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                          THE FROZEN PIRATE.

                         BY W. CLARK RUSSELL

AUTHOR OF "THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR," "THE LADY MAUD," "A SAILOR'S
SWEETHEART," ETC., ETC.

PH[OE]NIX PUBLISHING CO.,
NEW YORK.




CONTENTS.


       I. The Storm

      II. The Iceberg

     III. I Lose My Companions

      IV. I Quit the Wreck

       V. I Sight a White Coast

      VI. An Island of Ice

     VII. I am Startled by a Discovery

    VIII. The Frozen Schooner

      IX. I Lose my Boat

       X. Another Startling Discovery

      XI. I Make Further Discoveries

     XII. A Lonely Night

    XIII. I Explore the Hold and Forecastle

     XIV. An Extraordinary Occurrence

      XV. The Pirate's Story

     XVI. I Hear of a Great Treasure

    XVII. The Treasure

   XVIII. We Talk over our Situation

     XIX. We Take a View of the Ice

      XX. A Merry Evening

     XXI. We Explore the Mines

    XXII. A Change Comes Over the Frenchman

   XXIII. The Ice Breaks Away

    XXIV. The Frenchman Dies

     XXV. The Schooner Frees Herself

    XXVI. I am Troubled by Thoughts of the Treasure

   XXVII. I Encounter a Whaler

  XXVIII. I Strike a Bargain with the Yankee

    XXIX. I Value the Lading

     XXX. Our Progress to the Channel

    XXXI. The End

          Postscript




THE FROZEN PIRATE.




CHAPTER I.

THE STORM.


The _Laughing Mary_ was a light ship, as sailors term a vessel that
stands high upon the water, having discharged her cargo at Callao, from
which port we were proceeding in ballast to Cape Town, South Africa,
there to call for orders. Our run to within a few parallels of the
latitude of the Horn had been extremely pleasant; the proverbial
mildness of the Pacific Ocean was in the mellow sweetness of the wind
and in the gentle undulations of the silver-laced swell; but scarce had
we passed the height of forty-nine degrees when the weather grew sullen
and dark, a heavy bank of clouds of a livid hue rose in the north-east,
and the wind came and went in small guns, the gusts venting themselves
in dreary moans, insomuch that our oldest hands confessed they had never
heard blasts more portentous.

The gale came on with some lightning and several claps of thunder and
heavy rain. Though it was but two o'clock in the afternoon, the air was
so dusky that the men had to feel for the ropes; and when the first of
the tempest stormed down upon us the appearance of the sea was
uncommonly terrible, being swept and mangled into boiling froth in the
north-east quarter, whilst all about us and in the south-west it lay in
a sort of swollen huddle of shadows, glooming into the darkness of the
sky without offering the smallest glimpse of the horizon.

In a few minutes the hurricane struck us. We had bared the brig down to
the close-reefed main-topsail; yet, though we were dead before the
outfly, its first blow rent the fragment of sail as if it were formed of
smoke, and in an instant it disappeared, flashing over the bows like a
scattering of torn paper, leaving nothing but the bolt-ropes behind. The
bursting of the topsail was like the explosion of a large cannon. In a
breath the brig was smothered with froth torn up in huge clouds, and
hurled over and ahead of her in vast quivering bodies that filled the
wind with a dismal twilight of their own, in which nothing was visible
but their terrific speeding. Through these slinging, soft, and singing
masses of spume drove the rain in horizontal steel-like lines, which
gleamed in the lightning stroke as though indeed they were barbed
weapons of bright metal, darted by armies of invisible spirits raving
out their war cries as they chased us.

The storm made a loud thunder in the sky, and this tremendous utterance
dominated without subduing the many screaming, hissing, shrieking, and
hooting noises raised in the rigging and about the decks, and the wild,
seething, weltering sound of the sea, maddened by the gale and
struggling in its enormous passion under the first choking and iron grip
of the hurricane's hand.

I had used the ocean for above ten years, but never had I encountered
anything suddener or fiercer in the form of weather than this. Though
the wind blew from the tropics it was as cruel in bitterness as frost.
Yet there was neither snow nor hail, only rain that seemed to pass like
a knife through the head if you showed your face to it for a second. It
was necessary to bring the brig to the wind before the sea rose. The
helm was put down, and without a rag of canvas on her she came round;
but when she brought the hurricane fair abeam, I thought it was all over
with us. She lay down to it until her bulwarks were under water, and the
sheer-poles in the rigging above the rail hidden.

In this posture she hung so long that Captain Rosy, the master, bawled
to me to tell the carpenter to stand by to cut away the topmast rigging.
But the _Laughing Mary_, as the brig was called, was a buoyant ship and
lightly sparred, and presently bringing the sea on the bow, through our
seizing a small tarpaulin in the weather main shrouds, she erected her
masts afresh, like some sentient creature pricking its ears for the
affray, and with that showed herself game and made indifferently good
weather of it.

But though the first rage of the storm was terrible enough, its
fierceness did not come to its height till about one o'clock in the
middle watch. Long before then the sea had grown mountainous, and the
dance of our eggshell of a brig upon it was sickening and affrighting.
The heads of the Andean peaks of black water looked tall enough to
brush the lowering soot of the heavens with the blue and yellow
phosphoric fires which sparkled ghastly amid the bursting froth. Bodies
of foam flew like the flashings of pale sheet-lightning through our
rigging and over us, and a dreadful roaring of mighty surges in mad
career, and battling as they ran, rose out of the sea to deepen yet the
thunderous bellowing of the hurricane on high.

No man could show himself on deck and preserve his life. Between the
rails it was waist high, and this water, converted by the motions of the
brig into a wild torrent, had its volume perpetually maintained by
ton-loads of sea falling in dull and pounding crashes over the bows on
to the forecastle. There was nothing to be done but secure the helm and
await the issue below, for, if we were to be drowned, it would make a
more easy foundering to go down dry and warm in the cabin, than to
perish half-frozen and already nearly strangled by the bitter cold and
flooded tempest on deck.

There was Captain Rosy; there was myself, by name Paul Rodney, mate of
the brig; and there were the remaining seven of a crew, including the
carpenter. We sat in the cabin, one of us from time to time clawing his
way up the ladder to peer through the companion, and we looked at one
another with the melancholy of malefactors waiting to be called from
their cells for the last jaunt to Tyburn.

"May God have mercy upon us!" cries the carpenter. "There must be an
earthquake inside this storm. Something more than wind is going to the
making of these seas. Hear that, now! naught less than a forty-foot
chuck-up could ha' ended in that souse, mates."

"A man can die but once," says Captain Rosy, "and he'll not perish the
quicker for looking at his end with a stout heart;" and with that he put
his hand into the locker on which he had been sitting and pulled out a
jar of whisky, which, after putting his lips to it and keeping them
glued there whilst you could have counted twenty, he handed to me, and
so it went round, coming back to him empty.

I often have the sight of that cabin in my mind's eye; and it was not
long afterwards that it would visit me as such a vision of comfort, I
would with a grateful heart have accepted it with tenfold darker
conditions of danger, had it been possible to exchange my situation for
it. A lantern hung from a beam, and swung violently to the rolling and
pitching of the brig. The alternations of its light put twenty different
meanings, one after another, into the settled dismal and rueful
expressions in the faces of my companions. We were clad in warm clothes,
and the steam rose from the damp in our coats and trousers like vapour
from wet straw. The drink mottled some of our faces, but the spirituous
tincture only imparted a quality of irony to the melancholy of our
visages, as if our mournfulness were not wholly sincere, when, God
knows, our hearts were taken up with counting the minutes when we should
find ourselves bursting for want of breath under water.

Thus it continued till daybreak, all which time we strove to encourage
one another as best we could, sometimes with words, sometimes with
putting the bottle about. It was impossible for any of us at any moment
to show more than our noses above the companion; and even at that you
needed the utmost caution, for the decks being full of water, it was
necessary to await the lurch of the vessel before moving the slide or
cover to the companion, else you stood to drown the cabin.

Being exceedingly anxious, for the brig lay unwatched, I looked forth on
one occasion longer than the others chose to venture, and beheld the
most extravagant scene of raging commotion it could enter the brain of
man to imagine. The night was as black as the bottom of a well; but the
prodigious swelling and flinging of white waters hove a faintness upon
the air that was in its way a dim light, by which it was just possible
to distinguish the reeling masts to the height of the tops, and to
observe the figure of the brig springing black and trembling out of the
head of a surge that had broken over and smothered her as in a cauldron,
and to note the shapes of the nearer liquid acclivities as they bore
down upon our weather bow, catching the brig fair under the bluff, and
so sloping her that she seemed to stand end on, and so heeling her that
the sea would wash to the height of the main hatch. Indeed, had she been
loaded, and therefore deep, she could not have lived an hour in that
hollow and frightful ocean; but having nothing in her but ballast she
was like a bladder, and swung up the surges and blew away to leeward
like an empty cask.

When the dawn broke something of its midnight fury went out of the gale.
The carpenter made shift to sound the well, and to our great
satisfaction found but little water, only as much as we had a right to
suppose she would take in above. But it was impossible to stand at the
pumps, so we returned to the cabin and brewed some cold punch and did
what we could to keep our spirits hearty. By noon the wind had weakened
yet, but the sea still ran very heavily, and the sky was uncommonly
thick with piles of dusky, yellowish, hurrying clouds; and though we
could fairly reckon upon our position, the atmosphere was so nipping it
was difficult to persuade ourselves that Cape Horn was not close aboard.

We could now work the pumps, and a short spell freed the brig. We got up
a new main-topsail and bent it, and, setting the reefed foresail, put
the vessel before the wind, and away she ran, chased by the swollen
seas. Thus we continued till by dead reckoning we calculated that we
were about thirty leagues south of the parallel of the Horn, and in
longitude eighty-seven degrees west. We then boarded our larboard tacks
and brought the brig as close to the wind as it was proper to lay her
for a progress that should not be wholly leeway; but four hours after we
had handled the braces the gale, that had not veered two points since it
first came on to blow, stormed up again into its first fury; and the
morning of the 1st of July, _anno_ 1801, found the _Laughing Mary_
passionately labouring in the midst of an enraged Cape Horn sea, her
jibboom and fore top-gallant mast gone, her ballast shifted, so that her
posture even in a calm would have exhibited her with her starboard
channels under, and her decks swept by enormous surges, which, fetching
her larboard bilge dreadful blows, thundered in mighty green masses over
her.




CHAPTER II.

THE ICEBERG.


The loss of the spars I have named was no great matter, nor were we to
be intimidated by such weather as was to be expected off Cape Horn. For
what sailor entering this icy and tempestuous tract of waters but knows
that here he must expect to find Nature in her most violent moods,
crueller and more unreckonable than a mad woman, who one moment looks
with a silent sinister sullenness upon you, and the next is shrieking
with devilish laughter as she makes as if to spring upon you?

But there was an inveteracy in the gale which had driven us down to this
part that bore heavily upon our spirits. It was impossible to trim the
ballast. We dared not veer so as to bring the ship on the other tack.
And the slope of the decks, added to the fierce wild motions of the
fabric, made our situation as unendurable as that of one who should be
confined in a cask and sent rolling downhill. It was impossible to light
a fire, and we could not therefore dress our food or obtain a warm
drink. The cold was beyond language severe. The rigging was glazed with
ice, and great pendants of the silvery brilliance of crystal hung from
the yards, bowsprit, and catheads, whilst the sails were frozen to the
hardness of granite, and lay like sheets of iron rolled up in gaskets of
steel. We had no means of drying our clothes, nor were we able so to
move as by exercise we might keep ourselves warm. Never once did the sun
shine to give us the encouragement of his glorious beam. Hour after hour
found us amid the same distracting scene: the tall olive-coloured seas
hurling out their rage in foam as they roared towards us in ranges of
dissolving cliffs; the wind screaming and whistling through our grey and
frozen rigging; the water washing in floods about our decks, with the
ends of the running gear snaking about in the torrent, and the live
stock lying drowned and stiff in their coops and pen near the caboose.

With helm lashed and yards pointed to the wind thus we lay, thus we
drifted, steadily trending with the send of each giant surge further and
deeper into the icy regions of the south-west, helpless, foreboding,
disconsolate.

It was the night of the fourth day of the month. The crew were forward
in the forecastle, and I knew not if any man was on deck saving myself.
In truth, there was no place in which a watch could be kept, if it were
not in the companion hatch. Such was the violence with which the seas
broke over the brig that it was at the risk of his life a man crawled
the distance betwixt the forecastle and the quarter-deck. It had been as
thick as mud all day, and now upon this flying gloom of haze, sleet, and
spray had descended the blackness of the night.

I stood in the companion as in a sentry-box, with my eyes just above the
cover. Nothing was to be seen but sheets of ghostly white water sweeping
up the blackness on the vessel's lee, or breaking and boiling to
windward. It was sheer blind chaos to the sight, and you might have
supposed that the brig was in the midst of some enormous vaporous
turmoil, so illusive and indefinable were the shadows of the
storm-tormented night--one block of blackness melting into another, with
sometimes an extraordinary faintness of light speeding along the dark
sky like to the dim reflection of a lanthorn flinging its radiance from
afar, which no doubt must have been the reflection of some particular
bright and extensive bed of foam upon a sooty belly on high, hanging
lower than the other clouds. I say, you might have thought yourself in
the midst of some hellish conflict of vapour but for the substantial
thunder of the surges upon the vessel and the shriek of the slung masses
of water flying like cannon balls between the masts.

After a long and eager look round into the obscurity, semi-lucent with
froth, I went below for a mouthful of spirits and a bite of supper, the
hour being eight bells in the second dog watch as we say, that is, eight
o'clock in the evening. The captain and carpenter were in the cabin.
Upon the swing-tray over the table were a piece of corned beef, some
biscuit, and a bottle of hollands.

"Nothing to be seen, I suppose, Rodney?" says the captain.

"Nothing," I answered. "She looks well up, and that's all that can be
said."

"I've been hove to under bare poles more than once in my time," said the
carpenter, "but never through so long a stretch. I doubt if you'll find
many vessels to look up to it as this here _Laughing Mary_ does."

"The loss of hamper forward will make her the more weatherly," says
Captain Rosy. "But we're in an ugly part of the globe. When bad sailors
die they're sent here, I reckon. The worst nautical sinner can't be hove
to long off the Horn without coming out of it with a purged soul. He
must start afresh to deserve further punishment."

"Well, here's a breeze that can't go on blowing much longer," cries the
carpenter. "The place it comes from must give out soon, unless a new
trade wind's got fixed into a whole gale for this here ocean."

"What southing do you allow our drift will be giving us, captain?" I
asked, munching a piece of beef.

"All four mile an hour," he answered. "If this goes on I shall look to
make some discoveries. The Antarctic circle won't be far off presently,
and since you're a scholar, Rodney, I'll leave you to describe what's
inside of it, though boil me if I don't have the naming of the tallest
land; for, d'ye see, I've a mind to be known after I'm dead, and
there's nothing like your signature on a mountain to be remembered by."

He grinned and put his hand out for the bottle, and after a pull passed
it to the carpenter. I guessed by his jocosity that he had already been
making somewhat free; for although I love a bold face put upon a
difficulty, ours was a situation in which only a tipsy man could find
food for merriment.

At this instant we were startled by a wild and fearful shout on deck. It
sounded high above the sweeping and seething of the wind and the hissing
of the lashed waters, and it penetrated the planks with a note that gave
it an inexpressible character of anguish.

"A man washed overboard!" bawled the carpenter, springing to his feet.

"No!" cried I, for my younger and shrewder ear had caught a note in the
cry that persuaded me it was not as the carpenter said; and in an
instant the three of us jumped up the ladder and gained the deck.

The moment I was in the gale the same affrighted cry rang down along the
wind from some man forward: _"For God's sake tumble up before we are
upon it!"_

"What do you see?" I roared, sending my voice, trumpet-fashion, through
my hands; for as to my own and the sight of Captain Rosy and the
carpenter, why, it was like being struck blind to come on a sudden out
of the lighted cabin into the black night.

Any reply that might have been attempted was choked out by the dive of
the brig's head into a sea, which furiously flooded her forecastle and
came washing aft like milk in the darkness till it was up to our knees.

"See there!" suddenly roared the carpenter.

"Where, man, where?" bawled the captain.

But in this brief time my sight had grown used to the night, and I saw
the object before the carpenter could answer. It lay on our lee beam,
but how far off no man could have told in that black thickness. It stood
against the darkness and hung out a dim complexion of light, or rather
of pallidness, that was not light--not to be described by the pen. It
was like a small hill of snow, and looked as snow does or the foam of
the sea in darkness, and it came and went with our soaring and sinking.

"Ice!" I shouted to the captain.

"I see it!" he answered, in a voice that satisfied me the consternation
he was under had settled the fumes of the spirits out of his head. "We
must drive her clear at all risks."

There was no need to call the men. To the second cry that had been
raised by one among them who had come out of the forecastle and seen the
berg, they had tumbled up as sailors will when they jump for their
lives; and now they came staggering, splashing, crawling aft to us, for
the lamp in the cabin made a sheen in the companion hatch, and they
could see us as we stood there.

"Men," cried Captain Rosy, "yonder's a gravestone for our carcases if we
are not lively! Cast the helm adrift!" (we steered by a tiller). "Two
hands stand by it. Forward, some of ye, and loose the stay-foresail, and
show the head of it."

The fellows hung in the wind. I could not wonder. The bowsprit had been
sprung when the jibboom was wrenched from the cap by the fall of the
top-gallant-mast; it still had to bear the weight of the heavy spritsail
yard, and the drag of the staysail might carry the spar overboard with
the men upon it. Yet it was our best chance; the one sail most speedily
released and hoisted, the one that would pay the brig's head off
quickest, and the only fragment that promised to stand.

"Jump!" roared the captain, in a passion of hurry. "Great thunder! 'tis
close aboard! You'll leave me no sea room for veering if you delay an
instant."

"Follow me who will!" I cried out; "and others stand by ready to hoist
away."

Thus speaking--for there seemed to my mind a surer promise of death in
hesitation at this supreme moment than in twenty such risks as laying
out on the bowsprit signified--I made for the lee of the weather
bulwarks, and blindly hauled myself forward by such pins and gear as
came to my hands. A man might spend his life on the ocean and never have
to deal with such a passage as this. It was not the bitter cold only,
though perhaps of its full fierceness the wildness of my feelings did
not suffer me to be sensible; it was the pouring of volumes of water
upon me from over the rail, often tumbling upon my head with such weight
as nearly to beat the breath out of my body and sink me to the deck; it
was the frenzy excited in me by the tremendous obligation of despatch
and my retardment by the washing seas, the violent motions of the brig,
the encumbrance of gear and deck furniture adrift and sweeping here and
there, and the sense that the vessel might be grinding her bows against
the iceberg before I should be able to reach the bowsprit. All this it
was that filled me with a kind of madness, by the sheer force of which
alone I was enabled to reach the forecastle, for had I gone to my duty
coldly, without agitation of spirits, my heart must have failed me
before I had measured half the length of the brig.

I got on to the bowsprit nearly stifled by the showering of the seas,
holding an open knife between my teeth, half dazed by the prodigious
motion of the light brig, which, at this extreme end of her, was to be
felt to the full height of its extravagance. At every plunge I expected
to be buried, and every moment I was prepared to be torn from my hold.
It was a fearful time; the falling off of the brig into the trough--and
never was I in a hollower and more swelling sea--her falling off, I say,
in the act of veering might end us out of hand by the rolling of a surge
over us big enough to crush the vessel down fathoms out of sight; and
then there was that horrible heap of faint whiteness leaping out of the
dense blackness of the sky, gathering a more visible sharpness of
outline with every liquid heave that forked us high into the flying
night with shrieking rigging and boiling decks.

Commending myself to God, for I was now to let go with my hands, I
pulled the knife from my teeth, and feeling for the gaskets or lines
which bound the sail to the spar, I cut and hacked as fast as I could
ply my arms. In a flash the gale, whipping into a liberated fold of the
canvas, blew the whole sail out; the bowsprit reeled and quivered under
me; I danced off it with incredible despatch, shouting to the men to
hoist away. The head of the staysail mounted in thunder, and the
slatting of its folds and the thrashing of its sheet was like the
rattling of heavy field-pieces whisked at full gallop over a stony road.

"High enough!" I bawled, guessing enough was shown, for I could not see.
"Get a drag upon the sheet, lads, and then aft with you for your lives!"

Scarce had I let forth my breath in this cry when I heard the blast as
of a gun, and knew by that the sail was gone; an instant after wash came
a mountainous sea sheer over the weather bulwarks fair betwixt the fore
and main rigging; but happily, standing near the fore shrouds, I was
holding on with both hands to the topsail halliards whilst calling to
the men, so that being under the rail, which broke the blow of the sea,
and holding on too, no mischief befell me, only that for about twenty
seconds I stood in a horrible fury and smother of frothing water,
hearing nothing, seeing nothing, with every faculty in me so numbed and
dulled by the wet, cold, and horror of our situation, that I knew not
whether in that space of time I was in the least degree sensible of what
had happened or what might befall.

The water leaving the deck, I rallied, though half-drowned, and
staggered aft, and found the helm deserted, nor could I see any signs of
my companions. I rushed to the tiller, and putting my whole weight and
force to it, drove it up to windward and secured it by a turn of its own
rope; for ice or no ice--and for the moment I was so blinded by the wet
that I could not see the berg--my madness now was to get the brig before
the sea and out of the trough, advised by every instinct in me that such
another surge as that which had rolled over her must send her to the
bottom in less time than it would take a man to cry "O God!"

A figure came out of the blackness on the lee side of the deck.

"Who is that?" said he. It was Captain Rosy.

I answered.

"What, Rodney! alive?" cried he. "I think I have been struck
insensible."

Two more figures came crawling aft. Then two more. They were the
carpenter and three seamen.

I cried out, "Who was at the helm when that sea was shipped?"

A man answered, "Me, Thomas Jobling."

"Where's your mate?" I asked; and it seemed to me that I was the only
man who had his senses full just then.

"He was washed forward along with me," he replied.

Now a fifth man joined us, but before I could question him as to the
others, the captain, with a scream like an epileptic's cry, shrieked,
"It's all over with us! We are upon it!"

I looked and perceived the iceberg to be within a musket-shot, whence it
was clear that it had been closer to us when first sighted than the
blackness of the night would suffer us to distinguish. In a time like
this at sea events throng so fast they come in a heap, and even if the
intelligence were not confounded by the uproar and peril, if indeed it
were as placid as in any time of perfect security, it could not possibly
take note of one-tenth that happens.

I confess that, for my part, I was very nearly paralyzed by the nearness
of the iceberg, and by the cry of the captain, and by the perception
that there was nothing to be done. That which I best recollect is the
appearance of the mass of ice lying solidly, like a little island, upon
the seas which roared in creaming waters about it. Every blow of the
black and arching surge was reverberated in a dull hollow tremble back
to the ear through the hissing flight of the gale. The frozen body was
not taller than our mastheads, yet it showed like a mountain hanging
over us as the brig was flung swirling into the deep Pacific hollow,
leaving us staring upwards out of the instant's stagnation of the trough
with lips set breathlessly and with dying eyes. It put a kind of film
of faint light outside the lines of its own shape, and this served to
magnify it, and it showed spectrally in the darkness as though it
reflected some visionary light that came neither from the sea nor the
sky. These points I recollect; likewise the maddening and maddened
motion of our vessel, sliding towards it down one midnight declivity to
another.

All other features were swallowed up in the agony of the time. One
monstrous swing the brig gave, like to some doomed creature's last
delirious struggle; the bowsprit caught the ice and snapped with the
noise of a great tree crackling in fire. I could hear the masts breaking
overhead--the crash and blows of spars and yards torn down and striking
the hull; above all the grating of the vessel, that was now head on to
the sea and swept by the billows, broadside on, along the sharp and
murderous projections. Two monster seas tumbled over the bows, floated
me off my legs, and dashed me against the tiller, to which I clung. I
heard no cries. I regained my feet, clinging with a death-grip to the
tiller, and, seeing no one near me, tried to holloa, to know if any man
were living, but could not make my voice sound.

The fearful grating noise ceased on a sudden, and the faintness of the
berg loomed upon the starboard bow. We had been hurled clear of it and
were to leeward; but what was our condition? I tried to shout again, but
to no purpose; and was in the act of quitting the tiller to go forward
when I was struck over the brows by something from aloft--a block, as I
believe--and fell senseless upon the deck.




CHAPTER III.

I LOSE MY COMPANIONS.


I lay for a long while insensible; and that I should have recovered my
mind instead of dying in that swoon I must ever account as the greatest
wonder of a life that has not been wanting in the marvellous. I had no
sooner sat up than all that had happened and my present situation
instantly came to me. My hair was stiff with ice; there was no more
feeling in my hands than had they been of stone; my clothes weighed upon
me like a suit of armour, so inflexibly hard were they frozen. Yet I got
upon my legs, and found that I could stand and walk, and that life
flowed warm in my veins, for all that I had been lying motionless for an
hour or more, laved by water that would have become ice had it been
still.

It was intensely dark; the binnacle lamp was extinguished, and the light
in the cabin burned too dimly to throw the faintest colour upon the
hatchway. One thing I quickly noticed, that the gale had broken and blew
no more than a fresh breeze. The sea still ran very high, but though
every surge continued to hurl its head of snow, and the heavens to
resemble ink from contrast with the passage, as it seemed, close under
them of these pallid bodies, there was less spite in its wash, less
fury in its blow. The multitudinous roaring of the heaving blackness had
sobered into a hard and sullen growling, a sound as of thunder among
mountains heard in a valley.

The brig pitched and rolled heavily. Much of the buoyancy of her earlier
dance was gone out of her. Nevertheless, I could not persuade myself
that this sluggishness was altogether due to the water she had taken in.
It was wonderful, however, that she should still be afloat. No man could
have heard the rending and grating of her side against the ice without
supposing that every plank in it was being torn out.

Finding that I had the use of my voice, I holloaed as loudly as I could,
but no human note responded. Three or four times I shouted, giving some
of the people their names, but in vain. Father of mercy! I thought, what
has come to pass? Is it possible that all my companions have been washed
overboard? Certainly, five men at least were living before we fouled the
ice. And again I cried out, "Is there any one alive?" looking wildly
along the black decks, and putting so much force into my voice with the
consternation that the thought of my being alone raised in me, that I
had like to have burst a blood-vessel.

My loneliness was more terrible to me than any other condition of my
situation. It was dreadful to be standing, nearly dead with cold, in
utter darkness, upon the flooded decks of a hull wallowing miserably
amid the black hollows and eager foaming peaks of the labouring sea,
convinced that she was slowly filling, and that at any moment she might
go down with me; it was dreadful, I say, to be thus placed, and to feel
that I was in the heart of the rudest, most desolate space of sea in the
world, into which the commerce of the earth dispatched but few ships all
the year round. But no feature of my lamentable situation so affrighted
me, so worked upon the passions of my mind, as my loneliness. Oh, for
one companion, even one only, to make me an echo for mine own speech!
Nay, God Himself, the merciful Father of all, even He seemed not! The
blackness lay like a pall upon the deep, and upon my soul. Misery and
horror were within that shadow, and beyond it nothing that my spirit
could look up to!

I stood for some moments as one stunned, and then my manhood--trained to
some purpose by the usage of the sea--reasserted itself; and maybe I
also got some slender comfort from observing that, dull and heavy as was
the motion of the brig, there was yet the buoyancy of vitality in her
manner of mounting the seas, and that, after all, her case might not be
so desperate as was threatened by the way in which she had been torn and
precipitated past the iceberg. At moments when she plunged the whiteness
of the water creaming upon the surges on either hand threw out a phantom
light of sufficient power to enable me to see that the forward part of
the brig was littered with wreckage, which served to a certain extent as
a breakwater by preventing the seas, which washed on to the forecastle,
from cascading with their former violence aft; also that the whole
length of the main and top masts lay upon the larboard rail and over the
side, held in that position by the gear, attached to them. This was all
that I could distinguish, and of this only the most elusive glimpse was
to be had.

Feeling as though the very marrow in my bones were frozen, I crawled to
the companion and, pulling open the door, descended. The lamp in the
companion burnt faintly. There was a clock fixed to a beam over the
table; my eyes directly sought it, and found the time twenty minutes
after ten. This signified that I had ten or eleven hours of darkness
before me!

I took down the lamp, trimmed it, and went to the lazarette hatch at the
after end of the cabin. Here were kept the stores for the crew. I lifted
the hatch and listened, and could hear the water in the hold gurgling
and rushing with every lift of the brig's bows; and I could not question
from the volume of water which the sound indicated that the vessel was
steadily taking it in, but not rapidly. I swallowed half a pannikin of
the hollands for the sake of the warmth and life of the draught, and
entering my cabin, put on thick dry stockings, first, chafing my feet
till I felt the blood in them; and I then, with a seaman's dispatch,
shifted the rest of my apparel, and cannot express how greatly I was
comforted by the change, though the jacket and trousers I put on were
still damp with the soaking of previous days. To render myself as
waterproof as possible--for it was the wet clothes against the skin that
made the cold so cruel--I took from the captain's cabin a stout cloak
and threw it over me, enveloping my head, which I had cased in a warm
fur cap, with the hood of it; and thus equipped I lighted a small
hand-lantern that was used on dark nights for heaving the log, that is,
for showing how the sand runs in the glass, and carried it on deck.

The lantern made the scene a dead, grave-like black outside its little
circle of illumination; nevertheless its rays suffered me to guess at
the picture of ruin the decks offered. The main mast was snapped three
or four feet above the deck, and the stump of it showed as jagged and
barbed as a wild beast's teeth. But I now noticed that the weight of the
hamper being on the larboard side, balanced the list the vessel took
from her shifted ballast, and that she floated on a level keel with her
bows fair at the sea, whence I concluded that a sort of sea-anchor had
been formed ahead of her by the wreckage, and that it held her in that
posture, otherwise she must certainly have fallen into the trough.

I moved with extreme caution, casting the lantern light before me,
sometimes starting at a sound that resembled a groan, then stopping to
steady myself during some particular wild leap of the hull; until,
coming abreast of the main hatch, the rays of the lantern struck upon a
man's body, which, on my bringing the flame to his face, proved to be
Captain Rosy. There was a wound over his right brow; and as if that had
not sufficed to slay him, the fall of the masts had in some wonderful
manner whipped a rope several times round his body, binding his arms and
encircling his throat so tightly, that no executioner could have gone
more artistically to work to pinion and choke a man.

Under a mass of rigging in the larboard scuppers lay two bodies, as I
could just faintly discern; it was impossible to put the lantern close
enough to either one of them to distinguish his face, nor had I the
strength even if I had possessed the weapons to extricate them, for they
lay under a whole body of shrouds, complicated by a mass of other gear,
against which leaned a portion of the caboose. I viewed them long enough
to satisfy my mind that they were dead, and then with a heart of lead
turned away.

I crossed to the starboard side, where the deck was comparatively clear,
and found the body of a seaman named Abraham Wise near the fore-hatch.
This man had probably been stunned and drowned by the sea that filled
the deck after I loosed the staysail. These were all of our people that
I could find; the others I supposed had been washed by the water or
knocked by the falling spars overboard.

I returned to the quarter-deck, and sat down in the companion way for
the shelter of it and to think. No language that I have command of could
put before you the horror that possessed me as I sat meditating upon my
situation and recalling the faces of the dead. The wind was rapidly
falling, and with it the sea, but the motion of the brig continued very
heavy, a large swell having been set running by the long, fierce gale
that was gone; and there being no uproar of tempest in the sky to
confound the senses, I could hear a hundred harsh and melancholy
groaning and straining sounds rising from the hull, with now and again a
mighty blow as from some spar or lump of ice alongside, weighty enough,
you would have supposed, to stave the ship. But though the _Laughing
Mary_ was not a new vessel, she was one of the stoutest of her kind ever
launched, built mainly of oak and put together by an honest artificer.
Nevertheless her continuing to float in her miserably torn and mangled
condition was so great a miracle, that, spite of my poor shipmates
having perished and my own state being as hopeless as the sky was
starless, I could not but consider that God's hand was very visible in
this business.

I will not pretend to remember how I passed the hours till the dawn
came. I recollect of frequently stepping below to lift the hatch of the
lazarette, to judge by the sound of the quantity of water in the vessel.
That she was filling I knew well, yet not leaking so rapidly but that,
had our crew been preserved, we might easily have kept her free, and
made shift to rig up jury masts and haul us as best we could out of
these desolate parallels. There was, however, nothing to be done till
the day broke. I had noticed the jolly-boat bottom up near the starboard
gangway, and so far as I could make out by throwing the dull lantern
light upon her she was sound; but I could not have launched her without
seeing what I was doing, and even had I managed this, she stood to be
swamped and I to be drowned. And, in sober truth, so horrible was the
prospect of going adrift in her without preparing for the adventure with
oars, sail, mast, provisions, and water--most of which, by the lamplight
only, were not to be come at amid the hideous muddle of wreckage--that
sooner than face it I was perfectly satisfied to take my chance of the
hulk sinking with me in her before the sun rose.




CHAPTER IV.

I QUIT THE WRECK.


The east grew pale and grey at last. The sea rolled black as the night
from it, with a rounded smooth-backed swell; the wind was spent; only a
small air, still from the north-east, stirred. There were a few stars
dying out in the dark west; the atmosphere was clear, and when the sun
rose I knew he would turn the sable pall overhead into blueness.

The hull lay very deep. I had at one time, during the black hours,
struck into a mournful calculation, and reckoned that the brig would
float some two or three hours after sunrise; but when the glorious beam
flashed out at last, and transformed the ashen hue of dawn into a
cerulean brilliance and a deep of rolling sapphire, I started with
sudden terror to observe how close the covering-board sat upon the
water, and how the head of every swell ran past as high as the bulwark
rail.

Yet for a few moments I stood contemplating the scene of ruin. It was
visible now to its most trifling detail. The foremast was gone smooth
off at the deck; it lay over the starboard bow; and the topmast floated
ahead of the hull, held by the gear. Many feet of bulwarks were crushed
level; the pumps had vanished; the caboose was gone! A completer
nautical ruin I had never viewed.

One extraordinary stroke I quickly detected. The jolly-boat had lain
stowed in the long-boat; it was thus we carried those boats, the little
one lying snugly enough in the other. The sea that had flooded our decks
had floated the jolly-boat out of the long-boat, and swept it bottom up
to the gangway where it lay, as though God's mercy designed it should be
preserved for my use; for, not long after it had been floated out, the
brig struck the berg, the masts fell--and there lay the long-boat
crushed into staves!

This signal and surprising intervention filled my heart with
thankfulness, though my spirits sank again at the sight of my poor
drowned shipmates. But, unless I had a mind to join them, it was
necessary I should speedily bestir myself. So after a minute's
reflection I whipped out my knife, and cutting a couple of blocks away
from the raffle on deck, I rove a line through them, and so made a
tackle, by the help of which I turned the jolly-boat over; I then with a
handspike prised her nose to the gangway, secured a bunch of rope on
either side her to act as fenders or buffers when she should be launched
and lying alongside, ran her midway out by the tackle, and, attaching a
line to a ring-bolt in her bow, shoved her over the side, and she fell
with a splash, shipping scarce a hatful of water.

I found her mast and sail--the sail furled to the mast, as it was used
to lie in her--close against the stump of the mainmast; but though I
sought with all the diligence that hurry would permit for her rudder, I
nowhere saw it, but I met with an oar that had belonged to the other
boat, and this with the mast and sail I dropped into her, the swell
lifting her up to my hand when the blue fold swung past.

My next business was to victual her. I ran to the cabin, but the
lazarette was full of water, and none of the provisions in it to be come
at. I thereupon ransacked the cabin, and found a whole Dutch cheese, a
piece of raw pork, half a ham, eight or ten biscuits, some candles, a
tinder-box, several lemons, a little bag of flower, and thirteen bottles
of beer. These things I rolled up in a cloth and placed them in the
boat, then took from the captain's locker four jars of spirits, two of
which I emptied that I might fill them with fresh water. I also took
with me from the captain's cabin a small boat compass.

The heavy, sluggish, sodden movement of the hull advised me to make
haste. She was now barely lifting to the swell that came brimming in
broad liquid blue brows to her stem. It seemed as though another ton of
water would sink her; and if the swell fell over her bows and filled the
decks, down she would go. I had a small parcel of guineas in my chest,
and was about to fetch this money, when a sort of staggering sensation
in the upward slide of the hull gave me a fright, and, watching my
chance, I jumped into the boat and cast the line that held her adrift.

The sun was an hour above the horizon. The sea was a deep blue, heaving
very slowly, though you felt the weight of the mighty ocean in every
fold; and eastwards, the shoulders of the swell, catching the glorious
reflection of the sun, hurled the splendour along, till all that quarter
of the sea looked to be a mass of leaping dazzle. Upon the eastern
sea-line lay a range of white clouds, compact as the chalk cliffs of
Dover; threads, crescents, feather-shapes of vapour of the daintiest
sort, shot with pearly lustre, floated overhead very high. It was in
truth a fair and pleasant morning--of an icy coldness indeed, but the
air being dry, its shrewdness was endurable. Yet was it a brightness to
fill me with anguish by obliging me to reflect how it would have been
with us had it dawned yesterday instead of to-day. My companions would
have been alive, and yonder sinking ruined fabric a trim ship capable of
bearing us stoutly into warm seas and to our homes at last.

I threw the oar over the stern of the boat to keep her near to the brig,
not so much because I desired to see the last of her, as because of the
shrinking of my soul within me from the thought of heading in my
loneliness into those prodigious leagues of ocean which lay stretched
under the sky. Whilst the hull floated she was something to hold on to,
so to say, something for the eye amid the vastness of water to rest
upon, something to take out of the insufferable feeling of solitude the
poisonous sting of conviction.

But her end was at hand. I had risen to step the boat's mast, and was
standing and grasping it whilst I directed a slow look round the horizon
in God knows what vain hope of beholding a sail, when my eye coming to
the brig, I observed that she was sinking. She went down very slowly;
there was a horrible gurgling sound of water rushing into her, and her
main deck blew up with a loud clap or blast of noise. I could follow the
line of her bulwarks fluctuating and waving in the clear dark blue when
she was some feet under. A number of whirlpools spun round over her, but
the slowness of her foundering was solemnly marked by the gradual
descent of the ruins of masts and yards which were attached to the hull
by their rigging, and which she dragged down with her. On a sudden, when
the last fragment of mast had disappeared, and when the hollows of the
whirlpools were flattening to the level surface of the sea, up rose a
body, with a sort of leap. It was the sailor that had lain drowned on
the starboard side of the forward deck. Being frozen stiff he rose in
the posture in which he had expired, that is, with his arms extended; so
that, when he jumped to the surface, he came with his hands lifted up to
heaven, and thus he stayed a minute, sustained by the eddies which also
revolved him.

The shock occasioned by this melancholy object was so great, it came
near to causing me to swoon. He sank when the water ceased to twist
him, and I was unspeakingly thankful to see him vanish, for his posture
had all the horror of a spectral appeal, and such was the state of my
mind that imagination might quickly have worked the apparition, had it
lingered, into an instrument for the unsettling of my reason.

I rose from the seat on to which I had sunk and loosed the sail, and
hauling the sheet aft, put the oar over the stern, and brought the
little craft's head to an easterly course. The draught of air was
extremely weak, and scarce furnished impulse enough to the sail to raise
a bubble alongside. The boat was about fifteen feet long; she would be
but a small boat for summer pleasuring in English July lake-waters, yet
here was I in her in the heart of a vast ocean, many leagues south and
west of the stormiest, most inhospitable point of land in the world,
with distances before me almost infinite for such a boat as this to
measure ere I could heave a civilized coast or a habitable island into
view!

At the start I had a mind to steer north-west and blow, as the wind
would suffer, into the South Sea, where perchance I might meet a whaler
or a Southseaman from New Holland; but my heart sank at the prospect of
the leagues of water which rolled between me and the islands and the
western American seaboard. Indeed I understood that my only hope of
deliverance lay in being picked up; and that, though by heading east I
should be clinging to the stormy parts, I was more likely to meet with a
ship hereabouts than by sailing into the great desolation of the
north-west. The burden of my loneliness weighed down upon me so
crushingly that I cannot but consider my senses must have been somewhat
dulled by suffering, for had they been active to their old accustomed
height, I am persuaded my heart must have broken and that I should have
died of grief.

Faintly as the wind blew, it speedily wafted me out of sight of the
floating relics of the wreck, and then all was bare, bald, swelling sea
and empearled sky, darkening in lagoons of azure down to the soft
mountainous masses of white vapour lying like the coast of a continent
on the larboard horizon. But one living thing there was besides myself:
a grey-breasted albatross, of a princely width of pinion. I had not
observed it till the hull went down, and then, lifting my eyes with
involuntary sympathy in the direction pointed to by the upraised arms of
the sailor, I observed the great royal bird hanging like a shape of
marble directly over the frothing eddies. It was as though the spirit of
the deep had taken form in the substance of the noblest of all the fowls
of its dominions, and, poised on tremorless wings, was surveying with
the cold curiosity of an intelligence empty of human emotion the
destruction of one of those fabrics whose unequal contests and repeated
triumphs had provoked its haughty surprise. The bird quitted the spot of
the wreck after a while and followed me. Its eyes had the sparkling
blood-red gleam of rubies. It was as silent as a phantom, and with
arched neck and motionless plumes seemed to watch me with an
earnestness that presently grew insufferable. So far from finding any
comfort of companionship in the creature, methought if it did not
speedily break from the motionless posture in which it rested on its
seat of air, and remove its piercing gaze, it would end in crazing me. I
felt a sudden rage, and, jumping up, shouted and shook my fist at it.
This frightened the thing. It uttered a strange salt cry--the very note
of a gust of wind splitting upon a rope--flapped its wings, and after a
turn or two sailed away into the north.

I watched it till its figure melted into the blue atmosphere, and then
sank trembling into the sternsheets of the boat.




CHAPTER V.

I SIGHT A WHITE COAST.


Four days did I pass in that little open boat.

The first day was fine, till sunset; it then blew fresh from the
north-west, and I was obliged to keep the boat before the wind. The next
day was dark and turbulent, with heavy falls of snow and a high swell
from the north, and the wind a small gale. On the third day the sun
shone, and it was a fair day, but horribly cold, and I saw two icebergs
like clouds upon the far western sea-line. There followed a cruel night
of clouded skies, sleet, and snow, and a very troubled sea; and then
broke the fourth day, as softly brilliant as an English May day, but
cold--great God, how cold!

Thus might I epitomize this passage; and I do so to spare you the
weariness of a relation of uneventful suffering.

In those four days I mainly ran before the wind, and in this way drove
many leagues south, though whenever a chance offered I hauled my sheet
for the east. I know not, I am sure, how the boat lived. I might pretend
it was due to my clever management--I do not say I had no share in my
own preservation, but to God belongs all the praise.

In the blackness of the first night the sea boiled all about me. The
boat leapt into hollows in which the sail slapped the mast. One look
behind me at the high dark curl of the oncoming surge had so affrighted
me that I never durst turn my head again lest the sight should deprive
me of the nerve to hold the oar with which I steered. I sat as squarely
as the task of steering would suffer, trusting that if a sea should
tumble over the stern my back would serve as a breakwater, and save the
boat from being swamped. The whole sail was on her, and I could not help
myself; for it would have been certain death to quit the steering oar
for an instant. It was this that saved me, perhaps; for the boat blew
along with such prodigious speed, running to the height of a sea as
though she meant to dart from that eminence into the air, that the slope
of each following surge swung like a pendulum under her, and though her
sail was becalmed in the trough, her momentum was so great that she was
speeding up the acclivity and catching the whole weight of the wind
afresh before there was time for her to lose way.

I was nearly dead with cold and misery when the morning came, but the
sparkling sun and the blue sky cheered me, and as wind and sea fell with
the soaring of the orb, I was enabled to flatten aft the sheet and let
the boat steer herself whilst I beat my arms about for warmth and broke
my fast. When I look back I wonder that I should have taken any pains to
live. That it is possible for the human mind at any period of its
existence to be absolutely hopeless I do not believe; but I can very
honestly say that when I gazed round upon the enormous sea I was in, and
considered the size of my boat, the quantity of my provisions, and my
distance (even if I was heading that way) from the nearest point of
land, I was not sensible of the faintest stirring of hope, and viewed
myself as a dead man.

No bird came near me. Once I spied the back of a great black fish about
a quarter of a mile off. The wetness of it caught the sunshine and
reflected it like a mirror of polished steel, and the flash was so
brilliant it might have passed for a bed of white fire floating on the
blue heavings. But nothing more that was living did I meet, and such was
the vastness of the sea over which my little keel glided, in the midst
of which I sat abandoned by the angels, that for utter loneliness I
might have been the very last of the human race.

When the third night came down with sullen blasts sweeping into a steady
storming of wind, that swung a strong melancholy howl through the
gloom, it found me so weak with cold, watching, and anxiety, and the
want of space wherein to rid my limbs of the painful cramp which
weighted them with an insupportable leaden sensation, that I had barely
power to control the boat with the oar. I pined for sleep; one hour of
slumber would, I felt, give me new life, but I durst not close my eyes.
The boat was sweeping through the dark and seething seas, and her course
had to be that of an arrow, or she would capsize and be smothered in a
breath.

Maybe I fell something delirious, for I had many strange and frightful
fancies. Indeed I doubt not it was the spirit of madness--that is
certainly tonical when small--which furnished strength enough to my arm
to steer with. It was like the action of a powerful cordial in my blood,
and the very horrors it fed my brain with were an animation to my
physical qualities. The gale became a voice; it cried out my name, and
every shout of it past my ear had the sound of the word 'Despair!' I
witnessed the forms of huge phantoms flying over the boat; I watched the
beating of their giant wings of shadow and heard the thunder of their
laughter as they fled ahead, leaving scores of like monstrous shapes to
follow. There was a faint lightning of phosphor in the creaming heads of
the ebon surges, and my sick imagination twisted that pallid complexion
into the dim reflection of the lamps of illuminated pavilions at the
bottom of the sea; mystic palaces of green marble, radiant cities in the
measureless kingdoms of the ocean gods. I had a fancy of roofs of pearl
below, turrets of milk-white coral, pavements of rainbow lustre like to
the shootings and dartings of the hues of shells inclined and trembled
to the sun. I thought I could behold the movements of shapes as
indeterminable as the forms which swarm in dreams, human brows crowned
with gold, the cold round emerald eyes of fish, the creamy breasts of
women, large outlines slowly floating upwards, making a deeper blackness
upon the blackness like the dye of the electric storm upon the velvet
bosom of midnight. Often would I shrink from side to side, starting from
a fancied apparition leaping into terrible being out of some hurling
block of liquid obscurity.

Once a light shone upon the masthead. At any other time I should have
known this to be a St. Elmo's fire, a corposant, the ignis fatuus of the
deep, and hailed it with a seaman's faith in its promise of gentle
weather. But to my distempered fancy it was a lanthorn hung up by a
spirit hand; I traced the dusky curve of an arm and observed the busy
twitching of visionary fingers by the rays of the ghostly light; the
outline of a large face of a bland and sorrowful expression, pallid as
any foam-flake whirling past, came into the sphere of those graveyard
rays. I shrieked and shut my eyes, and when I looked again the light was
gone.

Long before daybreak I was exhausted. Mercifully, the wind was scant;
the stars shone very gloriously; on high sparkled the Cross of the
southern world. A benign influence seemed to steal into me out of its
silver shining; the craze fell from me, and I wept.

Shortly afterwards, worn out by three days and nights of suffering, I
fell into a deep sleep, and when I awoke my eyes opened right upon the
blinding sun.

This was the morning of the fourth day. I was without a watch. By the
height of the sun I reckoned the hour to be ten. I threw a languid
glance at the compass and found the boat's head pointing north-west; she
fell off and came to, being without governance, and was scarcely sailing
therefore. The wind was west, a very light breeze, just enough to put a
bright twinkling into the long, smooth folds of the wide and weighty
swell that was rolling up from the north-east. I tried to stand, but was
so benumbed that many minutes passed before I had the use of my legs.
Brightly as the sun shone there was no more warmth in his light than you
find in a moon-beam on a frosty night, and the bite in the air was like
the pang of ice itself pressed against the cheek. My right hand suffered
most; I had fallen asleep clasping the loom of the steering oar, and
when I awoke my fingers still gripped it, so that, on withdrawing them,
they remained curved like talons, and I believed I had lost their use,
and even reckoned they would snap off and so set up a mortification,
till by much diligent rubbing I grew sensible of a small glow which,
increasing, ended in rendering the joints supple.

I stood up to take a view of the horizon, and the first sight that met
my eye forced a cry from me. Extending the whole length of the
south-west seaboard lay what I took to be a line of white coast melting
at either extremity into the blue airy distance. Even at the low
elevation of the boat my eye seemed to measure thirty miles of it. It
was not white as chalk is; there was something of a crystalline
complexion upon the face of its solidity. It was too far off to enable
me to remark its outline; yet on straining my sight--the atmosphere
being very exquisitely clear--I thought I could distinguish the
projections of peaks, of rounded slopes, and aerial angularities in
places which, in the refractive lens of the air, looked, with their hue
of glassy azure, like the loom of high land behind the coastal line.

The notion that it was ice came into my head after the first prospect of
it; and then I returned to my earlier belief that it was land. Methought
if it were ice, it must be the borderland of the Antarctic circle, the
limits of the unfrozen ocean, for it was incredible that so mighty a
body could signify less than the capes and terraces of a continent of
ice glazing the circumference of the pole for leagues and leagues; but
then I also knew that, though first the brig and then my boat had been
for days steadily blown south, I was still to the north of the South
Shetland parallels, and many degrees therefore removed from the polar
barrier. Hence I concluded that what I saw was land, and that the
peculiar crystal shining of it was caused by the snow that covered it.

But what land? Some large island that had been missed by the explorers
and left uncharted? I put a picture of the map of this part of the world
before my mind's eye, and fell to an earnest consideration of it, but
could recollect of no land hereabouts, unless indeed we had been wildly
wrong in our reckoning aboard the brig, and I in the boat had been
driven four or five times the distance I had calculated--things not to
be entertained.

Yet even as a mere break in the frightful and enduring continuity of the
sea-line--even as something that was not sea nor sky nor the cold silent
and mocking illusion of clouds--it took a character of blessedness in my
eyes; my gaze hung upon it joyously, and my heart swelled with a new
impulse of life in my breast. It would be strange, I thought, if on
approaching it something to promise me deliverance from this dreadful
situation did not offer itself--some whaler or trader at anchor, signs
of habitation and of the presence of men, nay, even a single hut to
serve as a refuge from the pitiless cold, the stormy waters, the black,
lonely, delirious watches of the night, till help should heave into view
with the white canvas of a ship.

I put the boat's head before the wind, and steered with one hand whilst
I got some breakfast with the other. I thanked God for the brightness of
the day and for the sight of that strange white line of land, that went
in glimmering blobs of faintness to the trembling horizon where the
southern end of it died out. The swell rose full and brimming ahead,
rolling in sapphire hills out of the north-east, as I have said, whence
I inferred that that extremity of the land did not extend very much
further than I could see it, otherwise there could not have been so much
weight of water as I found in the heaving.

The breeze blew lightly and was the weaker for my running before it; but
the little line of froth that slipped past either side the boat gave me
to know that the speed would not be less than four miles in the hour;
and as I reckoned the land to be but a few leagues distant, I calculated
upon being ashore some little while before sundown.

In this way two hours passed. By this time the features of the coast
were tolerably distinct. Yet I was puzzled. There was a peculiar sheen
all about the irregular sky-line; a kind of pearly whitening, as it
were, of the heavens beyond, like to the effect produced by the rising
of a very delicate soft mist melting from a mountain's brow into the
air. This dismayed me. Still I cried to myself, 'It must be land! All
that whiteness is snow, and the luminous tinge above it is the
reflection of the glaring sunshine thrown upwards from the dazzle. It
cannot be ice! 'tis too mighty a barrier. Surely no single iceberg ever
reached to the prodigious proportions of that coast. And it cannot be an
assemblage of bergs, for there is no break--it is leagues of solid
conformation. Oh yes, it is land, sure enough! some island whose tops
and seaboard are covered with snow. But what of that? It may be
populated all the same. Are the northern kingdoms of Europe bare of life
because of the winter rigours?' And then thought to myself, if that
island have natives, I would rather encounter them as the savages of an
ice-bound country than as the inhabitants of a land of sunshine and
spices and radiant vegetation; for it is the denizens of the most
gloriously fair ocean seats in the world who are man-eaters; not the
Patagonian, giant though he be, nor the blubber-fed anatomies of the
ice-climes.

Thus I sought to reassure and comfort myself. Meanwhile my boat sailed
quietly along, running up and down the smooth and foamless hills of
water very buoyantly, and the sun slided into the north-west sky and
darted a reddening beam upon the coast towards which I steered.




CHAPTER VI.

AN ISLAND OF ICE.


I had to approach the coast within two miles before I could satisfy my
mind of its nature, and then all doubt left me.

It was _ice!_ a mighty crescent of it--as was now in a measure
gatherable, floating upon the dark blue waters like the new moon upon
the field of the sky.

For a great while I had struggled with my misgivings, so tyrannically
will hope lord it even over conviction itself, until it was impossible
for me to any longer mistake. And then, when I knew it to be ice, I
asked myself what other thing I expected it should prove, seeing that
this ocean had been plentifully navigated since Cook's time and no land
discovered where I was; and I called myself a fool and cursed the hope
that had cheated me, and, in short, gave way to a violent outburst of
passion, and was indeed so wild with grief and rage that, had my ecstasy
been but a very little greater, I must have jumped overboard, so great
was my loathing of life then, and the horror the sight of the ice filled
me with.

Indeed, you cannot conceive how shocking to me was the appearance of
that great gleaming length of white desolation. On the deck of a stout
ship sailing safely past it I should have found the scene magnificent, I
doubt not; for the sun, being low with westering, shone redly, and the
range of ice stood in a kind of gold atmosphere which gave an
extraordinary richness to the shadowings of its rocks and peaks, and a
particular fullness of mellow whiteness to its lustrous parts, softening
the dazzle into an airy tenderness of brightness, so that the whole mass
shone out with the blandness visible in a glorious star. But its main
beauty lay in those features by which I knew it to be ice--I mean in a
vast surprising variety of forms, such as steeples, towers, columns,
pyramids, ruins as it might be of temples, grotesque shapes as of mighty
statues, left unfinished by the hands of Titans, domes as of cathedrals,
castellated heights, fragments of ramparts, and the like. These features
lay in groups, as if veritably the line of coast were dotted with
gatherings of royal mansions and remains of imperial magnificence, all
of white marble, yet with a glassy tincture as though the material owned
something of a Parian quality.

I had to come within two miles, as I have said, before these elegancies
broke upon me, so deceptively did their delicacy of outlines mingle with
the dark blue softness beyond. In places the coast ran up to a height of
two or three hundred feet, in others it sloped down to twenty feet. For
some miles it was like the face of a cliff, a sheer abrupt, with scarce
a scar upon its front, staring with a wild bald look over the frosty
beautiful blue of that afternoon sea. Here and there it projected a
forefoot, some white and massive rock, upon which the swell of the ocean
burst in thunder, and flew to almost the height of the cliff in a very
great and glorious fury of foam. In other parts, where I suspected a
sort of beach, there was the silver tremble of surf; but in the main,
the heave coming out of the north-east, the folds swept the base of the
ice without froth.

I say again, beheld in the red sunshine, that line of ice, resembling a
coast of marble defining the liquid junction of the swelling folds of
sapphire below and the moist violet of the eastern sky beyond and over
it, crowned at points with delicate imitations of princely habitations,
would have offered a noble and magnificent spectacle to a mind at ease;
but to my eyes its enchantments were killed by the horror I felt. It was
a lonely, hideous waste, rendered the more shocking by the consideration
that the whole vast range was formed of blocks of frozen water which
warmth would dissolve; that it was a country as solid as rock and as
unsubstantial as a cloud, to be shunned by the mariner as though it was
Death's own pavilion, the estate and mansion of the grisly spectre, and
creating round about it as supreme a desolation and loneliness of ocean
as that which reigned in its own white stillness.

Though I held the boat's head for it I was at a loss--in so much
confusion of mind that I knew not what to do. I did not doubt by the
character of the swell that its limits in the north-east extended only
to the sensible horizon; in other words, that its extremity there would
not be above five miles distant, though to what latitude its southern
arm did curve was not to be conjectured.

Should I steer north and seek to go clear of it? Somehow, the presence
of this similitude of land made the sea appear as enormous as space
itself. Whilst it was all clear horizon the immensity of the deep was in
a measure limited to the vision by its cincture. But this ice-line gave
the eye something to measure with, and when I looked at those leagues of
frozen shore my spirits sank into deepest dejection at the thought of
the vastness of the waters in whose heart I floated in my little boat.

However, I resolved at last to land if landing was possible. I could
stretch my limbs, recruit myself by exercise, and might even make shift
to obtain a night's rest. I stood in desperate need of sleep, but there
was no repose to be had in the boat. I durst not lie down in her; if
nature overcame me and I fell asleep in a sitting posture, I might wake
to find the boat capsized and myself drowning. This consideration
resolved me, and by this time being within half a mile of the coast, I
ran my eye carefully along it to observe a safe nook for my boat to
enter and myself to land in.

Though for a great distance, as I have said, the front of the cliff, and
where it was highest too, was a sheer fall, coming like the side of a
house to the water, that part of the island towards which my boat's head
was pointed sloped down and continued in a low shore, with hummocks of
ice upon it at irregular intervals, to where it died out in the
north-east. I now saw that this part had a broken appearance as if it
had been violently rent from a mainland of ice; also, to my approach,
many ledges projecting into the sea stole into view. There were ravines
and gorges, and almost on a line with the boat's head was an assemblage
of those delicate glass-like counterfeits of spires, towers, and the
like, of which I have spoken, standing just beyond a brow whose
declivity fell very easily to the water.

To make you see the picture as I have it in my mind would be beyond my
art; it is not in the pen--not in the brush either, I should think--to
convey even a tolerable portraiture of the ruggedness, the fairy
grouping, the shelves, hollows, crags, terraces, precipices, and beach
of this kingdom of ice, where its frontal line broke away from the
smooth face of the tall reaches, and ran with a ploughed, scarred, and
serrated countenance northwards.

Very happily I had insensibly steered for perhaps the safest spot that I
could have lighted on; this was formed of a large projection of rock,
standing aslant, so that the swell rolled past it without breaking. The
rock made a sort of cove, towards which I sailed in full confidence that
the water there would be smooth. Nor was I deceived, for I saw that the
rock acted as a breakwater, whose stilling influence was felt a good way
beyond it. I thereupon steered for the starboard of this rock, and when
I was within it found the heave of the sea dwindled to a scarce
perceptible undulation, whereupon I lowered my sail, and, standing to
the oar, sculled the boat to a low lump of ice, on to which I stepped.

My first business was to secure the boat; this I did by inserting the
mast into a deep, thin crevice in the ice and making the painter fast to
it as to a pole. The sun was now very low, and would soon be gone. The
cold was extreme, yet I did not suffer from it as in the boat. There is
a quality in snow which it would be ridiculous to speak of as _warmth_;
yet, as you may observe after a heavy fall ashore on top of a black
frost, it seems to have a power of blunting the sharp edge of the cold,
and the snow on this shore of ice being very abundant, though frozen as
hard as the ice itself, appeared to mitigate the intolerable rigour I
had languished under upon the water, in the brig and afterwards. This
might also be owing to the dryness of the cold.

Having secured the boat I beat my hands heartily upon my breast, and
fell to pacing a little level of ice whilst I considered what I should
do. The coast--I cannot but speak of this frozen territory as land--went
in a gentle slope behind me to the height of about thirty feet; the
ground was greatly broken with rocks and boulders and sharp points,
whence I suspected many fissures in which the snow might not be so hard
but that I might sink deep enough to be smothered. I saw no cave nor
hollow that I could make a bedroom of, and the improved circulation of
my blood giving me spirits enough to resolve quickly, I made up my mind
to use my boat as a bed.

So I went to work. I took the oar and jammed it into such another
crevice as the mast stood in, and to it I secured the boat by another
line. This moored her very safely. There was as good promise of a fair
quiet night as I might count upon in these treacherous latitudes; the
haven in which the boat lay was sheltered and the water almost still,
and this I reckoned would hold whilst the breeze hung northerly and the
swell rolled from the north-east. I spread the sail over the seats,
which served as beams for the support of this little ceiling of canvas,
and enough of it remained to supply me with a pillow and to cover my
legs. I fell to this work whilst there was light, and when I had
prepared my habitation, I took a bottle of ale and a handful of victuals
ashore and made my supper, walking briskly whilst I ate and drank.

I caught myself sometimes looking yearningly towards the brow of the
slope, as though from that eminence I should gain an extensive prospect
of the sea and perhaps behold a ship; but I wanted the courage to climb,
chiefly because I was afraid of tumbling into a hole and miserably
perishing, and likewise because I shrank from the idea of being
overtaken up there by the darkness. There was a kind of companionship in
the boat, the support of which I should lose if I left her.

The going of the sun was attended by so much glory that the whole weight
of my situation and the pressure of my solitude did not come upon me
until his light was gone. The swell ran athwart his mirroring in lines
of molten gold; the sky was a sheet of scarlet fire where he was, paling
zenithwards into an ardent orange. The splendour tipped the frozen coast
with points of ruby flame which sparkled and throbbed like sentinel
beacons along the white and silent range. The low thunder of far-off
hills of water bursting against the projections rolled sulkily down upon
the weak wind. Just beyond the edge of the slope, about a third of a
mile to the north of my little haven, stood an assemblage of exquisitely
airy outlines--configurations such as I have described; their
crystalline nature stole out to the lustrous colouring of the glowing
west, and they had the appearance of tinted glass of several dyes of
red, the delicate fibres being deep of hue, the stouter ones pale; and
never did the highest moon of human invention reach to anything more
glorious and dainty, more sweetly simulative of the arts of a fairy-like
imagination than yonder cluster of icy fabrics, fashioned, as it entered
my head to conceive, as pavilions by the hands of the spirits of the
frozen world, and gilt and painted by the beams of the setting sun.

But all this wild and unreal beauty melted away to the oncoming of the
dusk; and when the sun was gone and the twilight had put a new quality
of bleakness into the air, when the sea rolled in a welter of dark
shadows, one sombre fold shouldering another--a very swarming of
restless giant phantoms--when the shining of the stars low down in the
unfathomable obscurity of the north and south quarters gave to the ocean
in those directions a frightful immensity of surface, making you feel as
though you viewed the scene from the centre of the firmament, and were
gazing down the spangled slopes of infinity--oh, _then_ it was that the
full spirit of the solitude of this pale and silent seat of ice took
possession of me. I found a meaning I had not before caught in the
complaining murmur of the night breeze blowing in small gusts along the
rocky shore, and in the deep organ-like tremulous _hum_ of the swell
thundering miles distant on the northward-pointing cliffs. This was a
note I had missed whilst the sun shone. Perhaps my senses were sharpened
by the darkness. It mingled with the booming of the bursts of water on
this side the range, and gave me to know that the northward extremity of
the island did not extend so far as I had supposed from my view of it in
the boat. Yet I could also suppose that the beat of the swell formed a
mighty cannonading capable of making itself heard afar, and the ice,
being resonant, with many smooth if not polished tracts upon it, readily
transmitted the sound, yes, though the cause of it lay as far off as the
horizon.

I will not say that my loneliness frightened me, but it subdued my
heart with a weight as if it were something sensible, and filled me with
a sort of consternation that was full of awe. The moon was up, but the
rocks hid the side of the sea she rode over, and her face was not to be
viewed from where I was until she had marched two-thirds of her path to
the meridian. The coast ran away on either hand in cold motionless
blocks of pallor, which further on fell (by deception of the sheen of
the stars) into a kind of twisting and snaking glimmer, and you followed
it into an extraordinarily elusive faintness that was neither light nor
colour in the liquid gloom, long after the sight had outrun the
visibility of the range. At intervals I was startled by sounds,
sometimes sullen, like a muffled subterranean explosion, sometimes
sharp, like a quick splintering of an iron-hard substance. These noises,
I presently gathered, were made by the ice stretching and cracking in
fifty different directions. The mass was so vast and substantial you
could not but think of it as a country with its foot resting upon the
bed of the sea. 'Twas a folly of my nerves no doubt, yet it added to my
consternation to reflect that this solid territory, reverberating the
repelled blows of the ocean swell, was as much afloat as my boat, and so
much less actual than my boat that, could it be towed a few degrees
further north, it would melt into pouring waters and vanish as utterly
with its little cities of columns, steeples, and minarets as a wreath of
steam upon the air.

This gave a spirit-like character to it in my dismayed inquiring eyes
which was greatly increased by the vagueness it took from the dusk. It
was such a scene, methought, as the souls of seamen drowned in these
seas might flock to and haunt. The white and icy spell upon it wrought
in familiar things. The stars looking down upon me over the edge of the
cliffs were like the eyes of shapes (easy to fashion out of the
darkness) kneeling up there and peering at the human intruder who was
pacing his narrow floor of ice for warmth. The deceit of the shadows
proportioned the blanched ruggedness of the cliff's face on the north
side into heads and bodies of monsters. I beheld a giant, from his waist
up, leaning his cheek upon his arm; a great cross with a burlesque
figure, as of a friar, kneeling near it; a mighty helmet with a white
plume curled; the shadowy conformation of a huge couchant beast, with a
hundred other such unsubstantial prodigies. Had the moon shone in the
west I dare say I should have witnessed a score more such things, for
the snow was like white paper, on which the clear black shadows of the
ice-rocks could not but have cast the likeness of many startling
phantasies.

I sought to calm my mind by considering my position, and to divert my
thoughts from the star-wrought apparitions of the broken slopes I asked
myself what should be my plans, what my chance for delivering myself
from this unparalleled situation. At this distance of time I cannot
precisely tell how long the provisions I had brought from the foundered
brig were calculated to last me, but I am sure I had not a week's
supply. This, then, made it plain that my business was not to linger
here, but to push into the ocean afresh as speedily as possible, for to
my mind nothing in life was clearer than that my only chance lay in my
falling in with a ship. Yet how did my heart sink when I reflected upon
the mighty breast of sea in which I was forlornly to seek for succour!
My eyes went to the squab black outline of the boat, and the littleness
of her sent a shudder through me. It is true she had nobly carried me
through some fierce weather, yet at the expense of many leagues of
southing, of a deeper penetration into the solitary wilds of the polar
waters.

However, I was sensible that I was depressed, melancholy, and under a
continued consternation, something of which the morning sun might
dissipate, so that I should be able to take a heartier view of my woful
plight. So after a good look seawards and at the heavens to satisfy
myself on the subject of the weather, and after a careful inspection of
the moorings of the boat, I entered her, feeling very sure that, if a
sea set in from the west or south and tumbled her, the motion would
quickly arouse me; and getting under the roof of sail, with my legs
along the bottom and my back against the stem, which I had bolstered
with the slack of the canvas, I commended myself to God, folded my arms,
and went to sleep.




CHAPTER VII.

I AM STARTLED BY A DISCOVERY.


In this uneasy posture, despite the intense cold, I continued to sleep
soundly during the greater part of the night. I was awakened by a horrid
dream of some giant shape stalking down the slope of ice to seize and
devour me, and sat up trembling with horror that was not a little
increased by my inability to recollect myself, and by my therefore
conceiving the canvas that covered me to be the groping of the ogre's
hand over my face.

I pushed the sail away and stood up, but had instantly to sit again, my
legs being terribly cramped. A drink of spirits helped me; my blood
presently flowed with briskness.

The moon was in the west; she hung large, red, and distorted, and shed
no light save her reflection that waved in the sea under her like
several lengths of undulating red-hot wire. My haven was still very
tranquil--the boat lay calm; but there was a deeper tone in the booming
sound of the distant surf, and a more menacing note in the echoing of
the blows of the swell along this side of the coast, whence I concluded
that, despite the fairness of the weather, the heave of the deep had,
whilst I slept, gathered a greater weight, which might signify stormy
winds not very many leagues away.

The pale stare of the heights of ice at that red and shapeless disc was
shocking. "Oh," I cried aloud, as I had once cried before, "but for one,
even but for one, companion to speak to!"

I had no mind to lie down again. The cold indeed was cruelly sharp, and
the smoke sped from my mouth with every breath as though I held a
tobacco pipe betwixt my teeth. I got upon the ice and stepped about it
quickly, darting searching glances into the gloom to left and right of
the setting moon; but all lay bare, bleak, and black. I pulled off my
stout gloves with the hope of getting my fingers to tingle by handling
the snow; but it was frozen so hard I could not scrape up with my nails
as much as a half-dozen of flakes would make. What I got I dissolved in
my mouth and found it brackish; however, I suspected it would be sweeter
and perhaps not so stonily frozen higher up, where there was less chance
of the salt spray mingling with it, and I resolved when the light came
to fill my empty beer-bottles as with salt or pounded sugar for use
hereafter--that is, if it should prove sweet; as to melting it, I had
indeed a tinder-box and the means of obtaining fire, but no fuel.

It seemed as if the night had only just descended, so tardy was the
dawn. Outside the slanting wall of ice that made my haven the swell
swept past in a gurgling, bubbling, drowning sound, dismal and ghastly,
as though in truth some such ogre as the monster I had dreamt of lay
suffocating there. I welcomed the cold colouring of the east as if it
had been a ship, and watched the stars dying and the frozen shore
darkening to the dim and sifting dawn behind it, against which the
outline of the cliffs ran in a broken streak of ink. The rising of the
sun gave me fresh life. The ice flashed out of its slatish hue into a
radiant white, the ocean changed into a rich blue that seemed as violet
under the paler azure of the heavens; but I could now see that the
swell was heavier than I had suspected from the echo of its remote
roaring in the north. It ran steadily out of the north-east. This was
miserable to see, for the line of its running was directly my course,
and if I committed myself to it in that little boat, the impulse of the
long and swinging folds could not but set me steadily southwards, unless
a breeze sprang up in that quarter to blow me towards the sun. There was
a small current of air stirring, a mere trickle of wind from the
north-west.

I made up my mind to climb as high as I could, taking the oar with me to
serve as a pole, that I might view the ice and the ocean round about and
form a judgment of the weather by the aspect of the sky, of which only
the western part was visible from my low strand. But first I must break
my fast. I remember bitterly lamenting the lack of means to make a fire,
that I might obtain a warm meal and a hot drink and dry my gloves, coat,
and breeches, to which the damp of the salt clung tenaciously. Had this
ice been land, though the most desolate, gloomy, repulsive spot in the
world, I had surely found something that would burn.

I sat in the boat to eat, and whilst thus occupied pondered over this
great field of ice, and wondered how so mighty a berg should travel in
such compacted bulk so far north--that is, so far north from the seat of
its creation. Now leisurely and curiously observing it, it seemed to me
that the north part of it, from much about the spot where my boat lay,
was formed of a chain of icebergs knitted one to another in a
consolidated range of irregular low steeps. The beautiful appearances of
spires, towers, and the like seemed as if they had been formed by an
upheaval, as of an earthquake, of splinters and bodies of the frozen
stuff; for, so far as it was possible for me to see from the low shore,
wherever these radiant and lovely figures were assembled I noticed great
rents, spacious chasms, narrow and tortuous ravines. Certain
appearances, however, caused me to suspect that this island was steadily
decaying, and that, large as it still was, it had been many times vaster
when it broke away from the continent about the Pole. Naturally, as it
progressed northwards it would dissolve, and the cracking and thunderous
noises I had heard in the night, sounds very audible now when I gave
them my attention--sometimes a hollow distant rumbling as of some great
body dislodged and set rolling far off, sometimes an inwards roaring
crack or blast of noise like the report of a cannon fired deep
down--advised me that the work of dissolution was perpetually
progressing, and that this prodigious island which appeared to barricade
the horizon might in a few months be dwindled into half a score of
rapidly dissolving bergs.

My slender repast ended, I pulled the oar out of the crevice, and found
it would make me a good pole to probe my way with and support myself by
up the slope. The boat was now held by the mast, which I shook and found
very firm. I put an empty beer-bottle in my pocket, meaning to see if I
could fill it, if the snow above was sweet enough to be well-tasted, and
then with a final look at the boat I started.

The slope was extremely craggy. Blocks of ice lay about, some on top of
the others, like the stones of which the pyramids are built; the white
glare of the snow caused these stones at a little distance to appear
flat--that is, by merging them into and blending them with the soft
brilliance of the background; and I had sometimes to warily walk fifty
or sixty paces round these blocks to come at a part of the slope that
was smooth.

I speedily found, however, that there was no danger of my being buried
by stepping into a hollow full of snow; for the same hardness was
everywhere, the snow, whether one or twenty feet deep, offering as solid
a surface as the bare ice. This encouraged me to step out, and I began
to move with some spirit; the exercise was as good as a fire, and before
I was half-way up I was as warm as ever I had been in my life.

I had come to a stand to fetch a breath, and was moving on afresh, when,
having taken not half a dozen steps, I spied the figure of a man. He was
in a sitting posture, his back against a rock that had concealed him.
His head was bowed, and his knees drawn up to a level with his chin, and
his naked hands were clasped upon his legs. His attitude was that of a
person lost in thought, very easy and calm.

I stopped as if I had been shot through the heart. Had it been a bear,
or a sea-lion, or any creature which my mind could instantly have
associated with this white and stirless desolation, I might have been
startled indeed; but no such amazement could have possessed me as I now
felt. It never entered into my head to doubt that he was alive, so
natural was his attitude, as of one lost in a mood of tender melancholy.

I stood staring at him, myself motionless, for some minutes, too greatly
astonished and thunder-struck to note more than that he was a man. Then
I looked about me to see if he had companions or for some signs of a
habitation, but the ice was everywhere naked. I fixed my eyes on him
again. His hair was above a foot long, black as ink, and the blacker
maybe for the contrast of the snow. His beard and mustachios, which were
also of this raven hue, fell to his girdle. He wore a great yellow
flapping hat, such as was in fashion among the Spaniards and buccaneers
of the South Sea; but over his ears, for the warmth of the protection,
were squares of flannel, secured by a very fine red silk handkerchief
knotted under his beard, and this, with his hair and pale cheeks and
black shaggy eyebrows, gave him a terrible and ghastly appearance. From
his shoulders hung a rich thick cloak lined with red, and the legs to
the height of the knees were encased in large boots.

I continued surveying him with my heart beating fast. Every instant I
expected to see him turn his head and start to behold me. My emotions
were too tumultuous to analyze, yet I believe I was more frightened than
gladdened by the sight of a fellow-creature, though not long before I
had sighed bitterly for some one to speak to. I looked around again,
prepared to find another one like him taking stock of me from behind a
rock, and then ventured to approach him by a few steps the better to see
him. He had certainly a frightful face. It was not only the length of
his coal-black hair and beard; it was the hue of his skin, a greenish
ashen colour, an unspeakably hideous complexion, sharpened on the one
hand by the red handkerchief over his ears and on the other by the
dazzle of the snow. Then, again, there was the extreme strangeness of
his costume.

I coughed loudly, holding my pole in readiness for whatever might
befall, but he did not stir; I then holloaed, and was answered by the
echoes of my own voice among the rocks. His stillness persuaded me he
was in one of those deep slumbers which fall upon a man in frozen
places, for I could not persuade myself he was dead, so living was his
posture.

This will not do, thought I; so I went close to him and peered into his
face.

His eyes were fixed; they resembled glass painted as eyes, the colours
faded. He had a broad belt round his waist, and the hilt of a kind of
cutlass peeped from under his cloak. Otherwise he was unarmed. I thought
he breathed, and seemed to see a movement in his breast, and I took him
by the shoulder; but in the hurry of my feelings I exerted more strength
than I was sensible of. I pushed him with the violence of sudden
trepidation; my hand slipped off his shoulder, and he fell on his side,
exactly as a statue would, preserving his posture as though, like a
statue, he had been chiselled out of marble or stone.

I started back frightened by his fall, in which my fears found a sort of
life; but it was soon clear to me his rigidity was that of a man frozen
to death. His very hair and beard stood stiff, as before, as though they
were some exquisite counterfeit in ebony. Perfectly satisfied that he
was dead, I stepped round to the other side of him, and set him up as I
had found him. He was as heavy as if he had been alive, and when I put
his back to the rock his posture was exactly as it had been, that of one
deeply meditating.

Who had this man been in life? How had he fallen into this pass? How
long had he been dead there, seated as I saw him?

These were speculations not to be resolved by conjecture. On looking at
the rock against which he leaned and observing its curvature, it seemed
to me that it had formed part of a cave, or of some large, deep hole of
ice; and this I was sure must have been the case, for it is certain
that, had this body remained long unsheltered, it must have been hidden
by the snow.

I concluded then that the unhappy man had been cast away upon this ice
whilst it was under bleaker heights than these parallels, and that he
had crawled into a hollow, and perished in that melancholic sitting
posture. But in what year had his fate come upon him? I had made
several voyages into distant places in my time and seen a great variety
of people; but I had never met any man habited as that body. He had the
appearance of a Spanish or French cut-throat of the middle of last
century, and of earlier times yet; for it may be known to you that the
buccaneers of the Spanish Main and the South Sea were great lovers of
finery; they had a strange theatric taste in their choice of costumes,
which, as you will suppose, they had abundant opportunities for
gratifying out of the many rich and glittering wardrobes that fell into
their hands; and this man, I say, with his large fine hat, handsome
cloak and boots, coupled with the villainous cast of his countenance and
the frightful appearance his long hair gave him, rendered him to my
notions the completest figure that could be imagined of one of those
rogues who earned their living as pirates.

Thinking I might find something on his person to acquaint me with his
story or that would furnish me with some idea of the date of his being
cast away, I pulled his cloak aside and searched his pockets. His legs
were thickly cased in two or three pairs of breeches, the outer pair
being of a dark green cloth. He also wore a handsome red waistcoat,
laced, and a stout coat of a kind of frieze. In his coat pocket I found
a silver tobacco-box, a small glass flask fitted with a silver band and
half full of an amber-coloured liquor, hard froze; and in his waistcoat
pocket a gold watch, shaped like an apple, the back curiously chased and
inlaid with jewels of several kinds, forming a small letter M. The
hands pointed to twenty minutes after three. A key of a strange shape
and a number of seals, trinkets, and the like, were attached to the
watch.

These things, together with a knife, a key, a thick plain silver ring,
and some Spanish pieces in gold and silver were what I found on this
man. There was nothing to tell me who he was nor how long he had been on
the island.

The searching him was the most disagreeable job I ever undertook in my
life. His iron-like rigidity made him seem to resist me, and the swaying
of his back against the rock to the motions of my hand was so full of
life that twice I quitted him, frightened by it. On touching his naked
hand by accident I discovered that the flesh of it moved upon the bones
as you pull a glove off and on. I had had enough of him, and walked away
feeling sick. If he had companions, and they were like him, I did not
want to see them, unless it was that I might satisfy my curiosity as to
the time they had been here. I determined, however, on my way back to
take his cloak, which would make me a comfortable rug in the boat, and
also the watch, flask, and tobacco-box; for if I was drowned they could
but go to the bottom of the sea, which was their certain destination if
I left them in his pockets; and if I came off with them, then the money
they would bring me must somewhat lighten the loss of my clothes and
property in the brig.

I pushed onwards, stepping warily and probing cautiously at every step,
and earnestly peering about me, for after such a sight as that dead man
I was never to know what new wonder I might stumble upon. About a
quarter of a mile on my left--that is, on my left whilst I kept my face
to the slope--there was the appearance of a ravine not discernible from
where the boat lay. When I was within twenty feet of the summit of the
cliff, the acclivity continuing gentle to the very brow, but much
broken, as I have said, I noticed this hollow, and more particularly a
small collection of ice-forms, not nearly so large as the other groups
of this kind, but most dainty and lovely nevertheless. They showed as
the heads of trees might to my ascent, and when I had got a little
higher I observed that they were formed upon the hither side of the
hollow, as though the convulsion which had wrought that chasm had tossed
up those exquisite caprices of ice. However, I was too eager to view the
prospect from the top of the cliff to suffer my admiration to detain me;
in a few minutes I had gained the brow, and, clambering on to a mass of
rock, I sent my gaze around.




CHAPTER VIII.

THE FROZEN SCHOONER.


I found myself on the summit of a kind of table-land; vast bodies of
ice, every block weighing hundreds and perhaps thousands of tons lay
scattered over it; yet for the space of a mile or so the character was
that of flatness. Southwards the range went upwards to a coastal front
of some hundred feet, with a huddle of peaks and strange configurations
behind soaring to an elevation from the sea-line of two or three hundred
feet. Northwards the range sloped gradually, with such a shelving of its
hinder part that I could catch a glimpse of a little space of the blue
sea that way. From this I perceived that whatever thickness and surface
of ice lay southwards, in the north it was attenuated to the shape of a
wedge, so that its extreme breadth where it projected its cape or
extremity would not exceed a musket shot.

A companion might have qualified in my mind something of the sense of
prodigious loneliness and desolation inspired by that huge picture of
dazzling uneven whiteness, blotting out the whole of the south-east
ocean, rolling in hills of blinding brilliance into the blue heavens,
and curving and dying out into an airy film of silvery-azure radiance
leagues away down in the south-west. But to my solitary eye the
spectacle was an amazing and confounding one.

If I had not seen the tract of dark blue water in the north-east, I
might have imagined that this island stretched as far into the east and
north as it did in the south and west. And one thing I quickly enough
understood: that if I wanted to behold the ocean on the east side of the
ice I should have to journey the breadth of the range, which here, where
I was, might mean one or five miles, for the blocks and lumps hid the
view, and how far off the edge of the cliffs on the other side might be
I could not therefore gather. This was not to be dreamt of, and
therefore to this extent my climb had been useless.

Being on the top of the range now, I could plainly hear the noises of
the splitting and internal convulsions of this vast formation. The
sounds are not describable. Sometimes they seemed like the explosions of
guns, sometimes like the growlings and mutterings of huge fierce beasts,
sometimes like smart single echoless blasts of thunder; and sometimes
you heard a singular sort of hissing or snarling, such as iron makes
when speeding over ice, only when this noise happened the volume of it
was so great that the atmosphere trembled upon the ear with it. It was
impossible to fix the direction of these sounds, the island was full of
them; and always sullenly booming upon the breeze was the voice of the
ocean swell bursting in foam against the ice-coast that confronted it.

You may talk of the solitude of a Selkirk, but surely the spirit of
loneliness in him could not rival the unutterable emotion of
solitariness that filled my mind as I sent my gaze over those miles of
frozen stirless whiteness. He had the sight of fair pastures, of trees
making a twinkling twilight on the sward, of grassy savannahs and
pleasant slopes of hills; the air was illuminated by the glorious
plumage of flying birds; the bleat of goats broke the stillness in the
valleys; there was a golden regale for his eye, and his other senses
were gratified with the perfumes of rich flowers and engaging concerts
among the trembling leaves. Above all, there was the soothing warmth of
a delicious climate. But out upon those heaped and spreading plains of
snow nothing stirred, if it were not once that I was startled by a loud
report, and spied a rock about half a mile away slide down the edge of
the flat cliff and tumble into the sea. Nothing stirred, I say; there
was an affrighting solemnity of motionlessness everywhere. The
countenance of this plain glared like a great dead face at the sky;
neither sympathy, nor fancy, no, not the utmost forces of the
imagination, could witness expression in it. Its unmeaningness was
ghastly, and the ghastlier for the greatness of its bald and lifeless
stare.

I turned my eyes seawards; haply it was the whiteness that gave the
ocean the extraordinarily rich dye I found in it. The expanse went in
flowing folds of violet into the nethermost heavens, and though God
knows what extent of horizon I surveyed, the line of it, as clear as
glass, ran without the faintest flaw to amuse my heart with even an
instant's hope.

There was more weight, however, in the wind than I had supposed. It blew
from the west of north, and was an exquisitely frosty wind, despite the
quarter whence it came. It swept in moans among the rocks, and there
were tones in it that recalled the stormy mutterings we had heard in the
blasts which came upon the brig before the storm boiled down upon her.
But my imagination was now so tight-strung as to be unwholesomely and
unnaturally responsive to impulses and influences which at another time
I had not noticed. There were a few heavy clouds in the north-east, so
steam-like that methought they borrowed their complexion from the snow
on the island's cape there. I was pretty sure, however, that there was
wind behind them, for if the roll of the ocean did not signify heavy
weather near to, then what else it betokened I could not imagine.

I cannot express to you how the very soul within me shrank from putting
to sea in the little boat. There was no longer the support of the
excitement and terror of escaping from a sinking vessel. I stood upon an
island as solid as land, and the very sense of security it imparted
rendered the boat an object of terror, and the obligation upon me to
launch into yonder mighty space as frightful as a sentence of death. Yet
I could not but consider that it would be equally shocking to me to be
locked up in this slowly crumbling body of ice--nay, tenfold more
shocking, and that, if I had to choose between the boat and this hideous
solitude and sure starvation, I would cheerfully accept fifty times over
again the perils of a navigation in my tiny ark.

This reflection comforted me somewhat, and whilst I thus mused I
remained standing with my eyes upon the little group of fanciful fanes
and spires of ice on the edge of the abrupt hollow. I had been too
preoccupied to take close notice; on a sudden I started, amazed by an
appearance too exquisitely perfect to be credible. The sun shone with a
fine white frosty brilliance in the north-east; some of these spikes and
figures of ice reflected the radiance in several colours. In places
where they were wind-swept of their snow and showed the naked ice, the
hues were wondrously splendid, and, mingling upon the sight, formed a
kind of airy, rainbow-like veil that complicated the whole congregation
of white shaft and many-tinctured spire, the marble column, the
alabaster steeple into a confused but most surprisingly dainty and
shining scene.

It was whilst looking at this that my eye traced, a little distance
beyond, the form of a ship's spars and rigging. Through the labyrinth of
the ice outlines I clearly made out two masts, with two square yards on
the foremast, the rigging perfect so far as it went, for the figuration
showed no more than half the height of the masts, the lower parts being
apparently hidden behind the edge of the hollow. I have said that this
coast to the north abounded in many groups of beautiful fantastic
shapes, suggesting a great variety of objects, as the forms of clouds
do, but nothing perfect; but here now was something in ice that could
not have been completer, more symmetrical, more faultlessly proportioned
had it been the work of an artist. I walked close to it and a little way
around so as to obtain a clearer view, and then getting a fair sight of
the appearance I halted again, transfixed with amazement.

The fabric appeared as if formed of frosted glass. The masts had a good
rake, and with a seaman's eye I took notice of the furniture, observing
the shrouds, stays, backstays, braces to be perfect. Nay, as though the
spirit artist of this fragile glittering pageant had resolved to omit no
detail to complete the illusion, there stood a vane at the masthead,
shining like a tongue of ice against the soft blue of the sky. Come,
thought I, recovering from my wonder, there is more in this than it is
possible for me to guess by staring from a distance; so, striking my
pole into the snow, I made carefully towards the edge of the hollow.

The gradual unfolding of the picture prepared my mind for what I could
not see till the brink was reached; then, looking down, I beheld a
schooner-rigged vessel lying in a sort of cradle of ice, stern-on to the
sea. A man bulked out with frozen snow, so as to make his shape as great
as a bear, leaned upon the rail with a slight upwards inclination of his
head, as though he were in the act of looking fully up to hail me. His
posture was even more lifelike than that of the man under the rock, but
his garment of snow robbed him of that reality of vitality which had
startled me in the other, and the instant I saw him I knew him to be
dead. He was the only figure visible. The whole body of the vessel was
frosted by the snow into the glassy aspect of the spars and rigging, and
the sunshine striking down made a beautiful prismatic picture of the
silent ship.

She was a very old craft. The snow had moulded itself upon her and
enlarged without spoiling her form. I found her age in the structure of
her bows, the headboards of which curved very low round to the top of
the stem, forming a kind of well there, the after-part of which was
framed by the forecastle bulkhead, after the fashion of ship-building in
vogue in the reign of Anne and the first two Georges. Her topmasts were
standing, but her jibboom was rigged in. I could find no other evidence
of her people having snugged her for these winter quarters, in which she
had been manifestly lying for years and years. I traced the outlines of
six small cannons covered with snow, but resting with clean-sculptured
forms in their white coats; a considerable piece of ordnance aft, and
several petararoes or swivel-pieces upon the after-bulwark rails. Gaffs
and booms were in their places, and the sails furled upon them. The
figuration of the main hatch showed a small square, and there was a
companion or hatch-cover abaft the mainmast. There was no trace of a
boat. She had a flush or level deck from the well in the bows to a
fathom or so past the main-shrouds; it was then broken by a short
poop-deck, which went in a great spring or rise to the stern, that was
after the pink style, very narrow and tall.

Though I write this description coldly, let it not be supposed that I
was not violently agitated and astonished almost into the belief that
what I beheld was a mere vision, a phenomenon. The sight of the body I
examined did not nearly so greatly astound me as the spectacle of this
ice-locked schooner. It was easy to account for the presence of a dead
man. My own situation, indeed, sufficiently solved the riddle of that
corpse. But the ship, perfect in all respects, was like a stroke of
magic. She lay with a slight list or inclination to larboard, but on the
whole tolerably upright, owing to the corpulence of her bilge. The
hollow or ravine that formed her bed went with a sharp incline under
her stern to the sea, which was visible from the top of the cliffs here
through the split in the rocks. The shelving of the ice put the wash of
the ocean at a distance of a few hundred feet from the schooner; but I
calculated that the vessel's actual elevation above the water-line,
supposing you to measure it with a plummet up and down, did not exceed
twenty feet, if so much, the hollow in which she rested being above
twenty feet deep.

It was very evident that the schooner had in years gone by got embayed
in this ice when it was far to the southward, and had in course of time
been built up in it by floating masses. For how old the ice about the
poles may be who can tell? In those sunless worlds the frozen continents
may well possess the antiquity of the land. And who shall name the
monarch who filled the throne of Britain when this vast field broke away
from the main and started on its stealthy navigation sunwards?




CHAPTER IX.

I LOSE MY BOAT.


I lingered, I daresay, above twenty minutes contemplating this singular
crystal fossil of a ship, and considering whether I should go down to
her and ransack her for whatever might answer my turn. But she looked so
darkly secret under her white garb, and there was something so terrible
in the aspect of the motionless snow-clad sentinel who leaned upon the
rail, that my heart failed me, and I very easily persuaded myself to
believe that, first, it would take me longer to penetrate and search her
than it was proper I should be away from the boat; that, second, it was
scarce to be supposed her crew had left any provisions in her, or that,
if stores there were, they would be fit to eat; and that, finally, my
boat was so small it would be rash to put into her any the most trifling
matter that was not essential to the preservation of my life.

So, concluding to have nothing to do with the ghostly sparkling fabric,
I started for the body under the rock, and with some pain and
staggering, the ice being very jagged, lumpish, and deceitful to the
tread, arrived at it.

Nothing but the desire to possess the fine warm cloak could have tempted
me to handle or even to cast my eye upon the dead man again. I found
myself more scared by him now than at first. His attitude was so
lifelike that, though I knew him to be a corpse, had he risen on a
sudden the surprise of it could hardly have shocked me more than the
astonishment his posture raised. As a skeleton he could not have so
chilled and awed me; but so well preserved was his flesh by the cold,
that it was hard to persuade myself he was not breathing, and that,
though he feigned to be gazing downwards, he was not secretly observing
me.

His beard was frozen as hard as a bush, and it crackled unpleasantly to
the movement of my hands, which I was obliged to force under it to
unhook the silver chain that confined the cloak about his neck. I felt
like a thief, and stole a glance over either shoulder as though,
forsooth, some strangely clad companion of his should be creeping upon
me unawares. Then, thought I, since I have the cloak I may as well take
the watch, flask, and tobacco-box, as I had before resolved; and so I
dipped my hand into his pockets, and without another glance at his
fierce still face made for the boat.

I now noticed for the first time, so overwhelmingly had my discoveries
occupied my attention, that the wind had freshened and was blowing
briskly and piercingly. When I had first started upon the ascent of the
slope, the wind had merely wrinkled the swell as the large bodies ran;
but those wrinkles had become little seas, which flashed into foam after
a short race, and the whole surface of the ocean was a brilliant blue
tremble. I came to a halt to view the north-east sky before the brow of
the rocks hid it, and saw that clouds were congregating there, and some
of them blowing up to where the sun hung, these resembling in shape and
colour the compact puff of the first discharge of a cannon before the
smoke spreads on the air. What should I do? I sank into a miserable
perplexity. If it was going to blow what good could attend my departure
from this island? It was an adverse wind, and when it freshened I could
not choose but run before it, and that would drive me clean away from
the direction I required to steer in. Yet if I was to wait upon the
weather, for how long should I be kept a prisoner in this horrid place?
True, a southerly wind might spring up to-morrow, but it might be
otherwise, or come in a hard gale; and if I faltered now I might go on
hesitating, and then my provisions would give out, and God alone knows
how it would end with me. Besides, the presence of the two bodies made
the island fearful to my imagination, and nature clamoured in me to be
gone, a summons my judgment could not resist, for reason often misleads,
but instincts never.

I fell again to my downward march and looked towards my boat--that is to
say, I looked towards the part of the ice where the little haven in
which she lay had been, and I found both boat and haven gone!

I rubbed my eyes and stared again. Tush, thought I, I am deceived by the
ice. I glanced at the slope behind to keep me to my bearings, and once
more sought the haven; but the rock that had formed it was gone, the
blue swell rolled brimming past the line of shore there, and my eye
following the swing of a fold, I saw the boat about three cables length
distant out upon the water, swinging steadily away into the south, and
showing and disappearing with the heave.

The dead man's cloak fell from my arm; I uttered a cry of anguish; I
clasped my hands and lifted them to God, and looked up to Him. I was for
kicking off my boots and plunging into the water, but, mad as I was, I
was not so mad as that; and mad I should have been to attempt it, for I
could not swim twenty strokes, and had I been the stoutest swimmer that
ever breasted the salt spray, the cold must speedily put an end to my
misery.

What was to be done? Nothing! I could only look idly at the receding
boat with reeling brain. The full blast of the wind was upon her, and
helping the driving action of the billows. I perceived that she was
irrecoverable, and yet I stood watching, watching, watching! my head
burning with the surgings of twenty impracticable schemes. I cast myself
down and wept, stood up afresh and looked at the boat, then cried to God
for help and mercy, bringing my hands to my throbbing temples, and in
that posture straining my eyes at the fast vanishing structure. She was
the only hope I had--my sole chance. My little stock of provisions was
in her--oh, what was I to do?

Though I was at some distance from the place where what I have called my
haven had been, there was no need for me to approach it to understand
how my misfortune had come about. It was likely enough that the very
crevice in which I had jammed the mast to secure the boat by was a deep
crack that the increased swell had wholly split, so that the mast had
tumbled when the rock floated away and liberated the boat.

The horror that this white and frightful scene of desolation had at the
beginning filled me with was renewed with such violence when I saw that
my boat was lost, and I was to be a prisoner on the death-haunted waste,
that I fell down in a sort of swoon, like one partly stunned, and had
any person come along and seen me he would have thought me as dead as
the body on the hill or the corpse that kept its dismal look-out from
the deck of the schooner.

My senses presently returning, I got up, and the rock upon which I stood
being level, I fell to pacing it with my hands locked behind me, my head
sunk, lost in thought. The wind was steadily freshening; it split with a
howling noise upon the ice-crags and unequal surfaces, and spun with a
hollow note past my ear; and the thunder of the breakers on the other
side of the island was deepening its tone. The sea was lifting and
whitening; something of mistiness had grown up over the horizon that
made a blue dulness of the junction of the elements there; but though a
few clouds out of the collection of vapour in the north-east had floated
to the zenith and were sailing down the south-west heaven, the azure
remained pure and the sun very frostily white and sparkling.

I am writing a strange story with the utmost candour, and trust that the
reader will not judge me severely for my confession of weakness, or
consider me as wanting in the stuff out of which the hardy seaman is
made for owning to having shed tears and been stunned by the loss of my
little boat and slender stock of food. You will say, "It is not in the
power of the dead to hurt a man; what more pitiful and harmless than a
poor unburied corpse?" I answer, "True," and declare that of the two
bodies, as dead men, I was not afraid; but this mass of frozen solitude
was about them, and they took a frightful character from it; they
communicated an element of death to the desolation of the snow-clad
island; their presence made a principality of it for the souls of dead
sailors, and into their lifelike stillness it put its own supernatural
spirit of loneliness; so that to my imagination, disordered by suffering
and exposure, this melancholy region appeared a scene without parallel
on the face of the globe, a place of doom and madness, as dreadful and
wild as the highest mood of the poet could reach up to.

By this time the boat was out of sight. I looked and looked, but she was
gone. Then came my good angel to my help and put some courage into me.
"After all," thought I, "what do I dread? Death! it can but come to
that. It is not long ago that Captain Rosy cried to me, "_A man can die
but once. He'll not perish the quicker for contemplating his end with a
stout heart._" He that so spoke is dead. The worst is over for him. Were
he a babe resting upon his mother's breast he could not sleep more
soundly, be more tenderly lulled, nor be freer from such anguish as now
afflicts me who cling to life, as if this--this," I cried, looking
around me, "were a paradise of warmth and beauty. I must be a man, ask
God for courage to meet whatever may betide, and stoutly endure what
cannot be evaded."

Do not smile at the simple thoughts of a poor castaway sailor. I hold
them still to be good reasoning, and had my flesh been as strong as my
spirit they had availed, I don't doubt. But I was chilled to the marrow;
the mere knowing that there was nothing to eat sharpened my appetite,
and I felt as if I had not tasted food for a week; and here then were
physical conditions which broke ruinously into philosophy and staggered
religious trust.

My mind went to the schooner, yet I felt an extraordinary recoil within
me when I thought of seeking an asylum in her. I had the figure of her
before my fancy, viewed the form of the man on her deck, and the idea of
penetrating her dark interior and seeking shelter in a fabric that time
and frost and death had wrought into a black mystery was dreadful to me.
Nor was this all. It seemed like the very last expression of despair to
board that stirless frame; to make a dwelling-place, without prospect of
deliverance, in that hollow of ice; to become in one sense as dead as
her lonely mariner, yet preserve all the sensibility of the living to a
condition he was as unconscious of as the ice that enclosed him.

It must be done nevertheless, thought I; I shall certainly perish from
exposure if I linger here; besides, how do I know but that I may
discover in that ship some means of escaping from the island? Assuredly
there was plenty of material in her for the building of a boat, if I
could meet with tools. Or possibly I might find a boat under hatches,
for it was common for vessels of her class and in her time to stow their
pinnaces in the hold, and, when the necessity for using them arose, to
hoist them out and tow them astern.

These reflections somewhat heartened me, and also let me add that the
steady mounting of the wind into a small gale served to reconcile me,
not indeed to the loss of my boat, but to my detention; for though there
might be a miserable languishing end for me here, I could not but
believe that there was certain death, too, out there in that high swell
and in those sharpening peaks of water off whose foaming heads the wind
was blowing the spray. By which I mean the boat could not have plyed in
such a wind; she must have run, and by running have carried me into the
stormier regions of the south, where, even if she had lived, I must
speedily have starved for victuals and perished of cold.

Hope lives like a spark amid the very blackest embers of despondency.
Twenty minutes before I had awakened from a sort of swoon and was
overwhelmed with misery; and now here was I taking a collected view of
my situation, even to the extent of being willing to believe that on the
whole it was perhaps as well that I should have been hindered from
putting to sea in my little eggshell. So at every step we rebel at the
shadowy conducting of the hand of God; yet from every stage we arrive at
we look back and know the road we have travelled to be the right one
though we start afresh mutinously. Lord, what patience hast Thou!

I turned my back upon the clamorous ocean and started to ascend the
slope once more. When I reached the brow of the cliffs I observed that
the clouds had lost their fleeciness and taken a slatish tinge, were
moving fast and crowding up the sky, insomuch that the sun was leaping
from one edge to another and darting a keen and frosty light upon the
scene. The wind was bitterly cold, and screamed shrilly in my ears when
I met the full tide of it. The change was sudden, but it did not
surprise me. I knew these seas, and that our English April is not more
capricious than the weather in them, only that here the sunny smile,
though sparkling, is frostier than the kiss of death, and brief as the
flight of a musket-ball, whilst the frowns are black, savage, and
lasting.

I bore the dead man's cloak on my arm and helped myself along with the
oar, and presently arrived at the brink of the slope in whose hollow lay
the ship as in a cup. The wind made a noisy howling in her rigging, but
the tackling was frozen so iron hard that not a rope stirred, and the
vane at the masthead was as motionless as any of the adjacent steeples
or pillars of ice. My heart was dismayed again by the figure of the man.
He was more dreadful than the other because of the size to which the
frozen snow upon his head, trunk, and limbs had swelled him; and the
half-rise of his face was particularly startling, as if he were in the
very act of running his gaze softly upwards. That he should have died in
that easy leaning posture was strange; however, I supposed, and no doubt
rightly, that he had been seized with a sudden faintness, and had leaned
upon the rail and so expired. The cold would quickly make him rigid and
likewise preserve him, and thus he might have been leaning,
contemplating the ice of the cliffs, for years and years!

A wild and dreadful thing for one in my condition to light on and be
forced to think of.

My heart, as I have said, sank in me again at the sight of him, and
fear and awe and superstition so worked upon my spirits that I stood
irresolute, and would have gone back had there been any place to return
to. I plucked up after a little, and, rolling up the cloak into a
compact bundle, flung it with all my strength to the vessel, and it fell
cleverly just within the rail. Then gripping the oar I started on the
descent.

The depth was not great nor the declivity sharp; but the surface was
formed of blocks of ice, like the collections of big stones you
sometimes encounter on the sides of mountains near the base; and I had
again and again to fetch a compass so as to gain a smaller block down
which to drop, till I was close to the vessel, and here the snow had
piled and frozen into a smooth face.

The ship lay with a list or inclination to larboard. I had come down to
her on her starboard side. She had small channels with long plates, but
her list, on my side, hove them somewhat high, beyond my reach, and I
perceived that to get aboard I must seek an entrance on the larboard
hand. This was not hard to arrive at; indeed, I had but to walk round
her, under her bows. She was so coated with hard snow I could see
nothing of her timbers, and was therefore unable to guess at the
condition of the hull. She had a most absurd swelling bilge, and her
buttocks, viewed on a line with her rudder, doubtless presented the
exact appearance of an apple. She was sunk in snow to some planks above
the garboard-streak, but her lines forward were fine, making her almost
wedge-shaped, though the flair of her bows was great, so that she
swelled up like a balloon to the catheads. She had something of the look
of the barca-longas of half a century ago--that is, half a century ago
from the date of my adventure; but that which, in sober truth, a man
would have taken her to be was a vessel formed of snow, sparred and
rigged with glass-like frosted ice, the artistic caprice of the genius
or spirit of this white and melancholy scene, who, to complete the
mocking illusion, had fashioned the figure of a man to stand on deck
with a human face toughened into an idle eternal contemplation.

On the larboard hand the ice pressed close against the vessel's side,
some pieces rising to the height of her wash-streak. The face of the
hollow was precipitous here, full of cracks and flaws and sharp
projections. Indeed, had the breadth of the island been as it was at the
extremity I might have counted upon the first violent commotion of the
sea snapping this part of the ice, and converting the northern part of
the body into a separate berg.

I climbed without difficulty into the fore-chains, the snow being so
hard that my feet and hands made not the least impression on it, and
somewhat warily--feeling the government of a peculiar awe, mounting into
a sort of terror indeed--stood awhile peering over the rail of the
bulwarks; then entered the ship. I ran my eyes swiftly here and there,
for indeed I did not know what might steal or leap into view. Let it be
remembered that I was a sailor, with the superstitious feelings of my
calling in me, and though I do not know that I actually believed in
ghosts and apparitions and spectrums, yet I felt as if I did;
particularly upon the deck of this silent ship, rendered spirit-like by
the grave of ice in which she lay and by the long years (as I could not
doubt) during which she had thus rested. Hence, when I slipped off the
bulwark on to the deck and viewed the ghastly, white, lonely scene, I
felt for the moment as if this strange discovery of mine was not to be
exhausted of its wonders and terrors by the mere existence of the
ship--in other words, that I must expect something of the supernatural
to enter into this icy sepulchre, and be prepared for sights more
marvellous and terrifying than frozen corpses.

So I stood looking forward and aft, very swiftly, and in a way I dare
say that a spectator would have thought laughable enough; nor was my
imagination soothed by the clear, harping, ringing sounds of the wind
seething through the frozen rigging where the masts rose above the
shelter of the sides of the hollow.

Presently, getting the better of my perturbation, I walked aft, and,
stepping on to the poop-deck, fell to an examination of the companion or
covering of the after-hatch, which, as I have elsewhere said, was
covered with snow.




CHAPTER X.

ANOTHER STARTLING DISCOVERY.


This hatch formed the entrance to the cabin, and there was no other road
to it that I could see. If I wanted to use it I must first scrape away
the snow; but unhappily I had left my knife in the boat, and was without
any instrument that would serve me to scrape with. I thought of breaking
the beer-bottle that was in my pocket and scratching with a piece of the
glass; but before doing this it occurred to me to search the body on the
starboard side.

I approached him as if he were alive and murderously fierce, and I own I
did not like to touch him. He resembled the figure of a giant moulded in
snow. In life he must have been six feet and a half tall. The snow had
bloated him, and though he leaned he stood as high as I, who was of a
tolerable stature. The snow was on his beard and mustaches and on his
hair; but these features were merged and compacted into the snow on his
coat, and as his cap came low and was covered with snow too, he, with
the little fragment of countenance that remained, the flesh whereof had
the colour and toughness of the skin of a drum that has been well
beaten, submitted as terrible an object as mortal sight ever rested on.
I say I did not like to touch him, and one reason was I feared he would
tumble; and though I know not why I should have dreaded this, yet the
apprehension of it so worked in me that for some time it held me idly
staring at him.

But I could not enter the cabin without first scraping the snow from the
companion door; and the cold, after I had stood a few moments inactive,
was so bitter as to set me craving for shelter. So I put my hand upon
the body, and discovered it, as I might have foreseen, frozen to the
hardness of steel. His coat--if I may call that a coat which resembled a
robe of snow--fell to within a few inches of the deck. Steadying the
body with one hand, I heartily tweaked the coat with the other, hoping
thus to rupture the ice upon it; in doing which I slipped and fell on my
back, and in falling gave a convulsive kick which, striking the feet of
the figure, dislodged them from their frozen hold of the deck, and down
it fell with a mighty bang alongside of me, and with a loud crackling
noise, like the rending of a sheet of silk.

I was not hurt, and sprang to my feet with the alacrity of fright, and
looking at the body saw that it had managed by its fall much better than
my hands could have compassed; for the snow shroud was cracked and
crumpled, slabs of it had broken away leaving the cloth of the coat
visible, and what best pleased me was the sight of the end of a hanger
forking out from the skirt of the coat.

Yet to come at it so as to draw the blade from its scabbard required an
intolerable exertion of strength. The clothes on this body were indeed
like a suit of mail. I never could have believed that frost served cloth
so. At last I managed to pull the coat clear of the hilt of the hanger;
the blade was stuck, but after I had tugged a bit it slipped out, and I
found it a good piece of steel.

The corpse was habited in jackboots, a coat of coarse thick cloth lined
with flannel, under this a kind of blouse or doublet of red cloth,
confined by a belt with leathern loops for pistols. His apparel gave me
no clue to the age he belonged to; it was no better, indeed, than a sort
of masquerading attire, as though the fashions of more than one country,
and perhaps of more than one age, had gone to the habiting of him. He
looked a burly, immense creature, as he lay upon the deck in the same
bent attitude in which he had stood at the rail, and so dreadful was his
face, with a singular diabolical expression of leering malice, caused by
the lids of his eyes being half closed, that having taken one peep I had
no mind to repeat it, though I was above ten minutes wrestling with his
cloak and hanger before I had the weapon fairly in my hand.

I walked to the companion and fell to scraping the snow away from it.
'Twas like scratching at mortar between bricks. But I worked hard, and
presently, with the point of the hanger, felt the crevice 'twixt the
door and its jamb, after which it was not long before I had carved the
door out of its plate of ice and snow.

The wind was now blowing a fresh gale, and the howling aloft was
extremely melancholy and dismal. I could not see the ocean, but I heard
it thundering with a hollow roaring note; and the sharp reports and
distant sullen crashing noises, with nearer convulsions within the ice,
were very frequent.

My labour warmed me, but it also increased my hunger. While I hacked and
scraped at the snow I was considering whether I should come across
anything fit to eat in the ship, and if not what I was to do. Here was
a vessel assuredly not less than fifty or sixty years old, and even
supposing she was almost new when she fell in with the ice, the date of
her disaster would still carry her back half a century; so that--and
certainly there was much in the appearance of the body on the rocks to
warrant the conjecture--she would have been thus sepulchred and
fossilized for fifty years!

What, then, in the form of provisions proper for human food, such as
even a famine-driven stomach could deal with, was I likely to find in
her? Would not her crew have eaten her bare, devoured the very heart out
of her, before they perished?

These thoughts weighed heavily in me, but I toiled on nevertheless, and
having cleared the door of the snow that bound it, I prized it apart
with the hanger and then dragged at it; but the snow on the deck would
not let it open far, and as there was room for me to squeeze through, I
did not stop to scrape the obstruction away.

A flight of steps sank into the darkness of the interior, and a cold
strange smell floated up, with something of a dry earthiness of flavour
and a mingling of leather and timber. I fell back a pace to let
something of this smell exhale before I ventured into an atmosphere that
had been hermetically bottled by the ice in that cabin since the hour
when this little door was last closed. Superstition was active in me
again, and when I peered into the blackness at the bottom of the hatch I
felt as might a schoolboy on the threshold of a haunted room in which
he is to be locked up as a punishment.

I put my foot on the ladder and descended very slowly indeed, my
inclination being strong the other way, and I kept on looking downwards
in a state of ridiculous fright as though at any moment I should be
seized by the leg; being in too much confusion of mind to consider that
it was impossible anything living could be below, whilst a ghostly
shadow could not catch hold of me so as to cause me to feel its grasp.
But then if fear could reason, it would cease to be fear.

On reaching the bottom I remained standing close against the ladder,
striving to see into what manner of place I was arrived. The glare of
the whiteness of the decks and rocks hung upon my eyes like a kind of
blindness charged with fires of several colours, and I could not obtain
the faintest glimpse of any part of this interior outside the sphere of
the little square of hazy light which lay upon the deck at the foot of
the steps. The darkness, indeed, was so deep that I concluded this was
no more than a narrow well formed of bulkheads, and that the cabin was
beyond, and led to by a door in the bulkhead.

To test this conjecture I extended my arms in a groping posture and
stepped a pace forward, feeling to right and left, till, having gone
five or six paces from the ladder, my fingers touched something cold,
and feeling it, I passed my hand down what I instantly knew by the
projection of the nose and the roughness of hair on the upper lip to be
a human face!

A little reflection might have prepared me for this, but I had not
reflected, at least in this direction, and was therefore not prepared;
and the horrible thrill of that black chill contact went in an agony
through my nerves, and I burst into a violent perspiration.

I backed away with all my hair astir, and then shot up the ladder as if
the devil had been behind me; and when I reached the deck I was
trembling so violently that I had to lean against the companion lest my
knees should give way. Never in all my time had I received such a fright
as this; but then I had gone to it in a fright, and was exactly in the
state of mind to be terrified out of my senses. My soul had been
rendered sick and weak within me by mental and corporeal suffering; my
loneliness, too, was dreadful, and the wilder and more scaring too for
this my unhappy association with the dead; the shrieking in the rigging
was like the tongue given by endless packs of hunting phantom wolves,
and the growling and cracking noises of the ice in all directions would
have made one coming new to this desolate scene suppose that the island
of ice was full of fierce beasts.

But needs must when Old Nick drives; I had either to find courage to
enter the schooner and search her, and so stand to come across the means
to prolong my life, and perhaps procure my deliverance, or perish of
famine and frost on deck.

The companion door was small, and being scarce more than ajar I was not
surprised that only a very faint light entered by it. If the top were
removed I doubted not I should be able to get a view of the cabin,
enough to show me where the windows or port-holes were. So I went to
work with the hanger again, insensibly obtaining a little stock of
courage from the mere brandishing of it. In half an hour I had chipped
and cut away the ice round the companion, and then found it to be one of
those old-fashioned clumsy hatch-covers formerly used in certain kinds
of Dutch ships--namely, a box with a shoulder-shaped lid. This lid,
though heavy, and fitting with a tongue, I managed to unship, on which
the full square of the hatch lay open to the sky.

The light gave me heart. Once more I descended. After a few moments the
bewildering dazzle of the snow faded off my sight, and I could see very
distinctly.

The cabin was a small room. The forward part lay in shadow, but I could
distinguish the outline of the mainmast amidships of the bulkhead there.
In the centre of this cabin was a small square table supported by iron
pins, that pierced through stanchions in such a manner that the table
could at will be raised to the ceiling, and there left for the
conveniency of space.

At this table, seated upon short quaintly-wrought benches, and
immediately facing each other, were two men. They were incomparably more
lifelike than the frozen figures. The one whose back was upon the
hatchway ladder, being the man whose face I had stroked, sat upright, in
the posture of a person about to start up, both hands upon the rim of
the table, and his countenance raised as if, in a sudden terror and
agony of death, he had darted a look to God. So inimitably expressive of
life was his attitude, that though I knew him to be a frozen body as
perished as if he had died with Adam or Noah, I was sensible of a
breathless wonder in me that the affrighted start with which he seemed
to be rising from the table was not continued--that, in short, he did
not spring to his feet with the cry that you seemed to _hear_ in his
posture.

The other figure lay over the table with his face buried in his arms. He
wore no covering to his head, which was bald, yet his hair on either
side was plentiful and lay upon his arms, and his beard fluffing up
about his buried face gave him an uncommon shaggy appearance. The other
had on a round fur cap with lappets for the ears. His body was muffled
in a thick ash-coloured coat; his hair was also abundant, curling long
and black down his back; his cheeks were smooth manifestly through
nature rather than the razor, and the ends of a small black mustache
were twisted up to his eyes. These were the only occupants of the cabin,
which their presence rendered terribly ghastly and strange.

There was perhaps something in keeping with the icy spell of death upon
this vessel in the figure of the man who was bowed over the table, for
he looked as though he slept; but the other mocked the view with a
_spectrum_ of the fever and passion of life. You would have sworn he
had beheld the skeleton hand of the Shadow reaching out of the dimness
for him; that he had started back with a curse and cry of horror, and
expired in the very agony of his affrighted recoil.

The interior was extremely plain: the bulkheads of a mahogany colour,
the decks bare, and nothing in the form of an ornament saving a silver
crucifix hanging by a nail to the trunk of the mainmast, and a cage with
a frozen bird of gorgeous plumage suspended to the bulkhead near the
hatch. A small lanthorn of an old pattern dangled over the table, and I
noticed that it contained two or three inches of candle. Abaft the
hatchway was a door on the starboard side which I opened, and found a
narrow dark passage. I could not pierce it with my eye beyond a few
feet; but perceiving within this range the outline of a little door, I
concluded that here were the berths in which the master and his mates
slept. There was nothing to be done in the dark, and I bitterly lamented
that I had left my tinder-box and flint in the boat, for then I could
have lighted the candle in the lanthorn.

"Perhaps," thought I, "one of those figures may have a tinder-box upon
him."

Custom was now somewhat hardening me; moreover I was spurred on by
mortal anxiety to discover if there was any kind of food to be met with
in the vessel. So I stepped up to the figure whose face I had touched,
and felt in his pockets; but neither on him nor on the other did I find
what I wanted, though I was not a little astonished to discover in the
pockets of the occupants of so small and humble a ship as this schooner
a fine gold watch as rich as the one I had brought away from the man on
the rocks, and more elegant in shape, a gold snuff-box set with
diamonds, several rings of beauty and value lying loose in the breeches
pocket of the man whose face was hidden, a handful of Spanish pieces in
gold, handkerchiefs of fine silk, and other articles, as if indeed these
fellows had been overhauling a parcel of booty, and then carelessly
returned the contents to their pockets.

But what I needed was the means of obtaining a light, so, after casting
about, I thought I would search the body on deck, and went to it, and to
my great satisfaction discovered what I wanted in the first pocket I
dipped my hand into, though I had to rip open the mouth of it away from
the snow with the hanger.

I returned to the cabin and lighted the candle, and carried the lanthorn
into the black passage or corridor. There were four small doors,
belonging to as many berths; I opened the first, and entered a
compartment that smelt so intolerably stale and fusty that I had to come
into the passage again and fetch a few breaths to humour my nose to the
odour. As in the cabin, however, so here I found this noxiousness of air
was not caused by putrefaction or any tainting qualities of a vegetable
or animal kind, but by the deadness of the pent-up air itself, as the
foulness of bilge-water is owing to its being imprisoned from air in the
bottom of the hold.

I held up the lanthorn and looked about me. A glance or two satisfied me
that I was in a room that had been appropriated to the steward and his
mates. A number of dark objects, which on inspection I found to be hams,
were stowed snugly away in battens under the ceiling or upper-deck; a
cask half full of flour stood in a corner; near it lay a large coarse
sack in which was a quantity of biscuit, a piece of which I bit and
found it as hard as flint and tasteless, but not in the least degree
mouldy. There were four shelves running athwartships full of glass,
knives and forks, dishes, and so forth, some of the glass very choice
and elegant, and many of the dishes and plates also very fine, fit for
the greatest nobleman's table. Under the lower shelf, on the deck, lay a
sack of what I believed to be black stones until, after turning one or
two of them about, it came upon me that they were, or had been, I should
say, potatoes.

Not to tease you with too many particulars under this head, let me
briefly say that in this larder or steward's room I found among other
things several cheeses, a quantity of candles, a great earthenware pot
full of pease, several pounds of tobacco, about thirty lemons, along
with two small casks and three or four jars, manifestly of spirits, but
of what kind I could not tell. I took a stout sharp knife from one of
the shelves, and pulling down one of the hams tried to cut it, but I
might as well have striven to slice a piece of marble. I attempted next
to cut a cheese, but this was frozen as hard as the ham. The lemons,
candles, and tobacco had the same astonishing quality of stoniness, and
nothing yielded to the touch but the flour. I laid hold of one of the
jars, and thought to pull the stopper out, but it was frozen hard in the
hole it fitted, and I was five minutes hammering it loose. When it was
out I inserted a steel--used for the sharpening of knives--and found the
contents solid ice, nor was there the faintest smell to tell me what the
spirit or wine was.

Never before did plenty offer itself in so mocking a shape. It was the
very irony of abundance--substantial ghostliness and a Barmecide's feast
to my aching stomach.

But there was biscuit not unconquerable by teeth used to the fare of the
sea life, and picking up a whole one, I sat me down on the edge of a
cask and fell a-munching. One reflection, however, comforted me, namely,
that this petrifaction by freezing had kept the victuals sweet. I was
sure there was little here that might not be thawed into relishable and
nourishing food and drink by a good fire. The sight of these stores took
such a weight off my mind that no felon reprieved from death could feel
more elated than I. My forebodings had come to nought in this regard,
and here for the moment my grateful spirits were content to stop.




CHAPTER XI.

I MAKE FURTHER DISCOVERIES.


So long as I moved about and worked I did not feel the cold; but if I
stood or sat for a couple of minutes I felt the nip of it in my very
marrow. Yet, fierce as the cold was here, it was impossible it could be
comparable with the rigours of the parts in which this schooner had
originally got locked up in the ice. No doubt if I died on deck my body
would be frozen as stiff as the figure on the rocks; but, though it was
very conceivable that I might perish of cold in the cabin by sitting
still, I was sure the temperature below had not the severity to stonify
me to the granite of the men at the table.

Still, though a greater degree of cold--cold as killing as if the world
had fallen sunless--did unquestionably exist in those latitudes whence
this ice with the schooner in its hug had floated, it was so bitterly
bleak in this interior that 'twas scarce imaginable it could be colder
elsewhere; and as I rose from the cask shuddering to the heart with the
frosty motionless atmosphere, my mind naturally went to the
consideration of a fire by which I might sit and toast myself.

I put a bunch of candles in my pocket--they were as hard as a parcel of
marline-spikes--and took the lanthorn into the passage and inspected the
next room. Here was a cot hung up by hooks, and a large black chest
stood in cleats upon the deck; some clothes dangled from pins in the
bulkhead, and upon a kind of tray fixed upon short legs and serving as a
shelf were a miscellaneous bundle of boots, laced waistcoats,
three-corner hats, a couple of swords, three or four pistols, and other
objects not very readily distinguishable by the candle-light. There was
a port which I tried to open, but found it so hard frozen I should need
a handspike to start it. There were three cabins besides this; the last
cabin, that is the one in the stern, being the biggest of the lot. Each
had its cot, and each also had its own special muddle and litter of
boxes, clothes, firearms, swords, and the like.

Indeed, by this time I was beginning to see how it was. The suspicion
that the watches and jewellery I had discovered on the bodies of the men
had excited was now confirmed, and I was satisfied that this schooner
had been a pirate or buccaneer, of what nationality I could not yet
divine--methought Spanish from the costume of the first figure I had
encountered; and I was also convinced by the brief glance I directed at
the things in the cabin, particularly the wearing apparel, and the make
and appearance of the firearms, that she must have been in this position
for upwards of fifty years.

The thought awed me greatly: _twenty years before I was born_ those two
men were sitting dead in the cabin!--he on deck was keeping his blind
and silent look-out; he on the rocks with his hands locked upon his
knees sat sunk in blank and frozen contemplation!

Every cabin had its port, and there were ports in the vessel's side
opposite; but on reflection I considered that the cabin would be the
warmer for their remaining closed, and so I came away and entered the
great cabin afresh, bent on exploring the forward part.

I must tell you that the mainmast, piercing the upper deck, came down
close against the bulkhead that formed the forward wall of the cabin,
and on approaching this partition, the daylight being broad enough now
that the hatch lay open on top, I remarked a sliding door on the
larboard side of the mast. I put my shoulder to it and very easily ran
it along its grooves, and then found myself in the way of a direct
communication with all the fore portion of the schooner. The arrangement
indeed was so odd that I suspected a piratical device in this uncommon
method of opening out at will the whole range of deck. The air here was
as vile as in the cabins, and I had to wait a bit.

On entering I discovered a little compartment with racks on either hand
filled with small-arms. I afterwards counted a hundred and thirteen
muskets, blunderbusses, and fusils, all of an antique kind, whilst the
sides of the vessel were hung with pistols great and little,
boarding-pikes, cutlasses, hangers, and other sorts of sword. This
armoury was a sight to set me walking very cautiously, for it was not
likely that powder should be wanting in a ship thus equipped; and where
was it stowed?

There was another sliding door in the forward partition; it stood open,
and I passed through it into what I immediately saw was the cook-house.
I turned the lanthorn about, and discovered every convenience for
dressing food. The furnaces were of brick and the oven was a great
one--great, I mean, for the size of the vessel. There were pots, pans,
and kettles in plenty, a dresser with drawers, dishes of tin and
earthenware, a Dutch clock--in short, such an equipment of kitchen
furniture as you would not expect to find in the galley of an Indiaman
built to carry two or three hundred passengers. About half a chaldron of
small coal lay heaped in a wooden angular fence fitted to the ship's
side, for the sight of which I thanked God. I held the lanthorn to the
furnace, and observed a crooked chimney rising to the deck and passing
through it. The mouth or head of it was no doubt covered by the snow,
for I had not noticed any such object in the survey I had taken of the
vessel above. Strange, I thought, that these men should have frozen to
death with the material in the ship for keeping a fire going. But then
my whole discovery I regarded as one of those secrets of the deep which
defy the utmost imagination and experience of man to explain them.
Enough that here was a schooner which had been interred in a sepulchre
of ice, as I might rationally conclude, for near half a century, that
there were dead men in her who looked to have been frozen to death, that
she was apparently stored with miscellaneous booty, that she was
powerfully armed for a craft of her size, and had manifestly gone
crowded with men. All this was plain, and I say it was enough for me. If
she had papers they were to be met with presently; otherwise, conjecture
would be mere imbecility in the face of those white and frost-bound
countenances and iron silent lips.

I thrust back another sliding door and entered the ship's forecastle.
The ceiling, as I choose to call the upper deck, was lined with
hammocks, and the floor was covered with chests, bedding, clothes, and I
know not what else. The ringing of the wind on high did not disturb the
stillness, and I cannot convey the impression produced on my mind by
this extraordinary scene of confusion beheld amid the silence of that
tomblike interior. I stood in the doorway, not having the courage to
venture further. For all I knew many of those hammocks might be
tenanted; for as this kind of bed expresses by its curvature the rounded
shape of a seaman, whether it be empty or not, so it is impossible by
merely looking to know whether it is occupied or vacant. The dismalness
of the prospect was of course vastly exaggerated by the feeble light of
the candle, which, swaying in my hand, flung a swarming of shadows upon
the scene, through which the hammocks glimmered wan and melancholy.

I came away in a fright, sliding the door to in my hurry with a bang
that fetched a groaning echo out of the hold. If this ship were haunted,
the forecastle would be the abode of the spirits!

Before I could make a fire the chimney must be cleared. Among the
furniture in the arms-room were a number of spade-headed spears; the
spade as wide as the length of a man's thumb, and about a foot long,
mounted on light thin wood. Armed with one of these weapons, the like of
which is to be met with among certain South American tribes, I passed
into the cabin to proceed on deck; but though I knew the two figures
were there, the coming upon them afresh struck me with as much
astonishment and alarm as if I had not before seen them. The man
starting from the table confronted me on this entrance, and I stopped
dead to that astounding living posture of terror, even recoiling, as
though he were alive indeed, and was jumping up from the table in his
amazement at my apparition.

The brilliance of the snow was very striking after the dusk of the
interiors I had been penetrating. The glare seemed like a blaze of white
sunshine; yet it was the dazzle of the ice and nothing more for the sun
was hidden; the fairness of the morning was passed; the sky was
lead-coloured down to the ocean line, with a quantity of smoke-brown
scud flying along it. The change had been rapid, as it always is
hereabouts. The wind screamed with a piercing whistling sound through
the frozen rigging, splitting in wails and bounding in a roar upon the
adamantine peaks and rocks; the cracking of the ice was loud,
continuous, and mighty startling; and these sounds, combined with the
thundering of the sea and the fierce hissing of its rushing yeast, gave
the weather the character of a storm, though as yet it was no more than
a fresh gale.

However, though it was frightful to be alone in this frozen vault, with
no other society than that of the dead, not even a seafowl to put life
into the scene, I could not but feel that, be my prospects what they
might, for the moment I was safe--that is to say, I was immeasurably
securer than ever I could have been in the boat, which, when I had
emerged into this stormy sound and realized the sea that was running
outside, I instantly thought of with a shudder. Had the rock, I mused,
not fallen and liberated the boat, where should I be now? Perhaps
floating, a corpse, fathoms deep under water, or, if alive, then flying
before this gale into the south, ever widening the distance betwixt me
and all chance of my deliverance, and every hour gauging more deeply the
horrible cold of the pole. Indeed I began to understand that I had been
mercifully diverted from courting a hideous fate, and my spirits rose
with the emotion of gratitude and hope that attends upon preservation.

I speedily spied the chimney, which showed a head of two feet above the
deck, and made short work of the snow that was frozen in it, as nothing
could have been fitter to cut ice with than the spade-shaped weapon I
carried. This done, I returned to the cook-room, and with a butcher's
axe that hung against the bulkhead I knocked away one of the boards that
confined the coal, split it into small pieces, and in a short time had
kindled a good fire. One does not need the experience of being cast away
upon an iceberg to understand the comfort of a fire. I had a mind to be
prodigal, and threw a good deal of coals into the furnace, and presently
had a noble blaze. The heat was exquisite. I pulled a little bench,
after the pattern of those on which the men sat in the cabin, to the
fire, and, with outstretched legs and arms, thawed out of me the frost
that had lain taut in my flesh ever since the wreck of the _Laughing
Mary_. When I was thoroughly warm and comforted I took the lanthorn and
went aft to the steward's room, and brought thence a cheese, a ham, some
biscuit, and one of the jars of spirits, all which I carried to the
cook-room, and placed the whole of them in the oven. I was extremely
hungry and thirsty, and the warmth and cheerfulness of the fire set me
yearning for a hot meal. But how was I to make a bowl without fresh
water? I went on deck and scratched up some snow, but the salt in it
gave it a sickly taste, and I was not only certain it would spoil and
make disgusting whatever I mixed it with or cooked in it, but it stood
as a drink to disorder my stomach and bring on an illness. So, thought I
to myself, there must be fresh water about--casks enough in the hold, I
dare say; but the hold was not to be entered and explored without labour
and difficulty, and I was weary and famished, and in no temper for hard
work.

In all ships it is the custom to carry one or more casks called
scuttlebutts on deck, into which fresh water is pumped for the use of
the crew. I stepped along looking earnestly at the several shapes of
guns, coils of rigging, hatchways, and the like, upon which the snow lay
thick and solid, sometimes preserving the mould of the object it
covered, sometimes distorting and exaggerating it into an unrecognizable
outline, but perceived nothing that answered to the shape of a cask. At
last I came to the well in the head, passed the forecastle deck, and on
looking down spied among other shapes three bulged and bulky forms. I
seemed by instinct to know that these were the scuttlebutts and went
for the chopper, with which I returned and got into this hollow, that
was four or five feet deep. The snow had the hardness of iron; it took
me a quarter of an hour of severe labour to make sure of the character
of the bulky thing I wrought at, and then it proved to be a cask.
Whatever might be its contents it was not empty, but I was pretty nigh
spent by the time I had knocked off the iron bands and beaten out staves
enough to enable me to get at the frozen body within. There were
three-quarters of a cask full. It was sparkling clear ice, and chipping
off a piece and sucking it, I found it to be very sweet fresh water.
Thus was my labour rewarded.

I cut off as much as, when dissolved, would make a couple of gallons,
but stayed a minute to regain my breath and take a view of this well or
hollow before going aft. It was formed of the great open head-timbers of
the schooner curving up to the stem, and by the forecastle deck ending
like a cuddy front. I scraped at this front and removed enough snow to
exhibit a portion of a window. It was by this window I supposed that the
forecastle was lighted. Out of this well forked the bowsprit, with the
spritsail yard braced fore and aft. The whole fabric close to looked
more like glass than at a distance, owing to the million crystalline
sparkles of the ice-like snow that coated the structure from the vane at
the masthead to the keel.

Well, I clambered on to the forecastle deck and returned to the
cook-room with my piece of ice, struck as I went along by the sudden
comfortable quality of life the gushing of the black smoke out of the
chimney put into the ship, and how, indeed, it seemed to soften as if by
magic the savage wildness and haggard austerity and gale-swept
loneliness of the white rocks and peaks. It was extremely disagreeable
and disconcerting to me to have to pass the ghastly occupants of the
cabin every time I went in and out; and I made up my mind to get them on
deck when I felt equal to the work, and cover them up there. The
slanting posture of the one was a sort of fierce rebuke; the sleeping
attitude of the other was a dark and sullen enjoinment of silence. I
never passed them without a quick beat of the heart and shortened
breathing; and the more I looked at them the keener became the
superstitious alarm they excited.

The fire burned brightly, and its ruddy glow was sweet as human
companionship. I put the ice into a saucepan and set it upon the fire,
and then pulling the cheese and ham out of the oven found them warm and
thawed. On smelling to the mouth of the jar I discovered its contents to
be brandy.[1] Only about an inch deep of it was melted. I poured this
into a pannikin and took a sup, and a finer drop of spirits I never
swallowed in all my life; its elegant perfume proved it amazingly choice
and old. I fetched a lemon and some sugar and speedily prepared a small
smoking bowl of punch. The ham cut readily; I fried a couple of stout
rashers, and fell to the heartiest and most delicious repast I ever sat
down to. At any time there is something fragrant and appetizing in the
smell of fried ham; conceive then the relish that the appetite of a
starved, half-frozen, shipwrecked man would find in it! The cheese was
extremely good, and was as sound as if it had been made a week ago.
Indeed, the preservative virtues of the cold struck me with
astonishment. Here was I making a fine meal off stores which in all
probability had lain in this ship fifty years, and they ate as choicely
as like food of a similar quality ashore. Possibly some of these days
science may devise a means for keeping the stores of a ship frozen,
which would be as great a blessing as could befall the mariner, and a
sure remedy for the scurvy, for then as much fresh meat might be carried
as salt, besides other articles of a perishable kind.

[Footnote 1: I can give the reader no better idea of the cold of the
latitudes in which this schooner had lain, than by speaking of the
brandy as being frozen. This may have happened through its having lost
twenty or thirty per cent. of its Strength.--P. R.]




CHAPTER XII.

A LONELY NIGHT


I had a pipe of my own in my pocket; I fetched a small block of the
black tobacco that was in the pantry, and, with some trouble, for it was
as hard and dry as glass, chipped off a bowlful and fell a-puffing with
all the satisfaction of a hardened lover of tobacco who has long been
denied his favourite relish. The punch diffused a pleasing glow through
my frame, the tobacco was lulling, the heat of the fire very soothing,
the hearty meal I had eaten had also marvellously invigorated me, so
that I found my mind in a posture to justly and rationally consider my
condition, and to reason out such probabilities as seemed to be attached
to it.

First of all I reflected that by the usual operation of natural laws
this vast seat of "thrilling and thick-ribbed ice" in which the schooner
lay bound was steadily travelling to the northward, where in due course
it would dissolve, though that would not happen yet. But as it advanced
so would it carry me nearer to the pathways of ships using these seas,
and any day might disclose a sail near enough to observe such signals of
smoke or flag as I might best contrive. But supposing no opportunity of
this kind to offer, then I ought to be able to find in the vessel
materials fit for the construction of a boat, if, indeed, I met not with
a pinnace of her own stowed under the main-hatch, for there was
certainly no boat on deck. Nay, my meditations even carried me further:
this was the winter season of the southern hemisphere, but presently the
sun would be coming my way, whilst the ice, on the other hand, floated
towards him; if by the wreck and dissolution of the island the schooner
was not crushed, she must be released, in which case, providing she was
tight--and my brief inspection of her bottom showed nothing wrong with
her that was visible through the shroud of snow--I should have a stout
ship under me in which I would be able to lie hove to, or even make
shift to sail her if the breeze came from the south, and thus take my
chance of being sighted and discovered.

Much, I had almost said everything, depended on the quantity of
provisions I should find in here and particularly on the stock of coal,
for I feared I must perish if I had not a fire. But there was the hold
to be explored yet; the navigation of these waters must have been
anticipated by the men of the schooner, who were sure to make handsome
provision for the cold--and the surer if, as I fancied, they were
Spaniards. Certainly they might have exhausted their stock of coal, but
I could not persuade myself of this, since the heap in the corner of the
cook-room somehow or other was suggestive of a store behind.

I knew not yet whether more of the crew lay in the forecastle, but so
far I had encountered four men only. If these were all, then I had a
right to believe, grounding my fancy on the absence of boats, that most
of the company had quitted the ship, and this they would have done
early--a supposition that promised me a fair discovery of stores. Herein
lay my hope; if I could prolong my life for three or four months, then,
if the ice was not all gone, it would have advanced far north, serving
me as a ship and putting me in the way of delivering myself, either by
the sight of a sail, or by the schooner floating free, or by my
construction of a boat.

Thus I sat musing, as I venture to think, in a clearheaded way. Yet all
the same I could not glance around without feeling as if I was
bewitched. The red shining of the furnace ruddily gilded the
cook-house; through the after-sliding door went the passage to the cabin
in blackness; the storming of the wind was subdued into a strange
moaning and complaining; often through the body of the ship came the
thrill of a sudden explosion; and haunting all was the sense of the dead
men just without, the frozen desolation of the island, the mighty world
of waters in which it lay. No! you can think of no isolation comparable
to this; and I tremble as I review it, for under the thought of the
enormous loneliness of that time my spirit must ever sink and break
down.

It was melancholy to be without time, so I pulled out the gold watch I
had taken from the man on the rocks and wound it up, and guessing at the
hour, set the hands at half-past four. The watch ticked bravely. It was
indeed a noble piece of mechanism, very costly and glorious with its
jewels, and more than a hint as to the character of this schooner; and
had there been nothing else to judge by I should still have sworn to her
by this watch.

My pipe being emptied, I threw some more coals into the furnace, and
putting a candle in the lanthorn went aft to take another view of the
little cabins, in one of which I resolved to sleep, for though the
cook-room would have served me best whilst the fire burned, I reckoned
upon it making a colder habitation when the furnace was black than those
small compartments in the stern. The cold on deck gushed down so
bitingly through the open companion-hatch that I was fain to close it.
I mounted the steps, and with much ado shipped the cover and shut the
door, by which of course the great cabin, as I call the room in which
the two men were, was plunged in darkness; but the cold was not
tolerable, and the parcels of candles in the larder rendered me
indifferent to the gloom.

On entering the passage in which were the doors of the berths, I noticed
an object that had before escaped my observation--I mean a small
trap-hatch, no bigger than a manhole, with a ring for lifting it, midway
down the lane. I suspected this to be the entrance to the lazarette, and
putting both hands to the ring pulled the hatch up. I sniffed
cautiously, fearing foul air, and then sinking the lanthorn by the
length of my arm I peered down, and observed the outlines of casks,
bales, cases of white wood, chests, and so forth. I dropped through the
hole on to a cask, which left me my head and shoulders above the deck,
and then with the utmost caution stooped and threw the lanthorn light
around me. But the casks were not powder-barrels, which perhaps a little
reflection might have led me to suspect, since it was not to be supposed
that any man would stow his powder in the lazarette.

As I was in the way of settling my misgivings touching the stock of food
in the schooner, I resolved to push through with this business at once,
and fetching the chopper went to work upon these barrels and chests; and
very briefly I will tell you what I found. First, I dealt with a tierce
that proved full of salt beef. There was a whole row of these tierces,
and one sufficed to express the nature of the rest; there were upwards
of thirty barrels of pork; one canvas bale I ripped open was full of
hams, and of these bales I counted half a score. The white cases held
biscuit. There were several sacks of pease, a number of barrels of
flour, cases of candles, cheeses, a quantity of tobacco, not to mention
a variety of jars of several shapes, some of which I afterwards found to
contain marmalade and succadoes of different kinds. On knocking the head
off one cask I found it held a frozen body, that by the light of the
lanthorn looked as black as ink; I chipped off a bit, sucked it, and
found it wine.

I was so transported by the sight of this wonderful plenty that I fell
upon my knees in an outburst of gratitude and gave hearty thanks to God
for His mercy. There was no further need for me to dismally wonder
whether I was to starve or no; supposing the provisions sweet, here was
food enough to last me three or four years. I was so overjoyed and
withal curious that I forgot all about the time, and flourishing the
chopper made the round of the lazarette, sampling its freight by
individual instances, so that by the time I was tired I had enlarged the
list I have given, by discoveries of brandy, beer, oatmeal, oil, lemons,
tongues, vinegar, rum, and eight or ten other matters, all stowed very
bunglingly, and in so many different kinds of casks, cases, jars, and
other vessels as disposed me to believe that several piratical
rummagings must have gone to the creation of this handsome and
plentiful stock of good things.

Well, thought I, even if there be no more coal in the ship than what
lies in the cook-house, enough fuel is here in the shape of casks,
boxes, and the like to thaw me provisions for six months, besides what I
may come across in the hold, along with the hammocks, bedding, boxes,
and so forth in the forecastle, all which would be good to feed my fire
with. This was a most comforting reflection, and I recollect springing
out through the lazarette hatch with as spirited a caper as ever I had
cut at any time in my life.

I replaced the hatch-cover, and having resolved upon the aftmost of the
four cabins as my bedroom, entered it to see what kind of accommodation
it would yield me. I hung up the lanthorn and looked into the cot, that
was slung athwartships, and spied a couple of rugs, or blankets, which I
pulled out, having no fancy to lie under them. The deck was like an old
clothes' shop, or the wardrobe of a travelling troop of actors. From the
confusion in this and the ajoining cabins, I concluded that there had
been a rush at the last, a wild overhauling and flinging about of
clothes for articles of more value hidden amongst them. But just as
likely as not the disorder merely indicated the slovenly indifference of
plunderers to the fruits of a pillage that had overstocked them.

The first garment I picked up was a cloak of a sort of silk material,
richly furred and lined; all the buttons but one had been cut off, and
that which remained was silver. I spread it in the cot, as it was a
soft thing to lie upon. Then I picked up a coat of the fashion you will
see in Hogarth's engravings; the coat collar a broad fold, and the cuffs
to the elbow. This was as good as a rug, and I put it into the cot with
the other. I inspected others of the articles on the deck, and among
them recollect a gold-laced waistcoat of green velvet, two or three
pairs of high-heeled shoes, a woman's yellow sacque, several frizzled
wigs, silk stockings, pumps--in fine the contents of the trunks of some
dandy passengers, long since gathered to their forefathers no doubt,
even if the gentlemen of this schooner had not then and there walked
them overboard or split their windpipes. But, to be honest, I cannot
remember a third of what lay tumbled upon the deck or hung against the
bulkhead. So far as my knowledge of costume went, every article pointed
to the date which I had fixed upon for this vessel.

I swept the huddle of things with my foot into a corner, and lifting the
lids of the boxes saw more clothes, some books, a collection of
small-arms, a couple of quadrants, and sundry rolls of paper which
proved to be charts of the islands of the Antilles and the western South
American coast, very ill-digested. There were no papers of any kind to
determine the vessel's character, nor journal to acquaint me with her
story.

I was tired in my limbs rather than sleepy, and went to the cook-room to
warm myself at the fire and get me some supper, meaning to sit there
till the fire died out and then go to rest; but when I put my knife to
the ham I found it as hard frozen as when I had first met with it; so
with the cheese; and this though there had been a fire burning for
hours! I put the things into the oven to thaw as before, and sitting
down fell very pensive over this severity of cold, which had power to
freeze within a yard or two of the furnace. To be sure the fire by my
absence had shrunk, and the sliding door being open admitted the cold of
the cabin; but the consideration was, how was I to resist the killing
enfoldment of this atmosphere? I had slept in the boat, it is true, and
was none the worse; and now I was under shelter, with the heat of a
plentiful bellyful of meat and liquor to warm me; but if wine and ham
and cheese froze in an air in which a fire had been burning, why not I
in my sleep, when there was no fire, and life beat weakly, as it does in
slumber? Those figures in the cabin were dismal warnings and assurances;
they had been men perhaps stouter and heartier in their day than ever I
was, but they had been frozen into stony images nevertheless, under
cover too, with the materials to make a fire, and as much strong waters
in their lazarette as would serve their schooner to float in.

Well, thought I, after a spell of melancholy thinking, if I _am_ to
perish of cold, there's an end; it is preordained, and it is as easy as
drowning, anyhow, and better than hanging; and with that I pulled out
the ham and found it soft enough to cut, finding philosophy (which, as
the French cynic says, triumphs over past and future ills) not so hard
because somehow I did not myself then particularly feel the cold--I
mean, I was not certainly suffering here from that pain of frost which I
had felt in the open boat.

Having heartily supped, I brewed a pint of punch, and, charging my pipe,
sat smoking with my feet against the furnace. It was after eight o'clock
by the watch I was wearing. I knew by the humming noise that it was
blowing a gale of wind outside, and from time to time the decks rattled
to a heavy discharge of hail. All sounds were naturally much subdued to
my ear by the ship lying in a hollow, and I being in her with the
hatches closed; but this very faintness of uproar formed of itself a
quality of mystery very pat to the ghastliness of my surroundings. It
was like the notes of an elfin storm of necromantic imagination; it was
hollow, weak, and terrifying; and it and the thunder of the seas
commingling, together with the rumbling blasts and shocks of splitting
ice, disjointed as by an earthquake, loaded the inward silence with
unearthly tones, which my lonely and quickened imagination readily
furnished with syllables. The lanthorn diffused but a small light, and
the flickering of the fire made a movement of shadows about me. I was
separated from the great cabin where the figures were by the little
arms-room only, and the passage to it ran there in blackness.

It strangely and importunately entered my head to conceive, that though
those men were frozen and stirless they were not dead as corpses are,
but as a stream whose current, checked by ice, will flow when the ice
is melted. Might not life in them be suspended by the cold, not ended?
There is vitality in the seed though it lies a dead thing in the hand.
Those men are corpses to my eye; but said I to myself, they may have the
principles of life in them, which heat might call into being.
Putrefaction is a natural law, but it is balked by frost, and just as
decay is hindered by cold, might not the property of life be left
unaffected in a body, though it should be numbed in a marble form for
fifty years?

This was a terrible fancy to possess a man situated as I was, and it so
worked in me that again and again I caught myself looking first forward,
then aft, as though, Heaven help me! my secret instincts foreboded that
at any moment I should behold some form from the forecastle, or one of
those figures in the cabin, stalking in, and coming to my side and
silently seating himself. I pshaw'd and pish'd, and querulously asked of
myself what manner of English sailor was I to suffer such womanly
terrors to visit me; but it would not do; I could not smoke; a coldness
of the heart fell upon me, and set me trembling above any sort of
shivers which the frost of the air had chased through me; and presently
a hollow creak sounding out of the hold, caused by some movement of the
bed of ice on which the vessel lay, I was seized with a panic terror and
sprang to my feet, and, lanthorn in hand, made for the companion-ladder,
with a prayer in me for the sight of a star!

I durst not look at the figures, but, setting the light down at the
foot of the ladder, squeezed through the companion-door on to the deck.
My fear was a fever in its way, and I did not feel the cold. There was
no star to be seen, but the whiteness of the ice was flung out in a wild
strange glare by the blackness of the sky, and made a light of its own.
It was the most savage and terrible picture of solitude the invention of
man could reach to, yet I blessed it for the relief it gave to my
ghost-enkindled imagination. No squall was then passing; the rocks rose
up on either hand in a ghastly glimmer to the ebony of the heavens; the
gale swept overhead in a wild, mad blending of whistlings, roarings, and
cryings in many keys, falling on a sudden into a doleful wailing, then
rising in a breath to the full fury of its concert; the sea thundered
like the cannonading of an electric storm, and you would have said that
the rending and crackling noises of the ice were responses to the
crashing blows of the balls of shadow-hidden ordnance. But the scene,
the uproar, the voices of the wind were real--a better cordial to my
spirits than a gallon of the mellowest vintage below; and presently,
when the cold was beginning to pierce me, my courage was so much the
better for this excursion into the hoarse and black and gleaming
realities of the night, that my heart beat at its usual measure as I
passed through the hatch and went again to the cook-room.

I was, however, sure that if I sat here long, listening and thinking,
fear would return. A small fire still burned; I put a saucepan on it,
and popped in a piece of the fresh-water ice, but on handling the
brandy I found it hard set. The heat of the oven was not sufficiently
great to thaw me a dram; so to save further trouble in this way I took
the chopper and at one blow split open the jar, and then there lay
before me the solid body of the brandy, from which I chipped off as much
as I needed, and thus procured a hot and animating draught.

Raking out the fire, I picked up the lanthorn and was about to go, then
halted, considering whether I should not stow the frozen provisions
away. It was a natural thought, seeing how precious food was to me. But,
alas! it mattered not where they lay; they were as secure here as if
they were snugly hidden in the bottom of the hold. It was the white
realm of death; if ever a rat had crawled in this ship, it was, in its
hiding-place, as stiff and idle as the frozen vessel. So I let the lump
of brandy, the ice, ham, and so forth, rest where they were, and went to
the cabin I had chosen, involuntarily peeping at the figures as I
passed, and hurrying the faster because of the grim and terrifying
liveliness put into the man who sat starting from the table by the swing
of the lanthorn in my hand.

I shut the door and hung the lanthorn near the cot, having the flint and
box in my pocket. There was indeed an abundance of candles in the
vessel; nevertheless, it was my business to husband them with the utmost
niggardliness. How long I was to be imprisoned here, if indeed I was
ever to be delivered, Providence alone knew; and to run short of
candles would add to the terrors of my existence, by forcing me either
to open the hatches and ports for light, and so filling the ship with
the deadly air outside, or living in darkness. There were a cloak and a
coat in the cot, but they would not suffice. The fine cloak I had taken
from the man on the rocks was on deck, and till now I had forgotten it;
there was, however, plenty of apparel in the corner to serve as wraps,
and having chosen enough to smother me I vaulted into the cot, and so
covered myself that the clothes were above the level of the sides of the
cot.

I left the lanthorn burning whilst I made sure my bed was all right, and
lay musing, feeling extremely melancholy; the hardest part was the
thought of those two men watching in the cabin. The most fantastic
alarms possessed me. Suppose their ghosts came to the ship at midnight,
and, entering their bodies, quickened them into walking? Suppose they
were in the condition of cataleptics, sensible of what passed around
them, but paralyzed to the motionlessness and seeming insensibility of
death? Then the very garments under which I lay were of a proper kind to
keep a man in my situation quaking. My imagination went to work to tell
me to whom they had belonged, the bloody ends their owners had met at
the hands of the miscreants who despoiled them. I caught myself
listening--and there was enough to hear, too, what with the subdued
roaring of the wind, the splintering of ice, the occasional
creaking--not unlike a heavy booted tread--of the fabric of the
schooner--to the blasts of the gale against her masts, or to a movement
in the bed on which she reposed.

But plain sense came to my rescue at last. I resolved to have no more of
these night fears, so, blowing out the candle, I put my head on the coat
that formed my pillow, resolutely kept my eyes shut, and after awhile
fell asleep.




CHAPTER XIII.

I EXPLORE THE HOLD AND FORECASTLE.


It was pitch dark when I awoke, and I conceived it must be the middle of
the night, but to my astonishment, on lighting the lanthorn and looking
at the watch, which I had taken the precaution to wind up overnight, I
saw it wanted but twenty minutes of nine o'clock, so that I had passed
through twelve hours of solid sleep. However, it was only needful to
recollect where I was, and to cast a glance at the closed door and port,
to understand why it was dark. I had slept fairly warm, and awoke with
no sensation of cramp; but the keen air had caused the steam of my
breath to freeze upon my mouth in such a manner that, when feeling the
sticky inconvenience I put my finger to it, it fell like a little mask;
and I likewise felt the pain of cold in my face to such an extent that
had I been blistered there my cheeks, nose, and brow could not have
smarted more. This resolved me henceforward to wrap up my head and face
before going to rest.

I opened the door and passed out, and observed an amazing difference
between the temperature of the air in which I had been sleeping and that
of the atmosphere in the passage--a happy discovery, for it served to
assure me that, if I was careful to lie under plenty of coverings and to
keep the outer air excluded, the heat of my body would raise the
temperature of the little cabin; nor, providing the compartment was
ventilated throughout the day, was there anything to be feared from the
vitiation of the air by my own breathing.

My first business was to light the fire and set my breakfast to thaw,
and boil me a kettle of water; and some time after I went on deck to
view the weather and to revolve in my mind the routine of the day. On
opening the door of the companion-hatch I was nearly blinded by the
glorious brilliance of the sunshine on the snow; after the blackness of
the cabin it was like looking at the sun himself, and I had to stand a
full three minutes with my hand upon my eyes before I could accustom my
sight to the dazzling glare. It was fine weather again; the sky over the
glass-like masts of the schooner was a clear dark blue, with a few light
clouds blowing over it from the southward. The wind had shifted at last;
but, pure as the heavens were, the breeze was piping briskly with the
weight and song of a small gale, and its fangs of frost, even in the
comparative quiet of the sheltered deck, bit with a fierceness that had
not been observable yesterday.

The moment I had the body of the vessel in my sight I perceived that
she had changed her position since my last view of her. Her bows were
more raised, and she lay over further by the depth of a plank. I stared
earnestly at the rocky slopes on either hand, but could not have sworn
their figuration was changed. An eager hope shot into my mind, but it
quickly faded into an emotion of apprehension. It was conceivable indeed
that on a sudden some early day I might find the schooner liberated and
afloat, and this was the first inspiriting flush; but then came the fear
that the disruption and volcanic throes of the ice might crush her, a
fear rational enough when I saw the height she lay above the sea, and
how by pressure those slopes which formed her cradle might be jammed and
welded together. The change of her posture then fell upon me with a kind
of shock, and determined me, when I had broken my fast, to search her
hold for a boat or for materials for constructing some ark by which I
might float out to sea, should the ice grow menacing and force me from
the schooner.

I made a plentiful meal, feeling the need of abundance of food in such a
temperature as this, and heartily grateful that there was no need why I
should stint myself. The having to pass the two figures every time I
went on deck and returned was extremely disagreeable and unnerving, and
I considered that, after searching the hold, the next duty I owed myself
was to remove them on deck, and even over the side, if possible, for one
place below was as sure to keep them haunting me as another, and they
would be as much with me in the forecastle as if I stowed them away in
the cabin adjoining mine.

Whilst I ate, my mind was so busy with considerations of the change in
the ship's posture during the night that it ended in determining me to
take a survey of her from the outside, and then climb the cliffs and
look around before I fell to any other work. I fetched the cloak I had
stripped the body on the rocks of and thawed and warmed it, and put it
on, and a noble covering it was, thick, soft, and clinging. Then, arming
myself with a boarding-pike to serve as a pole, I dropped into the
fore-chains and thence stepped on to the ice, and very slowly and
carefully walked round the schooner, examining her closely, and boring
into the snow upon her side with my pike wherever I suspected a hole or
indent. I could find nothing wrong with her in this way, though what a
thaw might reveal I could not know. Her rudder hung frozen upon its
pintles, and looked as it should. Some little distance abaft her rudder,
where the hollow or chasm sloped to the sea, was a great split three or
four feet wide; this had certainly happened in the night, and I must
have slept as sound as the dead not to hear the noise of it. Such a rent
as this sufficed to account for the subsidence of the after-part of the
schooner and her further inclination to larboard. Indeed, the hollow was
now coming to resemble the "ways" on which ships are launched; and you
would have conceived by the appearance of it that if it should slope a
little more yet, off would slide the schooner for the sea, and in the
right posture too--that is, stern on. But I prayed with all my might
and main for anything but this. It would have been very well had the
hollow gone in a gentle declivity to the wash of the sea, to the water
itself, in short; but it terminated at the edge of a cliff, not very
high indeed, but high enough to warrant the prompt foundering of any
vessel that should launch herself off it. Happily the keel was too
solidly frozen into the ice to render a passage of this description
possible; and the conclusion I arrived at after careful inspection was
that the sole chance that could offer for the delivery of the vessel to
her proper element was in the cracking up and disruption of the bed on
which she lay.

Having ended my survey of the schooner, I addressed myself to the ascent
of the starboard slope, and scaled it much more easily than I had
yesterday managed to make my way over the rocks. I climbed to the
highest block that was nearest me on the summit, and here I had a very
large view of the scene. Much to my astonishment, the first objects
which encountered my eye were four icebergs, floating detached but close
together at a distance of about three miles on my side of the north-east
trend of the island. I counted them and made them four. They swam low,
and it was very easily seen they had formed part of the coast there,
though, as the form of the ice that way was not familiar to me, and as,
moreover, the glare rendered the prospect very deceptive, I could not
distinguish where the ruptures were. But one change in the face of this
white country I did note, and that was the entire disappearance of two
of the most beautiful of the little crystal cities that adorned the
northward range. The gale of the night had wrought havoc, and the
unsubstantiality of this dazzling kingdom of ice was made startlingly
apparent by the evanishment of the delicate glassy architecture, and by
those four white hills floating like ships under their courses and
topsails out upon the flashing hurry and leaping blue and yeast of the
water.

It was blowing harder than I had imagined. The wind was extraordinarily
sharp, and the full current of it not long to be endured on my
unsheltered eminence. The sea, swelling up from the south, ran high, and
was full of seething and tumbling noises, and of the roaring of the
breakers, dashing themselves against the ice in prodigious bodies of
foam, which so boiled along the foot of the cliffs that their fronts,
rising out of it, might have passed for the spume itself freezing as it
leapt into a solid mass of glorious brilliance. The eye never explored a
scene more full of the splendour of light and of vivid colour. Here and
there the rocks shone prismatically as though some flying rainbow had
shivered itself upon them and lay broken. The blue of the sea and sky
was deepened into an exquisite perfection of liquid tint by the blinding
whiteness of the ice, which in exchange was sharpened into a wonderful
effulgence by the hues above and around it. Again and again, along the
whole range, far as the sight could explore, the spray rose in stately
clouds of silver, which were scattered by the wind in meteoric
scintillations of surpassing beauty, flashing through the fires of the
sun like millions of little blazing stars. There were twenty different
dyes of light in the collection of spires, fanes, and pillars near the
schooner, whose masts, yards, and gear mingled their own particular
radiance with that of these dainty figures; and wherever I bent my gaze
I found so much of sun-tinctured loveliness, and the wild white graces
of ice-forms and the dazzle of snow-surfaces softening into an azure
gleaming in the far blue distances, that but for the piercing wind I
could have spent the whole morning in taking into my mind the marvellous
spirit of this ocean picture, forgetful of my melancholy condition in
the intoxication of this draught of free and spacious beauty.

Satisfied as to the state of the ice and the posture of the schooner,
viewed from without, I sent a slow and piercing gaze along the ocean
line, and then returned to the ship. The strong wind, the dance of the
sea, the grandeur of the great tract of whiteness, vitalized by the
flying of violet cloud-shadows along it, had fortified my spirits, and
being free (for a while) of all superstitious dread, I determined to
begin by exploring the forecastle and ascertaining if more bodies were
in the schooner than those two in the cabin and the giant form on deck.
I threw some coal on the fire, and placed an ox-tongue along with the
cheese and a lump of the frozen wine in a pannikin in the oven (for I
had a mind to taste the vessel's stores, and thought the tongue would
make an agreeable change), and then putting a candle into the lanthorn
walked very bravely to the forecastle and entered it.

I was prepared for the scene of confusion, but I must say it staggered
me afresh with something of the force of the first impression. Sailors'
chests lay open in all directions, and their contents covered the decks.
There was the clearest evidence here that the majority of the crew had
quitted the vessel in a violent hurry, turning out their boxes to cram
their money and jewellery into their pockets, and heedlessly flinging
down their own and the clothes which had fallen to their share. This I
had every right to suppose from the character of the muddle on the
floor; for, passing the light over a part of it, I witnessed a great
variety of attire of a kind which certainly no sailor in any age ever
went to sea with; not so fine perhaps as that which lay in the cabins,
but very good nevertheless, particularly the linen. I saw several wigs,
beavers of the kind that was formerly carried under the arm, women's
silk shoes, petticoats, pieces of lace, silk, and so forth; all directly
assuring me that what I viewed was the contents of passengers' luggage,
together with consignments and such freight as the pirates would seize
and divide, every man filling his chest. Perhaps there was less on the
whole than I supposed, the litter looking great by reason of everything
having been torn open and flung down loose.

I trod upon these heaps with little concern; they appealed to me only as
a provision for my fire should I be disappointed in my search for coal.
The hammocks obliged me to move with a stooped head; it was only
necessary to feel them with my hand--that is, to test their weight by
pushing them in the middle--to know if they were tenanted. Some were
heavier than the others, but all of them much lighter than they would
have been had they contained human bodies; and by this rapid method I
satisfied my mind that there were no dead men here as fully as if I had
looked into each separate hammock.

This discovery was exceedingly comforting, for, though I do not know
that I should have meddled with any frozen man had I found him in this
place, his being in the forecastle would have rendered me constantly
uneasy, and it must have come to my either closing this part of the ship
and shrinking from it as from a spectre-ridden gloom, or to my disposing
of the bodies by dragging them on deck--a dismal and hateful job. There
were no ports, but a hatch overhead. Wanting light--the candle making
the darkness but little more than visible--I fetched from the arms-room
a handspike that lay in a corner, and, mounting a chest, struck at the
hatch so heartily that the ice cracked all around it and the cover rose.
I pushed it off, and down rolled the sunshine in splendour.

Everything was plain now. In many places, glittering among the clothes,
were gold and silver coins, a few silver ornaments such as buckles, and
watches--things not missed by the pirates in the transport of their
flight. In kicking a coat aside I discovered a couple of silver
crucifixes bound together, and close by were a silver goblet and the
hilt of a sword broken short off for the sake of the metal it was of.
Nothing ruder than this interior is imaginable. The men must have been
mighty put to it for room. There was a window in the head, but the snow
veiled it. Maybe the rogues messed together aft, and only used this
forecastle to lie in. Right under the hatch, where the light was
strongest, was a dead rat. I stooped to pick it up, meaning to fling it
on to the deck, but its tail broke off at the rump, like a pipe-stem.

Close against the after bulkhead that separated the forecastle from the
cook-room was a little hatch. There was a quantity of wearing-apparel
upon it, and I should have missed it but for catching sight of some
three inches of the dark line the cover made in the deck. On clearing
away the clothes I perceived a ring similar to that in the lazarette
hatch, and it rose to my first drag and left me the hold yawning black
below. I peered down and observed a stout stanchion traversed by iron
pins for the hands and feet. The atmosphere was nasty, and to give it
time to clear I went to the cook-house and warmed myself before the
fire.

The fresh air blowing down the forecastle hatch speedily sweetened the
hold. I lowered the lanthorn and followed, and found myself on top of
some rum or spirit casks, which on my hitting them returned to me a
solid note. There was a forepeak forward in the bows, and the casks
went stowed to the bulkhead of it; the top of this bulkhead was open
four feet from the upper deck, and on holding the lanthorn over and
putting my head through I saw a quantity of coals. If the forepeak went
as low as the vessel's floor, then I calculated there would not be less
than fifteen tons of coal in it. This was a noble discovery to fall
upon, and it made me feel so happy that I do not know that the assurance
of my being immediately rescued from this island could have given a
lighter pulse to my heart.

The candle yielded a very small light, and it was difficult to see above
a yard or so ahead or around. I turned my face aft, and crawled over the
casks and came to under the main-hatch, where lay coils of hawser,
buckets, blocks, and the like, but there was no pinnace, though here she
had been stowed, as a sailor would have promptly seen. A little way
beyond, under the great cabin, was the powder-magazine, a small
bulkheaded compartment with a little door, atop of which was a small
bull's-eye lamp. I peered warily enough, you will suppose, into this
place, and made out twelve barrels of powder. I heartily wished them
overboard; and yet, after all, they were not very much more dangerous
than the wine and spirits in the lazarette and fore-hold.

The run remained to be explored--the after part, I mean, under the
lazarette deck to the rudder-post--but I had seen enough; crawling about
that black interior was cold, lonesome, melancholy work, and it was
rendered peculiarly arduous by the obligation of caution imposed by my
having to bear a light amid a freight mainly formed of explosives and
combustible matter. I had found plenty of coal, and that sufficed. So I
returned by the same road I had entered, and sliding to the bulkhead
door to keep the cold of the forecastle out of the cook-room, I stirred
the fire into a blaze and sat down before it to rest and think.




CHAPTER XIV.

AN EXTRAORDINARY OCCURRENCE.


After the many great mercies which had been vouchsafed me, such as my
being the only one saved of all the crew of the _Laughing Mary_, my
deliverance from the dangers of an open boat, my meeting with this
schooner and discovering within her everything needful for the support
of life, I should have been guilty of the basest ingratitude had I
repined because there was no boat in the ship. Yet for all that I could
not but see it was a matter that concerned me very closely. Should the
vessel be crushed, what was to become of me? It was easy to propose to
myself the making of a raft or the like of such a fabric; but everything
was so hard frozen that, being single-handed, it was next to impossible
I should be able to put together such a contrivance as would be fit to
live in the smallest sea-way.

However, I was resolved not to make myself melancholy with these
considerations. The good fortune that had attended me so far might
accompany me to the end, and maybe I was the fitter just then to take a
hopeful view of my condition because of the cheerfulness awakened in me
by the noble show of coal in the forepeak. At twelve o'clock by the
watch in my pocket I got my dinner. I had a mind for a lighter drink
than brandy, and went to the lazarette and cut out a block of the wine
in the cask I had opened; I also knocked out the head of a tierce of
beef, designing a hearty regale for supper. You smile, perhaps, that I
should talk so much of my eating; but if on shore, amid the security of
existence there, it is the one great business of life, that is to say,
the one great business of life after love, what must it be to a poor
shipwrecked wretch like me, who had nothing else to think of but his
food?

Yet I could not help smiling when I considered how I was carrying my
drink about in my fingers. What the wine was I do not know; it looked
like claret but was somewhat sweet, and was the most generous wine I
ever tasted, spite of my having to drink it warm, for if I let the cup
out of my hand to cool, lo! when I looked it was ice!

Whilst I sat smoking my pipe it entered my head to presently turn those
two silent gentlemen in the cabin out of it. It was a task from which I
shrank, but it must be done. To be candid, I dreaded the effects of
their dismal companionship on my spirits. I had been in the schooner two
days only; I had been heartened by the plenty I had met with, a sound
night's rest, the fire, and my escape from the fate that had certainly
overtaken me had I gone away in the boat. But being of a superstitious
nature and never a lover of solitude, I easily guessed that in a few
days the weight of my loneliness would come to press very heavily upon
me, and that if I suffered those figures to keep the cabin I should find
myself lying under a kind of horror which might end in breaking down my
manhood and perhaps in unsettling my reason.

But how was I to dispose of them? I meditated this matter whilst I
smoked. First I thought I would drag them to the fissure or rent in the
ice just beyond the stern of the schooner and tumble them into it. But
even then they would still be with me, so to speak--I mean, they would
be neighbours though out of sight; and my eagerness was to get them away
from this island altogether, which was only to be done by casting them
into the sea. Why, though I did not mention the matter in its place, I
was as much haunted last night by the man on deck and the meditating
figure on the rocks as by the fellows in the cabin; and, laugh as you
may at my weakness, I do candidly own my feeling was, if I did not
contrive that the sea should carry those bodies away, I should come
before long to think of them as alive, no matter in what part of the
island I might bear them to, and at night-time start at every sound,
hear their voices in the wind, see their shapes in the darkness, and
even by day dread to step upon the cliffs.

That such fancies should possess me already shows how necessary it was I
should lose no time to provide against their growth; so I settled my
scheme thus: first I was to haul the figures as best I could on to the
deck; then, there being three, to get them over the side, and afterwards
by degrees to transport the four of them to some steep whence they would
slide of themselves into the ocean. Yet so much did I dread the
undertaking, and abhor the thought of the tedious time I foresaw it
would occupy me, that I cannot imagine any other sort of painful and
distressing work that would not have seemed actually agreeable as
compared with this.

My pipe being smoked out, I stepped into the cabin, and ascending the
ladder threw off the companion-cover and opened the doors, and then went
to the man that had his back to the steps, but my courage failed me; he
was so lifelike, there was so wild and fierce an earnestness in the
expression of his face, so inimitable a picture of horror in his
starting posture, that my hands fell to my side and I could not lay hold
of him. I will not stop to analyse my fear or ask why, since I knew that
this man was dead, he should have terrified me as surely no living man
could; I can only repeat that the prospect of touching him, and laying
him upon the deck and then dragging him up the ladder, was indescribably
fearful to me, and I turned away, shaking as if I had the ague.

But it had to be done, nevertheless; and after a great deal of reasoning
and self-reproach I seized him on a sudden, and, kicking away the bench,
let him fall to the deck. He was frozen as hard as stone and fell like
stone, and I looked to see him break, as a statue might that falls
lumpishly. His arms remaining raised put him into an attitude of
entreaty to me to leave him in peace; but I had somewhat mastered
myself, and the hurry and tumult of my spirits were a kind of hot
temper; so catching him by the collar, I dragged him to the foot of the
companion-steps, and then with infinite labour and a number of sickening
pauses hauled him up the ladder to the deck.

I let him lie and returned, weary and out of breath. He had been a very
fine man in life, of beauty too, as was to be seen in the shape of his
features and the particular elegance of his chin, despite the distortion
of his last unspeakable dismay; and with his clothes I guessed his
weight came hard upon two hundred pounds, no mean burden to haul up a
ladder.

I went to the cook-house for a dram and to rest myself, and then came
back to the cabin and looked at the other man. His posture has been
already described. He made a very burly figure in his coat, and if his
weight did not exceed the other's it was not likely to be less. Nothing
of his head was visible but the baldness on the top and the growth of
hair that ringed it, and the fluffing up of his beard about his arms in
which his face was sunk. I touched his beard with a shuddering finger,
and noted that the frost had made every hair of it as stiff as wire. It
would not do to stand idly contemplating him, for already there was
slowly creeping into me a dread of seeing his face; so I took hold of
him and swayed him from the table, and he fell upon the deck sideways,
preserving his posture, so that his face remained hidden. I dragged him
a little way, but he was so heavy and his attitude rendered him as a
burthen so surprisingly cumbrous that I was sure I could never of my own
strength haul him up the ladder. Yet neither was it tolerable that he
should be there. I thought of contriving a tackle called a whip, and
making one end fast to him and taking the other end to the little
capstan on the main deck; but on inspecting the capstan I found that the
frost had rendered it immovable, added to which there was nothing
whatever to be done with the iron-hard gear, and therefore I had to give
that plan up.

Then, thought I, if I was to put him before the fire, he might presently
thaw into some sort of suppleness, and so prove not harder than the
other to get on deck. I liked the idea, and without more ado dragged him
laboriously into the cook-room and laid him close to the furnace,
throwing in a little pile of coal to make the fire roar.

I then went on deck, and easily enough, the deck being slippery, got my
first man to where the huge fellow was that had sentinelled the vessel
when I first looked down upon her; but when I viewed the slopes, broken
into rocks, which I, though unburdened, had found hard enough to ascend,
I was perfectly certain I should never be able to transport the bodies
to the top of the cliffs, I must either let them fall into the great
split astern of the ship, or lower them over the side and leave the
hollow in which the schooner lay to be their tomb.

I paced about, not greatly noticing the cold in the little valley, and
relishing the brisk exercise, scheming to convey the bodies to the sea,
for I was passionately in earnest in wishing the four of them away; but
to no purpose. I had but my arms, and scheme as I would, I could not
make them stronger than they were. It was still blowing a fresh bright
gale from the south; the sea, as might be known by the noise of it, beat
very heavily against the cliffs of ice; and the extremity of the hollow,
where it opened to the ocean but without showing it, was again and again
veiled by a vast cloud of spray, the rain of which I could hear ringing
like volleys of shot as the wind smote it and drove it with incredible
force against the rocks past the brow of the north slope. I thought to
myself there should be power in this wind to quicken the sliding of even
so mighty a berg as this island northwards. Every day should steal it by
something, however inconsiderable, nearer to warmer regions, and no
gale, nay, no gentle swell even, but must help to crack and loosen it
into pieces. "Oh," cried I, "for the power to rupture this bed, that the
schooner might slip into the sea! Think of her running north before such
a gale as this, steadily bearing me towards a more temperate clime, and
into the road of ships!" I clenched my hands with a wild yearning in my
heart. Should I ever behold my country again? should I ever meet a
living man? The white and frozen steeps glared a bald reply; and I heard
nothing but menace in the shrill noises of the wind and the deep and
thunderous roaring of the ocean.

It was mighty comforting, however, on returning to the cabin to find it
vacant, to be freed from the scare of the sight of the two silent
figures. I drew my breath more easily and stopped to glance around. It
was the barest cabin I was ever in--uncarpeted, with no other seats than
the little benches. I looked at the crucifix, and guessed from the sight
of it that, whatever might be the vessel's nation, she had not been
sailed by Englishmen. I peeped into poor Polly's cage--if a parrot it
was--and the sight of the rich plumage carried my imagination to skies
of brass, to the mysterious green solitude of tropic forests, to islands
fringed with silver surf, in whose sunny flashing sported nude girls of
faultless forms, showing their teeth of pearl in merry laughter, winding
amorously with the blue billow, and filling the aromatic breeze with the
melody of their language of the sun. Ha! thought I, sailors see some
changes in their time; and with a hearty sigh I stepped into the
cook-room.

I started, stopped, and fell back a pace with a cry. When I had put the
figure before the fire he was in the same posture in which he had sat at
the table, that is, leaning forward with his face hid in his arms; I had
laid him on his side, with his face to the furnace, and in that attitude
you would have supposed him a man sound asleep with his arms over his
face to shield it from the heat. But now, to my unspeakable
astonishment, he lay on his back, with his arms sunk to his side and
resting on the deck, and his face upturned.

I stared at him from the door as if he was the Fiend himself. I could
scarce credit my senses, and my consternation was so great that I cannot
conceive of any man ever having laboured under a greater fright. I
faintly ejaculated 'Good God!' several times, and could hardly prevent
my legs from running away with me. You see, it was certain he must have
moved of his own accord to get upon his back. I was prepared for the
fire to thaw him into limberness, and had I found him straightened
somewhat I should not have been surprised. But there was no power in
fire to stretch him to his full length and turn him over on his back.
What living or ghostly hand had done this thing? Did spirits walk this
schooner after all? Had I missed of something more terrible than any
number of dead men in searching the vessel?

I had made a great fire and its light was strong, and there was also the
light of the lanthorn; but the furnace flames played very lively,
completely overmastering the steady illumination of the candle, and the
man's figure was all a-twitch with moving shadows, and a hundred
fantastic shades seemed to steal out of the side and bulkheads and
disappear upon my terrified gaze. Then, thought I, suppose after all
that the man should be alive, the vitality in him set flowing by the
heat? I minded myself of my own simile of the current checked by frost,
yet retaining unimpaired the principle of motion; and getting my
agitation under some small control, I approached the body on tiptoe and
held the lanthorn to its face.

He looked a man of sixty years of age; his beard was grey and very
long, and lay upon his breast like a cloud of smoke. His eyes were
closed; the brows shaggy, and the dark scar of a sword-wound ran across
his forehead from the corner of the left eye to the top of the right
brow. His nose was long and hooked, but the repose in his countenance,
backed by the vague character of the light in which I inspected him,
left his face almost expressionless. I was too much alarmed to put my
ear to his mouth to mark if he breathed, if indeed the noise of the
burning fire would have permitted me to distinguish his respiration. I
drew back from him, and put down the lanthorn and watched him. Thought
I, it will not do to believe there is anything supernatural here. I can
swear there is naught living in this ship, and am I to suppose, assuming
she is haunted, that a ghost, which I have always read and heard of as
an essence, has in its shadowy being such quality of _muscle_ as would
enable it to turn that heavy man over from his side on to his back? No,
no, thought I! depend upon it, either he is alive and may presently come
to himself, or else in some wonderful way the fire in thawing him has so
wrought in his frozen fibres as to cause him to turn.

Presently his left leg, that was slightly bent towards the furnace,
stretched itself out to its full length, and my ear caught a faint
sound, as of a weak and melancholy sigh. Gracious heaven, thought I, he
_is_ alive! and with less of terror than of profound awe, now that I saw
there was nothing of a ghostly or preternatural character in this
business, I approached and bent over him. His eyes were still shut, and
I could not hear that he breathed; there was not the faintest motion of
respiration in his breast nor stir in the hair, that was now soft, about
his mouth. Yet, so far as the light would suffer me to judge, there was
a complexion in his face such as could only come with flowing blood,
however languid its circulation, and putting this and the sigh and the
movement of the leg together, I felt convinced that the man was alive,
and forthwith fell to work, very full of awe and amazement to be sure,
to help nature that was struggling in him.

My first step was to heat some brandy, and whilst this was doing I
pulled open his coat and freed his neck, fetching a coat from the cabin
to serve as a pillow for his head. I next removed his boots and laid
bare his feet (which were encased in no less than four pairs of thick
woollen stockings, so that I thought when I came to the third pair I
should find his legs made of stockings), and after bathing his feet in
hot water, of which there was a kettleful, I rubbed them with hot brandy
as hard as I could chafe. I then dealt with his hands in the like
manner, having once been shipmate with a seaman who told me he had seen
a sailor brought to by severe rubbing of his extremities after he had
been carried below supposed to be frozen to death, and continued this
exercise till I could rub no longer. Next I opened his lips and, finding
he wanted some of his front teeth, I very easily poured a dram of brandy
into his mouth. Though I preserved my astonishment all this while, I
soon discovered myself working with enthusiasm, with a most passionate
longing indeed to recover the man, not only because it pleased me to
think of my being an instrument under God of calling a human being, so
to speak, out of his grave, but because I yearned for a companion, some
one to address, to lighten the hideous solitude of my condition and to
assist me in planning our deliverance.

I built up a great fire, and with much trouble, for he was very heavy,
disposed him in such a manner before it that the heat was reflected all
over the front of him from his head to his feet. I likewise continued to
chafe his extremities, remitting this work only to rest, and finding
that the brandy had stolen down his throat, I poured another dram in and
then another, till I think he had swallowed a pint. This went on for an
hour, during which time he never exhibited the least signs of life; but
on a sudden he sighed deep, a tremor ran through him, he sighed again
and partly raised his right hand, which fell to the deck with a blow;
his lips twitched, and a small convulsion of his face compelled the
features into the similitude of a grin that instantly faded; then he
fetched a succession of sighs and opened his eyes full upon me.

I was warm enough with my work, but when I observed him looking at me I
turned of a death-like cold, and felt the dew of an intolerable emotion
wet in the palms of my hands. There was no speculation in his stare at
first; his eyes lay as coldly upon me as those of a fish; but as life
quickened in him so his understanding awoke; he slightly knitted his
brows, and very slowly rolled his gaze off me to the furnace and so over
as much of the cook-room as was before him. He then started as if to sit
up, but fell back with a slight groan and looked at me again.

"What is this?" said he in French, in a very hollow feeble voice.

I knew enough of his language to enable me to know he spoke in French,
but that was all. I could not speak a syllable of that tongue.

"You'll be feeling better presently; you must not expect your strength
to come in a minute," said I, taking my chance of his understanding me,
and speaking that he might not think me a ghost, for I doubt not I was
as white as one; since, to be plain, the mere talking to a figure that I
had got to consider as sheerly dead as anybody in a graveyard was
alarming enough, and then again there was the sound of my own voice,
which I had not exerted in speech for ages, as it seemed to me.

He faintly nodded his head, by which I perceived he understood me, and
said very faintly in English, but with a true French accent, "This is a
hard bed, sir."

"I'll speedily mend that," said I, and at once fetched a mattress from
the cabin next mine; this I placed beside him, and dragged him on to it,
he very weakly assisting. I then brought clothes and rugs to cover him
with, and made him a high pillow, and as he lay close to the furnace he
could not have been snugger had he had a wife to tuck him up in his own
bed.

I was very much excited; my former terrors had vanished, but my awe
continued great, for I felt as if I had wrought a miracle, and I
trembled as a man would who surveys some prodigy of his own creation. It
was yet to be learnt how long he had been in this condition; but I was
perfectly sure he had formed one of the schooner's people, and as I had
guessed her to have been here for upwards of fifty years, the notion of
that man having lain torpid for half a century held me under a perpetual
spell of astonishment; but there was no more horror in me nor fright. He
followed me about with his eyes but did not offer to speak; perhaps he
could not. I put a lump of ice into the kettle, and when the water
boiled made him a pint of steaming brandy punch, which I held to his
lips in a pannikin whilst I supported his back with my knee; he supped
it slowly and painfully but with unmistakable relish, and fetched a sigh
of contentment as he lay back. But he would need something more
sustaining than brandy and water; and as I guessed his stomach, after so
prodigious a fast, would be too weak to support such solids as beef or
pork or bacon, I mused a little, turning over in my mind the contents of
the larder (as I call it), all which time he eyed me with bewilderment
growing in his face; and I then thought I could not do better than
manufacture him a broth of oatmeal, wine, bruised biscuit, and a piece
of tongue minced very small.

This did not take me long in doing, the tongue being near the furnace
and soft enough for the knife, and there was nothing to melt but the
wine. When the broth was ready I kneeled as before and fed him. He ate
greedily, and when the broth was gone looked as if he would have been
glad for more.

"Now, sir," says I, "sleep if you can;" with which he turned his head
and in a few minutes was sound asleep, breathing regularly and deeply.




CHAPTER XV.

THE PIRATE'S STORY.


It was now time to think of myself. The watch showed the hour to be
after six. Whilst my supper was preparing I went on deck to close the
hatches to keep the cold out of the ship, and found the weather changed,
the wind having shifted directly into the west, whence it was blowing
with a good deal of violence upon the ice, ringing over the peaks and
among the rocks with a singular clanking noise in its crying, as though
it brought with it the echo of thousands of bells pealing in some great
city behind the sea. It also swept up the gorge that went from our
hollow to the edge of the cliff in a noisy fierce hooting, and this
blast was very freely charged with the spray of the breakers which
boiled along the island. The sky was overcast with flying clouds of the
true Cape Horn colour and appearance.

I closed the fore-scuttle, but on stepping aft came to the two bodies,
the sight of which brought me to a stand. Since there was life in one,
thought I, life may be in these, and I felt as if it would be like
murdering them to leave them here for the night. But, said I to myself,
after all, these men are certainly insensible if they be not dead; the
cold that freezes on deck cannot be different from the cold that froze
them below; they'll not be better off in the cabin than here. It will be
all the same to them, and to-morrow I shall perhaps have the Frenchman's
help to carry them to the furnace and discover if the vital spark is
still in them.

To be candid, I was the more easily persuaded to leave them to their
deck lodging by the very grim, malignant, and savage appearance of the
great figure that had leaned against the rail. Indeed, I did not at all
like the notion of such company in the cabin through the long night.
Added to this, his bulk was such that, without assistance, I could only
have moved him as you move a cask, by rolling it; and though this might
have answered to convey him to the hatch, I stood to break his arms and
legs off, and perhaps his head, so brittle was he with frost, by letting
his own weight trundle him down the ladder.

So I left them to lie and came away, flinging a last look round, and
then closing the companion-door upon me. The Frenchman, as I may call
him, was sleeping very heavily and snoring loudly.

I got my supper, and whilst I ate surveyed the mound of clothes he made
on the deck--a motley heap indeed, with the colours and the finery of
the lace and buttons of the coats I had piled upon him--and fell into
some startling considerations of him. Was it possible, I asked myself,
that he could have lain in his frozen stupor for fifty years? But why
not? for suppose he had been on this ice but a year only, nay, six
months--an absurdity in the face of the manifest age of the ship and her
furniture--would not six months of lifelessness followed by a
resurrection be as marvellous as fifty years? Had he the same aspect
when the swoon of the ice seized him as he has now? I answered yes, for
the current of life having been frozen, his appearance would remain as
it was.

I lighted my pipe and sat smoking, thinking he would presently awake;
but his slumber was as deep as the stillness I had thawed him out of had
been, and he lay so motionless that, but for his snoring and harsh
breathing, I should have believed him lapsed into his former state.

At eight o'clock the fire was very low. Nature was working out her own
way with this Frenchman, and I determined to let him sleep where he was,
and take my chance of the night. At all events he could not alarm me by
stirring, for if I heard a movement I should know what it was. So,
loitering to see the last gleam of the fire extinguished, I took my
lanthorn and went to bed, but not to sleep.

The full meaning of the man awakening into life out of a condition into
which he had been plunged, for all I knew, before I was born, came upon
me very violently in the darkness. There being nothing to divert my
thoughts, I gave my mind wholly to it, and I tell you I found it an
amazing terrifying thing to happen. Indeed, I do not know that the like
of such an adventure was ever before heard of, and I well recollect
thinking to myself, "I would give my left hand to know of other cases of
the kind--to be assured that this recovery was strictly within the
bounds of nature," that I might feel I was not alone, so strongly did
the thoughts of a satanic influence operating in this business crowd
upon me--that is to say, as if I was involuntarily working out some plan
of the devil.

The gale made a great roaring. The ship's stern lay open to the gorge,
and but for her steadiness I might have supposed myself at sea. There
was indeed an incessant thunder about my ears often accompanied by the
shock of a mass of spray flung thirty feet high, and falling like
sacks of stones upon the deck. Once I felt the vessel rock; I cannot
tell the hour, but it was long past midnight, and by the noise of
the wind I guessed it was blowing a whole gale. The movement was
extraordinary--whether sideways or downwards I could not distinguish;
but, seasoned as my stomach was to the motion of ships, this movement
set up a nausea that lasted some while, acting upon me as I have since
learned the convulsion of an earthquake does upon people. It took off my
mind from the Frenchman, and filled me with a different sort of alarm
altogether, for it was very evident the gale was making the ice break;
and, thought I to myself, if we do not mind our eye we shall be crushed
and buried. But what was to be done? To quit the ship for that piercing
flying gale, charged with sleet and hail and foam, was merely to
languish for a little and then miserably expire of frost. No, thought I,
if the end is to come let it find me here; and with that I snugged me
down amid the coats and cloaks in my cot, and, obstinately holding my
eyes closed, ultimately fell asleep.

It was late when I awoke. I lighted the lanthorn, but upon entering the
passage that led to the cabin I observed by my own posture that the
schooner had not only heeled more to larboard, but was further "down by
the stern" to the extent of several feet. Indeed, the angle of
inclination was now considerable enough to bring my shoulder (in the
passage) close against the starboard side when I stood erect. The noise
of the gale was still in the air, and the booming and boiling of the sea
was uncommonly loud. I walked straight to the cook-room, and, putting
the lanthorn to the Frenchman, perceived that he was still in a heavy
sleep, and that he had lain through the night precisely in the attitude
in which I had left him. His face was so muffled that little more than
his long hawk's-bill nose was discernible. It was freezingly cold, and I
made haste to light the fire. There was still coal enough in the corner
to last for the day, and before long the furnace was blazing cheerfully.
I went to work to make some broth and fry some ham, and melt a little
block of the ruby-coloured wine; and whilst thus occupied, turning my
head a moment to look at the Frenchman, I found him half started up,
staring intently at me.

This sudden confrontment threw me into such confusion that I could not
speak. He moved his head from side to side, taking a view of the scene,
with an expression of the most inimitable astonishment painted upon his
countenance. He then brought the flat of his hand with a dramatic blow
to his forehead, the scar on which showed black as ink to the fire-glow,
and sat erect.

"Where have I been?" he exclaimed in French.

"Sir," said I, speaking with the utmost difficulty, "I do not understand
your language. I am English. You speak my tongue. Will you address me in
it?"

"English!" he exclaimed in English, dropping his head on one side, and
peering at me with an incredible air of amazement. "How came you here?
You are not of our company? Let me see..." Here he struggled with
recollection, continuing to stare at me from under his shaggy eyebrows
as if I was some frightful vision.

"I am a shipwrecked British mariner," said I, "and have been cast away
upon this ice, where I found your schooner."

"Ha!" he interrupted with prodigious vehemence, "certainly; we are
frozen up--I remember. That sleep should serve my memory so!" He made as
if to rise, but sat again. "The cold is numbing; it would weaken a
lion. Give me a hot drink, sir."

I filled a pannikin with the melted wine, which he swallowed thirstily.

"More!" cried he. "I seem to want life."

Again I filled the pannikin.

"Good!" said he, fetching a sigh as he returned the vessel; "you are
very obliging, sir. If you have food there, we will eat together."

I give the substance of his speech, but not his delivery of it, nor is
it necessary that I should interpolate my rendering with the French
words he used.

The broth being boiled, I gave him a good bowl of it along with a plate
of bacon and tongue, some biscuit and a pannikin of hot brandy and
water, all which things I put upon his knees as he sat up on the
mattress, and to it he fell, making a rare meal. Yet all the while he
ate he acted like a man bewitched, as well he might, staring at me and
looking round and round him, and then dropping his knife to strike his
brow, as if by that kind of blow he would quicken the activity of memory
there.

"There is something wrong," said he presently. "What is it, sir? This is
the cook-room. How does it happen that I am lying here?"

I told him exactly how it was, adding that if it had not been for his
posture, which obliged me to thaw in order to carry him, he would now be
on deck with the others, awaiting the best funeral I could give him.

"Who are the others?" asked he.

"I know not," said I. "There were four in all, counting yourself; one
sits frozen to death on the rocks. I met him first, and took this watch
from his pocket that I might tell the time."

He took the watch in his hands, and asked me to bring the lanthorn
close.

"Ha!" cried he, "this was Mendoza's--the captain's. I remember; he took
it for the sake of this letter upon it. He lies dead on the rocks? We
missed him, but did not know where he had gone."

Then, raising his hand and impulsively starting upon the mattress, he
cried, whilst he tapped his forehead, "It has come back! I have it!
Guiseppe Trentanove and I were in the cabin; he had fallen blind with
the glare of the ice--if that was it. We confronted each other. On a
sudden he screamed out. I had put my face into my arms, and felt myself
dying. His cry aroused me. I looked up, and saw him leaning back from
the table with his eyes fixed and horror in his countenance. I was too
feeble to speak--too languid to rise. I watched him awhile, and then the
drowsiness stole over me again, and my head sank, and I remember no
more."

He shuddered, and extended the pannikin for more liquor. I filled it
with two-thirds of brandy and the rest water, and he supped it down as
if it had been a thimbleful of wine.

"By the holy cross," cried he, "but this is very wonderful, though. How
long have you been here, sir?"

"Three days."

"Three days! and I have been in a stupor all that time--never moving,
never breathing?"

"You will have been in a stupor longer than that, I expect," said I.

"What is this month?" he cried.

"July," I replied.

"July--July!" he muttered. "Impossible! Let me see"--he began to count
on his fingers--"we fell in with the ice and got locked in November. We
had six months of it, I recollect no more. Six months of it, sir; and
suppose the stupor came upon me then, the month at which my memory stops
would be April. Yet you call this July; that is to say, _four months of
oblivion_; impossible!"

"What was the year in which you fell in with the ice?" said I.

"The year?" he exclaimed in a voice deep with the wonder this question
raised in him; "the year? Why, man, what year but _seventeen hundred and
fifty-three_!"

"Good God!" cried I, jumping to my feet with terror at a statement I had
anticipated, though it shocked me as a new and frightful revelation.

"Do you know what year this is?"

He looked at me without answering.

"It is eighteen hundred and one," I cried, and as I said this I recoiled
a step, fully expecting him to leap up and exhibit a hundred
demonstrations of horror and consternation; for this I am persuaded
would have been my posture had any man roused me from a slumber and told
me I had been in that condition for eight-and-forty years.

He continued to view me with a very strange and cunning expression in
his eyes, the coolness of which was inexpressibly surprising and
bewildering and even mortifying; then presently grasping his beard,
looked at it; then put his hands to his face and looked at them; then
drew out his feet and looked at _them_; then very slowly, but without
visible effort, stood up, swaying a little with an air of weakness, and
proceeded to feel and strike himself all over, swinging his arms and
using his legs; after which he sat down and pulled the clothes over his
naked feet, and fixing his eyes on me afresh, said, "What do you say
this year is, sir?"

"Eighteen hundred and one," I replied.

"Bah!" said he, and shook his head very knowingly. "No matter; you have
been shipwrecked too! Sir, shipwreck shuffles dates as a player does
cards, and the best of us will go wrong in famine, loneliness, cold, and
peril. Be of good cheer, my friend; all will return to you. Sit, sir,
that I may hear your adventures, and I will relate mine."

I saw how it was--he supposed me deranged, a mortifying construction to
place upon the language of a man who had restored him to life; yet a few
moments' reflection taught me to see the reasonableness of it, for
unless he thought me crazy he must conclude I spoke the truth, and it
was inconceivable he should believe that he had lain in a frozen
condition for eight-and-forty years.

I stirred the fire to make more light and sat down near the furnace. His
appearance was very striking. The scar upon his forehead gave a very
dark sullen look to his brows; his eyes were small and were half lost in
the dusky hollows in which they were set, and I observed an
indescribably leering, cunning expression in them, something of which I
attributed to the large quantity of liquor he had swallowed. This
contrasted oddly with the respectable aspect he took from his
baldness--that is, from the nakedness of his poll, for, as I have before
said, his hair fell long and plentifully, in a ring a little above the
ears, so that you would have supposed at some late period of his life he
had been scalped.

I know not how it was, but I felt no joy in this man's company. For some
companion, for some one to speak with, I had yearned again and again
with heart-breaking passion; and now a living man sat before me, yet I
was sensible of no gladness. In truth, I was overawed by him; he
frightened me as one risen from the dead. Here was a creature that had
entered, as it seemed to me, those black portals from which no man ever
returns, and had come back, through my instrumentality, after hard upon
fifty years of the grave. Reason as I might that it was all perfectly in
nature, that there was nothing necromantic or diabolic in it, that it
could not have happened had it not been natural, my spirits were as much
oppressed and confounded by his sitting there alive, talking, and
watching me, as if, being truly dead, life had entered him on a sudden,
and he had risen and walked.

I have no doubt the disorder my mind was in helped to persuade him that
I had not the full possession of my senses. He ran his eye over my
figure and then round the cook-room, and said, "I am impatient to learn
your story, sir."

"Why, sir," said I, "my story is summed up in what I have already told
you." But that he might not be at a loss--for to be sure he had only
very newly collected his intellects--I related my adventures at large.
He drew nearer to the furnace whilst I talked, bringing his covering of
clothes along with him, and held out his great hands to toast at the
fire, all the time observing me with scarce a wink of the eye. Arrived
at the end of my tale, I told him how only last night I had dragged his
companion on deck, and how he was to have followed but for his posture.

"Ha!" cried he, "you might have caused my flesh to mortify by laying me
close to the fire. It would have been better to rub me with snow."

He poked up one foot after the other to count his toes, fearing some had
come away with his stockings, and then said, "Well, and how long should
I have slept had you not come? Another week! By St. Paul, I might have
died. Have you my stockings, sir?"

I gave them to him, and he pulled them over his legs and then drew on
his boots and stood up, the coats and wraps tumbling off him as he rose.

"I can stand," says he. "That is good."

But in attempting to take a step he reeled and would have fallen had I
not grasped his arm.

"Patience, my friend, patience!" he muttered as if to himself. "I must
lie a little longer," and with that he kneeled and then lay along the
mattress. He breathed heavily and pointed to the pannikin. I asked him
whether he would have wine or brandy; he answered, "Wine," so I melted a
draught, which dose, I thought, on top of what he had already taken,
would send him to sleep; but instead it quickened his spirits, and with
no lack of life in his voice he said, "What is the condition of the
vessel?"

I told him that she was still high and dry, adding that during the night
some sort of change had happened which I should presently go on deck to
remark.

"Think you," says he, "that there is any chance of her ever being
liberated?"

I answered, "Yes, but not yet; that is, if the ice in breaking doesn't
destroy her. The summer season has yet to come, and we are progressing
north; but now that you are with me it will be a question for us to
settle, whether we are to wait for the ice to release the schooner or
endeavour to effect our escape by other means."

A curious gleam of cunning satisfaction shone in his eyes as he looked
at me; he then kept silence for some moments, lost in thought.

"Pray," said I, breaking in upon him, "what ship is this?"

He started, deliberated an instant, and answered, "The _Boca del
Dragon_."[2]

[Footnote 2: So in Mr. Rodney's MS.]

"A Spaniard?"

He nodded.

"She was a pirate?" said I.

"How do you know that?" he cried with a sudden fierceness.

"Sir," said I, "I am a British sailor who has used the sea for some
years, and know the difference between a handspike and a poop-lanthorn.
But what matters? She is a pirate no longer."

He let his eyes fall from my face and gazed round him with the air of
one who cannot yet persuade his understanding of the realities of the
scene he moves in.

"Tut!" cried he presently, addressing himself, "what matters the truth,
as you say? Yes, the _Boca del Dragon_ is a pirate. You have of course
rummaged her, and guessed her character by what you found?"

"I met with enough to excite my suspicion," said I. "The ship's company
of such a craft as this do not usually go clothed in lace and rich
cloaks, and carry watches of this kind," tapping my breast, "in their
fobs and handfuls of gold in their pockets."

"Unless----" said he.

"Unless," I answered, "their flag is as black as our prospects."

"You think them black?" cried he, the look of resentment that was
darkening his face dying out of it. "The vessel is sound, is not she?"

I replied that she appeared so, but it would be impossible to be sure
until she floated.

"The stores?"

"They are plentiful."

"They should be!" he cried; "we have the liquor and stores of a galleon
and two carracks in our hold, apart from what we originally laid in for
the cruise. Everything will have been kept sweet by the cold."

"All the stores seem sound," said I; "we shall not starve--no, not if we
were to be imprisoned here for three years. But all the same our
prospects are black, for here is the ship high and fixed; the ice in
parting may crush her, and we have no boat."

"May, may!" he cried with a Frenchman's vehemence. "You have _may_ and
you also have _may not_ in your language. Let me feel my strength
improving; we shall then find means of throwing a light upon these black
prospects of yours."

He smiled, or rather grinned, his fangs making the latter term fitter
for the mirthless grimace he made.

"May I ask your name?" said I.

"Jules Tassard, at your service," said he, "third in command of the
_Boca del Dragon_, but good as Mate Trentanove, and good as Captain
Mendoza, and good as the cabin boy Fernando Prado; for we pirates are
republicans, sir, we know no social distinctions save those we order for
the convenience of working ship. Now let me tell you the story of our
disaster. We had come out of the Spanish Main into the South Seas,
partly to escape some British and French cruisers which were after us
and others of our kind, and partly because ill-luck was against us, and
we could not find our account in those waters. We sailed in December two
years ago----"

"Making the year----?" I interrupted.

He started, and then grinned again.

"Ah, to be sure!" cried he, "this is eighteen hundred and one; but to
keep my tale in countenance," he went on in a satirical apologetic way,
"let me call the year in which we sailed for the South Sea seventeen
hundred and fifty-one. What matters forty or fifty years to the
shipwrecked? Is not one day of an open boat, with no society but the
devils of memory and no hope but the silence at the bottom of the sea,
an eternity? Fill me that pannikin, my friend. I thank you. To proceed:
we cruised some months in the South Sea and took a number of ships. One
was a privateer that had plundered a British Indiaman in the Southern
Ocean, and had entered the South Sea by New Holland. This fellow was
full of fine clothes and had some silver in her. We took what we wanted,
and let her go with her people under hatches, her yards square, her helm
amidships, and her cabin on fire. Our maxim is, 'No witnesses!' That is
the pirate's philosophy. Who gives us quarter unless it be to hang us?
But to continue: we did handsomely, but were a long time about it, and
after careening and filling up with water 'twixt San Carlos and Chiloe
we set sail for the Antilles. Like your brig, we were blown south. The
weather was ferocious. Gale after gale thundered down upon us, forcing
us to fly before it. We lost all reckoning of our position; for days,
for weeks, sea and sky were enveloped in clouds of snow, in the heart of
which drove our frozen schooner. We were none of us of a nationality fit
to encounter these regions; we carried most of us the curly hair of the
sun, the chocolate cheek of the burning zone, and the ice chained the
crew, crouching like Lascars, below. We swept past many vast icebergs,
which would leap on a sudden out of the white whirl of thickness, often
so close aboard that the recoil of the surge striking against the mass
would flood our decks. At all moments of the day and night we were
prepared to feel the shock of the vessel crushing her bows against one
of these stupendous hills. The cabin resounded with Salves and Aves,
with invocations to the saints, promises, curses, and litanies. The cold
does not make men of the Spaniards, who are but indifferent seamen in
temperate climes, and we were chiefly Spanish with consciences as red as
your English flag."

He grinned, emptied the pannikin, and stretched his hands to the fire to
warm them.

"One morning, the weather having cleared somewhat, we found ourselves
surrounded by ice. A great chain floated ahead of us, extending far into
the south. The gale blew dead on to this coast; we durst not haul the
schooner to the wind, and our only chance lay in discovering some bay
where we might find shelter. Such a bay it was my good luck to spy,
lying directly in a line with the ship's head. It was formed of a great
steep of ice jutting a long way slantingly into the sea, the width
between the point and the main being about a third of a mile. I seized
the helm, and shouted to the men to hoist the head of the mainsail that
she might round to when I put the helm down. But the fellows were in a
panic terror and stood gaping at what they regarded as their doom,
calling upon the Virgin and all the saints for help and mercy. Into this
bay did we rush on top of a huge sea, Trentanove and the captain and I
swinging with set teeth at the tiller, that was hard a-lee; she came
round, but with such way upon her that she took a long shelving beach of
ice and ran up it to the distance of half her own length, and there she
lay, with her rudder within touch of the wash of the water. The men,
regarding the schooner as lost, and and concluding that if she went to
pieces her boats would be destroyed, and with them their only chance to
escape from the ice, fell frantic and lost their wits altogether. They
roared, 'To the boats! to the boats!' The captain endeavoured to bring
them to their senses; he and I and the mate, and Joam Barros, the
boatswain--a Portuguese--went among them pistols in hand, entreating,
cursing, threatening. 'Think of the plunder in this hold! Will you
abandon it without an effort to save it? What think you are your chances
for life in open boats in this sea? The schooner lies protected here;
the weather will moderate presently, and we may then be able to slide
her off.' But reason as we would the cowardly dogs refused to listen.
They had broached a spirit-cask aft, and passed the liquor along the
decks whilst they hoisted the pinnace out of the hold and got the other
boats over. The drink maddened, yet left them wild with fear too. They
would not wait to come at the treasure in the run--the fools believed
the ship would tumble to pieces as she stood--but entered the forecastle
and the officers' cabins, and routed about for whatever money and
trinkets they might stuff into their pockets without loss of time; and
then provisioning the boats, they called to us to join them, but we
said, No, on which they ran the boats down to the water, tumbled into
them, and pulled away round the point of ice. We lost sight of them
then, and I have little doubt that they all perished shortly
afterwards."

He ceased. I was anxious to hear more.

"You had been six months on the ice when the stupor fell upon you?"

"Ay, about six months. The ice gathered about us and built us in. I
recollect it was three days after we stranded that, going on deck, I saw
the bay (as I term it) filled with ice. We drew up several plans to
escape, but none satisfied us. Besides, sir, we had a treasure on board
which we had risked our necks to get, and we were prepared to go on
imperilling our lives to save it. 'Twas natural. We had a great store of
coal forwards and amidships, for we had faced the Horn in coming and
knew what we had to expect in returning. We were also richly stocked
with provisions and drink of all sorts. There were but four of us, and
we dealt with what we had as if we designed it should last us fifty
years. But the cold was frightful; it was not in flesh and blood to
stand it. One day--we had been locked up about five months--Mendoza said
he would get upon the rocks and take a view of the sea. He did not
return. The others were too weak to seek him, and they were half blind
besides; I went, but the ice was full of caves and hollows, and the
like, and I could not find him, nor could I look for him long, the cold
being the hand of death itself up there. The time went by; Trentanove
went stone-blind, and I had to put food and drink into his hands that he
might live. A week before the stupor came upon me I went on deck and saw
Joam Barros leaning at the rail. I called to him, but he made no reply.
I approached and looked at him, and found him frozen. Then happened what
I have told you. We were in the cabin, the mate seated at the table,
waiting for me to lead and support him to the cook-room, for he was so
weak he could scarce carry his weight. A sudden faintness seized me, and
I sank down upon the bench opposite him, letting my head fall upon my
arms. His cry startled me--I looked up--saw him as I have said; but the
cabin then turned black, my head sank again, and I remember no more."

He paused and then cried in French, "That is all! They are dead--Jules
Tassard lives! The devil is loyal to his own!" and with that he lay back
and burst into laughter.

"And this," said I, "was in seventeen hundred and fifty-three?"

"Yes," he answered; "and this is eighteen hundred and
one--eight-and-forty years afterwards, hey?" and he laughed out again.
"I've talked so much," said he, "that, d'ye know, I think another nap
will do me good. What coals have you found in the ship?"

I told him.

"Good," he cried; "we can keep ourselves warm for some time to come,
anyhow."

And so saying, he pulled a rug up to his nose and shut his eyes.




CHAPTER XVI.

I HEAR OF A GREAT TREASURE.


I lighted a pipe and sat pondering his story a little while. There was
no doubt he had given me the exact truth so far as his relation of it
went. As it was certain then that the _Boca del Dragon_ (as she was
called) had been fixed in the ice for hard upon fifty years, the
conclusion I formed was that she had been blown by some hundreds of
leagues further south than the point to which the _Laughing Mary_ had
been driven; that this ice in which she was entangled was not then
drifting northwards, but was in the grasp of some polar current that
trended it south-easterly; that in due course it was carried to the
Antarctic main of ice, where it lay compacted; after which, through
stress of weather or by the agency of a particular temperature, a great
mass of it broke away and started on that northward course which bergs
of all magnitude take when they are ruptured from the frozen continent.

This theory may be disputed, but it matters not. My business is to
relate what befell me; if I do my share honestly the candid reader will
not, I believe, quarrel with me for not being able to explain everything
as I go along.

The Frenchman snored, and I sat considering him. The impression he had
made upon me was not agreeable. To be sure he had suffered heavily, and
there was something not displeasing in the spirit he discovered in
telling the story--a spirit I am unable to communicate, as it owed
everything to French vivacity largely spiced with devilment, and to
sudden turns and ejaculations beyond the capacity of my pen to imitate.
But a professional fierceness ran through it too; it was as if he had
licked his chops when he talked of dismissing the captured ship with her
people confined below and her cabin on fire. He had been as good as dead
for nearly fifty years, yet he brought with him into life exactly the
same qualities he had carried with him in his exit. Hence I never now
hear that expression taken from the Latin, "_Of the dead speak nothing
unless good_," without despising it as an unworthy concession to
sentiment; for I have not the least doubt in my mind that, spite of
deathbed repentances and all the horrors which crowd upon the
imagination of a bad man in his last moments--I say I have not the least
doubt that of every hundred persons who die, ninety-nine of them, could
they be raised from the dead, no matter how many years or even centuries
they might have lain in their graves, would exhibit their original
natures, and pursue exactly the same courses which made them loved or
scorned or feared or neglected before, which brought them to the gallows
or which qualified them to die in peace with faces brightening to the
opening heavens. If Nero did not again fire Rome he would be equal to
crimes as great, and desire nothing better than the opportunity for
them. Cæsar would again be the tyrant, and the sword of Brutus would
once more fulfil its mission. Richard III. would emerge in his
winding-sheet with the same humpbacked character in which he had
expired, the Queen of Scots return warm to her gallantries, and the
Stuarts repeat those blunders and crimes which terminated in the
headsman or in banishment.

But these are my thoughts of to-day; I was of another temper whilst I
sat smoking and listening to the snoring of Monsieur Jules Tassard. Now
that I had a companion should I be able to escape from this horrid
situation? He had spoken of chests of silver--where was the treasure? in
the run? There might be booty enough in the hold to make a great man, a
fine gentleman of me ashore. It would be a noble ending to an amazing
adventure to come off with as much money as would render me independent
for life, and enable me to turn my back for ever upon the hardest
calling to which the destiny of man can wed him.

Of such were the fancies which hurried through my mind, coupled with
visitations of awe and wonder when I cast my eyes upon the sleeping
Frenchman. After all it was ridiculous that I should feel mortified
because he supposed me crazy in the matter of dates. How was it
conceivable he should believe he had lain lifeless for eight-and-forty
years? I knew a man who after a terrible adventure had slept three days
and nights without stirring; the assurances of the people about him
failed to persuade him that he had slumbered so long, and it was not
until he walked abroad and met a hundred evidences as to the passage of
the time during which he had slept that he allowed himself to become
convinced.

I wished to see how the schooner lay and what change had befallen the
ice in the night, and went on deck. It was blowing a whole gale of wind
from the north-west. Inside the ship, with the hatches on, and protected
moreover by the sides of the hollow in which she lay, it would have been
impossible to guess at the weight of the gale, though all along I had
supposed it to be storming pretty fiercely by the thunderous humming
noise which resounded in the cabin. But I had no notion that so great a
wind raged till I gained the deck and heard the prodigious bellowing of
it above the rocks. The sky was one great cloud of slate, and there was
no flying darkness or yellow scud to give the least movement of life to
it. The sea was swelling very furiously, and I could divine its
tempestuous character by clouds of spray which sped like volumes of
steam under the sullen dusky heavens high over the mastheads. The
schooner lay with a list of about fifteen degrees and her bows high
cocked. I looked over the stern and saw that the ice had sunk there, and
that there were twenty great rents and yawning seams where I had before
noticed but one. A vast block of ice had fallen on the starboard side,
and lay so close on the quarter that I could have sprung on to it. No
other marked changes were observable, but there were a hundred sounds to
assure me that neither the sea nor the gale was wholly wasting its
strength upon this crystal territory, and that if I thought proper to
climb the slope and expose myself to the wind, I should behold a face of
ice somewhat different from what I had before gazed upon.

But the bitter cold held me in dread, and there was no need besides for
me to take a survey. All that concerned me lay in the hollow in which
the schooner was frozen; but so far as the slopes were concerned I could
see nothing to render me uneasy. The declivities were gradual, and there
was little fear of even a violent convulsion throwing the ice upon us.
The danger lay below, under the keel; if the ice split, then down would
drop the ship and stave herself, or if she escaped that peril she must
be so wedged as to render the least further pressure of the ice against
her sides destructive.

I was about to go below again, when my eye was taken by the two figures
lying upon the deck. No dead bodies ever looked more dead, but after
the wondrous restoration of the Frenchman I could not view their forms
without fancying that they were but as he had been, and that if they
were carried to the furnace and treated with brandy and rubbing and the
like they might be brought to. Full of thoughts concerning them I
stepped into the cabin, and, going to the cook-room, found Tassard still
heavily sleeping. The coal in the corner was low, and as it wanted an
hour of dinner-time I took the lanthorn and a bucket and went into the
forepeak, and after several journeys stocked up a good provision of coal
in the corner. I made noise enough, but Tassard slept on. When this was
ended I boiled some water to cleanse myself, and then set about getting
the dinner ready.

The going into the forepeak had put my mind upon the treasure, which, as
I had gathered from the Frenchman's narrative, was somewhere hidden in
the schooner--in the run, as I doubted not; I mean in the hold, under
the lazarette, for you will recollect that, being weary and
half-perished with the cold, I had turned my back on that dark part
after having looked into the powder-room. All the time I was fetching
the coal and dressing the dinner my imagination was on fire with fancies
of the treasure in this ship. The Frenchman had told me that they had
been well enough pleased with their hauls in the South Sea to resolve
them upon heading round the Horn for their haunt, wherever it might be,
in the Spanish main; and I had too good an understanding of the
character of pirates to believe that they would have quitted a rich
hunting-field before they had handsomely lined their pockets. What,
then, was the treasure in the run, if indeed it were there? I recalled a
dozen stories of the doings of the buccaneers, not to speak of the
famous Acapulco ship taken by Anson a little before the year in which
the _Boca del Dragon_ was fishing in those waters; and I feasted my
fancy with all sorts of sparkling dreams of gold and silver and precious
stones, of the costly ecclesiastical furniture of New Spain, of which
methought I found a hint in that silver crucifix in the cabin, of rings,
sword-hilts, watches, buckles, snuff-boxes, and the like. Lord! thought
I, that this island were of good honest mother earth instead of ice,
that we might bury the pirate's booty if we could not save the ship, and
make a princely mine of its grave, ready for the mattock should we
survive to fetch it!

I was mechanically stirring the saucepan full of broth I had prepared,
lost in these golden thoughts, when the Frenchman suddenly sat up on his
mattress.

"Ha!" cried he, sniffing vigorously, "I smell something good--something
I am ready for. There is no physic like sleep," and with that he
stretched out his arms with a great yawn, then rose very agilely,
kicking the clothes and mattress on one side and bringing a bench close
to the furnace. "What time is it, sir?"

"Something after twelve by the captain's watch," said I, pulling it out
and looking at it. "But 'tis guesswork time."

"The _captain's watch_?" cried he, with a short loud laugh. "You are
modest, Mr. ----"

"Paul Rodney," said I, seeing he stopped for my name.

"Yes, modest, Mr. Paul Rodney. That watch is yours, sir; and you mean it
shall be yours."

"Well, Mr. Tassard," said I, colouring in spite of myself, though he
could not witness the change in such a light as that, "I felt this, that
if I left the watch in the captain's pocket it was bound to go to the
bottom ultimately, and----"

"Bah!" he interrupted, with a violent flourish of the hand. "Let us save
the schooner, if possible; there will be more than one watch for your
pocket, more than one doubloon for your purse. Meanwhile, to dinner! My
stupor has converted me into an empty hogshead, and it will take me a
fortnight of hard eating to feel that I have broken my fast."

With a blow of the chopper he struck off a lump of the frozen wine, and
then fell to, eating perhaps as a man might be expected to eat who had
not had a meal for eight-and-forty years.

"There are two of your companions on deck," said I.

He started.

"Frozen," I continued; "they'll be the bodies of Trentanove and Joam
Barros?"

He nodded.

"There is no reason why they should be deader than you were. It is true
that Barros has been on deck whilst you have been below; but after you
pass a certain degree of cold fiercer rigours cannot signify."

"What do you propose?" said he, looking at me oddly.

"Why, that we should carry them to the fire and rub them, and bring them
to if we can."

"Why?"

I was staggered by his indifference, for I had believed he would have
shown himself very eager to restore his old companions and shipmates to
life. I was searching for an answer to his strange inquiry, "Why?" when
he proceeded,--

"First of all, my friend Trentanove was stone-blind, and Barros nearly
blind. Unless you could return them their sight with their life they
would curse you for disturbing them. Better the blackness of death than
the blackness of life."

"There is the body of the captain," said I.

He grinned.

"Let them sleep," said he. "Do you know that they are cutthroats, who
would reward your kindness with the poniard that you might not tell
tales against them or claim a share of the treasure in this vessel? Of
all desperate villains I never met the like of Barros. He loved blood
even better than money. He'd quench his thirst before an engagement with
gunpowder mixed in brandy. I once saw him choke a man--tut! he is very
well--leave him to his repose."

In the glow of the fire he looked uncommonly sardonic and wild, with his
long beard, bald head, flowing hair, shaggy brows, and little cunning
eyes, which seemed in their smallness to share in his grin, and yet did
not; and though to be sure he was some one to talk to and to make plans
with for our escape, yet I felt that if he were to fall into a stupor
again it would not be my hands that should chafe him into being.

"You knew those men in life," said I. "If the others are of the same
pattern as the Portuguese, by all means let them lie frozen."

"But, my friend," said he, calling me _mon ami_, which I translate,
"that's not it, either. Do you know the value of the booty in this
schooner?"

I answered, No; how was I to know it? I had met with nothing but wearing
apparel, and some pieces of money, and a few watches in the forecastle.
He knit his brows with a fierce suspicious gleam in his eyes.

"But you have searched the vessel?" he cried.

"I have searched, as you call it--that is, I have crawled through the
hold as far as the powder-room."

"And further aft?"

"No, not further aft."

His countenance cleared.

"You scared me!" said he, fetching a deep breath. "I was afraid that
some one had been beforehand with us. But it is not conceivable. No! we
shall look for it presently, and we shall find it."

"Find what, Mr. Tassard?" said I.

He held up the fingers of his right hand: "One, two, three, four,
five--five chests of plate and money; one, two, three--three cases of
virgin silver in ingots; one chest of gold ingots; one case of
jewellery. In all----" he paused to enter into a calculation, moving his
lips briskly as he whispered to himself--"between ninety and one hundred
thousand pounds of your English money."

I stifled the amazement his words excited, and said coldly, "You must
have met with some rich ships."

"We did well," he answered. "My memory is good"--he counted afresh on
his fingers--"ten cases in all. Fortune is a strange wench, Mr. Rodney.
Who would think of finding her lodged on an iceberg? Now bring those
others up there to life, and you make us five. What would follow, think
you? what but this?"

He raised his beard and stroked his throat with the sharp of his hand.
Then, swallowing a great draught of brandy, he rose and stopped to
listen.

"It is blowing hard," said he; "the harder the better. I want to see
this island knocked into bergs. Every sea is as good as a pickaxe. Hark!
there are those crackling noises I used to hear before I fell into a
stupor. Where do you sleep?"

I told him.

"My berth is the third," said he. "I wish to smoke, and will fetch my
pipe."

He took the lanthorn and went aft, acting as if he had left that berth
an hour ago, and I understood in the face of this ready recurrence of
his memory how impossible it would be ever to make him believe he had
been practically lifeless since the year 1753. When he returned he had
on a hairy cap, with large covers for the ears, and a big flap behind
that fell to below his collar, and was almost as long as his hair. He
wanted but a couple of muskets and an umbrella to closely resemble
Robinson Crusoe, as he is made to figure in most of the cuts I have
seen. He produced a pipe of the Dutch pattern, with a bowl carved into a
death's head, and great enough to hold a cake of tobacco. The skull
might have been a child's for size, and though it was dyed with tobacco
juice and the top blackened, with the live coals which had been held to
it, it was so finely carved that it looked very ghastly and terribly
real in his hand as he sat puffing at it.

He eyed me steadfastly whilst he smoked, as if critically taking stock
of me, and presently said, "The devil hath an odd way of ordering
matters. What particular merit have _I_ that I should have been the one
hit upon by you to thaw? Had you brought any one of the others to, he
would have advised you against reviving us, and so I should have passed
out of my frosty sleep into death as quietly, ay, and as painlessly, as
that puff of smoke melts into clear air."

"Then perhaps you do not think you are obliged by my awakening you to
life?" said I.

"Yes, my friend, I am much obliged," said he with vivacity. "Any fool
can die. To live is the true business of life. Mark what you do: you
make me know tobacco again, you enable me to eat and drink, and these
things are pleasures which were denied me in that cabin there. You
recall me to the enjoyment of my gains, nay, of more--of my own and the
gains of our company. You make me, as you make yourself, a rich man; the
world opens before me anew, and very brilliantly--to be sure, I am
obliged."

"The world is certainly before you, as it is before me," said I, "but
that's all; we have got to get there."

He flourished his pipe, and 'twas like the flight of Death through the
gloomy fire-tinctured air.

"That must come. We are two. Yesterday you were one, and I can
understand your despair. But these arms--stupor has not wasted so much
as the dark line of a finger-nail of muscle. You too are no girl.
Courage! between us we shall manage. How long is it since you sailed
from England?"

"We sailed last month a year from the Thames for Callao."

"And what is the news?" said he, taking a pannikin of wine from the oven
and sipping it. "Last year! 'Tis twelve years since I was in Paris and
three years since we had news from Europe."

News! thought I; to tell this man the news, as he calls it, would oblige
me to travel over fifty years of history.

"Why, Mr. Tassard," said I, "there's plenty of things happening, you
know, for Europe's full of kings and queens, and two or more of them are
nearly always at loggerheads; but sailors--merchantmen like myself--hear
little of what goes on. We know the name of our own sovereign and what
wages sailors are getting; that's about it, sir. In fact, at this moment
I could tell you more about Chili and Peru than England and France."

"Is there war between our nations?" he asked.

"Yes," said I.

"Ha!" he cried, "I doubt if this time you will come off so easily. You
have good men in Hawke and Anson; but Jonquière and St. George, hey? and
Maçon, Cellie, Letenduer!"

He shook his head knowingly, and an air of complacency, that would be
indescribable but for the word French, overspread his face. I knew the
name of Jonquière as an admiral who had fought us in 1748 or
thereabouts; of the others I had never heard. But I held my peace, which
I suppose he put down to good manners, for he changed the subject by
asking if I was married. I answered, No, and inquired if _he_ had a
wife.

"A wife!" cried he; "what should a man of my calling do with a wife? No,
no! we gather such flowers as we want off the high seas, and wear them
till the perfume palls. They prove stubborn though; our graces are not
always relished. Trentanove reckoned himself the most killing among us,
and by St. Barnabas he proved so, for three ladies--passengers of beauty
and distinction--slew themselves for his sake. Do you understand me?
They preferred the knife to his addresses. _I_," said he, tapping his
breast and grinning, "was always fortunate."

He looked a complete satyr as he thus spoke, with his hairy cap, grey
beard, long nose, little cunning shining eyes, and broken fangs; and a
chill of disgust came upon me. But I had already seen enough of him to
understand that he was a man of a very formidable character, and that he
had awakened after eight-and-forty years of insensibility as real a
pirate at heart as ever he had been, and that it therefore behoved me to
deal very warily with him, and above all not to let him suspect my
thoughts. Yet he seemed a person superior to the calling he had adopted.
His English was good, and his articulation indicated a quality of
breeding. Whilst he smoked his pipe out he told me a story of an action
between this schooner and a French Indiaman. I will not repeat it; it
was mere butchery, with features of diabolic cruelty; but what affected
me more violently than the horrors of the narrative was his cool and
easy recital of his own and the deeds of his companions. You saw that he
had no more conscience in him than the death's head he puffed at, and
that his idea was there was no true greatness to be met with out of
enormity. Well, thought I, as I stepped to the corner for some coal, if
I was afraid of this creature when he was dead, to what condition of
mind shall I be reduced by his being alive?




CHAPTER XVII.

THE TREASURE.


When his pipe was out he rose and made several strides about the
cook-room, then took the lanthorn, and entering the cabin stood awhile
surveying the place.

"So this would have been my coffin but for you, Mr. Rodney?" said he. "I
was in good company, though," pointing over his shoulder at the crucifix
with his thumb. "Lord, how the rogues prayed and cursed in this same
cabin! In fine weather, and when all was well, the sharks in our wake
had more religion than they; but the instant they were in danger, down
they tumbled upon their quivering knees, and if heaven was twice as big
as it is, it could not have held saints enough for those varlets to
petition."

"You were nearly all Spaniards?"

"Ay; the worst class of men a ship could enter these seas with. But for
our calling they are the fittest of all the nations in the world; better
even than the Portuguese, and with truer trade instincts than the
trained mulatto--nimbler artists in roguery than ever a one of them. I
despise their superstition, but they are the better pirates for it. They
carry it as a man might a feather bed; it enables them to fall soft.
D'ye take me?" He gave one of his short loud laughs, and said, "I hope
this slope won't increase. The angle's stiff enough as it is. 'Twill be
like living on the roof of a house. I have a mind to see how she lies.
What d'ye say, Mr. Rodney? shall I venture into the open?"

"Why not?" said I. "You can move briskly. You have as much life as ever
you had."

"Let's go, then," he exclaimed, and climbing the ladder he pushed open
the companion-door and stepped on to the deck. I followed with but
little solicitude, as you may suppose, as to what might attend his
exposure. The blast of the gale though it was broken into downwards
eddying dartings by the rocks, made him bawl out with the sting of it,
and for some moments he could think of nothing but the cold, stamping
the deck, and beating his hands.

"Ha!" cried he, grinning to the smart of his cheeks, "this is not the
cook-room, eh? Great thunder, you will not have it that this ice has
been drifting north? Why, man, 'tis icier by twenty degrees than when we
were first locked up."

"I hope not," said I; "and I think not. Your blood doesn't course strong
yet, and you are fresh from the furnace. Besides, it is blowing a bitter
cold gale. Look at that sky and listen to the thunder of the sea!"

The commotion was indeed terribly uproarious. The spume as before was
blowing in clouds of snow over the ice, and fled in very startling
flashes of whiteness under the livid drapery of the sky. The wind itself
sounded like the prolonged echo of a discharge of monster ordnance, and
it screeched and whistled hideously where it struck the peaks and edges
of the cliffs and swept through the schooner's masts. The rending noises
of the ice in all directions were distinct and fearful. The Frenchman
looked about him with consternation, and to my surprise crossed
himself.

"May the blessed Virgin preserve us!" he said. "Do you say we have
drifted north? If this is not the very heart of the south pole you shall
persuade me we are on the equator."

"It cannot storm too terribly for us, as you just now said," I replied.
"I want this island to go to pieces."

As I said this a solid pillar of ice just beyond the brow of the hill on
the starboard side was dislodged or blown down; it fell with a mighty
crash, and filled the air with crystal splinters. Tassard started back
with a faint cry of "Bon Dieu!"

"Judge for yourself how the ship lies," said I; "this is freezing work."

He went aft and looked over the stern, then walked to the larboard rail
and peered over the side.

"Is there ice beyond that opening?" he asked, pointing over the
taffrail.

"No," I answered; "that goes to the sea. There is a low cliff beyond.
Mark that cloud of white; it is the spray hurled athwart the mouth of
this hollow."

"Good," he mumbled with his teeth chattering. "The change is marvellous.
There was ice for a quarter of a mile where that slope ends. 'Tis too
cold to converse here."

"_There_ are your companions," said I, pointing to the two bodies lying
a little distance before the mainmast.

He marched up to them, and exclaimed, "Yes, this is Trentanove and that
is Barros. Both were blind, but they are blinder now. Would they thank
you to arouse them out of their comfortable sleep and force them to feel
as I do, this cold to which they are now as insensible as I was? By
heaven, for my part, I can stand it no longer;" and with that he ran
briskly to the hatch.

I followed him to the cook-room and he crept so close to the furnace
that I thought he had a mind to roast himself. No doubt, newly come to
life as he was, the cold hurt him more than me, and maybe the tide of
those animal spirits which had in his former existence furnished him
with a brute courage had not yet flowed full to his mind; still I
questioned even in his heydey if there had ever been much more than the
swashbuckler in him, which opinion, however, could only increase the
anxiety his companionship was like to cause me by obliging me to
understand that I must prepare myself for treachery, and on no account
whatever to suppose for a moment that he was capable of the least degree
of gratitude or was to be swerved from any design he might form by
considerations of my claim upon him as his preserver.

It is among the wonders of human nature that antagonisms should be found
to flourish under such conditions of hopelessness, misery, and anguish
as make those who languish under them the most pitiful wretches under
God's eye. But so it has been, so it is, so it will ever be. Two men in
an open boat at sea, their lips frothing with thirst, their eyes burning
with famine, shall fall upon each other and fight to the death. Two men
on an island, two miserable castaways whose dismal end can only be a
matter of a week or two, eye each other morosely, give each other
injurious words, break away and sullenly live, each man by himself, on
opposite sides of their desert prison. Beasts do not act thus, nor
birds, nor reptiles--only man. What was in the Frenchman Tassard's mind
I do not know; in mine was fear, dislike, profound distrust, a great
uneasiness, albeit we were alone, we were brothers in affliction and
distress, as completely sundered from the world to which we belonged as
if we lay stranded in the icy moon, speaking in the same tongue and
believing in the same God!

The heat comforted him presently, and he put a lump of wine into the
oven to melt, and this comforted him also.

"I can converse now," said he. "Perhaps after all the danger lies more
in the imagination than in the fact. But it is a hideous naked scene,
and needs no such colouring as the roaring of wind, the rushing of seas,
and the crashing falls of masses of ice to render it frightful."

"You tell me," said I, "that when you fell asleep"--I would sometimes
express his frozen state thus--"there was a quarter of a mile of ice
beyond the schooner's stern."

"At least a quarter of a mile," he answered. "Day after day it would be
built up till it came to a face of that extent."

I thought to myself if it has taken forty-eight years of the wear and
tear of storm and surge to extinguish a quarter of a mile, how long a
time must elapse before this island splits up? But then I reflected that
during the greater part of those years this seat of ice had been stuck
very low south where the cold was so extreme as to make it defy
dissolution; that since then, it was come away from the main and
stealing north, so that what might have taken thirty years to accomplish
in seventy degrees of south latitude, might be performed in a day on the
parallel of sixty degrees in the summer season in these seas.

Tassard continued speaking with the pannikin in his hand, and his eyes
shut as if to get the picture of the schooner's position fair before his
mind's vision: "There was a quarter of a mile of ice beyond the ship: I
have it very plain in my sight: it was a great muddle of hillocks, for
the ice pressed thick and hard, and raised us and vomited up peaks and
rocks to the squeeze. Suppose I have been asleep a week?" Here he opened
his eyes and gazed at me.

"Well?" said I.

"I say," he continued in the tone of one easily excited into passion, "a
week. It will not have been more. It is impossible. Never mind about
your eighteen hundred and one," showing his fangs in a sarcastic grin;
"a week is long enough, friend. Then this is what I mean to say: that
the breaking away of a quarter of a mile of ice in a week is fine work,
full of grand promise: the next wrench--which might come now as I speak,
or to-morrow, or in a week--the next wrench may bring away the rock on
which we are lodged, and the rest is a matter of patience--which we can
afford, hey? for we are but two--there is plenty of meat and liquor and
the reward afterwards is a princely independence, Mr. Paul Rodney."

I was struck with the notion of the bed of ice on which the schooner lay
going afloat, and said, "Are sea and wind to be helped, think you? If
the block on which we lie could be detached, it might beat a bit against
its parent stock, but would not unite again. The schooner's canvas might
be made to help it along--though suppose it capsized!"

"We must consider," said he; "there is no need to hurry. When the wind
falls we will survey the ice."

He warmed himself afresh, and after remaining silent with the air of one
turning many thoughts over in his mind, he suddenly cried, "D'ye know I
have a mind to view the plate and money below. What say you?"

His little eyes seemed to sparkle with suspicion as he directed them at
me. I was confident he suspected I had lied in saying I knew nothing of
this treasure and that he wanted to see if I had meddled with those
chests. One of the penalties attached to a man being forced to keep the
company of liars is, he himself is never believed by them. I answered
instantly, "Certainly; I should like to see this wonderful booty. It is
right that we should find out at once if it is there; for supposing it
vanished we should be no better than madmen to sit talking here of the
fine lives we shall live if ever we get home."

He picked up the lanthorn and said, "I must go to your cabin: it was the
captain's. The keys of the chests should be in one of his boxes."

He marched off, and was so long gone that I was almost of belief he had
tumbled down in a fit. However, I had made up my mind to act a very wary
part; and particularly never to let him think I distrusted him, and so I
would not go to see what he was about. But what I did was this: the
arms-room was next door: I lighted a candle, entered it, and swiftly
armed myself with a sort of dagger, a kind of boarding-knife, a very
murderous little two-edged sword, the blade about seven inches long, and
the haft of brass. There were some fifty of these weapons, and I took
the first that came to my hand and dropped it into the deep side pocket
of my coat and returned to the cook-room. It was not that I was afraid
of going unarmed with this man into the hold: there was no more danger
to me there than here: should he ever design to despatch me, one place
was the same as another, for the dead above could not testify: there
were no witnesses in this white and desolate kingdom. What resolved me
to go armed was the fear that should the treasure be missing--and who
was to swear that the schooner had never been visited once in
eight-and-forty years?--the Frenchman, who was persuaded his stupor had
not lasted above a week, and who was doubtless satisfied the chests were
in the hold down to the period when he lost recollection, would suspect
me of foul play, and in the barbarous rage of a pirate fall upon and
endeavour to kill me. Thus you will see that I had no very high opinion
of the morals and character of the man I had given life to; and indeed,
after I had armed myself and was seated again before the furnace, I felt
extremely melancholy, and underwent the severest dejection of spirits
that had yet visited me, fearing that my humanity had achieved nothing
more than to bring me into the society of a devil, who would prove a
fixed source of anxiety and misery to me. Was it conceivable that the
others should be worse than, or even as bad as, this creature? His hair
showed him hoary in vice. The Italian was a handsome man, and let him
have been as profligate as he would, as cruel and fierce a pirate as
Tassard had painted him, he would at all events have proved a sightly
companion, and harmless as being blind, though to be sure for that
reason of no use to me. Yet though his blindness would have made him a
burden, I had rather have thawed him into life than the Frenchman.

The mere thought of feeling under an obligation to arm myself filled me
with such vindictive passions that I protest as I sat alone waiting for
him. I felt as if it were a duty I owed myself to return him to the
condition in which I found him, which was to be easily contrived by my
binding him in his sleep and dragging him to the deck and leaving him to
stupefy alongside the body of the giant Joam Barros. "Peace!" cried I to
myself with a shiver; "villain that thou art to harbour such thoughts!
Thou art a hundred-fold worse than the wretch against whom Satan is
setting thee plotting to think thus vilely." I gulped down this bolus
of conscience with the help of a draught of wine, and it did me good.
Lord, how dangerous is loneliness to a man! Depend upon it, your seeker
after solitude is only hunting for the road that leads to Bedlam.

It might be that he was long because of having to seek for the keys; but
my own conviction was that he found the keys easily and stayed to
rummage the boxes for such jewels and articles of value as he might
there find. I think he was gone near half an hour; he then returned to
the cook-house, saying briefly, "I have the keys," and jingling them,
and after warming himself, said, "Let us go."

I was moving towards the forecastle.

"Not that way for the run," cried he.

"Is there a hatch aft?" I asked.

"Certainly; in the lazarette."

"I wish I had known that," said I; "I should have been spared a stifling
scramble over the casks and raffle forwards."

He led the way, and coming to the trap hatch that conducted to the
lazarette, he pulled it open and we descended. He held the lanthorn and
threw the light around him and said, "Ay, there are plenty of stores
here. We reckoned upon provisions for twelve months, and we were seventy
of a crew."

A strange figure he looked, just touched by the yellow candle-light, and
standing out upon the blackness like some vision of a distempered fancy,
in his hair-cap and flaps, and with his long nose and beard and little
eyes shining as he rolled them here and there. We made our way over the
casks, bales, and the like, till we were right aft, and here there was a
small clear space of deck in which lay a hatch. This he lifted by its
ring, and down through the aperture did he drop, I following. The
lazarette deck came so low that we had to squat when still or move upon
our knees. At the foremost end of this division of the ship, so far as
it was possible for my eyes to pierce the darkness--for it seems that
this run went clear to the fore-hold bulkhead, that is to say, under the
powder-room, to where the fore-hold began--were stowed the spare sails,
ropes for gear, and a great variety of furniture for the equipment of a
ship's yards and masts. But immediately under the hatch stood several
small chests and cases, painted black, stowed side by side so that they
could not shift.

Tassard ran his eye over them, counting. "Right!" cried he; "hold the
lanthorn, Mr. Rodney."

I took the light from him, and, pulling the keys from his pocket, he
fell to trying them at the lock of the first chest. One fitted; the bolt
shot with a hard click, like cocking a trigger, and he raised the lid.
The chest was full of silver money. I picked up a couple of the coins,
and, bringing them to the candle, perceived them to be Spanish pieces of
eight. The money was tarnished, yet it reflected a sort of dull metallic
light. The Frenchman grasped a handful and dropped them, as though, like
a child, he loved to hear the chink the pieces made as they fell.

"There's a brave pocketful there," said I.

"Tut!" cried he, scornfully. "'Tis a mere show of money; resolve it into
gold and it becomes a lean bit of plunder. This we got from the
_Conquistador_; it was all she had in this way; destined for some
monastery, I recollect; but disappointment is good for holy fathers; it
makes them more earnest in their devotions and keeps their paunches from
swelling."

He let fall the lid of the chest, which locked itself, and then, after a
short trial of the keys, opened the one beside it. This was stored to
the top with what I took to be pigs of lead, and when he pulled out one
and bade me feel the weight of it I still thought it was lead, until he
told me it was virgin silver.

"This was good booty!" cried he, taking the lanthorn and swinging it
over the blocks of metal. "It would have been missed but for me. Our men
had found it in the hold of the buccaneer in a chest half as deep again
as this, and thought it to be a case of marmalade, for there were two
layers of boxes of marmalade stowed on top. I routed them out and found
those pretty bricks of ore snug beneath. I believe Mendoza made the
value of the two chests--silver though it be--to be equal to six
thousand pounds of your money."

The next chest he opened was filled with jewellery of various kinds, the
fruits, I daresay, of a dozen pillages, for not only had this pirate
robbed honest traders but a picaroon as well that had also plundered in
her turn another of her own kidney; so that, as I say, this chest of
jewellery might represent the property of the passengers of as many as
a dozen vessels. It was as if the contents of the shop of a jeweller who
was at once a goldsmith and a silversmith had been emptied into this
chest; you could scarce name an ornament that was not here--watches,
snuff-boxes, buckles, bracelets, pounce-boxes, vinaigrettes, earrings,
crucifixes, stars for the hair, necklaces--but the list grows tiresome;
in silver and gold, but chiefly in gold; all shot together and lying
scramble fashion, as if they had been potatoes.

"This is a fine sight," said Tassard, poring upon the sparkling mass
with falcon nose and ravenous eyes. "Here is a dainty little watch.
Fifty guineas would not purchase it in London or Paris. Where is the
white breast upon which that cross there once glittered? Ha! the perfume
has faded," bringing a vinaigrette to his hawk's bill; "the soul is
gone; the body is the immortal part in this case. Now, my friend, talk
to me of the patient drudgery of honourable life after this," collecting
the chests, so to say, to my view with a sweep of the hand; "men will
break their hearts for a hundred livres ashore and be hanged for the
price of a pinchbeck dial. When I was in London I saw five men carted to
the gallows; one had forged, one was a highwayman--I forget the others'
businesses; but I recollect on inquiring the value of their
baggings--that for which they were hanged--it did not amount to four
guineas a man. Look at this!" He swept his great hand again over the
chests. "Is not here something worth going to the scaffold for?"

His bosom swelled, his eyes sparkled, and he made as if to strike a
heroic posture, but this he could not contrive on his hams.

I was thunder-struck, as you will suppose, by the sight of all this
treasure, and looked and stared like a fool, as if I was in a dream. I
had never seen so many fine things before, and indulged in the most
extravagant fancies of their worth. Here and there in the glittering
huddle my eye lighted on an object that was a hundred, perhaps two
hundred, years old: a cup very choicely wrought, that may have been in a
family for several generations; a watch of a curious figure, and the
like. There might have been the pickings of the cabins, trunks, and
portmanteaux of a hundred opulent men and women in this chest, and, so
far as I could judge from what lay atop, the people plundered
represented several nationalities.

But there were other chests and cases to explore--ten in all: two of
these were filled with silver money, a third with plate, a fourth with
English, French, Spanish, and Portugal coins in gold; but the one over
which Tassard hung longest in a transport that held him dumb, was the
smallest of all, and this was packed with gold in bars. The stuff had
the appearance of mouldy yellow soap, and having no sparkle nor variety
did not affect me as the jewellery had, though in value this chest came
near to being worth as much as all the others put together. The fixed
transported posture of the pirate, his little shining eyes intent upon
the bars, his form in the candle-light looking like a sketch of a
strange, wildly-apparelled man done in phosphorus, coupled with the loom
of the black chests, the sense of our desolation, the folly of our
enjoyment of the sight of the treasure in the face of our pitiable and
dismal plight, the melancholy storming of the wind, moaning like the
rumble of thunder heard in a vault, and above all the feeling of
unreality inspired by the thought of my companion having lain for
eight-and-forty years as good as dead, combined to render the scene so
startlingly impressive that it remains at this hour painted as vividly
upon the eye of memory as if I had come from it five minutes ago.

"So!" cried the Frenchman suddenly, slamming the lid of the chest. "Tis
all here! Now then to the business of considering how to come off with
it."

He thrust the keys in his pocket, and we returned to the cook-room.




CHAPTER XVIII.

WE TALK OVER OUR SITUATION.


That night, as afterwards, Tassard occupied the berth that he was used
to sleep in before he was frozen. Although I had not then the least fear
that he would attempt any malignant tricks with me whilst we remained in
this posture, the feeling that he lay in the berth next but one to mine
made me uneasy in spite of my reasoning; and I was so nervous as to
silently shoot a great iron bolt, so that it would have been impossible
to enter without beating the door in.

In sober truth, the sight of the treasure had put a sort of fever into
my imagination, of the heat and effects of which I was not completely
sensible until I was alone in my cabin and swinging in the darkness.
That the value of what I had seen came to ninety or a hundred thousand
pounds of our money I could not doubt; and I will not deny that my fancy
was greatly excited by thinking of it. But there was something else.
Suppose we should have the happiness to escape with this treasure, then
I was perfectly certain the Frenchman would come between me and my share
of it. This apprehension threading my heated thoughts of the gold and
silver kept me restless during the greater part of the night, and I also
held my brains on the stretch with devices for saving ourselves and the
treasure; yet I could not satisfy my mind that anything was to be done
unless Nature herself assisted us in freeing the schooner.

However, as it happened, the gale roared for a whole week, and the cold
was so frightful and the air so charged with spray and hail that we were
forced to lie close below with the hatches on for our lives. It was true
Cape Horn weather, with seas as high as cliffs, and a westering tendency
in the wind that flung sheets of water through the ravine, which must
have quickly filled the hollow and built us up in ice to the height of
the rails but for the strong slope down which the water rushed as fast
as it was hurled.

I never needed to peep an inch beyond the companion-way to view the
sky; nor for the matter of that was there ever any occasion to leave the
cabin to guess at the weather, for the perpetual thunder of it echoed
strong in every part of the vessel below, and the whole fabric was
constantly shivering to the blows of the falls of water on her decks.

At first the Frenchman and I would sit in the greatest fear imaginable,
constantly expecting some mighty disaster, such as the rending of the
ice under our keel and our being swallowed up, or the coming together of
the slopes in such a manner as to crush the ship, or the fall upon her
of ice weighty enough to beat her flat; though perhaps this we least
feared, for unless the storm changed the whole face of the cliffs, there
was no ice in our neighbourhood to serve us in that way. But as the time
slipped by and nothing worse happened than one sharp movement only in
the vessel, following the heels of a great noise like a cannon
discharged just outside; though this movement scared us nearly out of
our senses, and held us in a manner dumbfounded for the rest of the day;
I say, the time passing and nothing more terrifying than what I have
related happening, we took heart and waited with some courage and
patience for the gale to break, never doubting that we should find a
wonderful change when we surveyed the scene from the heights.

We lived well, sparing ourselves in nothing that the vessel contained,
the abundance rendering stint idle; the Frenchman cooked, for he was a
better hand than I at that work, and provided several relishable
sea-pies, cakes, and broths. As for liquor, there was enough on board to
drown the pair of us twenty times over: wines of France, Spain,
Portugal, very choice fine brandy, rum in plenty, such variety indeed as
enabled us to brew a different kind of punch every day in the seven. But
we were much more careful with the coal, and spared it to the utmost by
burning the hammocks, bedding, and chests that lay in the forecastle;
that is to say, we burnt these things by degrees, the stock being
excessive, and by judiciously mixing them with coal and wood, they made
good warming fires, and as tinder lasted long too.

We occupied one morning in thoroughly overhauling the forecastle for
such articles of value as the sailors had dropped or forgotten in their
flight; but found much less than I had expected from the sight of the
money and other things on the deck. There was little in this way to be
found in the cabins: I mean in the captain's cabin which I used, and the
one next it that had been the mate's, for of course I did not search Mr.
Tassard's berth. But though it was quite likely that the seamen had
plundered these cabins before they left the ship, I was also sure that
the Frenchman had made a clean sweep of what they had overlooked when he
pretended to search for the keys of the treasure-chests; and this
suspicion I seemed to find confirmed by the appearance of the captain's
boxes. One of these boxes contained books, papers, a telescope, some
nautical instruments, and the like. I looked at the books and the
papers, in the hope of finding something to read; but they were written
and printed in the Spanish tongue, and might have been Hebrew for all
the good they were to me.

Our life was extraordinarily dismal and melancholy, how much so I am
unable to express. It was just the same as living in a dungeon. There
was no crevice for the daylight to shine through, and had there been we
must have closed it to keep the cold out. Nothing could be imagined more
gloomy to the spirits than the perpetual night of the schooner's
interior. The furnace, it is true, would, when it flamed heartily, throw
a brightness about it; but often it sank into redness that did but
empurple the gloom. We burned but one candle at a time, and its light
was very small, so that our time was spent chiefly in a sullen twilight.
Added to all this was my dislike of my companion. He would half fuddle
himself with liquor, and in that condition hiccup out twenty kinds of
villainous yarns of piracy, murder, and bloodshed, boasting of the
number of persons he had despatched, of his system of torturing
prisoners to make them confess what they had concealed and where. He
would drivel about his amours, of the style in which he lived when
ashore, and the like; but whether reticence had grown into a habit too
strong even for drink to break down, he never once gave me so much as a
hint touching his youth and early life. He was completely a Frenchman in
his vanity, and you would have thought him entirely odious and
detestable for this excessive quality in him alone. Methinks I see him
now, sitting before me, with one half of him reflecting the light of the
furnace, his little eyes twinkling with a cruel merriment of wine,
telling me a lying story of the adoration of a noble, queenly-looking
captive for his person--some lovely Spanish court lady whom, with
others, they had taken out of a small frigate bound to old Spain. To
test her sincerity he offered to procure her liberty at the first
opportunity that offered; but she wept, raved, tore her hair. No;
without her Jules life would be unendurable; her husband, her country,
her king, nay, even the allurements and sparkle of the court, had grown
disgusting; and so on, and so on. And I think a monkey would have burst
into laughter to see the bald-headed old satyr beat his bosom, flourish
his arms, ogle, languish, and simper, all with a cut-throat expression,
too, soften his voice, and act in short as if he was not telling me as
big a lie as was ever related on shipboard.

It naturally rendered me very melancholy to reflect that I had restored
this old villain to life, and I protest it was a continuous shock to
such religious feelings as I had managed to preserve to reflect that
what had been as good as nearly half a century of death had done nothing
for this elderly rogue's morals. It entered my head once to believe that
if I could succeed in getting him to believe he had lain frozen for
eight-and-forty years, he might be seized with a fright (for he was a
white-livered creature), and in some directions mend, and so come to a
sense of the service I had done him, of which he appeared wholly
insensible, and qualify me to rid my mind of the fears which I
entertained concerning our association, should we manage to escape with
the treasure. I said to him bluntly--not _apropos_ (to use his own
lingo) of anything we were talking about,--

"'Tis odd, Mr. Tassard, you should doubt my assurance that this is the
year eighteen hundred and one."

He stared, grinned, and said, "Do you think so?"

"Well," said I, "perhaps it is not so odd after all; but you should
suffer me to have as good an idea of the passage of time as yourself.
You cannot tell me how long your stupor lasted."

"Two days if you like!" he interrupted vehemently. "Why more? Why longer
than a day? How do you know that I had sunk into the condition in which
you found me longer than an hour or two when you landed? How do you
know, hey? How do you know?" and he snapped his fingers.

"I know by the date you name and by the year that this is," said I
defiantly.

He uttered a coarse French expression and added, "You want to prove that
I have been insensible for forty-eight years."

"It is the fact," said I.

He looked so wild and fierce that I drew myself erect ready for him if
he should fall upon me. Then, slowly wagging his head whilst the anger
in his face softened out, he said, "Who reigns in France now?"

I said, "There is no king; he was beheaded."

"What was his name?" said he.

"Louis the Sixteenth," I answered.

"Ha!" cried he, with an arch sneer; "Louis the Sixteenth, hey? Are you
sure it wasn't Louis the Seventeenth?"

"He is dead too."

"This is news, Mr. Rodney," said he scornfully.

"Whilst you have been here," said I, "many mighty changes have happened.
France has produced as great a general and as dangerous a villain as the
world ever beheld; his name is Buonaparte."

He shrugged his shoulders with an air of mocking pity.

"Who is your king?" he asked.

"George the Third," said I; "God bless him!"

"So--George and Louis--Louis and George. I see how it is. Stick to your
dates, sir. But, my friend, never set up as a schoolmaster."

This sally seemed to delight him, and he burst into a loud laugh.

"Eighteen hundred and one!" he cried. "A man I knew once lost ten
thousand livres at a _coup_. What do you think happened? They settled in
him here;" he patted his belly: "he went about bragging to everybody
that he was made of money, and was nicknamed the walking bourse. One day
he asked a friend to dine with him; when the bill was presented he felt
in his pockets, and exclaimed, 'I left my purse at home. No matter;
there is plenty here;' with which he seized a table-knife and ripped
himself open. Eighteen hundred and one, d'ye call it? _Soit._ But let
it be _your_ secret, my friend. The world will not love you for making
it fifty years older than it is."

It was ridiculous to attempt to combat such obstinacy as this, and as
the subject produced nothing but excitement and irritation, I dropped it
and meddled with it no more, leaving him to his conviction that I was
cracked in this one particular. In fact, it was a matter of no
consequence at all; what came very much closer home was the business of
our deliverance, and over this we talked long and very earnestly, for he
forgot to be mean and fierce and boastful, and I to dislike and fear
him, when we spoke of getting away with our treasure, and returning to
our native home.

For hour after hour would we go on plotting and planning and scheming,
stepping about the cook-house in our earnestness, and entirely engrossed
with the topic. His contention was that if we were to save the money and
plate, we must save the schooner.

"Unless we build a vessel," said I.

"Out of what?"

"Out of this schooner."

"Are you a carpenter?" said he.

"No," I replied.

"Neither am I," said he. "It's possible we might contrive such a
structure as would enable us to save our lives; but we have not the
skill to produce a vessel big enough to contain those chests as well as
ourselves, and the stores we should require to take. Besides, do you
know there is no labour more fatiguing than knocking such a craft as
this to pieces?"

This I very well believed, and it was truer of such a vessel as the
_Boca del Dragon_ that was a perfect bed of timber, and, like the
_Laughing Mary_, built as if she was to keep the seas for three hundred
years.

"And supposing," said he, "after infinite toil we succeeded in breaking
up as much of her as we wanted, what appliances have we for reshaping
the curved timbers? and where are we to lay the keel? Labour as we
might, the cold would prove too much for us. No, Mr. Rodney, to save the
treasure, ay, and to save ourselves, we must save the ship. Let us put
our minds to that."

In this way we would reason, and I confess he talked very sensibly,
taking very practical views, and indicating difficulties which my more
ardent and imaginative nature might have been blind to till they
immovably confronted me, and rendered days of labour useless. But how
was the ship to be saved? Was it possible to force Nature's hand; in
other words, to anticipate our release by the dissolution of the ice? We
were both agreed that this was the winter season in these seas, though
he instantly grew sulky if I mentioned the month, for he was as certain
I was as mad in this, as in the year, and he would eye me very
malignantly if I persisted in calling it July. But, as I have said, we
were both agreed that the summer was to come, and though we could not
swear that the ice was floating northwards, we had a right to believe
so, in spite of the fierceness of the cold, this being the trick of all
these frozen estates when they fetch to the heights under which we lay;
and we would ask each other whether we should let our hands and minds
rest idle and wait to see what the summer would do for us, or essay to
launch the schooner.

"If," said he, "we wait for the ice to break up it may break us up too."

"Yes," said I, "but how are we to cut the vessel out of the ice in which
she is seated to above the garboard streak? Waiting is odious and
intolerable work; but my own conviction is, nothing is to be done till
the sun comes this way, and the ice crumbles into bergs. The island is
leagues long, and vanishes in the south; but it is wasting fast in the
north, and when this gale is done I shall expect to see twenty bergs
where it was before all compact."

As you may guess, our long conversations left us without plans, bitter
as was our need, and vigorous as were our efforts to strike upon some
likely scheme. However, if they achieved no more, they served to beguile
the time, and what was better yet, they took my companion's mind off his
nauseous and revolting recollections, so that it was only now and again
when he had drained a full bowl, and his little eyes danced in their
thick-shagged caves, that he regaled me with his memories of murder,
rapine, plank-walking, hanging, treacheries of all kinds, and cruelties
too barbarous for belief.




CHAPTER XIX.

WE TAKE A VIEW OF THE ICE.


For seven days the gale raged with uncommon violence: it then broke, and
this brought us into the first week of August. The wind fell in the
night, and I was awakened by the silence, which you will not think
strange if you consider how used were my ears to the fierce seething and
strong bellowing of the blast. I lay listening, believing that it had
only veered, and that it would come on again in gusts and guns; but the
stillness continued, and there was no sound whatever, saving the noises
of the ice, which broke upon the air like slow answers from batteries
near and distant, half whose cannons have been silenced.

I slept again, and when I awoke it was half-past nine o'clock in the
morning. The Frenchman was snoring lustily. I went on deck before
entering the cook-house, and had like to have been blinded by the
astonishing brilliance of the sunshine upon the ice and snow. All the
wind was gone. The air was exquisitely frosty and sharp. But there was a
heavy sound coming from the sea which gave me to expect the sight of a
strong swell. The sky was a clear blue, and there was no cloud on as
much of its face as showed betwixt the brows of the slopes.

The schooner was a most wonderful picture of drooping icicles. A more
beautiful and radiant sight you could not figure. From every rope, from
the yards forward, from the rails, from whatever water could run in a
stream, hung glorious ice-pendants of prismatic splendour. No snow had
fallen to frost the surfaces, and every pendant was as pure and polished
as cut-glass and reflected a hundred brilliant colours. The water hurled
over and on the schooner had frozen upon the masts, rigging, and decks,
and as this ice, like the pendants, was very sparklingly bright, it gave
back all the hues of the sunbeam, so that, stepping from the darkness of
the cabin into this effulgent scene, you might easily have persuaded
yourself that before you stood the fabric of a ship fashioned out of a
rainbow.

My attention, however, was quickly withdrawn from this shining spectacle
by the appearance of the starboard cliff over against our quarter. The
whole shoulder of it had broken away and I could just catch a view of
the horizon of the sea from the deck by stretching my figure. The sight
of the ocean showed me that the breakage had been prodigious, for to
have come to that prospect before, I should have had to climb to the
height of the main lower masthead. No other marked or noteworthy change
did I detect from the deck; but on stepping to the larboard side to peer
over I spied a split in the ice that reached from the very margin of the
ravine, I mean to that end of it where it terminated in a cliff, to past
the bows of the schooner by at least four times her own length.

I returned to the cook-room and went about the old business of lighting
the fire and preparing the breakfast--this job by an understanding
between the Frenchman and me, falling to him who was first out of
bed--and in about twenty minutes Tassard arrived.

"The wind is gone," said he.

"Yes," I replied, "it is a bright still morning. I have been on deck.
There has been a great fall of ice close to."

"Does it block us?"

"No, on the contrary, it clears the way to the sea; the ocean is now
visible from the deck. Not that it mends our case," I added. "But there
is a great rent in the ice that puts a fancy into my head; I'll speak of
it later after a closer look."

The breakfast was ready, and we fell to in a hurry, the Frenchman
gobbling like a hog in his eagerness to make an end. When we were
finished he wrapped himself up in three or four coats and cloaks,
warming the under ones before folding them about him, and completing his
preparations for the excursion by swallowing half a pint of raw brandy.
I bade him arm himself with a short-headed spear to save his neck; and
thus equipped we went on deck.

He stood stock-still with his eyes shut on emerging through the hatch,
crying out with a number of French oaths that he had been struck blind.
This I did not believe, though I readily supposed that the glare made
his eyeballs smart so as to cause him a good deal of agony. Indeed, all
along I had been surprised that he should have found his sight so
easily after having sat in blindness for forty-eight years, and it was
not wonderful that the amazing brilliance on deck, smiting his sight on
a sudden, should have caused him to cry out as if he had lost the use of
his eyes for ever.

I waited patiently, and in about ten minutes he was able to look about
him, and then it was not long before he could see without pain. He stood
a minute gazing at the glories upon the rigging, and in that piercing
light I noticed the unwholesome colour of his face. His cap hid the
scar, and nothing of his countenance was to be seen but the cheeks,
eyes, and nose; he was much more wrinkled than I had supposed, and
methought the spirit of cruelty lay visible in every line. I had never
seen eyes so full of cunning and treachery--so expressive, I should say,
of these qualities; yet they were no bigger than mere punctures. I was
sensible of a momentary fear of the man--not, let me say, an emotion of
cowardice--but a sort of mixture of alarm and awe, such as a ghost might
inspire. This I put down to the searching light in which I watched him
for a moment or two, an irradiation subtle enough to give the sharpest
form to expression, to exquisitely define every meaning that was
distinguishable in his graveyard physiognomy. I left him to stare and
judge for himself of the posture in which the long hard gale had put the
schooner and stepped over to the two bodies. They were shrouded in ice
from head to foot, as though they had each man been packed in a glass
case cunningly wrought to their shapes. Their faces were hid by the
crystal masks. Tassard joined me.

"Small chance for your friends now," said I, "even if you were agreeable
to my proposal to attempt to revive them."

"So!" cried he, touching the body of the mate with his foot; "and this
is the end of the irresistible Trentanove! for what conquests has Death
robed him so bravely? See, the colours shine in him like fifty different
kinds of ribbands. Poor fellow! he could not curl his moustachios now,
though the loveliest eyes in Europe were fixed in passionate admiration
on him. He'll never slit another throat, nor hiccup Petrarch over a
goblet nor remonstrate with me on my humanity. Shall we toss the bodies
over the side?"

"They are your friends," said I; "do as you please."

"But we must empty their pockets first. Business before sentiment, Mr.
Rodney."

He stirred the figure again with his foot.

"Well, presently," said he, "this armour will want the hatchet. Now, my
friend, to view the work of the gale."

The increased heel of the ship brought the larboard fore-channel low,
and we stepped without difficulty from it on to the ice. The rent or
fissure that I have before spoken of went very deep; it was nearly two
feet wide in places, but, though the light poured brilliantly upon it, I
could see no bottom.

"If only such another split as this would happen t'other side," said the
Frenchman, "I believe this block would go adrift."

"Well," said I, after musing a little whilst I ran my eye over the
hollows, "I'll tell you what was in my mind just now. There is a great
quantity of gunpowder in the hold; ten or a dozen barrels. By dropping
large parcels of it into the crevices on the right there, and firing it
with slow-matches--"

He interrupted me with a cry: "By St. Paul, you have it! What crevices
have you?"

We walked briskly round the vessel, and all about her beam and starboard
quarter I found, in addition to the seams I had before noticed, many
great cracks and fissures, caused no doubt by the fall of the shoulder
of the slope. I pushed on further yet, going down the ravine, as I have
called it, until I came to the edge; and here I looked down from a
height of some twelve or fourteen feet--so greatly had the ice sunk or
been changed by the weather--upon the ocean. I called to Tassard. He
approached warily. I believe he feared I might be tempted to give him a
friendly shove over the edge.

"Observe this hollow," said I; "the split there goes down to the water,
and you may take it that the block is wholly disconnected on that side.
Now look at the face of the ice," said I, pointing to the starboard or
right-hand side; "that crack goes as far as the vessel's quarter, and
the weakness is carried on to past the bows by the other rents. Mr.
Tassard, if we could burst this body of ice by an explosion from its
moorings ahead of the bowsprit, where it is all too compact, this cradle
with the schooner in it will go free of the parent body."

He answered promptly, "Yes; it is the one and only plan. That crack to
starboard is like telling us what to do. It is well you came here. We
should not have seen it from the top. This valley runs steep. You must
expect no more than the surface to be liberated, for the foot of the
cliff will go deep."

"I desire no more."

"Will the ship stand such a launch, supposing we bring it about?" said
he.

I responded with one of his own shrugs, and said, "Nothing is certain.
We have one of two courses to choose: to venture this launch, or stay
till the ice breaks up, and take our chance of floating or of being
smashed."

"You are right," he exclaimed. "Here is an opportunity. If we wait,
bergs may gather about this point and build us in. As to this island
dissolving, we are yet to know which way 'tis heading. Suppose it should
be travelling south, hey!"

He struck the ice with his spear, and we toiled up the slippery rocks
with difficulty to the ship. We walked past the bows to the distance of
the vessel's length. Here were many deep holes and cracks, and as if we
were to be taught how these came about, even whilst we were viewing them
an ear-splitting crash of noise happened within twenty fathoms of us, a
rock many tons in weight rolled over, and left a black gulf behind it.

The Frenchman started, muttered, and crossed himself. "Holy Virgin!" he
cried, rolling his eyes. "Let us return to the schooner. We shall be
swallowed up here."

I own I was not a little terrified myself by the sudden loud blast and
the thunder of the uprooted rock, and the sight of the huge black rent;
but I meant to view the scene from the top, and to consider how best to
dispose of the powder in the cracks, and said, "There is nothing to be
done on board; skulking below will not deliver us or preserve the
treasure. Here are several fissures big enough to receive barrels of
gunpowder. See, Mr. Tassard, as they stand they cover the whole width of
the hollow."

And I proceeded to give him my ideas as to lowering, fixing the barrels,
and the like. He nodded his head, and said, "Yes, very good; yes, it
will do," and so on; but was too scared in his heart, I believe, to see
my full meaning. He was perpetually moving, as if he feared the ice
would split under his feet, and his eyes travelled over the face of the
rocks with every manifestation of alarm in their expression. I wondered
how so poor a creature should ever have had stomach enough to serve as a
pirate; no doubt his spirit had been enfeebled by his long sleep; but
then it is also true that the greatest bullies and most bloodthirsty
rogues prove themselves despicable curs under conditions which make no
demand upon their temper or their lust for plunder.

He would have returned to the ship, had I encouraged him, but on seeing
me start to climb to the brow he followed. The prospect disappointed me.
I had expected to witness a variety of surprising changes; but southward
the scene was scarce altered. It was a wonderfully fair morning, the sky
clear from sea-line to sea-line, and of a very soft blue, the ocean of a
like hue, with a high swell running, that was a majestic undulation even
from the height at which I surveyed it. The sun stood over the ice in
the north-east, and the dazzle kept me weeping, so intolerable was the
effulgence. Half of the delicate architecture that had enriched the
slopes and surfaces that way was swept down, and ice lay piled in places
to an elevation of many feet, where before it had been flat or hollow.
However, there was no question but that the gale had played havoc with
the north extremity of the island: I counted no less than twenty bergs
floating off the main, and it was quite likely the sea was crowded
beyond, though my sight could not travel so far.

However, when I came to look close, and to recollect the features of the
shore as they showed when I first landed, I found some vital changes
near at hand. Where my haven had been the ice had given way and left a
gap half a mile broad and a hundred feet deep. The fall on the
schooner's starboard quarter was very heavy, and the ice was split in
all directions; and in parts was so loose that a point of cliff hard
upon the sea rocked with the swell. When Tassard came to a stand he
looked about him north and south, shading his eyes with his hand, and
then swearing very savagely in French, he cried out in English, freely
employing oaths as he spoke,--

"Why, here's as much ice as there was before I fell asleep! See yonder!"
pointing to the south. "It dies out in the distance. If it does not
join the pole there, may the devil rise before me as I speak. Thunder
and fury! I had hoped to see it shrivelled to an ordinary berg!"

"What! in a week?" cried I, as if I believed his stupor had not lasted
longer.

He returned no answer and gaped about him full of consternation and
passion.

"And are we to wait for our deliverance till this continent breaks up?"
he bawled. "The day of judgment will be a thing of the past by that
time. Travelling north! 'sdeath!" he roared, his mouth full of the
expletives of his day, French and English. "Who but a madman could
suppose that this ice is not as fixed as the antarctic circle to which
it is moored? Why, six months ago it was no bigger than it is now!" And
he sent a furious terrified gaze into the white solitudes vanishing in
azure faintness in the south-west.

It was not a thing to reason upon. I was as much disappointed as he by
the trifling changes the gale had made, and my heart felt very heavy at
the sight of the great field disappearing in the south. The bergs in the
north signified little. It is true they indicated demolition, but
demolition so slow as to be worthless to us. It was not to be questioned
that the island was proceeding north, but at what rate? Here, perhaps,
might be a frozen crescent of forty or fifty leagues: and at what speed,
appreciable enough to be of the least consequence to our calculations,
should such a body travel?

I looked at the Frenchman.

"This must decide us!" said I. "We must fix on one of two courses:
endeavour to launch the ship by blowing up the ice, or turn to and rig
up the best arrangement we can contrive and put to sea."

"Yes," he answered, scowling as he darted his enraged eyes over the ice.
"Better set a slow match in the magazine and drink ourselves senseless,
and so blow ourselves to hell, than linger here in the hope that this
continent will dissolve and release us. Where's Mendoza's body?"

I stared about me, and then pointing to the huge gap the ice had made,
answered, "It was there. Where it is now I know not."

He shrugged his shoulders, took another view of the ice and the ocean,
and then cried impatiently, "Let us return! the powder-barrels must have
the first chance." And he made for the schooner, savagely striking the
ice with his spear and growling curses to himself as he ploughed and
climbed and jumped his way along.




CHAPTER XX.

A MERRY EVENING.


By the time we had reached the bottom of the hollow Tassard was blowing
like a bellows with the uncommon exertion; and swearing that he felt the
cold penetrating his bones, and that he should be stupefied again if he
did not mind, he climbed into the ship and disappeared. I loved him so
little that secretly I very heartily wished that nature would make away
with him: I mean that something it would be impossible in me to lay to
my conscience should befall him, as becoming comatose again, and so
lying like one dead. Assuredly in such a case it was not this hand that
would have wasted a drop of brandy in returning an evil, white-livered,
hectoring old rascal to a life that smelled foully with him and the like
of him.

It was so still a day that the cold did not try me sorely: there was
vitality if not warmth in the light of the sun, and I was heated with
clambering. So I stayed a full half-hour after my companion had vanished
examining the ice about the schooner; which careful inspection repaid me
to the extent of giving me to see that if by blasts of gunpowder I could
succeed in rupturing the ice ahead of the schooner's bows there was a
very good chance of the mass on which she lay going adrift. Yet I will
not deny that though I recognized this business of dislocation as our
only chance--for I could see little or nothing to be done in the way of
building a boat proper to swim and ply--I foreboded a dismal issue to
our adventure, even should we succeed in separating this block from the
main. In fine, what I feared was that the weight of the schooner would
overset the ice and drown her and us.

I entered the ship and found Tassard roasting himself in the cook-house.

"How melancholy is this gloom," said I, "after the glorious white
sunshine!"

"Yes," said he, "but it is warm. That is enough for me. Curse the cold,
say I. It robs a man of all spirit. To grapple with this rigour one
should have fed all one's life on blubber. I defy a man to be brave when
he is half-frozen. I feel a match for any three men now; but on the
heights a flea would have made me run."

He pulled a pot from the bricks and filled his pannikin.

"I have been surveying the ice," said I, drawing to the furnace, "and
have very little doubt that if we wisely bestow the powder in great
quantities we shall succeed in dislocating the bed on which we are
lying."

"Good!" he cried.

"But after?" said I.

"What?"

"As much of this bed as may be dislodged will not be deep: icebergs, as
of course you know, capsize in consequence of their becoming top-heavy
by the wasting of the bulk that is submerged. This block will make but a
small berg should we liberate it, and I very much fear that the weight
of the schooner will overset it the instant we are launched."

"Body of Moses!" he cried angrily, knitting his brows, whereby he
stretched the scar to half its usual width, "what's to be done, then?"

"She is a full ship," said I, "and weighty. If the liberated ice be thin
she may sit up on it and keep it under. We have a right to hope in that
direction, perhaps. Yet there is another consideration. She may leak
like a sieve!"

"Why?" he exclaimed. "She took the ice smoothly; she has not been
strained; she was as tight as a bottle before she stranded; the coating
of ice will have cherished her; and a stout ship like this does not
suffer from six months of lying up!"

Six months, thought I!

"Well, it may be as you say; but if she leaks it will not be in our four
arms to keep her free."

He exclaimed hotly, "Mr. Rodney, if we are to escape, we must venture
something. To stay here means death in the end. I am persuaded that this
ice is joined with some vast main body far south and that it does not
move. What is there, then, to wait for? There is promise in your
gunpowder proposal. If she capsizes then the devil will get his own."
And with a savage flourish of the pannikin he put it to his lips and
drained it.

His sullen determination that we should stand or fall by my scheme was
not very useful to me. I had looked for some shrewdness in him, some
capacity of originating and weighing ideas; but I found he could do
little more than curse and swagger and ply his can, in which he found
most of his anecdotes and recollections and not a little of his courage.
I pulled out my watch, as I must call it, and observed that it was hard
upon one o'clock.

"'Tis lucky," said he, eying the watch greedily and coming to it away
from the great subject of our deliverance as though the sight of the
fine gold thing with its jewelled letter extinguished every other
thought in him, "that you removed that watch from Mendoza. But he will
have carried other good things to the bottom with him, I fear."

"His flask and tobacco-box I took away," said I. "He had nothing of
consequence besides."

"They must go into the common-chest," cried he; "'tis share and share,
you know."

"Ay," said I, "but what I found on Mendoza is mine by the highest right
under heaven. If I had not taken the things, they would now be at the
bottom of the sea."

"What of that?" cried he savagely. "If we had not plundered the galleon,
she might have been wrecked and taken all she had down with her. Yet
should such a consideration hinder a fair division as between
us--between you who had nothing to do with the pillage and me who risked
my life in it?"

I said, "Very well; be it as you say," appearing to consent, for there
was something truly absurd in an altercation about a few guineas' worth
of booty in the face of our melancholy and most perilous situation;
though it not only enabled me to send a deeper glance into the mind of
this man than I had yet been able to manage, but made me understand a
reason for the bloody and furious quarrels which have again and again
arisen among persons standing on the brink of eternity, to whom a cup of
drink or the sight of a ship had been more precious than the contents of
the Bank of England.

I set about getting the dinner.

"Whilst you are at that work," cried he, starting up, "I'll overhaul the
pockets of the bodies on deck;" and, picking up a chopper, away he
went, and I heard him cursing in his native tongue as he stumbled to the
companion-ladder through the darkness in the cabin.

His rapacity was beyond credence. There was an immense treasure in the
hold, yet he could not leave the pockets of the two poor wretches on
deck alone. I did not envy him his task. The frozen figures would bear a
deal of hammering; and besides he had to work in the cold. Ah, thought I
with a groan, I should have left him to make one of them!

I had finished my dinner by the time he arrived. He produced the watch I
had taken from and returned to the mate's pocket when I had searched him
for a tinder-box; also a gold snuff-box set with diamonds, and a few
Spanish pieces in gold. On seeing these things I remembered that I had
found some rings and money in his pockets whilst overhauling him for
means to obtain fire; but I held my peace.

"Should not we have been imbeciles to sacrifice these beauties?" he
cried, viewing the watch and snuff-box with a rapturous grin.

"They were hard to come at, I expect?"

"No," he answered, pocketing them and turning to a piece of beef in the
oven. "I knocked away the ice and after a little wrenching got at the
pockets. But poor Trentanove! d'ye know, his nose came away with the
mask of ice! He is no longer lovely to the sight!" He broke into a
guffaw, then stuffed his mouth full and talked in the intervals of
chewing. "There was nothing worth taking on Barros. They are both
overboard."

"Overboard!" I cried.

"Why, yes," said he. "They are no good on deck. I stood them against the
rail, then tipped them over."

This was an illustration of his strength I did not much relish.

"I doubt if I could have lifted Barros," said I.

"Not you!" he exclaimed, running his eye over me. "A dead Dutchman would
have the weight of a fairy alongside Barros."

"Well, Mr. Tassard," said I, "since you are so strong, you will be very
useful to our scheme. There is much to be done."

"Give me a sketch of your plans, that I may understand you," he
exclaimed, continuing to eat very heartily.

"First of all," said I, "we shall have to break the powder-barrels out
of the magazine and hoist them on deck. There are tackles, I suppose?"

"You should be able to find what you want among the boatswain's stores
in the run," he replied.

"There are some splits wide enough to receive a whole barrel of powder,"
said I. "I counted four such yawns all happily lying in a line athwart
the ice past the bows. I propose to sink these barrels twenty feet deep,
where they must hang from a piece of spar across the aperture."

He nodded.

"Have you any slow-matches aboard?"

"Plenty among the gunner's stores," he replied.

"There are but you and me," said I; "these operations will take time. We
must mind not to be blown up by one barrel whilst we are suspending
another. We shall have to lower the barrels with their matches on fire
and they must be timed to burn an hour."

"Ay, certainly, at least an hour," he exclaimed. "Two hours would be
better."

"Well, that must depend upon the number of parcels of matches we meet
with. There will be a good many mines to spring, and one must not
explode before another. 'Tis the united force of the several blasts
which we must reckon on. The contents of at least four more barrels of
powder we must distribute amongst the other chinks and splits in such
parcels as they will be able to receive."

"And then?"

"And then," said I, "we must await the explosion and trust to the mercy
of Heaven to help us."

He made a hideous face, as if this was a sort of talk to nauseate him,
and said, "Do you propose that we should remain on board or watch the
effects from a distance?"

"Why, remain on board of course," I answered. "Suppose the mines
liberated the ice on which the schooner lies and it floated away, what
should we, watching at a distance, do?"

"True," cried he, "but it is cursed perilous. The explosion might blow
the ship up."

"No, it will not do that. We shall be bad engineers if we bring such a
thing about. The danger will be--providing the schooner is released--in
her capsizing, as I have before pointed out."

"Enough!" cried he, charging his pannikin for the third time. "We must
chance her capsizing."

"If I had a crew at my back," said I, "I would carry an anchor and cable
to the shoulder of the cliff at the end of the slope to hold the ship if
she swam. I would also put a quantity of provisions on the ice along
with materials for making us shelter and the whole of the stock of coal,
so that we could go on supporting life here if the schooner capsized."

"Then," said he, "you would remain ashore during the explosion?"

"Most certainly. But as all these preparations would mean a degree of
labour impracticable by us two men, I am for the bold venture--prepare
and fire the mines, return to the ship, and leave the rest to
Providence."

He made another ugly face and indulged himself in a piece of profanity
that was inexpressibly disgusting and mean in the mouth of a man who was
used to cross himself when alarmed and swear by the saints. But perhaps
he knew, even better than I, how little he had to expect from
Providence. He filled his pipe, exclaiming that when he had smoked it
out we should fall to work.

Now that I had settled a plan I was eager to put it into practice--hot
and wild indeed with the impatience and hope of the castaway animated
with the dream of recovering his liberty and preserving his life; and I
was the more anxious to set about the business at once, on account of
the weather being fair and still, for if it came on to blow a stormy
wind again we should be forced as before under hatches. But I had to
wait for the Frenchman to empty his pipe. He was so complete a
sensualist that I believe nothing short of terror could have forced him
to shorten the period of a pleasure by a second of time. He went on
puffing so deliberately, with such leisurely enjoyment of the flavour of
the smoke, that I expected to see him fall asleep; and my patience
becoming exhausted I jumped up; but by this time his bowl held nothing
but black ashes.

"Now," cried he, "to work."

And he rose with a prodigious yawn and seized the lanthorn. Our first
business was to hunt among the boatswain's stores in the run for tackles
to hoist the powder-barrels up with. There was a good collection, as
might have been expected in a pirate whose commerce lay in slinging
goods from other ships' holds into her own; but the ropes were frozen as
hard as iron, to remedy which we carried an armful to the cook-house,
and left the tackles to lie and soften. We also conveyed to the
cook-house a quantity of ratline stuff--a thin rope used for making of
the steps in the shroud ladders; this being a line that would exactly
serve to suspend the smaller parcels of powder in the splits. Before
touching the powder-barrels we put a lighted candle into the bull's eye
lamp over the door and removed the lanthorn to a safe distance. Tassard
was perfectly well acquainted with the contents of this storeroom, and
on my asking for the matches put his hand on one of several bags of
them. They varied in length, some being six inches and some making a big
coil. There was nothing for it but to sample and test them, and this I
told Tassard could be done that evening. The main hatch was just forward
of the gun-room bulkhead; we seized a handspike apiece and went to work
to prize the cover open. It was desperate tough labour; as bad as trying
to open an oyster with a soft blade. The Frenchman broke out into many
strange old-fashioned oaths in his own tongue, imagining the hatch to be
frozen; but though I don't doubt the frost had something to do with it,
its obstinacy was mainly owing to time, that had soldered it, so to
speak, with the stubbornness that eight-and-forty years will communicate
to a fixture which ice has cherished and kept sound.

We got the hatch open at last--be pleased to know that I am speaking of
the hatch in the lower deck, for there was another immediately over it
on the upper or main deck--and returning to the powder-room rolled the
barrels forward ready for slinging and hoisting away when we should have
rigged a tackle aloft. We had not done much, but what we had done had
eaten far into the afternoon.

"I am tired and hungry and thirsty," said the Frenchman. "Let us knock
off. We have made good progress. No use opening the main-deck hatch
to-night: the vessel is cold enough even when hermetically corked."

"Very well," said I, bringing my watch to the lanthorn and observing
the time to be sundown: so, carefully extinguishing the candle in the
bull's-eye lamp, we took each of us a bag of matches and went to the
cook-room.

There was neither tea nor coffee in the ship. I so pined for these
soothing drinks that I would have given all the wine in the vessel for a
few pounds of either one of them. A senseless, ungracious yearning,
indeed, in the face of the plenty that was aboard! but it was the
plenty, perhaps, that provoked it. There was chocolate, which the
Frenchman frothed and drank with hearty enjoyment; he also devoured
handfuls of _succades_, which he would wash down with wine. These things
made me sick, and for drink I was forced upon the spirits and wine, the
latter of which was so generous that it promised to combine with the
enforced laziness of my life under hatches to make me fat; so that I am
of opinion had we waited for the ice to release us, I should have become
so corpulent as to prove a burden to myself.

I mention this here that you may find an excuse in it for the only act
of folly in the way of drinking that I can lay to my account whilst I
was in this pirate; for I must tell you that, on returning to the
furnace, we, to refresh us after our labour, made a bowl of punch, of
which I drank so plentifully that I began to feel myself very merry. I
forgot all about the matches and my resolution to test them that night.
The Frenchman, enjoying my condition, continued to pledge me till his
little eyes danced in his head. Luckily for me, being at bottom of a
very jolly disposition, drink never served me worse than to develop
that quality in me. No man could ever say that I was quarrelsome in my
cups. My progress was marked by stupid smiles, terminating in unmeaning
laughter. The Frenchman sang a ballad about love and Picardy, and the
like, and I gave him "Hearts of Oak," the sentiments of which song kept
him shrugging his shoulders and drunkenly looking contempt.

We continued singing alternately for some time, until he fell to setting
up his throat when I was at work, and this confused and stopped me. He
then favoured me with what he called the Pirate's Dance, a very wild,
grotesque movement, with no elegance whatever to be hurt by his being in
liquor; and I think I see him now, whipping off his coat, and sprawling
and flapping about in high boots and a red waistcoat, flourishing his
arms, snapping his fingers, and now and again bursting into a stave to
keep step to. When he was done, I took the floor with the hornpipe,
whistling the air, and double-shuffling, toe-and-heeling, and quivering
from one leg to another very briskly. He lay back against the bulkhead
grasping a can half full of punch, roaring loudly at my antics; and when
I sank down, breathless, would have had me go on, hiccuping that though
he had known scores of English sailors, he had never seen that dance
better performed.

By this time I was extremely excited and extraordinarily merry, and
losing hold of my judgment, began to indulge in sundry pleasantries
concerning his nation and countrymen, asking with many explosions of
laughter, how it was that they continued at the trouble of building
ships for us to use against them, and if he did not think the "flower de
louse" a neater symbol for people who put snuff into their soup and
restricted their ablutions to their faces than the tricolour, being too
muddled to consider that he was ignorant of that flag; and in short I
was so offensive, in spite of my ridiculous merriment, that his savage
nature broke out. He assailed the English with every injurious term his
drunken condition suffered him to recollect; and starting up with his
little eyes wildly rolling, he clapped his hand to his side, as if
feeling for a sword, and calling me by a very ugly French word, bade me
come on, and he would show me the difference between a Frenchman and a
beast of an Englishman.

I laughed at him with all my might, which so enraged him that, swaying
to right and left, he advanced as if to fall upon me. I started to my
feet and tumbled over the bench I had jumped from, and lay sprawling;
and the bench oversetting close to him, he kicked against it and fell
too, fetching the deck a very hard blow. He groaned heavily and muttered
that he was killed. I tried to rise, but my legs gave way, and then the
fumes of the punch overpowered me, for I recollect no more.

When I awoke it was pitch dark. My hands, legs, and feet seemed formed
of ice, my head of burning brass. I thought I was in my cot, and felt
with my hands till I touched Tassard's cold bald head, which so
terrified me that I uttered a loud cry and sprang erect. Then
recollection returned, and I heartily cursed myself for my folly and
wickedness. Good God! thought I, that I should be so mad as to drown my
senses when never was any wretch in such need of all his reason as I!

The boatswain's tinder-box was in my pocket; I groped, found a candle,
and lighted it. It was twenty minutes after three in the morning.
Tassard lay on his back, snoring hideously, his legs overhanging the
capsized bench. I pulled and hauled at him, but he was too drunk to
awake, and that he might not freeze to death I fetched a pile of clothes
out of his cabin and covered him up, and put his head on a coat.

My head ached horribly, but not worse than my heart. When I considered
how our orgy might have ended in bloodshed and murder, how I had
insulted God's providence by drinking and laughing and roaring out songs
and dancing at a time when I most needed His protection, with Death
standing close beside me, as I may say, I could have beaten my head
against the deck in the anguish of my contrition and shame. My passion
of sorrow was so extravagant, indeed, that I remember looking at the
Frenchman as if he was the devil incarnate, who had put himself in my
way to thaw and recover, that he might tempt me on to the loss of my
soul. Fortunately these fancies did not last. I was parched with thirst,
but the water was ice, and there was no fire to melt it with; so I
broke off some chips and sucked them, and held a lump to my forehead. I
went to my cabin and got into my hammock, but my head was so hot, and
ached so furiously, and I was so vexed with myself besides, that I could
not sleep. The schooner was deathly still; there was not apparently the
faintest murmur of air to awaken an echo in her; nothing spoke but the
near and distant cracking of the ice. It was miserable work lying in the
cabin sleepless and reproaching myself, and as my burning head robbed
the cold of its formidableness, I resolved to go on deck and take a
brisk turn or two.

The night was wonderfully fine; the velvet dusk so crowded with stars
that in parts it resembled great spaces of cloth of silver hovering. I
turned my eyes northwards to the stars low down there and thought of
England and the home where I was brought up until the tears gathered,
and with them went something of the dreadful burning aching out of my
head. Those distant, silent, shining bodies amazingly intensified the
sense of my loneliness and remoteness, and yonder Southern Cross and the
luminous dust of the Magellanic clouds seemed not farther off than my
native country. It is not in language to express the savage naked
beauty, the wild mystery of the white still scene of ice, shining back
to the stars with a light that owed nothing to their glory; nor convey
how the whole was heightened to every sense by the element of fear, put
into the picture by the sounds of the splitting ice, and the softened
regular roaring of the breakers along the coast.

I started with fresh shame and horror when I contrasted this ghastly
calmness of pale ice and the brightness of the holy stars looking down
upon it, with our swinish revelry in the cabin, and I thought with
loathing of the drunken ribaldry of the pirate and my own tipsy songs
piercing the ear of the mighty spirit of this solitude. The exercise
improved my spirits; I stepped the length of the little raised deck
briskly, my thoughts very busy. On a sudden the ice split on the
starboard hand with a noise louder than the explosion of a twenty-four
pounder. The schooner swayed to a level keel with so sharp a rise that I
lost my balance and staggered. I recovered myself, trembling and greatly
agitated by the noise and the movement coming together, without the
least hint having been given me, and grasping a backstay, waited, not
knowing what was to happen next. Unless it be the heave of an
earthquake, I can imagine no motion capable of giving one such a
swooning, nauseating, terrifying sensation as the rending of ice under a
fixed ship. In a few moments there were several sharp cracks, all on the
starboard side, like a snapping of musketry, and I felt the schooner
very faintly heave, but this might have been a deception of the senses,
for though I set a star against the masthead and watched it, there was
no movement. I looked over the side and observed that the split I had
noticed on the face of the cliff had by this new rupture been extended
transversely right across the schooner's starboard bow, the thither
side being several feet higher than on this. It was plain that the bed
on which the vessel rested had dropped so as to bring her upright, and I
was convinced by this circumstance alone, that if I used good judgment
in disposing of the powder the weight of the mass would complete its own
dislocation.

I stepped a little way forward to obtain a clearer sight of the splits
about the schooner, and on putting my head over, I was inexpressibly
dismayed and confounded by the apparition of a man with his arms
stretched out before him, his face upturned, and his posture that of
starting back as though terrified at beholding me. I had met with
several frights whilst I had been on this island, but none worse than
this, none that so completely paralyzed me as to very nearly deprive me
of the power of breathing. I stared at him, and he seemed to stare at
me, and I know not which of the two was the more motionless. The
whiteness made a light of its own, and he was perfectly plain. I blinked
and puffed, conceiving it might be some illusion of the wine I had
drunk, and finding him still there, and acting as though he warded me
off in terror, as if my showing myself unawares had led him to think me
the devil--I say finding him perfectly real, I was seized with an agony
of fear, and should have rushed to my cabin had my legs been equal to
the task of transporting me there. _Then_, thought I, idiot that you
are, what think you, you fool, is it but the body of Trentanove? Sure
enough it was, and putting my head a little farther over the rail, I saw
the figure of the Portuguese Barros lying close under the bends. No
doubt it was the movement of the ice that had shot the Italian into the
lifelike posture, it being incredible he should have fallen so on being
tumbled overboard by the Frenchman. But there he was, resting against a
lump of ice, looking as living in his frozen posture as ever he had
showed in the cabin.

The shock did my head good; I went below and got into my cot, and after
tossing for half an hour or so fell asleep. I awoke and went to the
cook-house, where I found Tassard preparing the breakfast, and a great
fire burning. I hardly knew what reception he would give me, and was
therefore not a little agreeably surprised by his thanking me for
covering him up.

"You have a stronger head than mine," said he. "The punch used you well.
You made me laugh, though. You was very diverting."

"Ay, much too diverting to please myself," said I; and I sounded him
cautiously to remark what his memory carried of my insults, but found
that he recollected nothing more than that I danced with vigour, and
sang well.

I said nothing about my contrition, my going on deck, and the like,
contenting myself with asking if he had heard the explosion in the
night.

"No," cried he, staring and looking eagerly.

"Well, then," said I, "there has happened a mighty crack in the ice, and
I do soberly believe that with the blessing of God we shall be able by
blasts of powder to free the block on which the schooner rests."

"Good!" cried he; "come, let us hurry with this meal. How is the
weather?"

"Quiet, I believe. I have not been on deck since the explosion aroused
me early this morning."

Whilst we ate he said, "Suppose we get the schooner afloat, what do you
propose?"

"Why," I answered, "if she prove tight and seaworthy, what but carry her
home?"

"What, you and I alone?"

"No," said I, "certainly not; we must make shift to sail her to the
nearest port, and ship a crew."

He looked at me attentively, and said, "What do you mean by home?"

"England," said I.

He shrugged his shoulders and exclaimed in French, "'Tis natural." Then
proceeding in English, "Pray," said he, showing his fangs, "do not you
know that the _Boca del Dragon_ is a pirate? Do you want to be hanged
that you propose to carry her to a port to ship men?"

"I have no fear of that," said I; "after all these years she'll be as
clean forgotten as if she had never had existence."

"Look ye here, Mr. Rodney," cried he in a passion, "let's have no more
of this snivelling nonsense about _years_. You may be as mad as you
please on that point, but it shan't hang _me_. It needs more than a few
months to make men forget a craft that has carried on such traffic as
our hold represents. You'll not find me venturing myself nor the
schooner into any of your ports for men. No, no, my friend. I am in no
stupor now, you know; and I've slept the punch off also, d'ye see. What,
betray our treasure and be hanged for our generosity?"

He made me an ironical bow, grinning with wrath.

"Let's get the schooner afloat first," said I.

"Ay, that's all very well," he cried; "but better stop here than dangle
in chains. No, my friend; our plan must be a very different one from
your proposal. I suppose you want your share of the booty?" said he,
snapping his fingers.

"I deserve it," said I, smiling, that I might soften his passion.

"And yet you would convey the most noted pirate of the age, with plunder
in her to the value of thousands of doubloons, to a port in which we
should doubtless find ships of war, a garrison, magistrates, governors,
prisons, and the whole of the machinery it is our business to give our
stern to! _Ma foi_, Mr. Rodney! sure you are out in something more than
your reckoning of time?"

"What do you propose?" said I.

"Ha!" he exclaimed, whilst his little eyes twinkled with cunning, "now
you speak sensibly. What do I propose? This, my friend. We must navigate
the schooner to an island and bury the treasure; then head for the
shipping highways, and obtain help from any friendly merchantmen we may
fall in with. _Home_ with us means the Tortugas. There we shall find the
company we need to recover for us what we shall have hidden. We shall
come by our own then. But to sail with this treasure on board--without a
crew to defend the vessel--by this hand! the first cruiser that sighted
us would make a clean sweep, and then, ho, for the hangman, Mr. Rodney!"

How much I relished this scheme you will imagine; but to reason with him
would have been mere madness. I knitted my brows and seemed to reflect,
and then said, "Well, there is a great deal of plain, good sense in what
you say. I certainly see the wisdom of your advice in recommending that
we should bury the treasure. Nor must we leave anything on board to
convict the ship of her true character."

His greedy eyes sparkled with self-complacency. He tapped his forehead
and cried, "Trust to this. There is mind behind this surface. Your plan
for releasing the schooner is great; mine for preserving the treasure is
great too. You are the sailor, I the strategist; by combining our
genius, we shall oppose an invulnerable front to adversity, and must end
our days as Princes. Your hand, Paul!"

I laughed and gave him my hand, which he squeezed with many contortions
of face and figure; but though I laughed I don't know that I ever so
much disliked and distrusted and feared the old leering rogue as at that
moment.

"Come!" cried I, jumping up, "let's get about our work." And with that I
pulled open a bag of matches, and fell to testing them. They burnt well.
The fire ate into them as smoothly as if they had been prepared the day
before. They were all of one thickness. I cut them to equal lengths, and
fired them and waited watch in hand; one was burnt out two minutes
before the other, and each length took about ten minutes to consume.
This was good enough to base my calculations upon.




CHAPTER XXI.

WE EXPLODE THE MINES.


I don't design to weary you with a close account of our proceedings. How
we opened the main-deck hatch, rigged up tackles, clapping purchases on
to the falls, as the capstan was hard frozen and immovable; how we
hoisted the powder-barrels on deck and then, by tackles on the foreyard,
lowered them over the side; how we filled a number of bags which we
found in the forecastle with powder; how we measured the cracks in the
ice and sawed a couple of spare studding-sail booms into lengths to
serve as beams whereby to poise the barrels and bags; would make but
sailor's talk, half of which would be unintelligible and the rest
wearisome.

The Frenchman worked hard, and we snatched only half an hour for our
dinner. The split that had happened in the ice during the night showed
by daylight as a gulf betwixt eight and ten feet wide at the seawards
end, thinning to a width of three feet, never less, to where it ended,
ahead of the ship, in a hundred cracks in the ice that showed as if a
thunderbolt had fallen just there. I looked into this rent, but it was
as black as a well past a certain depth, and there was no gleam of
water. When we went over the side to roll our first barrel of powder to
the spot where we meant to lower it, the Frenchman marched up to the
figure of Trentanove, and with no more reverence than a boy would show
in throwing a stone at a jackass, tumbled him into the chasm. He then
stepped up to the body of the Portuguese boatswain, dragged him to the
same fissure, and rolled him into it.

"There!" cried he; "now they are properly buried."

And with this he went coolly on with his work.

I said nothing, but was secretly heartily disgusted with this brutal
disposal of his miserable shipmates' remains. However, it was his doing,
not mine; and I confess the removal of those silent witnesses was a very
great relief to me, albeit when I considered how Tassard had been
awakened, and how both the mate and the boatswain might have been
brought to by treatment, I felt as though, after a manner, the Frenchman
had committed a murder by burying them so.

It blew a small breeze all day from the south-west, the weather keeping
fine. It was ten o'clock in the morning when we started on our labour,
and the sun had been sunk a few minutes by the time we had rigged the
last whip for the lowering and poising of the powder. This left us
nothing to do in the morning but light the matches, lower the powder
into position, and then withdraw to the schooner and await the issue.
Our arrangements comprised, first, four barrels of powder in deep yawns
ahead of the vessel, directly athwart the line of her head; second, two
barrels, a wide space between them, in the great chasm on the starboard
side; third, about fifty very heavy charges in bags and the like for the
further rupturing of many splits and crevices on the larboard bow of the
ship, where the ice was most compact. What should follow the mighty
blast no mortal being could have foretold. I had no fear of the charges
injuring the vessel--that is to say, I did not fear that the actual
explosion would damage her: but as the effect of the bursting of such a
mass of powder as we designed to explode upon so brittle a substance as
ice was not calculable, it was quite likely that the vast discharge,
instead of loosening and freeing the bed of ice, might rend it into
blocks, and leave the schooner still stranded and lying in some wild
posture amid the ruins.

But the powder was our only trumps; we had but to play it and leave the
rest to fortune.

We got our supper and sat smoking and discussing our situation and
chances. Tassard was tired, and this and our contemplation of the
probabilities of the morrow sobered his mind, and he talked with a
certain gravity. He drank sparely and forbore the hideous recollections
or inventions he was used to bestow on me, and indeed could find nothing
to talk about but the explosion and what it was to do for us. I was very
glad he did not again refer to his project to bury the treasure and
carry the schooner to the Tortugas. The subject fired his blood, and it
was such nonsense that the mere naming of it was nauseous to me.
Eight-and-forty years had passed since his ship fell in with this ice,
and not tenfold the treasure in the hold might have purchased for him
the sight of so much as a single bone of the youngest of those
associates whom he idly dreamt of seeking and shipping and sailing in
command of. Yet, imbecile as was his scheme, having regard to the
half-century that had elapsed, I clearly witnessed the menace to me that
it implied. His views were to be read as plainly as if he had delivered
them. First and foremost he meant that I should help him to sail the
schooner to an island and bury the plate and money; which done he would
take the first opportunity to murder me. His chance of meeting with a
ship that would lend him assistance to navigate the schooner would be as
good if he were alone in her as if I were on board too. There would be
nothing, then, in this consideration to hinder him from cutting my
throat after we had buried the treasure and were got north. Two motives
would imperatively urge him to make away with me; first, that I should
not be able to serve as a witness to his being a pirate, and next that
he alone should possess the secret of the treasure.

He little knew what was passing in my mind as he surveyed me through the
curls of smoke spouting up from his death's-head pipe. I talked easily
and confidentially, but I saw in his gaze the eyes of my murderer, and
was so sure of his intentions that had I shot him in self-defence, as he
sat there, I am certain my conscience would have acquitted me of his
blood.

I passed two most uneasy hours in my cot before closing my eyes. I could
think of nothing but how to secure myself against the Frenchman's
treachery. You would suppose that my mind must have been engrossed with
considerations of the several possibilities of the morrow; but that was
not so. My reflections ran wholly to the bald-headed evil-eyed pirate
whom in an evil hour I had thawed into being, and who was like to
discharge the debt of his own life by taking mine. The truth is, I had
been too hard at work all day, too full of the business of planning,
cutting, testing, and contriving, to find leisure to dwell upon what he
had said at breakfast, and now that I lay alone in darkness it was the
only subject I could settle my thoughts to.

However, next morning I found myself less gloomy, thanks to several
hours of solid sleep. I thought, what is the good of anticipating?
Suppose the schooner is crushed by the ice or jammed by the explosion?
Until we are under way, nay, until the treasure is buried, I have
nothing to fear, for the rogue cannot do without me. And, reassuring
myself in this fashion, I went to the cook-room and lighted the fire; my
companion presently arrived, and we sat down to our morning meal.

"I dreamt last night," said he, "that the devil sat on my breast and
told me that we should break clear of the ice and come off safe with
the treasure--there is loyalty in the Fiend. He seldom betrays his
friends."

"You have a better opinion of him than I," said I; "and I do not know
that you have much claim upon his loyalty either, seeing that you will
cross yourself and call upon the Madonna and saints when the occasion
arises."

"Pooh, mere habit," cried he, sarcastically. "I have seen Barros praying
to a little wooden saint in a gale of wind and then knock its head off
and throw it overboard because the storm increased." And here he fell to
talking very impiously, professing such an outrageous contempt for every
form of religion, and affirming so ardent a belief in the goodwill of
Satan and the like, that I quitted my bench at last in a passion, and
told him that he must be the devil himself to talk so, and that for my
part his sentiments awoke in me nothing but the utmost scorn, loathing,
and horror of him.

His face fell, and he looked at me with the eye of one who takes measure
of another and does not feel sure.

"Tut!" cried he, with a feigned peevishness; "what are my sentiments to
you, or yours to me? you may be a Quaker for all I care. Come, fill your
pannikin and let us drink a health to our own souls!"

But though he said this grinning, he shot a savage look of malice at me,
and when he put his pannikin down his face was very clouded and sulky.

We finished our meal in silence, and then I rose, saying, "Let us now
see what the gunpowder is going to do for us."

My rising and saying this worked a change in him. He exclaimed briskly,
"Ay, now for the great experiment," and made for the companion-steps
with an air of bustle.

The wind as before was in the south-west, blowing without much weight;
but the sky was overcast with great masses of white clouds with a tint
of rainbows in their shoulders and skirts, amid which the sky showed in
a clear liquid blue. Those clouds seemed to promise wind and perhaps
snow anon; but there was nothing to hinder our operations. We got upon
the ice, and went to work to fix matches to the barrels and bags, and to
sling them by the beams we had contrived ready for lowering when the
matches were fired, and this occupied us the best part of two hours.
When all was ready I fired the first match, and we lowered the barrel
smartly to the scope of line we had settled upon; so with the others.
You may reckon we worked with all imaginable wariness, for the stuff we
handled was mighty deadly, and if a barrel should fall and burst with
the match alight, we might be blown in an instant into rags, it being
impossible to tell how deep the rents went.

The bags being lighter there was less to fear, and presently all the
barrels and bags with the matches burning were poised in the places and
hanging at the depth we had fixed upon, and we then returned to the
schooner, the Frenchman breaking into a run and tumbling over the rail
in his alarm with the dexterity of a monkey.

Each match was supposed to burn an hour, so that when the several
explosions happened they might all occur as nearly as possible at once,
and we had therefore a long time to wait. The margin may look
unreasonable in the face of our despatch, but you will not think it
unnecessary if you consider that our machinery might not have worked
very smooth, and that meanwhile all that was lowered was in the way of
exploding. So interminable a period as now followed I do believe never
before entered into the experiences of a man. The cold was intense, and
we had to move about; but also were we repeatedly coming to a halt to
look at our watches and cast our eyes over the ice. It was like standing
under a gallows with the noose around the neck waiting for the cart to
move off. My own suspense became torture; but I commanded my face. The
Frenchman, on the other hand, could not control the torments of his
expectation and fear.

"Holy Virgin!" he would cry, "suppose we are blown up too? suppose we
are engulphed in the ice? suppose it should be vomited up in vast blocks
which in falling upon us must crush us to pulp and smash the decks in?"

At one moment he would call himself an idiot for not remaining on the
rocks at a distance and watching the explosion, and even make as if to
jump off the vessel, then immediately recoil from the idea of setting
his foot upon a floor that before he could take ten strides might split
into chasms, with hideous uproar under him. At another moment he would
run to the companion and descend out of my sight, but reappear after a
minute or two wildly shaking his head and swearing that if waiting was
insupportable in the daylight, it was ten thousand times worse in the
gloom and solitude of the interior.

I was too nervous and expectant myself to be affected by his behaviour;
but his dread of the explosion upheaving lumps of ice was sensible
enough to determine me to post myself under the cover of the hatch and
there await the blast, for it was a stout cover and would certainly
screen me from the lighter flying pieces.

It was three or four minutes past the hour and I was looking
breathlessly at my watch when the first of the explosions took place.
Before the ear could well receive the shock of the blast the whole of
the barrels exploded along with some twelve or fourteen parcels.
Tassard, who stood beside me, fell on his face, and I believed he had
been killed. It was so hellish a thunder that I suppose the blowing up
of a first-rate could not make a more frightful roar of noise. A kind of
twilight was caused by the rise of the volumes of white smoke out of the
ice. The schooner shook with such a convulsion that I was persuaded she
had been split. Vast showers of splinters of ice fell as if from the
sky, and rained like arrows through the smoke, but if there were any
great blocks uphove they did not touch the ship. Meanwhile, the other
parcels were exploding in their places sometimes two and three at a
time, sending a sort of sickening spasms and throes through the fabric
of the vessel, and you heard the most extraordinary grinding noises
rising out of the ice all about, as though the mighty rupture of the
powder crackled through leagues of the island. I durst not look forth
till all the powder had burst, lest I should be struck by some flying
piece of ice, but unless the schooner was injured below she was as sound
as before, and in the exact same posture, as if afloat in harbour, only
that of course her stern lay low with the slope of her bed.

I called to Tassard and he lifted his head.

"Are you hurt?" said I.

"No, no," he answered. "'Tis a Spaniard's trick to fling down to a
broadside. Body of St. Joseph, what a furious explosion!" and so saying
he crawled into the companion and squatted beside me. "What has it done
for us?"

"I don't know yet," said I; "but I believe the schooner is uninjured.
_That_ was a powerful shock!" I cried, as a half-dozen of bags blew up
together in the crevices deep down.

The thunder and tumult of the rending ice accompanied by the heavy
explosions of the gunpowder so dulled the hearing that it was difficult
to speak. That the mines had accomplished our end was not yet to be
known; but there could not be the least doubt that they had not only
occasioned tremendous ruptures low down in the ice, but that the
volcanic influence was extending far beyond its first effects by making
one split produce another, one weak part give way and create other
weaknesses, and so on, all round about us and under our keel, as was
clearly to be gathered by the shivering and spasms of the schooner, and
by the growls, roars, blasts, and huddle of terrifying sounds which
arose from the frozen floor.

It was twenty minutes after the hour at which the mines had been framed
to explode when the last parcel burst; but we waited another quarter of
an hour to make sure that it _was_ the last, during all which time the
growling and roaring noises deep down continued, as if there was a
battle of a thousand lions raging in the vaults and hollows underneath.
The smoke had been settled away by the wind, and the prospect was clear.
We ran below to see to the fire and receive five minutes of heat into
our chilled bodies, and then returned to view the scene.

I looked first over the starboard side and saw the great split that had
happened in the night torn in places into immense yawns and gulfs by the
fall of vast masses of rock out of its sides; but what most delighted me
was the hollow sound of washing water. I lifted my hand and listened.

"'Tis the swell of the sea flowing into the opening!" I exclaimed.

"That means," said Tassard, "that this side of the block is dislocated
from the main."

"Yes," cried I. "And if the powder ahead of the bows has done its work,
the heave of the ocean will do the rest."

We made our way on to the forecastle over a deep bed of splinters of
ice, lying like wood-shavings upon the deck, and I took notice as I
walked that every glorious crystal pendant that had before adorned the
yards, rigging, and spars had been shaken off. I had expected to see a
wonderful spectacle of havoc in the ice where the barrels of gunpowder
had been poised, but saving many scores of cracks where none was before,
and vast ragged gashes in the mouths of the crevices down which the
barrels had been lowered, the scene was much as heretofore.

The Frenchman stared and exclaimed, "What has the powder done? I see
only a few cracks."

"What it may have done, I don't know," I answered; "but depend on't such
heavy charges of powder must have burst to some purpose. The dislocation
will be below; and so much the better, for 'tis _there_ the ice must
come asunder if this block is to go free."

He gazed about him, and then rapping out a string of oaths, English,
Italian, and French, for he swore in all the languages he spoke, which,
he once told me, were five, he declared that for his part he considered
the powder wasted, that we'd have done as well to fling a hand-grenade
into a fissure, that a thousand barrels of powder would be but as a
popgun for rending the schooner's bed from the main, and in short, with
several insulting looks and a face black with rage and disappointment,
gave me very plainly to know that I had not only played the fool myself,
but had made a fool of him, and that he was heartily sorry he had ever
given himself any trouble to contrive the cursed mines or to assist me
in a ridiculous project that might have resulted in blowing the schooner
to pieces and ourselves with it.

I glanced at him with a sneer, but took no further notice of his
insolence. It was not only that he was so contemptible in all respects,
a liar, a rogue, a thief, a poltroon, hoary in twenty walks of vice,
there was something so unearthly about a creature that had been as good
as dead for eight-and-forty years, that it was impossible anything he
said could affect me as the rancorous tongue of another man would. I
feared and hated him because I knew that in intent he was already my
assassin; but the mere insolences of so incredible a creature could not
but find me imperturbable.

And perhaps in the present instance my own disappointment put me into
some small posture of sympathy with his passion. Had I been asked before
the explosions happened what I expected, I don't know that I should have
found any answer to make; and yet, though I could not have expressed my
expectations, which after all were but hopes, I was bitterly vexed when
I looked over the bows and found in the scene nothing that appeared
answerable to the uncommon forces we had employed. Nevertheless, I felt
sure that my remark to the Frenchman was sound. A great show of uphove
rocks and fragments of ice might have satisfied the eye; but the real
work of the mines was wanted below; and since the force of the mighty
explosion must needs expend itself somewhere, it was absurd to wish to
see its effects in a part where its volcanic agency would be of little
or no use.

"There is nothing to be seen by staring!" exclaimed the Frenchman
presently, speaking very sullenly. "I am hungry and freezing, and shall
go below!" And with that he turned his back and made off, growling in
his throat as he went.

I got upon the ice and stepped very carefully to the starboard side and
looked down the vast split there. The sea in consequence of the slope
did not come so far, but I could hear the wash of the water very plain.
It was certain that the valley in which we lay was wholly disconnected
from the main ice on this side. I passed to the larboard quarter, and
here too were cracks wide and deep enough to satisfy me that its hold
was weak. It was forward of the bows where the barrels had been exploded
that the ice was thickest and had the firmest grasp; but its surface was
violently and heavily cracked by the explosions, and I thought to myself
if the fissures below are as numerous, then certainly the swell of the
sea ought to fetch the whole mass away. But I was now half frozen myself
and pining for warmth. It was after one o'clock. The wind was piping
freshly, and the great heavy clouds in swarms drove stately across the
sky.

"It may blow to-night," thought I; "and if the wind hangs as it is, just
such a sea as may do our business will be set running." And thus musing
I entered the ship and went below.




CHAPTER XXII.

A CHANGE COMES OVER THE FRENCHMAN.


Tassard was dogged and scowling. Such was his temper that had I been a
small or weak man, or a person likely to prove submissive, he would have
given a loose to his foul tongue and maybe handled me very roughly. But
my demeanour was cold and resolved, and not of a kind to improve his
courage. I levelled a deliberate semi-contemptuous gaze at his own fiery
stare, and puzzled him, too, I believe, a good deal by my cool reserve.
He muttered whilst we ate, drinking plentifully of wine, and garnishing
his draughts with oaths and to spare; and then, after falling silent and
remaining so for the space of twenty minutes, during which I lighted my
pipe and sat with my feet close to the furnace, listening with eager
ears to the sounds of the ice and the dull crying of the wind, he
exclaimed sulkily, "Your scheme is a failure. The schooner is fixed.
What's to be done now?"

"I don't know that my scheme is a failure," said I. "What did you
suppose? that the blast would blow the ice with the schooner on it into
the ocean clear of the island? If the ice is so shaken as to enable the
swell to detach it, my scheme will have accomplished all I proposed."

"_If!_" he cried scornfully and passionately. "_If_ will not deliver us
nor save the treasure. I tell you the schooner is fixed--as fixed as the
damned in everlasting fire. Be it so!" he cried, clenching his fist.
"But you must meddle no more! The _Boca del Dragon_ is mine--_mine_,
d'ye see, now that they're all dead and gone but me"--smiting his
bosom--"and if ever she is to float, let nature or the devil launch her:
no more explosions with the risks your failure has made her and me run!"

His voice sank; he looked at me in silence, and then with a wild grin of
anger he exclaimed, "What made you awake me? I was at peace--neither
cold, hungry, nor hopeless! What demon forced you to bring me to
this--to bring me back to _this_?"

"Mr. Tassard," said I coldly, "I don't ask your pardon for my
experiment; I meant well, and to my mind it is no failure yet. But for
disturbing your repose I do sincerely beg your forgiveness, and solemnly
promise you, if you will return to the state in which I found you, that
I will not repeat the offence."

He eyed me from top to toe in silence, filled and lighted his hideous
pipe, and smoked with his back turned upon me.

Had there been another warm place in the schooner I should have retired
to it, and left this surly and scandalous savage to the enjoyment of his
own company. His temper rendered me extremely uneasy. The arms-room was
full of weapons; he might draw a pistol upon me and shoot me dead before
I should have time to clench my hand. Nor did I conceive him to have his
right mind. His panic terrors and outbursts of rage were such extremes
of behaviour as suggested some sort of organic decay within. He had
been for eight-and-forty years insensible; in all that time the current
of life had been frozen in him, not dried up and extinguished;
therefore, taking his age to be fifty-five when the frost seized him, he
would now be one hundred and three years old, having subsisted into this
great span of time in fact, though confronting me with the aspect of an
elderly man merely. Death ends time, but this man never had been dead,
or surely it would not have been in the power of brandy and chafing and
fire to arouse him; and though all the processes of nature had been
checked in him for near half a century, yet he must have been throughout
as much alive as a sleeping man, and consequently when he awoke he arose
with the weight of a hundred and three years upon his brain, which may
suffice to account for the preternatural peculiarities of his character.

After sitting a long while sullenly smoking in silence, he fetched his
mattress and some covers, lay down upon it, and fell fast asleep. I
admired and envied this display of confidence, and heartily wished
myself as safe in his hands as he was in mine. The afternoon passed. I
was on deck a half-dozen times, but never witnessed the least alteration
in the ice. My spirits sank very low. There was bitter remorseless
defiance in the white, fierce rigid stare of the ice, and I could not
but believe with the Frenchman that all our labour and expenditure of
powder was in vain. There was no more noticeable weight in the wind, but
the sea was beginning to beat with some strength upon the coast, and
the schooner sometimes trembled to the vibrations of the blows. There
was also a continuous crackling noise coming up out of the ice, and just
as I came on deck on my third visit, a block of ice, weighing I dare say
a couple of hundred tons, fell from the broken shoulder on the starboard
quarter, and plunged with a roar like a thunder-clap into the chasm that
had opened in the night.

I sat before the furnace extremely dejected, whilst the Frenchman snored
on his mattress. I could no longer flatter myself that the explosions
had made the impression I had expected on the ice, and my mind was
utterly at a loss. How to deliver myself from this horrible situation I
could not imagine. As to the treasure, why, if the chests had all been
filled with gold, they might have gone to the bottom there and then for
me, so utterly insignificant did their value seem as against the
pricelessness of liberty and the joy of deliverance. Had I been alone I
should have had a stouter heart, I dare say, for then I should have been
able to do as I pleased; but now I was associated with a bloody-minded
rogue whose soul was in the treasure, and who was certain to oppose any
plan I might propose for the construction of a boat or raft out of the
material that formed the schooner. The sole ray of hope that gleamed
upon me broke out of the belief that this island was going north, and
that when we had come to the height of the summer in these seas, the
wasting of the coast or the dislocation of the northern mass would
release us.

Yet this was but poor comfort too; it threatened a terrible long spell
of waiting, with perhaps disappointment in the end, and months of
enforced association with a wretch with whom I should have to live in
fear of my life.

When I was getting supper Tassard awoke, quitted his mattress, and came
to his bench.

"Has anything happened whilst I slept?" said he.

"Nothing," I answered.

"The ice shows no signs of giving?"

"I see none," said I.

"Well," cried he, with a sarcastic sneer, "have you any more fine
schemes?"

"'Tis your turn now," I replied. "Try _your_ hand. If you fail, I
promise you I shall not be disappointed."

"But you English sailors," said he, wagging his head and regarding me
with a great deal of wildness in his eye, "speak of yourselves as the
finest seamen in the world. Justify the maritime reputation of your
nation by showing me how we are to escape with the schooner from the
ice."

"Mr. Tassard," said I, approaching him and looking him full in the face,
"I would advise you to sweeten your temper and change your tone. I have
borne myself very moderately towards you, submitted to your insults with
patience, and have done you some kindness. I am not afraid of you. On
the contrary, I look upon you as a swaggering bully and a hoary villain.
Do you understand me? I am a desperate man in a desperate situation. But
if I don't fear death, depend upon it, I don't fear _you_--and I take
God to witness that if you do not use me with the civility I have a
right to expect, I will kill you."

My temper had given way; I meant every word I spoke, and my air and
sincerity rendered my speech very formidable. I approached him by
another stride; he started up, as I thought, to seize me, but in reality
to recoil, and this he did so effectually as to tumble over his bench,
and down he fell, striking his bald head so hard that he lay for several
minutes motionless.

I stood over him till he chose to sit erect, which he presently did,
rubbing his poll and looking at me with an air of mingled bewilderment
and fear.

"This is scurvy usage to give a shipmate in distress," said he. "'Od's
life, man! I had thought there was some sense of humour in you. Your
hand, Mr. Rodney; I feel dazed."

I helped him to rise, and he then sat down in a somewhat rickety manner,
rubbing his eyes. It might have been fancy, it might have been the
illusion of the furnace light combined with the venerable appearance his
long hair and naked pate gave him, but methought in those few minutes he
had grown to look twenty years older.

"Never concern yourself about my humour, Mr. Tassard," said I,
preserving my determined air and coming close to him again. "How is it
to stand between us? I leave the choice to you. If you will treat me
civilly you'll not find me wanting in every disposition to render our
miserable state tolerable; but if you insult me, use me injuriously, and
act the pirate over me, who am an honest man, by God, Mr. Tassard, I
will kill you."

He stooped away from me, and raised his hand in a posture as if to fend
me off, and cried in a whining manner, "I lost my head--this gunpowder
business hath been a hellish disappointment, look you, Mr. Rodney. Come!
We will drink a can to our future amity!"

I answered coldly that I wanted no more wine and bade him beware of me,
that he had gone far enough, that our hideous condition had filled my
soul with desperation and misery, and that I would not have my life on
this frozen schooner made more abominable than it was by his swagger,
lies, and insults, and I added in a loud voice and in a menacing manner
that death had no terrors for me, and that I would dispatch him with as
little fear as I should meet my doom, whatever shape it took.

I marched on deck, not a little astounded by the cowardice of the old
rascal, and very well pleased with the marked impression my bearing and
language had produced on him. Not that I supposed for a moment that my
bold comportment would save me from his knife or his pistol when he
should think proper to make away with me. No. All I reckoned upon was
cowing him into a civiller posture of mind, and checking his aggressions
and insolence. As to his murdering me, I was very sure he would not
attempt such an act whilst we remained imprisoned. Loneliness would have
more horrors for him than for me; and though my machinery of mines had
apparently failed, he was shrewd enough, despite his rage of
disappointment, to understand that more was to be done by two men than
by one, and that between us something might be attempted which would be
impracticable by a simple pair of hands, and particularly old hands,
such as his.

I stayed but a minute or two on deck. Such was the cold that I do not
know I had ever felt it more biting and bitter. The sound of foaming
waters filled the wind, and the wind itself was blowing fairly strong,
in gusts that screamed in the frozen rigging or in blasts that had the
deep echo of the thunder-claps of the splitting ice. The clouds were
numerous and dark with the shadow of the night; and the swiftness of
their motion as they sailed up out of the south-west quarter was
illustrated by the leaping of the few bright stars from one dusky edge
to another.

I returned below and sat down. The Frenchman asked me no questions. He
had his can in the oven and his death's head in his great hand, and
puffed out clouds of smoke of the colour of his beard, and indeed in the
candle and fire light looked like a figure of old Time with his long
nose and bald head. I addressed one or two civil remarks to him, which
he answered in a subdued manner, discovering no resentment whatever that
I could trace in his eyes or the expression of his countenance; and
being wishful to show that I bore no malice I talked of pirates and
their usages, and asked him if the _Boca del Dragon_ fought under the
red or black flag.

"Why, the black flag, certainly," said he; "but if we met with
resistance, it was our custom to haul it down and hoist the red flag,
to let our opponents know we should give no quarter."

"Where is your flag locker?" said I.

"In my berth," he answered.

"I should like to see the black flag," I exclaimed: "'tis the one piece
of bunting, I believe, I have never viewed."

"I'll fetch it," said he, and taking the lanthorn went aft very quietly,
but with a certain stagger in his walk, which I should have put down to
the wine if it was not that his behaviour was free from all symptoms of
ebriation. The change in him surprised me, but not so greatly as you
might suppose; indeed, it excited my suspicions rather than my wonder.
Fear worked in him unquestionably, but what I seemed to see best was
some malignant design which he hoped to conceal by an air of
conciliation and a quality of respectful _bonhomie_.

He came back with a flag in his hand, and we spread it between us; it
was black, with a yellow skull grinning in the middle, over this an
hourglass, and beneath a cross-bones.

"What consternation has this signal caused and does still cause!" said
I, surveying it, whilst a hundred fancies of the barbarous scenes it had
flown over, the miserable cries for mercy that had swept up past it to
the ear of God, crowded into my mind. "I think, Mr. Tassard," said I,
"that our first step, should we ever find ourselves afloat in this ship,
must be to commit this and all other flags of a like kind on board to
the deep. There is evidence in this piece of drapery to hang an angel."

He let fall his ends of the flag and sat down suddenly.

"Yes," he answered, sending a curious rolling glance around the
cook-room and at the same time bringing his hand to the back of his
head, "this is evidence to dangle even an honester man than you, sir.
All flags but the ensign we resolve to sail under must go--all flags,
and all the wearing apparel, and--and--but"--here he muttered a
curse--"we are fixed--there is to be no sailing."

He shook his head and covered his eyes. His manner was strange, and the
stranger for his quietude.

I said to him, "Are you ill?"

He looked up sharply and cried vehemently, "No, no!" then stretched his
lips in a very ghastly grin and turned to take the can from the oven,
but his hand missed it, and he appeared to grope as if he were blind,
though he looked at the can all the time. Then he catched it and brought
it to his mouth, but trembled so much that he spilt as much as he drank,
and after putting the can back sat shaking his beard and stroking the
wet off it, methought, in a very mechanical lunatic way.

I thought to myself, "Is this behaviour some stratagem of his? What
device can such a bearing hide? If he is acting, he plays his part
well."

I rolled the black flag into a bundle and flung it into a corner, and,
resuming my seat and my pipe, continued, more for civility's sake than
because of any particular interest I took in the subject, to ask him
questions about the customs and habits of pirates.

"I believe," said I, "the buccaneers are so resolute in having clear
ships that they have neither beds nor seats on board."

"The English," he answered, speaking slowly and letting his pipe droop
whilst he spoke with his eyes fixed on deck, "not the Spanish. 'Tis the
custom of most English pirates to eat and sleep upon the decks for the
sake of a clear ship, as you say. The Spaniard loves comfort--you may
observe his fancy in this ship."

"How is the plunder partitioned?" I asked.

"Everything is put into the common chest, as we call it, and brought to
the mast and sold by auction--Strange!" he cried, breaking off and
putting his hand to his brow. "I find my speech difficult. Do you notice
I halt and utter thickly?"

I replied, No; his voice seemed to be the same as hitherto.

"Yet I feel ill. Holy Mother of God, what is this feeling coming upon
me? O Jesus, how faint and dark!"

He half rose from his bench, but sat again, trembling as if the palsy
had seized him, and I noticed his head dotted with beads of sweat. He
had drunk so much wine and spirits throughout the day that a dram would
have been of no use to him.

I said, "I expect it will be the blow on the back of your head, when you
fell just now, that has produced this feeling of giddiness. Let me help
you to lie down" (for his mattress was on deck); "the sensation will
pass, I don't doubt."

If he heard he did not heed me, but fell a-muttering and crying to
himself. And now I did certainly remark a quality in his voice that was
new to my ear; it was not, as he had said, a labour or thickness of
utterance, but a dryness and parchedness of old age, with many breaks
from high to low notes, and a lean noise of dribbling threading every
word. He sweated and talked and muttered, but this was from sheer
terror; he did not swoon, but sat with a stoop, often pressing his brows
and gazing about him like one whose senses are all abroad.

"Gracious Mother of all angels!" he exclaimed, crossing himself several
times, but with a feeble, most agitated hand, and speaking in French and
English, and sometimes interjecting an invocation in Italian or Spanish,
though I give you what he said in my own tongue; "surely I am dying. O
Lord, how frightful to die! O holy Virgin, be merciful to me. I shall go
to hell--O Jesu, I am past forgiveness--for the love of heaven, Mr.
Rodney, some brandy! Oh that some saint would interpose for me! Only a
few years longer--grant me a few years longer--I beseech for time that I
may repent!" and he extended one quivering hand for the brandy (of which
a draught stood melted in the oven) and made the sign of the cross upon
his breast with the other, whilst he continued to whine out in his
cracked pipes the wildest appeals for mercy, saying a vast deal that I
durst not venture to set down, so plentiful and awful were his clamours
for time that he might repent, though he never lapsed into blasphemy,
but on the contrary discovered an agony of religious horror.

I was much astonished and puzzled by this illness that had come upon
him, for, though he talked of darkness and faintness and of dying, he
continued to sit up on his bench and to take pulls at the can of brandy
I had handed to him. It might be, indeed, that a sudden faintness had
terrified him nearly out of his senses with a prospect of approaching
death; but that would not account for the peculiar note and appearance
of age that had entered his figure, face, and voice. Then an
extraordinary fancy occurred to me: Had the whole weight of the unhappy
wretch's years suddenly descended upon him? Or, if not wholly arrived,
might not these indications in him mark the first stages of a gradually
increasing pressure? The heat, the vivacity, the fierceness, spirits,
and temper of the life I had been instrumental in restoring to him
probably illustrated his character as it was eight-and-forty years
since; that had flourished artificially from the moment of his awakening
down to the present hour; but now the hand of Time was upon this man,
whose age was above an hundred. He might be decaying and wasting, even
as he sat there, into such an intellectual condition and physical aspect
as he would possess and submit had he come without a break into his
present age.

I was fascinated by the mystery of his vitality, and breathlessly
watched him as if I expected to witness some harlequin change in his
face and mark the transformation of his polished brow into the lean
austerity of wrinkles. His voice sank into a mere whisper at last, and
then, ceasing to speak altogether, he dropped his chin on to his bosom
and began to sway from side to side, catching himself from falling with
several paralytic starts, but without lifting his head or opening his
eyes that I could see, and manifesting every symptom of extreme
drowsiness.

I got up and laid my hand on his shoulder, on which he turned his face
and viewed me with one eye closed, the other scarce open.

"How are you feeling now?" said I.

"Sleepy, very sleepy," he answered.

"I'll put your mattress into your hammock," said I, "and the best thing
you can do is to go and turn in properly and get a long night's rest,
and to-morrow morning you'll feel yourself as hearty as ever."

He mumbled some answer which I interpreted to signify "Very well!" so I
shouldered his mattress and slung a lanthorn in his cabin, and then
returned to help him to bed. He sat reeling on the bench, his chin on
his breast, catching himself up as before with little sharp terrified
recoveries, and I was forced to put my hand on him again to make him
understand I had come back. He then made as if to rise, but trembled so
violently that he sank down again with a groan, and I was obliged to put
my whole strength to the lifting of him to get him on to his legs. He
leaned heavily upon me, breathing hard, stooping very much and
trembling. When we got to his cabin I perceived that he would never be
able to climb into his hammock, nor had I the power to hoist a man of
his bulk so high. To end the perplexity I cut the hammock down and laid
it on the deck, and covering him with a heap of clothes, unslung the
lanthorn, wished him good-night, closed the door, and returned to the
furnace.




CHAPTER XXIII.

THE ICE BREAKS AWAY.


It was not yet eight o'clock. I was restless in my mind, under a great
surprise, and was not sleepy. I filled a pipe, made me a little pannikin
of punch, and sat down before the fire to think. If ever I had suspected
the accuracy of my conjecture that the Frenchman's sudden astonishing
indisposition was the effect of his extreme age coming upon him and
breaking down the artificial vitality with which he had bristled into
life under my hands, I must have found fifty signs to set my misgivings
at rest in his drowsiness, nodding, bowed form, weakness, his tottering
and trembling, and other features of his latest behaviour. If I was
right, then I had reason to be thankful to Almighty God for this
unparalleled and most happy dispensation, for now I should have nothing
to fear from the old rogue's vindictiveness and horrid greed. Supposing
him to be no more than a hundred, the infirmities of five score years
would stand between him and me, and protect me as effectually as his
death. I had nothing to dread from a man who could scarce stand, whose
palsied hand could scarce clasp a knife, whose evil tongue could scarce
articulate the terrors of his soul or the horrors of his recollection.

The wonder of it all was so great it filled me with admiration and
astonishment. Had he been dead and come to life again, as Lazarus, or
one of those bodies which arose during the time our Lord hung upon the
cross, then, questionless, he must have picked up the chain of his life
at the link which death had broken, and continued his natural walk into
age and decay (though interrupted by a thousand years of the sepulchre)
as if his life had been without this black hiatus, and he was proceeding
steadily and humanly from the cradle. But collecting that the vital
spark could never have been extinguished in him, I understood that time,
which has absolute control over life, still knew him as its prey during
all those forty-eight years in which he had lain frozen; that it had
seized him now and suddenly, and pinned upon his back the full burden of
his lustres. This I say, I believed; but the morrow, of course, would
give me further proof.

Well, 'twas a happy and gracious deliverance for me. He could do me no
hurt; the scythe had sheared his talons, and all without occasioning my
conscience the least uneasiness whatever: whereas, but for this
interposition, I did truly and solemnly believe that it must have come
to my having had to slay him that I might preserve my own life.

Thus I sat for an hour smoking and wetting my lips with the punch,
whilst the fire burned low, so exulting in the thought of my escape from
the treacherous villain I had recovered from the grave, and in the
feeling that I might now be able to go to rest, to move here and there,
to act as I pleased without being haunted and terrified by the shadow of
his foul intent, that I hardly gave my mind for a moment to the
situation of the schooner nor to the barren consequences of my fine
scheme of mines.

The wind blew strong. I could hear the humming of it in every fibre of
the vessel. The bed on which she rested trembled to the blows of the
seas upon the rocks. From time to time, in the midst of my musing, I
started to the sharp claps of parted ice. Still feeling sleepless, I
threw a few coals on the fire, and catching sight of the pirate flag
opened it on the deck as wide as the space would permit, and sat down to
contemplate the hideous insignia embroidered on it. My mind filled with
a hundred fancies as my gaze went from the skull on the black field to
the death's-head pipe that had fallen from the grasp of Tassard and lay
on the deck, and I was sitting lost in a deep dreamlike contemplation,
when I was startled and shocked into instantaneous activity by a blast
of noise, louder than any thunder-clap that ever I heard, ringing and
booming through the schooner. This was followed by a second and then a
third, at intervals during which you might have counted ten, and I
became sensible of a strange sickening motion, which lasted about twenty
or thirty moments, such as might be experienced by one swiftly
descending in a balloon, or in falling from a height whilst pent up in a
coach.

For a little while the schooner heeled over so violently that the
benches and all things movable in the cook-room slided as far as they
could go, and I heard a great clatter and commotion among the freight in
the hold. She then came upright again, and simultaneously with this a
vast mass of water tumbled on to the deck and washed over my head, and
then fell another and then another, all in such a way as to make me know
that the ice had broken and slipped the schooner close to the ocean,
where she lay exposed to its surges, but not free of the ice, for she
did not toss or roll.

I seized the lanthorn and sprang to the cabin, where I hung it up, and
mounted the companion-steps. But as I put my hand to the door to thrust
it open a sea broke over the side and filled the decks, bubbling and
thundering past the companion-hatch in such a way as to advise me that I
need but open the door to drown the cabin. I waited, my heart beating
very hard, mad to see what had happened, but not daring to trust myself
on deck lest I should be immediately swept into the sea. 'Twas the most
terrible time I had yet lived through in this experience. To every blow
of the billows the schooner trembled fearfully; the crackling noises of
the ice was as though I was in the thick of a heavy action. The full
weight of the wind seemed to be upon the ship, and the screeching of it
in the iron-like shrouds pierced to my ear through the hissing and
tearing sounds of the water washing along the decks, and the volcanic
notes of the surges breaking over the vessel. I say, to hear all this
and not to be able to see, to be ignorant of the situation of the
schooner, not to know from one second to another whether she would not
be crushed up and crumbled into staves, or be hurled off her bed and be
pounded to fragments upon the ice-rocks by the seas, or be dashed by the
cannonading of the surge into the water and turned bottom up, made this
time out and away more terrible than the collision between the _Laughing
Mary_ and the iceberg.

I drew my breath with difficulty, and stood upon the companion-ladder
hearkening with straining ears, my hand upon the door. I was now
sensible of a long-drawn, stately, solemn kind of heaving motion in the
schooner, which I put down to the rolling of the ice on which she
rested; and this convinced me that the mass in whose hollow she had been
fixed had broken away and was afloat and riding upon the swell that
under-ran the billows. But I was far too much alarmed to feel any of
those transports in which I must have indulged had this issue to my
scheme happened in daylight and in smooth water. I was terrified by the
apprehensions which had occurred to me even whilst I was at work on the
mines; I mean, that if the bed broke away the schooner would make it
top-heavy and that it would capsize; and thus I stood in a very agony of
expectancy, caged like a rat, and as helpless as the dead.

Half an hour must have passed, during which time the decks were
incessantly swept by the seas, insomuch that I never once durst open the
door even to look out. But nothing having happened to increase my
consternation in this half-hour, though the movement in the schooner was
that of a very ponderous and majestical rolling and heaving, showing her
bed to be afloat, I began to find my spirits and to listen and wait with
some buddings of hope and confidence. At the expiration of this time the
seas began to fall less heavily and regularly on to the deck, and
presently I could only hear them breaking forward, but without a quarter
their former weight, and nothing worse came aft than large brisk showers
of spray.

I armed myself with additional clothing for the encounter of the wet,
cold, and wind, and then pushed open the door and stepped forth. The sky
was dark with rolling clouds, but the ice put its own light into the
air, and I could see as plain as if the first of the dawn had broken. It
was as I had supposed: the mass of the valley in which the schooner had
been sepulchred for eight-and-forty years had come away from the main,
and lay floating within a cable's length of the coast. A stranger,
wonderfuller picture human eye never beheld. The island shore ran a
rampart of faintness along the darkness to where it died out in liquid
dusk to right and left. The schooner sat upon a bed of ice that showed a
surface of about half an acre; her stern was close to the sea, and about
six feet above it. On her larboard quarter the slope or shoulder of the
acclivity had been broken by the rupture, and you looked over the side
into the clear sea beyond the limit of the ice there; but abreast of the
foreshrouds the ice rose in a kind of wall, a great splinter it looked
of what was before a small broad-browed hill, and the wind or the sea
having caused the body on which the schooner lay to veer, this wall
stood as a shield betwixt the vessel and the surges, and was now
receiving those blows which had heretofore struck her starboard side
amidships and filled her decks.

Oh for a wizard's inkhorn, that I might make you see the picture as I
view it now, even with the eye of memory! The posture of the little berg
pointed the schooner's head seawards, about west; the ice-terraces of
the island lay with the wild strange gleam of their own snow radiance
upon them upon the larboard quarter; around the schooner was the
whiteness of her frozen seat, and her outline was an inky, exquisitely
defined configuration upon it; above the crystal wall on the larboard
bow rose the spume of the breaking surge in pallid bodies, glancing for
an instant, and sometimes shaking a thunder into the ship when a portion
of the seething water was flung by the wind upon the forecastle deck; at
moments a larger sea than usual overran the ice on the larboard beam and
quarter, and boiled up round about the buttocks of the schooner. To
leeward the smooth backs of the billows rolled away in jet, but the
fitful throbbings and feeble flashings of froth commingled with the dim
shine of the ice were over all, tincturing the darkness with a spectral
sheen, giving to everything a quality of unearthliness that was
sharpened yet by the sounds of the wind in the gloom on high and the
hissing and foaming of waters sending their leagues-distant voices to
the ear upon the wings of the icy blast.

The wind, as I have said, blew from the south-west, but the trend of the
island-coast was north-east and as the mass of ice I was upon in parting
from the main had floated to a cable's length from the cliffs, there was
not much danger, whilst the wind and sea held, of the berg (if I may so
term it) being thrown upon the island. That the ice under the schooner
was moving, and if so, at what rate, it was too dark to enable me to
know by observing the marks on the coast. There was to be no sleep for
me that night, and knowing this, I stepped below and built up a good
fire, and then went with the lanthorn to see how Tassard did and to give
him the news; but he was in so deep a sleep, that after pulling him a
little without awakening him I let him lie, nothing but the sound of his
breathing persuading me that he had not lapsed into his old frozen state
again.

Of all long nights this was the longest I ever passed through. I did
truly believe that the day was never to break again over the ocean. I
must have gone from the fire to the deck thirty or forty times. The
schooner continued upright. I had no fear of her oversetting; she sat
very low, and the ice also showed but a small head above the water, and
as the body of it lay pretty flat, then, even supposing its submerged
bulk was small, there was little chance of its capsizing. I also noticed
that we were setting seawards--that is to say, to the westward--by a
noticeable shrinking of the pallid coast. But I never could stay long
enough above to observe with any kind of narrowness, the wind being full
of the wet that was flung over the ice-wall and the cold unendurable.

All night I kept the fire going, and on several occasions visited the
Frenchman, but found him motionless in sleep. I kept too good a look-out
to apprehend any sudden calamity short of capsizal, which I no longer
feared, and during the watches of that long night I dreamt a hundred
waking dreams of my deliverance, of my share of the treasure, of my
arriving in England, quitting the sea for ever, and setting up as a
great squire, marrying a nobleman's daughter, driving in a fine coach,
and ending with a seat in Parliament and a stout well-sounding handle to
my name.

At last the day broke; I went on deck and found the dawn brightening
into morning. The wind had fallen and with it the sea; but there still
ran a middling strong surge, and the breeze was such as, in sailors'
language, you would have shown your top-gallant sails to. I could now
take measure of our situation, and was not a little astonished and
delighted to observe the island to be at least a mile distant from us,
and the north-east end lying very plain, the ocean showing beyond it,
though in the south-west the ice died out upon the sea-line. That we had
been set away from the main by some current was very certain. There was
a westerly tendency in all the bergs which broke from the island, the
small ones moving more quickly than the large, for the sea in the north
and west was dotted with at least fifty of these white masses, great and
little. On the other hand, the wind and seas were answerable for the
progress we had made to the north.

The wall of ice (as I call it) that had stood over against the larboard
bow was gone, and the seas tumbled with some heaviness of froth and much
noise over the ice, past the bows, and washed past the bends on either
side in froth rising as high as the channels. I noticed a great quantity
of broken ice sinking and rising in the dark green curls of the billows,
and big blocks would be hurled on to the schooner's bed and then be
swept off, sometimes fetching the bilge such a thump as seemed to swing
a bellow through her frame. It was only at intervals, however, that
water fell upon the decks, for the ice broke the beat of the moderating
surge and forced it to expend its weight in spume, which there was not
strength of wind enough to raise and heave. Since the vessel continued
to lie head to sea, my passionate hope was that these repeated washings
of the waves would in time loosen the ice about her keel, in which case
it would not need much of a billow, smiting her full bows fair, to slide
her clean down and off her bed and so launch her. There were many
clouds in the heavens, but the blue was very pure between. The morning
brightening with the rising of the sun, I directed an earnest gaze along
the horizon, but there was nothing to see but ice. Some of the bergs,
however, and more particularly the distant ones, stole out of the blue
atmosphere to the sunshine with so complete a resemblance to the lifting
canvas of ships that I would catch myself staring fixedly, my heart
beating fast. But there was no dejection in these disappointments; the
ecstasy that filled me on beholding the terrible island, the hideous
frozen prison whose crystal bars I had again and again believed were
never to be broken, now lying at a distance with its northern cape
imperceptibly opening to our subtle movement, was so violent that I
could not have found my voice for the tears in my heart.

This, then, was the result of my scheme; it was no failure, as Tassard
had said; as he owed his life to me, so now did he owe me his liberty.
Nay, my transports were so great that I would not suffer myself to feel
an instant's anxiety touching the condition of the schooner--I mean
whether she would leak or prove sound when she floated--and how we two
men were to manage to navigate so large a craft, that was still as much
spellbound aloft in her frozen canvas and tackle as ever she had been in
the sepulchre in which I discovered her.

I went below, and put the provisions we needed for breakfast into the
oven, and entered Tassard's cabin. On bringing the lanthorn to his face
as he lay under half a score of coats upon the deck, I perceived that
he was awake, and, my heart being full, I cried out cheerily, "Good
news! good news! the gunpowder did its work! The ice is ruptured and we
are afloat, Mr. Tassard, afloat--and progressing north!"

He looked at me vacantly, and giving his head a shake exclaimed, "How
can I crawl from this mound? My strength is gone."

If I was amazed that the joyful intelligence I had delivered produced no
other response than this querulous inquiry, I was far more astonished by
the sound of his voice. It was the most cracked and venerable pipe that
ever tickled the throat of old age, a mingling of wailing falsettos and
of hollow gasping growls, the whole very weak. I threw the clothes off
him, and said, "Do you wish to rise? I will bring your breakfast here if
you wish."

He looked at me, but made no answer. I bawled again, and observed (by
the dim lanthorn light) that he watched my lips with an air of
attention; and whilst I waited for his reply he said, "I don't hear
you."

Anxious to ascertain to what extent his hearing was impaired, I kneeled
on the deck, and putting my lips to his ear said, not very loud, "Will
you come to the cook-house?" which he did not hear; and then louder,
"Will you come to the cook-house?" which he did not hear either. I
believed him stone-deaf till, on roaring with all the power of my lungs,
he answered "Yes."

I took him by the hands and hauled him gently on to his feet, and had
to continue holding him or he must have fallen. Time was beginning with
him when he had gone to bed, and the remorseless old soldier had
completely finished his work whilst his victim slept. I viewed the
Frenchman whilst I grasped his hands, and there stood before me a
shrunk, tottering, deaf, bowed, feeble old man. What was yesterday a
polished head was now a shrivelled pate, as though the very skull had
shrunk and left the skin to ripple into wrinkles and sit loose and
puckered. His hands trembled excessively. But his lower jaw was held in
its place by his teeth, and this perpetuated in the aged dwindled
countenance something of the likeness of the fierce and sinister visage
that had confronted me yesterday. I was thunder-struck by the
alteration, and stood overwhelmed with awe, confusion, and alarm. Then,
re-collecting my spirits, I supported the miserable relic to the fire,
putting his bench to the dresser that he might have a back to lean
against.

He could scarce feed himself--indeed, he could hardly hold his chin off
his breast. He had gone to bed a man, as I might take it, of fifty-six,
and during the night the angel of Time had visited him, and there he
sat, _a hundred and three years of age_!

He looked it. Ha, thought I, I was dreading your treachery yesterday;
there is nothing more to fear. Besides that he was nearly stone deaf, he
could hardly see; and I was sure, if he should be able to move at all,
he could not stir a leg without the help of sticks. I was going to roar
out to him that we were adrift, but he looked so imbecile that I
thought, to what purpose? If there be aught of memory in him, let him
sit and chew the cud thereof. He cannot last long; the cold must soon
stop his heart. And with that I went on eating my breakfast in silence,
but greatly affected by this astonishing mark of the hand of Providence,
and under a very heavy and constant sense of awe, for the like of such a
transformation I am sure had never before encountered mortal eyes, and
it was terrifying to be alone with it.




CHAPTER XXIV.

THE FRENCHMAN DIES.


However, if I expected my Frenchman to sit very long silent, he soon
undeceived me by beginning to complain in his tremulous aged voice of
his weakness and aching limbs.

"'Tis the terrible cold that has affected me," said he, whilst his head
nodded nervously. "I feel the rheumatism in every bone. There is no
weakness like the rheumatic, I have heard, and 'tis true, 'tis true. It
may lay me along--yes, by the Virgin, 'tis rheumatism--what else?" Here
he was interrupted by a long fit of coughing, and when it was ended he
turned to address me again, but looked at the bulkhead on my right, as
if his vision could not fix me. "But my capers are not over!" he cried,
setting up his rickety shrill throat; "no, no! Vive l'amour! vive la
joie! The sun is coming--the sun is the fountain of life--ay, mon brave,
there are some shakes in these stout legs yet!" He shook his head with
a fine air of cunning and knowingness, grinning very oddly; and then,
falling grave with a startling suddenness, he began to dribble out a
piratical love-story he had once before favoured me with, describing the
charms of the woman with a horrid leer, his head nodding with the
nervous affection of age all the time, whilst he looked blindly in my
direction--a hideous and yet pitiful object!

I could not say that his mind was gone, but he talked with many breaks
for breath, and not very coherently, as though the office of his tongue
was performed by habit rather than memory, so that he often went far
astray and babbled into sentences that had no reference to what had gone
before, though on the whole I managed to collect what he meant. I was
sure he had not power enough of vision to observe me in the dim reddish
light of the cook-room, and this being so, he could not know I was
present, more particularly as he could not hear me, yet he persisted in
his poor babble, which was a behaviour in him that, more than even the
matter of his speech, persuaded me of his imbecility.

He made no reference to our situation, and in solemn truth I believe his
memory retained no more than a few odds and ends of the evil story of
his life, like bits of tarnished lace and a rusty button or two lying in
the bottom of a dark chest that has long been emptied of the clothes it
once held.

But my condition made such heavy demands upon my thoughts that I had
very much less attention to give to this surprising phenomenon of
senility than its uncommon merits deserved. It has puzzled every member
of the faculty that I have mentioned it to, the supposition being that,
given the case of suspended animation, there is no waste, and the person
would quit his stupor with the same powers and aspect as he possessed
when he entered it, though it lasted a thousand years. But granting
there is no waste, Time is always present waiting to settle accounts
when the sleeper lifts his head. There may be an artificial interval,
during which the victim might show as my pirate did, but the poised load
of years is severed on a sudden by the scythe and becomes
superincumbent, and with the weight comes the transformation; and this
theory, as the only eye-witness of the marvellous thing, I will hold and
maintain whilst I have breath in my body to support it.

I left him gabbling to himself, sometimes grinning as if greatly
diverted, sometimes lifting a trembling hand to help his ghostly recital
by an equally ghostly dumb-show, and went on deck, satisfied that he was
too weak to get to the fire and meddle with it, but sufficiently
invigorated by his long night's rest to sit up without tumbling off the
bench.

This time I carried with me an old perspective glass I had noticed in
the chest in my cabin--the chest in which were the nautical instruments,
charts, and papers--and levelled it along the coast of the island, but
it was a poor glass, and I found I could manage nearly as well with the
naked eye. There was no change of any kind, only that there was a
sensible diminution in the blowing of the wind and a corresponding
decrease in the height of the seas. The ice stretched in a considerable
bed on either hand the ship and ahead of her; the water frothed freely
over it, and there was a great jangling and flashing of broken pieces,
but the hull was no longer heavily hit by them.

I got into the main chains to view the body of the vessel, and noticed
with satisfaction that the constant pouring of the sea had thinned down
the frozen snow to the depth of at least a foot. This encouraged me to
hope that the restless tides would sap to her keel at least, and put her
into a posture to be easily launched by the blow of a surge upon her
bows--that is if fortune continued to keep her head on. But by this
time, my transports having moderated, I was grown fully sensible of the
extreme peril of our position. Should the sea rise and the ice bring her
broadside to it, it was inevitable, it seemed to me, that she must go to
pieces. Or if the ice on which she floated, fouled some other berg it
might cost us all our spars. Then again occurred the dismal question,
Suppose she should launch herself, would she float? For eight-and-forty
years she had been high and dry; never a caulker's hammer had rung upon
her in all that time. Tassard had spoken of her as a stout ship, and so
she was, I did not doubt; but the old rogue talked as if she had been
stranded six months only! I had no other hope than that the intense
cold had treated her timbers as it had treated the bodies of her people,
an expectation not unreasonable when I considered the state of her
stores and the manifest substantiality of her inward fabric.

I regained the deck and stepped over to the pumps. There were two of
them, but built up in snow. My business was to save my life if I could,
and the schooner too, for the sake of the great treasure in her. Nothing
must disconcert me I said to myself--I must spare no labour, but act a
hearty sailor's part and ask for God's countenance. So I trotted below,
and selecting some weapons from the arms-room, such as a tomahawk, a
spade-headed spear, a pike and a chopper, I returned to the pumps and
fell upon them with a will. The ice flew about me, but I continued to
smite, the exercise making me hot and renewing my spirits, and in an
hour--but it took me an hour--I had chopped, hacked, and beaten one of
the pumps pretty clear of its thick crystal coat. They were what is
called brake-pumps--that is to say, pumps which are worked by handles.
The ice, of course, held them immovable, but they looked to be perfectly
sound, in good working order, though there would be neither chance nor
need to test them until the schooner went afloat.

I cleared the other one and was well satisfied with my morning's work.
But I did bitterly lament the lack of a little crew. Even the Frenchman
as he was yesterday would have served my turn, for between us we might
have made shift to clamber aloft, and with hatchets break the sails
free of their ice bonds, and so expose canvas enough to hold the wind,
which could not have failed to impart a swifter motion to the berg. But
with my single pair of hands I could only look up idly at the yards and
gaffs standing hard as granite. Still, even such surface as the spars
and rigging offered to the breeze helped our progress. We were but a
very little berg, nay, not a berg, but rather a sheet of ice lying
indifferently flat upon the sea, and, as I believe, without much depth.
Our spars and gear were as if the ice itself were rigged as a ship, and
then there was the height of the hull besides to offer to the breeze a
tolerable resistance for its offices of propulsion. In this way I
explain our progress; but whatever the cause, certain it was that our
bed of ice was fairly under weigh, and at noon the island of ice bore at
least half a league distant from us, and we had opened the sea broadly
past its northern cape.

I have often diverted myself with wondering what sort of impression the
posture of our schooner would have made on the minds of sailors sighting
us from their deck. We looked to be floating out of water, and mariners
who regard the devil as a conjuror must have accepted us as one of his
pet inventions.

The many icebergs which encumbered the sea filled me with anxiety. We
were travelling faster than they, and it seemed impossible that we could
miss striking one or another of them. Yet perilous as they were, I could
not but admire their beautiful appearance as they floated upon the dark
blue of the running waters, flashing out very gloriously to the sun with
a sparkling of tints upon their whiteness as if fires of twenty
different colours had been kindled upon their craggy steeps, and then
fading into a sulky watchet to the dull violet shadowing of the passing
clouds. I particularly marked a very brilliant scene on the opening of
five or six of them to the sunshine. They lay in such wise that the
shadow of the cloud covered them all as with a veil, the skirts of
which, trailing, left them to leap one after the other into the noontide
dazzle; and as each one shot from the shadow the flash was like a
volcanic spouting of white flame enriched with the prismatic dyes of
emeralds, rubies, sapphires, and gems of lovely hue.

To determine the hour and our position I fetched a quadrant from my
cabin, and was happily just in time to catch the sun crossing the
meridian. My watch was half an hour fast, so I had been out of my
reckoning to the extent of thirty minutes ever since I had been cast
away. I made our latitude to be sixty-four degrees twenty-eight minutes
south, and the computation was perhaps near enough.

This business ended, I went to the cook-house to prepare dinner, and the
first object I saw was Tassard flat upon his face near the door that
opened into the cabin. He groaned when I picked him up, which I managed
without much exertion of strength, for so much had he shrunk that I dare
say more than half his weight lay in his clothes; and set him upon his
bench with his back to the dresser. I put my mouth to his ear and
roared, "Are you hurt?" His head nodded as if he understood me, but I
question if he did. He was the completest picture of old age that you
could imagine. I fetched a couple of spears from the arms-room, and,
cutting them to his height, put one in each hand that he might keep
himself propped; and whilst my own dinner was broiling I made him a mess
of broth with which I fed him, for now that he had the sticks he would
not let go of them. But in any case I doubt if his trembling hand could
have lifted the spoon to his lips without capsizing the contents down
his beard.

With some small idea of rallying the old villain, I mixed him a very
stiff bumper of brandy, which he supped down out of my hand with the
utmost avidity. The draught soon worked in him, and he began to move his
head about, seeking me in his blind way, and then cried in his broken
notes, "I have lost the use of my legs and cannot walk. Mother of God,
what shall I do! O holy St. Antonio, what is to become of me?"

I guessed from this that, impelled by habit or some small spur of
reason, he had risen to go on deck and fallen. He went on vapouring
pitifully, gazing with sufficient steadfastness to let me understand
that his vision received something of my outline, though he would fix
his eyes either to left or right of me, as though he was not able to see
if he looked straight; and this and his mournful cackle and his nodding
head, bowed form, propped hands, and diminished face made him as
distressful and melancholy a picture of Time as ever mortal man viewed.
He broke off in his rambling to ask for more brandy, taking it for
granted that I was still in the cook-room, for I never spoke, and I
filled a can for him and as before held it to his mouth, which he opened
wide, a piece of behaviour which went to show that some of his wits
still hung loose upon him. This was a strong dose, and co-operating with
the other, soon seized hold on his head, and presently he began to laugh
to himself and talk, and even broke into a stave or two--some French
song which he delivered in a voice like the squeaking of a rat
alternating with the growling of a terrier.

I guess his stumbling upon this old French catch (which I took it to be
from seeing him feebly flourish one of his sticks as if inviting a
chorus) put him upon speaking his own tongue altogether, for though he
continued to chatter with all the volubility his breath would permit
during the whole time I sat eating, not one word of English did he
speak, and not one word therefore did I understand. Seeing how it must
be with him presently, I brought his mattress and rugs from his cabin,
and had scarce laid them down when he let fall one of his sticks and
drooped over. I grasped him, and partly lifting, partly hauling, got him
on his back and covered him up. In a few minutes he was asleep.

I trust I shall not be deemed inhuman if I confess that I heartily
wished his end would come. If he went on living he promised to be an
intolerable burden to me, being quite helpless. Besides, he was much too
old for this world, in which a man who reaches the age of ninety is
pointed to as a sort of wonder.

As there was nothing to be done on deck, I filled my pipe and made
myself comfortable before the furnace, and was speedily sunk in
meditation. I reviewed all the circumstances of my case and considered
my chances, and the nimble heels of imagination carrying me home with
this schooner, I asked myself, suppose I should have the good fortune to
convey the treasure in safety to England, how was I to secure it? Let me
imagine myself arrived in the Thames. The whole world stares at the
strange antique craft sailing up the river; she would be boarded and
rummaged by the customs people, who of course would light upon the
treasure. What then? I knew nothing of the law; but I reckoned, since I
should have to tell the truth, that the money, ore, and jewellery would
be claimed as stolen property, and I dismissed with a small reward for
bringing it home. There was folly in such contemplation at such a time,
when perhaps at this hour to-morrow the chests might be at the bottom of
the sea, and myself a drowned sailor floating three hundred fathoms
deep. But man is a froward child, who builds mansions out of dreams,
and, jockeyed by hope, sets out at a gallop along the visionary road to
his desires; and my mind was so much taken up with considering how I
should manage when I brought the treasure home, that I spent a couple of
hours in a conflict of schemes, during which time it never once
occurred to me to reflect that I was a good way from home still, and
that much must happen before I need give myself the least concern as to
the securing of the treasure.

Nothing worth recording happened that day. The wind slackened, and the
ice travelled so slow that at sundown I could not discover that we had
made more than a quarter of a mile of progress to the north since noon,
though we had settled by half as much again that distance westwards.
Whilst I was below I could hear the ice crackling pretty briskly round
about the ship, which gave me some comfort; but I could never see any
change of consequence when I looked over the side or bows, only that at
about four o'clock, whilst I was taking a view from the forecastle, a
large block broke away from beyond the starboard bow with the report of
a swivel gun.

I had not closed my eyes on the previous night, and was tired out when
the evening arrived, and, as no good could come of my keeping a watch,
for the simple reason that it was not in my power to avert anything that
might happen, I tumbled some further covering over the Frenchman, who
had lain on the deck all the afternoon, sometimes dozing, sometimes
waking and talking to himself, and appearing on the whole very easy and
comfortable, and went to my cabin.

I slept sound the whole night through, and on waking went on deck before
going to the cook-house and lighting the furnace (as was my custom), so
impatient was I to observe our state and to hear such news as the ocean
had for me. It was a very curious day, somewhat darksome, and a dead
calm, with a large long swell out of the south-east. The sky was full of
clouds, with a stooping appearance in the hang of them that reminded you
of the belly of a hammock; they were of a sallow brown, very uncommon;
some of them round about sipped the sea-line, and their shadows,
obliterating those parts of the cincture which they overhung, broke the
continuity of the horizon as though there were valleys in the ocean
there. A good part of our bed of ice was gone, at least a fourth of it;
but the schooner still lay as strongly fixed as before. I had come to
the deck half expecting to find her afloat from the regular manner of
her heaving, and was bitterly disappointed to discover her rooted as
strongly as ever in the ice, though the irritation softened when I
noticed how the bed had diminished. The mass with the ship upon it rose
and sank with the sluggish squatting motion of a water-logged vessel. It
was an odd sensation to my legs after their long rest from such
exercise. The heaving satisfied me that the base of the bed did not go
deep, but at the same time it was all too solid for me, I could not
doubt, for had the sheet been as thin as I had hoped it, it must have
given under the weight of the schooner and released her.

The island lay a league distant on the larboard beam, and looked a
wondrous vast field of ice going into the south, and it stared very
ghastly upon the dark green sea out of the clouds whose gloom sank
behind it. I could not observe that we had drifted anything to the
north, whilst our set to the westwards had been steady though
snail-like. The sea in the north and north-west swarmed with bergs, like
great snowdrops on the green undulating fields of the deep. Now and
again the swell, in which fragments of ice floated with the gleam of
crystal in liquid glass, would be too quick for our dull rise and
overflow the bed, brimming to the channels with much noise of foam and
pouring waters, but the interposition of the ice took half its weight
out of it, and it never did more than send a tremble through the vessel.

What to make of the weather I knew not. Certainly, of all the caprices
of this huge cold sea, its calms are the shortest lived, but this
knowledge helped me to no other. The clouds did not stir. In the
north-east a beam of sunshine stood like a golden waterspout, its foot
in a little flood of glory. It stayed all the while I was on deck,
showing that the clouds had scarce any motion, and made the picture of
the sea that way beyond nature to my sight, by the contrast of the
defined shaft of gold, burning purely, with the dusk of the clouds all
about, and of the pool of dazzle at its foot with the ugly green of the
water that melted into it.

I went below and got about lighting the fire. The Frenchman lay very
quiet, under as many clothes as would fill a half-dozen of sacks. It was
bitterly cold, sharper in the cook-house than I had ever remembered it,
and I could not conceive why this should be, until I recollected that I
had forgotten to close the companion-hatch before going to bed. I
prepared some broth for my companion, and dressed some ham for myself,
and ate my breakfast, supposing he would meanwhile awake. But after
sitting some time and observing that he did not stir, a suspicion
flashed into my mind; I kneeled down, and clearing his face, listened.
He did not breathe. I brought the lanthorn to him, but his countenance
had been so changed by his unparalleled emergence from a state of middle
life into extreme old age, he was so puckered, hollowed, gaunt, his
features so distorted by the great weight of his years that I was not to
know him dead by merely viewing him. I threw the clothes off him,
listened at his mouth breathlessly, felt his hands, which were ice-cold.
Dead indeed! thought I. Great Father, 'tis Thy will! And I rose very
slowly and stood surveying the silent figure with an emotion that owed
its inspiration partly to the several miracles of vitality I had beheld
in him during our association, and to a bitter feeling of loneliness
that swelled up in me.

Yes! I had feared and detested this man, but his quick transformation
and silent dark exit affected me, and I looked down upon him sadly. Yet,
to be perfectly candid with you, I recollect that, though it occurred to
me to test if life was out of him by bringing him close to the fire and
chafing him and giving him brandy, I would not stir. No, I would not
have moved a finger to recover him, even though I should have been able
to do so by merely putting him to the furnace. He was dead, and there
was an end; and without further ado I carried him into the forecastle
and threw a hammock over him, and left him to lie there till there
should come clear water to the ship to serve him for a grave.




CHAPTER XXV.

THE SCHOONER FREES HERSELF.


All day long the weather remained sullen and still, and the swell
powerful. I was on deck at noon, looking at an iceberg half a league
distant when it overset. It was a small berg, though large compared with
most of the others; yet such a mighty volume of foam boiled up as gave
me a startling idea of the prodigious weight of the mass. The sight made
me very anxious about my own state, and to satisfy my mind I got upon
the ice and walked round the vessel, and to get a true view of her
posture went to the extreme end of the rocks beyond her bows, and
finally came to the conclusion that, supposing the ice should crumble
away from her sides so as to cause the weight of the schooner to render
it top-heavy, her buoyancy on touching the water would certainly tear
her keel out of its frosty setting and leave her floating. Indeed, so
sure was I of this that I saw, next to the ice splitting and freeing her
in that way, the best thing that could happen would be its capsizal.

I regained the ship, and had paused an instant to look over the side,
when I perceived the very block of ice on which I had come to a halt
break from the bed with a smart clap of noise, and completely roll
over. Only a minute before had I been standing on it, and thus had sixty
seconds stood between me and death, for most certainly must I have been
drowned or killed by being beaten against the ice by the swell! I fell
upon my knees and lifted up my hands in gratitude to God, feeling
extraordinarily comforted by this further mark of His care of me, and
very strongly persuaded that He designed I should come off with my life
after all, since His providence would not work so many miracles for my
preservation if I was to perish by this adventure.

These thoughts did more for my spirits than I can well express; and the
intolerable sense of loneliness was mitigated by the knowledge that I
was watched, and therefore not alone.

The day passed I know not how. The shadow as of tempest hung in the air,
but never a cats-paw did I see to blurr the rolling mirror of the ocean.
The hidden sun sank out of the breathless sky, tingeing the atmosphere
with a faint hectic, which quickly yielded to the deepest shade of
blackness. The mysterious desperate silence, however, that on deck
weighed oppressively on every sense, as something false, menacing, and
malignant in these seas, was qualified below by the peculiar straining
noises in the schooner's hold caused by the swinging of the ice upon the
swell. I was very uneasy; I dreaded a gale. It was impossible but that
the vessel must quickly go to pieces in a heavy sea upon the ice if she
did not liberate herself. But though this excited a depression
melancholy enough, nothing else that I can recollect contributed to it.
When I reviewed the apprehension the Frenchman had raised, and reflected
how unsupportable a burden he must have become, I was very well
satisfied to be alone. Time had fortified me; I had passed through
experiences so surprising, encountered wonders so preternatural, that
superstition lay asleep in my soul, and I found nothing to occasion in
me the least uneasiness in thinking of the lifeless shrivelled figure of
what was just now a fierce, cowardly, untamed villain, lying in the
forecastle.

I made a good supper, built up a large fire, and mixed myself a hearty
bowl of punch, not with the view of drowning my anxieties--God forbid! I
was too grateful for the past, too expectant of the future, to be
capable of so brutish a folly--but that I might keep myself in a
cheerful posture of mind; and being sick of my own company took the
lanthorn to the cabin lately used by the Frenchman, and found in a chest
there, among sundry articles of attire, a little parcel of books, some
in Dutch and Portuguese, and one in English.

It was a little old volume, the author's name not given, and proved to
be a relation of the writer's being taken by pirates, and the many
dangers he underwent. There was nothing in it, to be sure, that answered
to my own case, yet it interested me mightily as an honest unvarnished
narrative of sea perils; and I see myself now in fancy reading it, the
lanthorn hanging by a laniard close beside my head, the book in one
hand, my pipe in the other, the furnace roaring pleasantly, my feet
close to it, and the atmosphere of the oven fragrant with the punch that
I put there to prevent it from freezing. I had come to a certain page
and was reading this passage: "_Soon after we were on board we all went
into the great cabin, where we found nothing but destruction. Two
scrutores I had there were broke to pieces, and all the fine goods and
necessaries in them were all gone. Moreover, two large chests that had
books in them were empty, and I was afterwards informed they had been
all thrown overboard; for one of the pirates on opening them swore there
was jaw-work enough (as he called it) to serve a nation, and proposed
that they might be cast into the sea, for he feared there might be some
books amongst them that might breed mischief enough, and prevent some of
their comrades from going on in their voyage to hell, whither they were
all bound_"--I say, I was reading this passage, not a little affected by
the impiety of the rascal, for whose portrait my dead Frenchman might
very well have sat, when I was terrified by an extraordinary loud
explosion, that burst so near and rang with such a prodigious clear note
of thunder through the schooner that I vow to God I believed the
gunpowder below had blown up. And in this suspicion I honestly supposed
myself right for a moment, for on running into the cabin I was dazzled
by a crimson flame that clothed the whole interior with a wondrous gush
of fire; but this being instantly followed by such another clap as the
former, I understood a thunderstorm had broken over the schooner.

It was exactly overhead, and that accounted for the violence of the
crashes, which were indeed so extreme that they sounded rather like the
splitting of enormous bodies of ice close to, than the flight of
electric bolts. The hatch lay open; I ran on deck, but scarce had passed
my head through the companion when down came a storm of hail, every
stone as big as a pigeon's egg, and in all my time I never heard a more
hellish clamour. There was not a breath of air. The hail fell in
straight lines, which the fierce near lightning flashed up into the
appearance of giant harp strings, on which the black hand of the night
was playing those heavy notes of thunder. I sat in the shelter of the
companion, very anxious and alarmed, for there was powder enough in the
hold to blow the ship into atoms; and the lightning played so
continuously and piercingly that it was like a hundred darts of fire,
violet, crimson, and sun-coloured, in the grasp of spirits who thrust at
the sea, all over its face, with swift movement of the arms, as though
searching for the schooner to spear her.

The hailstorm ceased as suddenly as it had burst. I stepped on to the
deck, and 'twas like treading on shingle. There was not the least motion
in the air, and the stagnation gave an almost supernatural character to
the thunder and lightning. The ocean was lighted up to its furthest
visible confines by the flames in the sky, and the repeated explosions
of thunder exceeded the roaring of the ordnance of a dozen squadrons in
hot fight. The ice-coast in the east, and the two score bergs in the
north and west leapt out of one hue into another; and were my days in
this world to exceed those of old Abraham, I should to my last breath
remember the solemn and terrible magnificence of that picture of
lightning-coloured ice, the sulphur-tinctured shapes of the swollen
bodies of clouds bringing their dark electric mines together in a
huddle, the answering flash of the face of the deep to the lancing of
each spiral dazzling bolt, with the air as still as the atmosphere of a
cathedral for the thunder to roll its echoes through.

There was a second furious shower of hail, and when that was over I
looked forth, and observed that the storm was settling into the
north-east, whence I concluded that what draught there might be up there
sat in the south-west. Nor was I mistaken; for half an hour after the
first of the outburst, by which time the lightning played weak and at
long intervals low down, and the thunder had ceased, I felt a crawling
of air coming out of the south-west, which presently briskened into a
small steady blowing. But not for long. It freshened yet and yet; the
wrinkles crisped into whiteness on the black heavings; they grew into
small surges with sharp cubbish snarlings preludious of the lion's
voice; and by ten o'clock it was blowing in strong squalls, the seas
rising, and the clouds sailing swiftly in smoke-coloured rags under the
stars.

The posture of the ice inclined the schooner's starboard bow to the
billows; and in a very short time she was trembling in every bone to the
blows of the surges which rolled boiling over the ice there and struck
her, flinging dim clouds of spume in the air, which soon set the
scuppers gushing. My case was that of a stranded ship, with this
difference only, that a vessel ashore lies solid to the beating of the
waves, whereas the ice was buoyant, it rose and fell, sluggishly it is
true, and so somewhat mitigated the severity of the shocks of water.
But, spite of this, I was perfectly sure that unless the bed broke under
her or she slipt off it, she would be in pieces before the morning. It
was not in any hull put together by human hands to resist the pounding
of those seas. The weight of the mighty ocean along whose breast they
raced was in them, and though the wind was no more than a brisk gale,
each billow by its stature showed itself the child of a giantess. The
ice-bed was like a whirlpool with the leap and flash and play of the
froth upon it. The black air of the night was whitened by the storms of
foam-flakes which flew over the vessel. The roaring of the broken waters
increased the horrors of the scene. I firmly believed my time was come.
God had been merciful, but I was to die now. As to making any shift to
keep myself alive after the ship should be broken up, the thought never
entered my head. What could I do? There was no boat. I might have
contrived some arrangement of booms and casks to serve as a raft, but to
what purpose? How long would it take the wind and sea to freeze me?

I crouched in the companion-way hearkening to the uproar around, feeling
the convulsions of the schooner, fully prepared for death, dogged and
hopeless. No, I was not afraid. Suffering and expectation had brought me
to that pass that I did not care. "'Tis such an end as hundreds and
thousands of sailors have met," I remember thinking; "it is the fittest
exit for a mariner. I have sinned in my time, but the Almighty God knows
my heart." To this tune ran my thoughts. I held my arms tightly folded
upon my breast, and with set lips waited for the first of those crashing
and rending sounds which would betoken the ruin and destruction of the
schooner.

So passed half an hour; then, being half perished with the cold, I went
to the furnace, for when the vessel went to pieces it would matter
little in what part of her I was, and warmed myself and took a dram as a
felon swallows a draught on his way to the scaffold. Were I to attempt
to describe the character of the thunderous noises in the ship I should
not be believed. The seas raised a most deafening roaring as they boiled
over the ice and rolled their volumes against the vessel's sides. Every
curl swung a load of broken frozen pieces against the bows and bends,
and the shocks resounded through her like blows from cyclopean hammers.
It was as if I had been seated in the central stagnant heart of a small
revolving hurricane, feeling no faintest sigh of air upon my cheek,
whilst close around whirled the hellish tormenting conflict of white
waters and yelling blasts.

On a sudden--in a breath--I felt the vessel rise. She was swung up with
the giddy velocity of a hunter clearing a tall gate; she sank again,
and there was a mighty concussion forward, then a pause of steadiness
whilst you might have counted five, then a wild upward heave, a sort of
sharp floating fall, a harsh grating along her keel and sides, as though
she was being smartly warped over rocks, followed by an unmistakable
free pitching and rolling motion.

I had sprung to my feet and stood waiting. But the instant I gathered by
the movements of her that she was released I sprang like a madman up the
companion-steps. The sea, breaking on her bow, flew in heavy showers
along the deck and half blinded me. But I was semi-delirious, and having
sat so long with Death's hand in mine was in a passionately defiant
mood, with a perfect rage of scorn of peril in me, and I walked right on
to the forecastle, giving the flying sheets of water there no heed. In a
minute a block of sea tumbled upon me and left me breathless; the
iciness of it cooled my mind's heat, but not my resolution. I was
determined to judge as best I could by the light of the foam of what had
happened, and holding on tenaciously to whatever came to my hand and
progressing step by step I got to the forecastle and looked ahead.

Where the ice was the water tumbled in milk; 'twas four or five ship's
lengths distant, and I could distinguish no more than that. I peered
over the lee bow, but could see no ice. The vessel had gone clear; how,
I knew not and can never know, but my own fancy is that she split the
bed with her own weight when the sea rose and threw the ice up, for she
had floated on a sudden, and the noises which attended her release
indicated that she had been forced through a channel.

I returned aft, barely escaping a second deluge, and looked over the
quarter; no ice was there visible to me. The vessel rolled horribly, and
I perceived that she had a decided list to starboard, the result of the
shifting of what was in her when the ice came away from the main with
her, and it was this heel that brought the sea washing over the bow. I
took hold of the tiller to try it, but either the helm was frozen
immovable or the rudder was jammed in its gudgeons or in some other
fashion fixed.

Had she been damaged below? was she taking in water? I knew her to be so
thickly sheathed with ice that, unless it had been scaled off in places
by the breaking of her bed, I had little fear (until this covering
melted or dropped off by the working of the frame) of the hull not
proving tight. I should have been coated with ice myself had I stayed
but a little longer in my wet clothes in that piercing wind, so I ran
below, and bringing an armful of clothes from my cabin to the cook-room,
was very soon in dry attire, and making an extraordinary figure, I don't
question, in the buttons, lace, and fripperies of the old-fashioned
garments.

The incident of the schooner's release from the ice had come upon me so
suddenly, and at a time too when my mind was terribly disordered, that I
scarce realized the full meaning of it until I had shifted myself and
fortified my heart with a dram and got warm in the glow of the furnace.
By this time she had fallen into the trough and was labouring like a
cask; that she would prove a heavy roller in a sea-way a single glance
at her fat buttocks and swelling bilge might have persuaded me, but I
never could have dreamt she would wallow so monstrously. The oscillation
was rendered more formidable by her list, and there were moments when I
could not keep my feet. She was shipping water very freely over her
starboard rail, but this did not much concern me, for the break of the
poop-deck kept the after part of the vessel indifferently dry, and the
forecastle and main hatches were well secured. But there was one great
peril I knew not how to provide against--I mean the flotilla of icebergs
in the north and west. They lay in a long chain upon the sea, and though
to be sure there was no doubt a wide channel between each, through which
it might have been easy to carry a ship under control, yet there was
every probability of a vessel in the defenceless condition of the
schooner, without a stitch of sail on her and under no other government
of helm than a fixed rudder, being swept against one of those frozen
floating hills when indeed it would be good-night to her and to me too,
for after such a catastrophe the sun would never rise for me or her
again.

Meanwhile I was crazy to ascertain if the schooner was taking in water.
If there was a sounding-rod in the ship I did not know where to lay my
hands upon it. But he is a poor sailor who is slow at substitutes.
There were several spears in the arms-room (piratical plunder, no doubt)
with mere spikes for heads, like those weapons used by the Caffres and
other tribes in that country; they were formed of a hard heavy wood. I
took a length of ratline line and secured it to one of these spears, and
carried it on deck with the powder-room bull's-eye lamp; but when I
probed the sounding-pipe I found it full of ice, and as it was
impossible to draw the pumps, I flung my ingenious sounding-rod down in
a passion of grief and mortification.

Yet was I not to be beaten. Such was my temper, had the devil himself
confronted me, I should have defied him to do his worst, for I had made
up my mind to weather him out. I entered the forecastle, lanthorn in
hand, prized open the hatch and dropped into the hold. It needed an
experienced ear to detect the sobbing of internal waters amid the
yearning gushes, the long gurgling washings, the thunderous blows, and
shrewd rain-like hissings of the seas outside. I listened with strained
hearing for some minutes, but distinguished no sounds to alarm me with
assurance of water in the hold. I could not mistake. I hearkened with
all my might, but the noise was outside. I thanked God very heartily,
and got out of the hold and put the hatch on. There was no need to go
aft and listen. The schooner was by the head, and there could be no
water in the run that would not be forward too.

Being reassured in respect of the staunchness of the hull, I returned to
the fire and proceeded to equip myself for a prolonged watch on deck.
Whilst I was drawing on a great pair of boots I heard a knocking in the
after part of the vessel. I supposed she had drifted into a little field
of broken ice, and that she would go clear presently, and I finished
arming myself for the weather; but the knocking continuing, I went into
the cabin where I heard it very plain, and walked as far as the
lazarette hatch, where I stood listening. The noises were a kind of
irregular thumping accompanied by a peculiar grinding sound. In a moment
I guessed the truth, rushed on deck, and by the dim light in the air saw
the long tiller mowing to and fro! The beat of the beam seas had
unlocked the frozen bonds of the rudder, and there swung the tiller, as
though like a dog the ship was wagging her tail for joy!

The vessel lay along, rolling so as to bring her starboard rail to a
level with the sea; her main deck was full of water, and the froth of it
combined with the ice that glazed her made her look like a fabric of
marble as she swung on the black fold ere it broke into snow about her.
I seized the tiller and ran it over hard a-starboard, and I had not held
it in that posture half a minute when to my inexpressible delight I
observed that she was paying off. Her head fell slowly from the sea; she
lurched drunkenly, and some tons of black water rolled over the
bulwarks; she reeled consumedly to larboard, and rose squarely and
ponderously to the height of the surge that was now abaft the beam. In a
few moments she was dead before it, the helm amidships, the wind blowing
sheer over the stern with half its weight seemingly gone through the
vessel running, the tall seas chasing her high stern and floating it
upwards, till looking forward was like gazing down the slope of a hill.

My heart was never fuller than then. I was half crazy with the passion
of joy that possessed me. Consider the alternations of hope and bitter
despair which had been crowded into that night! We may wonder in times
of security that life should be sweet, and admit the justice of the
arguments which several sorts of writers, and the poets even more than
the parsons, use in defence of death. But when it comes to the pinch
human nature breaks through. When the old man in Æsop calls upon Death
to relieve him, and the skeleton suddenly rises, the old man changes his
mind, and thinks he will go on trying for himself a little longer. I
liked to live, and had no mind for a wet shroud, and this getting the
schooner before the wind, along with the old familiar feeling of the
decks reeling and soaring and sinking under my feet, was so cordial an
assurance of life that, I tell you, my heart was full to breaking with
transport.

However, I was still in a situation that made prodigious demands upon my
coolness and wits. The wind was south-west, the schooner was running
north-east; the bulk of the icebergs lay on the larboard bow, but there
were others right ahead, and to starboard, where also lay the extremity
of the island, though I did not fear _that_ if I could escape the rest.
It was a dark night; methinks there should have been a young moon
curled somewhere among the stars, but she was not to be seen. The clouds
flew dark and hurriedly, and the frosty orbs between were too few to
throw a light. The ocean ahead and around was the duskier for the
spectral illumination of the near foam and the glimmer of the ice-coated
ship. I tested the vessel with the tiller and found she responded but
dully; she would be nimbler under canvas no doubt, but it was enough
that she should answer her helm at all. Oh, I say, I was mighty
thankful, most humbly grateful. My heart was never more honest to its
Maker than then.

She crushed along, pitching pitifully, the dark seas on either hand
foaming to her quarters, and her rigging querulous with the wind. Had
the Frenchman been alive to steer the ship, I might have found strength
enough for my hands in the vigour of my spirit to get the spritsail yard
square and chop its canvas loose--nay, I might have achieved more than
that even; but I could not quit the tiller now. I reckoned our speed at
about four miles an hour, as fast as a hearty man could walk. The high
stern, narrow as it was, helped us; it was like a mizzen in its way; and
all aloft being stout to start with and greatly thickened yet by ice,
the surface up there gave plenty for the gale to catch hold on; and so
we drove along.

I could just make out the dim pallid loom of the coast of ice upon the
starboard beam, and a blob or two of faintness--most elusive and not to
be fixed by the eye staring straight at them--on the larboard bow. But
it was not long before these blobs, as I term them, grew plainer, and
half a score swam into the dusk over the bowsprit end, and resembled
dull small visionary openings in the dark sky there, or like stars
magnified and dimmed into the merest spectral light by mist. I passed
the first at a distance of a quarter of a mile; it slided by
phantasmally, and another stole out right ahead. This I could have gone
widely clear of by a little shift of the helm, but whilst I was in the
act of starboarding three or four bergs suddenly showed on the larboard
bow, and I saw that unless I had a mind to bring the ship into the
trough again I must keep straight on. So I steered to bring the berg
that was right ahead a little on the bow, with a prayer in my soul that
there might be no low-lying block in the road for the schooner to split
upon. It went by within a pistol-shot. I was very much accustomed to the
sight of ice by this time, yet I found myself glancing at this mass with
pretty near as much wonder and awe as if I had never seen such a thing
before. It was not above thirty feet high, but its shape was exactly
that of a horse's head, the lips sipping the sea, the ears cocked, the
neck arching to the water. You would have said it was some vast courser
rising out of the deep. The peculiar radiance of ice trembled off it
like a luminous mist into the dusk. The water boiled about its nose, and
suggested a frothing caused by the monster steed's expelled breath. Let
a fire have been kindled to glow red where you looked for the eye, and
the illusion would have been frightfully grand.

The poet speaks of the spirits of the vasty deep; if you want to know
what exquisite artists they are, enter the frozen silences of the south.

Thus threading my way I drove before the seas and wind, striking a piece
of ice but once only, and that a small lump which hit the vessel on the
bow and went scraping past, doing the fabric no hurt; but often forced
to slide perilously close by the bergs. I needed twenty instead of one
pair of eyes. With ice already on either bow, on a sudden it would
glimmer out right ahead, and I had to form my resolution on the instant.
If ever you have been amid a pack of icebergs on a dark night in a high
sea you will understand my case; if not, the pen of a Fielding or a
Defoe could not put it before you. For what magic has ink to express the
roaring of swollen waters bursting into tall pale clouds against the
motionless crystal heights, the mystery of the configuration of the
faintness under the swarming shadows of the flying night, the sudden
glares of breaking liquid peaks, the palpitating darkness beyond, the
plunging and rolling of the ship, making her rigging ring upon the air
with the reeling of her masts, the gradual absorption of the solid mass
of dim lustre by the gloom astern, the swift spectral dawn of such
another light over the bows, with many phantasmal outlines slipping by
on either hand, like a procession of giant ocean-spectres, travelling
white and secretly towards the silent dominions of the Pole?

Half this ice came from the island, the rest of it was formed of bergs
too tall to have ever belonged to the north end of that great stretch.
It took three hours to pass clear of them, and then I had to go on
clinging to the tiller and steering in a most melancholy famished
condition for another long half-hour before I could satisfy myself that
the sea was free.

But now I was nearly dead with the cold. I had stood for five hours at
the helm, during all which time my mind had been wound up to the
fiercest tension of anxiety, and my eyes felt as if they were strained
out of their sockets by their searching of the gloom ahead, and nature
having done her best gave out suddenly, and not to have saved my life
could I have stood at the tiller for another ten minutes.

The gear along the rail was so iron-hard that I could not secure the
helm with it, so I softened some lashings by holding them before the
fire, and finding the schooner on my return to be coming round to
starboard, I helped her by putting the tiller hard a port and securing
it. I then went below, built up the fire, lighted my pipe, and sat down
for warmth and rest.




CHAPTER XXVI.

I AM TROUBLED BY THOUGHTS OF THE TREASURE.


The weight of the wind in the rigging steadied the schooner somewhat,
and prevented her from rolling too heavily to starboard, whilst her
list corrected her larboard rolls. So as I sat below she seemed to me
to be making tolerably good weather of it. Not much water came aboard;
now and again I would hear the clatter of a fall forwards, but at
comfortably long intervals.

I sat against the dresser with my back upon it, and being dead tired
must have dropped asleep on a sudden--indeed, before I had half smoked
my pipe out, and I do not believe I gave a thought to my situation
before I slumbered, so wearied was I. The cold awoke me. The fire was
out and so was the candle in the lanthorn, and I was in coffin darkness.
This the tinder-box speedily remedied. I looked at my watch--seven
o'clock, as I was a sinner! so that my sleep had lasted between three
and four hours.

I went on deck and found the night still black upon the sea, the wind
the same brisk gale that was blowing when I quitted the helm, the sea no
heavier, and the schooner tumbling in true Dutch fashion upon it. I
looked very earnestly around but could see no signs of ice. There would
be daylight presently, so I went below, lighted the fire, and got my
breakfast, and when I returned the sun was up and the sea visible to its
furthest reaches.

It was a fine wintry piece; the sea green and running in ridges with
frothing heads, the sky very pale among the dark snow-laden clouds, the
sun darting a ray now and again, which was swung into the north by the
shadows of the clouds until they extinguished it. Remote in the
north-west hung the gleam of an iceberg; there was nothing else in
sight. Yes--something that comforted me exceedingly, though it was not
very many days ago that a like object had heavily scared me--an
albatross, a noble bird, sailing on the windward close enough to be
shot. The sight of this living thing was inexpressibly cheering; it put
into my head a fancy of ships being at hand, thoughts of help and of
human companions. In truth, my imagination was willing to accept it as
the same bird that I had frightened away when in the boat, now returned
to silently reproach me for my treatment of it. Nay, my lonely eye, my
subdued and suffering heart might even have witnessed the good angel of
my life in that solitary shape of ocean beauty, and have deemed that,
though unseen, it had been with me throughout, and was now made visible
to my gaze by the light of hope that had broken into the darkness of my
adventure.

Well, supposing it so, I should not have been the only man who ever
scared his good angel away and found it faithful afterwards.

I unlashed the tiller and got the schooner before the wind and steered
until a little before noon, letting her drive dead before the sea, which
carried her north-east. Then securing the helm amidships I ran for the
quadrant, and whilst waiting for the sun to show himself I observed that
the vessel held herself very steadily before the wind, which might have
been owing to her high stern and the great swell of her sides and her
round bottom; but be the cause what it might, she ran as fairly with her
helm amidships as if I had been at the tiller to check her, a most
fortunate condition of my navigation, for it privileged me to get about
other work, whilst, at the same time, every hour was conveying me nearer
to the track of ships and further from the bitter regions of the south.

I got an observation and made out that the vessel had driven about
fifteen leagues during the night. She must do better than that, thought
I; and when I had eaten some dinner I took a chopper, and, going on to
the forecastle, lay out upon the bowsprit, and after beating the
spritsail-yard block clear of the ice, cut away the gaskets that
confined the sail to the yard, heartily beating the canvas, that was
like iron, till a clew of it fell. I then came in and braced the yard
square, and the wind, presently catching the exposed part of the sail,
blew more of it out, and yet more, until there was a good surface
showing; then to a sudden hard blast of wind the whole sail flew open
with a mighty crackling, as though indeed it was formed of ice; but to
render it useful I had to haul the sheets aft, which I could not manage
without the help of the tackles we had used in slinging the powder over
the side; so that, what with one hindrance and another, the setting of
that sail took me an hour and a half.

But had it occupied me all day it would have been worth doing. Trifling
as it was as a cloth, its effect upon the schooner was like that of a
cordial upon a fainting man. It was not that she sensibly showed nimbler
heels to it; its lifting tendency enabled her to ride the under-running
seas more buoyantly, and if it increased her speed by half a knot an
hour it was worth a million to me, whose business it was to take the
utmost possible advantage of the southerly gale.

I returned to the helm, warm with the exercise, and gazed forward not a
little proud of my work. Though the sail was eight-and-forty years old
and perhaps older, it offered as tough and stout a surface to the wind
as if it was fresh from the sailmaker's hands, so great are the
preserving qualities of ice. I looked wistfully at the topsail, but on
reflecting that if it should come on to blow hard enough to compel me to
heave the brig to she would never hull with that canvas abroad, I
resolved to let it lie, for I could cut away the spritsail if the
necessity arose and not greatly regret its loss; but to lose the topsail
would be a serious matter, though if I did not cut it adrift it might
carry away the mast for me; so, as I say, I would not meddle with it.

Finding that the ship continued to steer herself very well, and the
better for the spritsail, I thought I would get the body of the old
Frenchman overboard and so obtain a clear hold for myself so far as
corpses went. I carried the lanthorn into the forecastle, but when I
pulled the hammock off him I confess it was not without a stupid fear
that I should find him alive. Recollection of his astounding vitality
found something imperishable in that ugly anatomy, and though he lay
before me as dead and cold as stone, I yet had a fancy that the seeds of
life were still in him, that 'twas only the current of his being that
had frozen, that if I were to thaw him afresh he might recover, and
that if I buried him I should actually be despatching him.

But though these fancies possessed, they did not control me. I took his
watch and whatever else he had in that way, carried him on deck and
dropped him over the side, using as little ceremony as he had employed
in the disposal of his shipmates, but affected by very different
emotions; for there was not only the idea that the vital spark was still
in him; I could not but handle with awe the most mysterious corpse the
eye had ever viewed, one who had lived through a stupor or death-sleep,
for eight-and-forty years, in whom in a few hours Time had compressed
the wizardry he stretches in others over half a century; who in a night
had shrunk from the aspect of his prime into the lean, puckered,
bleared-eyed, deaf, and tottering expression of a hundred years.

But now he was gone! The bubbles which rose to the plunge of his body
were his epitaph; had they risen blood-red they would have better
symbolized his life. The albatross stooped to the spot where he had
vanished with a hoarse salt scream like the laugh of a delirious woman,
and the wind, freshening momentarily in a squall, made one think of the
spirit of Nature as eager to purify the air of heaven from the taint of
the dead pirate's passage from the bulwarks to the water's surface.

All that day and through the night that followed the schooner drove,
rolling and plunging before the seas, into the north-east, to the
pulling of the spritsail. I made several excursions into the fore-hold,
but never could hear the sound of water in the vessel. Her sides in
places were still sheathed in ice, but this crystal armour was gradually
dropping off her to the working of her frame in the seas, so that, since
she was proving herself tight, it was certain her staunchness owed
nothing to the glassy plating. I had seen some strange craft in my day;
but nothing to beat the appearance this old tub of a hooker submitted to
my gaze as I viewed her from the helm. How so uncouth a structure, with
her tall stern, flairing bows, fat buttocks, sloping masts,
forecastle-well, and massive head-timbers ever managed to pursue and
overhaul a chase was only to be unriddled by supposing all that she took
to be more unwieldy and clumsy than herself. What would a pirate of
these days, in his clean-lined polacca or arrowy schooner, have thought
of such an instrument as this for the practice of his pretty trade? The
ice aloft still held for her spars and rigging the resemblance of glass,
and to every sunbeam that flashed upon her from between the sweeping
clouds she would sparkle out into many-coloured twinklings, marvellously
delicate in colour, and changing their tints twenty times over in a
breath through the swiftness of the reeling of the spars.

I should but fatigue you to follow the several little stories of these
hours one by one; how I got my food, snatched at sleep, stood at the
helm, gazed around the sea-line and the like. Just before sundown I saw
a large iceberg in the north, two leagues distant; no others were in
sight, but one was enough to make me uneasy, and I spent a very troubled
night, repeatedly coming on deck to look about me. The schooner steered
herself as if a man stood at the helm. The spritsail further helped her
in this, for, if the curl of a sea under her forefoot brought her to
larboard or starboard, the sail forced her back again. Still, it was a
very surprising happy quality in her, the next best thing to my having a
shipmate, and a wonderful relief to me who must otherwise have brought
her to, under a lashed helm, every time I had occasion to leave the
deck.

The seaworthiness of the craft, coupled with the reasonable assurance of
presently falling in with a ship, rendered me so far easy in my mind as
to enable me to think very frequently of the treasure and how I was to
secure it. If I fell in with an enemy's cruiser or a privateer I must
expect to be stripped. This would be the fortune of war, and I must take
my chance. My concern did not lie that way; how was I to protect this
property, that was justly mine, against my own countrymen, suppose I had
the good fortune to carry the schooner safely into English waters? I had
a brother-in-law, Jeremiah Mason, Esq., a Turkey merchant in a small way
of business, whose office was in the City of London, and, if I could
manage to convey the treasure secretly to him, he would, I knew, find me
a handsome account in his settlement of this affair. But it was
impossible to strike out a plan. I must wait and attend the course of
events. Yet riches being things which fever the coldest imaginations, I
could not look ahead without excitement and irritability of fancy, I
should reckon it a hard fate indeed after my cruel experiences, my
freeing the vessel from the ice, my sailing her through some thousand of
miles of perilous seas, and arriving finally in safety, to be
dispossessed of what was strictly mine--as much mine as if I had fished
it up from the bottom of the sea, where it must otherwise have lain till
the crack of doom.

I remember that, among other ideas, it entered my head to tell the
master of the first ship I met, if she were British, the whole story of
my adventure, to acquaint him with the treasure, to offer to tranship it
and myself to his vessel and abandon the schooner, and to propose a
handsome reward for his offices. But I could not bring my mind to trust
any stranger with so great a secret. The mere circumstance of the
treasure not being mine, in the sense of my having earned it, of its
being piratical plunder, and as much one's as another's, might dull the
edge even of a fair-dealing conscience and expose me to the machinations
of a heavily tempted mind.

Therefore, though I had no plan, I was resolved at all hazards to stick
to the schooner, and, with a view to providing against the curiosity or
rummaging of any persons who should come aboard I fell to the following
work after getting my breakfast. I hung lanthorns in the run and
hatchways and cabin to enable me to pass easily to and fro; I then
emptied one of the chests in my cabin and carried it to where the
treasure was. The chest I filled nearly three-parts full with money,
jewellery, &c., which sank the contents of the other chests to the depth
I wanted. I then fetched a quantity of small arms, such as pistols and
hangers and cutlasses, and filled up the chests with them, first placing
a thickness of canvas over the money and jewellery, that no glitter
might show through. To improve the deception I brought another chest to
the run, and wholly filled it with cutlasses, powder-horns, pistols, and
the like, and so fixed it that it must be the first to come to hand. My
cunning amounted to this: that, suppose the run to be rummaged, the
contents of the first chest were sure to be turned out, but, on the
other chests being opened, and what they appeared to contain observed,
it was as likely as not that the rummagers would be satisfied they were
arms-chests, and quit meddling with them.

Herenow might I indulge in a string of reflections on the troubles and
anxieties which money brings, quote from Juvenal and other poets, and
hold myself up to your merriment by a contemptuous exhibition of myself,
a lonely sailor, labouring to conceal his gold from imaginary knaves,
toiling in the dark depth of the vessel, and never heeding that, even
whilst he so worked, his ship might split upon some half-tide rock of
ice, and founder with him and his treasure too, and so on, and so on.
But the fact is I was not a fool. Here was money enough to set me up as
a fine gentleman for life, and I meant to save it and keep it too, if I
could. A man on his deathbed, a man in such peril that his end is
certain, can afford to be sentimental. He is going where money is dross
indeed, and he is in a posture when to moralize upon human greed and the
vanity of wishes and riches becomes him. But would not a man whose
health is hearty, and who hopes to save his life, be worse off than a
sheep in the matter of brains not to keep a firm grip of Fortune's hand
when she extended it? I know I was very well pleased with my morning's
work when I had accomplished it, and had no mind to qualify my
satisfaction by melancholy and romantic musings on my condition and the
uncertainty of the future. This was possibly owing to the fineness of
the weather; a heavy black gale from the north would doubtless have
given a very different turn to my humours.

The wind at dawn had weakened and come into the west. There was a strong
swell--indeed there always is in this ocean--but the seas ran small. The
sky looked like marble, with its broad spreadings of high white clouds
and the veins of blue sky between. I wished to make all the northing
that was possible, but there was nothing to be done in that way with the
spritsail alone. Had not the capstan been frozen I should have tried to
get the mainsail upon the ship, but without the aid of machinery I was
helpless. So, with helm amidships, the schooner drove languidly along
with her head due east, lifting as ponderously as a line-of-battle ship
to the floating launches of the high swell, and the albatross hung as
steadfastly in the wake of my lonely ocean path as though it had been
some messenger sent by God to watch me into safety.




CHAPTER XXVII.

I ENCOUNTER A WHALER.


I had been six days and nights at sea, and the morning of the seventh
day had come. With the exception of one day of strong south-westerly
winds, which ran me something to the northwards, the weather had been
fine, bitterly cold indeed, but bright and clear. In this time I had run
a distance of about six hundred and fifty miles to the east, and with no
other cloths upon the schooner than her spritsail.

I confess, as the hours passed away and nothing hove into view, I grew
dispirited and restless; but, on the other hand, I was comforted by the
bright weather and the favourable winds, and particularly by the
vessel's steering herself, which enabled me to get rest, to keep myself
warm with the fire, and to dress my food, yet ever pushing onwards
(however slowly) into the navigated regions of this sea.

On the morning of the seventh day I came on deck, having slept since
four o'clock. The wind was icy keen, pretty brisk, about west by south;
the movement in the sea was from the south, and rolled very grandly;
there was a fog that way, too, that hid the horizon, bringing the
ocean-line to within a league of the schooner; but the other quarters
swept in a dark, clear, blue line against the sky, and there was such a
clarity of atmosphere as made the distances appear infinite.

I went below and lighted the fire and got my breakfast, all very
leisurely, and when I was done I sat down and smoked a pipe. It was so
keen on deck that I had no mind to leave the fire, and, as all was well,
I lounged through the best part of two hours in the cook-house, when,
thinking it was now time to take another survey of the scene I went on
deck.

On looking over the larboard bulwark rail, the first thing I saw was a
ship about two miles off. She was on the larboard tack, under courses,
topsails, and main-topgallant sail, heading as if to cross my bows. The
sunshine made her canvas look as white as snow against the skirts of the
body of vapour that had trailed a little to leeward of her, and her
black hull flashed as though she discharged a broadside every time she
rose wet to the northern glory out of the hollow of the swell with a
curl of silver at her cutwater.

My heart came into my throat; I seemed not to breathe; not to have saved
my life could I have uttered a cry, so amazed and transported was I by
this unexpected apparition. I stared like one in a dream, and my head
felt as if all the blood in my body had surged into it. But then, all on
a sudden, there happened a revulsion of feeling. Suppose she should
prove a privateer--a French war-vessel--of a nation hostile to my own?
Thought so wrought in me that I trembled like an idiot in a fright. The
telescope was too weak to resolve her, I could do better with my eyes;
and I stood at the bulwarks gazing and gazing as if she were the spectre
ship of the Scandinavian legend.

There were flags below and I could have hoisted a signal of distress:
but to what purpose? If the appearance of the schooner did not
sufficiently illustrate her condition, there was certainly no virtue in
the language and declarations of bunting to exceed her own mute
assurance. I watched her with a passion of anxiety, never doubting her
intention to speak to me, at all events to draw close and look at me,
wholly concerning myself with her character. The swell made us both
dance, and the blue brows of the rollers would often hide her to the
height of her rails; but we were closing each other middling fast she
travelling at seven and I at four miles in the hour, and presently I
could see that she carried a number of boats.

A whaler, thought I; and after a little I was sure of it by perceiving
the rings over her top-gallant rigging for the look-out to stand in.

On being convinced of this, I ran below for a shawl that was in my
cabin, and, jumping on to the bulwarks, stood flourishing it for some
minutes to let them know that there was a man aboard. She luffed to
deaden her way, that I might swim close, and as we approached each other
I observed a crowd of heads forward looking at me, and several men aft,
all staring intently.

A man scrambled on to the rail, and with an arm clasping a backstay
hailed me:

"Schooner ahoy!" he bawled, with a strong nasal twang in his cry. "What
ship's that?"

"The _Boca del Dragon_," I shouted back.

"Where are you from, and where are you bound to?"

"I have been locked up in the ice," I cried, "and am in want of help.
What ship are you?"

"The _Susan Tucker_, whaler, of New Bedford, twenty-seven months out,"
he returned. "Where in creation got you that hooker?"

"I'm the only man aboard," I cried, "and have no boat. Send to me, in
the name of God, and let the master come!"

He waved his hand, bawling, "Put your helm down--you're forging ahead!"
and so saying, dismounted.

I immediately cast the tiller adrift, put it hard over, and secured it,
then jumped on to the bulwarks again to watch them. She was Yankee
beyond doubt; I had rather met my own countrymen; but, next to a
British, I would have chosen an American ship to meet. Somehow, despite
the Frenchman, I felt to have been alone throughout my adventure; and so
sore was the effect of that solitude upon my spirits that it seemed
twenty years since I had seen a ship, and since I had held commune with
my own species. I was terribly agitated, and shook in every limb. Life
must have been precious always; but never before had it appeared so
precious as now, whilst I gazed at that homely ship, with her
main-topsail to the mast, swinging stately upon the swell, the faces of
the seamen plain, the smoke of her galley-fire breaking from the
chimney, the sounds of creaking blocks and groaning parrels stealing
from her. Such a fountain of joy broke out of my heart that my whole
being was flooded with it, and had that mood lasted I believe I should
have exposed the treasure in the run, and invited all the men of the
whaler to share in it with me.

They stared fixedly; little wonder that they should be astounded by such
an appearance as my ship exhibited. One of the several boats which hung
at her davits was lowered, the oars flashed, and presently she was near
enough to be hit with a biscuit; but when there the master, as I
supposed him to be, who was steering, sung out, "'Vast rowing!" the boat
came to a stand, and her people to a man stared at me with their chins
upon their shoulders as if I had been a fiend. It was plain as a
pikestaff that they were frightened, and that the superstitions of the
forecastle were hard at work in them whilst they viewed me. They looked
a queer company: two were negroes, the others pale-faced bearded men,
wrapped up in clothes to the aspect of scarecrows. The fellow who
steered had a face as long as a wet hammock, and it was lengthened yet
to the eye by a beard like a goat's hanging at the extremity of his
chin.

He stood up--a tall, lank figure, with legs like a pair of
compasses--and hailed me afresh, but the high swell, regular as the
swing of a pendulum, interposed its brow between him and me, so that at
one moment he was a sharply-lined figure against the sky of the horizon,
and the next he and his boat and crew were sheer gone out of sight, and
this made an exchange of sentences slow and troublesome.

"Say, master," he sung out, "what d'ye say the schooner's name is?"

"The _Boca del Dragon_," I replied.

"And who are _you_, matey?"

"An English sailor who has been cast away on an island of ice," I
answered, talking very shortly that the replies might follow the
questions before the swell sank him.

"Ay, ay," says he, "that's very well; but _when_ was you cast away,
bully?"

I gave him the date.

"That's not a month ago," cried he.

"It's long enough, whatever the time," said I.

Here the crew fell a-talking, turning from one another to stare at me,
and the negroes' eyes showed as big as saucers in the dismay of their
regard.

"See, here, master," sung out the long man, "if you han't been cast away
more than a month, how come you clothed as men went dressed a century
sin', hey?"

The reason of their misgivings flashed upon me. It was not so much the
schooner as my appearance. The truth was, my clothes having been wetted,
I had ever since been wearing such thick garments as I met with in the
cabin, keeping my legs warm with jackboots, and I had become so used to
the garb that I forgot I had it on. You will judge, then, that I must
have presented a figure very nicely calculated to excite the wonder and
apprehension of a body of men whose superstitious instincts were already
sufficiently fluttered by the appearance of the schooner, when I tell
you that, in addition to the jackboots and a great fur cap, my costume
was formed of a red plush waistcoat laced with silver, purple breeches,
a coat of frieze with yellow braiding and huge cuffs, and the cloak that
I had taken from the body of Mendoza.

"Captain," cried I, "if so be you are the captain, in the name of God
and humanity come aboard, sir." Here I had to wait till he reappeared.
"My story is an extraordinary one. You have nothing to fear. I am a
plain English sailor; my ship was the _Laughing Mary_, bound in ballast
from Callao to the Cape." Here I had to wait again. "Pray, sir, come
aboard. There is nothing to fear. I am alone--in grievous distress, and
in want of help. Pray come, sir!"

There was so little of the goblin in this appeal that it resolved him.
The crew hung in the wind, but he addressed them peremptorily. I heard
him damn them for a set of curs, and tell them that if they put him
aboard they might lie off till he was ready to return, where they would
be safe, as the devil could not swim; and presently they buckled to
their oars again and the boat came alongside. The long man, watching his
chance, sprang with great agility into the chains, and stepped on deck.
I ran up to him and seized his hand with both mine.

"Sir," cried I, speaking with difficulty, so great was the tumult of my
spirits and the joy and gratitude that swelled my heart, "I thank you a
thousand times over for this visit. I am in the most helpless condition
that can be imagined. I am not astonished that you should have been
startled by the appearance of this vessel and by the figure I make in
these clothes, but, sir, you will be much more amazed when you have
heard my story."

He eyed me steadfastly, examining me very earnestly from my boots to my
cap, and then cast a glance around him before he made any reply to my
address. He had the gauntness, sallowness of complexion, and
deliberateness of manner peculiar to the people of New England. And
though he was a very ugly, lank, uncouth man, I protest he was as fair
in my sight as if he had been the ambrosial angel described by Milton.

"Well, cook my gizzard," he exclaimed presently, through his nose, and
after another good look at me and along the decks and up aloft, "if this
ain't mi-raculous, tew. Durned if we didn't take this hooker for some
ghost ship riz from the sea, in charge of a merman rigged out to fit her
age. Y' are all alone, air you?"

"All alone," said I.

"Broach me every barrel aboard if ever I see sich a vessel," he cried,
his astonishment rising with the searching glances he directed aloft and
alow. "How old be she?"

"She was cast away in seventeen hundred and fifty-three," said I.

"Well, I'm durned. She's froze hard, sirree; I reckon she'll want a hot
sun to thaw her. Split me, mister, if she ain't worth sailing home as a
show-box."

I interrupted his ejaculations by asking him to step below, where we
could sit warm whilst I related my story, and I asked him to invite his
boat's crew into the cabin that I might regale them with a bowl of such
liquor as I ventured to say had never passed their lips in this life. On
this he went to the side, and, hailing the men, ordered all but one to
step aboard and drink to the health of the lonesome sailor they had come
across. The word "drink" acted like a charm; they instantly hauled upon
the painter and brought the boat to the chains and tumbled over the
side, one of the negroes remaining in her. They fell together in a body,
and surveyed me and the ship with a hundred marks of astonishment.

"My lads," said I, "my rig is a strange one, but I'll explain all
shortly. The clothes I was cast away in are below, and I'll show you
them. I'm no spectre, but as real as you; though I have gone through so
much that, if I am not a ghost, it is no fault of old ocean, but owing
to the mercy of God. My name is Paul Rodney, and I'm a native of London.
You, sir," says I, addressing the long man, "are, I presume, the master
of the _Susan Tucker_?"

"At your sarvice--Josiah Tucker is my name, and that ship is my wife
Susan."

"Captain Tucker, and you, men, will you please step below," says I. "The
weather promises fair; I have much to tell, and there is that in the
cabin which will give you patience to hear me."

I descended the companion-stairs, and they all followed, making the
interior that had been so long silent ring with their heavy tread,
whilst from time to time a gruff, hoarse whisper broke from one of them.
But superstition lay strong upon their imagination, and they were awed
and quiet. The daylight came down the hatch, but for all that the cabin
was darksome.

I waited till the last man had entered, and then said, "Before we settle
down to a bowl and a yarn, captain, I should like to show you this ship.
It'll save me a deal of description and explanation if you will be
pleased to take a view."

"Lead on, mister," said he; "but we shall have to snap our eyelids and
raise fire in that way, for durned if I, for one, can see in the dark."

I fetched three or four lanthorns, and, lighting the candles,
distributed them among the men, and then, in a procession, headed by the
captain and me, we made the rounds. I had half-cleared the arms-room,
but there were weapons enough left, and they stared at them like yokels
in a booth. I showed them the cook-house and the forecastle, where the
deck was still littered with clothes, and chests, and hammocks; and,
after carrying them aft to the cabins, gave them a sight of the hold. I
never saw men more amazed. They filled the vessel with their
exclamations. They never offered to touch anything, being too much awed,
but stepped about with their heads uncovered, as quietly as they could,
as though they had been in a crypt, and the influence of strange and
terrifying memorials was upon them. I also showed them the clothes I had
come away from the _Laughing Mary_ in; and, that I might submit such an
aspect to them as should touch their sympathies, I whipped off the cloak
and put on my own pilot-cloth coat.

There being nothing more to see, I led them to the cook-room, and there
brewed a great hearty bowl of brandy-punch, which I seasoned with lemon,
sugar, and spices into as relishable a draught as my knowledge in that
way could compass, and, giving every man a pannikin, bade him dip and
welcome, myself first drinking to them with a brief speech, yet not so
brief but that I broke down towards the close of it, and ended with a
dry sob or two.

They would have been unworthy their country and their calling not to
have been touched by my natural manifestation of emotion; besides, the
brandy was an incomparably fine spirit, and the very perfume of the
steaming bowl was sufficient to stimulate the kindly qualities of
sailors who had been locked up for months in a greasy old ship, with no
diviner smells about than the stink of the try-works. The captain,
standing up, called upon his men to drink to me, promising me that he
was very glad to have fallen in with my schooner, and then, looking at
the others, made a sign, whereupon they all fixed their eyes upon me and
drank as one man, every one emptying his pot and inverting it as a
proof, and fetching a rousing sigh of satisfaction.

This ceremony ended, I began my story, beginning with the loss of the
_Laughing Mary_, and proceeding step by step. I told them of the dead
body of Mendoza, but said nothing about the Frenchman and the mate, and
the Portugal boatswain, lest I should make them afraid of the vessel,
and so get no help to work her. As to acquainting them with my recovery
of Tassard, after his stupor of eight-and-forty years, I should have
been mute on that head in any case, for so extraordinary a relation
could, from such people, have earned me but one of two opinions: either
that I was mad and believed in an impossibility, or that I was a rogue
and dealt in magic, and to be vehemently shunned. Yet there were wonders
enough in my story without this, and I recited it to a running
commentary of all sorts of queer Yankee exclamations.

There were seven seamen and the captain and I made nine, and we pretty
nearly filled the cook-room. 'Twas a scene to be handled by a Dutch
brush. We were a shaggy company, in several kinds of rude attire, and
the crimson light of the furnace, whose playing flames darted shadows
through the steady light of the lanthorns, caused us to appear very
wild. The mariners' eyes gleamed redly as their glances rove round the
place, and, had you come suddenly among us, I believe you would have
thought this band of pale, fire-touched, hairy men, with the one ebon
visage among them, rendered the vessel a vast deal more ghostly than
ever she could have shown when sailing along with me alone on board.

They were a good deal puzzled when I told them of the mines I had made
and sprung in the ice. They reckoned the notion fine, but could not
conceive how I had, single-handed, broken out the powder-barrels, got
them over the side, and fixed them.

"Why," said I, "'twas slow, heavy work, of course; but a man who labours
for his life will do marvellous things. It is like the jump of a hunted
stag."

"True for you," says the captain. "A swim of two miles spends me in
pleasurin'; but I've swum eight mile to save my life, and stranded fresh
as a new-hooked cod. What's your intentions, sir?"

"To sail the schooner home," said I, "if I can get help. She's too good
to abandon. She'll fetch money in England."

"Ay, as a show."

"Yes, and as a coalman. Rig her modernly, and carry your forecastle deck
into the head, captain, and she's a brave ship, fit for a Baltimore
eye."

He stroked down the hair upon his chin.

"Dip, captain, dip, my lads; there's enough of this to drown ye in the
hold," said I, pointing to the bowl. "Come, this is a happy meeting for
me; let it be a merry one. Captain, I drink to the _Susan Tucker_."

"Sir, your servant. Here's to your sweetheart, be she wife or maid.
Bill, jump on deck and take a look round. See to the boat."

One of the men went out.

"Captain," said I, "you are a full ship?"

"That's so."

"Bound home?"

"Right away."

"You have men enough and to spare. Lend me three of your hands to help
me to the Thames, and I'll repay you thus; there should be near a
hundred tons of wine and brandy, of exquisite vintage, and choice with
age beyond language in the hold. Take what you will of that freight;
there'll be ten times the value of your lay in your pickings, modest as
you may prove. Help yourself to the clothes in the cabin and forecastle;
they will turn to account. For the men you will spare, and who will
volunteer to help me, this will be my undertaking: the ship and all that
is in her to be sold on her arrival, and the proceeds equally divided.
Shall we call it a thousand pounds apiece? Captain, she's well found:
her inventory would make a list as long as you; I'd name a bigger sum,
but here she is, you shall overhaul her hold and judge for yourself."

I watched him anxiously. No man spoke, but every eye was upon him. He
sat pulling down the hair on his chin, then, jumping up on a sudden and
extending his hand, he cried, "Shake! it's a bargain, if the men 'll
jine."

"I'll jine!" exclaimed a man.

There was a pause.

"And me," said the negro.

I was glad of this, and looked earnestly at the others.

"Is she tight?" said a man.

"As a bottle," said I.

They fell silent again.

"Joe Wilkinson and Washington Cromwell--them two jines," said the
captain. "Bullies, he wants a third. Don't speak all together."

The man named "Bill" at this moment returned to the cook-room, and
reported all well above. My offer was repeated to him, but he shook his
head.

"This is the Horn, mates," said he. "There's a deal o' water 'tween this
and the Thames. How do she sail?--no man knows."

"I want none but willing men," said I. "Americans make as good sailors
as the English. What an English seaman can face any of you can. There is
another negro in the boat. Will you let him step aboard, captain? He may
join."

A man was sent to take his place. Presently he arrived, and I gave him a
cup of punch.

"'Splain the business to him, sir," said the captain, filling his
pannikin; "his name's Billy Pitt."

I did so; and when I told him that Washington Cromwell had offered, he
instantly said, "All right, massa, I'll be ob yah."

This was exactly what I wanted, and had there been a third negro I'd
have preferred him to the white man.

"But how are you going to navigate this craft home with three men?" said
the man "Bill" to me.

"There'll be four; we shall do. The fewer the more dollars, hey,
Wilkinson?"

He grinned, and Cromwell broke into a ventral laugh.

They seemed very well satisfied, and so was I.




CHAPTER XXVIII.

I STRIKE A BARGAIN WITH THE YANKEE.


The captain put his cup down; the bowl was empty; I offered to brew
another jorum, but he thanked me and said no, adding significantly that
he would have no more _here_, by which he meant that he would brew for
himself in his own ship anon. The drink had made him cheerful and
good-natured. He recommended that we should go on deck and set about
transhipping whilst the weather held, for he was an old hand in these
seas and never trusted the sky longer than a quarter of an hour.

"This here list," says he, "wants remedying and that'll follow our
easin' of the hold."

"Yes," said I, "and I should be mighty thankful if some of your men
would see all clear aloft for me, that we might start with running
rigging that will travel, capstans that'll revolve, and sails that'll
spread."

"Oh, we'll manage that for you," said he. "Tru-ly, she's been bad froze,
very bad froze. Durned if ever I see a worse freeze."

So saying he called to "Bill," who seemed the principal man of the
boat's crew, and gave him some directions, and immediately afterwards
all the men entered the boat and rowed away to the ship.

Whilst they were absent I carried the captain into the hold and left him
to overhaul it. I told him that all the spirits, provisions, and the
like were in the hold and lazarette, which was true enough, wanting to
keep him out of the run, though, thanks to the precaution I had taken, I
was in no fear even if he should penetrate so deep aft. Before he came
out five-and-twenty stout fellows arrived in four boats from the ship,
and when we went on deck, we found them going the rounds of the vessel,
scraping the guns to get a view of them, peering down the companion,
overhauling the forecastle-well, as I call the hollow beyond the
forecastle, and staring aloft with their faces full of grinning wonder.
The captain sang out to them and they all mustered aft.

"Now, lads," said he, "there's a big job before you--a big job for Cape
Horn, I mean; and you'll have to slip through it as if you was grease.
When done there'll be a carouse, and I'll warrant ye all such a sup that
the most romantic among ye'll never cast another pining thought in the
direction o' your mother's milk."

Having delivered this preface, he divided the men into two gangs; one,
under the boatswain, to attend to the rigging, clear the canvas of the
ice, get the pumps and the capstans to work, and see all ready for
getting sail on the schooner; the other, under the second mate, to get
tackles aloft and break out the cargo, taking care to trim ship whilst
so doing.

They fell to their several jobs with a will. 'Tis the habit of our
countrymen to sneer at the Americans as sailors, affirming that if ever
they win a battle at sea it is by the help of British renegades. But
this I protest; after witnessing the smartness of those Yankee whalemen,
I would sooner charge the English than the Americans with lubberliness
came the nautical merits of the two nations ever before me to decide
upon. They had the hatches open, tackles aloft, and men at work below
whilst the mariners of other countries would have been standing looking
on and "jawing" upon the course to be taken. Some overran the fabric
aloft, clearing, cutting away, pounding, making the ice fly in storms;
others sweated the capstans till they clanked; others fell to the pumps,
working with hammers and kettles of boiling water. The wondrous old
schooner was never busier, no, not in the heyday of her flag, when her
guns were blazing and her people yelling.

I doubt whether even a man-of-war could have given this work the
despatch the whaler furnished. She had eight boats and sixty men, and
every boat was afloat and alongside us ready to carry what she could to
the ship. I wished to help, but the captain would not let me do so; he
kept me walking and talking, asking me scores of questions about the
schooner, and all so shrewd that, without appearing reserved, I
professed to know little. The great show of clothes puzzled him. He also
asked if the crucifix in the cabin was silver. I said I believed it was,
fetched it, and asked him to accept it, saying if he would give me the
smallest of his boats for it I should be very much obliged.

"Oh, yes," says he, "you can have a boat. The men would not sail with
you without a boat;" and after weighing the crucifix without the least
exhibition of veneration in his manner, he put it in his pocket, saying
he knew a man who would give him a couple of hundred dollars for the
thing on his telling him that the Pope had blessed it.

"Ay, but," says I, "how do you know the Pope has blessed it?"

"Then _I_'ll bless it," cried he; "why, am I a cold Johnny-cake that my
blessing ain't as good as another man's?"

I was glad I had hidden the black flag; I mean, that I had stowed it
away in the cabin of the Frenchman after he was dead. The Yankee needed
but the sight to make his suspicions of the original character of the
_Boca del Dragon_ flame up; and you may suppose that I was exceedingly
anxious he should not be sure that the schooner had been a pirate, lest
he might have been tempted to scrutinize her rather more closely than
would have been agreeable to me.

He asked me if I had met with any money in her: and I answered evasively
that in searching the dead man on the rocks, I had discovered a few
pieces in his pocket, but that I had left them, being much too
melancholy and convinced of my approaching end to meddle with such a
useless commodity. From time to time he would quit me to go to the hatch
and sing down orders to the second mate in the hold. How many casks he
meant to take I did not know; when he asked me how much I would give, I
replied: "Leave me enough to keep me ballasted; that will satisfy me."

The high swell demanded caution, but they managed wonderfully well. They
never swung more than three casks into a boat, and with this cargo she
would row away to the ship that lay hove-to close, and the men in her
hoisted the casks aboard.

The wind remained light till half-past three; it then freshened a bit.
Though all hands had knocked off at noon to get dinner--and a fine meal
I gave them of ham, tongue, beef, biscuits, wine, and brandy--by
half-past three they had eased the hold of ten boatloads of casks,
besides clearing out the whole of the clothes from the forecastle along
with as much of the bedding as we did not require; and I began to think
that my Yankee intended to leave me a clean ship to carry home, though I
durst not remonstrate. Yet was my turn handsomely served too. The pumps
had been cleared and tried, and found to work well, and--which was glad
news to me--the well found dry. The running rigging had been overhauled,
and it travelled handsomely. The sails had been loosed and hoisted and
lowered again, and the canvas found in good condition. The jibboom had
been run out, and the stays set up. The stock of fresh water had been
examined and found plentiful, and the casks in the head brought out and
secured on the main deck. In short, the American boatswain had worked
with the judgment and care of a master-rigger, of a great artist in
ropes, booms, and sails, and the schooner was left to my hands as fit
for any navigation as the whaler that rose and fell on our quarter.

But, as I have said, at half-past three in the afternoon, the breeze
began to sit in dark curls upon the water, and there was evidence enough
in the haziness in the west, and in the loom of the shoulders of vapour
in the dark-blue obscure there, to warrant a sackful for this capful
presently.

"I reckon," says the captain to me, after looking into the west, "that
we'd best knock off now. There's snow and wind yonder, and we'd better
see all snug while there's time."

He called to one of the men to tell the second mate to come up from
below and get the hatches on, and bringing me to the rail, he pointed to
a boat, and asked if that would do? I said yes, and thanked him heartily
for the gift, which was handsome, I must say, the boat being a very good
one, though, to be sure, he had got many times its value out of the
schooner; and a party of men were forthwith told off to get the boat
hoisted and stowed.

"Now, Mr. Rodney," said the captain, standing in the gangway, "how can I
serve you further?"

"Sir," said I, "you are very obliging. Two things I stand sadly in need
of: a chart of these waters and a chronometer."

"I'll send you a chart," said he, "that'll carry you as high as San
Roque; but I've only got one chronometer, sir, and can't spare him."

"Well then," said I, "if, when you get aboard, you'll give me the time
by your chronometer, I'll set my watch by it; but I'll thank you very
much for the chart. The tracings below are as shapeless as the moon
setting in a fog."

"You shall have the chart," said he, and then called to Wilkinson and
the two negroes.

"Lads," said he, "you're quite content, I hope?"

They answered "Yes."

"You've all three a claim upon me for the amount of what's owing ye,"
said he, "and when you turn up at New Bedford you shall have it--that's
square. I see fifteen hundred dollars a man on this job, if so be as ye
don't broach too thirstily as you go along. Mr. Rodney, Joe here's a
steady, 'spectable man, and'll make you a good mate. Cromwell and Billy
Pitt are black only in their hides; all else's as good as white."

He then shook me by the hand, and, calling a farewell to Wilkinson and
the negroes, scrambled into the chains and dropped into his boat, very
highly satisfied, I make no doubt, with the business he had done that
day.

A boat's crew were left behind to help us to make sail. But the weather
looking somewhat wild in the west with the red light of the sun among
the clouds there, and the dark heave of the swell running into a sickly
crimson under the sun and then glowing out dusky again, I got them to
treble-reef the mainsail and hoist it, and then thanking them, advised
them to be off. Then, putting Cromwell to the tiller, I went forward
with the others and set the topsail and forestaysail (the spritsail
lying furled), which would be show enough of canvas till I saw what the
weather was to be like. I kept the topsail aback, waiting for a boat to
arrive with my chart, and in a few minutes the boat we had cheered
returned with what I wanted.

Meanwhile they were shortening sail on the whaler, and though she was no
beauty, yet, I tell you, I found her as picturesque as any ship I had
ever beheld as she lay with her main-topgallant-sail clewed up, her
topsail yards on the caps, and the heads of men knotting the reef-points
showing black over the white cloths, her hull floating up out of the
hollow and flinging a wet orange gleam to the west, a tumble of creamy
foam about her to her rolling, shadows like the passage of phantom hands
hurrying over her sails to the swaying of her masts, and the swelling
sea darkling from her into the east.

I hollowed my hands, and, hailing the captain, who was on the
quarter-deck, asked him for the time by his chronometer. He flourished
his arm and disappeared and, presently returning, shouted to know if I
was ready. I put the key in my watch and answered yes, and then he gave
me the time. My watch, though antique, was a noble piece of mechanism,
and I have little doubt, as trustworthy as his chronometer. But I was
careful to let it lie snug in my hand. I did not want the negro at the
tiller nor the others to see it. They would wonder that so fine a
jewelled piece as this should be in the possession of the second mate of
a little brig, and it was my business to manage that they never should
have cause to wonder at anything in that way.

The dusk of the evening came quick out of the east, and the wind
freshened with a long cry in our rigging as if the eastern darkness was
a foe it was rushing out of the west to meet. I brought the schooner
north-north-east by my compass and watched her behaviour anxiously. The
swell was on the quarter, and the wind and sea a trifle abaft the
larboard beam; she leaned a little to the weight of her clothes, but was
surprisingly stiff considering how light she was. Wilkinson and the
negro came and stood by my side. The sea broke heavily from the weather
bow, and the water roared white under the lee bends and spread astern in
a broad wake of foam. The whaler did not brace his yards up till after
we had started, and now hung a pale faint mass in the windy darkness on
the quarter. A tincture of rusty red hovered like smoke coloured by the
furnace that produces it, in the west, but the night had drawn down
quick and dark; the washing noise of the water was sharp, the wind
piercingly cold; each sweep of the schooner's masts to windward was
followed by a dull roaring of the blast rushing out of the hollows of
the canvas, and she swung to the seas with wild yaws, but with
regularity sufficient to prove the strict government of the helm.

But it was being at sea! homeward bound too! There was no wish of mine,
engendered by my hideous loneliness on the ice, by my abhorred
association with the Frenchman, that I could not refer to as, down to
this moment, gratified. My heart bounded; my spirits could not have been
higher had this ocean been the Thames, and yonder dark flowing hills of
water the banks of Erith and the Gravesend shore.

I turned to the three men: "My lads," said I, "you prove yourselves fine
bold fellows by thus volunteering. Do not fear: if God guides us
home--to my home, I mean--you shall find a handsome account in this
business."

"Six more chaps would have jined had th'ole man bin willin'," said
Wilkinson. "But best as it is, master, though she's a trifle
short-handed."

"Why, yes," said I; "but being fore and aft, you know! It isn't as if
we'd got courses to hand and topsails to reef."

"Ay, ay, dat's de troof," cried Billy Pitt. "I tort o' dat. Fore an' aft
makes de difference. Don't guess I should hab volunteer had she been a
brig."

"There are four of us," said I. "You're my chief mate, Wilkinson. Choose
your watch."

"I choose Cromwell," said he; "he was in my watch aboard the whaler."

"Very well," I exclaimed; and this being settled, and both negroes
declaring themselves good cooks, we arranged that they should
alternately have the dressing of our victuals, that Wilkinson should
have the cabin next mine, and the negroes the one in which the Frenchman
had slept, one taking the other's place as he was relieved.

I asked Wilkinson what he thought of the schooner. He answered that he
was watching her.

"There's nothing to find fault with yet," said he; "she's a whale at
rolling, sartinly. I guess she walks, though. I reckon she's had enough
of the sea, like me, and's got the scent o' the land in her nose. I
guess old Noah wasn't far off when her lines was laid. Mebbe his sons
had the building of her. There's something scriptural in her cut. How
old's she, master?"

"Fifty years and more," said I.

"Dere's nuffin' pertickler in dat," cried Cromwell. "I knows a wessel
dat am a hundred an' four year old, s'elp me as I stand."

"I don't know how the whaler's heading," said I, "but this schooner's a
canoe if we aren't dropping her!"

Indeed she was scarce visible astern, a mere windy flicker hovering upon
the pale flashings of the foam. It might be perhaps that the whaler was
making a more northerly course than we, and under very snug canvas,
though ours was snug enough, too; but be this as it may, I was mighty
pleased with the slipping qualities of the schooner. I never could have
dreamt that so odd and ugly a figure of a ship would show such heels.
But I think this: we are too prone to view the handiwork of our sires
with contempt. I do not know but that their ships were as fast as ours.
They made many good passages. They might have proved themselves fleeter
navigators had they had the sextant and chronometer to help them along.
Fifty years hence perhaps mankind will be laughing at our crudities; at
us, by heaven, who flatter ourselves that the art of ship-building and
navigation will never be carried higher than the pitch to which we have
raised them!

Cromwell being at the tiller, I told Billy Pitt to go below and get
supper, instructing him what to dress and how much to melt for a bowl,
for as you know there was nothing but spirits and wine to season our
repasts with. I saw Cromwell grin widely into the binnacle candle flame
when he heard me talk of ham, tongue, sweetmeats, marmalade and the like
for supper, together with a can of hot claret, and knowing sailor's
nature middling well, I did not doubt that the fare of the schooner
would bring the three men more into love with the adventure than even
the reward that was to follow it.

I had noticed that the bundles which had been sent from the whaler as
belonging to the poor fellows were meagre enough and showed indeed like
the end of a long voyage, and I detained Billy Pitt a minute whilst I
told them that there was a handsome stock of clothes in the cabins,
together with linen, boots, and other articles of that sort; that,
though the coats, breeches, and waistcoats were of bright colour and
old-fashioned, they would keep them as warm as if they had been cut by a
tailor of to-day.

"These things," said I, "you can wear at sea, keeping your own clothes
ready to slip on should we be spoken or to wear when we arrive in
England. To-morrow they shall be divided among you, and they will
become your property. The suit you saw me in to-day is all that I shall
need."

Both negroes burst into a most diverting laugh of joy on hearing this.
Nothing delights a black man more than coloured apparel. They had seen
the clothes in the forecastle and guessed the kind of garments I meant
to present them with.

Whilst supper was getting, I walked the deck with Wilkinson, both of us
keeping a bright look-out, for it was blowing fresh; the darkness lay
thick about us, there might be ice near us, and the schooner was
storming under her reefed mainsail, topsail, and staysail through the
hollow seas, thundering with a great roaring seething noise into the
trough, and lifting to the foaming slope with her masts wildly aslant. I
talked to my companion very freely, being anxious to find out what kind
of person he was, and I must say that there was something in his
conversation that impressed me very favourably. He told me that he had a
wife at New Bedford, that he was heartily sick of the sea, and that he
hoped the money he would get by this adventure, added to his _lay_,
would enable him to set up for himself ashore.

"Well," said I, "we will see to-morrow what cargo Captain Tucker has
left us. But that you may be under no misapprehension, Wilkinson, if we
are fortunate enough to bring the ship safely to England, I will enter
into a bond to pay you five hundred pounds sterling for your share one
week after the date of our arrival."

He answered that if he could get that sum he would be a made man for
life. "But it's too much to expect, sir," says he.

I told him that he had no idea of the value of the cargo. The wines and
spirits were of such a quality I would stake my interest in the schooner
in their fetching a large sum of money.

"That'll depend," said he, "on how much the capt'n left us."

"He helped himself freely," I answered, "but we are well off too. You
shall judge to-morrow. Then there's the schooner--as she stands: besides
a noble stock of stores of all kinds, sails, ropes, tools, ammunition
and several chests of small arms. I tell you I will give you five
hundred pounds for your share."

His satisfaction was expressed by his silence.

"But," continued I, "we must act with judgment. What we have we must
keep. Are the negroes trustworthy men?"

"Yes, they are honest fellows. I wouldn't have shipped with them else."

"We shall not require much for ourselves," said I, "and the rest we'll
batten down and keep snug. There'll be some man[oe]uvring needed in
order to come off clear with this booty when we arrive: but there's
plenty of time to think that over, and our business till then is to look
after the ship and pray for luck to keep clear of anything hostile."

And then we fell to other talk; in the course of which he told me he was
an Englishman born, but having been pressed into a man-o-war, deserted
her at Halifax and made several voyages in American ships. He was
wrecked on the Peruvian coast and became a beachcomber, and then got a
berth in a whaler. He married at New Bedford and sailed with Captain
Tucker--this was his second whaling trip, he said, and he wanted no
more. I told him I was glad to learn that he was a countryman of mine,
but not surprised. His speech was well-larded with americanisms, "but,"
said I, "the true twang is wanting, and," added I, laughing, "I should
know you for Hampshire for all your reckons and guesses if I had to eat
you should I be mistaken."

"The press-gang's the best friend the Yankees has," said he a little
sheepishly. "Do any man suppose I hadn't sooner hail from my native town
Southampton than from New Bedford? Half the American foksles is made up
of Yankees who'd prove hearts of oak if it wasn't for the press."

His candour gratified me as showing that he already looked upon me as a
shipmate to be trusted, and, as I have said, this first chat with the
man left me strongly disposed to consider myself fortunate in having him
as an associate.




CHAPTER XXIX.

I VALUE THE LADING.


The day had been so full of business, there had been so much to engage
my mind, that it was not until I was seated at supper in the old
cook-room in which I had passed so many melancholy hours, that I found
myself able to take a calm survey of my situation, and to compare the
various motions of my fortunes. I could scarcely indeed believe that I
was not in a dream from which I should awake presently, and discover
myself still securely imprisoned in the ice, and all those passages of
the powder-blasts, the liberation of the schooner, my lonely days in her
afloat, my encounter with the whaler, as visionary and vanishing as
those dusky forms of vapour which had swarmed in giant-shape over my
little open boat.

But even if confirmation had been wanting in the sable visage of Billy
Pitt, who sat near the furnace munching away with prodigious enjoyment
of his food and bringing his can of hot spiced wine from his vast
blubber lips with a mighty sigh of deep delight, I must have found it in
each hissing leap and roaring plunge of the old piratical bucket, so
full of the vitality of the wind-swollen canvas, so quick with all the
life-instincts of a vessel storming through the deep with buoyant keel
and under full control. Oh, heaven! how different from the dull ambling
of the morning, the sluggish pitching and rolling to the weak pulling of
the spritsail!

Wilkinson and Cromwell kept the deck whilst Billy Pitt and I got our
supper, and I had some talk with my negro, who seemed to be a very
simple childish fellow, heartily in love with his stomach and very eager
to see England. He told me that he had heard it was a fine country, and
his wish to see it was one reason of his volunteering.

"Dey say," said he, "dat Lunnon's a very fine place, sah, bigger dan
Philadelphy, and dat a man's skin don' tell agin him among de yaller
gals dere."

I laughed and said, that in my country people were judged rather by the
colour of their hearts than by the hue of their faces.

"But dollars count for something too, sah, I spects?" said he.

"Why, yes," said I, "with dollars enough you can make black white in
England."

"Hum!" cried he, scratching his head. "I guess it 'ud take an almighty
load of dollars to make me white, massa."

"Put money in your pocket and chink it," said I, "and your face'll be
found white enough, I warrant."

"By golly!" cried he, "I'll do it den. S'elp me de Lord, massa, I'd
chink twenty year for a white face. Dat comes ob bein' civilized.
Tell'ee what dey dew, massa, dey makes you feel like a white man, but
dey lets you keep black, blast 'em!"

I checked his excitement by telling him that in my country he would find
that the negro was a person held in very high esteem, that the women in
particular valued him for that very dinginess which the Americans found
distasteful, and told him that I could name several ladies of quality
who had married their black servants.

He looked surprised, but not incredulous, and said in his peculiar
dialect that he had no doubt I spoke the truth, as he had always heard
that England was a fine country to live in. I then led him insensibly
from this topic to talk of the sea and his experiences, and found that
he had seen a very great deal, having been freed when young, and keeping
to the ocean ever since in many different sorts of craft. Indeed, I was
as much pleased with him as with Wilkinson, but then I had foreseen a
simplicity in both the negroes, and in expectation of finding this
quality, so useful to one in my strange position, I was overjoyed when
they consented to help me sail the schooner to the Thames.

We went on deck to relieve Wilkinson and Cromwell. Billy Pitt took the
tiller and I walked to either rail and stared into the darkness. It was
very thick with occasional squalls of snow, which put a screaming as of
tortured cats into the wind as they swung through it. The sea was high,
but the schooner was making excellent weather of it, whilst she rolled
and pitched through the troubled darkness at seven knots in the hour.
'Twas noble useful sailing, yet a speed not to be relished in these
waters amid so deep a shadow. Still the temptation to "hold on all," as
we say, was very great; every mile carried us by so much nearer to the
temperate parallels, and shortened to that extent the long, long passage
that lay before us.

I was pacing the deck briskly, for the wind was horribly keen, when Pitt
suddenly called out, "I say, massa!"

"Hullo," I replied.

"Sah," he cried, "I smell ice!"

I knew that this was a capacity not uncommon among men who had voyaged
much in the frosty regions of the deep, and instantly exclaimed, "Luff,
then, luff! shake the way out of her!" sniffing as I spoke, but
detecting no added shrewdness in the air that was already freezingly
cold. He put the helm down, and I called to the others below to come on
deck and flatten in the main sheet. They were up in a trice and tailed
on with me, asking no questions, till we had the boom nearly amidships.

I was about to speak when Wilkinson cried out, "I smell ice." He sniffed
a moment: "Yes, there's an island aboard. Anybody see it?"

"Ay, dere it am, sure enough!" cried Cromwell. "Dere--on de lee-bow--see
it, sah? See it, Billy?"

Yes, I saw it plain enough when I knew where to look for it. 'Twas just
such another lump of faintness as had wrecked the _Laughing Mary_, a
mass of dull spectral light upon the throbbing blackness, and it lay
exactly in a line with the course we had been steering when Pitt first
called out, so that assuredly we had not shifted our helm a minute too
soon. We chopped and wallowed past it slowly, keeping a sharp look-out
for like apparitions in other quarters, and when it had disappeared, I
made up my mind to heave the schooner to and keep her in that posture
till daylight, unless the night cleared. So we got the mainsail down and
stowed it, clewed up the topsail (which I lent a hand to roll up), and
let the vessel lie under a reefed foresail with her helm lashed. The
weather, however, must have ultimately compelled what the thickness had
required; for by ten o'clock it was blowing a hard gale, with a frequent
hoariness of clouds of snow upon the blackness, the seas very high and
foaming, and the wind crying madly in the rigging.

I let some time go by, and then sounded the well and found no more water
than the depth at which the pumps sucked. This did wonders in the way of
reassuring the men, who were rendered uneasy by the violent motions of
the unwieldy vessel, and by the very harsh straining noises which rose
out of the hold, which latter they would naturally attribute to the
craziness of the fabric, though the true cause of it lay in the number
of loose, movable bulkheads.

"It's amazin' to me that she holds together at all," cried Wilkinson,
"so ancient she is!"

"She's only old," said I, "in the sound of the years she's been in
existence. The ice has kept her young. Would the hams and tongues we're
eating be taken to be half a century old? yet where could you buy
sweeter and better meat of the kind ashore? A ship's well is your only
honest reporter of her condition. Ours has vouched in a way that should
keep you easy."

"Arter de _Soosan Tucker_ dis is like bein' hung up to dry," exclaimed
one of the negroes. "It war pump, pump dere and no mistake. I call dis a
werry beautiful little sheep, massa; yes, s'elp me de Lord, dere's
nuffin could persuade me she ain't what I says she am."

However, I was up and down a good deal during the night. But for the
treasure I should have been less anxious, I dare say. I had come so
successfully to this point that I was resolved, if my hopes were to
miscarry, the misfortune should not be owing to want of vigilance on my
part; and there happened an incident which inevitably tended to sharpen
my watchfulness, though I was perfectly conscious there was a million to
one against its occurring a second time. I came on deck to relieve
Wilkinson, at midnight, after a half-hour's nodding doze by the furnace
below. He went to his cabin; I stood under the lee of a cloth seized in
the weather main rigging. Pitt arrived, and I told him he could return
to the cook-house and stay there till I called him. The helm being
lashed, and the schooner doing very well, nothing wanted watching in
particular, yet I would not have the deck abandoned, and meant to keep a
look-out, turn and turn about with Pitt, as Wilkinson and Cromwell had.
The snow had ceased; but it was very dark and thick, the ocean a roaring
shadow, palpitating upon the eyes in rolling folds of blackness, with
the quick expiring flash of foam to windward. On a sudden, looking over
the weather quarter, methought I discerned a deeper shade in the night
there than was elsewhere perceptible. It was like a great blot of ink
upon the darkness. Even whilst I speculated, it drew out in the shape of
a ship running before the gale. She seemed to be heading directly for
us. The roof of my mouth turned dry as desert-sand; my tongue and limbs
refused their office; I could neither cry nor stir, being indeed
paralyzed by the terrible suddenness of that apparition and the
imminence of our peril. It all happened whilst you could have told
thirty. The great black mass surged up with the water boiling about the
bows; she brought a thunder along with her in her rigging and sails as
she soared to the crowns of the seas she was sweeping before. I could
not tell what canvas she was under, but her speed was a full ten knots,
and as I did not see her till she was close, she looked to come upon us
as with a single bound. She passed us to windward within a stone's
throw, and vanished like a dark cloud melting into the surrounding
blackness. Not a gleam of light broke from her; you heard nothing but
the boiling at her bows and the thunderous pealing of the gale in her
canvas. A quarter turn of the wheel would have sent us to the bottom,
and her, no doubt, on top of us. Whether she was the _Susan Tucker_, or
some other whaler, or a big South-Sea-man driven low and getting what
easting she could out of the gale, I know not. She was as complete a
mystery of the ocean night as any spectral fabric, and a heavier terror
to me than a phantasm worked by ghosts could have proved.

I knew such a thing could not happen again, yet when I called Pitt I
talked to him about it as though we must certainly be run down if he did
not keep a sharp look-out, and when my watch below came round at four
o'clock, I was so agitated that I was up and down till daybreak, as
though my duty did not end till then.

The gale moderated at sunrise, and, though it was a gloomy, true Cape
Horn morning, with dark driving clouds, the sea a dusky olive, very
hollow, and frequent small quick squalls of sleet which brought the wind
to us in sharp guns, yet as we could see where we were going, I got the
schooner before it, heading her east-north-east, and under a reefed
topsail, mainsail, and staysail, the old bucket stormed through it with
the sputter and rage of a line-of-battle ship. There was a log-reel and
line on deck, and I found a sand-glass in the chest in my cabin in which
I had met with the quadrants, perspective glass, and the like, and I
kept this log regularly going, marking a point of departure on the chart
the American captain had given me, which I afterwards found to be within
two leagues and a half of the true position. But for three days the
weather continued so heavy that there was nothing to be done in the
shape of gratifying the men's expectations by overhauling what was left
of the cargo. Indeed, we had no leisure for such work; all our waking
hours had to be strictly dedicated to the schooner, and in keeping a
look-out for ice. But the morning of the fourth day broke with a fine
sky and a brisk breeze from a little to the east of south, to which we
showed every cloth the schooner had to throw abroad, and being now by
dead reckoning within a few leagues of the meridian of sixty degrees, I
shaped a course north by east by my compass, with the design of getting
a view of Staten Island that I might correct my calculations.

When we had made sail and got our breakfast, I told Wilkinson and
Cromwell (Pitt being at the tiller) that now was a good opportunity for
inspecting the contents of the hold; and (not to be tedious in this part
of my relation, however I may have sinned in this respect elsewhere) we
carried lanthorns below, and spent the better part of the forenoon in
taking stock. From a copy of the memorandum I made on that occasion
(still in my possession), we discovered that the Yankee captain had left
us the following: thirty casks of rum, twenty-eight hogsheads of claret,
seventy-five casks of brandy, fifty of sherry, and eighteen cases of
beer in bottles. In addition to this were the stores in the lazarette
(besides a quantity of several kinds of wine in jars, &c.) elsewhere
enumerated, besides all the ship's furniture, her guns, powder,
small-arms, &c, as well as the ship herself. I took the men into the run
and showed them the chests, opening the little one which I had stocked
with small-arms, and lifting the lids of two or three of the others.
They were perfectly satisfied, fully believing all the chests to be
filled with small-arms and nothing else, and so we came away and
returned to the cabin, where, to please them, I put down the value of
the cargo at a venture, setting figures against each article, and making
out a total of two thousand six hundred and forty pounds. This of course
included the ship.

"How much'll dat be a man, massa?" asked Cromwell.

"Six hundred and sixty pounds," I answered.

The poor fellow was so transported that, after staring at me in silence
with the corners of his mouth stretched to his ears, he tossed up his
hands, burst into a roar of laughter, and made several skips about the
deck.

"Of course," said I, addressing Wilkinson, "my figures may be ahead or
short of the truth. But if you are disposed to take the chance, I'll
tell you what I'll do; I'll stand by my figures, accepting the risk of
the value of the lading being less than what I say it is, and undertake
to give each man of you six hundred and sixty pounds for your share."

"Well, sir," said he, "I don't know that I ought to object. But a few
pounds is a matter of great consequence to me, and I reckon if these
here goods and the wessel should turn out to be worth more than ye
offer, the loss 'ud go agin the grit, ay, if 'twere twenty dollars a
man."

I laughed, and told him to let the matter rest, there was plenty of time
before us; I should be willing to stand to my offer even if I lost by
it, so heartily obliged was I to them for coming to my assistance. And
in this I spoke the truth, though, as you will understand who know my
position, I had to finesse. It went against my conscience to make out
that the chests were full of small-arms, but I should have been mad to
tell them the truth, and, perhaps, by the truth made devils of men who
were, and promised to remain, steady, temperate, honest fellows. I was
not governed by the desire to keep all the treasure to myself; no, I vow
to God I should have been glad to give them a moiety of it, had I not
apprehended the very gravest consequences if I were candid with them.
But this, surely, must be so plain that it is idle to go on insisting on
it.

The fine weather, the golden issue that was to attend our successful
navigation, the satisfactory behaviour of the schooner, put us into a
high good-humour with one another; and when it came to my collecting all
the clothes in the after cabins and distributing them among the three
men, I thought Billy Pitt and Cromwell would have gone mad with delight.
To the best of my recollection the apparel that had been left us by the
American captain (who, as you know, had cleared the forecastle of the
clothes there) consisted of several coats of cut velvet, trimmed with
gold and silver lace, some frocks of white drab with large plate
buttons, brocade waistcoats of blue satin and green silk, crimson and
other coloured cloth breeches, along with some cloaks, three-corner
hats, black and white stockings, a number of ruffled shirts, and other
articles, of which I recollect the character, though my ignorance of the
costumes of that period prevents me from naming them.

Any one acquainted with the negro's delight in coloured clothes will
hardly need to be told of the extravagant joy raised in the black
breasts of Cromwell and Pitt by my distribution of this fine attire. The
lace, to be sure, was tarnished, and some of the colours faded, but all
the same the apparel furnished a brave show; and such was the avidity
with which the poor creatures snatched at the garments as I offered them
first to one and then another, that I believe they would have been
perfectly satisfied with the clothes alone as payment for their
services. I made this distribution on the quarter-deck, or little poop,
rather, that all might be present: Wilkinson was at the tiller, and
appeared highly delighted with the bundle allotted him, saying that he
might reckon upon a hearty welcome from his wife when she came to know
what was in his chest. The negroes were wild to clothe themselves at
once; I advised them to wait for the warm weather, but they were too
impatient to put on their fine feathers to heed my advice. They ran
below, and were gone half an hour, during which time I have no doubt
they put on all they had; and when at last they returned, their
appearance was so exquisitely absurd that I laughed till I came near to
suffocating. Each negro had tied a silver laced hat on to his woolly
head; one wore a pair of crimson, the other a pair of black, velvet
breeches; over their cucumber shanks they had drawn white silk
stockings, regardless of the cold; their feet were encased in buckled
shoes, and their costumes were completed by scarlet and blue waistcoats
which fell to their knees, and crimson and blue coats with immense
skirts. What struck me as most astonishing was their gravity. Their
self-complacency was prodigious; they eyed each other with dignified
approbation, and strutted with the air of provincial mayors and aldermen
newly arrived from the presence of royalty.

"They're in keepin' with the schooner, any ways," said Wilkinson.

And so perhaps they were. The antique fabric needed the sparkle of those
costumes on her deck to make her aspect fit in with the imaginations she
bred. But, as I had anticipated, the cold proved too powerful for their
conceit, and they were presently glad to ship their more modern
trousers, though they clung obstinately to their waistcoats, and could
not be persuaded to remove their hats on any account whatever.




CHAPTER XXX.

OUR PROGRESS TO THE CHANNEL.


When I started to relate my adventure I never designed to write an
account of the journey home at large. On the contrary, I foresaw that,
by the time I had arrived at this part, you would have had enough of the
sea. Let me now, then, be as brief as possible.

The melting of the ice and the slowly increasing power of the sun were
inexpressibly consoling to me who had had so much of the cold that I do
protest if Elysium were bleak, no matter how radiant, and the abode of
the fiends as hot as it is pictured, I would choose to turn my back upon
the angels. I cannot say, however, that the schooner was properly thawed
until we were hard upon the parallels of the Falkland Islands; she then
showed her timbers naked to the sun, and exposed a brown solid deck
rendered ugly by several dark patches which, scrape as we might, we
could not obliterate. We struck the guns into the hold for the better
ballasting of the vessel, got studding-sail booms aloft, overhauled her
suits of canvas and found a great square sail which proved of
inestimable importance in light winds and in running. After the ice was
wholly melted out of her frame she made a little water, yet not so much
but that half an hour's spell at the pump twice a day easily freed her.
But, curiously enough, at the end of a fortnight she became tight again,
which I attribute to the swelling of her timbers.

We were a slender company, but we managed extraordinarily well. The men
were wonderfully content; I never heard so much as a murmur escape one
of them; they never exceeded their rations nor asked for a drop more of
liquor than we had agreed among us should be served out. But, as I had
anticipated, our security lay in our slenderness. We were too few for
disaffection. The negroes were as simple as children, Wilkinson looked
to find his account in a happy arrival, and if I was not, strictly
speaking, their captain, I was their navigator without whom their case
would have been as perilous as mine was on the ice.

Outside the natural dangers of the sea we had but one anxiety, and that
concerned our being chased and taken. This fear was heartily shared by
my companions, to whom I also represented that it must be our business
to give even the ships of our country a wide berth; for, though I had
long since flung all the compromising bunting overboard, and destroyed
all the papers I could come across, which being written in a language I
was ignorant of, might, for all I knew, contain some damning
information, a British ship would be sure to board us and I should have
to tell the truth or take the risks of prevaricating. If I told the
truth, then I should have to admit that the lading of the vessel was
piratical plunder; and though I knew not how the law stood with regard
to booty rescued from certain destruction after the lapse of hard upon
half a century, yet it was a hundred to one that the whole would be
claimed in the king's name under a talk of restitution, which signified
that we should never hear more of it. On the other hand prevarication
would not fail to excite suspicion, and on our not being able to
satisfactorily account for our possession of the ship and what was in
her, it might end in our actually being seized as pirates and perhaps
executed.

This reasoning went very well with the men and filled them with such
anxiety that they were for ever on the look-out for a sail. But, as you
may guess, my own solicitude sank very much deeper; for, supposing the
schooner to be rummaged by an English crew, it was as certain as that my
hand was affixed to my arm that the chests of treasure would be
transhipped and lost to me by the law's trickery.

Now, till we were to the north of the equator we sighted nothing; no, in
all those days not a single sail ever hove into view to break the
melancholy continuity of the sea-line. But between the parallels of 12°
and 22° N. we met with no less than eight ships, the nearest within a
league. We watched them as cats watch mice; making a point to bear away
if they were going our road, or, if they were coming towards us, to
shift our helm--but never very markedly--so as to let them pass us at
the widest possible distance. Some of them showed a colour, but we never
answered their signals. That they were all harmless traders I will not
affirm; but none of them offered to chase us. Yet could I have been sure
of a ship, I should have been glad to speak. My longitude was little
more than guesswork; my latitude not very certain; and my compass was
out. However, I supported my own and the spirits of my little company by
telling them of the early navigators; how Columbus, Candish, Drake,
Schouten and other heroic marine worthies of distant times had navigated
the globe, discovered new worlds, penetrated into the most secret
solitudes of the deep without any notion of longitude and with no better
instruments to take the sun's height than the forestaff and astrolabe.
We were better off than they, and I had not the least doubt, I told
them, of bringing the old schooner to a safe berth off Deal or
Gravesend.

But it happened that we were chased when on the polar verge of the
North-East Trade-wind. It was blowing brisk, the sea breaking in snow
upon the weather bow, the sky overcast with clouds, and the schooner
washing through it under a single-reefed mainsail and whole topsail. It
was noon: I was taking an observation, when Pitt at the tiller sang out
"Sail ho!" and looking, I spied the swelling cloud-like canvas of a
vessel on a line with our starboard cathead. I told Pitt to let the
schooner fall off three points, and with slackened sheets the old _Boca
del Dragon_ hummed through it brilliantly, flinging the foam as far aft
as the gangway. The strange sail rose rapidly, and the lifting of her
hull discovered her to be a line-of-battle ship. We held on as we were,
hoping to escape her notice; but whether she did not like our
appearance, or that there was something in the figure we cut that
excited her curiosity, she, on a sudden, put her helm up and steered a
true course for us.

At the first sight of her I had called Wilkinson and Cromwell on deck,
and I now cried out, "Lads, d'ye see, she's after us. If she catches us
our dream of dollars is over. Lively now, boys, and give her all she can
stagger under; and what she can't carry she must drag." And we sprang to
make sail, briskly as apes, and every one working with two-man power. I
knew the old _Boca's_ best point; it was with the wind a point abaft the
beam; we put her to that, got the great square-sail on her, shook out
all reefs, and gave all she had to the wind. The wake roared away from
her like a white torrent that flies from the foot of a foaming cataract.
She had the pirate's instincts, and being put to her trumps, was nimble.
God! how she did swing through it! Never had I driven the aged bucket
before like this, and I understood that speed at sea is not
irreconcilable with odd bodies. But the great ship to windward hung
steady; a cloud of bland and swelling cloths. When we had set the
studding-sail we had nothing more to fly with; and so we stood looking.
She slapped six shots at us, one after another, as a haughty hint to us
to stop; but we meant to escape, and at last we did, outsailing her by
thirteen inches to her foot--one foot to her twelve--though she stuck to
our skirts the whole afternoon and kept us in an agony of anxiety.

The sun was setting when she abandoned us: she was then some five or six
miles distant on our weather quarter. What her nation was I did not
know; but Wilkinson reckoned her French when she gave us up. We rushed
steadily along the same course into the darkness of the night and then,
shortening sail, brought the schooner to the wind again, after which we
drank to the frisky old jade in an honestly-earned bowl.

It was on the 5th of December that we sighted the Scilly Isles. I
guessed what that land was, but so vague had been my navigation that I
durst not be sure; until, spying a smack with her nets over, I steered
for her and got the information I needed from her people. They answered
us with an air of fear, and in truth the fellows had reason; for,
besides the singular appearance of the ship, the four of us were
apparelled in odds and ends of the antique clothes, and I have little
doubt they considered us lunatics of another country, who had run away
with a ship belonging to parts where the tastes and fashions were behind
the age.

Now, as you may suppose, by this time I had settled my plans; and as we
sailed up channel, I unfolded them to my companions. I pointed out that
before we entered the river it would be necessary to discharge our
lading into some little vessel that would smuggle the booty ashore for
us. The figure the schooner made was so peculiar she would inevitably
attract attention; she would instantly be boarded in the Thames on our
coming to anchor, and, if I told the truth, she would be seized as a
pirate, and ourselves dismissed with a small reward, and perhaps with
nothing.

"My scheme," said I, "is this: I have a relative in London to whom I
shall communicate the news of my arrival and tell him my story. You,
Wilkinson must be the bearer of this letter. He is a shrewd, active man,
and I will leave it to him to engage the help we want. There is no lack
of the right kind of serviceable men at Deal, and if they are promised a
substantial interest in smuggling our lading ashore, they will run the
goods successfully, do not fear. As there is sure to be a man-of-war
stationed in the Downs, we must keep clear of that anchorage. I will
land you at Lydd, whence you will make your way to Dover and thence to
London. Cromwell and Pitt will return and help me to keep cruising. My
letter to my relative will tell him where to seek me, and I shall know
his boat by her flying a jack. When we have discharged our lading we
will sail to the Thames, and then let who will come aboard, for we shall
have a clean hold. This," continued I, "is the best scheme I can devise.
The risk of smuggling attend it, to be sure; but against those risks we
have to put the certainty of our forfeiting our just claims to the
property if we carry the schooner to the Thames. Even suppose, when
there, that we should not be immediately visited, and so be provided
with an opportunity to land our stuff--whom have we to trust? The Thames
abounds with river thieves, with lumpers, scuffle-hunters, mud-larks,
glutmen, rogues of all sorts, to hire whom would mean to bribe them with
the value of half the lading and to risk their stealing the other half.
But this is the lesser difficulty; the main one lies in this: there are
some sixteen hundred men employed in the London Custom House, most of
whom are on river duty as watchmen; thirty of these people are clapped
aboard an East Indiaman, five or six on West India ships, and a like
proportion in other vessels. So strange a craft as ours would be
visited, depend on't, and smartly, too. D'ye see the danger, lads? What
do you say, then, to my scheme?"

The negroes immediately answered that they left it to me; I knew best;
they would be satisfied with whatever I did.

Wilkinson mused a while and then said, "Smuggling was risky work. How
would it be if we represented that we had found the schooner washing
about with nobody aboard?"

"The tale wouldn't be credited," said I. "The age of the vessel would
tell against such a story, even if you removed all other evidence by
throwing the clothes and small-arms overboard and whatever else might go
to prove that the schooner must have been floating about abandoned since
the year 1750!"

"Musn't lose de clothes, massa, on no account," cried Pitt.

"Well, sir," says Wilkinson, after another spell of reflection, "I
reckon you're right. If so be the law would seize the vessel and goods
on the grounds that she had been a pirate and all that's in her was
plunder, why, then, certainly, I don't see nothin' else but to make a
smuggling job of it, as you say, sir."

This being settled (Wilkinson's concurrence being rendered the easier by
my telling him that, providing the lading was safely run, I would adhere
to my undertaking to give them six hundred and sixty pounds each for
their share), I went below and spent half an hour over a letter to Mr.
Jeremiah Mason. There was no ink, but I found a pencil, and for paper I
used the fly-leaves of the books in my cabin. I opened with a sketch of
my adventures, and then went on to relate that the _Boca_ was a _rich
ship_; that as she had been a pirate, I risked her seizure by carrying
her to London; that I stood grievously in need of his counsel and help,
and begged him not to lose a moment in returning with the messenger to
Deal, and there hiring a boat and coming to me, whom he would find
cruising off Beachy Head. That I might know his boat, I bade him fly a
jack a little below the masthead. "As for the _Boca del Dragon_," I
added, "Wilkinson would recognize her if she were in the middle of a
thousand sail, and indeed a farmer's boy would be able to distinguish
her for her uncommon oddness of figure." I was satisfied to underscore
the words "a rich ship," quite certain his imagination would be
sufficiently fired by the expression. At anything further I durst not
hint, as the letter would be open for Wilkinson to read.

When I had finished, I took a lanthorn and the keys of the chest and
went very secretly and expeditiously to the run, and removing the layers
of small-arms from the top of the case that held the money, I picked out
some English pieces, quickly returned the small-arms, locked the chest,
and returned.

All this time we were running up Channel before a fresh westerly wind.
It was true December weather, very raw, and the horizon thick, but I
knew my road well, and whilst the loom of the land showed, I desired
nothing better than this thickness.

But wary sailing delayed us; and it was not till ten o'clock on the
night of the seventh that we hove the schooner to off the shingly beach
of Lydd within sound of the wash of the sea upon it. The bay sheltered
us; we got the boat over; I gave Wilkinson the letter and ten guineas,
bidding him keep them hidden and to use them cautiously with the silver
change he would receive, for they were all guineas of the first George
and might excite comment if he, a poor sailor, ill-clad, should pull
them out and exhibit them. Happily, in the hurry of the time, he did not
think to ask me how I had come by them. He thrust them into his pocket,
shook my hand and dropped into the boat, and the negroes immediately
rowed him ashore.

I stood holding a lanthorn upon the rail to serve them as a guide,
waiting for the boat to return, and never breathed more freely in my
life than when I heard the sound of oars. The two negroes came
alongside, and, clapping the tackles on to the boat, we hoisted her with
the capstan, and then under very small canvas stood out to sea again.




CHAPTER XXXI.

THE END.


I should require to write to the length of this book over again to do
full justice by description to the difficulties and anxieties of the
days that now followed. If it had not been thick weather all the time, I
do not know how I should have fared, I am sure. I was between two fires,
so to say; on the one side the French cruisers and privateers, and on
the other side the ships of my own country, and particularly the revenue
cutters and the sloops and the like cruising after the smugglers. As I
knew that my relative could not be with me under four days, I steered
out of sight of land into the middle of the Channel, betwixt Beachy Head
and the Seine coast, and there dodged about under very small canvas,
heartily grateful for the haze that shrouded the sea to within a mile of
me. I scarcely closed my eyes in sleep, and though my worries were now
of a very different kind from those which had racked me on the ice, they
were, in their way, to the full as tormenting. Every sail that loomed in
the dinginess filled me with alarm. Several ships passed me close, and I
could scarce breathe till they were out of sight. Indeed, I lay skulking
out upon that sea as if I was some common thief broken loose from jail.
However, it pleased heaven that I should manage to keep out of sight of
those whom I most strenuously desired not to see; and the afternoon of
the fourth day found the _Boca_ lying off Beachy Head, and I peering
over the rail, with a haggard face, at the dark shadow of the land.

It had been blowing and snowing all day. The seas ran short and
spitefully. It was a dismal December afternoon, and the more sensibly
disgusting to us who were fresh from several weeks of the balm and glory
of the tropics. And yet I would not have exchanged it for a clear fine
day for all that I was like to be worth.

It was the most reasonable thing in the world that a vessel should be
hove-to in such sombre weather, and so I was under no concern that our
posture in this respect would excite suspicion, should we be descried.
The hours stole away one by one. Now and again a little coaster would
pass, some hoy bound west, a sloop for the Thames, a lugger on some
unguessable mission: all small ships, oozing dark and damp out of the
snow and mist and passing silently. I kept the land close aboard to be
out of the way of the bigger craft, and held the vessel in the wind
till it was necessary to reach to our station. The three of us were
mighty pensive and eager, staring incessantly with all our eyes; but it
looked as if we were not to expect anything that day when the night put
its darkness into the weather. Then, as I foresaw a serious danger if
the wind shifted into the south, and as I could not obtain a glimpse of
a shore-light, I resolved to bring up and ride till dawn. Long ago we
had got the schooner's old anchors at the catheads and the cables bent,
so, lowering the mainsail and hauling down the stay foresail, we let
fall the starboard anchor, and the ship came to a stand. I put the lead
over the side that we might know if she dragged, hung a lantern on the
forestay and one on either quarter that our presence might be marked by
my relative should he be out in quest of us, and went below, leaving
Cromwell to keep the look-out.

I was extremely fretful and anxious and had no patience to talk with
Billy Pitt. There were too many risks, too many vague chances in this
exploit to render contemplation of it tolerable. Suppose my relative
should be dead? Suppose Wilkinson should be robbed of his money? fall to
the cutting of capers, as a sailor newly delivered to the pleasures of
the land with ten guineas in his pocket? Get locked up for breaking the
peace? Blab of us in his cups and start the Customs on our trail? There
was no end to such conjectures, and I made myself so melancholy that I
was fool enough to think that the treasure was no better than a curse,
and that on the whole I was better off on the ice than here with the
anchor in English ground and my native soil within gunshot.

I was up and about till midnight, and then, being in the cabin and
exhausted, I fell asleep across the table, and in that posture lay as
one dead. Some one dragging at my arm, with very little tenderness,
awoke me. I was in the midst of a dream of the schooner having been
boarded by a party of French privateersmen, with Tassard at their head,
and the roughness with which I was aroused was exactly calculated to
extend into my waking the horror and grief of my sleep.

I instantly sprang to my feet and saw Washington Cromwell.

"Massa Rodney," he bawled, "Massa Rodney, de gent's 'longside--him an'
Wilkinson--yaas, by de good Lord--dey'se both dere! Dey hail me an' I
answer and say who are you, and dey say are you de _Boca_? We am, I say,
and dey say----"

I had stood stupidly staring at him, but my full understanding coming
to me on a sudden, I jumped to the ladder and darted on deck. I heard
voices over the starboard side and ran there. It was not so dark
but that I could see the outline of a Deal lugger. Whilst I was
peering, the voice of my man Wilkinson cried out, "On deck, there!
Cromwell--Billy--where's Mr. Rodney?"

"Here I am!" cried I.

"My God, Paul!" exclaimed the voice of Mr. Mason, "this encounter is
fortunate indeed."

I shouted to the negroes to show a light, and in a few minutes Mr.
Mason, Wilkinson, and a couple of Deal boatmen came over the side. I
grasped my relative by both hands. I had not seen him for four years.

"This is good of you, indeed!" I cried. "But you must be perished with
the cold of that open boat. Come below at once--come Wilkinson, and you
men--there's a fire in the cook-room and drink to warm us;" and down I
bundled in the wildest condition of excitement, followed by Mason and
the others.

My relative was warmly clad and did not seem to suffer from the cold. He
took me by the hand and brought me to the lanthorn-light, and stood
viewing me.

"Ay," said he, "you are your old self: a bit worried looking, but
that'll pass. Stout and burnt. Odd's heart! Paul, if you have passed
through the experiences Wilkinson has given me a sketch of, we must have
your life, man, we must have your life--for the booksellers."

Well, I need not detain you by reciting all the civilities and
congratulations which he and I exchanged. He and Wilkinson had arrived
at Deal at three o'clock that afternoon, and, after a hurried meal, had
hired a lugger and started at once for Beachy Head. It was now three
o'clock in the morning; and what I may consider a truly extraordinary
circumstance is, that they had sailed as true a course for the schooner
as if she had lain plain to the gaze at the very start; that since the
night had drawn down they had met no vessel of any kind or description,
until they came up to us; that in all probability they would have run
stem on into us if they had not seen our lights, and that their seeing
our lights had caused them to hail us, their "ship ahoy!" being
instantly answered by Cromwell.

"Well," said I, "there are stranger things to tell of than this, even.
Now, Wilkinson, and you Billy, and Cromwell, get us a good supper and
mix a proper bowl. How many more of you are in the lugger?"

"Four, sir," says one of the boatmen.

"Then fetch as many as may safely leave the boat," said I. "Billy, get
candles and make a good light here. Throw on coal, boys; there's enough
to carry us home."

I saw Mason gazing curiously about him.

"'Tis like a tale out of the Arabian Nights, Paul," he exclaimed.

"Ay," said I, "but written in bitter prose, and no hint of enchantment
anywhere. But, thank God, you are come! I have passed a dismal time of
expectation, I promise you." I added softly, "I have something
secret--we will sup first, man--I shall amaze you! We must talk apart
presently."

He bowed his head.

Three more boatmen arrived, giving us the company of five of them. Soon
there was a hearty sound of frying and a smell of good things upon the
air. Pitt put plates and glasses upon the cabin table, two great bowls
of punch were brewed, and in a little time we had all fallen to. I
whispered Wilkinson, who sat next me, "These boatmen know nothing of our
business; I shall have to take Mr. Mason apart and arrange with him.
These fellows may not be fit for our service. Let no hint escape you."

"Right, sir," said he.

This I said to disarm his suspicions should he see me talking alone with
Mr. Mason. He entertained us with an account of his excursion to London;
and then, partly to appease the profound curiosity of the boatmen and
partly to save time when I should come to confer with my relative, I
gave them the story of my shipwreck, and told how I had met with the
schooner and how I had managed to escape with her.

"And now, Mason," said I, "whilst our friends here empty these bowls,
come you with me to the cook-room." And with that we quitted the cabin.

"D'ye mean to tell me, Paul," was the first question my relative asked,
"that this vessel was on the ice eight-and-forty years?"

"Yes," I replied.

"Surely you dream?"

"I think not."

"What we have been eating and drinking--is that forty-eight years old,
too?"

"Ay, and older."

"Well, such a thing shall make me credulous enough to duck old women for
witches. But what brandy--what brandy! Never had spirit such a bouquet.
Every pint is worth its weight in guineas to a rich man. To think of
Deal boatmen and niggers swilling such nectar!"

"Mason," said I, speaking low, "give me now your attention. In the run
of this schooner are ten chests loaded with money, bars of silver and
gold, and jewellery. This vessel was a pirate, and her people valued
their booty at ninety to a hundred thousand pounds."

His jaw fell; he stared as if he knew not whether it was he or I that
was mad.

"Here is evidence that I speak the truth," said I. "A little sample
only--but look at it!" And I put the pirate captain's watch into his
hand.

He eyed it as though he discredited the intelligence of his sight,
turned it about, and returned it to me with a faint "Heaven preserve
me!" Then said he, still faintly, "You found some of the pirates alive?"

"No."

"Who told you that the people of the vessel valued their plunder at that
amount?"

I answered by giving him the story of the recovery of the Frenchman.

He listened with a gaze of consternation: I saw how it was; he believed
my sufferings had affected my reason. There was only one way to settle
his mind; I took a lanthorn, and asked him to follow me. As we passed
through the cabin I whispered Wilkinson that I meant to show my relative
the lading below, and bade him keep the Deal men about him. I had the
keys of the chests in my pocket: lifting the after-hatch, we entered the
lazarette, and Mason gazed about him with astonishment. But I was in too
great a hurry to return to suffer him to idly stand and stare. I opened
the second hatch and descended into the run, and crawling to the jewel
chest opened it, removed a few of the small-arms, and bade him look for
himself.

"Incredible! incredible!" he cried. "Is it possible! is it possible!
Well, to be sure!" And for some moments he could find no more to say, so
amazed and confounded was he.

I quickly showed him the gold and silver ingots and then returned the
firearms and locked the chests.

"_These_," said I emphatically, pointing to the cases, "have been my
difficulty; not the lading, though there is value there too. My crew
know nothing of these chests: of their value, I mean; they believe them
cases of small-arms. How am I to get them ashore? If I tell the truth,
they will be seized as piratical plunder. If I equivocate, I may tumble
into a pit of difficulties. I durst not carry them to the Thames, the
river swarms with thieves and Custom House people. I am terrified to
linger here, lest I be boarded and the booty discovered. There is but
one plan, I think: we must hire some Deal smugglers to run these chests
and the cargo for us. The boat now alongside might serve, and I don't
doubt the men are to be had at their own price."

My relative had regained his wits, which the sight of the treasure had
temporarily scattered, and surveyed me thoughtfully whilst I spoke; and
then said, "Let us return to the fire; I think I have a better scheme
than yours."

The men still sat around the table talking. Some liquor yet lay in one
of the bowls, and the fellows were happy enough. I smiled at Wilkinson
as I passed, that he might suppose our inspection below very
satisfactory, and I saw him look meaningly and pleasantly at Washington
Cromwell, who sat with a laced hat on his head.

"Paul," said Mason, sitting down and folding his arms, "your smuggling
plan will not do. It would be the height of madness to trust those
chests to the risks of running and to the honesty of the rogues engaged
in that business."

"What is to be done?"

"Tell me your lading," said he.

I gave it to him as accurately as I could.

"Why," he exclaimed, "a single boat would take a long time to discharge
ye--observe the perils--several boats would mean a large number of men;
they would eat you up; they would demand so much, you would have nothing
left. And suppose they opened the chests! No, your scheme is worthless."

"What's to do, then, in God's name?"

"I'll tell you!" he exclaimed, smiling with the complacency of a man who
is master of a great fancy. "I shall sail to Dover at once. 'Tis now a
quarter past four. Give me twelve hours to make Dover: I shall post
straight to London and be there by early morning. Now, Paul, attend you
to this. To-day is Wednesday; by to-morrow night you must contrive to
bring your ship to an anchor off Barking Level."

"The Thames!" I cried.

He nodded.

I looked at him anxiously. He leaned to me, putting his hand on my leg.

"I own a lighter," said he: "she will be alongside of you at dusk. I
have people of my own whom I can trust. The lighter will empty your hold
and convey the lading to a ship chartered by me, arrived from the Black
Sea on Sunday and lying in the Pool. The stuff can be sold from that
ship as it is--"

"But the chests--the chests, Mason!"

"They shall be lowered into another boat, and taken ashore and put into
a waggon that will be in waiting--I in it--and driven to my home."

I clapped him on the shoulder in a transport.

"Nobly schemed indeed!" I cried; "but have we nothing to fear from the
Customs people?"

"No, not low down the river and at dark. You bring up for convenience,
d'ye see. Mind it is dark when you anchor. A lighter and boat shall be
awaiting you. It is down the river, you know, that all the lumpers drop
with the lighters they go adrift in from ships' sides. There's more
safety in smuggling over Thames mud than on this coast shingle. One
thought more: you say that Wilkinson believes the chests hold
small-arms?"

"Yes."

"Then account to him for sending the chests away separately by saying
that I have found a purchaser, and that they are going to him direct.
You have your cue--you see all!"

"All."

"Let me hurry, then, Paul; that brandy should fetch you half a guinea a
pint. You are in luck's way, Paul. See that you bring your ship along
safely. Till to-morrow night!"

He clasped and wrung my hand and ran into the cabin.

"Now, lads, off with us!" he cried. "Off to Dover! Put me ashore there
smartly and you shall find your account. Off now--time presses."

Five minutes afterwards the boat was gone.

When fortune falls in love with a man she makes him a bounteous
mistress. Everything fell out as I could have desired. We got our anchor
at five, and by daybreak were off Hastings jogging quietly along towards
London river, the weather conveniently obscure, the wind south, and
forty hours before us to do the run in. I exactly explained my
relative's scheme to Wilkinson and the others, who declared themselves
perfectly satisfied, Wilkinson adding that though he had not objected to
the Deal smuggling project he throughout considered the risk too heavy
to adventure. I told them that Mr. Mason believed he could immediately
find a purchaser for the small-arms, in which case they would have to be
sent privately ashore; and to give a proper colour to this ruse I made
them pack away all the remaining weapons in the arms-room and carry them
to the run, ready to be taken with the other chests.

Once fairly round the Forelands half my anxieties fell from me. There
was no longer the French cruiser or privateer to be feared, and however
wonderingly the people of my own country's vessels might stare at the
uncommon figure of my schooner, they could find no excuse to board us.
Besides, as I have said, I was greatly helped by the weather, which
continuing hazy, though happily never so thick as to oblige me to stop,
delivered me to the sight only of such vessels as passed close, and
offered me as a mere smudge to the shore.

We arrived off Barking Level on the Thursday night, and dropped anchor
close to a lighter that lay there with a large boat hanging by her. It
was then very dark. The first person to come on board was Mason. He was
followed by several men, one of whom he introduced to me as his head
clerk, who would see to the unloading of the schooner and to the
transhipment of the goods to the ship in the Pool. He informed me that
there was a covered van waiting on shore; and telling Wilkinson that the
small-arms had been disposed of, and that Mr. Mason would hand over the
proceeds on our calling at his office, I went with a party of my
relative's men into the run and presently had the whole of the chests in
the boat. Mason went with her.

Then, as she disappeared in the darkness, but not till then, did I draw
the first easy breath I had fetched since the hour of the collision of
the _Laughing Mary_ with the iceberg. A sob shook me: I had gone through
much: many wonderful things had happened to me: I had been delivered
from such perils that the mere recollection of them will stir my hair,
though it is years since; my duty I knew, and I discharged it by
withdrawing to my cabin and kneeling with humble and grateful heart
before the throne of that Being to whom I owed everything.




POSTSCRIPT.


Here concludes the remarkable narrative of Mr. Paul Rodney. It is to be
wished that he had found the patience to tell us a little more. The
circumstance of his dying in 1823, worth 31,000_l._, leads me to suspect
that his associate Tassard greatly exaggerated the value of the
treasure. I am assured that he lived very quietly, and that the lady he
married, who bore him two children, both of whom died young, was of a
nunlike simplicity of character and loved show and extravagance as
little as her husband. Hence there is no reason to suppose that he
squandered any portion of the fortune that had in the most extraordinary
manner ever heard of fallen into his hands. I have ascertained that he
very substantially discharged the great obligation that his relative
Mason laid him under, and that his three men received a thousand pounds
apiece. It is possible, then, that the pirates were themselves deceived,
that what they had taken to be gold or silver ingots were not all so; or
it might be that the case of jewellery was less valuable than the
admiring and astonished eyes of a plain sailor, who admits that he had
never before seen such a sight, figured it. Be this, however, as it may,
it is nevertheless certain, as proved by Mr. Rodney's last will and
testament, that he did uncommonly well out of his adventure on the ice.

Whatever may be thought of his story of the Frenchman's restoration to
life, in other directions Mr. Rodney's accuracy seems unimpeachable. It
is quite conceivable that a stoutly-built vessel locked up in the ice
and thickly glazed, should continue in an excellent state of
preservation for years. The confession of his superstitious fears
exhibits honesty and candour. It is related that a Captain Warren,
master of an English merchant-ship, found a derelict (in August, 1775)
that had long been ice-bound, with her cabins filled with the bodies of
the frozen crew. "His own sailors, however, would not suffer him to
search the vessel thoroughly, through superstition, and wished to leave
her immediately." A pity they did not try their hands at thawing one of
the poor fellows: the result might have kept Mr. Rodney's strange
experience in countenance!

Accounts of vast bodies of ice, such as that which Mr. Rodney fell in
with, will be found in the South Atlantic Directory. For instance:--

"Sir James C. Ross crossed Weddel's track in Lat. 65° S., and where he
had found an open sea, Ross found an ice-pack of an impassable
character, along which he sailed for 160 miles; and again, when only one
degree beyond the track of Cook, who had no occasion to enter the pack,
Ross was navigating among it for fifty-six days.

"But these appear insignificant when compared with a body of ice
reputed to have been passed by twenty-one ships during the months of
December, 1854, and January, February, March, and April, 1855, floating
in the South Atlantic from Lat 44° S., Long. 28° W., to Lat. 40° S.,
Long. 20° W. Its elevation in no case exceeded 300 feet. The first
account of it was received from the _Great Britain_, which in December,
1854, was reported to have steamed 50 miles along the outer side of the
longer shank." One ship was lost upon it: others embayed.


THE END.