There was not an officer nor able seaman on board the good ship
_Icebear_, who had not been in the Arctic regions before.
Mostly Englishmen they were, with just a sprinkling of Scotch--"the
leaven that leavened the lump," that is how Rab McDonald, the third
officer, expressed it, and it is needless to say that Rab himself was a
Scot.
Onward went the _Icebear_, sometimes in a clear sea, though far into
Baffin's Bay--for this was what is called an exceptional year--but at
other times she had literally to plough her way through the heavy ice.
When the weather was fine there was but little danger, unless, indeed, a
swell rolled in, playing and toying with the monster pieces as
schoolboys would with balls.
But when a breeze sprang up, even if only half a gale, then indeed the
scene was changed. Then--
"Through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:
Nor shapes of man nor beasts they ken--
The ice was all between.
"The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around;
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound."
During calm weather and in the open water Dr Barrett was busy indeed,
taking soundings, deep or otherwise, and dredging for living objects at
the sea's bottom.
Very lovely and interesting indeed was the collection that soon grew up
in his cabinet, under his magic spell. What could be in that tangled
mass of mud and weed and sand, one would have asked, that was hauled on
board, the sea-water dripping and trickling out of the bag?
To Dr Barrett--and to the _savants_ at home--treasures more valuable
than gold itself.
And after he had secured a haul, washed them, put them up, perhaps on
cards of jet to show their beauties off, the clever surgeon would have
handed you his great glass and bade you look. It was like gazing at
creatures from fairyland. All shapes and colours, but all so minute
that they could not well be seen with the naked eye. Here is a little
fairy fish--no bigger is it than this letter `f.' Take that glass,
please. Now look. No wonder an expression of amazement steals over
your face! It is a perfect fish, yet, strange to say, transparent and
colourless--that is, there is no fixed colour any more than there is in
the Arctic aurora, but greens dance and crimsons flit and play around
it; and, stranger still, with a stronger glass, you can see its internal
anatomy, see its heart beat and its pulses move! Could anything be more
wonderful? And here are shells that, lying on this morsel of black
cardboard, are no bigger than the letters "a," or "e," or "c." Look at
these. No wonder you smile with delight; they, too, are faultless in
shape and curious in form; they, too, are transparent as glass; they,
too, display all the colours of the finest pearl.
Put this one--it is no bigger than a comma to the naked eye--under the
microscope in a drop of water. Lo! that drop of water is to it a small
ocean, and round and round it crawls, legs all out and its shell high up
on its shoulders, and of a bright translucent blue. I could sit here
all the livelong night and write, sheet of foolscap after sheet of
foolscap should flutter from my desk and fall upon the floor, and yet
when the grey dawn of morning crept in through the casement of this red
parlour, I should not have told you of one-half the mysterious and
beautiful beings that this man of science dredged up from the dark
depths of that mysterious sea.
I pause here and listen. There was not a sound in the house when I
penned the last sentence, only a mouse nibbling the crumbs that I placed
for it in the corner, but now there comes from an adjoining room the
voice of some one singing. It is only poor old Janet. She does so
every night before retiring; and, old though she be, I know she is very
happy--happy with a happiness that can never be taken from her. But
to-night the words she sings are so _en rapport_ with my own spirit
while writing, that I cannot but give a line or two--
"God moves in a mysterious way,
His wonders to perform;
He plants His footsteps on the sea,
And rides upon the storm."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
As much as it was practicable to do so, the _Icebear_ hugged the western
shores of Greenland, but here the ice was heaviest. As the summer
advanced, however, the land became bare of snow; it was then that
delightful excursions were made inland, up through the long, deep fiords
that everywhere indent this coast. I do not like the word "indent,"
though I use it; for an indentation means fork-like incision, widest at
the mouth--a bay, for example,--but these Arctic fiords are, many of
them, narrow at the inlet, then spread out as they go inland.
There are thousands and thousands of them yet unexplored, and which
never will be explored as long as the world lasts.
Not altogether for the sake of pleasure were these excursions made, but
for the purpose of scientific discovery.
I am sitting here to tell a story, and not to describe scenery, the
yachting, the fishing, hunting, and all the pleasures that make a
holiday in Greenland north, during the short summer-time, so
enthrallingly delightful--a something that once enjoyed can never be
forgotten, while the life-blood circulates in our veins.
Claude himself was a lover of nature. In his soul he had all the poetry
of a Wordsworth, though there it remained, for he never wrote verses.
He could love and admire every tiny flower, every moss or lichen or
tender and beautiful saxifrage that clad the rocky uplands. Neither
could he classify them.
Dr Barrett both admired and classified. He was ever on the outlook for
new species, and I verily believe he dreamed about them by night. So
his cabinet, of the rare and lovely specimens found on shore, grew even
bigger than did his deep-sea collection.
Cold? No, it was not cold--these regions at this season. Cool
sometimes, but never cold.
The _Icebear_ would be cautiously steered up some of those fiords and
the anchor let go, in an inland sea or harbour in which all the navies
in the world, both mercantile and man-o'-war, could easily have ridden.
While the doctor and his assistants would be prospecting among the
hills, leaving the ship in charge of the mate, and, accompanied only by
the faithful Fingal and giant Byarnie, Claude would start in a small
boat, a kind of elegant dingy, which he had had made on purpose, and go
off up the fiords for miles with gun and fishing-rod.
The snow-bird, strange to say, always remained on board. What truth
there may be in the statement I do not know, but they say that a
snow-bird, or tern, that has once been domesticated by mankind dare not
return to its kindred birds under pain of death.
Claude used to enjoy those excursions on the fiords very much. Here is
how he generally spent the day: First, Byarnie would pull him slowly
about close to the rocks, where the fish were most numerous. A few
dozen were speedily caught and thrown in the bottom of the boat. Fingal
used to take them in charge, apparently delighting in doing so, for his
wise eyes never left them, and if one flopped Fingal held it down with
an air of seriousness on his rough hairy face that was highly amusing.
But Claude soon got tired of fishing, and put up the rod. Then he told
Byarnie to pull him away out into the centre of the fiord, and let the
boat float as she liked in the sweet sunshine. Claude would have a
book, perhaps, and very often, when his eyes were riveted on it, it was
upside down, which showed where his thoughts were.