CHAPTER TEN.
THE "HUMBOLDT" GLACIER.
The two ships were at this time floating in a tolerably broad expanse ofopen water; but at a distance of some seven miles ahead the pack-icestretched, apparently unbroken, across their track for miles. Theskipper of the whaler, however, shouted down to them from his elevatedperch the intelligence that a somewhat intricate but continuous channelextended through this ice in a northerly direction as far as the eyecould reach. Toward this channel, then, away they went at a speed ofsomething like sixteen knots per hour, the barque with her string ofcolours still fluttering bravely in defiance of the adverse gale, andthe _Flying Fish_ with the white ensign of the Royal Yacht Squadron, ofwhich Sir Reginald was a member, streaming from her ensign staff inhonour of little Florrie. It was a strange sight, even in that regionof fantastic phantasmagoria, to see the two ships, one of which,moreover, wore such an unaccustomed shape, dashing rapidly along throughthe black foam-flecked water, with ice in every conceivable form heapedand piled around them, and their bright-hued flags fluttering againstthe dark and dismal background of a stormy sky; and the skipper of thewhaler possesses to this day a spirited water-colour sketch of thescene, executed on the spot by the colonel, which he exhibits withbecoming pride whenever he relates the story of his wonderful escapefrom the threatening icebergs.
Half an hour later they entered the channel through the ice. Narrow andtortuous at first, it gradually widened out, and, after a journey ofsome fourteen or fifteen miles, turned sharply off in a direction almostdue west. About the same time the gale broke, the sun made hisappearance through the rifted clouds, and by seven o'clock that evening,at which hour Florrie's father duly put in an appearance on board the_Flying Fish_, the engines having been temporarily stopped to receivehim, they found themselves in open water, or rather in a straightchannel some twelve miles in width and entirely free from ice, with aclear sky overhead, a light easterly wind blowing, and the evening sunlighting up the snow-clad peaks of the extensive island called NorthDevon. An hour later, dinner having been postponed on account of theirnear proximity to the land, the two vessels entered a commodious naturalharbour called Hyde Bay, and anchored there for the night, in order togive the whaler's exhausted crew an opportunity to snatch a few hours ofmuch-needed rest.
The master of the _Walrus_, who answered, by the way, to the name ofHudson, though only a bluff hearty seaman, and somewhat shy for thefirst half-hour or so in such unaccustomed company as that of his fourwell-bred easy-mannered entertainers, gradually thawed out under thegenial influence of the baronet's champagne, and proved himself atolerably well informed and by no means disagreeable companion. Hepossessed a fund of interesting anecdote and information with respect tothe peculiarities of the region his hosts were now visiting for thefirst time, and imparted to them many valuable hints as to the bestmeans of protecting themselves from the ice; but, as they did not seefit to inform him of the aerial capabilities of the _Flying Fish_, helaughed to scorn their project of reaching the North Pole, which heassured them most solemnly was an utter impossibility. They duly drankthe unconscious Florrie's health, treated her father to some excellentmusic, gave him a file of the latest newspapers they had brought withthem, and sent him back to his own ship at midnight a thoroughly happyman.
On the following morning about half-past eight, whilst the party onboard the _Flying Fish_ were sitting down to breakfast, the sound ofoars was heard close alongside; and a minute later Captain Hudson,ushered by George, made his appearance in the saloon. He was in a greathurry and almost breathlessly explained that he had come on board torepeat his thanks and those of his crew for their rescue of the previousday, and to say "Good-bye," as he was about to weigh and proceed to seain chase of a large school of whales which had just been seen spoutingat a distance of some twelve miles in the offing. The baronet was good-natured enough to offer to tow him to the scene of action; but thisservice he gratefully declined, saying that there was a fine fair windblowing and that his anchor was already a-trip. The party thereforeshook hands heartily with him, wishing him "Good luck," and he departed,leaving Sir Reginald and his friends to finish their meal at theirleisure.
An hour later the _Flying Fish_ also weighed and stood out to sea afterthe _Walrus_, now nearly hull down, to witness the sport.
The engines had scarcely begun to move when the whaler was seen to heaveto; and when the _Flying Fish_ ranged up alongside her, some ten minutesafterwards, three whale-boats were in the water and pulling lustilytoward a school of some forty whales which were lazily sporting,apparently quite unconscious of danger, about two miles away.
"Those whales do not appear in the least alarmed at the presence of theboats," remarked Mildmay; "evidently they have not been chased for aconsiderable period. If we only had the means of killing a few, now,what a splendid opportunity there would be to do that poor fellow Hudsona good turn."
"Well thought of!" exclaimed the professor. "Follow me, gentlemen; wecan do our friend a good turn, and, at the same time, test the powers ofour large-bore rifles with explosive shells for big game."
The party hurried below to the armoury, and each selected one of theweapons indicated by the professor, providing himself at the same timewith a supply of cartridges from a large chest near at hand.
The rifles were truly formidable, being repeating weapons each capableof firing ten shots without reloading. The barrels were not very long,measuring only three feet from breech to muzzle, but they were of one-and-a-half-inch bore and fired a conical shell four and a half inches inlength. Notwithstanding their somewhat ponderous appearance they werevery light, being constructed of aethereum throughout.
When the party returned to the deck they had the satisfaction of seeingthat, though each of the whale-boats had succeeded in fastening to afish, the remainder of the school manifested very little alarm, thestricken whales having started to "run" in different directions andquite away from their companions.
The _Flying Fish_ was moved as gently as possible into the very centreof the herd, the huge monsters taking no apparent notice of her, andperhaps mistaking her for one of themselves. They were swimming lazilyabout, rolling over on their sides until their pectoral fins appearedabove the surface, and occasionally throwing themselves entirely out ofthe water.
The engines being stopped the four sportsmen took up their positions,two on each side of the deck, and, having loaded their weapons, waitedfor a favourable opportunity to use them.
The baronet was the first to fire. He had selected for his victim ahuge bull, fully eighty feet in length, and this creature he patientlywatched, hoping for an opportunity to inflict a fatal wound. It sooncame. The animal rolled lazily over on its right side, exposing thewhole of its left fin, and before it could recover itself Sir Reginaldhad levelled and discharged his piece. There was a very faint puff ofthin fleecy vapour, but no report or sound of any kind save the by nomeans loud click of the hammer, above which could be distinctly heardthe dull thud of the shell. The whale shuddered visibly at the blow,and made as though about to "sound" or dive; but before it had power todo so the shell must have exploded, for the immense creature made asudden violent writhing motion, half leapt out of the water, and rolledover on its side, dead. The professor scored the next success, closelyfollowed by the colonel, Lieutenant Mildmay signalising his first essaywith the new arm by making a palpable miss, much to his disgust. Hisfailure, however, taught him a valuable lesson, and he succeeded inkilling two whales before either of the others had been able to secureanother shot. In ten minutes eight whales had been killed, and theprofessor, who was very rigid in his objection to the wanton sacrificeof life, then suggested that probably as many had been killed as thewhaler could successfully deal with at one time, especially as the boatsnow had signals flying which showed that each had killed her fish. The_Flying Fish_ was accordingly ranged up close alongside the _Walrus_,and the baronet hailed:
"_Walrus_ ahoy! how many fish can you `cut in' at one oper
ation?"
"I wish I had the chance of trying my hand upon half a dozen," was thereply, given, the baronet thought, in rather a sulky tone.
"Well," returned Sir Reginald, "there are eight which we have killed andthree taken by your boats, making eleven altogether. Can you handle anymore? because, if so, we will kill them for you; but, if not, we thinkit best not to disturb them further."
"Do you mean to say that you've killed those fish on my account, then?"asked Hudson with great animation.
"To be sure we did. You surely did not suppose that we wanted them forourselves, did you?"
The whaling skipper muttered a few unintelligible words to himself, andthen shouted back in unmistakably hearty tones:
"Thank'ee, gentlemen, thank'ee with all my heart. That's another favourI'm in your debt. That being the case, I think, if it's all the same toyou, I'd rather that the rest of the school be left to go their ways inpeace. I don't want them to be frightened; and eleven fish is as muchas we can well handle at one time."
"In that case, then," returned Sir Reginald, "we will wish you `Good-bye,' and a prosperous voyage."
"Thank'ee, gentlemen; the same to you, and best thanks for all favours,"replied Hudson.
And with mutual hand-wavings and dipping of colours the two craftseparated, the _Walrus_ bearing up to intercept her boats, and the_Flying Fish_ heading northward at a speed of about twenty knots.
For about a couple of hours the adventurous voyagers were able tomaintain that speed; but toward noon they found themselves once moresurrounded by ice; and they had no choice but either to materiallyreduce their speed and slowly thread their way through narrow andtortuous channels, or once more take flight into the air. They chosethe latter alternative; and for the next two hours the flying ship spednorthward through Smith's Sound, for the most part over an unbrokenfield of pack-ice which, to any ordinary vessel, would have opposed anutterly impassable barrier. At two o'clock in the afternoon, however,the Greenland shore suddenly trended to the north-eastward; and afterfollowing it for a short time the ice once more began to be intersectedwith water channels, short and narrow at first, but wider as theyproceeded, until at length they found themselves once more able todescend in a water lane some four miles in width.
"And now," said the professor, as they were nearing a bold rockyheadland on their starboard bow, "we are about to be introduced to oneof _the_ sights _par excellence_ of the Arctic regions."
"What is it?" was the question which burst simultaneously from the lipsof his three companions.
"Wait and see," answered the professor, nodding mysteriously.
Sure enough, the moment that the _Flying Fish_ rounded the point amagnificent spectacle burst upon the travellers' enraptured gaze. Itwas neither more nor less than an immense cliff of the clearest crystalice, towering some three hundred feet above the water's edge, andextending so far northward along the coast that its northern extremitylay far below the horizon. It was the magnificent Humboldt Glacier.The afternoon sun was shining full upon its rugged face, causing theenormous mass to flash and gleam like a gigantic diamond. As theycoasted slowly along, at a distance of about half a mile from its face,the dazzling flashes of light were reproduced one after the other,changing rapidly from one colour to another through every conceivabletint of the rainbow, until the beholders' eyes fairly ached with thecontemplation of so much splendour, all of which was reflected with themost charming variation in the mirror-like surface of the deep stillwater below. The wind had died away to a dead calm, as if to give thebold explorers an opportunity of witnessing this unrivalled sight to thebest advantage; and every now and then the still air resounded with thesharp rifle-like _crack_ which told that, though apparently somotionless and solid, hidden forces were at work within the heart of theglacier, slowly but surely tending to its ultimate dismemberment.
Suddenly a crashing report, so loud that it resembled the simultaneousdischarge of a whole army of rifles, smote upon their ears; and then, asthey stood in a trance of breathless expectation, wondering what wasabout to happen, an immense section of the icy cliff was seen to be inmotion. Slowly at first, but with ever-increasing rapidity, it sliddownward into the water, with a continuous roaring reverberating crash,to which even the awful pealing of thunder was as nothing, until in awild turmoil of madly leaping and foaming surges it disappeared entirelybelow the water. The sea rushed irresistibly after it from all sides,pouring like a foaming cataract into the hollow watery basin it hadleft, and dragging the _Flying Fish_ helplessly toward the yawningvortex. Then the inward rush suddenly ceased; a gleaming white crest ofice reappeared above the foam, and with a mighty upward rush and aresounding roar the gigantic submerged mass once more upreared itselfabove the again maddened waters, swaying heavily to and fro, whilst athousand gleaming torrents poured down its sparkling sides. And, as afitting _finale_ to the thrilling spectacle, a huge wall of watersuddenly heaped itself up about the rocking mass and began to rushrapidly outward in an ever-widening circle, its towering crestsurmounted by a roaring curling fringe of snow-white foam. Increasingin height and in speed as it advanced, it rapidly attained an altitudeof fully sixty feet, bearing down upon the _Flying Fish_ so menacinglythat, for a few seconds, the party in the pilot-house stood paralysedwith consternation, expecting nothing less than that they would behelplessly overwhelmed. The first to recover his presence of mind wasMildmay, who, springing to the rods which controlled the air-valves,pressed them powerfully down, throwing them all wide open and at onceejecting from the hull both the water and the compressed air, andcausing the ship to rise until she floated lightly as an air-bubble onthe water. He then injected a dense body of vapour into the air andwater chambers, completing the vacuum; and the ship rose into the airjust in time to avoid the gigantic surge, which went hissing and roaringclose beneath them with a power and fury which fully revealed to themthe extent of the disturbance from which they had so narrowly escaped.Other surges followed in quick rotation; but each was less formidablethan its predecessor, and in another ten minutes the surface had oncemore subsided into a state of comparative calm.
As the _Flying Fish_ once more settled down upon the water and the air-pump was set going, the professor turned to his companions and remarked:
"We have especial reason to congratulate ourselves and each other,gentlemen, for we have to-day not only looked upon the magnificentHumboldt Glacier under most highly favourable conditions, but we havebeen also permitted to witness that even rarer sight, _the birth of aniceberg_!"
They had indeed witnessed the birth of an iceberg, and that too of quiteunusual size; for, as soon as they dared, they approached the newlyfallen mass of ice closely enough to make a tolerably accuratemeasurement of it; and they found that it was of nearly square shape,measuring fully three-quarters of a mile along each of its four sides,and towering to an average height of about three hundred and fifteenfeet above the surface of the water. The visible portion of the bergconstituted, however, only a small portion of its entire bulk, sincefresh-water ice floating in salt water shows above the surface only one-eighth of its entire depth. This enormous berg, therefore, must havemeasured in its entirety about four thousand feet square by about twothousand five hundred feet deep! And its weight must have approximatedclosely upon two thousand millions of tons! Bergs of equal, or evengreater dimensions, have occasionally been encountered in the Arcticseas; but how few of earth's inhabitants have ever been privileged towitness the disruption of so enormous a mass from its parent glacier!
After witnessing so thrilling a spectacle as this--probably the grandestand most impressive which the Arctic regions can exhibit--it is perhapsnot to be wondered at that even the beauties of the glacier itselfappeared somewhat tame and uninteresting to the voyagers. But theirinterest was once more awakened when, having at length coasted along theface of the glacier for a distance of not less than _sixty miles_, theyreached its northern extremity and found the succeeding Greenland coastto be magnificently picturesque, th
e greenstone and sandstone cliffs insome cases towering abruptly from the water's edge to a height of athousand feet or more, not in a smooth unbroken face, or even with theusual everyday rugged aspect of a rocky precipice, but presenting to theenraptured eye an ever-varying perspective of ruined buttresses,pinnacles, arches, and even more fantastic architectural semblances. Inone spot which caused them to pause in sheer admiration, the crumbling_debris_ at the foot of the cliff had shaped itself into the likeness ofa huge causeway such as might have been constructed by one of the giantsof fabulous times, leading into a deep wild rocky gorge rich in softpurple shadows, at the further edge of which rose a gigantic rock hewnby the storms of ten thousand winters into the exact similitude of acastle flanked by three lofty detached towers all bathed in the dreamyroseate haze of the evening sunshine. And, somewhat further on, theycame to a single greenstone cliff the skyline of which was boldlychiselled into the likeness of the ruined ramparts of an extensive city,whilst at its northern extremity, at the edge of a deep ravine, asolitary column nearly five hundred feet high, and standing upon a baseor pedestal nearly three hundred feet high, shot straight and smooth upinto the deep blue of the northern sky.
Tearing themselves unwillingly away from this region of weirdenchantment, the voyagers pushed onward along Kennedy and RobesonChannels, sometimes winding their way through intricate water lanes inthe ice, and sometimes skimming lightly a few yards above the surface ofthe solid pack, until they reached the latitude of 82 degrees 30 minutesNorth, when the land abruptly trended away to their right and left, andthey found themselves hovering over an immense field of pack-ice whichextended in an unbroken mass as far northward as the eye could reach.
Up to the present, from the time of their passing Disko Island, thevoyagers had seen plenty of seals and walruses, with an occasional whitebear, a few Arctic foxes, a herd or two of reindeer, and even a fewspecimens of the elk and musk-ox, to say nothing of birds, such as snow-geese, eider and long-tailed ducks, sea-eagles, divers, auks, and gulls.Moreover, they had been favoured with, on the whole, exceptionally fineweather--due as much as anything, perhaps, to the fact that they hadbeen fortunate enough to enter the Arctic circle during the prevalenceof a "spell" of fine weather, and that they had accomplished in a veryfew days a distance which it would occupy an ordinary craft months ofweary toil to cover. But, on passing the edge of this gigantic icebarrier, they left all life behind them; even the very gulls--which hadfollowed them in clouds whenever the speed of the _Flying Fish_ was lowenough to permit of such a proceeding--after wheeling agitatedly aboutthe ship for a few minutes with discordant screams, as of warning to thetravellers not to venture into so vast and gloomy a solitude, forsookthem and retraced their way to the southward. The weather, too,changed, the sky becoming overcast with a pall of dull grey snow--ladencloud accompanied by a dismal murky atmosphere and a temperature of tendegrees below zero. The wind sighed and moaned over the icy waste; but,excepting for this dreary and depressing sound, there was absolutesilence, the silence of a dead world.
The ice bore at first the same appearance as all the other ice whichthey had hitherto encountered, but by the time that they had advanced adistance of thirty miles into the frozen desert they became conscious ofa change. The hummocks were not so lofty as heretofore, the hollowsbetween them having the appearance of being to a considerable extentfilled up with hard frozen snow; the ice itself, too, instead of being apure white, was tinged with yellow of the hue of very old ivory; thesharp angles, also, were all worn away as if by long-continued abrasion;the ice, in fact, bore unmistakable evidence of extreme age.
At the professor's suggestion a pause was made and a descent effected,in order that he might carefully investigate the nature of the ice; and,warmly clad in furs, the entire party left the ship for this purpose.
"It is as I feared," said von Schalckenberg, after they had toiledpainfully over the surface for some time; "we have reached the region ofpaleocrystic or ancient ice; and my cherished theory of an open seaabout the North Pole vanishes into thin air. Look at this ice here,where a portion of the original hummock still remains bare--it is yellowand rotten, not with the rottenness which precedes a thaw, but withextreme age. See, it crumbles at a kick or a blow, but the fragments donot melt; it is years--possibly _ages_--since this ice was water. Andlook at the edges of the blocks; they are rounded and worn away by theconstant abrading action of the wind, the snow, the hail, and possiblythe rain, which has beaten upon them through unnumbered years. It is nowonder that this is a lifeless solitude; there is nothing here capableof sustaining the life of even the meanest insect. Let us return to theship, my friends, and hasten over this part of our journey; we shallmeet with nothing worthy of interest until we reach the Pole, whichitself will probably prove to be merely an undistinguishable spot injust such a waste as this."
The professor was, however mistaken; a most interesting discoveryawaited them at no very great distance ahead. They returned to the shipoppressed with a vague feeling of melancholy foreboding for which theycould not account, but which was doubtless attributable to the gloomycheerless aspect of their surroundings, and, releasing the ship from thehold of her grip-anchors, resumed their way northward at the _FlyingFish's_ utmost speed.
Half an hour later, however, they suddenly checked their flight anddiverged a mile to the eastward of their former course to examine anobject which Mildmay's quick eye had detected. The object--or objectsrather, for there were two of them--proved to be short poles or sparsabout twenty-five feet apart, projecting about twelve feet out of theice, and surmounted by the skeleton framework of what seemed to havebeen at one time small bulwarked platforms. Wondering what they couldpossibly be, and by whom placed in so out-of-the-way a region, butthinking they might possibly mark cairns or places of deposit inclosingthe records of some long-lost expedition, they resolved to stop andinstitute a thorough examination.
They were fortunate enough to find a smooth and level spot suitable forgrounding the _Flying Fish_ upon, at a distance of barely a quarter of amile from the objects of their interest; and it being by that time sixo'clock in the evening, and too late to do any good before dinner, theysecured the ship there for the night--taking the precaution of fullyweighting her down with compressed air in addition to mooring her firmlyto the ice by her four grip-anchors. It was a most happy inspirationwhich impelled them to take this precaution; for when they arose nextmorning a terrific gale from the northward was blowing, accompanied by aheavy ceaseless fall of snow; and, well secured as the ship was both byher weight and by her anchors, she fairly trembled at times with theviolence of the blast. Had she been dependent only upon her anchors andher own unassisted weight--which the reader will remember was verytrifling notwithstanding her immense dimensions--she would infalliblyhave been whirled away like a bubble upon the wings of the gale. Thehighly-compressed air, however, held her securely down upon her icy bed,and, beyond imparting an occasional tremor, as already mentioned, thetempest, fierce as it was, had no power to move her.
In such terrible weather it was of course useless to think of pursuingtheir investigations; it would, indeed, have been the sheerest madnessto have attempted to face the furious gale, with its deadly cold and theblinding whirling snow. The travellers were therefore compelled tospend an inactive day. For this, however, they were by no means sorry;they had been keeping rather late hours since entering the Arcticcircle, and this interval of inaction afforded them an opportunity ofsecuring their arrears of rest. Besides this there were sketches tocomplete, and a thousand little odd matters to attend to--to such anextent, indeed, that when they once began work they wondered at theirown thoughtlessness in not having attended to them before. Thusemployed, with occasional interludes of meditative gazing out upon theceaseless whirling rush of the snow, the day passed rapidly andpleasantly away, wound up by an hour or two of vocal and instrumentalmusic after dinner. They retired early to their warm comfortable state-rooms that night, and were lulled to sweet dreamless slu
mber by thehowling of the gale outside.
The four following days were spent in the same manner--the gale lastingall that time with unabated fury, accompanied by an almost ceaselessfall of snow. But on the fifth day the weather moderated; the snowceased, or at all events fell only intermittently; the wind backed roundand blew from the south-west; and the exterior temperature, which duringthe gale had fallen to thirty-three degrees below zero, rose twentydegrees. The sky was still overcast and lowering, it is true, and thecold was still intense. But notwithstanding this the weather, comparedwith that of the preceding five days, seemed positively fine; and,wrapping themselves up in their warmest clothing, and arming themselveswith pick and shovel, they set out to discover if possible what layconcealed beneath the two queer-looking poles.