Читать книгу Wild Adventures round the Pole - Stables Gordon - Страница 7

There is one member of the mess whom I have not yet introduced, but a very worthy member he is, our youthful doctor. Poor fellow! never before had he been to sea, and so he suffered accordingly. Oh! right bravely had he tried to keep up for all that. He was the boldest mariner afloat while coming down the Clyde; he disappeared as the ship began to round the stormy Mull. He appeared again for a short time at Oban, but vanished when the anchor was weighed. At Lerwick, where they called in to take old Magnus Bolt on board, and ship a dozen stalwart Shetlanders, the doctor was once more seen on deck; and it was currently reported that when the vessel lay helpless on the reef, a ghostly form bearing a strong resemblance to the bold surgeon was seen flitting about in the darkness, and a quavering voice was heard to put this solemn question more than once, “Any danger, men? Men, are we in danger?” This was the last that had been seen of the medico; but Rory found a slate in the dispensary, into which sanctum, by the way, he had no right to pop even his nose. He brought this slate aft, the young rascal, and read what was written thereon to Allan and Ralph, from which it was quite evident that Sandie McFlail, M.D., of Aberdeen, had made a most intrepid attempt to keep a diary. The entries were short, and ran somewhat thus: —

“February 9th. – Dropped away from the Broomielaw and steamed down the beautiful Clyde. Charming day, though cold, and the hills on each side the river clothed in virgin snow. Felt sad and sorrowful at leaving my native land. I wonder will ever we return, or will the great sea swallow us up? Would rather it didn’t. I wonder if she will think of me and pray for her mariner bold when the wind blows high at night, when the cold rain beats against the window-panes of her little cot, and the storm spirit roars around the old chimneys. I feel a sailor already all over, and I tread the decks with pride.

“Feb. 10th. – At sea. The ocean getting rough. Passed some seagulls.

“Feb. 11th. – Sea rougher. Passed a ship.

“Feb. 12th. – Sea still rough. Passed some seaweed.

“Feb. 13th. – Sea mountains high. Passed – ”

“And here,” says Rory, “the diary breaks off all of a sudden like; and all of a sudden the entries close; so, really, there is no saying what the doctor passed on the 13th. But just about this time, the mate tells me, he was seen leaning languidly over the side, so – ”

“Ho, ho!” cried McBain, close at his ear. The captain had entered the saloon unperceived by boy Rory, and had been standing behind him all the time he was reading. Ralph and Allan saw him well enough, but they, of course, said nothing, although they could not refrain from laughing.

“Ho, ho, Rory, my boy!” says McBain; “ho, ho, boy Rory! so you’re fairly caught?”

“And indeed then,” says Rory, jumping up and looking as guilty as any schoolboy, “I didn’t know you were there at all at all.”

“Of that I am perfectly sure,” McBain says, laughing, “else you wouldn’t have been reading the poor doctor’s private diary. What shall we do with him, Ralph? What shall he be done to, Allan?”

“Oh!” said Ralph, mischievously; “send him to the masthead for a couple of hours. Into the foretop, mind, where he’ll get plenty of air about him.”

“No,” said Allan, grinning; “give him a seat for three hours on the end of the bowsprit. Of course, Captain McBain, you’ll let him have a bottle of hot water at his feet, and a blanket or two about him. He is only a little one, you know.”

“But now that I think of it,” said McBain, “you are all the same, boys; there isn’t one of you a whit better than the other.”

“Sure and you’re right, captain,” Rory put in, “for if I was reading, they were listening, most intently, too.”

“Well then, boys, I’ll tell you how you can make amends to the honest doctor. Off you go, the three of you, and see if you can’t rouse him out. Get him to come on deck and breathe the fresh air. He’ll soon get round.”

And off our three heroes went, joyfully, on their mission of mercy.

They found the worthy doctor in bed in his cabin, and forthwith set about kindly but firmly rousing him out. They had even brought Freezing Powders with them, to carry a pint of moselle.

“I feel vera limp,” said Sandie, as soon as he got dressed, “vera limp indeed. Well, as you say, the moselle may do me good, but I’m a teetotaler as a rule.”

“We never touch any wine,” said Ralph, “nor care to; but this, my dear doctor, is medicine.”

Sandie confessed himself better immediately when he got on deck. With Allan on one side of him and big Ralph on the other, he was marched up and down the deck for half an hour and more.

“Man! gentlemen!” he remarked, “I thought I could walk finely, but I’m just now for a’ the world like a silly drunken body.”

“We were just the same,” said Allan, “when we came first to sea – couldn’t walk a bit; but we soon got our sea-legs, and we’ve never lost them yet.”

The doctor was struck with wonder at the might and majesty of the waves, and also at the multitude of birds that were everywhere about and around them. Kittiwakes, solons, gulls, guillemots, auks, and puffins, they whirled and wheeled around the ship in hundreds, screaming and shrieking and laughing. They floated on the water, they swam on its surface, and dived down into its dark depths, and no fear had they of human beings, nor of the steamer itself.

“How happy they all seem!” said Rory; “if I was one of the lower animals, as we call them, sure there is nothing in the wide world I’d like better to be than a sea-bird.”

“True for you,” said Allan; “it’s a wild, free life they lead.”

“And they seem to have no care,” said the doctor. “Their meat is bound to their heads; at any rate, they never have far to go to seek it. When tired they can rest; when rested they can fly again. Then look at the warm and beautiful coats they wear. There is no wetting them to the skin; the water glides off o’ them like the rain from a duck’s back. Then think o’ the pleasure o’ possessin’ a pair o’ wings that can cleave the air like an arrow from a bowstring; that in a few short days, independent o’ wind or waves or weather, can carry them from the cauld north far, far awa’ to the saft and sunny south. Wha wouldna’ be a sea-bird?”

“Yes,” reiterated Rory, stopping in front of the doctor; “as you say, doctor, ‘Wha wouldna’ be a sea-bird?’ But pardon me, sir, for in you I recognise a kindred spirit, a lover of nature, a lover of the beautiful. You and I will be friends, doctor – fast friends. There, shake hands.”

“As for Ralph and Allan,” he added, with a mischievous grin, “’deed in troth, doctor dear, there isn’t a bit of poetry in their nature, and they would any day far sooner see a couple of eider ducks roasted and flanked with apple sauce, than the same wildly beautiful birds happy and alive and afloat on the dark, heaving breast of the ocean. It’s the truth I’m telling ye, doctor. D’ye play at all? Have you any favourite instrument?”

“Weel, sir,” the doctor replied, “I canna say that I’m vera much o’ a musician, but I just can manage to toot a wee bit on the flute.”

“And I’ve no doubt,” said Rory, “that you ‘toot’ well, too.”

The conversation never slackened for a couple of hours, and so well did the doctor feel, that of his own free will he volunteered joining them at dinner in the saloon. McBain was as much surprised as delighted when he came below to dine, and found that their new messmate, Sandie McFlail, had at long last put in an appearance at table.

The swell on the sea was much less next morning; the wind had slightly increased, and more sail had been spread, so that the ship was moderately steady. The rugged coast and strange, fantastic rocks of the outlying islands of Iceland were in sight, and, half-buried in misty clouds, the distant mountains could be dimly descried.

“Yonder,” said the mate, advancing towards Captain McBain, glass in hand, – “yonder is a small boat, sir, with a bit of a sail on her; she has just rounded the needle rocks, and seems standing in for the mainland.”

“Well,” said the captain, “let us overhaul her, anyhow. There can be no harm in that, and it may secure us a fresh fish or two for dinner.”

In less than an hour the Arrandoon had come up with this strange sail, which at first sight had seemed a mere speck on the ocean, seen at one moment and hidden the next behind some mountain roller. The surprise of our heroes may be better imagined than described, to find afloat in this cockle-shell of a boat, with an oar shipped as a mast and a tartan plaid as a main-sail, none other than the heroine of the wreckers’ reef. Seeing that she was in the power of the big ship, she made no further attempt to get away, but, dropping her sail, she seized the oars, paddled quietly and coolly alongside, and next moment stood on the quarter-deck, with bowed head and modest mien, before Captain McBain.

The captain took her kindly by the hand, smiling as he said, “Do not be afraid, my girl; consider yourself among friends – among those, indeed, who would do anything in their power to serve you, even if they were not already deeply in your debt, and deeply grateful.”

“Ah!” she said, mournfully, “my warning came all too late to save you. But, praised be God! you are safe now, and not in the power of those terrible men, who would have spared not a single life of those the waves did not engulf.”

“But tell us,” continued McBain, “all about it – all about yourself. There is some strange mystery about the matter, which we would fain have solved. But stay – not here, and not yet. You must be very tired and weary; you must first have rest and refreshment, after which you can tell us your tale. Stevenson, see the little boat hauled up; and, doctor, I place this young lady under your care; to-night I hope to land her safely in Reikjavik; meanwhile my cabin is at her disposal.”

“Come, lassie,” said the good surgeon, laconically, leading the way down the companion.

Merely dropping a queenly curtsey to McBain and our young heroes, she followed the doctor without a word.

Peter the steward placed before her the most tempting viands in the ship, yet she seemed to have but little appetite.

“I am tired,” she said at length, “I fain would rest. Long weary weeks of sorrow have been mine. But they are past and gone at last.”

Then she retired, this strange ocean waif and stray, and so the day wore gradually to a close, and they saw no more of her until the sun, fierce, fiery, and red, began to disappear behind the distant snow-clad hills; then they found her once more in their midst.

She had gathered the folds of her plaid around her, her long yellow hair still floated over her shoulders, and her dreamy blue eyes were shyly raised to McBain’s face as she began to speak.

“I owe you some explanation,” she said. “My strange conduct must appear almost inexplicable to you. My appearance among you two nights ago was intended to save you from the destruction that awaited you – from the destruction that had been prepared for you by the Danish wreckers.”

“Sir,” she continued, after a pause, “I am myself a Dane. My father was parish minister in the little village of Elmdene. Alas! I fear he is now no more. Afflictions gathered and thickened around us in our once happy little home, and the only way we could see out of them was to leave our native land and cross the ocean. In America we have many friends who had kindly offered us an asylum, until happier days should come again. Our vessel was a brig, our crew all told only twenty hands, and we, my brother, father, and myself – for mother has long since gone up beyond – were the only passengers.

“All went well until we were off the northern Shetlands, when at the dark, starry hour of midnight our ship was boarded and carried by pirates. Every one in the ship was put to the sword, saving my father and myself. My poor dear brave brother was slain before my eyes, but he died as the Danes die – with his face to the foe. My father was promised his life if he would perform the ceremony of marriage between myself and the pirate captain, who is a Russian, a daring, fearless fellow, but a strange compound of superstition and vice – a man who will go to prayers before scuttling a ship! The object of this pirate was to seize your vessel; he would have met and fought you at sea, but the easier plan for him was to try to wreck you. Fortune seemed to favour this bold design of his. The lights placed on shore, to represent a vessel of large size, were part and parcel of his vile scheme. But the darkness of the night enabled me to escape and come towards you. Then I feared to return; but, alas! alas! I now tremble lest my dear father has had to pay the penalty of my rashness with his life.”

(The story of the pirate is founded on fact.)

“But the ship – this pirate?” said McBain. “We sailed around the island next day but saw no signs of him?”

“Then,” said the girl, “he must have escaped in the darkness, immediately after discovering the entire failure of his scheme.”

“And whither were you bound for when we overtook you, my poor girl?” asked McBain.

“At Reikjavik,” she replied, “I have an uncle, a minister. He it was who taught me all I know, while he was still at home in Elmdene – taught me among other things the beautiful language of your country, which I speak, but speak so indifferently.”

“Can this be,” said McBain, “the self-same pirate that attacked the Snowbird?”

“The very same thought,” answered Ralph, “was passing through my own mind.”

“And yet how strange that a pirate should, cruise in these far northern seas?”

“She has less chance of being caught, at all events,” Allan said.

“Ha?” exclaimed McBain, with a kind of grim, exultant laugh, “if she comes across the Arrandoon, that chance will indeed be a small one. She’ll find us a different kind of a craft from the Snowbird.”

The vessel was now heading directly for the south-east coast of Iceland. Somewhere in there, though at present hidden by points of land and rocky islets, lay the capital of Iceland, which they hoped to reach ere midnight.

A more lovely land and seascape than that which was now stretched out before them, it would indeed be difficult to conceive. The sun had gone down behind the western end of a long line of snow-clad mountains, serrated, jagged, and peaked, but their tops were all rose-tipped with his parting beams. Above them the sky was clear, with just one speck of crimson cloud; the lower land between was bathed in a purple mist, through which the ice-bound rocks could dimly be discerned, while the mantle of night had already been spread over the ocean.

It was “nightfall on the sea.”