W. G. Burn Murdoch

“ The little excitement of narwhal-hunting broke the stillness of rather a monotonous evening of mist and fine rain. Pretty enough, though, for a little sunlight penetrates the mist, giving the snow the faintest warm flesh tint, a pleasing contrast to the green and blue underside of the snow blocks on the floe to which we are anchored. We can study these delicate snow tints through our cabin door, as we sit at meals, always hoping that a whale may blow in the still water, or a bear may cross the delicate tints of the middle distance. Our language at table is in Spanish, French, and Norwegian. ”

“ Over the glassy rollers we go at a good pace, the whale is six hundred yards away or more and wandering from left to right, and ahead, in the deep swell, it seems as if it would be a long business to get into reach. We back the stern in and Jensen makes a great lunge and the spear goes in five feet and is twisted out of his hand and the vast body rolls over, the tail rises up and up and comes down in a sea of foam. We pull clear back in again at next rise and draw the spear all bent, straighten it, and one more thrust finishes the business and the whale spouts red and dies. ”

“ I write in our little chart-room on the bridge, with a view all round of floes of ice extending right round the horizon; we are anchored to one—in its shelter. The wind is falling and it is very quiet; there is the lap, lap of the small waves against the green edge of the floe, the tweet, tweet of some ivory gulls, and the homely barn-door-fowl-like cluck, cluck of the fulmar petrels, as they squabble and splutter under the stern for scraps of food, not forgetting the frequent low, deep growls of the bear we lassoed last night. ”

“ On this sad occasion, 9th of August, we have again to light the midnight oil, or put it down “candle,” in my cabin—midnight sun versus candle, and the candle wins. There is absolute stillness, not a sound in the fiord but the gentle throb of our engine.
How sad it is to lose the light.
It is almost incredible, the tranquillity of the dead-still water as we lie at anchor fishing cod—breathless stillness, so quiet one does not know how to go to sleep, no more bracing of limbs now against the side of the bunk to steady one’s restless slumbers. ”

“ It is September now, and a Wednesday, and early and clear and cold, with no gale, with just a ripple down Lerwick Bay; one or two people are lighting their peat fires and the scent comes off to us on the pure, almost wintry air, and we hoist the Union Jack astern though no one may see it, and let steam into the steam donkey-engine, and up comes the port anchor, then the starboard and there is a pause and a bell rings for stand-by, then half-speed and clash goes the air pressure; then full speed, and the motor settles down to its steady musical beat and hum. ”

“ It is a wonder that animal painters, some of them quite distinguished, do not as a rule take the trouble to go and study their animals in their proper surroundings. What numbers of pictures we see of snow-leopards, bears, and such-like, done excellently up to a point, but with none of their natural atmosphere. The white bear with its pale primrose colour needs the shimmer and pearl-like tints of its natural surroundings, the blues and greens of the floe, veiled a little by fine snow or mist, and the hard ice, to set off its rounded soft furry form that hides such terrible strength. ”

“ No mother bear could shut her ears to it, were she alive. The two cubs, each on a line, are swimming; they seem to prefer the water to the floe-edge. A huge mushroom of ice, pale blue and of exquisite form, drifted alongside, and the young male cub got on to it and it slowly turned over—how he swore and gnashed at his rope; but what exquisite delicate colours, the bears, the ice, and the reflections make. They are brother and sister; the brother is the stronger and makes, if possible, more row than his sister in their struggles for liberty. ”

“ We pass under the cliffs to the west of Funchal Bay, rowing steadily with two long sweeps, two men to a sweep, close to the surf on the rocks, and pass a blow-hole in the [168] rocks, where the rising surge makes a fountain of fine spray through a hole in the rocks, very like a whale’s blast. It is blowing intermittently, dimly seen in the moonlight. As we pass the outstanding rocky island opposite it we catch a faint land breeze and step our mast and set the mainsail and slip along in absolute silence. ”

“ Where we are to-night there is little life, only a few petrels chuckling quietly at our stern, where there is always some blubber hanging over for their benefit.
There is not a ripple on the sea, not the slightest perceptible motion. I think the stillness and silence of the Arctic is a thing seldom noticed; the hundreds of miles of drifting floes which surround us break all swell. Everyone sleeps to-night after the exertions of yesterday. If there is a watch on deck I do not hear him; in my cabin the only sound is the snoring of our starboard bear. ”

“ About three hundred and sixty fathoms ran out before we saw further sign; running over the two ringing barrels of our strong steam winch, five times round each barrel with the brake such as you see on a railway engine wheel hard down and burning; then foam appeared a quarter of a mile in front, and our whale’s flippers, then the mighty flukes of its enormous tail, slowly threshing the sea into white. To right and left it travelled, towing us ahead whilst our engine reversed at eight knots but not for long. ”

“ The crow’s nest and mast, shining in the sun, go swinging to and fro across the sky—now she puts her nose down into the blue, pleasantly, and rises and our old level horizon of the ice days is away below us as our bows point to the skies—right and left we roll and we swing her south-east, for habitable land, for Trömso and Trondhjem and green trees growing and new fresh food; for even a few months in the ice with food getting rather stale makes us hanker a little after a new kitchen. ”

“ Though our ice-scape is very remote and far afield, and subdued in sound and in colour, there is a great deal going on. At the floe-edge there are reddish shrimps in the clear cold water, and if you take some of the water in a glass, you will see still more minute crustaceans, a joy of delicate coloured armour under the microscope. And there is inorganic life amongst the ice; a blue block has just come sweeping past very slowly—it is like blue and white muslin. But big life, bar our three selves on deck this morning, there seems to be none. ”

“ A fisherman is not to be pitied coming home with seventy tons to port and sixty to starboard, enjoying the sense of comfort and well-being that comes after the first hardening days at sea, enjoying the pure air and the scent of roasting coffee. We do ourselves well on our Norwegian boats this year; at least the coffee is good. As we imbibe it and think our sport is over, we come into warmer weather, a froth of soft white and grey clouds reflected in the swell, two whalers on the horizon and finners in sight. ”

“ Whales seem to be such good beasts, and have such kind brown eyes—nothing of the fish in them, and their colouring is that of all the sea; their backs are grey-black to dove-colour, reflecting the blue of the sky, and the white of their underside is like the white of a kid glove with the faintest pink beneath, so white it makes the sea-foam look grey as it washes across it to and fro, and the white changes to emerald-green in the depths to the blue-green of an iceberg’s foot. ”

“ All day we travelled north and as westerly as possible, trying to get within sight of Greenland, and for once the sun came out and we felt as if we could paint on deck, and did so for a little—dead smooth sea, with fine icicles forming and very level fields of ice, with few hummocks, extending to the pigeon-grey ribbed sky on horizon—rather monotonous. The guitar was going somewhere on board and most of us cooling our heels in the silence. Only the captive bears seem busy—grate, grate, grating at their wooden walls; one got nearly out last night, when we were off after the narwhal. ”

“ We broke a bottle of champagne at this point of our proceedings—and we all agreed it tasted rather better in the snow than down South, and we shot at the empty bottle, and practised lasso-throwing, getting our eye in against a rencontre with seal or bear. Our little white ship that seemed so insignificant down in Trömso now seems to rather dominate the ice and seascape—twenty people inside the little vessel, engines, harpoons, rifles, coals, heat and food, quite a concentrated little cosmos of life and human contrivances—our all, in this wide, empty Arctic world. ”

“ We are now (five A.M.) going N.E.—a lovely smooth sea—nothing more idyllic we think than at five in the morning to be steadily pegging away over the silky swell seventy miles north of the Shetlands into the sunrise on a warm morning, watching the circle of horizon for a blow. One man is in the crow’s nest on our short foremast, another at the wheel, and you lie your length on the bridge, on the long chest used for the side lights, which of course are never used here, with glass in hand, watching. The gun is ready in the bow, and the harpoon and line are all in order. ”

“ It is the romantic, beautiful time at sea, formality goes, we talk a little of home and families we have, or may have, and the night, as it were, just droops her golden eyes, and in a very little while raises them on another day, blue and fresh as ever, and we begin another day’s hunting, to get, if we can, one more whale to tow to our harbour in the south, there to provide work and pay for Shetlanders and Norwegians, food for Danes and ourselves, and fertilisers for farmers’ crops and cattle, each of which subjects could not be treated of in less than a page of these notes for itself. ”