"And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold,
And ice, mast high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.
"And through the drifts the snowy clilts
Did send a dismal sheen,
Nor shapes of men nor beast we ken--
The ice was all between."
Coleridge.
Scene: The Arctic Ocean. One solitary ship in sight. Ice all about,
against which, in contrast, the water looks black as ink.
Yes, everything they saw in this voyage and in these seas was indeed
very new to Leonard and Douglas. They certainly were pleased they had
come. It was like being in a new world.
They saw so many icebergs before they reached Cape Farewell that they
ceased to fear them. Nothing very tremendous, though, but of all sizes,
mostly covered with snow, and of shapes the most fantastic. Everything
on earth seemed to be mimicked in shape by these bergs. Churches and
houses, or halls with domes and minarets, were common objects.
Furniture of all kinds came next in order of frequency; then came
animals of all sorts, pigs, sheep, lions, bears, giraffes, geese, swans,
horses, cattle, cocks, and hens. And the most amusing part of the
business was this: as the ship sailed past them, or through the midst of
them, they kept altering their shapes or forms with the greatest
coolness, so to speak.
A giraffe, for instance, developed into a ginger-beer bottle, a cow
turned into a cab, a church into a chair, a pig became a pigeon, and a
hen a horse, while, perhaps, a monster lion or couchant bear became a
daft-looking old wife with a flap-cap on. It was funny.
Some of the smaller of these icebergs were tenanted by seals.
What a delightfully easy life those lovely creatures seemed to lead!
There goes one, for instance, basking on a bit of ice just like a sofa,
pillow and all complete; and his snowy couch is floating quietly away
through that blue and sunny summer sea, rising and falling gently on the
waves in a way that must be quite delightful. He just raises his head
as the ship sails past, and gazes after the _Fairy Queen_ with a kind of
dreamy interest, then lets it drop again, and recommences his study of
the birds that go wheeling and screaming round in the sky.
Yonder a walrus pops a monster tusked head and goggle eyes out of the
water, looking at the ship as fiercely as an angry bull.
"What are you?" he seems to ask, "or why are you disturbing the placid
waters of my ocean home?"
Then he disappears, and presently is seen far away to the north.
Yonder, ploughing his lonely way through the silence of the dark sea, is
a monster narwhal. He makes no remark. If a boat were to attack him,
he might lose his temper, and try to stave her with his mighty ivory
horn; but the _Fairy Queen_ is nothing to him, so he looks not to right
or to left, but goes on and on and away.
Here comes a shoal of dancing porpoises, all going south. How they
dance, and how they plunge, and how they caper, to be sure! They take
little heed of the ship, do not even go out of their way to avoid her.
Perhaps they are going on a summer holiday, and are so full of their own
happiness and joy that they have little time to think of anything else.
Bless the innocent creatures! I've often and often felt pleasure in
beholding their gambols; and thanked God from the bottom of my heart,
because He has made them, made the earth and its fulness, the sea and
all it contains, so full of life and love and beauty.
But look away down yonder, and you will perceive--for the ship is now
becalmed--a triangular, fan-like thing above the water, and a dark line
close by it. It is the back of the huge and awful Greenland shark. And
look! there is a sea-bird perched on it, just as a starling might be on
the back of a sheep. I do not like to think about sharks nor see them,
and I could tell you many an ugly story about them--awful enough to make
your blood run cold, but that would be a digression; besides, I feel
sure the reader does not want his blood to run cold. But there is a
more terrible-looking monster far than the Greenland shark in these
seas. I allude to the gigantic hammer-head, who is more ugly than any
nightmare.
But lo! here comes an honest whale. I do like these great monsters; I
have seen quite a deal of their ways and manners. I am sure they have
far more sagacity than they get credit for. I should like to own a
little private sea of my own, and have it enclosed, with a notice board
up, "Trespassers will be prosecuted," and keep a full-sized whale or
two. I feel sure I could teach them quite a host of little tricks.
Stay, though--they would not be _little_ tricks. Never mind, I and my
whales would get on very well together. But if one _did_ get angry with
me, and _did_ open his mouth, why--but it will not bear thinking about.
The whales our heroes saw in the Greenland ocean were leviathans.
Leonard could not have believed such monsters existed anywhere in the
world, and they had a thorough business air about them, too. Some came
near enough the ship to show their eyes. Good-natured, twinkling little
eyes, that seemed to say,--
"We know you are not a whaler, so pass on, and molest us not, else with
one stroke of our tails we will send you all to Davy Jones."
Then they would blow, and great fountains of steam would rise into the
air, with a roar like that which an engine emits, only louder far. This
is not _water_, as is generally supposed, but the breath of the vast
leviathan of the ocean.