O'er Many Lands, on Many Seas, Gordon Stables [microsoft ebook reader TXT] 📗

"Throned in his palace of cerulean ice,

Here Winter holds his unrejoicing court."

 

Thomson's "Seasons."

 

"I don't think," said I, as Captain Ben Roberts and I sat at breakfast

one day in a homely old hotel in Bala, North Wales, "I don't think, Ben,

my boy, I ever ate anything more delicious in the way of fish than these

same lovely mountain trout."

 

"Well, you see," replied my friend, "we caught them ourselves, to begin

with; then the people here know exactly how to cook them. But, Nie,

lad, have you forgotten the delicious fries of flying-fish you used to

have in the dear old _Niobe_?"

 

"Almost, Ben; almost."

 

"Well, I can tell you that you did use to enjoy them, all the same."

 

"Ay, and I've enjoyed them since many and many is the time in the

tropics, and especially in the Indian Ocean."

 

"So have I," said Ben Roberts. "Funny way they used to have of catching

them, though, in the old _Sans Pareil_. Of course you know they will

always fly to a light if held over the ship's side?"

 

"Yes."

 

"Well, but the orders were not to have lights kicking about the deck at

night, either naked or in a lantern; so some of our fellows--not that I

at all approve of what they did--utilised a wild cat the doctor kept in

a cage. When they came on deck to keep the middle watch--we were on a

voyage from Seychelles to the Straits of Malacca--they would swing him,

cage and all, over the stern. His eyes would be gleaming like bottled

wildfire. 'Twasn't long, I can tell you, before the flying-fish sprang

up at the cage. Old Tom put out his claws and hooked some of them in;

but lots flew on board, and they were being fried five minutes

afterwards."

 

"I quite believe you, Roberts," I said; "though some would call that a

traveller's tale. But just look at that lovely pair of Persian cats in

the corner there, Ben; it seems almost impossible to believe they can

belong to the same family as the wild cat you've been speaking about."

 

"Yes, Nie, civilisation is a wonderful thing when it can extend even to

the lower animals. You were once a savage yourself too, Nie. Think of

that."

 

"I shan't think about it," I replied. "None of your sauce, my worthy

friend. What were you doing at Seychelles, and what were you doing with

a wild cat on board?"

 

"We had queerer things than wild cats on board, Nie; the fact is, we

were what they call cruising on special service. We had a fine time of

it, I can tell you. We seemed to go everywhere, and do nothing in

particular. At the time we had that wild cat on board, Nie, we had

already been three years in commission, and had sailed about and over

almost every ocean and sea in the world."

 

"What a lot of fun and adventure you must have had, Ben! Wish I had

been with you."

 

"You were in the Rocky Mountains then, I believe?"

 

"Yes, and in Australia, and the Cape. You see, I had a turn after gold

and diamonds wherever I thought I could find them. But help yourself

and me to some more of those glorious trout, and spin your yarn."

 

"Let us get away out of doors first, Nie. On this lovely summer's day

we should be on the lake."

 

So we were, reader, one hour afterwards; but the sun was too bright;

there were neither clouds nor wind, and the fish wouldn't bite; so we

pulled on shore, drew up our boat, and seated ourselves at the shady

side of a great rock on a charming bit of greensward, and there we

stayed for hours, Ben lazily talking and smoking, I listening in a

dreamy kind of way, but enjoying my friend's yarn all the same.

 

"Yes," said Ben, "we were on special service. One day we would be

dredging the bottom of the sea, the next day taking soundings. One day

we would be shivering under polar skies, the next roasting under a

tropical sun."

 

"Come, come, be easy, Ben; be easy," I cried, half-rising from the

grass. "If you were under polar skies one day, how, in the name of

mystery, could you be in the tropics next, Captain Roberts? I shall

imagine you are going to draw the long bow, as the Yankees call it."

 

"Well, well, Nie; the fact is, we passed so pleasant an existence in the

_Sans Pareil_, that time really glided away as if we had been in

dreamland all the while. We sailed away to the far north in the early

spring of the year. We didn't go after either seals or whales; but we

did have the sport for all that. Our captain was one of those real

gentlemen that you do find now and then commanding ships in the Royal

Navy. Easy-going and complacent, but a stickler for duty and service

for all that. There wasn't a man or officer in the ship who wouldn't

have risked his life at any moment to please him--ay, or laid it down in

duty's cause. Indeed, the men would any day do more for Captain Mann's

nod and smile, than they would do for any one else's shouted word of

command.

 

"We dredged our way up north to Greenland. It was a stormy spring. We

often had to lie-to for a whole week together; but we were a jolly crew,

and well-officered, and we had on board two civilians--Professor kind of

chaps I think they were--and they were the life and soul of the whole

ship. Whenever we could we took soundings, and hauled up mud and

shingle and stuff from the bottom of the dark ocean, even when it was a

mile deep and more. But when that mud was washed away, and the living

specimens spread out and arranged on bits of jet-black paper, what

wonders we did see, to be sure! Our Scotch doctor called them

`ferlies': he called everything wonderful a `ferlie.' But these

particular ferlies, Nie, took the shape of tiny wee shells of all the

colours in the rainbow, and funny wee fishes, some not bigger than a

pin-point. But, oh! the beauty, the more than loveliness of them! The

roughest old son of a gun on board of us held up his hands in admiration

when he saw them. We cruised all round Spitzbergen, and all down the

edge of the eastern pack ice. We shot bears and foxes innumerable;

walruses, narwhals, seals, and even whales fell to our guns; while the

number of strange birds we bagged and set up would have filled a museum.

 

"Some of those walruses gave us fun, though. I remember once we fell

amidst ice positively crowded with them. They seemed but little

inclined to budge, either. Again and again we fought our way through

them; but the number seemed to increase rather than diminish, till at

last our fellows--we were two boats' crews--were thoroughly exhausted,

and fain to take to the boats. Was the battle ended then? I thought it

was only just beginning, when I saw around us the water alive with

fierce tusked heads evidently bent on avenging the slaughter of their

comrades.

 

"Our good surgeon was as fond of sport as anyone ever I met, but he

confessed that day he had quite enough of it. At one time the peril we

were in was very great indeed. Several times the brutes had all but

fastened their terrible tusks on the gunwale of our boat. Had they

succeeded, we should have been capsized, and entirely at their mercy.

 

"The surgeon, with his great bone-crushing gun, loaded and fired as fast

as ever fingers could; but still they kept coming.

 

"`Ferlies'll never cease,' cried the worthy medico, blowing the brains

clean out of one who had almost swamped the boat from the stern.

Meanwhile it fared but badly with the other boat. The men were fighting

with clubs and axes, their ammunition being entirely spent. One poor

fellow was pierced through the arm by the tusk of a walrus and fairly

dragged into the water, where he sank before he could be rescued.

 

"The ship herself bore down to our assistance at last, and such a rain

of bullets was poured upon the devoted heads of those walruses that they

were fain to dive below. The noise of this battle was something

terrible; the shrieks of the cow walruses, and the grunting, groaning,

and bellowing of the bulls, defy all attempts at description.

 

"What do you think," continued Captain Roberts, "I have here in my

pocket-book? Look; a sketch of a strangely fantastic little iceberg the

doctor made half an hour after the battle. He was a strange man--partly

sportsman, partly naturalist, poet, painter, all combined."

 

"Is he dead?"

 

"No, not he; I'll warrant he is busy sketching somewhere in the interior

of Africa at this very moment. But I loved Greenland so, Nie, that old

as I am I wouldn't mind going back again. The beauty of some of the

aurora scenes, and the moonlight scenes, can never be imagined by your

stay-at-home folk. We went into winter quarters. Well, yes, it was a

bit dreary at times; but what with fun and jollity, and games of every

kind on board, and sledging parties and bear and fox hunts on shore on

the ice around us, the time really didn't seem so very long after all."

 

"What say you to lunch, Ben, my boy?" I remarked.

 

"The very thing," replied my friend; "but first and foremost, just shake

that ferocious-looking stag-beetle off your shoulder; he'll have you by

the ear before you know where you are."

 

"Ugh!" I cried, knocking the beast a yard away. The creature turned

and shook his horrid mandibles threateningly at me, for a stag-beetle

never runs away. Although admiring his pluck, I could not stand his

impudence, so I flicked him away, and he fell into the lake.

 

"Ah! Nie," Captain Roberts said, "if the wild beasts of the African

jungle were only half as courageous and fierce as that beetle, not so

many of our gay sportsmen would go after them. Only fancy that creature

as big as an elephant!

 

"Well, Nie, in that cruise of ours, we had no sooner got back to England

and been surveyed than off we were down south, across the Bay of Biscay.

No storms then; we could have crossed it in the dinghy boat. Visited

Madeira. You know, Nie, how grand the scenery is in that beautiful

island."

 

"And how delicious the turtle!" I said.

 

"True, O king!" said Ben; "the bigwigs in London think they know what

turtle tastes like, but they're mistaken; there is as much difference

between the flavour of a turtle newly caught, and one that has been

starved to death as your London turtles are, as there is between a bit

of cork and a well-boiled cauliflower."

 

"Bravo! Ben, you speak the truth."

 

"Then we visited romantic Saint Helena. It used to be called `a rock in

the middle of the ocean.' How different now! A more fertile and

luxuriant place there isn't in all the wide, wide world. We called at

Ascension next; well, that is a rock if you like, not a green thing

except at the top o' the hill [it has since been cultivated]. But the

birds' eggs, Nie, and the turtle. It makes me hungry to think of them

even now.

 

"We had whole months of sport at the Cape and in South Africa, and all

up the coast as far as Zambesi. We visited Madagascar; more sport

there, and a bit of honest fighting; then on to the Comoro islands--more

romantic scenery, and more fighting; then to Zanzibar. Captured prizes,

took soundings, dredged, and went on again. On, to Seychelles, then to

Java, Sumatra, Penang, then back to India, and thence to Africa, the Red

Sea, Mocha; why, it would be easier far to mention the places we did not

visit. But the best of it was that we stayed for months at every new

place where we cast anchor."

 

"Visited Ceylon, I dare say?"

 

"Yes, hid, and had some rare sport elephant-shooting. I tell you what,

Nie, there was some clanger attached to that sort of thing in those

days, but now it is little better than shooting cows, unless you get

away into the little-known regions of equatorial Africa; there you still

find the elephant has his foot--and a big one it is--upon his native

soil. But I remember once--I and my man Friday--being charged by two

gigantic tuskers, and the whole herd rushing wildly down to their

assistance. It was a supreme moment, Nie. I thought my time was come;

I would have given anything and everything I possessed to get up into

the top of the palm-tree close beside me.

 

"`Now, Friday,' I cried, `be steady if you value your own life and

mine.'

 

"I fired, and my tusker dropped.