WEST LAND OF GREENLAND--A FALL! A FALL!--DANGER ON ALL SIDES--"MANTHE ICE-SAWS"--WORKING FOR LIFE--BESET IN THE DREARY PACK.
"I feel," said the captain one day, at breakfast, "that I am making adangerous experiment. I am keeping far in to the west land; I am allbut hugging the shore; and if it were to come on to blow from seawards,we would--Steward, I'll have another cup of coffee."
"You think," said Chisholm, "our chances of further cups of coffeewouldn't be very great, eh?"
"I don't think they would," said the captain. "Well, lads, I've shownyou a bit of sport, haven't I? And if we had only a little more blubberin her, troth, I'd bear up for bonnie Scotland. I've just come downfrom the crow's-nest, and what do you think I've spied? Why, open waterfor miles ahead, stretching away to the north as far as eyes can reach.There are whales there, boys, if we can but wait for them."
After breakfast it was, "All hands assist ship!"
Up sprang the men, and ere one could wink, so to speak, half the crewwere at the side with poles, pressing on the ice to make room for the_Grampus_. It was strange work, and it seemed at first impossible thattwenty men with a spar could move a floe. But they did, and three hoursafterwards they were in this mysterious open sea.
"Why," cried Frank, "I declare there is the Dutchman dodging yonder withforeyard aback. A sailing ship beat a steamer!"
"Ay, she's got the pull on us, boys," the captain said. "And see, sheis flenshing [skinning] a whale; the crang [the skinned corpse] liesbeside her. She has met with a lane of open water, and taken advantageof it."
Just at that moment came the cry, "A fall! a fall! on the weatherquarter!"
"A fall! a fall!" Surely never was excitement seen like this before,thought Frank.
There was no waiting for orders. The ship seemed to stop of her ownaccord, and the escaping steam roared uselessly through the funnel.
"A fall! a fall!" Up tumble the men, many undressed, with their clothesin a bundle. They spring to the boats, our heroes follow the example,and in three minutes more are tearing through the water towards thecoveted leviathan. The Dutchman has spied the monster too, and herboats are soon afloat. Who shall be first?
[The origin of this cry is this, I think. "Whaol" is the ordinaryScotch for "whale," but Aberdonians use the "f" instead of the "wh" insuch words as "what," "where," etc, which they pronounce "fat" and"far." Hence "whale" would become "faul," or "fall."]
"Pull, lads, pull! Hurrah, lads, hurrah! We'll never let a Dutchmanbeat us!"
Is the whale asleep, that she lies so quietly? Nay, for now she scentsthe danger, and, lashing her tail madly skywards, is off; but not beforethe roar of the harpoon gun from the foremost boat has awakened theechoes of the Greenland sea.
"A fall! a fall! She is struck! she is struck!" Vainly now she dashesthrough the surging sea; another boat pulls around to intercept her, andagain she is struck; the lines whirl over the gunwale of Frank's boattill it smokes again. There is blood now in the great beast's wake, andher way is not so swift; she dives and dives again, but she isbreathless now. Dreadful her wound must be--for see, she is spoutingwater mingled with blood; and now she lies still on the surface of theocean.
"In line, men!" cries the mate, springing up and seizing his long lance,and standing bravely up in the bows. "Pull gently alongside, and standby to back water the moment I spear the fall."
"How bold and daring he looks!" thinks Frank; all thought of dangerswallowed up in admiration of the man who stands, spear in hand, in theboat's bows.
They are close now. Swish! Quick as lightning the spear is sent home;quickly it is turned, to sever the carotid; next moment the backing boatis almost swamped in blood. But not quickly enough can they back, Ifear, to save the boat from destruction, themselves from speedy death.High, high in air is raised that dreadful tail; half the animal seemsout of the water; they are under the shadow of it; and now it descends,and every oar on the port-side of the boat is broken off close to therowlocks. But the boat is saved. For fully half an hour the whaleflaps the sea in her dying agony, and the noise may be heard for milesaround, while the waters around her are churned into crimson foam. Thenthere is one more terrible convulsion; her great jaw opens and shutsagain. The leviathan is dead. The men of the brig and the men in theboats answer each other with boisterous cheers; but the Dutchman fillsher sails, puts about, and bears sullenly up for the south.
Well would it have been for the _Grampus_ had Captain Anderson followedher example; but he would not.
"She can go," he said; "she is a full ship, and only a sailing ship.Now let us get but two other `fish,' then hey for the sunny south,boys."
For a whole month they remained dodging about in that open sea, butwithout seeing another whale. All their good luck seemed to have gonewith the Dutchman, and the captain was about to bear up, and force hisway once more out through the southern ice to the open sea beyond, whensuddenly a change came o'er the spirit of the scene. To their surprise,if not to their horror, the ice began to close in around them in alldirections. Nearer and nearer came the mighty floes. They came fromthe north; they came from the south and the east; they even deployedinto two long lines, or horns, that crept along the land until they met.At the same time a heavy swell began to roll in from seawards.
"There is a gale of wind outside," the captain said to Chisholm, "andthis is the result; but come, I don't mean to be caught like a mouse ina trap." Then, addressing the mate, "Call all hands, Mr Lewis. Getout the ice-saws and anchors."
"Ay, ay, sir," replied the mate.
"Now, my lads," continued the captain, when the men came aft in a body,"you've all been to Greenland before, and you know the danger we are inas well as I can tell you. If we are caught between two floes in thatheaving pack, we'll be crunched like a walnut-shell. So we'll have towork to make a harbour. That alone can save us. Call the steward.Steward! we'll splice the main brace."
The men gave a cheer; they stripped off coats and jackets, and eventheir gloves. They meant business, and looked it. Meanwhile the_Grampus_ was going ahead at full speed, straight towards the ice inshore. Why, it looked to our heroes as if the captain was positivelycourting destruction; for he was steering for the very largest berg hecould find, and presently he was alongside it. The ship was stopped,and every man that could be spared sent over the side. The anchors weregot out speedily, and made fast to the berg. Then the men began towork.
The iceberg against which they directed their operations was indeed amighty one. Although not very high close to the edge, it towered abovethem many hundreds of feet, a snow-clad mountain of ice, its green andrugged sides glittering in the beams of the mid-day sun. It was soonevident to Chisholm O'Grahame that the captain's object was to hollowout a temporary harbour in the side of the berg, sufficiently wide toenable the ship to fit into it, so that she might be safe from beingground into matchwood when the whole pack was joined.
"Come," he cried, to his comrades, "three hands of us here idle! We canwork too, captain. Only tell us what to do, and we'll do it."
"Bravo! my lads," said the captain, cheerily. "Over the side with youthen, and help with the ice-saws."
Those great ice-saws were about twenty feet long, and had four crosshandles at the top, so that when let down, on the perpendicular, againstthe piece, four men standing above could work one saw. Frank and histwo friends, with Mr Lewis, the mate, took charge of a saw, and thework went on cheerily. The men sang as they laboured, and there was asmuch laughing and joking as if they had been husbandmen working togetherin the harvest-field, instead of men working for their dear lives. Byeight o'clock the harbour was complete.
By eight o'clock the ice had almost closed upon them.
And now to get the ship into this _portus salutis_. There was so littletime; other giant bergs were close aboard of them, rising and falling onthe swelling waves with a noise that was simply appalling. The captainhad to give his orders through the speaking-trumpet, and even then hisvoice was ofte
n drowned by the grinding, shrieking din of the heavingfloes. But at last they have worked her in, and now for a time at leastshe is safe, for she rises and falls with the ice; and, though hemmed inon all sides, has nothing to fear.
The _Grampus_ was "beset;" and from that very hour began one of thedreariest seasons of imprisonment that ever a beleaguered ship's crewexperienced. They were far away from aid of any kind that they knew of,the ice was terribly heavy, and, worse than all, the summer season wasfar advanced, and already the sun dipped very close to the northernhorizon at