RORY'S REVERIE--SILAS ON THE SCYMNUS BOREALIS--THE BATTLE WITH THE
SHARKS--RORY GETS IN FOR IT AGAIN--THROWN AMONG THE SHARKS.
The ships still lay hard and fast in the ice-pack, many miles to the
nor'ard and eastward of the Isle of Jan Mayen. There was as yet no sign
of the frost giving way. Day after day the bay ice between the bergs
got thicker and thicker, and the thermometer still stood steadily well
down below zero. But the wind never blew, and there never was a speck
of cloud in the brilliant sapphire sky, nor even haze itself to shear
the sun of his beams; so the cold was hardly felt, and after a brisk
walk or scamper over the ice our heroes felt so warm that they were in
the habit of throwing themselves down on the snow on the southern side
of a hummock of ice. Book in hand, Rory would sometimes lie thus for
fully half an hour on a stretch. Not always reading, though; the fact
of Rory's having a book in his hand was no proof that he was reading,
for just as often he was dreaming; and I'll tell you a little secret--
there were a pair of beautiful eyes which were filled with tears when
last he had seen them, there were two rosy lips that had quivered as
they parted to breathe the word "good-bye." These, and a soft, small
hand that had lain for a moment in his, haunted him by night and by day,
and seemed ever present with him through all his wild adventures.
Ah! but they didn't make him unhappy, though; no, but quite the reverse.
He was reclining thus one day all by himself, about a quarter of a mile
from his ship, when Ralph and McBain came gently up behind him, walking
as silently as the crisp snow, that felt like powdered glass under their
feet, would permit them.
"Hullo! Rory," cried McBain, in a voice of thunder.
Startled from his reverie, Rory sprang to his feet, and instinctively
grasped his rifle.
His friends laughed at him.
"It is somewhat late to seize your rifle now, my boy," said McBain;
"supposing now we'd been a bear, why, we would be eating you at this
present moment."
"Or making a mouse of you," added Ralph, "as the yellow bear did of poor
Freezing Powders; and at this very minute you'd be--
"`Dancin' for de dear life
Among de Greenland snow.'"
"I was reading," said Rory, smiling, "that beautiful poem of Wordsworth,
_We are seven_."
"Wordsworth's _We are seven_?" cried Ralph, laughing. "Oh! Row, Row,
you'll be the death of me some day. Since when did you learn to read
with your book upside down?"
"Had I now?" said Rory, with an amused look of candour. "In troth I
daresay you are right."
"But come on, Row, boy," continued Ralph, "luncheon is all ready, Peter
is waiting, and after lunch Silas Grig is going to show as some fun."
"What more malley-shooting?" asked Rory.
"No, Row, boy," was the reply; "he is going to lead us forth to battle
against the sharks."
"Against the sharks!" exclaimed Rory, incredulous.
"I'm not in fun, really," replied Ralph. "Silas tells us they are in
shoals of thousands at present under us; that the sea swarms with them,
some fifteen feet long, others nearer twenty."
"Oh!" said Row; "this _is_ interesting. Come on; I'm ready."
While the trio stroll leisurely shipwards over the snow, let me try to
explain to my reader what Rory meant by malley-shooting, as taught them
by Silas Grig. The term, or name, "malley," is that which is given by
Greenlandmen to the Arctic gull. Although not so charming in plumage as
the snowbird, it is nevertheless a very handsome bird, and has many
queer ways of its own which are interesting to the naturalist, and which
you do not find described in books. These gulls build their nests early
in the season on the cliffs of Faroe and Shetland, and probably, though
I have never found them, in sheltered caves of Jan Mayen and Western
Greenland as well. Despite the extreme cold, they manage to bring forth
and rear their young successfully, and are always ready to follow
Greenland ships in immense flocks. Wherever work is going on, wherever
the crack of the rifle is heard on the pack, wherever the snow is
stained crimson and yellow with blood, the malleys will be there in
daring thousands. The most curious part of the thing is this: they
possess a power of either scent or sight, which enables them to discover
their quarry, although scores of miles away from it. For example--the
Arctic gulls, as a rule, do not follow a ship for sake of the bits of
bread and fat that may be thrown overboard. Some of them do, I know,
but I look upon these as merely the lazaroni, the beggars of their
tribe; your healthy, youthful, aristocratic malley prefers something he
considers better. Give him blubber to eat, or the flesh of a new slain
seal, and he will follow you far enough. Now a ship may be lying
becalmed off this pack, with no seals in sight, and doing nothing; if so
she will be deserted by these birds. Not from the crow's-nest, though
aided by the most powerful telescope, will you be able to descry a
single gull; but no sooner is a sealskin or two hauled on deck to be
cleared of their fat, than notice seems to be flashed to the far-off
gulls, and in a few minutes they are winging around you, making the
welkin ring with their wild, delighted screams. They alight in the
water around a morsel of meat in such bunches, that a table-cloth would
cover two dozen of them.
Having had enough--and that "enough" means something enormous--they go
off for a "fly," just as tumbling pigeons do. You may see them in
hundreds high in air, sailing round and round, enjoying themselves
apparently to the very utmost, and shrieking with joy. Now is the time
for the skua to attack them. A bold, black, hawklike rascal is this
skua, a robber and a thief. He never comes within gunshot of a ship.
He is as wild and untamable as the north wind itself; yet, no sooner
have the malleys commenced their post-prandial gambols than he is in the
midst of them. He does not want to kill them; only some one or more
must disgorge their food. On this the skua lives. No wonder that
Greenland sailors call him the unclean bird.
The malley-gull floats on the waves as lightly and gently as a child's
toy air-ball would. His usual diet is fish, except in sealing times;
and of the fish he catches the marauding skua never fails to get his
share. It is for the sake of the feathers sailors shoot these birds on
the ice, for they are nearly as well feathered as an eider duck.
Getting tired of shooting seals in the water, Rory and Allan one day,
leaving the others on the banks of the great ice-hole, determined to
make a bag of feathers. And here is how they bagged their game.
Armed with fowling-pieces, they retired to some distance from the water
party and lay down behind a hummock of ice. Here they might have lain
until this day without a bird looking twice in their direction had they
not provided themselves with a lure. This lure was simply a pair of the
wings of a gull, which one waved above his head, while the other
prepared to fire right and left. And not a minute would these wings be
waved aloft ere the gulls, with that strange curiosity inherent in all
wild creatures, would begin to circle around, coming nearer and nearer,
tack and half-tack, until they were within reach of the guns, when--down
they came. But the untimely end of one brace nor twenty did not prevent
their companions from trying to solve the mystery of the waving wings.
Luncheon was on the table, and our friends were seated around it, all
looking happy and hungry. Rory would have liked to have asked Silas
Grig right straight away about the expedition against the sharks but for
one thing--he didn't like to appear too inquisitive; and, for another,
he was not quite sure even now that it was not one of Ralph's pretty
jokes. But when everybody had been served, when weather and future
prospects, the state of the thermometer and height of the barometer, had
been discussed, Rory found he could not contain himself any longer.
"What are you going to be doing after lunch?" he asked Silas, pointedly.
"Aha, boy Rory!" was the reply; "we'll have such sport as you never saw
the likes o' before!"
Rory now began to see there really was no joke about the matter; and
Ralph, who was sitting next to him, pinched him for his doubt and
misbelief. The two young men could read each other's thoughts like
books.
"Do you mean to say you are going to catch sharks in earnest, you know?"
asked Rory.
"Well," said Silas, with a bit of a laugh, "I'm going to have as good a
try at it as ever I had. And as for catching 'em in earnest, I'm
thinking it won't be fun--for the sharks!"
"It is the _Scymnus borealis_, isn't it?" said Dr Sandy McFlail,
"belongin', if my memory serves me, to the natural family _Squalidae_--a
powerful brute, and a vera dangerous, too."
"You may call him the _Aurora borealis_ if you like, doctor," said
Silas; "and as for his family connections I know nought, but I daresay
he comes from a jolly bad stock."
"Natural history books," said Allan, "don't speak of their being so very
numerous."
"Natural history books!" reiterated Silas, with some warmth of disdain.
"What do they know? what can they teach a man? Write a complete history
of all the creatures that move about on God's fair earth, that fly in
His air or swim in His sea, and you'd fill Saint Paul's with books from
top to bottom--from the mighty cellars beneath to the golden cross
itself. No, take my advice, boy Rory; if you want to study nature, put
little faith in books. The classification is handy, say you? Yes,
doctor; and I've seen a stripling fresh from college look as proud as a
two-year-old peacock because he could spin you off the Greek names of a
few specimens in the British Museum, though he couldn't have told you
the ways and habits of any one of them to save him from having his leave
stopped. There is only one way, gentlemen, to study natural history;
you must go to the great book of Nature itself--ay, and be content, and
thankful, too, if, during even a long lifetime, you are able to learn
the contents of even a single page of it."
Rory, and the doctor, too, looked at Silas with a kind of new-born
admiration; there was more in this man, with his weather-beaten,
flower-pot-coloured face, than they had had any idea of.
"If I had time, gentlemen," Silas added, "I could tell you some queer
stories about sharks. `I reckon,' as poor old Cobb used to say, that
some o' them would raise your hair a bit, too!"
"And what kind of a monster is this Greenland shark?" asked Allan.
"No more a monster," said Silas, "than I am. God made us both, and we
have each some end to fulfil in life. But if you want me to tell you
something about him, I'll confess to you I love the animal about as much
as I do an alligator. He comes prowling around the icebergs when we are
sealing to see what he can pick up in the shape of a dead or wounded
seal, a chunk o' blubber, or a man's leg. He is neither dainty nor
particular, he has the appetite of a healthy ostrich, and about as much
conscience as a coal-carter's horse. He is as wary as a five-season
fox, and when he pays your ship a visit when out at sea, he looks as
humble and unsophisticated as a bull trout. He'll take whatever you
like to throw him, though--anything, in fact, from a cow's-heel to the
cabin boy--and he'll swallow a red-hot brick rather than go away with an
empty stomach. But when he comes around the ice at old-sealing time he
doesn't come alone, he brings his father and mother with him, and his
uncles and aunts, and apparently all his natural family, as the doctor
calls it. And fine fun they have, though they don't agree particularly
well even _en famille_. I've seen five of them on to one seal crang,
and there was little interchange of courtesies, I can tell you. He's
not a brave fish, the Greenland shark, big and all as he is. If you
fall into the water among a score of them your best plan is to keep cool
and kick. Yes, gentlemen, by keeping cool and kicking plenty I've known
more than one man escape without a bite. The getting out is the worst,
though, for as long as you splash they keep at a distance and look on;
they don't quite know what to make of you; but as soon as you get a hold
of the end of the rope, and are being drawn out, look sharp, that's all,
or it will be `Snap!' and you will be minus one leg before you can wink,
and thankful you may be it isn't two. A mighty tough skin has the
Greenland shark," continued Silas; "I've played upon the back of one for
over half an hour with a Colt's revolver, and it just seemed to tickle
him--nothing more. I don't think sharks have much natural affection,
and they are no respecters of persons. I do believe they would just as
soon dine off little Freezing Powders here as they would off a leg of
McBain."
"Oh, oh, Massa Silas!" cried Freezing Powders, "don't talk like dat; you
makes my flesh all creep like nuffin' at all!"
"They are slow in their movements, aren't they?" said the doctor.
"Ay!" said Silas, "when they get everything their own way; but they are
fierce, revengeful, and terrible in their wrath. An angry shark will
bite a bit out of your boat, collar an oar, or do anything to spite you,
though it generally ends in his having his own head split in the long
run."
[Silas Grig's description of the Greenland shark is a pretty correct
one, so far as my own experience goes.--G.S.]
"The men are all ready, sir," said Stevenson, entering the cabin at that
moment, "to go over the side, sir."
"Thank you," said the captain; "send them on to the ice, then, for a
general skylark till we come up."
When the officers did come up they found all the men on the ice, and a
pretty row they were having. They were running, racing, jumping high
leap and low leap, boxing, and fencing with single-sticks,
quarter-staves, and foils; and last but not least, a party were dancing
the wild and exciting reels of Scotland, with Peter playing to them just
as loudly as he knew how to, although his eyes seemed starting from his
head, and his face was as red as a dorking's comb in laying season.