SEAL-STALKING--A GLORIOUS DAY'S SPORT--PIPER PETER AND THE BEAR--A
STRANGE DUET--THE SEAL-STALKERS' RETURN.
It was about midnight on the 24th of April when the seals were sighted.
Midnight, and the sun was low down on the horizon, but, for three long
months, never more would it set or sink behind the sea of ice. The
weather was bright, bracing, beautiful. Not a cloud in the sky, and
hardly wind enough to let the ships get well in through the pack,
towards the place where the seals lay as thick as bees, and all
unconscious of their approaching fate. But the _Arrandoon_ got steam
up, and commenced forcing her way through the closely packed yet loosely
floating bergs, leaving behind her a wake of clear water, which made it
easy work for the _Scotia_ and the saucy little "two-stick yacht" to
follow her example.
My young reader must dismiss from his mind the idea of tall,
mountainous, pinnacled icebergs, like those he sees in common
engravings. The ice was in heavy pieces, it is true, from forty to
sixty or seventy feet square, and probably six feet out of water, with
hummocks here and there, and piles of bay ice that looked like packs of
gigantic cards, but so flat and low upon the whole, that from the
masthead a stretch of snow-clad ice could be seen, spreading westwards
and north for many and many a mile.
When even the power of steam failed to force the _Arrandoon_ farther
into the pack, the ships were stopped, fires were banked and sails were
clewed, and all hands prepared for instant action. The men girt their
knives and steels around them, and threw their "Jowrie-tows" across
their broad shoulders, and the officers, dressed in their sealing
costume, seized their rifles and shot-belts.
Next moment the bo's'n's shrill pipe sounded out in the still air, and
the order was shouted,--
"All hands over the side."
In five minutes more the ships were apparently deserted. You wouldn't
have heard a sound on board, for few were left but stewards and cooks;
while little boy Freezing Powders and his wonderful cockatoo had it all
to themselves down in the saloon of the great steamship. The boy was
bending down beside his favourite in the corner.
"What's the row? What's the row? What's the row?" the bird was saying.
"I don't know nuffin' more nor you do, Cockie," was the boy's reply;
"but it strikes dis chile dat dey have all taken leave of der senses,
ebery moder's son of dem. And de captain he have gone up into de
crow's-nest, which looks for all de world like a big barrel of treacle,
Cockie, and he have shut hisself in der, and nuffin' does he do but wave
a long stick wid a black ball at de end of it. [The fan with which
Greenland captains guide their men in the direction of the seals.] Dat
is all de knows; but oh! Cockie, don't you take such drefful big
mouf-fuls o' hemp. Supposin' anyting happen to you, Cockie, den I hab
nobody to talk to dat fully understand dis chile."
The _Canny Scotia_ was moored to the ice so close to the _Arrandoon_
that the captains of the respective ships could maintain a conversation
without stressing their lungs to any very great extent. Talking thus,
each in his own crow's-nest, they looked for all the world like a couple
of chimney-sweeps conversing together from rival chimneys. The cooks
were not idle in the galleys, they were busy boiling hams and huge
joints of beef, and these, when cooked, were taken on deck; for sealing
is hungry work, and every time a man brings a drag to the vessel's side
he helps himself to a lordly slice and a biscuit.
By-and-by the draggers began to drop in fast enough, each one hauling an
immense skin with the fat or blubber attached; and these skins were all
hoisted on board the _Scotia_, for all hands were working for Silas.
But our heroes had the sport, and, taking it all in all, I do not think
there is any sport in the world to compare to that of seal-stalking.
Without any of the cowardliness of battue shooting, in which the poor
surrounded animals are helpless, and cruelly and mercilessly slain, you
have far more excitement, and the sport is not unattended with danger.
To be a good seal-stalker you need the limbs of an athlete, the eye of
an excellent marksman, and all the stealth and cunning of a tabby cat or
a Coromanche Indian. If your nerves are not well strung, or your
muscles not like iron, you may fail to leap across the lane of dark
water that separates piece from piece; if you do fail and are not
speedily helped out, the current may drag you beneath the bergs, or
those dreadful sharks, that seldom are absent where blood is being
spilled on the sea of ice, may seize and pull you down to a fearful
death; if you are not a good shot, your seals will get away, for your
bullet _must_ pierce either neck or head; and, lastly, if you are not
cunning, if you do not stalk with stealth, your seals will escape with
the speed of lightning.
On warm, sunny days the seals lie close and sleep soundly, but they
always have their sentries set. Kill the sentry, and many others are at
your mercy; miss him, or merely wound him, and he gives the alarm
_instanter_, and all the rest jump helter-skelter into the sea,
according you a beautiful view of their tail-ends, which you don't find
very advantageous in the way of making a bag.
A good sealer, like a good skirmisher, takes advantage of every bit of
cover, and many a death-blow is dealt from the shelter of a lump of
loose ice.
The gunners to-day, as they usually do, went on after the seals in
skirmishing order, in one long line, each taking a breadth of about
seventy or one hundred yards.
It was an hour past midnight before they left the ships. When it was
nine in the morning there was a kind of general assembly of the riflemen
to breakfast, behind a large square hummock of packed bay ice, and only
the very oldest among them could believe that it was so late. [These
strange hummocks, which resemble, as already stated, huge packs of
cards, are formed of pieces of bay ice about a foot thick, which has
been broken up between two bergs, and finally thrown up out of the water
altogether. They form quite a characteristic feature of a North
Greenland icescape.] Why, to our own particular heroes it seemed
scarcely an hour since they had left their ship, so great is the
excitement of seal-stalking. But Ralph and Rory and Allan had done so
well, and had managed to lay so many splendid seals dead on every piece
of ice, that they earned high encomiums from the mate of the _Canny
Scotia_; and even the doctor hadn't shot amiss, and proud was he to be
told so.
"But, my dear sirs," said Sandy, "I'd like to know why a good surgeon
shouldn't be a good sportsman. Don't you know that the great Liston
himself was sometimes summoned to an operation at the hospital, just as
he was mounting his horse to ride off to the hunt, arrayed in scarlet
and cords?"
"And what did he do?" asked Rory.
"Pass the pie," said Ralph.
"Why," continued the doctor, enthusiastically, "doffed his scarlet coat
and donned an old gown, whipped off a leg in one minute ten and a half
seconds, and was in the saddle again five minutes after that."
"Brayvo!" cried Captain Cobb, "doctor, you're a brick, and if ever you
come out to New Jersey, come and see Cobb, and I guess he'll give you a
good time of it."
"Ray," said Rory.
"Well, Row," said Ray.
"Your face and hands are begrimed with powder, and there is a kind of
wolfish look about you that is worth studying. You look like a
frozen-out blacksmith who hasn't a penny to buy a bit of peas-pudding or
a morsel of soap."
"I'm hungry, anyhow," said Ray. "How good of McBain to send such a
jolly breakfast! But I say, Row, d'ye remember the proverb about
Claudius? Well, don't you call my face and hands black till you've
washed your own. You look like a chimney-sweep who has been out of work
for a week, and got no food since the day before yesterday."
"Well, well," says Row, "but 'deed in troth, my dear big boy, nobody can
wonder at your being successful as a seal-stalker, for what with the
colour of your face, and the urgency, so to speak, of the two eyes of
you, and that big fur cap, why the seals take you for one o' themselves,
a big bladder-nose."
"Pass the ham," said Ray; "Allan, some more coffee, I begin to feel like
a giant refreshed."
"I do declare upon mine honour," said De Vere, "dat dis is de most
glorious pignig [picnic] I ever have de pleasure to attend. But just
you look at mine friend Seth, how funnily he do dress."
"It may be a funny way," said Allan, "but it is a most effectual one;
dear old trapper Seth has killed more seals this morning than any two of
us."
Seth was dressed from top to toe in young seals' skins, the hair
outwards, with the exception of the cap, which was of darker fur, and a
black patch on his back. They were not loose garments, they were almost
as tight as a harlequin's; but when Seth drew his fur cap over his face
and threw himself on the ice, and began wriggling along, his resemblance
to a saddle-seal was so preposterous that everybody burst into a hearty
laugh.
"That's the way I gets so near them," said Seth, standing once more
erect.
"Look, look!" cried Rory, and every eye was turned in the direction in
which he pointed; and there, in a pool of dark water not twenty yards
away, a dozen beautiful heads, with round, wondering eyes, had popped up
to gaze at them.
It was a lovely sight, and never a rifle was lifted to shoot. Presently
they disappeared, but on the mate of the _Scotia_ giving vent to a loud
whistle, up came the heads again, and there they remained as long as the
mate whistled, for of all wild creatures in the world that I have ever
come across, the Greenland seal is the most inquisitive; and no doubt
the experience of some of my old-boy readers who have been to the
country is the same as my own.
Onwards, steadily onwards, all that day went our sportsmen; they did not
even assemble again for another meal, and at five of the clock they
found themselves fully four miles from the place where the ships lay.
The field of seals which they had attacked was some ten miles square,
and although they had worked their way into it for miles, nevertheless
when the flags were hoisted to recall them, at two bells in the first
dog-watch, the field of seals still remained about ten miles square.
This may seem strange, but is thus accounted for. Out of say twenty
seals on each berg, fifteen at least would escape, and these swam away
under the pack, and again took the ice on the far-off edge of the field
of seals.
It being somewhat too far to drag the skins to the ship, bings had been
made on the ice during the latter part of the day, so that no dead seals
should be left unflensed upon the ice. When they wended their way
homewards at the end of this glorious day's shooting a broom was stuck
besom-side up, on each bing, with the name of the ship on the handles.
This is done with the view of preventing other ships from appropriating
the skins. This is the custom of the country--one of the unwritten laws
of the sea of ice.
While the gunners and their merry men were yet a long way off from the
ships, there came a hail from the crow's-nest of the _Arrandoon_, which,
by the way, McBain had hardly left all the time. Peter had brought him
up coffee and food, and he had danced in the interval to keep himself
warm.
"On deck there?"
"Ay, ay, sir," roared Peter, looking up.
"Is dinner all laid?"
"Ay, sir, and the cook is waiting."
"Well, on with the kilt, Peter, if you're not afraid of getting your
hocks frozen, get the bagpipes, and go and meet the hunters."
Down below dived Peter, and he was up again in what sailors call "a
brace of shakes," arrayed in full Highland costume, with the bagpipes
over his arm. No wonder the cockatoo cried,--
"De-ah me?" when he saw Peter, and added, "Such a to-do! such a to-do!
such a to-do!"
Now the bears had been rather numerous on the pack that day, just as the
sharks were in the water. Doubtless the sharks found many a poor
wounded seal to close their vengeful jaws upon, for they are either too
cowardly or not swift enough to catch a healthy phoca; but the bears had
behaved themselves unusually well. They had had plenty to eat, at all
events, and seemed to know that the men at work on the ice were laying
up a store of provisions for them that would last them all the summer,
so they had made no attempt to attack them. But on their way back to
the ship the doctor, who was striding on a little way in advance of the
rest, startled a huge monster who was sunning himself behind a hummock.
It would be difficult to say whether the bear or the doctor was the more
startled; at all events the latter fired and missed, and the former made
off, running in the direction of the ships. But he hadn't gone above
half a mile when who should Bruin meet but Peter, coming swinging along
with his bagpipes under his arm. Never a gun had Peter, and never a
club--only the pipes. As soon as they saw each other they both stopped
short.
"I do declare," Bruin seemed to say to himself, "here is a man or
something all alone. But what a strange dress! I never saw anybody
dressed like that before. Never mind, he looks sweet and nice; I'll
have a bit."
"I do declare," said Peter to himself, "if that isn't a big lump of a
bear coming along, and I haven't even a stone to throw at him. Whatever
shall I do at all, at all? Och! and och! this is the end of me now, at
last. Sure enough it is marching to my own funeral I've been all the
time, instead of going to meet the sportsmen. Oh! Peter, Peter! you'll
never see your old mother in this world again, nor Scotland either.
Yonder big bear is licking his chops to devour you. Yonder is the big
hairy sarcophagus that'll soon contain your mangled remains. Who would
have thought that Peter of Arrandoon would have lived to play his own
coronach?" [Coronach--a funeral hymn or wail for the departed.]
Hardly knowing what he did, poor Peter shouldered his pipes, and began
to play a dreary, droning, yelling, squealing lament.
At the same moment Bruin commenced to perform some of the queerest
antics ever a bear tried before. He stretched first one leg, then
another, and he stretched his neck and described circles in the air with
his nose, keeping time with the music. Then he sat up entirely on one
end.
"Oh!" he seemed to say, "flesh and blood couldn't stand that; I must,
yes, I must give vent to a Ho--o--o--o--o--
"And likewise to a Hoo--oo--oo--oo--oo!!"
Reader, the voice of an asthmatical steam-engine, heard at midnight as
it enters a tunnel, is a melancholy sound, so is the Welsh hooter, and
the fog-horn of a Newcastle coal brig; but all combined, and sounding
together, would be but a feeble imitation of the agonising notes of that
great white bear as he sat on his haunches listening to Peter's pipes.
Peter himself saw the effect his music had produced, and, like the
"towsy tike" in _Tam o' Shanter_,--
"He hotched and blew wi' might and main."
And, as if Peter had been a great magician, Bruin felt impelled to try
to follow the notes, though I am bound to say he did not always keep
even in the key-note. Surely such a duet was never heard before in this
world. There was a small open space of water not far from the hummock
on which the piper of the _Arrandoon_ had stationed himself; it was soon
alive with the heads of hundreds of seals who had come up to listen; so,
upon the whole, Peter had a most appreciative audience. But see yonder,
is that a seal on the ice that is creeping closer and closer up behind
the bear? Nay, for seals don't carry rifles; and now the newcomer
levels his gun just for a moment, there is a puff of blue-white smoke,
the bear springs high in the air, then falls prostrate on the snow. His
ululations are over for ever and ay; the piper plays a merrier air, and
advances with speed to meet old Seth and the rest of the sportsmen, who,
glad as they are to see him alive, greet him with uproarious cheers and
laughter. Then a procession is formed, and with Peter and his pipes
striding on in front, thus do the seal-stalkers return to the
_Arrandoon_.