rory, turning Ralph round and round
to examine him.
Seth looked on at the fun, chewing the end of a capstan bar, and Oscar
kept on rolling Spunkie in the scuppers, but when McBain joined the
group order was somewhat restored.
"Boys," said McBain, smiling, "I declare to you I see a change in you
all; one needn't laugh at the other. Oh, don't look at me! I know I'm
adding inches to my waist, and so is Allan. And as for you, boy Rory--"
"Yes," said Rory, "as for me?"
"You're rotund already," said McBain.
"No more shape than a sun-fish," added Ralph, revengefully.
Of course, after so daring a remark Ralph had to run for it, and so away
he went, scampering along the deck with Rory in hot pursuit, but he had
to save himself by making a back, over which Rory vaulted, and placed
himself in position a few yards beyond.
"Oh?" cried Allan, "if it's leapfrog, I'm in too."
And off he went, bounding like a deer over Ralph, and over Rory.
"Keep the pot a-boiling!" cried Ralph.
And so, with many a shout and many a joke, round and round the
_Snowbird's_ deck vaulted and ran our merry boy-heroes; but when it came
to shoulders high, then their increase in bulk--the "perwision o'
Natur'," as Seth termed it--told a tale. Ralph cleared Rory, but
floundered over Allan, then Rory jumped on top of them both, and the
whole three went rolling over on the deck, and Oscar and the wolf and
the little Skye, who had been making bears of them, and legging them,
all got mixed.
They extricated themselves at last, and then settled seriously to work.
Off went their jackets.
"No more high leaps," cried Ralph.
But behold, the fun gets infectious. McBain has joined the group, then
Stevenson and Mitchell, and the mate of the _Trefoil_, and in less time
than I take to tell it, there was a complete circle round the deck of
the _Snowbird_. Every man Jack was there; it was pleasure without end;
it was wonderful. But to see the performance of old Ap! In his flight
around the charmed circle he leaped all in a piece, as it were, but he
seemed positively to rebound like a cricket-ball; to ricochet like as
shot upon water. Even Seth, with his long legs, who went about the game
as if it were a matter of life and death, confessed afterwards that
neither kids nor kangaroos were a circumstance to Ap.
And so on they went for half-an-hour and over; and had you gazed on that
mad, merry scene, you would have declared that all hands had taken leave
of their senses. No, you wouldn't, though, for you would have joined
the fun yourself.
"I reckon," said Seth, after the ship had resumed its wonted calm, "that
although we are going to be soldered up up here all winter, we ain't
going to let down our hearts about it."
Now although the new hall was complete, and Ap had almost finished the
last chair in it, it must not be supposed that the officers and crew of
the _Snowbird_ were idle. By no means; every day was now precious.
They were as busy laying up stores as the Alpine hare. Stores of wood
to burn, and stores of fresh provisions in case of emergency. The deer
they shot, and one or two of the younger and smaller bison, were cut up
with great precision and exactness by the old trapper, and the carcasses
afterwards lashed against the masts in the fore and main tops to be
frozen, and thus to remain fresh throughout the coming winter.
One morning, just after such a sunset as I tried to describe in last
chapter, when Rory and Allan went on deck for their matutinal run before
breakfast, they found, to their astonishment, that the shore and the
trees, ay, and the ship itself, were clad in dazzling white. Not snow,
though, but hoar-frost; only it was a hoar-frost such as it had never
entered into their minds to imagine the like of. The sky seemed
overcast with a strange purplish haze that hid the distant hills, and
only revealed the scenery in the immediate neighbourhood. There wasn't
a breath of wind. There was silence everywhere shoreward, broken only
now and then by the sullen splash of some giant sea mammal diving into
the dark waters. And the hoar-frost kept falling, falling, falling.
It was a downfall of snow-stars and their spiculae; but these alighted
on everything--on the sheets and shrouds and every horizontal spar,
making them look five times their usual thickness; and the whole ship
appeared as if enchanted; the men's caps were white, their clothes were
white, and their beards and hair, so that they looked like old, old men.
A great silvery-haired animal crept softly along the deck. Was it a
polar bear? No, it was Oscar. He looked up in their faces with his
plaintive brown eyes, as if beseeching them to tell him what it all
meant.
But when, about an hour afterwards, they came on deck again and looked
about them, they found that the purple mist had all cleared off, and
that the sun was shining in a bright blue sky, towering high into which
were the dazzling hills. The scene was extraordinary; it was magical,
glorious. No snow that ever fell could have changed the landscape as
those falling snow-stars had; for every twiglet, stem, and branch was
white and silvery, and radiant as the sun itself, and the pines and
soft-leaved trees were clad in a foliage more beautiful than that of
summer itself.
It was a scene such as few men ever behold, and which but once to see is
to remember for ever and ay.
It faded at last, though, as everything lovely does fade in this world,
and before twelve of the clock the hoar-frost had melted and fallen from
the branches, like showers of radiant diamonds.
Away through the dripping woodlands went Rory, Ralph, and Allan, in
pursuit of game. Seth was to spend the day in fishing, for ere long the
waters would be frozen over, and but few fish to be had, so all those
that had been taken during the past week had been carefully salted,
dried in smoke, and stored away.
With our three heroes this afternoon went a party of men with a
rudely-constructed sledge, to bring back a load of logs for the general
store.
"Who is the laziest of us three, I wonder?" said Ralph, as soon as they
had got to the high ground, and the men had commenced to wood.
"Oh, I am, I think," said Allan. "That leapfrog business is too much
for a fat old fellow like me."
"Very well," said Ralph, "for once in a way we'll grant that you are
right, so you just stop and keep the `b'ars' from the working party, and
Rory and I will go down to the creek and see if we can't find a duck or
two."
"All right," said Allan; and down he sat on a fallen tree, and pulling a
book from his pocket he began to read. So Allan sat there reading, and
some fifty or sixty yards beneath him the men worked, singing and
laughing as they plied the axe and saw. A whole half-hour was thus
passed.
"This is slow work," he thought at last, placing the book in his pocket.
"I'll creep quietly over to that bit of jungle--I'm sure to get a shot
at something."
If there was anything to shoot in the jungle the wind was all in his
favour. He was down to leeward.
When he neared the thicket he threw himself on his hands and knees, and
approaching, entered with caution.
There is no sport in the world a Scottish Highlander loves so much as
that of deer-stalking. Is it any wonder, then, that when he found
himself within fifty yards of a tall an tiered red deer his heart jumped
for joy?
"One hundred and fifty pounds," he said to himself, "if he weighs an
ounce."
He was just about to raise his rifle, when a dead branch snapped under
him, and next moment the quarry had glided silently away.
"Anyhow," thought Allan, "I'll follow him up a little way. I've done a
bit of this work at home, and he is a wary scamp, indeed, if he escapes
me."
He searched all through the piece of jungle first. This led him a
goodly mile along the ravine, and into the forest, and he was about to
give up the quest when he caught a glimpse of the animal's white flag
about a hundred yards away, but quickly getting farther off, though
seeming in no great hurry. Keeping well under cover, Allan went on and
on, determined if possible not to go back without a lordly haunch of
venison on his shoulder. Before very long he found himself on the brink
of a ravine. This puzzled him not a little. It was _a_ ravine, but was
it _the_ ravine at the end of which he was sure to find his comrades?
He did not care whether it was or not; he would cross and risk it, for
yonder, on the opposite "brae," were antlers; not one pair but many
pairs.
So down he went, and, to his joy, found the stream was fordable.
Upwards now, with all the caution imaginable, crept this enthusiastic
sportsman, upwards to where the all-unconscious herd were browsing. He
was near them now, and was pushing the boughs aside to obtain a view,
when, as ill luck would have it, a twig caught the trigger, the rifle
went off, the deer stampeded, and poor Allan was left to mourn.
"Back homewards now, Allan," a voice seemed to whisper to him. "Back,
back; it isn't the first time a deer has brought misfortune to the house
of Arrandoon."
Allan was a good mountaineer, and an excellent walker; he felt sure he
could regain his party in an hour at most, but would daylight hold out
as long? He feared it would not, and he knew it would get dark much
sooner under the pine-trees, so he determined to follow the course of
the stream. If it flowed at the bottom of the _right_ ravine he was
bound soon to rejoin his party. "Oh, of course it is the _right_
ravine!" He found himself making this remark to himself a dozen times
in a minute, as he commenced hurrying along the banks of the rivulet.
But now the shades of night began to fall, great black clouds rolled up
and obscured the sky's blue; there would neither be moon nor stars to
guide him, so he increased his pace to as nearly a run as the rough
nature of the ground would permit. But presently the trees got thicker
and darker overhead, and he could no longer see the stream, and to
advance farther were but madness.
He pauses now, and the dread of some coming evil falls like a shadow
over his heart. In vain he shouts. There is no answer from the hills
above; no answer from the dark woods. He fires his rifle again, it
reverberates from rock to rock as if a volley had been fired. But the
echo is the only response.