Among the Esquimaux; or, Adventures under the Arctic Circle Read online

  CHAPTER II

  A COLOSSAL SOMERSAULT

  The voyage of the "Nautilus" was uneventful until she was far to thenorthward in Baffin Bay. It was long after leaving St. John that ourfriends saw their first iceberg. They should have seen them before, asCaptain McAlpine explained, for, as you well know, those mountains ofice often cross the path of the Atlantic steamers, and more than oncehave endangered our great ocean greyhounds. No doubt numbers of themwere drifting southward, gradually dissolving as they neared theequator, but it so happened that the "Nautilus" steered clear of themuntil many degrees to the north.

  The captain, who was scanning the icy ocean with his glass, apprisedthe boys that the longed-for curiosity was in sight at last. As hespoke, he pointed with his hand to the north-west, but though theyfollowed the direction with their eyes, they were disappointed.

  "I see nothing," said Rob, "that looks like an iceberg."

  "And how is it with you, Mr. Warburton?" asked the skipper, loweringhis instrument, and turning toward the younger of the boys, who hadapproached, and now stood at his side.

  "We can make out a small white cloud in the horizon, that's all," saidFred.

  "It's the cloud I'm referring to, boys; now take a squint at that samething through the glass."

  Fred leveled the instrument and had hardly taken a glance, when hecried:

  "Oh! it's an iceberg sure enough! Isn't it beautiful?"

  While he was studying it, the captain added: "Turn the glass a littleto the left."

  "There's another!" added the delighted youth.

  "I guess we've struck a school of 'em," remarked Rob, who was usinghis eyes as best he could; "I thought we'd bring up the average beforereaching Greenland."

  "It's a sight worth seeing," commented Fred, handing the glass to hisfriend, whose pleasure was fully as great as his own.

  The instrument was passed back and forth, and, in the course of ahalf-hour, the vast masses of ice could be plainly discerned with theunaided eye.

  "That proves they are coming toward us, or we are going toward them,"said Rob.

  "Both," replied Captain McAlpine; "we shall pass within a mile of thelarger one."

  "Suppose we run into it?"

  The old sea-dog smiled grimly, as he replied:

  "I tried it once, when whaling with the 'Mary Jane.' I don't mean tosay I did it on purpose, but there was no moon that night, and whenthe iceberg, half as big as a whole town, loomed up in the darkness,we hadn't time to get out of its path. Well, I guess I've saidenough," he remarked, abruptly.

  "Why, you've broken off in the most interesting part of the story,"said the deeply interested Fred.

  "Well, that was the last of the 'Mary Jane.' The mate, Jack Cosgrove,and myself were all that escaped out of a crew of eleven. We managedto climb upon a small shelf of ice, just above the water, where wewould have perished with cold had not an Esquimau fisherman, namedDocak, seen us. We were nearer the mainland than we dared hope, and hecame out in his kayak and took us off. He helped us to make our way toIvignut, where the cryolite mines are, and thence we got back toEngland by way of Denmark. No," added Captain McAlpine, "a prudentnavigator won't try to butt an iceberg out of his path; it don't pay."

  "It must be dangerous in these waters, especially at night."

  "There is danger everywhere and at all times in this life," was thetruthful remark of the commander; "and you know that the most constantwatchfulness on the part of the great steamers cannot always avertdisaster, but I have little fear of anything from icebergs."

  You need to be told little about those mountains of ice whichsometimes form a procession, vast, towering, and awful, that streamdown from the far North and sail in all their sublime grandeursteadily southward until they "go out of commission" forever in thetepid waters of the tropic regions.

  It is a strange spectacle to see one of them moving resistlesslyagainst the current, which is sometimes dashed from the corrugatedfront, as is seen at the bow of a steamboat, but the reason is simple.Nearly seven-eighths of an iceberg is under water, extending so fardown that most of the bulk is often within the embrace of the countercurrent below. This, of course, carries it against the weaker flow,and causes many people to wonder how it can be thus.

  While the little group stood forward talking of icebergs, they weregradually drawing near the couple that had first caught theirattention. By this time a third had risen to sight, more to thewestward, but it was much smaller than the other two, though moreunique and beautiful. It looked for all the world like a grandcathedral, whose tapering spire towered fully two hundred feet in air.It was easy to imagine that some gigantic structure had been submergedby a flood, while the steeple still reared its head above thesurrounding waters as though defying them to do their worst.

  The other two bergs were much more enormous and of irregular contour.The imaginative spectator could fancy all kinds of resemblances, butthe "cold fact" remained that they were simply mountains of ice, withno more symmetry of outline than a mass of rock blasted from a quarry.

  "I have read," said Fred, "that in the iceberg factories of the north,as they are called, they are sometimes two or three years in forming,before they break loose and sweep off into the ocean."

  "That is true," added Captain McAlpine; "an iceberg is simply a chunkoff a frozen river, and a pretty good-sized one, it must be admitted.Where the cold is so intense, a river becomes frozen from the surfaceto the ground. Snow falls, there may be a little rain during themoderate season, then snow comes again, and all the time the waterbeneath is freezing more and more solid. Gravity and the pressure ofthe inconceivable weight beyond keeps forcing the bulk of ice and snownearer the ocean, until it projects into the clear sea. By and by itbreaks loose, and off it goes."

  "But why does it take so long?"

  "It is like the glaciers of the Alps. Being solid as a rock while thepressure is gradual as well as resistless, it may move only a few feetin a month or a year; but all the same the end must come."

  The captain had grown fond of the boys, and the fact that the fatherof one of them was a director of the company which employed himnaturally led him to seek to please them so far as he could do soconsistent with his duty. He caused the course of the "Nautilus" to beshifted, so that they approached within a third of a mile of thenearest iceberg, which then was due east.

  Sail had been slackened and the progress of the mass was so slow as tobe almost imperceptible. This gave full time for its appallinggrandeur to grow upon the senses of the youths, who stood minute afterminute admiring the overwhelming spectacle, speechless and awed as isone who first pauses at the base of Niagara.

  Naturally the officers and crew of the "Nautilus" gave the sight someattention, but it could not impress them as it did those who lookedupon it for the first time.

  The second iceberg was more to the northward, and the ship was headingdirectly toward it. It was probably two-thirds the size of the first,and, instead of possessing its rugged regularity of outline, had acurious, one-sided look.

  "It seems to me," remarked Rob, who had been studying it for somemoments, "that the centre of gravity in that fellow must be ratherticklish."

  "It may be more stable than the big one," said Fred, "for you don'tknow what shape they have under water; a good deal must depend onthat."

  Jack Cosgrove, the sailor, who had joined the little party at theinvitation of the captain, ventured to say:

  "Sometimes them craft get top-heavy and take a flop; I shouldn't bes'prised if that one done the same."

  "It must be a curious sight; I've often wondered how Jumbo, the greatelephant, would have looked turning a somersault. An icebergperforming a handspring would be something of the same order, but ahundred thousand times more extensive. I would give a good deal if oneof those bergs should take it into his head to fling a handspring, butI don't suppose--"

  "Look!" broke in Fred, in sudden excitement.

  To the unbounded amazement of captain, crew, and all the spectators,the v
ery thing spoken of by Rob Carrol took place. The vast bulk oftowering ice was seen to plunge downward with a motion, slow at first,but rapidly increasing until it dived beneath the waves like someenormous mass of matter cast off by a planet in its flight throughspace. As it disappeared, two-fold as much bulk came to view, therewas a swirl of water, which was flung high in fountains, and the wavesformed by the commotion, as they swept across the intervening space,caused the "Nautilus" to rock like a cradle.

  The splash could have been heard miles away, and the iceberg seemed toshiver and shake itself, as though it were some flurried monster ofthe deep, before it could regain its full equilibrium. Then, as thespectators looked, behold! where was one of those mountains of icethey saw what seemed to be another, for its shape, contour,projections, and depressions were so different that no resemblancecould be traced.

  "She's all right now," remarked Jack Cosgrove, whose emotions wereless stirred than those of any one else; "she's good for two or threethousand miles' voyage, onless she should happen to run aground inshoal water."

  "What then would take place, Jack?" asked Fred.

  "Wal, there would be the mischief to pay gener'ly. Things would goripping, tearing, and smashing, and the way that berg would behavewould be shameful. If anybody was within reach he'd get hurt."

  Rob stepped up to the sailor as if a sudden thought had come to him.Laying his hand on his arm, he said, in an undertone:

  "I wonder if the captain won't let us visit that iceberg?"