he would pretend to hold communication with it, and the creature looked as though it understood every word he said. During the winter, Claude used to be at a distant school. Then his bird stayed at the Towers; but, although it suffered itself to be fed and petted by Lady Alwyn and by Janet, it did little else but mope until spring returned, and with it Claude.
The library at Dunallan Towers was a very large one, and Claude had the choosing of his own summer reading after forenoon lessons were over, and the books he took with him afield were always those of adventure, or some of the poets. It was often remarked that he never invited any of his tutors to accompany him in his rambles – only the bird.
“Mother,” said Claude one evening, “I’m going to be a sailor.”
“Dear boy,” replied his mother, “what has put such a notion in your head?”
“My bird, perhaps, mother,” said the boy, smiling.
“No, Claude, but those books you pore over. Dear boy, hardly half of what you read bears any resemblance to the truth.”
“Oh, mother,” cried the boy, “if only one half is true I must go and see that half I’m a good sailor already; you know how I enjoyed that voyage down the Mediterranean. I dream of all I saw even till this day. Mother, I must go to sea.
“Mother,” he said again, after a long pause, during which Lady Alwyn was musing, and very sad and gloomy were her thoughts – “mother, do you know where my bird came from?”
“It came from the wild mysterious region around the Pole.”
“Yes, I have been reading about that too, reading about it until I seem to have spent years and years of my life in the country. I have but to shut my eyes, any time I wish, and such pictures rise up before me as few but sailors ever see the reality of.”
Young Claude placed one hand across his eyes as he spoke.
“Here it is again, mother, a vast and lonely trackless waste of snow; great glaciers, against whose sides mountain waves for ever dash and foam; icebergs whose pinnacled heads taper upwards into a sky of cloudless blue. Fields of ice on which white bears roam; dark, inky seas where the walrus plays and tumbles, and through which the solitude-loving narwhal pursues his finny prey; and crystalline caves where sea-bears roar. But the scene is changed: it is night – the long, long, Polar night. Oh, how bright and beautiful the Aurora, with its ever-changing tints of crimson, green, and blue; and the stars, how near they seem; and the silence, how deep, how awful! But see, a storm is coming across the pack, and clouds are banking up and hiding the glorious Aurora; now it is on us, and higher than the stars rise the clouds of whirling, drifting snow. Hark! how the wind howls! There is danger on its wings; there is – ”
“Stop, boy, stop?” cried Lady Alwyn, laying her hand on his arm. “Speak not thus; you frighten me.”
There were tears in her eyes. Claude made haste to soothe her.
“Dear mother, forgive me!” he cried. “I am so thoughtless; but I will not transgress so again. Forgive and forget it.”
“You are all I have on earth to care for,” she said, drawing him gently towards her; “but, Claude, your happiness has always been, and ever will be, my first, my chief care. Yes, I will forgive your heedless words. You did not mean to hurt me; but, Claude,” – here she smiled, but it was a very sad smile – “I will not quite forget them. You love the sea.”
Lady Alwyn retired early to her room that evening, but it was long past midnight ere she slept. Her last thoughts ere slumber sealed her eyelids were these —
“And so my boy, even my boy, will be taken away from me. He will be a sailor; it is his bent, and why should I do aught that would mar his happiness? Heaven give me strength to bear my every trial here below, nor forget that on earth I have ‘no continuing city.’”
Lady Alwyn was rich, though not surpassingly so. She could afford her boy a yacht, in which he made many a cruise as owner – not as master – round the British islands and as far north as the Shetlands; indeed more than once they ventured over to Norway.
And so Claude grew up a sailor, so to speak. The smaller yacht gave place to a larger, and still a larger; and in a few years, when young Lord Alwyn had reached his twentieth year, he commanded, as well as owned, his ship himself.
About this time an event occurred that in a great measure altered the old tenor of Claude’s life, and that of his mother too, and on this event our story hinges.
In none of his cruises did his snow-bird accompany its master. Lady Alwyn was glad of this. “So long,” she thought, “as the bird stays with me, my boy will return safely from sea.”
It will be seen that even Lady Alwyn was slightly superstitious.
And Claude’s cruises were ever northwards. He had been several times to Iceland itself, and one day he meant to make a far longer and much more adventurous voyage. In the words of the old Norse song, it appeared as though —
“Nought around howe’er so bright
Could win his stay or stop his flight
From where he saw the Pole-star’s light
Shine o’er the north.”
Chapter Three
Among Iceland Wilds
It was early morning. So early, indeed, that although it was sweet summer-time – and summer can he as sweet in Iceland as in any other part of the world – the birds had hardly yet uttered a note. Only the robin shook the dew from his wings (the American, not the English robin), and uttered a peevish twitter; and far away up among those wild hills, with their strange jagged peaks, you might have heard an occasional plaintive whistle or scream, the cry of the golden plover. Yet, early though it was, though the stars had not yet all fled from the west, sea-fowl were gracefully circling round – the gull, the tern, and the thievish skua. There was no wind, not a breath, but the dew lay heavy on the moss, on the green heather and stunted shrubs, and draggled the snow-white plumes of the lovely cotton grass. The wild flowers had not yet opened their beautiful petals when poor Claude Alwyn opened his eyes. Languidly, yet painfully, he raised himself on his elbow, and gazed dreamily around him. Where was he? How had he come here? These were questions that he asked himself. What is that on a stone yonder? A snow-bird gazing at him with one beautiful eye, and seeming to pity him. A snow-bird? His snow-bird?
“Alba! Alba!” he calls it; but the bird flies away. He was not at home, then, in bonnie Scotland, by the green banks of the Nith, as he had almost thought he was.
No, no; for look, yonder is his horse at the foot of the cliff – dead.
Dead? Surely not dead. He tries to crawl towards it. The movement gives him intense agony. He himself is wounded. And now he remembers all. How he left his yacht at Reykjavik a week ago; how he had been travelling ever since in search of incident and adventure, making sketches, gathering wild flowers, and enjoying the scenery of this strange, weird island; and how he was belated the evening before, and fell headlong over a cliff. That was all, but a dreadful all. He closes his eyes again and tries to think. Must he lie here and die? He shudders with cold and dread, starts up, and, despite the pain, staggers to his feet. He slowly passes the poor horse. Yes, there is death in that glazed eye, death in the drooping neck and stiffened limbs.
It takes Claude nearly an hour to drag himself to a neighbouring knoll, for one limb is smashed, and he has lost blood. He throws
