Finding no whales and being unable to get on to Greenland, for some
twenty miles of ice now separate us from its shore, we decide to turn
back.
Right about wheel then, for we are sick of eternal flat ice-floes. If we
had a new boiler, new coal supply, new food supply and unlimited time, we
would hang on. The ice may open in ten or twelve days, but we arranged
to finish our hunting, if possible, at Trömso, Norway, about the middle
of August. So we have just time and no more to get there by that time,
granted there is fine weather and little fog.
But as I write, seven P.M., we are again into a fog bank and have to
tie up to a floe. It is thin fog, and sun shines through it and we hope
it will lift. So it is good-bye to our chances of whales, musk oxen, or
walrus, for walrus we can only get along the coast in shallow soundings.
One whale, and that only a narwhal, is our poor basket. We must console
ourselves with having got a fair number of bears in the time—seventeen in
the month, one narwhal and a lot of seals. It will not pay, but we may
yet get bottle-nose down about Jan Mayen Island, if the drift takes us
southerly in that direction before we get out of the ice easterly.
Perhaps I may here be allowed to put down some notes on the protective
coloration of the Arctic fauna.
Evening of the 2nd August. We thought we were in for another bear this
evening, because a young man on watch probably mistook a piece of yellow
ice for a bear, and we went back on our tracks, but found no bear. We
hunted round the floe on which he vowed he had seen it, but did not find
even spoor, so I fear his cry of “Wolf” will not be listened to for many
a day. Naturalists tell us that the yellowish tint of the bear’s skin is
given to it by Nature to allow the bear to secure its prey, the seal—that
the seal is green enough to mistake the bear’s skin for a piece of yellow
ice, and thus the fittest survives. As these yellow pieces of ice are
few and far between, and as there are far more pieces of blue ice, and as
the predominating colour of the snow is white, I’d have painted the bear
blue and white if I had been Nature, with only a touch perhaps of yellow
here and there.
Naturalists have also told me that whilst waiting for a seal at its
breathing-hole in the ice, the bear covers its nose with its paws to
prevent the seal seeing the conspicuous black of its nostrils. I should
think myself this is to keep his hands warm. Five black claws on each
foot must be as conspicuous to the seal as the black nose. Again,
sometimes a bear covers itself completely with snow, all but its nose!
This allows man in his turn to have a chance of proving himself to be
the fittest. A case in point was when two men I know up here encountered
a bear. It took careful stock of them and did not like their protective
smell or the checks of their tweeds, so it did not immediately attempt
to eat them (possibly it was not hungry), but it retired, as it thought,
out of sight, and with a few grand sweeps of its great forearms and
hands covered itself up with snow, only leaving its black nose exposed.
But for this wonderful foresight on the part of Nature in making the
bear’s nose black, the order of evolution might have been reversed. Man
strolling along and seeing nothing but white snow might have slipped
out of existence in the warm embrace of Ursus Maritimus. The protective
coloration of the black nose, from the man’s point of view, surely proved
that Nature originally intended the bear to be cooked with onions for our
dinner.
When they spotted the black nose, the two men proceeded to guess in which
direction lay the neck and body. (I think only an artist who has studied
the drawing of a bear’s nose and head could have told for certain.) So
when they did hit it in the neck, it must have been rather a fluke! It
was a fighting bear, and came out of the eruption of snow with fearful
roars, and in a great hurry, for a bear. But Nature insisted on the
evolution and survival of the higher species and wiped out the bear with
two 475 decimal bullets, nickel covered, and added, very incidentally,
vermilion to the general colour scheme of the floe, tempting one to drag
in the trite quotation: “Nature red of tooth and claw.”
We are inclined to dwell at some length on the theory of the protective
coloration of the fauna of the Arctic and the Antarctic regions. For in
these frost-bound portions of our sphere there is frequently so much
fog, or nebulous condition of the atmosphere, of such density that the
naturalist observer is compelled either to evolve theories or play cards.
Another of the carnivoræ of these high latitudes, _Vulpes lagopus_ or
Arctic fox, has also by Nature been given a remarkable skin as protective
colouring of perfect whiteness (value to-day about £12). Beyond doubt,
as with the bear, this resemblance of the colour of this skin to the
surroundings is in order to allow the fox to secure its prey—namely, the
_Lagopus hemilencurus_ or Arctic grouse, of which it is particularly
fond, as also of the _Lagopus glacialis_ or white hare of the polar
Arctic regions.
Now, seeing that the fox is singularly gifted with cunning, a fact which
has been universally admitted by naturalists of all times, Nature,
to prevent the complete extinction of the smaller fauna, such as the
hare, which has neither wings to fly with nor fins to swim with, has
also gifted the hare with a white coat, and so the balance of Nature is
preserved. In the case of this _Lagopus hemilencurus_ or Arctic grouse,
which, unlike the fox or bear, is unprovided with teeth with which to
protect itself, Nature, with its unstinted bounty, has provided it with
lateral appendages, one on either side, with which it is enabled to fly;
thus it has, besides its protective coloration, another means by which
it can escape its natural enemy, so the preservation of the less cunning
but more edible species is preserved. We might perhaps have thought that,
being provided with wings with which to take flight, the protective
coloration for this bird would have been unnecessary, but we must
remember that the fogs of these high latitudes, which have already been
alluded to as affecting the actions of the higher animal _homo_, put this
bird to a disadvantage. For it has been stated (the writer need hardly
quote his authority here) the nebulous conditions referred to in these
high latitudes are sometimes of such density that they may actually
prevent this bird from seeking safety in flight. This being so, we can
the more readily understand the necessity of the protective coloration
for this succulent bird.
As an example of how very thick such a fog can be up here, it is related
by an explorer (an American, I believe) that the men on watch on a
certain occasion on his vessel were sitting on the bulwarks smoking their
pipes and were leaning against the mist, when suddenly it rose and they
all fell backwards into the sea.
What may seem unaccountable when you consider the bear’s protective
coloration is that seals of various kinds in the Arctic regions should
have apparently no protective colouring. Whilst lying on the ice beside
their holes they form quite conspicuous objects, even at a distance of a
mile on a clear day, and less if it is foggy or on a dark night. But the
reason for this apparent contradiction is not far to find; for, as we
have already explained, owing to the colour of the bear’s coat being of
a yellowish tint and occasional pieces of ice being also of a yellowish
tint, with a far-away resemblance to the bear’s coat, the seal takes the
bear for a lump of ice walking, so Nature here has stepped in and said to
the seal: “If you are such a silly fool as to mistake a bear for a piece
of yellow ice, why, have a dark brown coat and be blowed to you,” so
everyone is pleased—and so on.
The bear, or supposed bear, of last night, interrupted a quiet, misty
evening we were spending alongside a small floe of a quarter of a mile
in diameter of hard, smooth, frosted ice. Our men were occupied drawing
fresh water from the blue pools. Eastward lay mist, north and west a pale
orange band just showed beyond the violet-coloured floes and soft grey
sky, just the quiet effect for decoration of a silk fan.
On the smooth floe we held various sports, tossing the caber, for
example, the caber being the remains of the pine-tree we found on a floe
as we came north. Also we had fencing. As there was rather a pretty small
blue iceberg alongside, C. A. H. got his camera and photographed the two
champions. The too-strong she-cook went a walk with Chee Chee; a little
trot, rather; she must weigh about two hundred pounds, but she rather
trips than walks. I wonder what a bear will think of her if he meets her.
She is broad and deep-chested, with round red cheeks, and has a gentle
voice and a gurgling laugh any time in the twenty-four hours of daylight.
There was also a little pipe-playing, so the smooth floe with the blue
pool was quite lively, till the call came to bear arms! Then everyone
but Chee Chee came on board, and it stood alone, with all hands saying
endearing things to make it come on board. Whether it was my seizing the
lasso, the sight of which it hates, or one of the men circumventing it,
I would not like to say, but from one reason or the other it came with a
sudden bolt—I think the lasso did it!
[Illustration]
I nearly forgot to put our Spanish friends into the picture; here they
are, there is just room, right-hand top corner, hilariously shooting
skuas, those robber birds. The señors are jolly the clock round; what a
fallacy that is, about “solemn as a Spanish Don.”