BEGINNING OF WINTER--MEETUCK EFFECTS A REMARKABLE CHANGE IN THE MEN'S
APPEARANCE--MOSSING, AND WORKING, AND PLANS FOR A WINTER CAMPAIGN.
In August the first frost came and formed "young ice" on the sea, but
this lasted only for a brief hour or two, and was broken up by the tide
and melted. By the 10th of September the young ice cemented the floes
of last year's ice together, and soon rendered the ice round the ship
immovable. Hummocks clustered round several rocky islets in the
neighbourhood, and the rising and falling of the tide covered the sides
of the rocks with bright crystals. All the feathered tribes took their
departure for less rigorous climes, with the exception of a small white
bird about the size of a sparrow, called the snow-bird, which is the
last to leave the icy north. Then a tremendous storm arose, and the sea
became choked up with icebergs and floes which the frost soon locked
together into a solid mass. Towards the close of the storm snow fell in
great abundance, and when the mariners ventured again to put their heads
up the opened hatchways, the decks were knee-deep, the drift to windward
was almost level with the bulwarks, every yard was edged with white,
every rope and cord had a light side and a dark, every point and truck
had a white button on it, and every hole, corner, crack, and crevice was
choked up.
The land and the sea were also clothed with this spotless garment, which
is indeed a strikingly appropriate emblem of purity, and the only dark
objects visible in the landscape were those precipices which were too
steep for the snow to lie on, the towering form of the giant flag-staff,
and the leaden clouds that rolled angrily across the sky. But these
leaden clouds soon rolled off, leaving a blue wintry sky and a bright
sun behind.
The storm blew itself out early in the morning, and at breakfast-time on
that day, when the sun was just struggling with the last of the clouds,
Captain Guy remarked to his friends, who were seated round the cabin
table: "Well, gentlemen, we must begin hard work to-day."
"Hard work, Captain!" exclaimed Fred Ellice, pausing for a second or two
in the hard work of chewing a piece of hard salt junk; "why, what do you
call the work we've been engaged in for the last few weeks?"
"Play, my lad; that was only play--just to bring our hands in, before
setting to work in earnest! What do you think of the health of the men,
Doctor?"
"Never was better, but I fear the hospital will soon fill if you carry
out your threat in regard to work."
"No fear," remarked the second mate; "the more work the better health is
my experience. Busy men have no time to git seek."
"No doubt of it sir," said the first mate, bolting a large mouthful of
pork. "Nothing so good for 'em as work."
"There are two against you, Doctor," said the captain.
"Then it's two to two," cried Fred, as he finished breakfast, "for I
quite agree with Tom, and with that excellent proverb which says: `All
work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.'"
The captain shook his head as he said: "Of all the nuisances I ever met
with in a ship a semi-passenger is the worst. I think, Fred, I must get
you bound apprentice, and give you regular work to do, you
good-for-nothing."
We need scarcely say that the captain jested, for Fred was possessed of
a spirit that cannot rest, so to speak, unless at work. He was able to
do almost anything _after a fashion_, and was never idle for a moment.
Even when his hands chanced to be unemployed his brows were knitted,
busily planning what to do next.
"Well now, gentlemen," resumed the captain, "let us consider the order
of business. The first thing that must be done now is to unstow the
hold, and deposit its contents on the small island astern of us, which
we shall call Store Island, for brevity's sake. Get a tent pitched
there, Mr Bolton, and bank it up with snow. You can leave Grim to
superintend the unloading. Then, Mr Saunders, do you go and set a gang
of men to cut a canal through the young ice from the ship to the island.
Fortunately the floes there are wide enough apart to let our
quarter-boats float between them. The unshipping won't take long. Tell
Buzzby to take a dozen men with him and collect moss; we'll need a large
quantity for fuel, and if another storm like this comes, it'll be hard
work to get down to it. Send Meetuck to me when you go on deck; I shall
talk to him as to our prospects of finding deer hereabouts, and arrange
a hunt. Doctor, you may either join the hunting party or post up the
observations, etcetera, which have accumulated of late."
"Thank you, Captain," said Singleton, "I'll accept the latter duty, the
more willingly that I wish to have a careful examination of my botanical
specimens."
"And what am I to do, Captain?" enquired Fred.
"What you please, lad."
"Then I'll go and take care of Meetuck; he's apt to get into mischief
when left--"
At this moment a tremendous shout of laughter, long-continued, came from
the deck, and a sound as of numbers of men dancing overhead was heard.
The party in the cabin seized their caps and sprang up the companion,
where they beheld a scene that accounted for the laughter, and induced
them to join in it. At first sight it seemed as if thirty polar bears
had boarded the vessel, and were executing a dance of triumph before
proceeding to make a meal of the crew; but on closer inspection it
became apparent that the men had undergone a strange transformation, and
were capering with delight at the ridiculous appearance they presented.
They were clad from head to foot in Esquimaux costume, and now bore as
strong a resemblance to polar bears as man could attain to.
Meetuck was the pattern and the chief instrument in effecting this
change. At Uppernavik Captain Guy had been induced to purchase a large
number of fox-skins, deer-skins, seal-skins, and other furs as a
speculation, and had them tightly packed and stowed away in the hold,
little imagining the purpose they were ultimately destined to serve.
Meetuck had come on board in a mongrel sort of worn-out seal-skin dress,
but the instant the cold weather set in he drew from a bundle, which he
had brought with him, a dress made of the furs of the Arctic fox, some
of the skins being white and the others blue. It consisted of a loose
coat somewhat in the form of a shirt, with a large hood to it, and a
short elongation behind like the commencement of a tail. The boots were
made of white bear-skin which, at the end of the foot, were made to
terminate with the claws of the animal, and they were so long that they
came up the thigh under the coat, or "jumper" as the men called it, and
thus served instead of trousers. He also wore fur mittens, with a bag
for the fingers, and a separate little bag for the thumb. The hair on
these garments was long and soft, and worn outside, so that when a man
enveloped himself in them, and put up the hood, which well-nigh
concealed the face, he became very much like a bear, or some such
creature, standing on its hind-legs.
Meetuck was a short, fat, burly little fellow by nature, but when he put
on his winter dress he became such a round, soft, squat, hairy, and
comical-looking creature that no one could look at him without laughing;
and the shout with which he was received on deck the first time he made
his appearance in his new costume was loud and prolonged. But Meetuck
was as good-humoured an Esquimaux as ever speared a walrus or lanced a
polar bear. He joined in the laugh, and cut a caper or two to show that
he entered into the spirit of the joke.
When the ship was set fast, and the thermometer fell pretty low, the men
found that their ordinary dreadnoughts and pea-jackets, etcetera, were
not a sufficient protection against the cold, and it occurred to the
captain that his furs might now be turned to good account. Sailors are
proverbially good needle-men of a rough kind. Meetuck showed them how
to set about their work; each man made his own garments, and in less
than a week they were completed. It is true the boots perplexed them a
little, and the less ingenious among the men made very rare and
curious-looking foot-gear for themselves, but they succeeded after a
fashion, and at last the whole crew appeared on deck in their new
habiliments, as we have already mentioned, capering among the snow like
bears, to their own entire satisfaction and to the intense delight of
Meetuck, who now came to regard the white men as brothers--so true is it
that "the tailor makes the man!"
"'Ow 'orribly 'eavy it is, hain't it?" gasped Mivins, after dancing
round the main-hatch till he was nearly exhausted.
"Heavy?" cried Buzzby, whose appearance was such that you would have
hesitated to say whether his breadth or length was greater,--"heavy,
d'ye say? It must be your sperrits wot's heavy, then, for I feel as
light as a feather myself."
"O morther! then may I niver sleep on a bed made o' sich feathers!"
cried O'Riley, capering up to Green, the carpenter's mate, and throwing
a mass of snow in his face. The frost rendered it impossible to form
the snow into balls, but the men made up for this by throwing it about
each other's eyes and ears in handfuls.
"What d'ye mean by insultin' my mate?--take that!" said Peter Grim,
giving the Irishman a twirl that tumbled him on the deck.
"Oh, bad manners to ye," spluttered O'Riley, as he rose and ran away,
"why don't ye hit a man o' yer own size."
"'Deed, then, it must be because there's not one o' my own size to hit,"
remarked the carpenter with a broad grin.
This was true. Grim's colossal proportions were increased so much by
his hairy dress that he seemed to spread out into the dimensions of two
large men rolled into one. But O'Riley was not to be overturned with
impunity. Skulking round behind the crew, who were laughing at Grim's
joke, he came upon the giant in the rear, and seizing the short tail of
his jumper, pulled him violently down on the deck.
"Ah! then give it him, boys," cried O'Riley, pushing the carpenter flat
down, and obliterating his black beard and his whole visage in a mass of
snow. Several of the wilder spirits among the men leaped on the
prostrate Grim, and nearly smothered him before he could gather himself
up for a struggle; then they fled in all directions, while their victim
regained his feet and rushed wildly after them. At last he caught
O'Riley, and grasping him by the two shoulders gave him a heave that was
intended and "calc'lated," as Amos Parr afterwards remarked, "to pitch
him over the foretop-sail-yard!" But an Irishman is not easily
overcome. O'Riley suddenly straightened himself and held his arms up
over his head, and the violent heave, which, according to Parr, was to
have sent him to such an uncomfortable elevation, only pulled the jumper
completely off his body, and left him free to laugh in the face of his
big friend, and run away.
At this point the captain deemed it prudent to interfere.
"Come, come, my lads," he cried, "enough o' this! That's not the
morning work, is it? I'm glad to find that your new dresses," he added
with a significant smile, "make you fond of rough work in the snow;
there's plenty of it before us. Come down below with me, Meetuck; I
wish to talk with you."
As the captain descended to the cabin the men gave a final cheer, and in
ten minutes they were working laboriously at their various duties.
Buzzby and his party were the first ready and off to cut moss. They
drew a sledge after them towards the Red-snow Valley, which was not more
than two miles distant from the ship. This "mossing", as it was termed,
was by no means a pleasant duty. Before the winter became severe the
moss could be cut out from the beds of the snow streams with comparative
ease, but now the mixed turf of willows, heaths, grasses, and moss was
frozen solid, and had to be quarried with crowbars and carried to the
ship like so much stone. However, it was prosecuted vigorously, and a
sufficient quantity was soon procured to pack on the decks of the ship,
and around its sides, so as to keep out the cold. At the same time the
operation of discharging the stores was carried on briskly, and Fred, in
company with Meetuck, O'Riley, and Joseph West, started with the
dog-sledge on a hunting expedition.
In order to enable the reader better to understand the condition of the
_Dolphin_ and her crew, we will detail the several arrangements that
were made at this time and during the succeeding fortnight. As a
measure of precaution, the ship, by means of blasting, sawing, and
warping, was with great labour got into deeper water, where one night's
frost set her fast with a sheet of ice three inches thick round her; in
a few weeks this ice became several feet thick, and the snow drifted up
her hull so much that it seemed as if she were resting on the land, and
had taken final leave of her native element. Strong hawsers were then
secured to Store Island in order to guard against the possibility of her
being carried away by any sudden disruption of the ice. The disposition
of the masts, yards, and sails were next determined on; the top-gallant
masts were struck, the lower yards got down to the housings. The
top-sail yards, gaff, and jib-boom, however, were left in their places.
The top-sails and courses were kept bent to the yards, the sheets being
unrove, and the clews tucked in. The rest of the binding sails were
stowed on deck to prevent their thawing during winter; and the spare
spars were lashed over the ship's sides, to leave a clear space for
taking exercise in bad weather.
The stores, in order to relieve the strain on the ship, were removed to
Store Island, and snugly housed under the tent erected there, and then a
thick bank of snow was heaped up round it. After this was accomplished,
all the boats were hauled up beside the tent and covered with snow,
except the two quarter boats, which were left hanging at the davits all
winter. When the thermometer fell below zero it was found that the
vapours below, and the breath of the men, condensed on the beams of the
lower deck and in the cabin near the hatchway. It was therefore
resolved to convert some sheet-iron, which they fortunately possessed,
into pipes, which, being conducted from the cooking-stove through the
length of the ship, served in some degree to raise the temperature and
ventilate the cabins. A regular daily allowance of coal was served out,
and four steady men appointed to attend to the fire in regular watches,
for the double purpose of seeing that none of the fuel should be wasted,
and of guarding against fire. They had likewise charge of the
fire-pumps and buckets, and two tanks of water, all of which were kept
in the hatchway in constant readiness in case of accidents. In addition
to this, a fire-brigade was formed, with Joseph West, a steady, quiet,
active young seaman, as its captain, and their stations in the event of
fire were fixed beforehand; also a hole was kept constantly open in the
ice alongside to ensure at all times a sufficient supply of water.
Strict regulations as to cleanliness, and the daily airing of the
hammocks, were laid down, and adhered to throughout the winter. A
regular allowance of provisions was appointed to each man, so that they
should not run the risk of starving before the return of the wild fowl
in spring. But those provisions were all salt, and the captain trusted
much to their hunting expeditions for a supply of fresh food, without
which there would be little hope of their continuing in a condition of
good health. Coffee was served out at breakfast, and cocoa at supper,
besides being occasionally supplied at other times to men who had been
engaged in exhausting work in extremely cold weather. Afterwards, when
the dark season set in, and the crew were confined by the intense cold
more than formerly within the ship, various schemes were set afoot for
passing the time profitably and agreeably. Among others a school was
started by the captain for instructing such of the crew as chose to
attend in reading, writing, and arithmetic, and in this hyperborean
academy Fred Ellice acted as the writing-master, and Tom Singleton as
the accountant. The men were much amused at first at the idea of "goin'
to school", and some of them looked rather shy at it, but O'Riley, after
some consideration, came boldly forward and said: "Well, boys, bad luck
to me if I don't think I'll be a scholard afther all. My old
gran'mother used to tell me, whin I refused to go to the school that was
kip be an owld man as tuck his fees out in murphies and photteen,--says
she: `Ah ye spalpeen, ye'll niver be cliverer nor the pig, ye wont.'
`Ah, then, I hope not,' says I, `for sure she's far the cliverest in the
house, an' ye wouldn't have me to be cliverer than me own gran'mother,
would ye?' says I. So I niver wint to school, and more be token, I
can't sign me name, and if it was only to learn how to do that, I'll go
and jine; indeed I will." So O'Riley joined, and before long every man
in the ship was glad to join, in order to have something to do.
The doctor also, twice a week, gave readings from Shakespeare, a copy of
which he had fortunately brought with him. He also read extracts from
the few other books they happened to have on board, and after a time,
finding unexpectedly that he had a talent that way, he began to draw
upon his memory and his imagination, and told long stories (which were
facetiously called _lectures_) to the men, who listened to them with
great delight. Then Fred started an illustrated newspaper once a week,
which was named the _Arctic Sun_, and which was in great favour during
the whole course of its brief existence. It is true, only one copy was
issued each morning of publication, because, besides supplying the
greater proportion of the material himself, and executing the
illustrations in a style that would have made Mr Leech of the present
day envious, he had to transcribe the various contributions he received
from the men and others in a neat, legible hand. But this _one_ copy
was perused and reperused as no single copy of any paper extant--not
excepting _The Times_ or _Punch_--has ever yet been perused; and when it
was returned to the editor to be carefully placed in the archives of the
_Dolphin_, it was emphatically the worse for wear. Besides all this, a
theatre was set agoing--of which we shall have more to say hereafter.
In thus minutely recounting the various expedients which these banished
men fell upon to pass the long dark hours of an Arctic winter, we may,
perhaps, give the reader the impression that a great deal of thought and
time were bestowed upon _amusement_, as if that were the chief end and
object of their life in those regions. But we must remind him that
though many more pages might be filled in recounting all the
particulars, but a small portion of their time was, after all, taken up
in this way; and it would have been well for them had they been able to
find more to amuse them than they did, for the depressing influence of
the long-continued darkness, and the want of a sufficiency of regular
employment for so many months, added to the rigorous nature of the
climate in which they dwelt, well-nigh broke their spirits at last.
In order to secure warmth during winter, the deck of the ship was padded
with moss about a foot deep, and, down below, the walls were lined with
the same material. The floors were carefully plastered with common
paste, and covered with oakum a couple of inches deep, over which a
carpet of canvas was spread. Every opening in the deck was fastened
down and covered deeply over with moss, with the exception of one hatch,
which was their only entrance, and this was kept constantly closed,
except when it was desirable to ventilate. Curtains were hung up in
front of it to prevent draughts. A canvas awning was also spread over
the decks from stem to stern, so that it was confidently hoped the
_Dolphin_ would prove a snug tenement even in the severest cold.
As has been said before, the snow-drift almost buried the hull of the
ship; and, as snow is a good _non-conductor_ of heat, this further
helped to keep up the temperature within. A staircase of snow was built
up to the bulwarks on the larboard quarter, and on the starboard side an
inclined plane of snow was sloped down to the ice to facilitate the
launching of the sledges when they had to be pulled on deck.
Such were the chief arrangements and preparations that were made by our
adventurers for spending the winter; but although we have described them
at this point in our story, many of them were not completed until a much
later period.