Stables Gordon
In the Land of the Great Snow Bear: A Tale of Love and Heroism

Chapter One
Dunallan Towers

Even in the days of his boyhood – I had almost said infancy – there seems to have been much in the character and habits of Claude Alwyn that is unusual in children so young.

Some people tell us that the qualities of mind, developed by the individual, depend entirely on the nature of his associates and associations in early youth. I am not prepared to deny that there is a great deal of truth in this statement. But the facts therein do not account for everything, for individuality is stamped on a child from his very birth, and the power for good or for evil of the accidental association of after life may mould in a great measure, but cannot alter this.

“Many men many minds.”

A true though trite old saying is that, and there were, no doubt, a great many different opinions concerning young Claude among those who dwelt in, or were in the habit of visiting at, Dunallan Towers.

From an old journal or diary, which has been handed to me by its writer, with full permission to make whatever use I choose of it, I have gleaned much information bearing on the boy’s character and peculiarities.

Dunallan Towers, now so gloomy and desolate, was once the happiest and the homeliest, and at the same time the gayest and brightest of all the many beautiful mansions that grace the banks of the winding Nith. This was shortly after the marriage of Lord Alwyn to the only daughter of an English baronet.

There were those, however, about the country-side who did not hesitate to say that Alwyn might have been content to take for himself a bride from among the many fair and high-born dames of the shire in which he lived.

“The goshawk should never mate wi’ the ringdove,” said one stern old Scottish lady, “nor the owl perch low in the nightingale’s bower. Our cauld Highland hills will hardly suit the dainty limbs of Alwyn’s bonnie English bride. Our wild forests are no’ like scented southern groves, and the roaring Nith is no’ the placid Thames. A’thing will be strange to her, everything foreign, wild, and queer. She’ll no’ stay lang. You’ll see! you’ll see! you’ll see.”

But if this proud and ancient dame really meant to give herself out as a prophetess, she proved to be a false one; only, to her credit be it said, she was the very first to call on the Lady of the Towers, as people named the bride of Lord Alwyn – the first to call, and the first to become one of her best and firmest friends.

As a bachelor hall, the Towers had been somewhat of a failure; all that was altered after Alwyn brought home his young wife – she looked so young, and in years, indeed, was little more than a girl.

But her easy, pleasant manner captivated every one; and, whether it were winter, with the snow on lawns and park, and ice on the river’s edge, or summer, with the roses all in bloom, and the wind sighing softly through the birch-clad glens, bright and happy faces never failed to encircle the dinner-table of our winsome Lady of the Towers.

There was great rejoicing throughout all the parish on the birth of Lord Alwyn’s heir. Village bells were rung, and a huge bonfire was lighted on the very top of the highest hill: a bonfire that could be seen from house and hut for leagues and leagues around.

The bonfire was kept burning all night long. Meanwhile the village lads and lasses had assembled in a barn gaily bedecked with evergreens and flowers of every hue, and had made quite a ball-room of it. So the fire burned all the livelong night, and as long as the fire burned, the lads and lasses danced, till at last the grey dawn of a summer morning made fire and dancing both seem out of place.

But Alwyn’s heir did not cease to be a wonder and a subject for talk for the traditional nine days at least, during which time there was not a living soul in or about Dunallan Towers who had not been honoured with a peep at his little full moon of a face.

His nurse was so proud of her charge that she had even brought him as far as the top of the great hall-stair for Peter, the cow-boy, to have just one glimpse at.

Peter – the diary informs me – had left his boots on the mat; and when he reached the stair-top, and the snowy-white wraps were down-folded from the child’s face, the good-hearted cow-boy, thinking he was in duty bound to say something very complimentary in return for the high honour bestowed upon him, lifted both hands and eyes ceiling-wards, and ejaculated —

“My goodness! What a bonnie, bonnie bairn! I never saw the like o’ that before in a’ my born days!”

I pause for a moment here, reader, and raise my head from the table at which I have been writing with the diary mentioned lying open before me. I look up because some one has just glided silently into the room. It is Janet – Janet who wrote the diary; Janet who had been Claude’s nurse. She is very old now, her hair is as white as wreaths of drifted snow, but her face is still pleasant, and her eyes are bright, nor has the weight of years succeeded in bending her form.

She stands by my side, erect. She places one hand – how thin it is! – on the pages of the journal.

“You will not find everything there,” she says, “about my dear boy Claude.”

“Sit down, Janet,” I say to her kindly. “I like to have you near me. Take the book on your lap. Read to me, or talk to me, or do both; I shall listen and presently I shall write.”

The apartment in which I am seated is what is called the red parlour of Dunallan Towers. It is in one of the many gables of the old mansion that abuts upon a green lawn, or brae, sloping somewhat steeply down to the river’s bank.

It is a lovely evening in early autumn. Behind the purple hills in the west yonder, the sun has just set in a golden haze, and high up in the sky’s blue there are a few feather-like clouds of brightest crimson. By-and-by these will change to grey, then shadows of night will creep up from glen and dell, the rooks will cease to caw, and we shall hear only the murmur of the river over its pebbly bed, and the wind moaning through the topmost branches and the crisp leaves of those tall swaying trees.

Janet’s voice falls upon my ear in sad but pleasant monotone. It is like the voice of one chanting some old-world ballad. I do not think her eyes are turned on me as she speaks – mine are looking outwards into the twilight; and she is gazing back, as it were, to the far-distant past.

Why, it is dark! Janet must have been talking for hours and hours, and has glided away as silently as she came.

I awake from the reverie into which I had fallen and step out through the casement. How fresh the air is! How pleasant the wind’s soft whisper and the river’s song! The stars are out, and the round yellow moon is struggling up through a bank of clouds on the horizon. Now and then a bat flits past; now and then an owl hoots mournfully from some turret or chimney, round which the darkling ivy creeps. Not a light in any window. Silence broods over Dunallan Towers.

 

“The harp that once thro’ Tara’s halls

The soul of music shed,

Now hangs as mute on Tara’s walls

As if that soul were fled.

   

“So sleeps the pride of former days,

So glory’s thrill is o’er,

And hearts that once beat high for praise

Now feel that pulse no more.”

 

The night air is keen. I re-enter the red parlour, close the casement, and light my reading-lamp.

And now I write once more. No need for the journal’s assistance any longer, though. Every word that old Janet said has sunk deep into my mind and rooted itself in my memory, and will never be effaced while I and time have any connection.

Chapter Two
Claude Alwyn’s Boyhood

On the very day after the birth of Alwyn’s heir something strange occurred: a large flight of curious seagulls alighted in the park around Dunallan Towers. No one had ever remembered seeing such weird-looking birds there before, and Janet had averred that their arrival betokened no good. She was not wrong, for that same night it came on to blow from the north, oh, such a fearful gale! Many of the tallest and sturdiest trees were torn up by the roots, and even tossed about, and the Towers shook and trembled as if the very earth were quaking. It was eerisome to hear, at the dark midnight hour, the shriek of frightened wild birds around the house, high above the fitful roaring of the wind.

The Nith, too, came down “in spate;” they could see its white flashing waters, nearly close up to the window of the red parlour in which I now am sitting at work. It brought along with it from the mountains, fallen trees, bushes, heather-clad turf, and boulders of solid rock, tons and tons in weight.

All that night the storm raged, and though the wind went down about sunrise, the terrible rain still fell, and the river continued in raging spate. Great was the damage done to the lower-lying lands seawards; huts and even houses were laid low, sheep and cattle were drowned and borne away, so great is the fury and strength of a Highland river like the Nith when it “comes down,” as the people phrase it.

But the sun shone forth at length, and the clouds went driving southwards, leaving lovely rifts of blue between them, and the rain ceased, and the poor people of the glens came forth to view the work of devastation and to mourn their losses.

One of these, while walking in the park and not far from the mansion house, found, crouching under the gnarled root of an old tree, and gazing up at him with its bright crimson eye, or rather first with one eye then with the other, a snow-white gull of most graceful form.1

He caught it – one wing was injured – and brought it round to the kitchen, where it was much admired and tenderly cared for. In little over a week it seemed as well and strong as it must have been before the storm. Yet it was in no hurry to leave.

It stayed on and on and on, and became as tame as a dove, and most affectionate to all it knew. But to Janet in particular it attached itself. One day it followed her into the room where Alwyn’s heir lay in his little crib. Janet showed him the bird. He smiled and stretched out his arms with a fond cry, and next moment the snow-bird was nestling quietly on his breast.

There was no keeping the gull out of Claude’s room after this, so it came to be called “baby’s bird.”

When Claude Alwyn was about three years of age, an event happened down the glen that cast that gloom on Dunallan Towers that never yet has left it: Lord Alwyn was thrown from his horse and killed on the spot. Her ladyship left the glen after this, and went south, and Claude, childlike, would insist on taking his pet along with him.

Years flew by, summers passed and winters passed, but smoke was hardly ever seen to hover over the Towers. Then one day the old steward came down to the village all a-quiver with excitement. He wanted tradesmen of all kinds to come forthwith to the mansion house. Lady Alwyn and young Claude – now grown a great lad, the steward felt sure of this – were to return in less than a month.

Smoke enough now began to curl high over turret and tree; even the rooks seemed to feel the importance of the coming occasion, and positively crowed themselves hoarse.

At the appointed time the family carriage, a very stately and gigantic kind of a concern, rattled up the long avenue through the park, and soon after the widow of Lord Alwyn was once more Lady of the Towers. She was greatly altered. Though still young and youthful in appearance, sorrow had stamped itself on her brow and saddened her eye. It was said that she seldom smiled.

But she was even kinder to the poor of the district than she had been in the days of yore, and, wet day or dry day, she was never missed from the pew in church of a Sunday. And beside her always sat a sturdy bright-faced boy of about thirteen, with blue eyes, and short irrepressible locks of soft fair hair, that nothing on earth except scissors could have kept from tumbling over his brow. He was always dressed in the Highland garb as Highland lads ought to be, but his jacket was of black velvet and his kilt of the sombrest coloured tartan.

He was the favourite of every one on the estate, and so was his bird. Wherever young Claude – he was seldom called Lord Claude, because he did not like to be – wherever he went his snow-bird went as well.

And Claude was quite as fond of his pet as his pet was of him, and that was the secret of his success in taming this wild and strangely beautiful creature.

Only those who have seen the snow-bird in its own country, sailing around great icebergs or glittering glaciers, its plumage rivalling the snow in the purity of its whiteness, its shape more graceful than that of a swallow, can have any idea of the extreme loveliness of the creature. No wonder that the humble people of the glens, deeply imbued as they were with that superstition peculiar to the Highland peasantry, often looked upon young Claude and his matchless bird with something akin to awe.

“It is his good angel and nothing else,” one old crone used to remark, “his good angel, Heaven bless the bonnie boy.”

Yes, and a bonnie boy he looked at all times. Had you seen him standing, alpenstock in hand, dressed in Highland garb, on the brow of a hill, well defined against the sky, up to which his face was turned, and in which the snow-bird kept sailing and sailing, following every motion of Claude’s upstretched, waving arm, you could not have helped admiring him.

Claude spent much of his time fishing or shooting, but more particularly the former. Little he recked if the fish did not bite. He would then throw himself on his back among the ferns and flowers on the banks of the stream and pull out his “Burns” or his “Scott.” Meanwhile the snow-bird would perch upon a mossy boulder, or water-washed stone, and watch for the tiny troutlets, which sought for shelter and sunshine in the shallower water.

Young lord though he was, Claude was a “people’s boy.” It would be an exaggeration of speech to say that any of the villagers would have died for him; but it is true that Claude brightened every doorstep he crossed. And this too, all and only, by means of his own handsome face, sunny smile, and kindly words. Not that he did not bring the poor folks gifts, for he was often sent on errands of mercy by his mother, and he brought them also of his own accord many a goodly string of trout.

In a wild country like that in which our young hero dwelt and wandered, there are many dangers to life and limb, and Claude did not always escape quite scot-free. But when, on rushing down a lofty hillside once, he missed his foothold and fell over a crag full fifty feet high, he did not lose his presence of mind, but simply jumped up from the soft turf on which he had alighted, as if on a feather bed, and looked around for his bonnet, which he never saw again. The old shepherd who witnessed the involuntary exploit, told of it all over the parish, and the wise women alleged it was the bird that had saved him. When Claude’s gun burst in his hand and he escaped without a scratch, that too was in some way owing to the bird’s protecting care. When a branch on which he was leaning snapped beneath his weight and precipitated Claude into the roaring, foaming torrent beneath, where any one save a Webb would have been drowned, and when bleeding and cut he safely scrambled out, who but the bird, averred the wise old women, helped him out?

Claude rather encouraged than otherwise the belief in the supernatural powers of this wonderful snow-bird of his. Rather mischievous of him, it must be confessed, but then he was only a boy.

“My bird tells me I must do this or that,” he would often say; or, “I must consult my bird on that subject.”

Then he would pretend to hold communication with it, and the creature looked as though it understood every word he said. During the winter, Claude used to be at a distant school. Then his bird stayed at the Towers; but, although it suffered itself to be fed and petted by Lady Alwyn and by Janet, it did little else but mope until spring returned, and with it Claude.

The library at Dunallan Towers was a very large one, and Claude had the choosing of his own summer reading after forenoon lessons were over, and the books he took with him afield were always those of adventure, or some of the poets. It was often remarked that he never invited any of his tutors to accompany him in his rambles – only the bird.

“Mother,” said Claude one evening, “I’m going to be a sailor.”

“Dear boy,” replied his mother, “what has put such a notion in your head?”

“My bird, perhaps, mother,” said the boy, smiling.

“No, Claude, but those books you pore over. Dear boy, hardly half of what you read bears any resemblance to the truth.”

“Oh, mother,” cried the boy, “if only one half is true I must go and see that half I’m a good sailor already; you know how I enjoyed that voyage down the Mediterranean. I dream of all I saw even till this day. Mother, I must go to sea.

“Mother,” he said again, after a long pause, during which Lady Alwyn was musing, and very sad and gloomy were her thoughts – “mother, do you know where my bird came from?”

“It came from the wild mysterious region around the Pole.”

“Yes, I have been reading about that too, reading about it until I seem to have spent years and years of my life in the country. I have but to shut my eyes, any time I wish, and such pictures rise up before me as few but sailors ever see the reality of.”

Young Claude placed one hand across his eyes as he spoke.

“Here it is again, mother, a vast and lonely trackless waste of snow; great glaciers, against whose sides mountain waves for ever dash and foam; icebergs whose pinnacled heads taper upwards into a sky of cloudless blue. Fields of ice on which white bears roam; dark, inky seas where the walrus plays and tumbles, and through which the solitude-loving narwhal pursues his finny prey; and crystalline caves where sea-bears roar. But the scene is changed: it is night – the long, long, Polar night. Oh, how bright and beautiful the Aurora, with its ever-changing tints of crimson, green, and blue; and the stars, how near they seem; and the silence, how deep, how awful! But see, a storm is coming across the pack, and clouds are banking up and hiding the glorious Aurora; now it is on us, and higher than the stars rise the clouds of whirling, drifting snow. Hark! how the wind howls! There is danger on its wings; there is – ”

“Stop, boy, stop?” cried Lady Alwyn, laying her hand on his arm. “Speak not thus; you frighten me.”

There were tears in her eyes. Claude made haste to soothe her.

“Dear mother, forgive me!” he cried. “I am so thoughtless; but I will not transgress so again. Forgive and forget it.”

“You are all I have on earth to care for,” she said, drawing him gently towards her; “but, Claude, your happiness has always been, and ever will be, my first, my chief care. Yes, I will forgive your heedless words. You did not mean to hurt me; but, Claude,” – here she smiled, but it was a very sad smile – “I will not quite forget them. You love the sea.”

Lady Alwyn retired early to her room that evening, but it was long past midnight ere she slept. Her last thoughts ere slumber sealed her eyelids were these —

“And so my boy, even my boy, will be taken away from me. He will be a sailor; it is his bent, and why should I do aught that would mar his happiness? Heaven give me strength to bear my every trial here below, nor forget that on earth I have ‘no continuing city.’”

Lady Alwyn was rich, though not surpassingly so. She could afford her boy a yacht, in which he made many a cruise as owner – not as master – round the British islands and as far north as the Shetlands; indeed more than once they ventured over to Norway.

And so Claude grew up a sailor, so to speak. The smaller yacht gave place to a larger, and still a larger; and in a few years, when young Lord Alwyn had reached his twentieth year, he commanded, as well as owned, his ship himself.

About this time an event occurred that in a great measure altered the old tenor of Claude’s life, and that of his mother too, and on this event our story hinges.

In none of his cruises did his snow-bird accompany its master. Lady Alwyn was glad of this. “So long,” she thought, “as the bird stays with me, my boy will return safely from sea.”

It will be seen that even Lady Alwyn was slightly superstitious.

And Claude’s cruises were ever northwards. He had been several times to Iceland itself, and one day he meant to make a far longer and much more adventurous voyage. In the words of the old Norse song, it appeared as though —

 

“Nought around howe’er so bright

Could win his stay or stop his flight

From where he saw the Pole-star’s light

            Shine o’er the north.”

 

Chapter Three
Among Iceland Wilds

It was early morning. So early, indeed, that although it was sweet summer-time – and summer can he as sweet in Iceland as in any other part of the world – the birds had hardly yet uttered a note. Only the robin shook the dew from his wings (the American, not the English robin), and uttered a peevish twitter; and far away up among those wild hills, with their strange jagged peaks, you might have heard an occasional plaintive whistle or scream, the cry of the golden plover. Yet, early though it was, though the stars had not yet all fled from the west, sea-fowl were gracefully circling round – the gull, the tern, and the thievish skua. There was no wind, not a breath, but the dew lay heavy on the moss, on the green heather and stunted shrubs, and draggled the snow-white plumes of the lovely cotton grass. The wild flowers had not yet opened their beautiful petals when poor Claude Alwyn opened his eyes. Languidly, yet painfully, he raised himself on his elbow, and gazed dreamily around him. Where was he? How had he come here? These were questions that he asked himself. What is that on a stone yonder? A snow-bird gazing at him with one beautiful eye, and seeming to pity him. A snow-bird? His snow-bird?

“Alba! Alba!” he calls it; but the bird flies away. He was not at home, then, in bonnie Scotland, by the green banks of the Nith, as he had almost thought he was.

No, no; for look, yonder is his horse at the foot of the cliff – dead.

Dead? Surely not dead. He tries to crawl towards it. The movement gives him intense agony. He himself is wounded. And now he remembers all. How he left his yacht at Reykjavik a week ago; how he had been travelling ever since in search of incident and adventure, making sketches, gathering wild flowers, and enjoying the scenery of this strange, weird island; and how he was belated the evening before, and fell headlong over a cliff. That was all, but a dreadful all. He closes his eyes again and tries to think. Must he lie here and die? He shudders with cold and dread, starts up, and, despite the pain, staggers to his feet. He slowly passes the poor horse. Yes, there is death in that glazed eye, death in the drooping neck and stiffened limbs.

It takes Claude nearly an hour to drag himself to a neighbouring knoll, for one limb is smashed, and he has lost blood. He throws himself down now, or rather he falls, and when next he becomes conscious the sun is shining down warm on him from a bright blue sky; birds are singing near, and the wild flowers are open and nodding to a gentle breeze.

And yonder – oh, joy! – down there in the hollow, there is smoke curling up from an Icelandic farm. He shouts till hoarse, but no one appears.

Wearily he leans back, and once again his eyes are closed, and he is back once more in his own room at Dunallan Towers. No pain now, for his sad-eyed but beautiful mother is bending over him, and soothing him.

Is it so? Not quite.

“Jarl! jarl! Wake, jarl, wake?”

The jarl wakes. The jarl looks up.

Over him is bending a huge male figure, dressed in a long-sleeved waistcoat and lofty nightcap. Pained though he is, Claude cannot help thinking he is the ugliest man he ever saw. He is a giant in stature. He kneels beside young Alwyn, and there is a kindness visible in his little grey eyes, as he strokes Claude’s face, just as if he had been a colt. Byarnie, for such is this giant’s name, soon finds out how matters stand, and gently he lifts Claude in his arms and places him on his shoulder, and then marches off.

Preposterous and humorous thoughts will often pass through the mind, even when the body is in agony; and now, Claude could not help recalling the story of Jack the Giant-killer, and fancied himself Jack being carried away on the shoulders of Blunderbore. But not to a castle with a lawn littered with skulls and bones was Claude borne.

He had probably fainted with pain, and when he again became sensible he was no longer on Byarnie’s back, but in a comfortable warm bed in an antique but well-furnished room, and being attended to by a couple of old dames, both dressed alike, in gowns of dark rustling silk, and elevated steeple-like skull-caps of white net. And both, too, were alike wrinkled and ugly. They had almost finished dressing his leg.

“Thou must not speak, dear; thou must lie still and sleep.”

Good enough English, but spoken in a strange monotone – no rising or falling of the voice.

In a few minutes the work was done, and poor Claude found infinite relief. Then they brought him coffee and milk, and made him drink, and a little dram of schnapps which he also had to swallow. They evidently thought him a child, and stroked his face as Byarnie had done. One left the room, and the other took her seat beside the bed, and, still gently passing her hand downwards over Claude’s face, began to “croon” over that beautiful English lullaby —

 

“Hush, my dear, lie still and slumber,

    Holy angels guard thy bed;

Countless blessings without number,

    Gently falling on thy head.”

 

The voice was quavering, but the music was sweet. How soft the pillows felt – they were eider-down. How light the quilt – that also was of the same. Under such circumstances it is little wonder that Claude soon forgot everything and fell into a deep and childlike slumber.

The scenes, it seemed to Claude, were continually shifting. He did not feel that he had slept, only that he had just closed his eyes and opened them again, when lo! the crones were gone, the sunlight was no longer shimmering in through the crimson and yellow flowers in the little window as he had last seen it. The room was lighted by a lofty lamp that stood on an ancient high-backed oaken piano, throwing a flood of light over all the apartment. A great grey cat was singing herself to sleep on the piano stool, a fire was burning on the low hearth – a fire of peat and wood, that looked very cheerful – and above the window, in a tiny wicker cage, hung a tiny and miserable-looking snow-flea.

Claude took all this in at a glance. But none of these things interested him. His eyes were riveted on the only figure now in the room. A beautiful young girl, almost spirit-like she looked. So thought Claude. She stood leaning against the piano reading a tiny gilt-edged book. She was dressed in a long flowing robe of crimson adorned with snow-white fur. Her fair hair floated free over her shoulders, and her sweet face seemed very sad as she read, all unconscious of Claude’s wondering gaze. But presently she became aware of it. A slight tint of crimson suffused her face, but next moment she advanced boldly towards the bed, and laid her hand – such a tiny hand – on his brow.

Claude would have spoken, but she lifted a finger and beckoned him to lie silent.

Lie silent? Yes. Claude would not have disobeyed the behests of so sweet a nurse whatever they might have been.

There was food to be partaken of; he took it. Nauseous brown medicine also; he quaffed it.

Presently, however, there was a change of nurses. One of the droll old ladies came back, and remained an hour. Claude thought it ten, and felt in the third heaven when his young nurse again returned.

She seated herself at a little table facing Claude, and without even knocking at the door, Byarnie the giant stepped in, and placed a zither in front of her. It was a strange household, but, altogether, Iceland is a strange place.

She was going to play to soothe her patient. And sweetly she played too. Old-world airs, but how delicate the touch, how tasteful the fingering. And now she sings. “Who,” thought Claude, “can have taught her that wild sad song? Can a girl so young as she have loved and lost?”

 

“She is far from the land where her young hero sleeps,

    And lovers around her are sighing;

But coldly she turns to his grave and weeps,

    For her heart with her hero is lying.”

 

But Claude’s sorrow was to come. Inflammation was succeeded by high fever, and for days he lay in a state of delirium – dreamful, racking, burning delirium.

Then came peace and calmness.

Chapter Four
Idyllic Life in Iceland

Iceland! land of flowers and sunshine? Ah no; but Iceland! land of storms; land of the thunder-cloud; land of lordly hills, whose strange, jagged peaks pierce the clouds by day, and at night seem to nod to stars or moon; land of rugged shores, around which for ever toss and roll the arctic billows; land of glorious sunsets; land of the Aurora; land of romance too, a romance of the olden time, for do not ancient Vikings slumber on its shores in their wave-rocked graves? Iceland! land of peace and innocence? Yes. Iceland! land of love? Yes, land of love – of love as pure and true, if not so passionate, as ever budded and bloomed beneath the sunny skies of fair Italia.

It was the evening of the eighth day since poor Claude’s accident. The fever had all gone and left him. He lay there pale and weak and thin, as quiet and as obedient as a child.

It was very still in that ancient room; the purring of the great grey cat seemed very loud, so did the gentle twitter of the snow-flea in his wee wicker cage, and when an old raven, perched on a stool near the fire, rustled his feathers, the noise sounded harsh and startling.

It was near sunset, for the window was in the west, and the sun shimmered in through the red and green and yellow of the flowers.

“Dear nursie, what is your name?”

The words appeared to fall unconsciously from the lips of our stricken hero.

In his fever dreams, he just dimly remembered hearing it, but he was not quite certain. Anyhow, he wished to hear it from the girl herself.

“Dear nursie, what is your name?”

“My name is Meta?” – this from the maiden, with a blush and a smile.

There was a pause. He would have liked her to have asked, “And what is yours?”

But she did not. She only sat silently there, with the book on her lap, as she had been sitting for the last half-hour.

“Mine is Claude,” he said at last. “May I call you Meta?”

“Ye-es,” with modest hesitation.

“Do call me Claude?”

“Claude,” said the girl, advancing towards him with a very serious countenance, and laying a tiny hand on his pulse, “I think you are going to die. Oh! I trust not. But there is a strange glitter in your eyes to-night – a look I like not, and your pulse flickers feebly. I will call aunt.”

She was hurrying away.

“Meta!”

She came back.

“Meta, I will not die if – ”

He paused hesitatingly.

“If what?”

“If you – if you will stay and nurse me.”

“I will; but now sleep. You are very weak, and, see, twilight is creeping up from the fiord. Close your eyes, and I will play to you.”

“Meta,” said Claude next day.

“Yes, Claude.”

Claude felt happy to be called Claude. Remember, he was very weak and ill, and in this condition even men grow childish.

“Tell me something about yourself. You were not always in this island. You even talk sweetly beautiful English.”

“I am Norwegian. My father was a sailor, the captain of a barque. He always took mother and me everywhere. We were all he had. Thus I learned English. We often traded to Reykjavik. My two aunts used to live there.”

“Yes, Meta; and your parents?”

“Alas! we were wrecked on this wild coast; both were drowned. My dear mother lies buried in the little graveyard yonder. My poor father was – never – found.”

Her face was hurriedly buried in her hands, and tears welled through her fingers.

Tears filled Claude’s eyes too, but he spoke not. He knew well how sacred grief and tears like hers are.

But soon she lifted her tearful face.

“They are both in heaven, Claude,” she said.

Claude hastened, with good tact, to change the subject. When he told her of his father’s sad death and of his mother’s perpetual sorrow, then even Meta felt that something had suddenly grown up in their hearts to draw them together in friendship.

We will be brother and sister, she thought; but, alas! he will go, and I shall see him never more again.

After this, though Meta still played, sung, and read to her patient as before, patient and nurse talked more together.

Meta told Claude of her early life, and Claude exchanged confidences.

“I would dearly like to see your great lady mother,” said Meta one day, about two weeks after their first earnest conversation.

“You may one day,” said Claude, thoughtfully.

“What? she may come here? – here in your ship? Is she very, very proud? She might not deign to speak to a sailor’s daughter,” she added.

“Oh yes, dear Meta,” exclaimed Claude, with enthusiasm; “she would speak to you. She would thank you – she would bless you for having saved the life of her only son.”

“My aunts did that; not I,” said innocent Meta.

“No, Meta, no; but you, and you alone, saved my worthless life – worthless to all but my mother.”

There is a joy in returning health and strength that only those who have been really and dangerously ill can understand. It was still the sweet summer time when Claude was able to go out once more. Very feebly went be at first, but in the keen, fresh, mountain air, vigour came fast. He was soon able to take long rambles, then longer rides. How delightful these rides were; how glorious, but sometimes how terrible and awesome, was the scenery!

They rode on ponies, Meta and Claude, while the great, unwieldy Byarnie trotted along by their side, or ran on ahead; for often there were rivers to ford, and gorges to descend, without e’er a path except that found, extempore, by this honest, but ghoul-like groom.

Many and many a day after, when imprisoned in the icy North without hope of deliverance, except through the valley of death, did Claude Alwyn look back with joy and pleasure to these excursions. He remembered every feature of the scenery – the frowning cliffs, the towering mountains, the broad, shallow rivers, the deep ravines and glens, the cliffs and rocks, the great boulders that seemed about to topple over and hurry them to destruction, the wild birds, the green, green sward, the beautiful mosses, and the still more lovely wild flowers. But, above all, he remembered the innocent, childlike face of Meta, that used to look into his so trustingly as she called him “brother Claude.”

Sometimes they would seat themselves together by the banks of a stream where Byarnie would be fishing, and Meta would tell her brother such wondrous tales – mostly Icelandic and Norse fairy stories, about which there is so great a charm. Claude loved to hear her talk; there was such an earnestness about her while she related tales of folk-lore, as if she really believed them all herself. But when she came to speak of the ancient Vikings, and their deeds of valour and prowess, then the maiden’s eyes sparkled, and there came a brighter glow in her cheeks, that told of a bold heart that beat within her breast, a heart that could not only love but dare.

So weeks sped on, so even months passed by, and surely Paul and Virginia led no more idyllic life than did Claude and Meta during this time.

They sat near a geyser one lovely day in July. There was no great eruption that day, no startling and awful upthrow of boiling water, only now and then a bubbling, rumbling sound, which made a rude bass to the song of the birds that hovered near.

Giant Byarnie had boiled some eggs in a spring. Byarnie always provided luncheon for the party of one kind or another. He had placed the eggs in the sun, and had gone away to a distance to milk a cow. I am really afraid that Byarnie was not particular whose cow it was. Cows are often public property in Iceland. Anyhow he found a cow, two of them for that matter, so he went to pull some of the sweetest grass to lay before one to keep her quiet while he filled his pannikin.

Meanwhile Meta and brother Claude sat on a bank near the spring. The sunshine was very soft and warm, and the air was filled with the odour of wild thyme.

Meta was silent and sad, for to-morrow Claude was going away – never, never, she thought to return again. She could not speak much. Very little would have made her cry, and she felt determined not to do that.

Claude was silent also.

And Byarnie, away down in the valley yonder, went on milking his cow – or rather somebody else’s cow – and singing in Norse to himself. Presently Claude put out his hand and took that of Meta. It was very cold.

“Dear sister Meta,” he said.

She felt she wanted to cry more than ever now.

“I am going away to-morrow – south to my mother, dear; south to my own bonnie land. I am going away – ”

Oh, how the tears rained now! There was no keeping them back. She threw herself on the grass and sobbed as if her heart would really burst.

Claude could say nothing for a moment or two.

“Meta! Meta!” he cried at last, “look up – speak to me. Listen, dear; I am going south to tell my mother I will never many any one except you, dear Meta. Do not speak; I know you love me as I love you. I will not be long away. You will long for my return, even as my dear mother is longing now. My mother will be your mother, Meta; my home and country will be yours.”

Meta was smiling now through her tears. What more was said, if anything, may never be known, but when Byarnie came floundering back with his pannikin of milk, he found his mistress and master, as he called them, both happy and gay, and wondered at this very much, because he had left them both sad and quiet.

A little Norse maiden knelt in prayer that night beside her dimity-curtained bed, and thanked the kind Father for the hope and joy of pure love, the hope that as she had a mother in heaven, she yet might have one on earth as well.

And Claude’s yacht spread her wings to the breeze, and south and south she flew. Past the Westmann Isles, past lonely Stramoe, past the rugged Faroes, past the Shetlands, past the Hebrides themselves.

And now Claude slackens sail His men notice that he is no longer so buoyant and happy. He treads the deck with a quicker step, as if to keep time with those thoughts.

“Oh?” he was saying to himself, “what will mother say? How will mother take it? How will the proud Lady Alwyn look, when I tell her I am betrothed to a simple Iceland maiden?”

Chapter Five
“Will He Never Come Again?”

Not since the bright old days before the death of Claude’s father had Dunallan Towers looked so cheerful as it did the week before the arrival of the wanderer himself in Glasgow waters.

“I believe my boy will come to-day,” Lady Alwyn would remark to her maid.

“Something tells me, too, he won’t be long,” Janet would reply; “and do you know, my lady, that Alba seems to know it also? He cried, ‘Claude! Claude! Claude!’ last night quite distinctly in his sleep, and the sound thrilled every nerve in my body. Oh! I hope nothing has happened to him, my lady.”

“Hush! hush!” replied her ladyship; “you are superstitious, Janet; but you mustn’t try to make me so.”

Even as they spoke there came a patter of tiny feet along the passage, like the rattle of hail on a summer-house roof, and the next moment Alba himself appeared. He flew up, and on to the back of a quaint old chair, and gazed first at Janet and then at her mistress with his garnet eyes.

Lady Alwyn smoothed the graceful creature, and it bent low on its perch, as if enjoying the gentle caress.

“Do you not notice,” said the lady, “how white and snowy its plumage has become of late? It is always thus before my boy arrives.”

“Dear Lady Alwyn, I did not like to tell you before; but all the three days you were at Dumfries Alba was lost, and I never thought to see him again. He was whiter when he came back than the snows on the mountains.”

“How strange!” said Lady Alwyn, meditatively.

“Claude, Claude!” cried Alba.

There is nothing strange in hearing a seagull talking, and Alba’s vocabulary was not a small one.

Lady Alwyn held out her hand; the bird perched on it, and presently was nestling fondly on her breast. This did not altogether please Fingal, Claude’s favourite deerhound. He must needs get up from the skin on which he had been reclining, and lean his noble head on the lady’s lap. And she could spare a hand to fondle the head.

Yes, everything was bright and pleasant. What though the early winter winds were raving through the leafless trees without, where swayed the rooks near their cheerless nests? what though the blasts were biting and cold in the uplands, and the Nith – brown and swollen – roared angrily over its rocky bed? Bright fires burned in every grate, and were reflected in patches of crimson from the massive mahogany furniture.

And Lady Alwyn’s face was cheerful too. Resigned and calm though she always appeared, to-day there was a sparkle in her eyes, that made her look almost young.

Rat-tat! It was a double knock at the front hall door which resounded through all the house.

Lady Alwyn started from her seat, and stood eager and expectant. She even went to meet the liveried servant, who presently entered with the telegram.

“Yes, yes!” she joyfully exclaimed in answer to Janet’s inquiring look. “My boy is coming to-day. I knew he would be. Alba, your master is coming.”

She embraced the bird again. Fingal, sure that something more than usual was on the tapis, began to scamper round the room, jumping over the chairs – a way he had when excited. He jumped all round the room twice, then he playfully snatched the telegram from Lady Alwyn’s hand and went jumping round again with that.

How much or how little of the truth Fingal guessed I cannot pretend to say. It was but a telegram. Had it been a letter written by his loved master’s hand, Fingal would have known it, even had the wanderer been years away.

So when Claude stepped briskly out of the train at the little station of P – , there, sure enough, was the great stately old carriage, with its two splendid dark bays, in their silvered harness, waiting to receive him.

His mother was not there; but Fingal was, and almost pulled his master down in the exuberance of his joy.

It was a long five-mile drive from the station to Dunallan. Charming enough, in all conscience, during the spring and summer months, and even when autumn tints were on the trees, but cold-looking and dreary now. All the more so that night was coming on apace, the little of lurid light which the sun had left in the west getting quickly absorbed in the heavy banks of rising cloud.

Claude’s spirits fell lower now than they had yet fallen. There was something even in the sombre grandeur of the family carriage that brought dark clouds around his heart.

Not one thought except those of love for the fair and innocent maiden far away mingled with these. But his mother? His proud, good, gentle mother?

How would the Lady Alwyn, the Lady of the Towers, herself of ancient family, like the idea of her only son marrying a poor Iceland orphan unblessed with a pedigree?

And he – a lord – Lord Alwyn! Yes, Lord Alwyn. He could not deny it, though he hated the title, hated it now more than ever for the sake of Meta.

There was some relief from his present gloom and doubts and fears in placing his arm round great Fingal – seated so lovingly by his side, – and breathing into his ears the strange story of his love.

Fingal could listen and sympathise, even if he did not know one whit what it was all about.

Fingal was a wise old dog, so he wisely held his peace, and offered no advice on the matter either way. He gave his master one lick on the cheek, however, as much as to say —

“Whatever you think, dear master, must be right, and whatever you do can’t be wrong in my eyes, so there?”

Mother and son had much to talk of that night. Lady Alwyn’s life since the Alba, her son’s ship, bore away for the far North, had been uneventful enough; but he had had adventures numerous indeed – although, mind you, he did not speak of them as such. Hardly ever is a rover off the stage heard making use of the word “adventures.” Modesty is one of the leading characteristics of your true hero.

There were times on this first evening when Claude would suddenly lapse into silence, almost into moodiness. He might be looking at his mother or not, but his mind was evidently abstracted, preoccupied, and his eyes had a far-away look in them. This did not escape his mother’s notice.

“Could he have any grief?” she thought. “Could he be ill and not know it?”

“You are sure,” she said once, “my dear Claude, that you have quite recovered from your terrible accident?”

“What, mother? Accident? Oh yes; indeed I had almost forgotten.”

“And your nurses, your kindly nurses, Claude: you must never forget them, dear.”

“I’m not likely to,” he said, with on emphasis which she thought almost strange. “Never while I live.”

He gazed into the fire.

“Would not this be the right time,” he was thinking, “to tell her all: to tell her I had three nurses instead of only two?”

But no; he dared not just yet. He would not run the risk of bringing a care to her now happy face. He thought himself thus justified in putting the evil day – if evil day it were to be – further off.

Claude was no coward, as I believe the sequel of my story will show, but still he dreaded – oh, how he dreaded! – the effect which the intelligence he was bound soon to give her would have upon her.

Claude slept but little that night, and slept but ill. More than once he started from some frightful dream, in which his mother was strangely mixed up, and not his mother only, but his Meta.

It was about five o’clock, though it would not be daylight for a long while yet. Claude was lying partially asleep: I say partially, because he seemed listening to the wind roaring through the leafless boughs of the trees, and every now and then causing the twiglets to tap and creak against the panes; but he thought he was at sea, and that the rushing sound was the rushing of waves, the creaking the yielding of the ship’s timbers to the force of the seas.

Suddenly he sprang half up in bed and listened intently, painfully.

He had distinctly heard some one in the room calling him. He could not be mistaken, and the voice seemed Meta’s.

“Claude! Claude!” cried the voice again, and his heart almost stood still for a moment as he saw a figure, which his imagination magnified a hundredfold, near the bed. “Claude?”

Next moment Alba, the snow-bird, alighted on his breast.

He slept soundly soon after this, but still when he appeared at breakfast he was so jaded looking and restless as to cause his mother considerable anxiety. He stoutly refused to see a medical man, however.

“It is nothing,” he laughed. “Nothing, dear mother, only slight fatigue. A sailor like myself thinks little of travelling a thousand miles by sea, yet dreads the rolling, jolting train.”

There was plenty to do and think about all day, well calculated to banish care. The villagers, the tenants, and neighbours all round were delighted to see the manly face and handsome figure of young Claude Alwyn once more among them, still accompanied by his pet – his spirit-bird, as the older cottagers had come to call it.

Then, although grouse were wild, there were hares in plenty, and fish in the river ready to be wooed by the gentle art of so true a fisherman as Claude Alwyn. And the walking exercise, through the heather hills, the fresh air, and the balmy breath of pine trees, never failed to refresh and invigorate him both in mind and body, so that he always returned to dinner buoyant and hopeful. But ever at the breakfast-table there was that weary look of carking care in his face.

He would go no further, however, in explaining it than confessing he did not sleep very well at night.

“It is the change,” he remarked, smiling, “from a hard mattress to one far too soft and luxuriant for a sailor. Besides, mother, I dare say I miss the motion of the ship.”

His mother only sighed softly.

There came to Claude one night a dream as vivid as any reality. He was back again in Iceland. He was gazing on the face and form of her whom he loved, though she did not seem to see him. She was seated on a hill-top, a favourite spot, where beside her he had often sat, when the fields beneath were green, the far-off sea an azure blue, when wild birds sang above and around them, and the perfume of wild flowers filled the summer air.

But snow was all over the landscape now, save where dark rocks jutted through the white, and the ocean, foam-flecked, dashed high over the beetling cliffs. Yes, there sat Meta, but oh! the sad, sad look in those beautiful eyes! She opened her lips and spoke at last.

“No, no, no!” she murmured; “he will never come again.”

He thought he sprang towards her, but she faded away like the mist from a geyser, and he was alone on the snow.

He slept no more that night. But he formed a resolve.

“No,” he said to himself, “I am not a man; not a drop of proud Alwyn’s blood runs through my veins if I hesitate longer. It is a duty I owe to my mother and to her to speak my mind. Yes, Meta, I will come back again.”

Were I an artist, I should delight in painting only beauty and peace: the fairest, holiest faces should be transferred to my canvas; the most smiling summer landscapes, the sunniest seas. But, alas! I am but an author, and no pen-and-ink depiction of life would be complete without the shade and shadow of sorrow.

I will not needlessly dwell on the interview that took place in the very room in which I am sitting writing now, between the proud Lady Alwyn and her son. Indeed, the interview was brief in itself: I have thus some excuse for being brevity personified in my description.

Pass we over, then, Claude’s introduction, his passionate declaration of love for Meta, his glowing panegyrics on her person and mind, and even the statement that only his regard for his mother and fear of hurting her feelings caused him to conceal the truth so long from her, and then we come to the dénouement.

“But, dearest mother, I now know and feel that your constant desire to do everything for my happiness will cause you to receive my Meta when I bring her home as my bride.”

If she had been silent till now, it was because she seemed as if thunder-struck.

“My boy,” she cried at last, “you are bewitched, or I am dreaming some hideous dream. Tell me it is all but an ill-timed joke. You are but a child – ”

“I am a man.”

“You have been deceived, put upon, tempted by a designing – ”

“Hold, mother, hold! Though the few words you have uttered sound like the death-knell to hopes I have fondly cherished, go no further: forget not yourself so far as to speak one word against my bride-elect, lest I forget I am your son.”

“My son? My son?” exclaimed the proud Lady of the Towers almost tragically. “Oh! would I could forget it, or that your ship had sunk in the blackest depths of ocean, rather than you had lived to bring this disgrace on the noble house of Alwyn.”

“Enough, mother; I will hear no more. You have thwarted me in the dearest wish of my heart, you whose love for a son ought to have conquered family pride. You have thrust me from the halls of my ancestors. I go forth into the world of adventure. I will seek in ambition, in ceaseless change, the only possible balm for the sorrow I have in parting from you.”

He turned on his heel as he spoke. He strode down the hall and through the avenue; he looked neither to right nor left, and never once behind him. His mother watched him with clasped hands, with anxious eyes, and with prayers on her pale and quivering lips.

“Would he turn? Surely, surely he would turn.” But nay; the trees soon hid him from view – hid him, and lastly Fingal, who with tail and head bent low, as if he knew that sorrow had come, followed at young Claude’s heels.

“Widowed and childless!” These were her words as she sank apparently lifeless on the floor.

Janet, her maid, found her thus and lifted her gently on to the couch. But when memory came back, no words her maid could utter could give comfort.

“I forgive him, Janet,” she said, “as he will forgive me. It is fate. He may write, but he’ll never return: too well do I know the pride of the Highland Alwyns. But, but, dear Janet,” – here all the woman’s nature gushed out in tears – “Janet,” she sobbed, “poor Fingal – too – has – gone.”

Sorrow had fallen like a dark cloud on Dunallan Towers, a cloud that was deepened in its darkness when one morning Alba, the snow-bird, was missing. It was last seen flying listlessly around the great elm trees, then straight as lightning bearing northwards. It was Janet who saw it, and it seemed to say —

 

“I hear a voice you cannot hear,

That bids me not to stay;

I see a hand you cannot see,

That beckons me away.”

 

Chapter Six
“Grief is the Parent of Fame.”

Claude was miles away from home ere he noticed faithful Fingal trotting near him.

His first thought was to order him back, but this poor dog, as if reading his mind, crouched low at his feet, looking beseechingly up.

“This is my home,” he appeared to plead.

Claude’s next thought was to take him back; his mother might even ere now have relented. But that Highland pride, which has been at once the glory and the curse of Auld Scotland, stepped in and forbade.

Young Claude went on.

“Grief,” says one of England’s greatest novelists – Lord Lytton – “is the parent of fame.”

This is so true! Many and many a grief-stricken, sorrow-laden man and woman in this world would faint and fail and die, did they not fall back upon work to support them. This is the tonic that sustains tens of thousands of sorely stricken ones, until Time, the great healer, has assuaged the floods of their sorrow.

Young though Claude was – but little more than twenty-one – he had already obtained some fame in the fields of literature. He had been a rover, and to some extent an explorer – more especially among those wild and lonely islands in the Norland Ocean. Nor had he been content to merely cruise around these, watching only the ever-changing hues of the ocean, or the play of sunshine and shade on bold bluff crags and terraced cliffs. No, for he was as much on shore as afloat, mingling among their peoples when peoples there were, mingling among the birds if they were the only inhabitants, studying flora, studying fauna, reading even the great book of the rocks, that told him so much, but never yet had caused him to waver in his belief in a Supreme Being, who made the sea and all that is in it, the land and all it contains.

He was a sportsman and naturalist; in fact, “a man of the world,” in the only true and dignified sense of the term.

His was an original mind, and a deep-thinking one, so that the sketches of his life and travels which he had been in the habit of sending from time to time to the organs of higher-class literature were sure to be welcome both to editors and readers.

He was, moreover, a student of Norse lore, and a speculator in the theories – many of them vague enough – concerning the mysterious regions that lie around the Arctic Pole. And it was his writings on these countries that first brought him into real notoriety among a class of very worthy savants who, though seldom too willing to venture into extreme danger themselves, are, to their credit be it said, never averse to spend money in fitting out ships of research.

On the very day of his rejoining his vessel at Glasgow, a letter was handed to him by his chief mate, inviting him to London on important business in connection with discovery in the Arctic regions.

Two hours afterwards Claude was seated in a flying train, whirling rapidly on towards the borders. In nine hours more he was in town. Another half-hour brought him to a shipping office in Leadenhall Street.

“You are Captain Lord Alwyn?” said the grey-haired clerk, looking at him over the rims of a pair of golden spectacles.

“The same, at your service,” returned Claude.

“We did not expect you quite so soon. But if you did come, I was told to hand you this note.”

It was simply an invitation to dine with Professor Hodson and a few friends next evening at Richmond.

When Claude got there, the first person to greet him when announced was the learned professor himself, and a very bustling, dignified little man he was.

“Ha! ha!” he laughed, as he shook Claude warmly by the hand. “I couldn’t have believed it. Really, it is strange!”

“Believe what?” said Claude, bluntly.

“Why, that you were so young a man. Should have thought from your writings you must be forty if a day.”

It was Claude’s turn to laugh.

“But there, never mind. Authors are always taken to be older men than they are. No, I don’t think that youth will be an insuperable objection. Besides, youth has courage, youth has fire and health, to say nothing of a recuperative power of rising again even after being floored by a thousand misfortunes.”

“Difficulties, I dare say,” said Claude, “were made to be overcome.”

“To be sure. Well, then, having heard and read a good deal about your doings up North, we thought we would send for you, and instead of having a learned day discussion round a green baize-covered table, to invite you to join us at dinner – quite a quiet affair – and just to chat matters over.”

It must be confessed that poor Claude did not feel altogether at home among those extremely learned men.

The conversation was all about previous voyages of scientific discovery. Had those gentlemen been more practical and less theoretical, Claude would have been all with them; but it was evident from the way they spoke that not one of them had ever been on blue water, much less on the stormy seas of the Far North.

When, by way of encouraging him to talk more, in the course of the evening they asked Claude’s advice concerning the practicability of the plans they had in view, then young Claude spoke out like a man of business and a sailor.

Cool and collected to a degree, boldly banishing all theories, he hung on to facts. He did not ignore dangers and difficulties; he did not despise them, but professed himself willing to meet them, without for a moment holding out any promise of ultimate success in the adventurous undertaking. How dared he, he said, expect to do more than abler and better and braver men who had gone on the same track before him? If he did presume to hope to even a little more, it was because he should have all their bygone experiences to help him. If they entrusted the command of an exploring ship to him, there was but one thing he could boldly promise, and that was to do his best. He said much more to the same effect, and even enlarged upon the necessary equipment, victualling, and armament of a ship of the kind they proposed sending out, and when he at length concluded —

“Spoken like a man and a sailor,” said the professor, and a murmur of assent passed round the table:

The savants retired to another room to consult. When they came back, Professor Hodson advanced and shook hands with Claude.

“We are unanimous in thinking, Lord Alwyn,” he said, “that you are just the man we want. The vessel you are to command already lies in Southampton waters. There are doubtless a thousand alterations to be made: these you, with your experience, will be able to see to. Do not spare expense. Draw upon us. We want you to feel that it will be no fault of ours if the expedition be not crowned with success; and I have the support of my colleagues in adding that we sincerely believe it will be no fault of yours. Other details,” added the bold professor, “can be gone into whenever you please.”

It was a quiet little hotel that Claude occupied that night, but one which he meant to make his home while in London. And why? Smile if you like, reader, but the reason is this: the landlord did not object to the presence of noble Fingal in his house.

Claude sat long in his sitting-room before retiring. The state of his feelings may be more easily imagined than described. His mind was by turns here, there, everywhere – back in his boyhood’s home, afloat on the sea, with his mother at Dunallan Towers, then away in the Far North with Meta. His mind reverted to the past, and went forward again to the future. He was sad and hopeful by turns. But he had crossed the Rubicon; he could not now draw back from anything he had done or promised to do.

Before he retired, he knelt and asked guidance from Him in whose hands are all our ways, and he slept more soundly that night than he had done for weeks.

Chapter Seven
A Pleasure Sail

“Oh, mamma, I do hope the weather will be fine!” said pretty Miss Hodson.

“Well, my dear Clara, isn’t it fine? Why, a more delightful day could not well be imagined.”

“Yes, now, mamma; but I mean all along on this adventuresome voyage that we are about to take.”

“Don’t you bother your little head, my mouse,” said her father, fondling one of her little hands in his. “I know enough about the weather to give a forecast a week beforehand, and a good deal about the sea, too, though I confess I’ve never been on it much. Ahem!”

The speakers were seated in a cab that was rattling along the quay of Aberdeen on a lovely morning in April. There were monster boxes on top, another cab filled with luggage only came up behind, and still another containing three gentlemen.

Very distinguished men these were, indeed, though oddly ill-matched in appearance. Number 1, let me call him, was a true type of a middle-aged John Bull – tall, whiskered, stout, strong, yet calm and thoughtful withal. Number 2 might have been a Boston editor or an Edinburgh genius of the old school. He was medium in height, lanky rather, high in cheek-bone, deep in eye. He wore no beard, but had a bushy moustache and very long grey hair. Number 3 was evidently a fat Frenchman, rotund to a degree, black as to hair, which was cropped as short as a convict’s, and moustache, but so fat! You could best describe his outline by letters, thus – take a big O and a little o and two letters l. Now stick the little o on the top of the big O and you have his head and body. Then clap on the two l’s to represent his legs, and you have his lines complete. He was so stout that when he stuck out his little white hands, with their palms upwards, as Frenchmen have a habit of doing in argument, the finger-tips did not project an inch beyond him in front. But Number 1 was no less an individual than Sir Thomas Merino; Number 2 was the Baron de Bamber; and Number 3, Count Koskowiskey himself.

The little boys in Aberdeen had never before seen such a strange procession of cabs, nor such a strange crew inside, so that they felt constrained to run alongside and wave their ragged bonnets and shout themselves hoarse.

The savants, for such they were, thought to purchase peace with a shower of coppers. This only increased the crowd, and no beggars in Cairo ever yelled for backsheesh as did those boys for “bawbees.”

But things do not last for ever, and at length the cabs drew up, one by one, at a gangway that stretched from the shore to the quarter-deck of the good ship Icebear. The gangway was covered with scarlet cloth, a neatly dressed sailor stood at each side of the shore end to steady it, and Captain Claude Alwyn stood at the other ready to receive his guests.

He looked very handsome did our Claude, in his peaked cap, reefing-jacket of simple blue, and gilt buttons.

He doffed his cap as he handed the ladies on board, and was rewarded by a smile from Mrs Hodson, and a blushet – let me coin a word – from Clara, her daughter.

Now, it was evident that Professor Hodson was the head of the party; for no sooner had every one of them taken a good look round the gallant ship than he remarked, “Now, gentlemen, what do you say – shall we have an early dinner and then sail, or sail first and have a more comfortable one out at sea! I propose the latter plan.”

“Professor,” said his wife, sternly, “I propose the former; and ladies, I think, should carry the sway.”

“They generally do,” sighed the professor, who looked subdued and henpecked, as distinguished savants are apt to be.

“Your proposal is best, madam,” put in Claude, smiling. “It is best to have it over. You can sup afterwards; that is,” he added mysteriously, “if any of you will care to.”

“Oh, we shall all sup,” said the professor. “The ocean always gives me an appetite.” (N.B. – He had been three times from London to Ramsgate by steamer.)

“Most sartainlee, capitaine,” said the French savant.

To have seen the way the gentlemen, and – pardon me, my lady readers – the ladies also, enjoyed that excellent dinner, one would have said there would be little need for supper.

The saloon was long and comfortable, though there was nothing of the boudoir about it. Claude himself had seen to everything personally. It was a very brilliant and select little party that assembled on deck about an hour afterwards. The élite, or rather the literary élite, of the city had come to wish the Icebear “God-speed?”

“What am I to do with all these flowers, sir?” the steward asked that same afternoon, when he got a word with the captain.

“Keep the choicest for the saloon,” was the reply, “and distribute the rest impartially for’ard.”

The Icebear was a lovely vessel, both fore and aft. She had been originally intended for a man-of-war to add to the navy of a far-off foreign potentate; but as the potentate in question did not, or could not, pay at the right moment, after waiting a goodly time the builder very properly put her in the market, and she was knocked down at a reasonable figure to our savant friends. About 1500 tons burden she was, low in bulwarks, flush in deck, with no great breadth of beam, though with more than the coffin-ships they often send poor Jack to sea in – things with no breadth at all to speak of, and that go over and down in a breeze, and in sea-way that a Peterhead herring-boat would laugh at. The Icebear was sturdy and strong all over, had good engines, good shaft and screw – she carried a spare one. Forward, the bows were of triple strength, moderately sharp, and shod with iron, to aid in boring through the ice.

She had three respectable masts, not heavy enough to weigh her over on her beam-ends if a squall struck her broadside, nor light enough to snap like pea-sticks if a puff came. When under sail the screw could be hoisted up into a kind of covered well, and the advantage of this will be found when the ship gets farther north.

Not a yard of canvas, not a fathom of cordage, that had not been examined and tested by Claude himself.

So much for the exterior. “Downstairs,” as landsmen would say, she was fitted up with a view to the utmost comfort. The men’s sleeping-berths forward and amidships were bunks and hammocks. The crew all told was ninety men, or would be when the vessel lay in at Kirkwall to ship additional hands.

Remember, there was no lumber of any kind on the upper deck. No unsightly cabins or rooms, only forward was the winch and then the steerage cabin, the capstan, the midship companion; and aft the saloon and cabin skylights and companions, the wheel-house and binnacle. I hope I am not talking Greek to my readers, who are probably not all nautical; but I wish it to be understood that the Icebear’s decks were most roomy, nothing at all unnecessary being built or even lying thereon – a deck on which you could waltz with delight, or fight without discomfort. The captain’s quarters, or rather his private room, occupied the after-part of the ship under the wheel-house, and was charmingly furnished, with a splendid stove, warm, soft carpets, a lounge, easy-chairs, a swing-cot, a library of choice books, and two ports that looked out over the sea. There, then I what more would you have in a private room afloat? and, mind you, it was the whole width of the ship. It had a private staircase. But the wardroom, or principal saloon, which lay under the quarter-deck, had cabins off it for the officers of the expedition, whose acquaintance we will make in good time.

It may be asked what were two ladies and four learned landsmen doing on board a ship bound for the icy North? It was a proposal of Mrs Hodson, to which her husband knew he dared not say nay, that the party we now see on board should accompany the vessel as far as Kirkwall, for what she called “the pleasure of a sail.”

Well, the pleasure of the sail really commenced before they were beyond the pier-head of Aberdeen. The long granite breakwater, which they were steaming past, was crowded with people, and, greatly to Mrs Hodson’s delight, a lusty shore-porter sprang up to the top of a parapet and, commanding silence by a wave of his arm, proposed “Three cheers for the two gallant ladies, who were sailing away to the North Pole never to return.”

And the cheers were given too – not three, but three times three; and when Mrs Hodson smilingly bowed her acknowledgments, and pretty Clara waved a handkerchief, which the crowd firmly believed to be wet with tears, then the cheering was redoubled, and kept up till the ship was over the bar. Next, guns were fired from the fort; and when this salute was returned from the Icebear, and the flag dipped and hoisted again, the voyage had commenced in earnest.

All the way to Peterhead it was most enjoyable, but as night stole over the ocean, and the sun dipped towards the sea, and just as Professor Hodson was proposing to go down to supper, the wind sprang up; then – let me say it in my own queer way – all on board that were sailors, were sailors, and those on board who were not, were very much the reverse. Surely this is better than saying that certain folks were sea-sick.

But it was a pity that the cruel wind should blow so high, and that the waves should not have respected the savants a single bit, nor Mrs Hodson either, nor even the pretty Clara.

It was not only a pity, but it was excessively annoying; for Professor Hodson, who had once written a treatise on the physical geography of the sea, had meant to give a scientific lecture in the forenoon; while Sir Thomas, the bold Saxon, was to have lectured on astronomy under the stars, the dredging machine was to have been set to work, and the mysteries of the ocean depths revealed to the wondering gaze of poor Jack; while Mrs Hodson had pictured to herself the pleasure she would have in presiding at the head of the table, and lecturing, not only her husband, but everybody else; and Clara – she, too, had had her dreams. There could be no harm, Clara had thought, in looking her best, and dressing her best, and even engaging in the delicatest of flirtations with the handsome Lord Claude. She had had a lovely sailor costume made, but, oh dear! – my heart bleeds to mention it – it was never worn, and the only miserable consolation left to her was to remember, that this nautical rig would do for Henley Regatta. Ugh!

But oh! the cruel, cruel ocean, and oh! the merciless waves, not one of all those dreamers left his or her cabin till the Icebear lay safe and sound in Kirkwall.

Thus ended the pleasure sail from which so much joy had been expected.

Chapter Eight
“Till Frozen Seas do Meet.”

“Mr Lloyd,” said Claude to his first mate, the morning after the Icebear sailed away from the Orkneys on the wings of a favouring breeze, “I am not going to call my men together and make a speech. That style of thing is far too stagey. We have picked our crew, and I believe they will be good men and true, every one of them. Well, I will try to be a kind and considerate captain; and I’ll tell you now what I should like. I want, then, in a word, all the discipline and cleanliness of a man-o’-war, with a good deal of the cheerfulness and light-heartedness you find on a well-appointed yacht or best class of merchantmen. Let them sing below if they like, or even on deck for’ard during smoking hours: I won’t object to a little music. You understand?”

“Perfectly, my lord.”

Claude held up a finger.

“My lord is too formal for a ship’s quarter-deck,” he said.

“Beg pardon, sir. I really had forgotten for the moment.”

The captain and mate were on the quarter-deck, the latter taking his orders for the day.

As shrewd and sturdy a sailor as ever faced the billows was Lloyd. And not only a sailor, but a thorough iceman. He had been going “back and fore,” as he phrased it, to Greenland ever since he was a boy of ten, and he was now nearly thirty. He had come through every peril that one can think of; he had been cast away as often as he had fingers on his left hand – there were only four, one had been shot off – his ship had been burned at sea, and he had drifted for weeks on an iceberg, with nothing to eat at last except boot leather; he had once even been dragged under water by a shark, and was saved by his sea-boot coming off – one of the best pairs of boots he ever had, he used to tell his mates; – but, for all the dangers he had come through, he dearly loved the regions round the Pole.

“Greenland has been like a mother to me,” he had been heard to say; “and I hope to die there, and be frozen up in an iceberg, where I’ll keep fresh till the crack of doom.”2

That first day at sea – for these hardy mariners had not considered themselves afloat till now – was a very busy one. It was a very beautiful one too, for the matter of that, when one had time to look around him.

When any one did, it was when the breeze slackened a bit, or blew stiffer, or changed its course a point or two, or did any one of the score of things that the wind that wafts a ship along is constantly doing.

The captain walked all round the ship about eight bells, and found everything taut and trim and clear, and no complaints.

The second and third officers had been with Claude before for many voyages. The surgeon was a man of over forty, and as grey as a badger. It was not years alone that had changed the colour of his hair, however, but a lifetime of abstruse study. His studies had been of a very mixed nature – better call him a scientist at once and be done with it; but he was a musician and poet also. By the way, every naturalist is a poet, whether he writes or not; for true poetry consists, not in writing verses, but in being and in feeling yourself part and parcel of all the life and loveliness around you, of loving all things and all creatures, and thus, unwittingly it may be, worshipping in the truest Way the great Being who made them.

But the surgeon’s character will come out as we go on in our story; suffice it to say here that although Claude had known him but a very few months, he already liked and respected him very much.

Claude felt happy and contented in having so good a crew, and officers he could trust by night or day. For though I may have seemed in my last chapter to be sneering at good Professor Hodson and his brother savants, they really were men who had the interests of science at heart, and this ship was going on no insignificant errand to the land of the snow bear.

The sea got up towards evening, and sail was taken in; and as the breeze still freshened, still more sail, and she was practically made snug for the night.

Before leaving Aberdeen – some days indeed – Claude had written to his mother, filially and affectionately bidding her good-bye. Thus far he had bent his pride; yes, and had she asked him to come home for a day – well, perhaps he would have thrown all his pride to the winds and obeyed.

But the time flew by, and there came no reply of any kind, and Claude was sad About an hour before he sailed, a telegram was put into his hand. It was brief, thus —

“Lady Alwyn wishes her son well.”

So far the proud Lady of the Towers had melted. Claude put the telegram in his Bible. It was something precious, for he could read between the words. So he was happy.

But he would not write again.

The ship was steered for the nor’-nor’-west; and as it neared Iceland, Claude grew more and more impatient. How would Meta look when she heard the news? – for in the few letters he had written – there were few mails to Iceland – he had not told her all the truth.

When at length the Icebear cast anchor before the quaint, old-fashioned town of Reykjavik, after what had appeared to Claude an interminable time, they found their store-ship in waiting. Claude boarded her; and finding that everything had gone all right, directed his men to pull him on shore.

Burning with impatience though he was to get away from the town – the reader will guess whither – it was hours before he could leave old friends, so warmly did they welcome him.

Free at last! Free and away, and fleet was the sturdy pony that carried him. Only an Iceland horse could have done so, for even in summer the country is dangerous. Summer had not yet come, and the hills still wore the garb of winter, and the higher paths were often slippery with melting ice.

He sees the strange old cottage at last, and faster still he rides, for it is nearly night. He sees Byarnie. Byarnie sees him, and, after one wave of the arm to bid him welcome, rushes indoors. Poor, innocent, beautiful Meta had had no thought of his coming that night, but, strange to say, she was dressed exactly as he had first seen her. But now the love-light was in her eyes, and tear-drops quivered on their long lashes.

“I thought,” she said, “you would never, never come again.”

Claude remembered his dream.

The quaint old room when it was lit up looked cosier than ever, with the great fire of turf and wood burning on the hearth, the raven nodding on a log, the great cat on a stool, the snow-flea in its cage, the table laid for supper, the aunts – still witch-like and ugly – one sitting spinning like Fate in a picture, the other with book and spectacles in a high-backed chair, and great, awkward Byarnie laying supper.

It was all like a vision of happiness to Claude. He thought he should like to stay here all his life.

Perhaps Meta could read his thoughts in his eyes. I do not myself believe in thought-reading; but if there be such a faculty, it surely is the gift of true lovers.

“Oh! stay with us for ever,” she whispered.

“Would I could,” he answered. “Would that I could.”

“But you will for months?”

“Nay, but for one short week.”

The bright face fell, and tears again bedimmed the eyes.

“Dearest Meta,” he murmured —

 

“‘I could not love thee half so much

Loved I not honour more.’”

 

Next day, when alone with her, he bravely told her all. She was convulsed with grief. He knew she would be so. He let her weep on for a time. Tears bring such relief.

“I love you just the same, and will marry you on my return.”

She turned to him, her face very pale and wet with tears, but calmness and heroic determination in her eyes.

“Lord Alwyn,” she said. Then she noticed the pain the words gave him. “Claude, then,” she continued, “I will never marry you without the consent of your mother. That consent will not be given. So I will never marry you —never.”

There was a mournful cadence in her voice that rang through his heart.

“Then,” he said, “you do not, you cannot lo – ”

“Stay!” she interrupted; “stay, Claude, stay!” She put her little hand on his as she spoke, and looked into his face with that holy truthful gaze of hers. “I love you. I will never love another. I will love you till frozen seas do meet.”

The earnestness of her voice and manner held poor Claude spellbound for a time – spellbound and speechless. He could only gaze entranced on her lovely face, and never had it seemed to him more lovely than now.

“Sit down, dear Meta,” he said at last; “we still are lovers.”

“Yes,” in a low, sad voice.

“Tell me, Meta, what did you mean by the strange words, ‘Till frozen seas do meet’?”

“There is a legend,” she replied, “that long, long ago there dwelt among the rocks of the hills hereby an ancient but good man. He was called the hermit; he never courted the acquaintance of any one, never left the fastnesses where he dwelt; but people often went to seek advice from him, and brought him gifts of roots and milk. He taught them many things, and many believed him supernatural. I do not think he was so, because his teachings were not all from the Good Book. He told them that the world was very old, but would be ages and ages older yet; that there lay at the South Pole an ocean of ice just as at the North; that the world was cooling down by imperceptibly slow degrees; that these frozen seas were creeping nearer, advancing south and north; that they would encroach on Southern Africa and on Europe; that the torrid zone would become temperate; that nearer and nearer the oceans of ice would creep, till at last they would all but meet on the equator; that ships would then cease to float; that men would even degenerate, and finally live for warmth in caves in the earth; and then the frozen seas would meet, and this world would be all one shining ball of ice-clad snow. But he said that a day would soon afterwards come when the elements would melt – the lost, the final day. That is the legend of the strange words I used. And,” – here she turned once more towards him, for she had been talking hitherto like one in a dream – “and I will love you, Claude, till frozen seas do meet.”

Chapter Nine
The Parting

Among the Northern nations, especially the Norse, you meet types of men and women as utterly different from those of Southern climes as if they belonged to another sphere. The same blessed religion nevertheless binds us all with its golden chain. Natures like those of Meta and honest Byarnie – who, be it remembered, are not creatures of the imagination, but true examples of a class – I have never met elsewhere.

The nearest approach to them in manners and ways of thinking, I have found in my own dear Highlands of Scotland.

Very many, both of the Norse, such as those met with in Shetland and Iceland, as well as our Highlanders, are very deeply imbued with the spirit and true sentiment of religion. It is part and parcel of their everyday existence. Religion is the weft in the beautiful web of such lives as these.

When women like Meta love it is very pure love, for the very reason I have stated, for Meta was not ashamed to go on her knees with her love. A very peculiar girl, you say? Would to Heaven there were millions like her in this fair land of ours.

On the very evening of their reunion, Claude left his bride-elect, and went thundering away through the moonlight along the stony path on his sure-footed pony.

He would come again, next day or next, he told her, but duty was duty, and must be obeyed.

He was more happy than might be expected – happy because hopeful.

He found everything well on board, just as he had expected he would.

“I’ve engaged a few more hands, sir,” the mate told him. “The right metal I like a mixture of nationalities, and yet I don’t. Bother the foreign scum that they man British ships with nowadays, sir, leaving honest English Jack on shore to starve. – But give me a crew like what we now have, sir – a crew mostly Scotch and English; then I say one or two Norwegians or Danes don’t do much harm.”

“Right, Mr Lloyd. And now I must tell you I am going to engage an extra hand. Can you make room?”

“Put him in a bunk, sir.”

“A bunk, Mr Lloyd? He’d never be able to get in, and if he did he couldn’t stick his legs out. He is seven feet high and over, and broad in proportion.”

“Ha, ha!” laughed the mate. “But I have it, sir; I’ve got a hammock big enough to hold an elephant.”

“That’ll do. Good night, then.”

As he took down his Book to read before retiring, out dropped the telegram.

He read it again and again with conflicting feelings. Would his mother relent? His own fate, as far as Meta was concerned, he determined should not be altered. She might never marry him, but he himself, in that case, would have but one bride for ever and ay – the sea. Still, as he closed the Bible that night and restored the telegram, he allowed himself to build just one castle in the air. In the cosy drawing-room of this castle his mother was seated, and Meta and he were there, and all were happy.

He slept and dreamt about this.

Duty kept him at Reykjavik next day and the day after, but Meta, lonely and weary through waiting, heard the well-known click-click of the pony’s hoofs on the succeeding evening, and ran to the door to meet Claude.

It was raining, but Byarnie took his cloak and the pony, and in he went, looking rosy, fresh, and beaming with joy.

“Have you got good news?” was Meta’s first question.

She answered it herself before he got time to speak.

“Yes, you have,” she said; “I see it in your eyes. What is it? A letter from your dear mamma?”

Claude’s face fell just a little.

“I wish it were,” he replied. “No, Meta, nothing so good as that, but something I received before I left Aberdeen, and, strange to say, forgot to say a word to you about. A telegram.”

They went and sat down to read it.

“I don’t like it,” she said. “Why didn’t she say more? Why does she use such a funny bit of paper? Why so formal? And how funnily she writes!”

Claude laughed, and explained all about telegrams, telling Meta that people could not say all they wanted to in a semi-public document, but that generally a good deal was left to be inferred, that the receiver must often read between the lines.

Innocent Meta held the telegram up between her and the evening sunshine.

Claude laughed again, and caught her hand.

“I don’t mean in that way, silly child,” he said. “There; we will read between the words in the way I mean.”

Then he told her a good deal of his own history, and how much he knew his mother loved him, and how he believed she really was sorry he had gone away, but that pride forbade her saying so, though she doubtless wanted him to be happy, and not to depart with a sore heart – and a deal more I need not note.

“Don’t you see, Meta?”

“Dark and dim, as through a glass,” said Meta, musing. “Telegrams are queer things, Claude, and I have never seen one before, but you must be right, because you look happy.”

“Well, I am, because I feel she will relent.”

“I wonder what she is doing now?”

And Meta’s question leads me to say a word or two about the Lady of the Towers.

I lay down my pen and ring for old Janet. I am still writing in the old red parlour at Dunallan Towers. I write by fits and starts, but I have been steady at it all day, because it has been raining in down-pouring torrents. I pity the very rooks on the swaying trees. Surely on a day like this they must envy the owl in his shelter in the turret, though they roar at him and laugh at him on sunshiny days, and call him “Diogenes?” But here comes Janet at last.

“Just one question, Janet, and I’ll let you go. How did Lady Alwyn feel when Claude went away?”

“Oh, sir,” says Janet, “she was far too proud to express her feelings to me in that way. You know, sir, when glad she always told me, but her sorrow she invariably kept to herself.”

“So, as she said nothing, you inferred she was unhappy?”

“For that reason I knew she was. Did I put in the diary, sir, that our poor boy, Claude, told me about his dream – consulted me ere he had that terrible interview with her ladyship?”

“Yes, yes, Janet, that is here.”

“Well, sir, it was first Fingal’s going away, trotting so sad-like after his master, and he never once looking back, and then the snow-bird going next. That, I think, nearly broke her heart. But oh, she was proud, sir.”

“She never owned her grief, then?”

“No, sir; but I’ve caught her often in tears, though she tried to hide them. She grew far more active than ever after that. She seemed to hate the very sight of indoors, and, wet day or dry day, she would be always out.”

“Doing good, doubtless?”

“Visiting the sick, sir; ay, and often sitting down sewing in a sick person’s room. The neighbours noticed her grief. They all loved her, they all pitied her. But it was at night, I think, she suffered most. Her room was next to mine, and it is often, often I’ve heard her pacing up and down the floor till nearly morning. On stormy nights, sir, when the wind was roaring round the old turrets, and howling in the trees then she would send for me.

“‘Janet,’ she would say, with her sad, beautiful smile, ‘I cannot sleep to-night. You must read to me.’”

As Janet is now feeling in her pocket for her handkerchief, and tears are choking her utterance, I gently dismiss her, and go on writing.

“Yes, Meta,” replied Claude, “and I often wonder too; but there is one thing that does give me joy, and that is this: she knows I love her and am not really unfilial.”

Claude found Meta much more hopeful next day, and more happy. Sometimes she was almost gay.

“By-the-by, Claude,” she said, “I’ve something to show you. You must promise to believe all I say.”

“Implicitly.”

“And not laugh at me?”

“Never a smile.”

“Well, follow me.”

Claude did.

She led him round to the back of the cottage, and there in a big aviary – evidently the work of Byarnie’s hands – were seven great sea-birds.

“Now you’re going to laugh,” cried Meta, with a warning finger.

“Well, no wonder. Such queer pets, Meta!”

“But they’re not pets, Claude, though I love them. They are all going with you.”

“All going with me! Those funny old things! Ha! ha! ha! Forgive me, darling, I can’t help it.”

“Well, I do forgive you. And when I tell you that this particular seagull makes the best carrier in the world, far before any pigeon, because it can fly ten times as far, and never get lost at sea – ”

“I reared those from the shell,” interrupted honest Byarnie, his big face all smiles. “And I’ve reared many such.”

“Byarnie,” said Claude, “you’ll come with me, and look after these birds, eh?”

Byarnie jumped and laughed, clapped his hand upon his leg, and jumped and laughed again, and then went skipping round with all the grace of an infant elephant, till Claude and Meta also laughed to see his uncouth exuberance.

“My brother will come here, and my sister too, and look after the house and farm,” he cried. “He! he! ho! ho! Byarnie’s the happiest man ’tween Reykjavik and Christiansund.”

Day after day went by, but still Claude was at the little capital of Iceland, or with Meta. He was waiting the arrival of the mail: she had broken a shaft or something, and eager and able though he was to get away to the land of the Northern Lights and the sea of ice, he did not begrudge himself the respite.

The mail was sighted and signalled at last, however, and came puffing and blowing in.

Claude had letters from his employers and from many a friend, but none from his mother.

But Janet’s letter must in some measure have made up for this, else he would not have ridden right away out to Meta’s dwelling.

Ah, well, it was their last day together anyhow!

There they were together now whom seas would soon sunder – two warm, loving, hoping hearts. Would they ever meet again?

Chapter Ten
In Norland Seas

“I shouldn’t wonder if we get it from out yonder,” said Dr Barrett, pointing away south and by west, the very direction in which the Icebear was steaming.

There was a great billowy heave on the blue sea, blue everywhere, except where the light shadow of some white fleecy cloud made a patch of fleeting grey or grey-green. There was not a breath of wind “to swear by,” as Jack Scott unpoetically put it, so the long rolling swell was as smooth as glass. This swell was meeting them too, and the ship rose and fell on it with a gentle dipping motion; only now and then, when a taller wave than usual dipped in under bows and keel, she gave a quick plunge forward.

Along the horizon ahead was a bank of rock-and-castle clouds, while far away astern the jagged snowcapped peaks of Iceland were just visible above the rolling seas.

Flocks of malleys, shrill-screaming kittywakes, and different kinds of seagulls were tacking and half-tacking round the vessel, afar off, and the dark and ominous-like skua waited his chance to rob the malleys of whatever they might happen to pick up.

“Yes,” the surgeon said; “I think we’ll have it out of yonder.”

“Seems so to me, too,” said Claude. “We are all ready for a blow, Mr Lloyd?”

Mr Lloyd gave one glance forward and smiled.

“Ay, sir,” he replied, “all ready for a buster; and many is the sneezer, sir, I’ve come through in these latitudes, and higher up North too.”

These officers were on the bridge.

This latter was not the great elevated deck you see on passenger steamers right amidships. No, the Icebear’s bridge was but a plank, comparatively speaking. Not more than three feet wide, with a rope railing at one side, and a brass one at the other, with a step-ladder leading up to it from the quarter-deck, for it was between the bulwarks near the mizzen mast.

The glass was going down, and the day was far spent. Already the sun’s rays were beginning to fall aslant the waves.

“Had we started sooner,” remarked the doctor, “we would have been farther off the land ere now.”

“True, my good Dr Barrett, true,” replied Claude; “but could we have done so?”

“It would certainly have been difficult I admit; but if anything short of a hurricane comes along we can face it, and the night is short.”

No, it had not been easy getting away from Reykjavik indeed. It so happens that the good people of that town are exceedingly hospitable, and it is a hospitality that comes straight away from the heart. So there had been a kind of farewell levée on board Claude’s ship, and as there happened to lie in the roadstead a French merchantman and a Danish man-of-war, and the officers from both attended it and talked much, this made matters worse – or better.

But down went the sun, and ugly and angry were his parting gleams. He sank in a coppery haze, which lit up all the sea between. He seemed to squint and to leer at our heroes as much as to say, “You’ll catch it before long; something’s brewing. Good night; I’m off to bed, for bed is the best place.”

Down went the sun and up rose the wind. Twilight is very long in these regions, and before it had quite given place to night, the sea from being rippled got rough. The breeze seemed uncertain at first where to come from, and went puffing about from three to four points of the compass. Then it appeared to say to itself, “First thoughts are best; I’ll follow the swell; I’ll soon blow that down.” So it came roaring out of the north-west. Long before it did blow “a stiffener,” as the mate called it, looking up ahead through the gloaming air, you could have seen mysterious-looking great grey blankets of clouds, drifting fast and furiously towards the south-east. They might have been a few miles high, but soon the stream of clouds was lowered and thickened and darkened, till the horizon was hardly three cables’ length away all round. Then it was night – night with an ever-increasing breeze and a choppy, frothy sea.

The wind did blow the swell pretty flat, but substituted in its place genuine waves, as ragged and jagged as the mountain peaks of Iceland.

And the good ship by-and-by creaked and groaned in every timber, and thick darkness fell, and Claude had to trust to Providence, to steam, and the compass. There were two men at the wheel at midnight, and at that time probably the gale was at its worst, for on heaving the log it was found she was barely making one knot an hour. The seas – whole water – were coming in over the bows by tons, and sweeping right aft like a miniature Niagara; but the hatches had been battened down early in the evening, and the boats secured, so there was little injury done, though the load of water sadly hampered the vessel’s motion: it was not able to get away fast enough.

About two bells in the middle watch the Icebear struck.

Struck? But what or where? I know not; I cannot tell; it was no island, no rock. It may have been the carcase of some floating monster of the deep; or – who knows? – some wretched derelict or a portion of a wreck. It was a mystery. But she struck with a dull thud that quite stopped her way, and for a time made every heart beat with fear for her safety. She must have struck not only on the bows, but gone over something; all along her keel was the quivering grating felt, as if of a substance underneath.

For a while, too, the rudder and screw were hampered and the vessel’s way all but stopped.

As it was she staggered and began to broach to. It was a moment of the greatest danger, but only a moment. Then it was over, and the Icebear was struggling once more with the stormy head wind and raging sea.

By morning light, though the wind still held, it was less furious, and the seas but broke in froth and spray against the descending bows, and went singing aft on each side, their tops twisting and curling in the gale.

Down in the darkened wardroom at breakfast that morning the talk was naturally about the storm. Although Claude retained his own quarters abaft, still he preferred taking all his meals with his officers.

“What was it we struck, do I think?” said the doctor in answer to a question put by Lloyd. “Some unhappy fishing-boat or walrus-hunter on his way to the east shores of Greenland.”

“Heaven forbid!” said Claude, with a slight shudder. “Would we not have heard a scream or yell?”

“Never a scream or yell in that roaring gale,” replied Dr Barrett, coolly. “Bless you, sir, I’ve run them down before. Steward, another cup of coffee, please.”

“You’ve been often to these regions, doctor?”

“I’ve been often everywhere. I’m the veriest old son of a gun of a sea-dog of a doctor.”

“It’s as well no one else said that about you.”

“I wouldn’t mind. My skin is as hard as tortoise-shell. I’ve been married so often, you know.”

“Have you really now?” said the second mate, a merry-eyed little dark man. “Are all your wives dead?”

“What a question!” said Claude.

“Ah! never mind,” quoth the surgeon; “I’ll answer him, if he’ll only cut me another slice of that delicious corn-beef. Mind, it isn’t for a lady, so you may cut it as thick as you please.”

“But about your wives?”

“Oh yes, the wives. I don’t think many of them are dead.”

“Doctor!” cried Claude, “you dreadful man!”

“Well, you see,” said the doctor, tapping the edge of his cup with the spoon as if counting, “I’ve been married just exactly fifty-nine times. My ships, messmates, are my wives.”

“Well, you’ve had many a honeymoon,” said Lloyd.

“Ay,” replied Dr Barrett; “and many more I hope to have.”

An able seaman popped his head in past the door curtain at this moment, and drew it out again.

“Don’t duck your head out and in like an old turtle, man,” cried the doctor; “come right in. Anybody sick?”

“Which I didn’t know, sir, the cap’n was ’ere. Nobody sick, but knew ye liked curios, doctor, sir.”

“Well?”

“Well, beggin’ yer parding, sir, likus the cap’n’s, but there be a bird wot our cook calls a sea-swallow a-perchin’ on the main yard. Shall one of us go up and fetch him? He’s mighty sea-sick I knows, and couldn’t fly to save his life.”3

“Certainly, bring it down.”

The officers went on with breakfast, and had forgotten all about Tom Scott and his sea-swallow, when suddenly the man appeared again, bearing under one arm a beautiful snow-bird.

It escaped almost at once, and fluttering upwards alighted on the compass that depended from the skylight.

All eyes were fixed on it. It did not seem a bit frightened, but looked downwards with one crimson saucy eye at the table.

“It looks like a spirit,” said Lloyd, half afraid, for, like most sailors, he was superstitious.

“It’s a spirit that will bring us luck. They always do,” said the second mate.

“Are you ill, sir?” exclaimed the doctor, addressing the captain.

One might have thought so. His face was pale, mouth a little open, brows lowered, and eyes riveted on the bird.

“Were such a thing possible,” he muttered, “I’d believe that was my snow-bird Alba.”

To the amazement of every one, no sooner were the words uttered, than with one quick glance of recognition, down flew the bird and nestled, as it was wont to do, on its master’s hand, held close up on his breast.

Yes, every one was astonished, but poor McDonald, the third mate, was frightened; and when, after receiving a few caresses, Alba jumped on to the table and began pattering around and saying, “Poor Alba wants his breakfast; Alba wants a sop of food,” McDonald could stand it no longer: he left the table and hurried on deck.

“It’s no canny,” he said to the steward; “it’s no canny, and if I could steal a boat I’d leave the ship and brave the stormy ocean.”

“Lord Alwyn – I mean sir,” said the mate, “a hundred years ago you’d have been burned for a witch.”

“Or a wizard,” remarked the doctor, laughing. “But I am not astonished. The captain has already told me the story of his snow-bird. The wonderful power of sight, scent, and probably hearing in gulls is scarcely yet known to naturalists; and the same may be said about nearly all sea-birds. They either have an instinct that we possess not, or the faculties they possess, in common with other animals, are most marvellously developed.4 Just look at that lovely bird now, and listen to its marvellous prattle.”

Pattering round the table went Alba, in a very excited condition, only every now and then flying off to Claude’s breast as if he could hardly believe in his own happiness. He jumbled up his sentences, too, as most talking birds do when excited.

“Alba wants – Alba wants – Alba wants Fingal’s Claude – Fingal’s – Fingal – Claude – Alba wants his breakfast.”

“That’s better, Alba,” said Dr Barrett, lifting the cover from a dish of fish.

Next moment Alba was in the third heaven.

“You’ve made that bird your friend for life, doctor,” said Claude.

Fingal, the deerhound, got up from under the table and laid his great head on his master’s knee.

“Of course I won’t forget you, you silly old Fingal, because Alba has come. I have room in my heart for both.”

Towards sunset that day the weather cleared, the wind having gone round to the nor’-east-and-by-east. The sea too went down with the sun, though it still ran high; a morsel of canvas was got up to steady her, and leaning over to it away she went, cutting merrily through the water as if she had been a veritable living thing. The stars shone that night so brilliantly; it was as though you could have stretched out your hand and touched them, so large, lustrous, and near-like were they. A broad white gleam of auroral light was in the north, above it the sky was of a strange sea-green hue. But a whisper had gone around the ship that a spirit had come on board, and an anxious group was seated round the galley fire to discuss the situation.

“If it’s a spirit,” said Tom Scott at last, “it’s a good one. It has brought us good weather. Hurrah, lads! give us a song somebody.”

The good ship Icebear had no more adventures for nearly a fortnight, by which time she had rounded Cape Farewell and reached the north-eastern ice.

 

“And now there came both mist and snow,

    And it grew wondrous cold,

And ice, mast-high, came floating by

    As green as emerald.”

 

Chapter Eleven
Summer on the Greenland Ocean

There was not an officer nor able seaman on board the good ship Icebear, who had not been in the Arctic regions before.

Mostly Englishmen they were, with just a sprinkling of Scotch – “the leaven that leavened the lump,” that is how Rab McDonald, the third officer, expressed it, and it is needless to say that Rab himself was a Scot.

Onward went the Icebear, sometimes in a clear sea, though far into Baffin’s Bay – for this was what is called an exceptional year – but at other times she had literally to plough her way through the heavy ice.

When the weather was fine there was but little danger, unless, indeed, a swell rolled in, playing and toying with the monster pieces as schoolboys would with balls.

But when a breeze sprang up, even if only half a gale, then indeed the scene was changed. Then —

 

“Through the drifts the snowy clifts

    Did send a dismal sheen:

Nor shapes of man nor beasts they ken —

    The ice was all between.

   

“The ice was here, the ice was there,

    The ice was all around;

It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,

    Like noises in a swound.”

 

During calm weather and in the open water Dr Barrett was busy indeed, taking soundings, deep or otherwise, and dredging for living objects at the sea’s bottom.

Very lovely and interesting indeed was the collection that soon grew up in his cabinet, under his magic spell. What could be in that tangled mass of mud and weed and sand, one would have asked, that was hauled on board, the sea-water dripping and trickling out of the bag?

To Dr Barrett – and to the savants at home – treasures more valuable than gold itself.

And after he had secured a haul, washed them, put them up, perhaps on cards of jet to show their beauties off, the clever surgeon would have handed you his great glass and bade you look. It was like gazing at creatures from fairyland. All shapes and colours, but all so minute that they could not well be seen with the naked eye. Here is a little fairy fish – no bigger is it than this letter ‘f.’ Take that glass, please. Now look. No wonder an expression of amazement steals over your face! It is a perfect fish, yet, strange to say, transparent and colourless – that is, there is no fixed colour any more than there is in the Arctic aurora, but greens dance and crimsons flit and play around it; and, stranger still, with a stronger glass, you can see its internal anatomy, see its heart beat and its pulses move! Could anything be more wonderful? And here are shells that, lying on this morsel of black cardboard, are no bigger than the letters “a,” or “e,” or “c.” Look at these. No wonder you smile with delight; they, too, are faultless in shape and curious in form; they, too, are transparent as glass; they, too, display all the colours of the finest pearl.

Put this one – it is no bigger than a comma to the naked eye – under the microscope in a drop of water. Lo! that drop of water is to it a small ocean, and round and round it crawls, legs all out and its shell high up on its shoulders, and of a bright translucent blue. I could sit here all the livelong night and write, sheet of foolscap after sheet of foolscap should flutter from my desk and fall upon the floor, and yet when the grey dawn of morning crept in through the casement of this red parlour, I should not have told you of one-half the mysterious and beautiful beings that this man of science dredged up from the dark depths of that mysterious sea.

I pause here and listen. There was not a sound in the house when I penned the last sentence, only a mouse nibbling the crumbs that I placed for it in the corner, but now there comes from an adjoining room the voice of some one singing. It is only poor old Janet. She does so every night before retiring; and, old though she be, I know she is very happy – happy with a happiness that can never be taken from her. But to-night the words she sings are so en rapport with my own spirit while writing, that I cannot but give a line or two —

 

“God moves in a mysterious way,

    His wonders to perform;

He plants His footsteps on the sea,

    And rides upon the storm.”

 

As much as it was practicable to do so, the Icebear hugged the western shores of Greenland, but here the ice was heaviest. As the summer advanced, however, the land became bare of snow; it was then that delightful excursions were made inland, up through the long, deep fiords that everywhere indent this coast. I do not like the word “indent,” though I use it; for an indentation means fork-like incision, widest at the mouth – a bay, for example, – but these Arctic fiords are, many of them, narrow at the inlet, then spread out as they go inland.

There are thousands and thousands of them yet unexplored, and which never will be explored as long as the world lasts.

Not altogether for the sake of pleasure were these excursions made, but for the purpose of scientific discovery.

I am sitting here to tell a story, and not to describe scenery, the yachting, the fishing, hunting, and all the pleasures that make a holiday in Greenland north, during the short summer-time, so enthrallingly delightful – a something that once enjoyed can never be forgotten, while the life-blood circulates in our veins.

Claude himself was a lover of nature. In his soul he had all the poetry of a Wordsworth, though there it remained, for he never wrote verses. He could love and admire every tiny flower, every moss or lichen or tender and beautiful saxifrage that clad the rocky uplands. Neither could he classify them.

Dr Barrett both admired and classified. He was ever on the outlook for new species, and I verily believe he dreamed about them by night. So his cabinet, of the rare and lovely specimens found on shore, grew even bigger than did his deep-sea collection.

Cold? No, it was not cold – these regions at this season. Cool sometimes, but never cold.

The Icebear would be cautiously steered up some of those fiords and the anchor let go, in an inland sea or harbour in which all the navies in the world, both mercantile and man-o’-war, could easily have ridden.

While the doctor and his assistants would be prospecting among the hills, leaving the ship in charge of the mate, and, accompanied only by the faithful Fingal and giant Byarnie, Claude would start in a small boat, a kind of elegant dingy, which he had had made on purpose, and go off up the fiords for miles with gun and fishing-rod.

The snow-bird, strange to say, always remained on board. What truth there may be in the statement I do not know, but they say that a snow-bird, or tern, that has once been domesticated by mankind dare not return to its kindred birds under pain of death.

Claude used to enjoy those excursions on the fiords very much. Here is how he generally spent the day: First, Byarnie would pull him slowly about close to the rocks, where the fish were most numerous. A few dozen were speedily caught and thrown in the bottom of the boat. Fingal used to take them in charge, apparently delighting in doing so, for his wise eyes never left them, and if one flopped Fingal held it down with an air of seriousness on his rough hairy face that was highly amusing.

But Claude soon got tired of fishing, and put up the rod. Then he told Byarnie to pull him away out into the centre of the fiord, and let the boat float as she liked in the sweet sunshine. Claude would have a book, perhaps, and very often, when his eyes were riveted on it, it was upside down, which showed where his thoughts were.

Just for fun then he would say to Fingal, “Speak, Fingal.”

Fingal would speak with a vengeance, till every hill and every rock re-echoed his bow-wow-wows. But the sound was sure to bring up a great head or two with goggle eyes out of the water, sea-lions, walruses, or saddle-back or bladder-nose seals, for they are all most inquisitive.

Lying very still sometimes, with the oars in, one single seal would pop his head out of the sun-glazed water and have a look at the boat.

“Sit still, Byarnie; don’t move,” Claude would say.

The seal would come nearer and have another look; then down he would go, tail first, and in three minutes more the sea all around would be black with great heads and sweet, soft, wondering eyes.

“Well,” they would seem to say, “we can’t make it out. Never mind, let us have a romp; the sunshine is so delightful. Hurrah!”

Then a scene of diving, and chasing, and splashing, such as it is impossible to describe, would ensue; it was, in fact, a seals’ ball. If Byarnie would suddenly explode with a loud “Ho! ho! ho!” of merriment, or if Fingal barked, then, hey! presto, every head would sink as if by magic, and in a few minutes the sea would be as smooth as usual, with only the gulls, divers, or grebes floating lazily on it.

Next, Claude would make Byarnie tell him some wild old Norse story – he was full of them – with Sagas, or Vikings, or fairies in it, and then sing. Oh! Byarnie could sing well, but a strange, monotonous kind of lilt it was – very pleasant, nevertheless, for it never once failed to put Claude to sleep. So sure, indeed, was Claude of falling asleep when Byarnie began to sing, that he used to lie down in the stern-sheets with a cushion beneath his head.

Sometimes he awoke with such a happy, happy half-dazed look on his handsome face, and say, “Oh! Byarnie, I’ve had such a pleasant dream!”

Next they would land, and Claude would now read in earnest, while poor Byarnie cooked the dinner in gipsy fashion.

Very often after this Claude would keep his companion talking about Iceland, with Meta always the centre figure, for hours, till, when near sundown, they would probably hear the report of a rifle at some distance off. This was Dr Barrett signalling to his men, and not long after the whaler would come sweeping up, and the boats would return together, often enjoying the fun and frolic of a good race, for Byarnie was a splendid oarsman; his skiff was light, and he, if not a feather, had the strength of three ordinary seamen.

Thus pleasantly passed the summer days on that lonesome Greenland ocean.

Chapter Twelve
Among Arctic Fiords – A Strange Discovery

If the reader happens to possess a map of the polar regions, or even a good map of the world, and will take a glance or two at the discovered lands and seas beyond the Arctic circle, he will be struck at once by their nomenclature. It would be interesting to know the why and the wherefore of many of these names, which I do not believe have, in any single instance, been given at random. The origin of some of them is evident enough – “Lady Franklin’s Sound,” for example, or “Hayes’ Inlet,” or “Peabody Bay.”

But I do not wish to be told of the exact reasons that determined these names. Knowing what I do about the Polar regions, I would rather let my imagination have a little play.

A little to the south of Spitzbergen lies Hope Isle, or Sea Horse Island; I happen to know that many walruses, sometimes called sea-horses, frequent the ice or the icy land there; but why called Hope Island? Some ship, perhaps, had been long imprisoned, north of this place, provisions exhausted, and the chances of ever getting clear small indeed; but, behold! the ice opens as if by magic, and by sawing and blasting they struggle as far south as this lone isle, where, though locked up once more in the icy embrace of King Winter, they live in hope, and are eventually rewarded.

Down the east coast of Greenland proper there is a point with an ugly name, “Cape Discord.” Was it mutiny or only mutiny threatened? did men struggle on slippery blood-bespattered decks, or was the discord confined to muttered threats, to black and angry looks and round-robins?5

“Cape Farewell” again – the southernmost point in Greenland. The ship has been wintered in Baffin’s Bay, and the men have undergone cold, misery, and privation; but hurrah! the last land is left behind, the blue open sea is all before them, cheerily sings the wind through the rigging, the sails are full, and the men’s hearts are also so full that if they did not sing they would go mad. So “farewell, old Greenland; our dear wives and sweethearts are waiting us at home in merry England. Farewell, farewell.”

But round that point is Cape Desolation. Look at those bluff, bare crags that overhang the sea, the home of hardly even a wild bird; see afar off the tree-lands covered with snow, leaden clouds athwart the sky, billows dashing in foam against the black rocks, and the cold wind blowing. Ugh! let us leave it. It is pleasant to find a Prince Albert Land and a Victoria Land up in the Arctic ocean, side by side; and a North Lincoln and North Devon, separated only by Jones’s Sound. We have been told that when the North Pole is eventually discovered a Scotchman will be found at the top of it. I should not wonder, for the most northerly land, if my memory serves me aright, is called Grant’s Land, and everybody knows that Grant is the name of a brave old Scottish clan.

Obeying instructions from his employers, Claude worked his ship north and north along the western shores of Greenland, exploring every creek and fiord; the doctor being meanwhile very busy, as we have seen in the last chapter, taking scientific notes and collecting specimens.

In their voyage out, the Icebear had only once spoken the Kittywake. She was a schooner commanded by the ex-skipper of a Dundee whaler, a man who knew the country well, and though but a small craft she was strong, and eminently suited for the work she had to perform, namely, to follow the Icebear with stores. She had received instructions to hug the western land, and, if a flagstaff was seen at the entrance to any creek, there to lay-to until the Icebear came out.

But the Kittywake’s powers of sailing were only of a very limited character, and steam she had none. So, after spoken, she was not seen again for a time.

Very few of these wonderful fiords, as I have already mentioned, are even known. Now, it had occurred to our learned savants at home that it would pay, not in one way, but in two, to explore the largest of them. Untold wealth lies buried in Greenland. Scientific wealth, and the dross called gold, mayhap even diamonds, mayhap precious stones of a kind not yet known to the world. For why? Was not Greenland – that vast country which a single glance at the map tells you is as large in extent, as long and as wide as Africa itself – was it not at one time, ages ago, they argued, an inhabited continent as free from ice as our fair England is at the present day? They believed that the mountains which now shoot their jagged peaks, covered with perpetual snow, up into the blue-green sky were once purple and crimson with gorgeous heath; that green valleys and lovely glens lay below, with placid lakes and rolling rivers, and cascades of sparkling water; that gigantic forest lands covered the greater part of the country, forests in which the bison and wild deer roamed and fed; that, in a word, Greenland was once upon a time – while the torrid zone was but a fiery belt, uncrossable, uninhabitable – a fertile land of beauty, a land of mountain, forest, and stream.

They even went farther. Might not man himself, they said, have dwelt in this beautiful country – primeval man – and might not his remains be found even yet? There is, indeed, no length to which some learned savants will not go, if they once give the reins to their imaginative power.

While not for a moment feeling half so sanguine as his employers, Claude, having undertaken a task, meant to do his duty, his best; and who can do more?

As long as the summer lasted, and before the mists began to rise, Claude continued his explorations. He came at last to a vast wall of solid rock, darkly frowning over the deep. He would have passed along it, never dreaming there could be any opening in there, had he not seen some bears swimming in the water. They disappeared on being followed by a boat, and the officer in charge, on returning, reported having discovered the inlet to a vast fiord. The Icebear was headed for the rock, and found the opening just soon enough to enter with safety.

It was a bright, clear day, with little wind and hardly a cloud in the sky, with every indication that fine weather would continue for a time at least.

All hands were on deck as the Icebear was turned shorewards and headed straight for the rocks. The boat that had gone in pursuit of the bears was ahead, guiding. To go steaming stem on to that adamantine wall seemed courting destruction, but lo! after a progress of a few hundred yards, the cliffs opened up as if by magic, showing a long channel of deep blue water. It got wider inland, but the cliffs were higher; gradually, however, they receded from the water’s edge, and got lower and lower.

The ship was now stopped, and a party sent on shore to climb the highest peak adjoining the sea, and plant thereon the flagstaff that should signal to the Kittywake the whereabouts of her consort.

Slowly on and on steamed the Icebear, two men taking soundings from the chains, lest the water should suddenly shoal, but the beach at each side still continued rocky, though no longer high.

“What do you think of this?” asked Claude of Dr Barrett, who stood near him on the bridge.

“I am rejoiced beyond measure at our discovery,” was the reply. “Why, this would please Professor Hodson, for no slowly descending glaciers ever made this wonderful cutting – it is volcanic entirely. Behold the rocks, Captain Alwyn.”

“You are right, doctor, beyond a doubt.”

“And I should not be surprised now what we came to.”

“Nor I.”

“I wish,” said Mr Lloyd, “I could see things with the eyes you seem to possess, doctor. How delightful it must be to be quite at-home-like with everything you see around you! You are a learned man, doctor.”

“Nay, nay,” cried the surgeon, laughing. “I am but a student – a baby student. Were I to live for ten thousand years I should still be only reading in the first book of Nature.”

“You are modest, at all events,” Claude said; “and I believe that is a sign of genius.”

“One cannot help feeling both modest and humble, Captain Alwyn, when standing face to face with the first facts of science, and knowing that the little knowledge he has acquired is to the vast unknown but as the light of a candle to the noonday sun.”

For days the Icebear followed the course of this estuary. Sometimes it narrowed to a mere deep cutting or canal, anon it would widen out into a broad oblong lake. At length it ended in an inland gulf or sea, some thirty or forty miles square.

In latitude this mysterious sheet of water was fully a degree and a half south of the inlet.

Dr Barrett spent days in dredging, and in roaming over the hills, studying botany and geology.

There were high mountains all around, and it was a strange sight for those on the deck of the Icebear, which was anchored at some little distance from the shore, to witness mighty cataracts tumbling sheer over the very summits of these hills, and coming roaring and foaming down their sides. The men looked upon this as magical, but it is easily explained: there were other hills behind these – much higher ones – that were invisible from the ship’s deck, and it was from these the waters poured down.

As might have been supposed, they found the waters of this inland sea less salt than the ocean itself, though by no means brackish.

“I think, sir,” said Dr Barrett, when he came off one evening, “that we need hardly proceed farther north. We can hardly expect to find another such lake as this.”

“Here, then, we shall winter,” replied Claude.

“Here, I believe, we ought, too. For look what I have dredged up.”

“Coal!”

“It is coal. I found it close in shore, and there is more of it. Depend upon it, we have discovered a country rich in mineral wealth; and, if I am any judge, there is gold in abundance here, too. Look at this. There are specimens for you.”

He handed him a few pieces of rock as he spoke.

“Pretty morsels of stone enough,” said Claude, as he bandied and weighed them in his palm. “Would make nice ornaments for a mantelpiece. But do they really represent anything of value?”

“Well, I will tell you. You see I have numbered all these morsels of stone. Here is Number 1.” (Number 1 was a piece of dark brown stone mingled with patches of the darkest blue, in which little stars sparkled and shone.) “That,” said Dr Barrett, “is carbonate of copper ore. Number 2, you perceive, is black with streaks of green; that also is a copper ore of some value. Number 3 – take hold of it, Mr McDonald,” continued the doctor, addressing the third mate. “What would you call it?”

“I should call it a chucky-stone,” was the Scotchman’s reply.

“Yes; well, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but that rough red-brown-black-spangled chucky-stone of yours is an argentiferous carbonate of lead. Number 3 is very heavy, and not unlike a piece of blacklead, only it shines more. That would give seventy ounces of solid silver from the ton of ore. Here is Number 4, a piece of quartz mixed with dark grey, and streaked with sea-green. That also is silver ore.”

“And this Number 5,” said McDonald, “looks to me like a bit of very bad coal. Is it worth a doit?”

“It is worth many doits. It will assay three hundred ounces or more of solid silver to the ton. Number 6 looks like a lump of petrified rhubarb root. Number 7 is somewhat similar, but mixed with quartz and a reddish brown material. Both are auriferous; the last will yield 300 pounds from each ton of ore.”

Claude shook Dr Barrett by the hand.

“You have indeed made important discoveries,” he said.

Dr Barrett smiled pleasantly.

“My conscience!” cried McDonald. “We’ll be a’ millionaires thegither, every mither’s son o’ us. Wha could hae thocht it, and a’ own to a wheen chucky-stones that I wadna hae gi’en a button for!”

Chapter Thirteen
The Long Dead Arctic Night – The Battle of the Snow-Squalls

The scene was changed. Summer had fled from the shores and from the braelands around the inland sea, where our travellers have taken up their abode.

 

“Away hath passed the heather-bell

That bloomed so rich on Needpath fell.”

 

Thus sweetly sang the Scottish bard. But here no heather-bell bloomed to vanish. But the lovely little stonecrops, white or yellow, the crimson ranunculus, the dark-tufted grasses, the wild dwarf poppies, and even the mosses and the hardy shrubs that blossomed for a time in the sloping rays of the sun – all have gone or lie deeply buried under the snow; they will appear no more till June again melts their covering and awakens them to sunshine and life.

Claude and his crew have not been idle. Every preparation is already made to mitigate the rigours of a winter that is even now commenced. Boats had been despatched to the inlet of the creek, to land and bury ship’s stores in a sheltered nook not far from the sea. This was done with all despatch. Captain Watson’s men of the Kittywake working with a will born of the knowledge that, as soon as their labours were over, they would once more embark and bear up for their own dear home in England.

They had the good luck to find a cave large enough to contain all the provisions and ammunition on board the store-ship. There was accordingly no digging to be done, except the quarrying from the hillsides of great stones to build up the entrance to the cave. This done, it but remained for Mr Lloyd, who was in charge of the working party, to take his bearings, in order to easily find the place again, and deliver to Captain Watson his written orders to return south.

Lloyd’s boats towed the Kittywake out to sea, or, rather, steered her, for the tide was running rapidly out. He remained on board the store-ship until the turn of the tide, then there were farewells said, and ringing cheers were re-echoed from the hills and from tall floating icebergs, and, sail being set, away went the Kittywake southward ho! the crew as merry as schoolboys at play.

They were to bear tidings to the savants in London of the successful voyage made by the Icebear, the strange discovery of the inland sea, and the prospects Claude and Dr Barrett entertained of the perfect success of the expedition.

It may be as well to state here, and state it once for all, that the Kittywake was never more heard of, never more seen by mortal eye.

Whether she had sprung a leak in a gale, and foundered; been caught a-back in a squall, and thrown on her beam-ends, never to recover; or been crushed like a nut between some awful bergs, will never be known until —

“The sea gives up its dead.”

Had our heroes known aught of the disaster to the store-ship, it would have cast a gloom over them that nothing could have dispelled.

As it was they had nothing in their hearts but hope – hope that, when the long, dreary winter wore away, having more than accomplished the object of their cruise, the ice would break up, their imprisonment would be over, and, laden with riches and crowned with honour, they would bid farewell to the land of the aurora, and reach England in peace and safety.

They could, therefore, mark with complacency the ever-shortening days, and the oncoming mists, and mists succeeded by stormy winds, and curling clouds of drifting snow. The sooner winter came the sooner it would be over.

There came a day when these intrepid travellers were to look their last upon the sun for months to come. It was towards the end of October, but not severely frosty. Indeed, the sky was altogether overcast, with the exception of a space on the southern horizon It was here that the sun last showed. Red, large, and angry looking, he but deigned to cast a glance or two across the dreary landscape, then slowly sank to rest, but for two hours after he had gone down, a long stripe of bare, lurid, orange sky remained over the spot. It gradually assumed the appearance of the reflection of some great fire or burning mountain. The clouds above were purple red, mingled with leaden grey, but all this soon faded. There was neither moon nor stars, and the blackness of darkness was over the land. About noon every day for nearly a week there was a kind of twilight. It was even more than this, for when the sky was partially clear there was all the appearance of coming sunrise, the cloudlets grew crimson, and even the tall mountains were tipped with rosy red, and all between the glens were of a strange blue colour.

But even this mid-day twilight ceased at last, then all was night.

All the way north Meta’s gulls had been kept on deck in an aviary built for the purpose, and two had already been despatched with little messages in sealed quills, fastened to their legs. Only one of these reached Iceland. The other probably preferred his freedom.

Claude seldom doubted but that the gulls he sent off would eventually find Meta’s home.

Even before the daylight had entirely gone, and the long dead Arctic night had descended upon the land, the birds and beasts migrated southwards, the malleys, and gulls, and terns, and skuas going first; then the guillemot the eider ducks, grebes, and divers. Next went the bears, the wild oxen, and the foxes; finally even the inland sea itself seemed deserted. The walrus and seal no longer popped their whiskered faces above the water, nor courted the sun’s rays on the rocky shore, and the lonesome unicorn was seen no more ploughing through the waves.

The blackness of desolation and a silence deep as death was over all the scene.

Think not, reader, that the beautiful stars were always shining, or that even when a full moon was in the sky there was somewhat of light and cheerfulness. No, for there were days – ay, and weeks – when neither moon, stars, nor aurora were visible for the dark clouds and whirling drift and snow.

At other times, perhaps, after a fall of silent snow, without as much wind as would serve to move one downy fleck, the clouds would disperse, and the stars would glitter like a million diamonds, when suddenly a murmuring roar would be heard among the mountains, and on looking in that direction from the ship’s deck, or from the huts on shore, a sight would be presented to the wondering gaze of Claude and his crew that my poor feeble pen would struggle in vain to describe. It seemed as if a wind from every point of the compass had marched forth to meet and do battle with each other among the hills, and that each wind was accompanied by a ghostly storm spirit. High as the stars were those whirling sheeted ghosts; if they crossed the moon’s disc they looked unearthly and fearful; but see! they meet in fury, and all is a bewildering chaos. Describe to me the foam of Atlantic billows dashing high in the air after striking a black, bare rock in the sea; describe to me in words the smoky spray of a geyser, and I will try to paint to you the battle of the snow-squalls. But, behold! while we yet look, half awed at the rage of elements among the jagged mountain peaks, the chaotic tempest comes nearer and nearer, other ghosts arise and whirl along on the plains, and a moaning sound as if nature were in pain falls upon the ear. This may be but momentary, and ere you can dive below, the tempest is on the vessel, the war of elements is raging around it. The very masts bend and crack and yield, and high above the roar of the wind is heard wild shrieks and yells and groans, as if demons really danced and fought on every side. These latter sounds are emitted by the ice rubbing against the ship’s hull.

Then, even while one is expecting every moment that some jagged edge of ice will penetrate through the vessel’s timbers – lo! all becomes hushed and silent. You creep on deck as quickly as the drifted snow will permit you, and look around. The stars are all out again, the moon’s rays throwing shadows from the mountain peaks, and all is still. And such a stillness! It is the silence of space – the silence of a dead and buried universe. You can almost fancy the stars are near enough to whisper to; that the flickering aurora borealis will presently emit some sound. If you talk aloud your own voice seems harsh, and you find yourself talking in a strangely subdued tone, as if Nature were asleep – as, indeed, she seems – and you dreaded to wake her. At all times in Greenland, when no wind is blowing, the silence is fearfully impressive; but it is after a snow-squall such as I have endeavoured to depict that it is most so.

“Do you think,” said Claude to Dr Barrett one day – “do you think, doctor, I might venture to send off another seagull?”

“I think,” was the reply, “that the bird will be far more likely to fly southward now – to seek the sun – than it would in summer.”

So a little fond note was attached as usual to a seagull’s thigh.

“Go!” whispered Claude, pressing his lips to the soft, warm head for a moment.

 

“Go, beautiful and gentle bird,

Oh! southwards quickly go;

Though moon and stars shine bright above.

How sad is all below!

   

“No longer drooping here, confined

In this cold prison, dwell;

Go, free to sunshine and to wind,

Sweet bird, go forth – farewell!

   

“Oh! beautiful and gentle bird,

Thy welcome sweet will be.

And yonder thou shalt hear the voice

Of Love’s fond melody.”

 

I trust my hero may be forgiven for slightly altering the words of the gentle poet Bowles.

The graceful bird went tacking and tacking for a time around the ship as if he could not quite believe he had obtained his freedom, or were loath to leave his quarters; then, as if memories of a sunnier south had suddenly awakened in his breast, away he darted, and was lost in the darkness.