The World of Ice - Robert Michael Ballantyne (best selling autobiographies TXT) 📗

known by the name of _stalking_--that is, creeping as close up to your game as possible, so as to get a good shot; and it said much for his patience and his future success the careful manner in which, on this occasion, he wound himself in and out among the rocks and blocks of ice on the shore in the hope of obtaining that sea-gull. At last he succeeded in getting to within about fifteen yards of it, and then, resting his musket on a lump of ice, and taking an aim so long and steadily that his companion began to fancy he must have gone to sleep, he fired, and blew the gull to atoms! There was scarcely so much as a shred of it to be found.

Fred bore his disappointment and discomfiture manfully. He formed a resolution then and there to become a good shot, and although he did not succeed exactly in becoming so that day, he nevertheless managed to put several fine specimens of gulls and an auk into his bag. The last bird amused him much, being a creature with a dumpy little body and a beak of preposterously large size and comical aspect. There were also a great number of eider-ducks flying about, but they failed to procure a specimen.

Singleton was equally successful in his scientific researches. He found several beautifully green mosses, one species of which was studded with pale yellow flowers, and in one place, where a stream trickled down the steep sides of the cliffs, he discovered a flower-growth which was rich in variety of colouring. Amid several kinds of tufted grasses were seen growing a small purple flower and the white star of the chickweed; The sight of all this richness of vegetation growing in a little spot close beside the snow, and amid such cold Arctic scenery, would have delighted a much less enthusiastic spirit than that of our young surgeon. He went quite into raptures with it, and stuffed his botanical box with mosses and rocks until it could hold no more, and became a burden that cost him a few sighs before he got back to the ship.

The rocks were found to consist chiefly of red sandstone. There was also a good deal of green-stone and gneiss, and some of the spires of these that shot up to a considerable height were particularly striking and picturesque objects.

But the great sight of the day's excursion was that which unexpectedly greeted their eyes on rounding a cape towards which they had been walking for several hours. On passing this point they stopped with an exclamation of amazement. Before them lay a scene such as the Arctic Regions alone can produce.

In front lay a vast reach of the strait, which at this place opened up abruptly and stretched away northward, laden with floes, and fields, and hummocks, and bergs of every shade and size, to the horizon, where the appearance of the sky indicated open water. Ponds of various sizes and sheets of water whose dimensions entitled them to be styled lakes spangled the white surface of the floes; and around these were sporting innumerable flocks of wild-fowl, many of which, being pure white, glanced like snow-flakes in the sunshine. Far off to the west the ice came down with heavy uniformity to the water's edge. On the right there was an array of cliffs whose frowning grandeur filled them with awe. They varied from twelve to fifteen hundred feet in height, and some of the precipices descended sheer down seven or eight hundred feet into the sea, over which they cast a dark shadow.

Just at the feet of our young discoverers--for such we may truly call them--a deep bay or valley trended away to the right, a large portion of which was filled with the spur of a glacier, whose surface was covered with _pink snow_! One can imagine with what feelings the two youths gazed on this beautiful sight. It seemed as if that valley, instead of forming a portion of the sterile region beyond the Arctic Circle, were one of the sunniest regions of the south, for a warm glow rested on the bosom of the snow, as if the sun were shedding upon it his rosiest hues. A little farther to the north the red snow ceased, or only occurred here and there in patches; and beyond it there appeared another gorge in the cliffs, within which rose a tall column of rock, so straight and cylindrical that it seemed to be a production of art. The whole of the back country was one great rolling distance of glacier, and, wherever a crevice or gorge in the riven cliffs afforded an opportunity, this ocean of land-ice sent down spurs into the sea, the extremities of which were constantly shedding off huge bergs into the water.

"What a scene!" exclaimed Tom Singleton, when he found words to express his admiration. "I did not think that our world contained so grand a sight. It surpasses my wildest dreams of fairy-land."

"Fairy-land!" ejaculated Fred, with a slight look of contempt; "do you know since I came to this part of the world, I've come to the conclusion that fairy tales are all stuff, and very inferior stuff too! Why, this reality is a thousand million times grander than anything that was ever invented. But what surprises me most is the red snow. What can be the cause of it?"

"I don't know," replied Singleton, "it has long been a matter of dispute among learned men. But we must examine it for ourselves, so come along."

The remarkable colour of the snow referred to, although a matter of dispute at the period of the _Dolphin's_ visit to the Arctic Seas, is generally admitted now to be the result of a curious and extremely minute vegetable growth, which spreads not only over its surface, but penetrates into it sometimes to a depth of several feet. The earlier navigators who discovered it, and first told the astonished world that the substance which they had been accustomed to associate with the idea of the purest and most radiant whiteness had been seen by them lying _red_ upon the ground, attributed the phenomenon to innumerable multitudes of minute creatures belonging to the order _Radiata_; but the discovery of red snow among the central Alps of Europe, and in the Pyrenees, and on the mountains of Norway, where _marine_ animalcula could not exist, effectually overturned this idea. The colouring matter has now been ascertained to result from plants belonging to the order called _Algae_, which have a remarkable degree of vitality, and possess the power, to an amazing extent, of growing and spreading with rapidity even over such an ungenial soil as the Arctic snow.

While Singleton was examining the red snow, and vainly endeavouring to ascertain the nature of the minute specks of matter by which it was coloured, Fred continued to gaze with a look of increasing earnestness towards the tall column, around which a bank of fog was spreading, and partially concealing it from view. At length he attracted the attention of his companion towards it.

"I say, I'm half inclined to believe that yon is no work of nature, but a monument set up to attract the attention of ships. Don't you think so?"

Singleton regarded the object in question for some time. "I don't think so, Fred; it is larger than you suppose, for the fog-bank deceives us. But let us go and see; it cannot be far off."

As they drew near to the tall rock, Fred's hopes began to fade, and soon were utterly quenched by the fog clearing away, and showing that the column was indeed of nature's own constructing. It was a single, solitary shaft of green limestone, which stood on the brink of a deep ravine, and was marked by the slaty limestone that once encased it. The length of the column was apparently about five hundred feet, and the pedestal of sandstone on which it stood was itself upwards of two hundred feet high.

This magnificent column seemed the flag-staff of a gigantic crystal fortress, which was suddenly revealed by the clearing away of the fog-bank to the north. It was the face of the great glacier of the interior, which here presented an unbroken perpendicular front--a sweep of solid glassy wall, which rose three hundred feet above the water-level, with an unknown depth below it. The sun glittered on the crags and peaks and battlements of this ice fortress, as if the mysterious inhabitants of the Far North had lit up their fires and planted their artillery to resist further invasion.

The effect upon the minds of the two youths, who were probably the first to gaze upon those wondrous visions of the Icy Regions, was tremendous. For a long time neither of them could utter a word, and it would be idle to attempt to transcribe the language in which, at length, their excited feelings sought to escape. It was not until their backs had been for some time turned on the scene, and the cape near the valley of red snow had completely shut it out from view, that they could condescend to converse again in their ordinary tones on ordinary subjects.

As they hastened back over the ice-belt at the foot of the cliffs, a loud boom rang out in the distance and rolled in solemn echoes along the shore.

"There goes a gun," exclaimed Tom Singleton, hastily pulling out his watch. "Hallo! do you know what time it is?"

"Pretty late, I suppose. It was afternoon, I know, when we started, and we must have been out a good while now. What time is it?"

"Just two o'clock in the morning!"

"What! do you mean to say it was _yesterday_ when we started, and that we've been walking all night, and got into _to-morrow morning_ without knowing it?"

"Even so, Fred. We have overshot our time, and the captain is signalling us to make haste. He said that he would not fire unless there seemed some prospect of the ice moving, so we had better run, unless we wish to be left behind; come along."

They had not proceeded more than half-a-mile when a Polar bear walked leisurely out from behind a lump of ice, where it had been regaling itself on a dead seal, and sauntered slowly out towards the icebergs seaward, not a hundred yards in advance of them.

"Hallo! look there! what a monster!" shouted Fred, as he cocked his musket and sprang forward. "What'll you do, Tom, you've no gun?"

"Never mind, I'll do what I can with the hammer. Only make sure you don't miss. Don't fire till you are quite close to him."

They were running after the bear at top speed while they thus conversed in hasty and broken sentences, when suddenly they came to a yawning crack in the ice, about thirty feet wide, and a mile long on either hand, with the rising tide boiling at the bottom of it. Bruin's pursuers came to an abrupt halt.

"Now, isn't that disgusting?"

Probably it was, and the expression of chagrin on Fred's countenance as he said so evidently showed that he meant it; but there is no doubt that this interruption to their hunt was extremely fortunate, for to attack a Polar bear with a musket charged only with small shot, and a geological hammer, would have been about as safe and successful an operation as trying to stop a locomotive with one's hand. Neither of them had yet had experience of the enormous strength of this white monarch of the Frozen Regions and his tenacity of life, although both were reckless enough to rush at him