CHAPTER TWELVE.
ANOTHER STARTLING DISCOVERY.
Notwithstanding the state of excitement which the travellers had beenthrown into by the successful accomplishment of this, the first, and,perhaps, the most difficult part of their novel enterprise, they managedto secure a tolerably sound night's rest--if one may venture to termnight any part of the twenty-four hours at that season and in thatregion, where the sun had never once sunk beneath the horizon since thetwenty-first of the preceding March, and where the day had still twomonths more to run before it should wane into the long six-months' nightof winter. But, as might be expected, they were up bright and early onthe following morning, eager to explore this strange new polar land, andscarcely patient enough to sit down and consume with becoming leisurethe appetising breakfast which the still imperturbable George hadprovided for them.
The meal, however, like most other matters, had an end at last; and thetravellers felt themselves free to follow the bent of their impatientinclinations. But the expedition upon which they were about to enterwas one not to be undertaken without due foresight and preparation. Itwas only to be a preliminary exploration, it is true, only a journey ofsome three or four miles into the interior; but the country and theclimate having already proved so extraordinarily at variance with alltheir preconceived ideas, who could say what new and strange forms ofanimal life might not possibly be lurking within those vast forestdepths? It therefore behoved them to adopt at least a reasonable amountof precaution, and so to equip themselves that, in the event of theirencountering new and hitherto unsuspected dangers, they might not findthemselves in a wholly defenceless condition.
The question of the kind of clothing to be worn was soon settled. Thetemperature stood at the extraordinary height (for that latitude) offifty-seven degrees Fahrenheit; and the air, actually cool and bracing,felt almost oppressively warm to them after the rigours of thepaleocrystic ice-field; they therefore donned a suit of roughserviceable cloth of moderate thickness, and stout waterproof leatherwalking boots. Then, for arms, as they were merely going on areconnoitring and not a hunting expedition, they decided to take theirlarge-bore repeating rifles, which, with the explosive shellsconstituting their ammunition, would enable the explorers to faceanything. And lastly, as accident or design might cause them to extendtheir ramble beyond its originally intended limits, they adopted theprecaution of providing themselves each with a small light knapsack ofprovisions. Thus equipped they proceeded on deck, raised the two boatswith their davits out of the snug below-deck compartments in which theyhad hitherto been concealed, and, lowering the smaller boat of the two,stepped into her, and were quickly conveyed to the shore.
It was with a curiously mingled feeling of awe and exultation that theysprang from the boat to the strand, and planted their feet for the firsttime upon this hitherto unknown and unvisited ground.
"Behold!" exclaimed the baronet, pointing to their footprints in thesand; "behold the first human footprints ever impressed upon this soil."And stepping rapidly forward until he had passed beyond the high-watermark, he unfurled a small union-jack which he carried in his hand, and,forcing the butt-end of the staff into the yielding sand, exclaimed:
"In the name of her most gracious majesty Victoria, Queen of GreatBritain and Ireland, I annex this land as a dependency of the Britishcrown!"
Then they all took off their hats and gave three cheers for the queen;after which Colonel Lethbridge proposed that the newly-discoveredcountry be called "Elphinstone Land," a proposition which was carriedwith acclamation by a majority of three to one, the dissenting voicebeing that of the baronet, who modestly disclaimed the honour of havingthe country named after himself.
But _were_ theirs, after all, the first human footprints which had everbeen impressed upon that soil? A decided answer in the negative awaitedthem; for they had not advanced very many yards from the shore when theycame upon an object which, upon examination, proved to be an ancient andmuch-rusted spear-head broken short off but with some six inches of thehaft still attached to it. The travellers felt, greatly disconcerted atthis discovery; it robbed them at once irretrievably of the honour ofbeing the first discoverers of the North Pole, and showed them that, atsome unknown period in the remote past, there must have existed a man,or more probably a body of men, who, not only without the exceptionalfacilities offered by the possession of such a ship as the _FlyingFish_, but with, in all probability, ships infinitely inferior to theworst of those used by modern explorers, had actually achieved thehitherto deemed impossible feat of piercing the great ice-barrier andactually reaching the northern pole of the earth.
Who were they? Of what country could they possibly have been natives?And why was the fact of their important discovery suffered to sink intooblivion? Such were the questions which at once rose to the minds ofthe baronet and his companions, and to which their lips spontaneouslygave utterance.
"I think there can be little doubt as to who and what they were,"remarked the professor. "They were _Vikings_; and their leader it mustunquestionably have been who drew the chart found by us in the Vikingship buried in the ice of the paleocrystic sea. It is his ship which wesee delineated upon the chart; this is the land from which she isrepresented as sailing triumphantly away; and it was doubtless this landwhich the Viking ship, discovered by us, was making so desperate aneffort to reach when death claimed her crew as its prey. The otherquestion, as to why the discovery of this land was suffered to remain anunknown fact, is not by any means so easy to answer. Perhaps the manbefore whose dead body the chart lay spread open upon the table may havebeen its author and the original discoverer of this land; perhaps theship represented on the chart and the ship discovered by us may havebeen one and the same; she may have been on her homeward voyage; and,finding the channels to the southward completely blocked with ice, mayhave been attempting to force her way back into the open Polar Sea whenher fate overtook her."
"But, admitting for the moment that such may possibly have been thecase," remarked the baronet, "how do you account for the fact that,whilst she must necessarily have forced her way twice through theancient ice, she should have failed in her third attempt?"
"Her third attempt may have been made late in the season," answered theprofessor. "But it is just possible that her final attempt may havebeen to force not a _third_ but a _second_ passage through the ice. Shemay have been attempting to return _southward_ instead of northward, asI just now suggested. My impression, with respect to the vast field ofpaleocrystic ice, is that at certain seasons--as when, for instance, twoor three very mild winters have occurred in succession in the Arcticcircle, followed possibly by exceptionally hot summers--it undergoespartial disruption, splitting up, in fact, into several lesser fieldswhich drift for longer or shorter distances out into the open Polar Sea.The fact that Scoresby, Penny, and Kane all beheld, at differentperiods, an open Polar sea, tends to confirm this impression; and thecircumstance that the bows of the galley discovered by us were pointingto the northward may be due, not to the fact that she was actuallymaking her way north when finally frozen in, but to the accident of thatportion of the field by which she was surrounded being subsequentlyturned completely round whilst adrift. But what object do I see yonder?Surely it is not a human habitation?"
It was, however, or at least had been, at some more or less distantperiod. It was the roofless ruin of a once most substantially builtlog-hut, measuring some twenty-five feet long by sixteen feet broad.The roof had fallen in; the log sides were decayed and moss-grown; andthe interior was overgrown with long grass and brambles, with a statelypine springing to a height of some ninety feet from the very centre ofthe structure--all of which incontestably proved its antiquity; but thatit was the work of man--most probably those who had left behind them therusty spear-head--there could be no possible doubt.
The party minutely inspected this interesting ruin, but without makingany further discovery, and then pressed forward through the heart of abelt of pine forest which they
had by this time reached.
The walking was not difficult and they made tolerably rapid progress.That the country was not absolutely tenantless they soon had abundantproof, for they had not advanced more than half a mile before an Arcticfox was discovered gliding rapidly away before them. A little furtheron they came unexpectedly upon a herd of moose-deer. The behaviour ofthese animals--naturally extremely shy--conclusively proved that theyhad never before met such an enemy as man, for, instead of boundingrapidly away, as is their wont, they merely ceased feeding for a momentto stand and gaze curiously upon the new-comers, and then went onbrowsing again with the utmost composure. Their fearlessness offered astrong temptation to such inveterate sportsmen as Sir Reginald and thecolonel; but not being in actual need of their flesh, and being,moreover, anxious not to disturb them just then, the party passedquietly on without firing a shot. A huge brown bear was the next animalencountered, and this time the baronet's love of sport overcame hishumanity, bruin falling an easy victim to the noiseless but deadlypercussion shell of Sir Reginald's large-bore rifle. A solitaryprowling wolf next fell before the equally deadly weapon of the colonel;and then the explorers emerged on the other side of the forest-belt, andfound themselves on the borders of an extensive tract of tolerably levelcountry intersected here and there by low hills, with occasional patchesof marshy land, the high flat table-land, which had been the firstobject sighted by them when approaching these shores from the southward,looming up, still misty and grey, at a long distance in the extremebackground of the landscape.
Heading directly for this mountain, as a conspicuous landmark, the partyagain pressed forward, and were speedily delighted to observe severalflocks of ptarmigan busily feeding on the crests of the low hills whichhere and there crossed the route. These birds proved rather shy, thoughnot so much so as to have prevented the sportsmen making a very decentbag had they been provided with fowling-pieces. As it was, however, thebirds were, of course, permitted to go free and undisturbed. A milefurther on a small drove of musk-oxen were seen grazing in the distance,and, whilst some of the party were watching the animals and discussingthe possibility of stalking them, Mildmay, who had been intently gazingthrough his binocular in another direction, startled his companions byexclaiming, in an almost horrified tone of voice:
"What on earth are those immense creatures moving slowly about in thevalley away yonder? Surely they _can't_ be elephants?"
"Elephants! my dear fellow, don't be absurd," remonstrated the baronet."Where are they? Oh, ah! now I have them," as he brought his glass tobear in the right direction. "By George, they _are_ elephants, though,and monsters into the bargain. And, I declare, it seems to me that theyare covered with a thick coat of shaggy hair. Why, I never saw such athing in my life."
"_Elephants? Covered with hair_?" exclaimed the professor in a voice soeager that it almost amounted to a scream. "Lend me a binocular,somebody; with my usual luck I have left mine at home--on board, I mean.A thousand thanks, Mildmay, my dear fellow. Now, where are theseelephants of yours? Quick, show me where to look for them. Goodheavens! if it should really be so. Ah! now I see them. Yes--yes--theyare--they _must_ be--Gentlemen, as I am a man of science, I solemnlydeclare to you the stupendous fact that those extraordinary animals areneither more nor less than living Mammoths. I congratulate you,gentlemen--I congratulate myself. Ach, himmel! to think that it shouldever be my good fortune to actually behold, not only one, but a wholeherd of living mammoths! I cannot believe it--yet--yes, there they are;it is no freak of a disordered imagination, but an actual, positive,undeniable reality."
The worthy professor was so excited that he could scarcely hold thebinocular firmly enough to look through it, and it was reallylaughable--to his companions--to hear his "Ach's" and "Pish's" ofimpatience as he vainly strove to steady his trembling hands and getanother good look at the herd of hitherto believed extinct monsters,which were quietly feeding at a distance of about two miles away. Atlength he, with a comical gesture of despair, restored the borrowedbinocular to Mildmay, and, turning to his companions, exclaimed in avoice of feverish earnestness:
"Come, my dear friends, why do we stand idly gaping here and wastingvaluable time, when we really have not a moment to lose? We may neverhave such a priceless opportunity again. Let us press forward, then,and at all risks secure a specimen of so unique an animal as themammoth. If we were to achieve this and nothing more our success wouldbe ample repayment for all the anxious thought devoted to the designingof our vessel, and all the money spent in her construction."
His excitement was contagious, and the baronet, after briefly arrangingwith the colonel a plan of operations, invited von Schalckenberg tofollow him; Lethbridge and Mildmay going off in another direction, withthe object of getting on the other side of the animals, and, in co-operation with the other party, driving them, if possible, within easydistance of the harbour in which the _Flying Fish_ lay at anchor.
To do this a wide detour was necessary, and it was nearly an hour and ahalf later when the four men found themselves in a proper position tocommence the operation of "driving." They had arranged themselves inthe form of a semicircle round the herd, at a distance of about aquarter of a mile away, and, at a signal from the baronet, all handsadvanced toward the huge creatures, shouting and gesticulating to theutmost extent of their several powers.
The mammoths, utterly unsuspicious of danger, had been quietly feedingamong the long grass during the approach of their enemies; but on thebaronet's first signal shout they paused, and, facing rapidly round inthe direction of the noise, raised their trunks in the air and wavedthem slowly from side to side as though scenting the air. The huntersnow redoubled their exertions, fully expecting that, on seeing them, theanimals would wheel about and shamble off in the required direction.But, to their dismay, the creatures, instead of doing this, no soonercaught sight of the party than, with upraised trunks and harsh trumpet-like screams of rage and defiance, they charged furiously straight downupon them. The herd numbered ten individuals, four of which appeared toinstantly constitute themselves the defenders of the party; and each ofthese promptly selected his own particular enemy, occupying hisattention so fully that the remaining members of the herd were affordedevery facility for escape.
It was a nervous moment for the hunters, who, never having faced such acreature before, had not the most remote idea of its fighting tactics;moreover, the aspect of the monsters, with their towering stature offully fifteen feet, their thick shaggy coats of rusty brown hair, theirenormous spirally curving tusks, and their small eyes blazing with furyas they rushed forward to the attack, all combined to produce such ahideous _tout ensemble_ as might well strike terror to the boldestheart. But neither Sir Reginald nor the colonel were the men to shrinkfrom an encounter when game was before them; Mildmay possessed all thecool daring and recklessness of the British seaman; and as for theprofessor, he would willingly have faced a thousand deaths to secure sonew and rare a specimen of natural history as the creature before him.
The four sportsmen pulled trigger almost simultaneously. The baronetand the colonel had each selected the same spot, the eye, as the objectof their aim, and both had been equally successful, the shell in eachcase passing upward through the eyeball into the brain, exploding thereand causing instant death. The professor's fascinated gaze beingriveted upon the wide-open mouth of his own particular adversary, heseemed to think that the yawning cavern thus revealed would be as good aplace as any to empty his rifle into; and he did so--just in bare timeto bring down his game and save himself from being trampled to a jelly.Mildmay, however, was not so fortunate. He seemed to think that itmattered very little where he directed his aim, so long as he made sureof hitting the brute _somewhere_, and he therefore fired point-blank atthe chest of the mammoth which was menacing him. The shell sped true,but, encountering the thick shaggy coat and the enormously tough hide ofthe creature, failed to penetrate the body, and, exploding outside, onlyinflicted such wounds as further excit
ed the already angry monster to aperfect frenzy of rage. Even at this critical moment there was time foranother shot; but Mildmay most unfortunately forgot that he had nineloaded chambers still available, and instead of firing again he flungaway his piece and ran for his life. The race was a disastrously shortone, however; he had not run more than twenty yards when the hugecreature was upon him. The great uplifted trunk gave one whirl in theair and descended with force enough to slay an ox. It struck poorMildmay on his right side, and, but for the fortunate accident of hishaving at that moment tripped and fallen forward, the lieutenant wouldthere and then have lost the number of his mess. As it was, he was sentwhirling through the air like a cricket-ball, to fall senseless, andbleeding from the nose and mouth, fully forty feet away. The vindictivebrute instantly turned short off with the evident intention of tramplinghis victim to death; but before he could reach the prostrate body ashell from the colonel's rifle sent him crashing lifeless to the ground.The remainder of the herd, evidently dismayed at the slaughter of theircompanions, now abandoned a half-formed intention which they had atfirst manifested to stay and fight it out, and went off in full retreatwith horrible trumpetings of anger and alarm.
The colonel was the first to reach the side of his unfortunate friend,the professor and the baronet joining him as speedily as their legscould convey them to the spot. Very fortunately von Schalckenberg,among his other multitudinous acquirements, possessed a very fairknowledge of medicine and surgery; and his skilful fingers were soon atwork removing the lieutenant's clothing so far as was necessary toinvestigate the nature and extent of his injuries. Singularly enoughthese were found to be comparatively trifling, a fractured rib andseveral very severe bruises being the sum of them. A little brandyforced between the lips of the sufferer soon restored him toconsciousness, and he was able to sit up.
On attempting to rise to his feet, however, he experienced such severepain that it was then and there resolved to let him remain where he was,two of his companions also remaining to mount guard over him and seethat he came to no harm; whilst the third was to hurry back with allspeed to the ship and bring her out on to the plain close by the spotwhere the accident occurred, when it would be a comparatively easymatter to convey the lieutenant from the spot where he then lay to hisown bed on board the _Flying Fish_.
The professor, having first made Mildmay as easy and comfortable ascircumstances permitted, volunteered for the service of moving the ship,explaining to his companions that, in the event of an attack of anykind, they, as seasoned sportsmen, would be able to far more effectuallydefend the wounded man than he could possibly hope to do; and then, SirReginald and the colonel quite concurring in this view, he set off forthe bay, shouting back an assurance as he went that he would not beabsent one moment longer than should prove absolutely necessary.
The worthy scientist was as good as his word; for in less than an hourfrom the moment of his departure the immense bulk of the _Flying Fish_was seen to rise into the air beyond the tops of the distant pine-trees,and, with her polished hull gleaming and flashing in the rays of thesun, to sweep gracefully round until she was heading straight in thedirection of the anxious watchers. Under the professor's able pilotageshe was soon brought to the ground and secured within a dozen yards ofthe spot occupied by them, when it was the work of a few minutes only toconvey the injured man to his own stateroom, where his hurts were atonce properly attended to and himself made thoroughly comfortable.
As soon as luncheon was over Sir Reginald and the colonel set out forthe spot were they had shot the bear in the morning, one of them beingarmed with a large-bore rifle and the other carrying a fowling-piece;and on their return somewhat late in the afternoon they bore not onlythe skin, skull, and claws of the defunct bruin, but also a goodly bagof ptarmigan. During their absence the professor had also been verybusy, dividing his attention pretty evenly between Mildmay and thefinest specimen of the slain mammoths, the latter of which he hadsucceeded in nearly half-denuding of its skin. With the assistance ofhis two able-bodied friends this task was completed by dinner-time; andby the corresponding hour next evening not only was the enormous hideundergoing the first stage of preparation for the taxidermist, but theindefatigable labourers had also succeeded in hewing out the tusks ofthe other slaughtered mammoths. For health's sake the ship was thenmoved about a mile further inland, and the carcasses were left to thewolves, which had already gathered in large numbers in the vicinity.
Under the skilful treatment of the professor Mildmay made steady andrapid progress toward recovery from the very first; the baronet and thecolonel had therefore no hesitation about carrying out a project whichhad been under discussion between them for the last two or three days,and which was neither more nor less than a pedestrian excursion to thefar distant table-land which they had first sighted from the sea. Theyestimated that this goal of their journey, upon which they expected tofind the actual site of the Northern Pole of the earth, must be aboutsixty miles distant from the ship; and they considered that the tripthere and back would occupy them about six days. It would of coursehave been very much easier, and more convenient in every way, to havemade the journey on board the _Flying Fish_; but the professor was busywith the preparation of his mammoth, the skin of which he had carefullystretched and pegged out on the ground alongside the ship, and was soaverse to the losing sight of it, even for a few hours, that it was soondecided the _Flying Fish_ must not be moved for the present. After all,the journey would probably not involve any very great amount ofhardship; it simply meant camping out for five or six nights, or atleast those hours of the twenty-four which did duty for night. And thisthe two seasoned hunters looked forward to as rather a pleasant changethan otherwise.
The necessary preparations were all made on the previous evening, andafter breakfast on the appointed day the two adventurers set out, takingleave of Mildmay--who was already out of bed again--and of theprofessor, who, to tell the truth, was heartily glad to be left to theuninterrupted prosecution of his task.
They were in light marching order, having resolved to carry nothingwhich they could possibly do without; their previous experience of thecountry had taught them that game was pretty plentiful, and that theymight safely depend upon their guns for the supply of their larder; andtheir stock of provisions consisted solely, therefore, of a few biscuitsand a substantial flask of brandy each. The temperature was decidedlymild, and had been so ever since their arrival at "Elphinstone Land,"with settled fine weather, and they therefore carried nothing in theshape of extra clothing save a light macintosh each, which they boresecurely strapped on the top of their knapsacks. The remainder of their_impedimenta_ consisted of a double-barrelled gun for each man--onebarrel being rifled and the other a smooth bore--two cartridge belts,one for the waist and the other for the shoulder, fully stocked; aformidable double-edged hunting knife each; a capacious waterproof bagcontaining a reserve supply of cartridges, and a small stock of matchesand tobacco.
Their road for the first five or six miles led up a gentle acclivity,just sufficient to make itself felt, but not steep enough to renderwalking difficult or fatiguing. Then came a stretch of flat country,bounded on each side by the projecting spurs of a range of rugged hillsof fantastic outline which stretched immediately across their path at adistance of some three or four miles or so. The pedestrians had notprogressed very far across this plain before their attention becamearrested by a curious phenomenon. The atmosphere immediately behind therange of hills last mentioned was thick with fleecy vapour, now so thinthat the distant table-land could be dimly seen through it as through aveil, and anon so dense that it assumed a decided cloud-like shape uponwhich the unsetting sun shone with dazzling brilliancy. This thickeningof the vapour seemed to occur at tolerably regular intervals of abouttwenty minutes each, and was immediately preceded by a sudden silverygleam succeeded by a most brilliant and perfectly formed rainbow. Theperiodical recurrence of this singular phenomenon under a perfectlycloudless sky of course greatly exci
ted the curiosity of thepedestrians, and they pushed rapidly forward, eager to ascertain thecause.
As they advanced, the encircling hills thrust their projecting spursfurther and further into the narrowing plain, their slopes becamesteeper and more rugged, and rocks began to crop out here and there withincreasing frequency through the lessening soil. A corresponding changeof course occurred in the character of the landscape; it grewincreasingly picturesque and wild at every step, and at length thetravellers found themselves at the mouth of a narrow rocky boulder-strewn gorge bounded on either side by titanic masses of volcanic rock,rugged and moss-grown, with little patches of herbage here and there, oran occasional stunted pine growing out of an almost imperceptiblefissure. The only signs of life in this wild spot consisted of adiminutive musk-ox here and there cropping the scanty herbage half-wayup the apparently inaccessible height in spots from which it appearedequally impossible for the creature to advance or to retreat.
Plunging into this defile, the travellers advanced with steadilyincreasing difficulty, the boulders with which their path was strewedgrowing ever larger and more numerous until at length the narrowing roadbecame completely choked with them, and the only mode of progression wasthat of a slow, toilsome, dangerous scramble. Still the pair pushedresolutely on, every minute hoping that the difficulties of the journeywould come to an end, and every minute less willing to turn back andagain encounter the obstacles already surmounted. At length the pathbecame so narrow that one enormous boulder sufficed to completely blockthe way, whilst the perpendicular rocky walls of the chasm towered sofar aloft that only the merest thread of sky was visible; the air grewchill and damp, and so deep a twilight gloom pervaded the place that itwas difficult to distinguish any object more than half a dozen yardsdistant.
The weary travellers looked at each other in dismay. Was this to be theineffectual ending of that long and toilsome scramble through theravine? There was just one single narrow crevice between the hugeboulder which blocked their way, and one of the precipitous walls whichpressed so closely in upon them--a crevice left by the irregular shapeof the block, and affording barely space enough for a man of robustproportions to squeeze himself through--and they determined that, beforeretracing their steps, they would at least satisfy their curiosity sofar as to creep through this crevice and see what lay on the fartherside. The baronet with some little difficulty squeezed through first,and his exclamation of astonishment quickly took the colonel to hisside.
The pair found themselves in a narrow rent between the two verticalfaces of rock--the projections of the one accurately corresponding withthe indentations of the other, and clearly demonstrating that, at somedistant period of the earth's history, that mighty chasm had beensuddenly torn open by a great natural convulsion awful in its intensitybeyond all power of imagination. The rent was roofed in as it were byboulders which thickly hung suspended and jammed in at varying heightsbetween the almost touching walls of the rift; and the adventurousexplorers could not repress a shudder as they glanced aloft at thesehuge masses and thought of the consequences to themselves which wouldensue should a projecting corner just then yield and suffer its parentrock to come crashing down to the bottom. Their first impulse was tobeat a precipitate retreat; their second, to go forward; for at only afew yards' distance before them the rift closed altogether, except atthe very bottom, where a low cavern-like fissure dimly appeared. Ahasty consultation passed between them, resulting in a determination togo forward and explore the fissure.
Fortunately for their purpose they had, at an early stage of theirdifficulties, provided themselves with a couple of stoutish pinebranches--wrenched from their parent stems and hurled into the ravineperchance by some winter storm--to aid them in surmounting thedifficulties of the way, and these they now determined to utilise ifpossible as torches.
With some little difficulty the smaller ends of these brands wereinduced to kindle; but, once fairly ignited, they blazed up bravely, andthus provided with the necessary lights the adventurers boldly pushedforward and plunged into the recesses of the fissure.