Wild Adventures round the Pole. Stables Gordon
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part of his lifetime.
Ralph Leigh was the son of a once wealthy baronet, and had just finished his education.
Rory Elphinston was an orphan, who owned estates in the west of Ireland, from which property, however, he seldom realised the rents. Like Ralph, Rory was fond of adventure, and ready and willing to do anything honest and worthy to earn that needful dross called gold; and when, one evening, McBain hinted at the wealth that lay ungathered in the inhospitable lands around the Pole, and of the many wild adventures to be met with in those regions, the relation fired the youthful blood of the trio. The boys clubbed together, as most boys might, and bought a small yacht. Small as she was, however, in her, under the able tuition of McBain, they were taught seamanship and discipline, and they became enamoured of the sea and longed to possess a larger ship, in which they might go in quest of adventures in far-off foreign lands.
Now Ralph’s father, poor though he was, was very fond – and perhaps even a little proud – of his son; he would, therefore, not refuse him anything in reason he could afford. He rejoiced to see him happy. The good yacht Snowbird was therefore bought, and in it our brave boys sailed away to the far north. The narrative of their adventures by sea and land is duly recorded in “The Cruise of the Snowbird.” You may seek for them there if you wish to read of them; if not, there is little harm done.
The Snowbird returned at last, if not really rich, yet with what sailors call an excellent general cargo, quite sufficient for each of them to realise a tolerably large sum of money from. Every shilling of his share Allan had expended in improving the glen, with its cottages and sheep farms, and the dear old castle itself. But, meanwhile, Ralph had fallen into a large fortune, and found himself possessed of rich estates, and a splendid old mansion in – shire, England. He might have married now, and settled quietly down for life as a country squire, enjoying to the full all the pleasures and luxuries that health combined with wealth are capable of bringing to their possessors. Ah! but then the spirit of the rover had entered into him; he had learned to love adventure for the sake of itself, and to love a life on the ocean wave.
Loving a life on the ocean wave, he might, had he so chosen, have had a very pleasant cruise with his friends, had he gone with them in their run round Africa, alluded to in the last chapter of this tale; but, as would be gleaned from the conversation recorded therein, he did not so choose. He and McBain had their little secret, which they kept well. They were determined to turn explorers, so Ralph built a ship, built a noble ship – built it without acquainting any one what service it was intended for, and even his dear friends Ralph and Rory were to know nothing about her until they, returned from their cruise in the tropics. Ralph meant it all as a kindly and a glad surprise to them, for well did he know how their hearts would bound with joy at the very thoughts of sailing once more in quest of adventures. Nor, as the sequel will show, was he in one whit disappointed.
In character, disposition, and appearance my four principal heroes may be thus summed up – I have already told you about Allan’s: —
McBain – Captain McBain – was a hardy, fear-nothing, daring man, his mind imbued with a sense of duty and with piety, both of which he had learned at the maternal knee.
Ralph was a young Englishman in every sense of the word – tall, broad, shapely, somewhat slow in action, with difficulty aroused, but a very lion when he did march out of his den intent on a purpose.
Somewhat more youthful was Rory, smaller as to person, poetic as to temperament, fond of the beautiful, an artist and a musician. And if you were to ask me, “Was he, too, brave?” I should answer, “Are not poets and Irishmen always brave? Does not Sir Walter Scott tell us that they laugh in their ranks as they go forward to battle – that they —
“Move to death with military glee?”
Sir Walter, I may also remind those who live in the land o’ cakes, says in the same poem:
“But ne’er in battlefield throbbed heart more brave
Than that which beats beneath the Scottish plaid.”
So now we are back again at the place where we left off in the last chapter, with the yacht being towed slowly past good Ralph’s ship on the stocks, and lusty cheers being exchanged from one vessel to the other.
Rory and Allan exchanged glances. The faces of each were at that moment a study for a physiognomist, but the uppermost feeling visible in either was one of astonishment – not blank astonishment, mind you, for there was something in the eyes of each, and in the smile that flickered round their lips, that would have told you in a moment that Ralph’s nicely-kept secret was a secret no more. Rory, as usual with natives of green Erin, was the first to break the silence.
“Depend upon it,” he said, nodding his head mirthfully, “it is all some mighty fine joke of Ralph’s, and he means giving us a pleasant surprise.”
“The same thought struck me,” replied Allan, “as soon as I clapped eyes on the word ‘Arrandoon.’”
“Oh?” chimed in Helen Edith, with her sweet, musical voice; “that is the reason your friend would not come with us on our delightful voyage.”
“That was the reason,” said Allan, emphatically, “because he was building a ship of his own, the sly dog.”
“But wherever do you think he means cruising to at all, at all?” added Rory, with puzzled face.
“That’s what I should like to know,” said Allan.
And this thought occupied their minds all the way up to Glasgow; but once there, and the ladies seen safely to their hotels, Rory and Allan sped off without delay to visit this big, mysterious yacht; and they had not been half an hour on board ere, as Rory expressed it, in language more forcible than elegant.
“The secret was out entirely, the cat flew out of the bag, and every drop of milk got out of the cocoa-nut.”
Poor Ralph was delighted at the return of his friends from their long cruise; and now that he had their company he had no longer any wish or desire to remain in the vicinity of the Arrandoon; so giving up his pretty Highland cottage, bidding a kindly adieu to the widow, kissing wee weeping Jeannie, and promising to be sure to return some day, the trio hurried them southwards, to spend most of their time at Ralph’s pleasant home, until the ship should be ready to launch.
Leigh Hall was a lordly mansion, possessing no very great pretensions to architectural splendour, but beautifully situated among its woods and parks on a high braeland that overlooked one of England’s fairest lakes. For miles you approached the house from behind by a road which, with many a devious turning, wound through a rich but rolling country. Past many a rural hamlet; past many a picturesque cottage, their gables and fronts charmingly painted and tinted by the hands of the magic artist Time; past stately farms, where sleek cattle seemed to low kindly welcome to our heroes as their carriage came rolling onwards, with here a wood and there a field, and yonder a great stretch of common where cows waded shoulder deep in ferns and furze, daintily cropping the green and tender tops of the trailing bramble; and here a broad, rushy moor, on which flocks of snowy geese wandered.
Alluding to the latter, says Rory, “Don’t these geese come out prettily against the patches of green grass, and how soft and easy it must be for the feet of them!”
“They’re preparing for Christmas,” said Ralph. Poet Rory gave him a look – one of Rory’s looks. “There’s never a bit of poetry nor romance in the soul of you,” he said.
“Except the romance and poetry of a well-spread table,” said Allan, laughing.
“And, ’deed, indeed,” replied Rory, “there is little to choose betwixt the pair of you; so what can I do but be sorry for you both?”
It was on a beautiful autumn afternoon that the three young men were now approaching the manor of Leigh. The trees that had been once of a tender green, whose leaves in the gentle breath of spring had rustled with a kind of silken frou-frou, were green now only when the sun shone upon them; all the rest was black by contrast. Feathery seedlings floated here and there on the breeze that blew from the north. This breeze went rushing through the woods with a sound