Читать книгу Arthur Conan Doyle: A Life in Letters - Daniel Stashower, Исмаил Шихлы - Страница 121

Here I am as well and as strong and as ugly as ever off Jan Mayen’s Island in the Arctic Circle. We started from Shetland on the 10th of March, & had a splendid passage without a cloud in the sky, reaching the ice upon the 16th. We went to bed with a great stretch of blue water before us as far as the eye could reach, & when we got on deck in the morning there was the whole sea full of great flat lumps of ice, white above and bluish green below all tossing & heaving on the waves. We pushed through it for a day but saw no seals, but on the second day we saw a young sea elephant upon the ice, and some schools of seals in the water swimming towards N.W. We followed their track and on the 18th saw the smoke of 6 steamers all making in the same direction, in the hope of reaching the main pack. Next morning eleven vessels could be seen from the deck, and a lot of sea elephants or bladdernose seals were lying about. These always hang on the skirts of a pack of true seals so we felt hopeful. You must know that no blood is allowed to be shed in the Arctic Circle before April 3rd.

On the 20th we saw the real pack. They were lying in a solid mass upon the ice, about 15 miles by 8, literally millions of them. On the 22nd we got upon the edge of them and waited. 25 vessels were in sight doing the same thing. On the 29th a gale broke and the pack was sadly scattered, and a couple of Norwegian lubbers came steaming through them, frightening those that had not pupped away. On the 3rd the bloody work began and it has been going on ever since. The mothers are shot and the little ones have their brains knocked out with spiked clubs. They are then skinned where they lie and the skin with blubber attached is dragged by the assassin to the ships side. This is very hard work, as you often have to travel a couple of miles, as I did today, jumping from piece to piece before you find your victim, and then you have a fearful weight to drag back. The crew must think me a man of extraordinary tastes to work hard and with gusto at what they all consider the most tiring task they have, but I think it encourages them. My shoulders are all chafed with the Lourie-tow or dragging rope.

By the way in the last four days I have fallen into the sea five times which is a pretty good average. The first time I tried to get on to the ice, there was a fine strong piece alongside, and I was swinging myself down on to it by a rope, when the ship gave a turn of her propeller sending me clear of the ice and into the sea with 28° of frost on. I was hauled out by a boat hook in my coat, and went on the ice again when I had changed, without mishap. I was not so fortunate next day for I fell in three times and all the clothes I had in the world were in the engine room drying. Next day I fell in once, and now I have had two days of immunity. It takes considerable practise to know what ice is trustworthy & what is not.

We have seen the steps of bears in the snow about the ship but I haven’t had a bang at one yet. I shot a fine sea elephant yesterday 11 feet long, as big as a walrus. They are formidable brutes and can give a bear more than he brings. Our young sealing is over now and has been a comparative failure, about 25 tons, but we will follow up the old seals now as they go North, and then away we go past Spitzbergen & over 80° Lat for the whaling where we hope to do better.

I have enjoyed my voyage immensely, my dear, and only hope you are as cheery. I don’t think you would have recognized me as I came into the cabin just now—I’m sure you wouldn’t. The Captain says I make the most awful looking savage he ever saw. My hair was on end, my face covered with dirt and perspiration, and my hands with blood. I had my oldest clothes on, my sea boots were shining with water and crusted with snow at the top. I had a belt round my coat with a knife in a sheath and a steel stuck in it, all clotted with blood. I had a coil of rope slung round my shoulders, & a long gory poleaxe in my hand. That’s the photograph of your little cherub, madam. I never before knew what it was to be thoroughly healthy. I just feel as if I could go anywhere or do anything. I’m sure I could go anywhere and eat anything.

Now, my dear, don’t be uneasy during the next month or two. If ever a round peg (not pig) got into a round hole it is me. Give my love to Greenhill Place also to Mrs Waller and the Doctor, also to Mrs Neilson & all in London. I would have written to London and to Greenhill Place and London but there is a ship alongside for our letters and I thought one good letter was worth three bad ones.

All kind regards to Mrs Budd and Budd himself. Don’t lose his address.

[P.S.] The Captain sends his compliments & says that I am an untidy rag; but sternly refuses to explain the meaning of this term of opprobrium. He calls me the ‘Great Northern Diver’ too in allusion to my recent exploits in the bathing way.

He did not tell his mother that he was dubbed that after nearly losing his life two days earlier. His diary for April 5th records:

I had just killed a seal on a large piece [of ice] when I fell over the side. Nobody was near and the water was deadly cold. I had hold

of the edge of the ice to prevent my sinking, but it was too smooth and slippery to climb up by, but at last I got hold of the seal’s hind flippers and managed to pull myself up by them.

A ‘nightmare tug-of-war,’ he recalled afterwards, ‘the question being whether I should pull the seal off or pull myself on.’

‘Look here,’ he continued; ‘it’s a dangerous place this, even at its best—a treacherous, dangerous place. I have known men cut off very suddenly in a land like this. A slip would do it sometimes—a single slip, and down you go through a crack, and only a bubble on the green water to show where it was that you sank.’

—‘The Captain of the Polestar’

Less than a week later, he saw for the first time a patient of his (an elderly seaman named Andrew Milne) die—‘died in my arms literally’, his diary noted: ‘Poor old man. They were kind to him forwards during his illness, and certainly I did my best for him.’

The Hope returned to Scotland on August 10th. ‘The green grass on shore looks very cool and refreshing to me after nearly 6 months never seeing it,’ his diary admitted, ‘but the houses look revolting. I hate the vulgar hum of men and would like to be back at the floes again.’ He returned to Dr Hoare’s, and began the division between medicine and writing that would characterize his life for the next dozen years.