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    Fast in the Ice; Or, Adventures in the Polar Regions
    Fast in the Ice; Or, Adventures in the Polar Regions
    Fast in the Ice; Or, Adventures in the Polar Regions
    Ebook101 pages1 hour

    Fast in the Ice; Or, Adventures in the Polar Regions

    By Robert Michael Ballantyne

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    About this ebook

    Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherJepson Press
    Release dateSep 19, 2017
    ISBN9781528780049
    Fast in the Ice; Or, Adventures in the Polar Regions
    Author

    Robert Michael Ballantyne

    Robert Michael Ballantyne was a Scottish author of juvenile fiction, who wrote more than a hundred books. He was also an accomplished artist: he exhibited some of his water-colours at the Royal Scottish Academy.

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      Book preview

      Fast in the Ice; Or, Adventures in the Polar Regions - Robert Michael Ballantyne

      Fast in the Face

      Or,

      Adventures in the

      Polar Regions

      by

      R. M. Ballantyne

      Copyright © 2017 Read Books Ltd.

      This book is copyright and may not be

      reproduced or copied in any way without

      the express permission of the publisher in writing

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available from

      the British Library

      Contents

      Biography of R. M. Ballantyne

      Chapter One.

      Chapter Two.

      Chapter Three.

      Chapter Four.

      Chapter Five.

      Chapter Six.

      Chapter Seven.

      Chapter Eight.

      Chapter Nine.

      Chapter Ten.

      Chapter Eleven.

      Biography of R. M. Ballantyne

      R.M. Ballantyne (born Robert Michael Ballantyne) was a Scottish author of popular children’s fiction and wrote more than 100 books. He was also a popular artist with his water-colours exhibited at the Royal Scottish academy.

      Ballantyne was born on 24 April 1825 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and was the ninth of ten children. His father, Alexander Thomson Ballantyne, was a newspaper editor and printer for family firm, Ballantyne and Co. His uncle, James Ballantyne, was also very literary and worked as the printer for Sir Walter Scott, the Scottish playwright, novelist and poet. In 1825 a banking crisis led to the collapse of the Ballantyne printing business with debts of approximately £130,000, leading to the decline of the family fortune.

      At age sixteen, Ballantyne left the family home and migrated to Canada where he spent five years working for Hudson’s Bay Company. He traded with the Native Americans for furs and frequently sleighed or canoed to the territories that are now known as Manitoba, Ontario and Quebec. These journeys influenced his later novel Snowflakes and Sunbeams (1856). During this time he missed home and frequently wrote to his mother. He later stated that this letter writing helped developed his literary skills.

      In 1847, Ballantyne returned home to discover that his father had died. He published his first book, Hudson’s Bay: or, Life in the Wilds of North America, in 1848. During this time he was employed by the publishing company, Messrs Constable, but gave this up in 1856 to focus on his own literary career. During his lifetime he wrote over a hundred books in regular and rapid succession. His titles include: The Young Fur Traders (1856), The Dog Crusoe (1860), Fighting the Whales (1866), The Pirate City (1874) and The Settler and the Savage (1877). His writing drew on his personal knowledge of all the scenes he described and his heroes were moral and resilient. His most popular novel was The Coral Island (1857). However, in this novel he made one small mistake when he incorrectly described the thickness of coconut shells. This small mistake led Ballantyne to gain first-hand knowledge of all the subject matters he wrote about from then onwards. He spent time living with lighthouse keepers at Bell Rock whilst writing The Lighthouse (1865) and spent time in Cornwall with tin miners when he was writing Deep Down (1868).

      During this period of his life, Ballantyne met Jane Grant, whom he married in 1866. Together they had three sons and three daughters. Ballantyne spent much of his later years living in Harrow, England. He later moved to Italy for the sake of his health. He was possibly suffering from undiagnosed Mélière’s disease, which affects the inner ear which and can result in feelings of vertigo, tinnitus, hearing loss and a fullness in the ear. He died in Rome on 8 February 1894.

      Ballantyne is a remembered and cherished author. A Greater London Council plaque commemorates him at Duneaves on Mount Park Road in Harrow, England. Ballantyne was also a favourite of the author Robert Louis Stevenson, who was so impressed by The Coral Island that he based portions of his own adventure novel, Treasure Island (1881), on Ballantyne’s themes. Stevenson honoured Ballantyne in the introduction to Treasure Island with the poem To the Hesitating Purchaser.

      C

      hapter One.

      One day, many years ago, a brig cast off from her moorings, and sailed from a British port for the Polar Seas. That brig never came back.

      Many a hearty cheer was given, many a kind wish was uttered, many a handkerchief was waved, and many a tearful eye gazed that day as the vessel left Old England, and steered her course into the unknown regions of the far north.

      But no cheer ever greeted her return; no bright eyes ever watched her homeward-bound sails rising on the far-off horizon.

      Battered by the storms of the Arctic seas, her sails and cordage stiffened by the frosts, and her hull rasped and shattered by the ice of those regions, she was forced on a shore where the green grass has little chance to grow, where winter reigns nearly all the year round, where man never sends his merchandise, and never drives his plough. There the brig was frozen in; there, for two long years, she lay unable to move, and her starving crew forsook her; there, year after year, she lay, unknown, unvisited by civilised man, and unless the wild Eskimos (see note 1) have torn her to pieces, and made spears of her timbers, or the ice has swept her out to sea and whirled her to destruction, there she lies still—hard and fast in the ice.

      The vessel was lost, but her crew were saved, and most of them returned to tell their kinsfolk of the wonders and the dangers of the frozen regions, where God has created some of the most beautiful and some of the most awful objects that were ever looked on by the eye of man.

      What was told by the fireside, long ago, is now recounted in this book.

      Imagine a tall, strong man, of about five-and-forty, with short, curly black hair, just beginning to turn grey; stern black eyes, that look as if they could pierce into your secret thoughts; a firm mouth, with lines of good-will and kindness lurking about it; a deeply-browned skin, and a short, thick beard and moustache. That is a portrait of the commander of the brig. His name was Harvey. He stood on the deck, close by the wheel, looking wistfully over the stern. As the vessel bent before the breeze, and cut swiftly through the water, a female hand was raised among the gazers on the pier, and a white scarf waved in the breeze. In the forefront of the throng, and lower down, another hand was raised; it was a little one, but very vigorous; it whirled a cap round a small head of curly black hair, and a shrill hurrah! came floating out to sea.

      The captain kissed his hand and waved his hat in reply; then, wheeling suddenly round, he shouted, in a voice of thunder:

      Mind your helm, there; let her away a point. Take a pull on these foretopsail halyards; look alive, lads!

      Aye, aye, sir! replied the men.

      There was no occasion whatever for these orders. The captain knew that well enough, but he had his own reasons for giving them. The men knew that, too, and they understood his reasons when they observed the increased sternness of his eyes, and the compression of his lips.

      Inclination and duty! What wars go on in the hearts of men—high and low, rich and poor—between these two. What varied fortune follows man, according as the one or the other carries the day.

      Please, sir, said a gruff, broad-shouldered, and extremely short man, with little or no forehead, a hard, vacant face, and a pair of enormous red whispers; please, sir, Sam Baker’s took very bad; I think it would be as well if you could give him a little physic, sir; a tumbler of Epsom, or some-think of that sort.

      Why, Mr Dicey, there can’t be anything very far wrong with Baker, said the captain, looking down at his second mate; he seems to me one of the healthiest men in the ship. What’s the matter with him?

      Well, I can’t say, sir, replied Mr Dicey, "but he looks ’orrible bad, all yellow and green about the gills, and fearful red round the eyes. But what frightens me most is that I heard him groanin’ very heavy about a quarter of an hour ago, and then I saw him suddenly fling himself into his ’ammock and begin blubberin’ like a child. Now, sir, I say, when a grow’d-up man gives way like that, there must be some-think far wrong with his

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