shivering under polar skies, the next roasting under atropical sun."
"Come, come, be easy, Ben; be easy," I cried, half-rising from thegrass. "If you were under polar skies one day, how, in the name ofmystery, could you be in the tropics next, Captain Roberts? I shallimagine you are going to draw the long bow, as the Yankees call it."
"Well, well, Nie; the fact is, we passed so pleasant an existence in the_Sans Pareil_, that time really glided away as if we had been indreamland all the while. We sailed away to the far north in the earlyspring of the year. We didn't go after either seals or whales; but wedid have the sport for all that. Our captain was one of those realgentlemen that you do find now and then commanding ships in the RoyalNavy. Easy-going and complacent, but a stickler for duty and servicefor all that. There wasn't a man or officer in the ship who wouldn'thave risked his life at any moment to please him--ay, or laid it down induty's cause. Indeed, the men would any day do more for Captain Mann'snod and smile, than they would do for any one else's shouted word ofcommand.
"We dredged our way up north to Greenland. It was a stormy spring. Weoften had to lie-to for a whole week together; but we were a jolly crew,and well-officered, and we had on board two civilians--Professor kind ofchaps I think they were--and they were the life and soul of the wholeship. Whenever we could we took soundings, and hauled up mud andshingle and stuff from the bottom of the dark ocean, even when it was amile deep and more. But when that mud was washed away, and the livingspecimens spread out and arranged on bits of jet-black paper, whatwonders we did see, to be sure! Our Scotch doctor called them`ferlies': he called everything wonderful a `ferlie.' But theseparticular ferlies, Nie, took the shape of tiny wee shells of all thecolours in the rainbow, and funny wee fishes, some not bigger than apin-point. But, oh! the beauty, the more than loveliness of them! Theroughest old son of a gun on board of us held up his hands in admirationwhen he saw them. We cruised all round Spitzbergen, and all down theedge of the eastern pack ice. We shot bears and foxes innumerable;walruses, narwhals, seals, and even whales fell to our guns; while thenumber of strange birds we bagged and set up would have filled a museum.
"Some of those walruses gave us fun, though. I remember once we fellamidst ice positively crowded with them. They seemed but littleinclined to budge, either. Again and again we fought our way throughthem; but the number seemed to increase rather than diminish, till atlast our fellows--we were two boats' crews--were thoroughly exhausted,and fain to take to the boats. Was the battle ended then? I thought itwas only just beginning, when I saw around us the water alive withfierce tusked heads evidently bent on avenging the slaughter of theircomrades.
"Our good surgeon was as fond of sport as anyone ever I met, but heconfessed that day he had quite enough of it. At one time the peril wewere in was very great indeed. Several times the brutes had all butfastened their terrible tusks on the gunwale of our boat. Had theysucceeded, we should have been capsized, and entirely at their mercy.
"The surgeon, with his great bone-crushing gun, loaded and fired as fastas ever fingers could; but still they kept coming.
"`Ferlies'll never cease,' cried the worthy medico, blowing the brainsclean out of one who had almost swamped the boat from the stern.Meanwhile it fared but badly with the other boat. The men were fightingwith clubs and axes, their ammunition being entirely spent. One poorfellow was pierced through the arm by the tusk of a walrus and fairlydragged into the water, where he sank before he could be rescued.
"The ship herself bore down to our assistance at last, and such a rainof bullets was poured upon the devoted heads of those walruses that theywere fain to dive below. The noise of this battle was somethingterrible; the shrieks of the cow walruses, and the grunting, groaning,and bellowing of the bulls, defy all attempts at description.
"What do you think," continued Captain Roberts, "I have here in mypocket-book? Look; a sketch of a strangely fantastic little iceberg thedoctor made half an hour after the battle. He was a strange man--partlysportsman, partly naturalist, poet, painter, all combined."
"Is he dead?"
"No, not he; I'll warrant he is busy sketching somewhere in the interiorof Africa at this very moment. But I loved Greenland so, Nie, that oldas I am I wouldn't mind going back again. The beauty of some of theaurora scenes, and the moonlight scenes, can never be imagined by yourstay-at-home folk. We went into winter quarters. Well, yes, it was abit dreary at times; but what with fun and jollity, and games of everykind on board, and sledging parties and bear and fox hunts on shore onthe ice around us, the time really didn't seem so very long after all."
"What say you to lunch, Ben, my boy?" I remarked.
"The very thing," replied my friend; "but first and foremost, just shakethat ferocious-looking stag-beetle off your shoulder; he'll have you bythe ear before you know where you are."
"Ugh!" I cried, knocking the beast a yard away. The creature turnedand shook his horrid mandibles threateningly at me, for a stag-beetlenever runs away. Although admiring his pluck, I could not stand hisimpudence, so I flicked him away, and he fell into the lake.
"Ah! Nie," Captain Roberts said, "if the wild beasts of the Africanjungle were only half as courageous and fierce as that beetle, not somany of our gay sportsmen would go after them. Only fancy that creatureas big as an elephant!
"Well, Nie, in that cruise of ours, we had no sooner got back to Englandand been surveyed than off we were down south, across the Bay of Biscay.No storms then; we could have crossed it in the dinghy boat. VisitedMadeira. You know, Nie, how grand the scenery is in that beautifulisland."
"And how delicious the turtle!" I said.
"True, O king!" said Ben; "the bigwigs in London think they know whatturtle tastes like, but they're mistaken; there is as much differencebetween the flavour of a turtle newly caught, and one that has beenstarved to death as your London turtles are, as there is between a bitof cork and a well-boiled cauliflower."
"Bravo! Ben, you speak the truth."
"Then we visited romantic Saint Helena. It used to be called `a rock inthe middle of the ocean.' How different now! A more fertile andluxuriant place there isn't in all the wide, wide world. We called atAscension next; well, that is a rock if you like, not a green thingexcept at the top o' the hill [it has since been cultivated]. But thebirds' eggs, Nie, and the turtle. It makes me hungry to think of themeven now.
"We had whole months of sport at the Cape and in South Africa, and allup the coast as far as Zambesi. We visited Madagascar; more sportthere, and a bit of honest fighting; then on to the Comoro islands--moreromantic scenery, and more fighting; then to Zanzibar. Captured prizes,took soundings, dredged, and went on again. On, to Seychelles, then toJava, Sumatra, Penang, then back to India, and thence to Africa, the RedSea, Mocha; why, it would be easier far to mention the places we did notvisit. But the best of it was that we stayed for months at every newplace where we cast anchor."
"Visited Ceylon, I dare say?"
"Yes, hid, and had some rare sport elephant-shooting. I tell you what,Nie, there was some clanger attached to that sort of thing in thosedays, but now it is little better than shooting cows, unless you getaway into the little-known regions of equatorial Africa; there you stillfind the elephant has his foot--and a big one it is--upon his nativesoil. But I remember once--I and my man Friday--being charged by twogigantic tuskers, and the whole herd rushing wildly down to theirassistance. It was a supreme moment, Nie. I thought my time was come;I would have given anything and everything I possessed to get up intothe top of the palm-tree close beside me.
"`Now, Friday,' I cried, `be steady if you value your own life andmine.'
"I fired, and my tusker dropped. But the terrible noise and trumpetingmust have shaken Friday's nerves a bit. He was usually a good shot, buton this occasion he missed. I loaded at once again, and as the greatbrute came down on us, let him have it point-blank. He reeled, butstill came on. I felt rooted to the spot. My life in a moment more, Ithought, w
ould be crushed out of me. Ah! but there must have been amist of blood before the tusker's eyes; it was a tree he charged; histusk snapped like a pipe-stalk, and the great elephant at once felldead."
"It was a narrow escape."
"Well, it was, but for the matter of that, Nie, who knows but that ourlives may be ever in danger, no matter where we are. A hundred times aday, perhaps, we are upheld by the kind hands of an unseen Providence,`our eyes are kept from tears, and our feet from falling.'
"Should we be grateful when our lives are spared? I think so, Nie, lad;only the reckless, and the braggart, and too often the coward, boast ofthe dangers they have come through, just as if their own strength alonehad