In the Land of the Great Snow Bear Part 23

And the men were pleased; the gloomy shadows left their brows; their eyes grew brighter; they even laughed and joked a little as they worked, and I'm quite sure they got through the task in half the time.

A good dinner followed. The cook, poor fellow, had been drowned, but he found a worthy successor in busy boy Bounce.

Boy Bounce to-day had made some excellent pea-soup. It was a good thing for these unfortunate sailors that this house and camp had been built on sh.o.r.e, and that it contained all the necessaries for cooking, etc, that they were likely to want. After the soup came preserved potatoes and pork, to say nothing of a delightful frizzly relish of young seal's liver. Then all felt happier and more hopeful.

There would be at least a whole month of daylight yet, though every day would be much shorter than its predecessor. Then light would leave them, and merge into the long, long Polar night.

As long as there was anything like a day, the men were employed fis.h.i.+ng and hunting. The bears had not yet left, and sometimes a deer was met with. Why some of these animals should occasionally be left behind the migrating flock is a great puzzle. Are they too delicate for the journey south, or are they left behind for punishment?

The bears that meant remaining were already seeking holes and caves.

The doctor knew their tricks and their manners, and had every likely hole and corner searched, often by torchlight, and several fine specimens were thus unearthed.

The brutes always showed fight, and some fierce hand to hand encounters (if I may so name them) were the consequence.

But the days grew shorter, and, despite all that Dr Barrett could do, a gloom settled down on the minds of the men that nothing seemed able to dispel. Even Paddy O'Connell himself lost heart.

"Och! sure," he said one day, "it is our graves we are in already, and it's little use there is in trying to prolong our existence."

Dr Barrett took him aside.

"Paddy," he said, "you must help me to keep up the men's spirits. I depend upon you. I am doing _my_ best. Help me. Will you?"

The tears rushed to the good fellow's eyes.

"Doctor dear," he exclaimed, "I'd lay down my life to plaze ye, and it's the truth I'm telling you."

"Well, my good honest fellow, there needn't be any laying down of lives, only just you keep up _your_ heart, and I'll lay a wager the men will be merry enough, and that is half the battle. I will not conceal from you, Paddy," continued the doctor, "that there is a hard struggle before us, a struggle perhaps for bare existence, but with G.o.d's help we'll get through it and conquer."

"'Deed, then, and well try, sorr."

"Yes, Paddy; and if the worst comes to the worst, we have but once to die, you know."

"True for ye, sorr. I never heard of any one dying twice, sorr."

"No, Paddy. And now you are my a.s.sistant--aren't you?"

He extended his hand as he spoke, and Paddy grasped it with the grip of a vice.

But Paddy did not speak, because there was a big lump in his throat.

Only from that moment the doctor and he understood each other.

Another faithful fellow whom the doctor greatly depended on was Giant Byarnie.

So now, virtually, the four heads of the expedition were Claude, the doctor, Paddy, and Byarnie.

They used to hold little meetings by themselves, apart from the others, and talk together of their prospects.

"If everything goes fairly well," said Dr Barrett one day, "what with rigid economy and no waste, we will manage to weather the winter, be it ever so hard."

"What say you to bear-steak, Captain Alwyn?"

"Delicious, I'm sure, with hunger as sweet sauce."

"Well, we can have that in abundance, and we have, or can have, fish all the weary winter. The biscuit is scarce, but we have peas, and--"

"And tobacco, sorr," put in Paddy.

"Right you are, Paddy. For that we ought to be thankful indeed.--What I lament most," continued the doctor, "is that our casks of cabbage have gone bad, and that we have saved no lime-juice from the burning s.h.i.+p.

However," he added more cheerfully, "let us keep our minds easy, and hope for the best. How are the birds, Byarnie?"

"In fine wing, sir, the two that are left, for one died, you know, sir.

But these are the strongest two, and were Miss Meta's favourites."

It was determined to start them both--both to bear the self-same message.

Claude would not willingly have brought a tear to Meta's eyes to own a throne, but it was agreed between the doctor and him that the best plan was to tell the whole truth, to hide nothing of the terrible extremities to which they were reduced.

And Claude took his advice, and with that message of love which those strong-winged birds bore away south with them, was something like a farewell, a long farewell, and a fear that, on earth, he--Claude--would never meet his love again.

"I think I can face death more bravely now," said Claude.

"And I too," was the reply.

It will be seen that even Dr Barrett lacked the complete hope of being able to fight against the fearful odds before them.

The men were set to work at the mines, but they did so with very little heart indeed.

What is the good, they said, of slaving here like coal-heavers, for gold that can never benefit either ourselves or our families?

Faddy came to Claude as spokesman.

Claude himself went personally to the men. He a.s.sured them that every nugget of gold they found would be their own; that they were now s.h.i.+pwrecked mariners; that they were to some extent, therefore, free agents, and could, if they chose, throw over allegiance to him, their former captain.

"No, sir," the men cried, "we will never do that. We have lived together happily and cheerily enough, let us die together."

"Who talks of dying?" cried Paddy O'Connell. "Sure we'll never die at all, at all. Is it because the winter is with us, and darkness all around us, that we'd go and cry like a choild that has been sent to bed widout a light? Troth, men, it's meself that's ashamed av ye entoirely.

Won't the sun come back and s.h.i.+ne down on us wid de blessing o' Heaven in a few or three months? Then won't we take our guns under our arms and go marching thro' the country as bould as Inniskilling Dragoons?

And won't there be such sport and such fun all the way south, as you never had the loikes of before? And sure, won't we reach the say at last, and go off in some s.h.i.+p or another to England and Oirland? And och! won't our wives and sweethearts, if we've got any, be glad to see us just--the darlints that they thought they'd never see in loife again, because the big whales av Greenland had eaten them up? And sure, won't me own dear mother, and Biddy my sister, and the pig, the crayture, go wild wid the joy that'll be on to them when they see their Patrick march in at the door again! Hooch! hurrah! it's myself that's as happy as a king wid the thoughts av it all."

Paddy's speech had even greater effect in keeping up the men's spirits than had Claude's. They resumed their work more cheerfully, and Paddy constantly led them with song or with joke.

Lectures and concerts were resumed in the wooden tent, now their sole abode. But the singing lacked spirit, and the dancing was _nil_.

They say that sorrows seldom come singly. It appeared even now, in December, that the proverb would hold good in the case of those forlorn mariners. For the winter turned out to be one of awful gloom and darkness.

The aurora, that shone with such radiance the winter before, now showed only occasionally, and that only as a faint white glimmer among the clouds. No moon or stars were ever seen.

Sometimes, for a week at a time, the snow fell and the wind raged with such fearful and bitter force as to preclude the possibility of any one ever putting his head beyond the threshold of the door on pain of instant suffocation.