Shows, Among Other Curious Matters, That Two Boys Are
Better Than One, and That Pluck Is a Good Thing,
Especially When Polar Bears Are Around.
The next record we have of the doings of the ancient mariner and his
little friends reads thus:--
"You will tell us to-day what you did with the bears,--won't you,
Captain Hardy?" inquired William.
"Well," replied the Captain, laughing in his free-and-easy way, like a
jolly old sailor as he was, taking his long pipe out of his mouth that
he might do it all the better, "I think it was pretty near being what
the bears did with us, my hearties! yes, that would be quite as near the
mark, I'm thinking."
"No matter, then," said William,--"no matter, Captain Hardy; we ain't
particular,--any way you like. I'll put the question t' other way,
then,--what did the bears do with you?"
The Captain was in great good-humor to-day, and he kept on laughing till
his pipe went out; and, while he laughed, he said, "Why, to be sure,
they frightened us!"
"Tit for tat," exclaimed William; "you frightened them,--that's fair."
"That's so," replied the Captain,--"that's so, sure enough; only they
wouldn't stay frightened, while we did, you see."
"What! did they find you out?"
"That they did, my lad, just as soon as they had finished the old
narwhal. We were sound asleep when they came; and they soon woke us up
with the great noise they made close to the hut.
"But stop a bit!" exclaimed the Captain, reflectively; "my story's got
ahead of me, or I've got ahead of the story,--one or the other; so I
must go back a little,"--and he paused, not with his finger to his nose
this time, as usual, but to his forehead, as if feeling in his brain for
the end of the "yarn," as he always called the story.
In a moment the old man appeared to have quite satisfied himself about
the matter, for he started off as fast as he could go:--
"I didn't tell you anything about the fort we built, nor the time we had
provisioning it,--did I?" said he.
"No," answered William, "nothing about a fort."
"Then there's the broken end of the yarn at last," and the old man took
his finger from his forehead and stopped feeling for it.
* * * * *
"Well, it was a good long time," continued the Captain, "before the
bears finished the old narwhal; but, finding how much they were occupied
in that quarter, we went to our storehouses, and brought all our stores
away, and stowed them close to the mouth of the hut, thinking that, if
they were discovered, we should there be better able to protect them.
"First of all, however, we built up two solid snow-walls, about three
feet apart, and as high as our heads, directly on a line with the
entrance to our hut, so that when we went outside we walked right
between them. Then, behind these walls, we piled all the birds,
seal-flesh and eggs that we had for food, and all the blubber (now
frozen quite hard) that we had for fuel,--the former on the right-hand
side (going out), and the latter on the left. Having done this, we
covered the whole over with snow several feet deep; and, as a still
further protection against our enemies the bears, we built up a great
wall all around in front of the hut where there were no high rocks.
Through this wall we left only one small hole to crawl through when we
went out; and, when we came inside, we carefully closed it up with some
large blocks of snow. But we did not go outside much, being afraid; and
at length, when one of the bears was discovered prowling about very near
the hut, we drew within our fortification, closed the opening in the
wall as tightly as possible, and were prepared for a siege.
"At first we did not sleep much, being all the time fearful of attack;
but gaining courage as we found, day after day, that the bears did not
come to molest us, we at length fell asleep both together; and it was
while we were thus asleep that the bears discovered us. Before either of
us awoke, they had actually scaled the wall of our snow-fort, and
advanced to where our food and fuel were stowed, close to the mouth of
the hut, and were tearing through the snow to get at it.
"We were, naturally enough, much alarmed, not so much on our own
immediate account, as on account of our stores, for the bears would, we
knew very well, not be likely to trouble us so long as there was
anything else to eat; but then they might just as well eat us first, and
the stores afterward, as to eat the stores first; for then we must
surely starve and freeze, which would be quite as bad.
"Fully sensible of our unhappy condition, and the first feeling of alarm
having passed over, we began seriously to speculate upon what we should
do; for something had to be done, and that very quickly.
"I looked out through the window, and there were the bears all crowded
together in the narrow passage; and one of them had already got among
the frozen ducks, which were tumbling in the snow about his feet, and he
had one in his mouth, crunching away at it in such a manner as to leave
no doubt that he was either very hungry or was in a violent hurry;
growling all the while,--'Ung, ung, ung,'--with each crunch he gave, to
keep away the other two bears. This bear was much the largest of the
three; the smallest one was not, as I said before, larger than a
Newfoundland dog,--not larger than Port or Starboard. Thus you see not
only what a destructive, but what a selfish, beast he was.
"From alarm we now got to be angry, as we observed the liberties these
bears were taking with our food, and the little ceremony they made of
eating up, in this wholesale manner, what had cost us so much hard labor
to get, and upon which our very lives now depended.
"I seized 'Old Crumply' in very desperation, and asked the Dean if he
would follow me. 'What!' exclaimed he, 'you don't mean to attack them?'
'That's just what I am going to do,' said I; 'and, if you can do
anything with "The Delight," now's your chance.' 'I'll stand by you,'
said the Dean, grasping his weapon; 'better to be killed outright by the
bears than to let them starve us to death, and then very likely kill us
afterwards.'
"Desperate as was our condition, I could not help being amused by the
Dean's way of putting the matter,--'first starved to death, and then
killed'; and I think this little speech, turned in that happy way, did a
great deal to stiffen up my courage.
"I crawled out through the doorway of the hut (which I have told you
was not high enough for us to stand upright in), and, upon coming near
the end of it, there was the bear within three feet of me. His head was
turned away, and his nose was all buried up in the snow; for he had just
swallowed a duck, and was getting a fresh one, so that he did not see
me. My heart seemed to be in my mouth,--so close to the dreadful
monster,--so ferocious and fearful did he appear as I looked up at him.
Had I been alone, I think I should have retreated; but here was the Dean
behind me, and I was ashamed to back out, having gone thus far.
Summoning all my courage, therefore, I brought forward my spear, grasped
it with both hands, and plunged it with all my force into the animal's
neck, just behind the lower jaw and below the ear.
"It was a fortunate stroke. I had evidently, by chance, cut some great
blood-vessel, for the blood spouted from the wound in a regular stream.
The bear dropped his duck very quickly, I can tell you. He was probably
never so much astonished in all his life before. I had come upon him so
stealthily, and he was so absorbed in what he was about, that he had
never once suspected the presence of an enemy, but thought himself, no
doubt, a very lucky bear to find such a dinner ready caught for him, and
was quite as little concerned about who the owner might be as most
people would be if they found a bag of gold.
"But I caused him to sing another tune than to be constantly going 'Ung,
ung, ung,' to frighten off the little bears, for he roared with terror,
so that you might have heard him half a mile; and, finding that he could
not wheel around as quickly as he wanted to, he roared again, louder
than before, which sounded so dreadful that I drew back into the hut
quite instinctively, and thus lost the opportunity to give him another
thrust, which I might very well have done, in the side. When he had got
wheeled round, he rolled over the other two bears, and the three
together, all roaring in a dreadful way, rolled against the snow-wall of
our fort, and broke it down; and now, as soon as they could scramble to
their legs again, they hurried away through the snow down into the
valley,--the smallest one trying hard to keep up, and whining piteously
all the while, as if he were afraid something terrible was coming to
catch him; and now, just as we had done before, when we had, with our
shouts, frightened the bears away when they had first come to disturb
us, we ran after them, little thinking of danger, in the excitement of
the moment.
"We found that the bear I had wounded held straight down the valley, as
was easily told by the red streak he left behind him on the snow. The
other two turned to the right, and ran over in the direction of the old
narwhal.
"Following the red streak, we came soon down to the beach; and then
climbing over the rough ice which the tide had piled up, we were quickly
upon the frozen sea, hurrying on as fast as we could go. Indeed, no
feeling of fear ever crossed our minds; for the great quantity of blood
that the bear left behind him somehow or other went to convince us,
without much reflection, that the bear must be dead, and that we should
presently come upon him.
"While hurrying on at this rate, our spirits received as sudden a check
as they had on a previous occasion; for we did at length come upon the
bear, sure enough, and, forgetting all our courage immediately, we
wheeled about in great alarm, and ran back towards the hut as fast as we
could go.
"Finding, however, that we were not pursued, we turned about again; and,
proceeding more cautiously this time, we came, in a little while, in
sight of the bear again, very near where he was before; but now he was
clearly by no means a formidable enemy; for he was going along very
slowly, and making a crooked track, as if he was drunk. Directly he fell
over; and, in a little while afterwards, we went up to him, and found
him dead,--having bled to death from the wound I had given him.
"You may easily imagine how rejoiced we were; for now we had an enormous
supply of food, and a fine bear-skin besides; so I lost no time in
unlashing the knife-blade from the end of 'Old Crumply,' and with this
we began to butcher him. It was a very cold and tedious operation; but
we got through with it at last, and then, burying all of the flesh in
the snow except a small piece that we wanted for supper, we returned to
the hut, dragging the skin after us, the Dean whistling, all the way,
'Bonaparte crossing the Alps,' which he had picked up, as he told me,
from a Frenchman in Havana.
"While we were coming up the valley towards the hut, in this lively
state of mind, the Dean stopped suddenly, and said: 'Suppose, Hardy, the
other two bears have taken a notion to come back'; and he was right; for
we came presently in sight of one of them, very near the hut, and making
directly for it. As soon as he saw us, however, he ran away. So we took
a good laugh at his expense, and, thinking the other one must be near
him, though not in sight, we proceeded on our way. Fortunately, however,
before seeing the bear, we halted long enough to secure the knife-blade
again on the end of 'Old Crumply'; and it was well that we did this,
for, when we arrived at the broken wall where the bears had made their
way out, much to our surprise, we came right upon the other bear, close
up to the mouth of the hut, busy swallowing a duck. This was the
smallest of the three bears, and he could not have been more than a
year or so old. No sooner did he hear us than he, like the other one,
became alarmed; but, seeing us in the road by which he had entered, he
did not try to escape in that way, nor did he appear to have the least
idea that he had only to charge upon us to see how quickly he would
clear the passage; for, instead of doing this, he instantly rushed
forward, and plunged into our hut, no doubt thinking that would lead to
a place of safety.
"I do not exactly know by what motive I was impelled, but I suppose the
same that governed me on several other occasions; that is, a general one
belonging to almost all human beings, and, indeed, to most animals, that
is, to chase whatever runs away, and to run away from whatever chases.
"At any rate, I rushed up to the doorway of the hut, I believe without
any idea at all in my head, and without giving much thought about it,
and had like to have got into a great scrape; for the bear, having found
that the hut gave him no chance of escape, had turned about, and was
coming out again. I was wholly unprepared for him, so hasty had I been.
I could not run, and therefore, quite mechanically, I hit him in the
face with the sharp point of 'Old Crumply,' which sent him back into the
hut again, and made him roar in an awful manner, as if he were half
killed. I knew I must have hit him on some tender spot,--the eye, it
proved to be afterwards, so he was half blind as well as half dead.
"It was very unfortunate that I had not let him go, or killed him
outright; for we could now hear him tearing everything to pieces in our
hut, trying to find a place of escape. The wall between our
sleeping-place and our closet was first knocked over, as he scrambled
about; and there was no doubt that our pots and lamps were all broken to
pieces. It was like a great roaring bull in a china shop, and we wished
many times that he was only out and off; and, if he had only known, our
minds upon the subject, a compromise would have been speedily made, and
the beast might have gone scot-free on condition of his doing no further
mischief.
"The bear was not long in discovering the window. Now, the window being
very small, it was evident that, if he attempted it, he would do us a
great damage, for he could only pass through by knocking down some part
of the wall. No sooner, therefore, had his head appeared in that
quarter, than the Dean charged him most gallantly with the 'Delight,'
and gave him such a tremendous blow on the nose that he was glad enough
to draw his head in again, which he did with a great cry. Then he became
quiet for a while, as if meditating what course it was best for him now
to pursue.
"Availing myself of this little pause, I exchanged weapons with the
Dean, and, fixing the harpoon-head on the end of the 'Delight,' I tied
the other end of the line which was fast to it around a large stone that
lay across the doorway of the hut. This I did because I thought there
might be a possible chance of catching the bear; and that, if we could
only get him to run out, I might harpoon him as he passed, and the stone
would hold him until we could find some way of despatching him.
"No sooner had these preparations been made than the bear was again in
motion; and now he gave a roar that seemed loud enough to have rattled
the whole hut down about his ears. This time he had clearly tried the
chimney, and had not only scattered the burning moss and fat all about
the hut, but had set himself on fire into the bargain; for a great
volume of smoke came out through the window, which smelled of burning
hair.
"The screams of the bear were now pitiful to hear, and in very
desperation he once more tried the window, when the Dean quickly gave
him a crack with 'Old Crumply,' which sent him back again.
"Grown now utterly reckless, he bolted right through the door. I was
ready for him, standing on the top of the passageway and on the stone to
which the harpoon line was made fast. As the bear came under me, I let
drive with the harpoon, and stuck him in the back. And then away he
dashed like a fiery demon, plunging through the snow, smoking and
blazing all over. He had evidently rolled all about in our burning fat
and moss, as bits of burning moss were sticking to him, setting his hair
all on fire, and no doubt scorching his skin to a degree that must have
made a dive into the snow very comfortable indeed.
"As soon as he had run out all the line, the stone under my feet,
instead of holding fast, gave way, pitching me after the bear, and
turning me quite upside down. I landed head-foremost in a snow-bank. The
burning bear went rushing and roaring away, dragging the big stone after
him; but not far, however, for he fell over and died directly,--no doubt
partly from fright, but chiefly, perhaps, from his wounds and his severe
burns.
"Having got rid of the bear, we gave him no further thought for the
present, but rushed into the hut to see what mischief he had done there.
The smoke was at first so thick that we were almost smothered by it. Our
cloth coats and part of our fur bedding were all mixed up with the
burning moss upon the floor, and were being rapidly destroyed. As we had
feared, the pots and lamps were all broken; and, in short, the inside of
the hut was in a most sorry state.
"It was a long time before we fully repaired all the damage the bear had
done, and we suffered much inconvenience and discomfort before we
replaced our pots, cups, and lamps. When we had, however, at last done
all this, we were not sorry that the bears had come to disturb us, but
on the other hand were rather rejoiced; for we were now in all respects
just as comfortable as ever, and had besides a great warm bear-skin to
sleep on, and one more variety of food added to our list, and that, too,
in such large quantity that there was no fear of our coming to want very
soon."
* * * * *
Seeing that the ancient mariner showed signs of breaking off at this
stage of the story, Fred spoke up, and wanted to know more about the
bear that had set fire to himself.
"O, it don't much matter about him," replied the Captain. "When we had
looked after the hut, and had got the fire put out, and found leisure
then to go after the bear, he was dead enough, as I said before; but
much of the hair was singed off him as nicely almost, in some places, as
if he had been shaved, so that the skin was of little use to us, and we
only used the flesh, which we soon grew very fond of; for this bear, as
I have said before, was a young one, and his flesh was tender."
"What became of the other bear?" asked William, curious to reach the end
of the bear story.
"We never saw anything more of him, nor heard anything more of him
either," answered the Captain; "and indeed we were never troubled any
more with bears at all in that way, but thereafter lived in peace.
"That is to say, we lived in peace so far as the bears were concerned;
but the cold and the darkness were now at their greatest, and the winds
blew sometimes with such violence that we were often greatly terrified.
Indeed, the storms at one time were so constant and so fearful that we
could scarcely stir out of doors. Up to this period the weather had been
mostly calm and very favorable to our course of life; but, as the winter
began to turn towards the spring, all this was changed.
"Yet we could not but feel thankful for the great privilege of good
weather with which Providence had so far blessed us. Had the storms
raged in the autumn and early winter as they did now, we should have
been quite unable to provide for our wants, and we must have starved.
But now our needs were abundantly supplied, and we had little occasion
for going abroad unless we wanted to and the weather was favorable. Once
only did we experience any serious danger from the weather; and this,
like most evils that befall all human beings, was due to our own
imprudence.
"There being a bright moon, and the air being nearly calm and not
unusually cold, we were tempted to take a long walk; and, attracted by
one object after another that was upon the frozen sea over which we were
walking,--here an iceberg of peculiar formation or remarkable size,
there a snow-drift of singular form,--we found ourselves at last several
miles away from our hut.
"When we turned about at length to retrace our steps, we discovered that
the northern sky, which we now faced (for we had walked out in a
southerly direction), showed stormy symptoms, and very quickly afterward
a severe gale of wind broke over the island and the desolate sea, and we
found ourselves overwhelmed with drifting snow.
"The sky was for the most part cloudless, and no snow fell from the
heavens, but the light snow that lay upon the ice was picked up, as it
were, by the wind, and whirled through the air in a manner as beautiful
as it was terrible; for the drift coming in streams, with the rushing
wind, lashed our faces, torturing us in a terrible manner, chilling us
through and through, and almost overpowering us. Then an aurora borealis
burst out before us, as if the heavens were on fire,--and from the top
of our little island the snow came whirling above our heads in constant
streams, that went circling about in a most fantastic way.
"You cannot imagine how grand this storm scene was,--the wind howling
around us, the snowdrifts whirling about and spinning over the icy
plain, the moon gleaming brightly upon the snow and the icebergs and the
island, and every now and then a great blaze of many colors that were
reflected on everything about us, would start up from the auroral arch,
until the light became almost as great for a few moments as if it were
broad day. It was very fearful, and you may be sure that we hastened on
to the hut as fast as we could, though we were not in such a great hurry
as to be wholly insensible to the magnificence of the scene.
"After we had reached the hut, the Dean repeated some verses which he
had picked up somewhere; and when I recite them for you, you will see
how appropriate they were to what I have been describing, and how
strange seemed to us our situation when we found ourselves in the very
place where the poet had imagined the Northwest wind to have a
beginning.
"The Nor'west wind is a spirit brave,
And he cometh from afar;
He is cradled far down in the depths that yawn
Beneath the polar star.
"Where no mortal foot hath been, he maketh
His track o'er the snowy plain;
And listens the tread of phantoms dread,
With banner and spear and flame.
"Where the billows are booming on frozen shore,
O there right kingly is he!
His pinnacled throne the iceberg lone,
His empire the boundless sea.
"He rideth aloft on the mountain-tops,--
Rare sport doth he meet with there;
He spinneth the snow in lightning flow,
Till it gleams like a witch's hair."
"O the Nor'west wind is a spirit brave,
A conquering hero is he;
And his fierce battle song, as he marcheth along,
Is the shout of victory."
"O, how beautiful and appropriate!" exclaimed the children.
"But," said William, "how did you get to the island?"
"Without any other accident," replied the Captain, "than with two frozen
noses, which were sore for a long time afterwards. But, after it was all
over, we would not have missed the sight for anything, it was so grand;
yet, had we been caught out on the sea a little farther from the hut, we
should never have got back, but both of us must have perished.
"Thus you see how Providence continued to watch over the two poor
castaways."