He paused and glanced seawards. "My dear Captain Alwyn," said the doctor, "our poor fellows are already buried; that water swarms with sharks." [Note 1.]
Claude himself went in charge of the boat to visit the _Kittywake_ stores. There would be, he reasoned with himself, about three hundred miles of water to row or sail over. The tide, however, that swept up and down the long creek which joined the ocean to the inland sea, had all the force of a mill-stream. He determined, therefore, to take advantage of that, and on his voyage out to anchor alongside the banks during the flow, and rush onward when the tide was ebbing.
He returned to the camp far sooner than he had expected.
He returned empty.
A bridge of ice and snow had been encountered which, no doubt, extended all the way to the sea.
"And so, even if my poor vessel had not been doomed to destruction, it would have been impossible to get clear this year." So spoke Claude.
"True, true," said Dr Barrett, "and now we must depend upon the sledges to bring us supplies from the stores. But," he added, "it is only right I should tell you what I think, Captain Alwyn--"
"And that is?"
"That they, too, will return empty."
This melancholy surmise of Dr Barrett turned out far too true.
They waited till the snow fell. Then, in charge of the spectioneer, who had been among the saved, and Mr McDonald, third mate, the sledges set out. As usual, Fingal trotted off with the rest.
Even to those in the sledges, the time seemed long. Their adventures were many, the whole journey a toilsome and perilous one. But the goal was gained at last. There was the signal pole on the cliff top that had been raised to guide the _Kittywake_ towards the creek, but where was the creek itself?
_Nowhere to be seen_.
It had been frozen over in the winter, and the ravine, at the bottom of which it lay, filled entirely and completely level with snow.
To find or even to guess at the whereabouts of the cave where the stores were buried under such circ.u.mstances was quite out of the question. A thousand men could hardly have found and rescued them.
If the time seemed long for those who went on this expedition, it was doubly tedious for those who waited their return.
At last, one evening, about sunset, amid thickly falling snow, Fingal came bounding into camp. Claude knew the sledges could not be far away.
All rushed out to meet them. Alas! and alas! for hope seemed to die even in Dr Barrett"s heart at the dire news.
They brought two bears, and these were cut in pieces and stored.
"What is to be done now?" said Claude. "Are we to die like rats in a hole?"
"Not, I think," was the reply, "without making one last effort to save ourselves. Were it the summer, we could live at all events as long as ammunition lasted, but we have hardly food enough to serve us to spring-time. So I propose that we get ready at once, that we provision the sledges, and make an attempt to reach the semi-Eskimo, semi-Danish settlement of Sturmstadt."
"It will be a terrible journey."
"It will, indeed, but both Jack and Joe know the way. I have talked to them. Their people have come on the hunting-path within a hundred miles of this place."
"_For_ myself, I care not," said Claude; "but I grieve to think of my poor fellows, perhaps sinking and dying by the way. Would it not be almost better to rough it here through another winter, then, when the snow is gone, to walk the journey? Every day would then be bringing us into a warmer and better climate."
"No, captain, it would not, and for this one of many reasons. If we take the journey now we can go in almost a straight line, for the creeks and streams will be frozen over in a few days. In summer we know not what _detours_ we might not have to make, what streams or rivers to ford or even swim."
"I will be guided by your experience," said Claude.
Early next morning, outside the wooden tent, Paddy O"Connell and boy Bounce were heard talking together loudly and excitedly.
"Is it true what you"re telling me, and sorra a word av a lie in it?"
"Which I walked all the way over, and ran all the way back to see," was the boy"s reply.
"Och! bladderips!" roared Paddy; "och! the thieving spalpeens! Bad cess to them evermore. Sure if I had them I"d break every bone in their durty bodies. I"d murder every mother"s son or the two o" them."
He entered the tent as he spoke.
"I know what you"ve come to say, Paddy," said Claude: "the Eskimos have taken the sledges and deserted us."
"True for you, sorr," said Paddy. "It"s all up wid us now, sorr. Sure I could tear me hair and cry; and it isn"t for meself either, sorr, I"d be after crying, but for me poor mother and Biddy."
"This is, indeed, terrible news, doctor," said Claude.
The doctor whistled a few bars of an operatic air thoughtfully before he made reply.
"It may be all for the best, you know. Hope, sir, hope, _hope_, _hope_.
""Hope is a better companion than fear; Providence, ever benignant and kind, Gives with a smile what you take with a tear.
All will be right; Let us look to the light.
Morning is ever the daughter of night.
Cheerily, cheerily, then, cheer up!""
Note 1. The _Scymnus Borealis_. Some of these monsters obtain a length of nearly twenty feet, and at certain seasons of the year the sea in some places swarms with them. They are gregarious, and never fail to appear when men are drowning or seals being killed. They are terribly fierce and voracious.
CHAPTER TWENTY.
SORROWS NEVER COME SINGLY.
However cheerful Dr Barrett might try to appear, he was far from feeling easy at heart.
Hopeless he was not. He had seen too much of the world--the wide world, I mean--he had faced too many dangers not to know that there is seldom or never real reason to throw up one"s arms in despair.
But it behoved him to a.s.sume an air of cheerfulness, even under the distressing circ.u.mstances in which he and his companions were now plunged. The survivors of the unhappy _Icebear_ were all his patients, all his charge and care, and he well knew the depressing effects of despondency, so he determined to do his duty, and keep up their hearts if possible.
"Give the men something to do," he said to Claude on the same morning the news of the desertion of the Eskimos had been brought to camp by busy boy Bounce.
"I"ll overhaul stores to begin with."
"Good?" said the doctor. "And during the time yen are working I"ll get on the top of the bench and play the fiddle to them."
It may seem a menial kind of duty for a surgeon to fiddle to a ship"s crew; nevertheless, duty it was, and the doctor did it.