Wild Adventures round the Pole Or, The Cruise of the "Snowbird" Crew in the "Arrandoon"

Four long months have passed away since poor old Magnus dropped dead on the grave of his son. The sun has once more appeared above the horizon, bringing joy to the hearts of the...

Ere the day had worn to a close, before the sun went down in a golden haze, leaving one long line of crimson cloud, as earnest of a bright to-morrow, the _Arrandoon_, steaming t...

The ships still lay hard and fast in the ice-pack, many miles to the nor'ard and eastward of the Isle of Jan Mayen. There was as yet no sign of the frost giving way. Day after d...

The summer was far advanced before Captain McBain and his crew returned to where their vessel lay off the island of Alba. They had fully expected to see some signs of the ice br...

What a tiny speck it looks in the map, that island of Jan Mayen, all by itself, right in the centre of the great Arctic Ocean. Of volcanic origin it undoubtedly is--every mounta...

Both Captain McBain and Silas Grig felt more easy in their minds when they had got fairly rid of the green-rooted monsters of icebergs that had lain so placidly yet so threateni...

The word "canny" is often applied to Scotchmen in a somewhat disparaging sense by those who do not know the meaning of the word, nor the true character of the people on whom the...

There was only one subject in the whole world that Silas Grig was thoroughly conversant with, and that was the manners and customs of his friends the seals. Had you started talk...

A whole week has elapsed since the events transpired which I have related in last chapter,--a week most interestingly if not always quite pleasantly spent. The _Arrandoon_ is ly...

As the owner of a large house, the head of a county family, and a landed proprietor, there were many duties devolved upon Ralph Leigh when at home, from which he never for a mom...

A cottage on a cliff. A cliff whose black, beetling sides rose sheer up out of the water three hundred feet and over; a cliff around which sea-birds whirled in dizzy flight; a c...

Wilder scenery there is in abundance in Scotland, but hardly will you find any more picturesquely beautiful than that in which the two great rivers, the Clyde and the Tweed, fir...

I never have been able to learn with a sufficient degree of exactitude whether it was the _Polar Star_ that first sighted the _Arrandoon_, or whether the _Arrandoon_ was the fir...

Has it not been said that the greatest pleasure on earth is felt on the sudden surcease of severe pain? I am inclined, though, to doubt the truth of this statement, and I think...

It was about midnight on the 24th of April when the seals were sighted. Midnight, and the sun was low down on the horizon, but, for three long months, never more would it set or...

"Ah! but," I think I hear you complain, "the May-days are not now what they were in the good old times; not the May-days we read of in books; not the May-days of merrie England....

While those two chiefs of the Eskimo Indians were hurrying their team of dogs across the sea of ice eastwards, ever eastwards, with the clouds rising behind them, with the wind...

"That puts quite another complexion on the matter," said Dr Sandy McFlail, with a sigh of relief, when Rory explained to him that he had spied the pirate, "quite another complex...

A black man in a barrel of treacle is said by some to be emblematical of happiness. So situated, a black man without doubt enjoys a deal of bliss, but I question very much if it...

The _Arrandoon_ was steaming slowly along the pack edge, wind still westerly, the _Canny Scotia_, with all canvas exposed, a mile or more to leeward of her. Both were heading in...

Mrs Morrison had done her best to put something nice before them, and not without success either--so thought Ralph, and so, too, thought his guest. At all events, both of them d...

"La la lay lee-ah, lay la le lo-O" So went the song on deck--a song without words, short, and interrupted at every bar, as the men hauled cheerily on tack and sheet.

Nothing in the shape of adventure came amiss to Rory. He was always ready for any kind of "fun," as he called every kind of excitement. Such a thing as fear I do not believe Ror...

In two days the ships sighted the island of Jan Mayen. As they neared it, they found the ice so closely packed around the shore that all approach even by boats was out of the qu...

On the very day that McBain shot the great she-bear--for it was one of the largest that ever fell before a sportsman's gun--on that day, and on the afternoon of that day, just a...

Has the reader ever been to sea? The first feeling that a landsman objects to at sea is that of the heaving motion of the ship; to your true sailor the cessation of that motion,...

There is one member of the mess whom I have not yet introduced, but a very worthy member he is, our youthful doctor. Poor fellow! never before had he been to sea, and so he suff...

Seeing the skipper of the _Canny Scotia_ and his mate come below together smiling, the steward readily guessed what they wanted, so he was not dilatory in producing the rum-bott...

See yonder Swiss village by the foot of the mountain, how peacefully it is sleeping in the moonlight; not a sound is to be heard save the occasional crowing of a wakeful cock, o...

If the crew of the _Arrandoon_ needed any stimulus to fight the pirate, beyond the short speech that their captain had made them, it certainly was given them when the order was...

It would be difficult to say which was most to be pitied, McBain on board the _Arrandoon_, passing long hours of inconceivable anxiety, or our other heroes, left to spend the dr...

Magnus was seated at the table in the captain's own room, with an old yellow, much-worn chart spread out before him, the only other person in the cabin, save these two, being Ro...

So willingly and merrily worked all hands on the ice, that in less than three days the _Canny Scotia_ was almost a full, though by no means a bumper ship, and poor Silas began t...

The _Arrandoon_ steamed away, and soon was hidden from view behind a lofty iceberg, and all that Silas Grig, as he stood on his own quarter-deck, could now hear, was the sad and...

Many of my readers have met with the heroes of this tale before [in the "Cruise of the Snowbird," by the same Author and Publishers], but doubtless some have not; and as it is a...