Friend let his sodden and frozen sou'-wester lie; and he looked wild and dreadful with icicles pendent from his hair. In a sudden sharp leap of the boat to the summit of an ugly sea, that broke and curled white as milk on a line with our gunwales, he pitched towards me, slipped over the thwart he struck, and lay motionless at my feet. He groaned twice but spoke not.
What could I do? Chafe his hands? As well the thwart he had been flung over. I had not a drop of spirit for his throat, and myself felt dying. I could not but let him lie, and I believe he gave up the ghost very shortly after he had uttered his second groan.
After Friend had lain at my feet for about an hour I stripped the oilskins off the body and put them on; they diminished the sense of deadly cold. I dragged the body into the bows, and after baling hard sat down, sure that my death was at hand, but seeking consolation in the thought that suffering ceases some while before you die of cold, and that death from this cause is as easy as drowning after the first agony.
It never ceased to snow until the night fell, and then when it was black the weather cleared—that is, I could see the flash of froth at a distance; but stare as I might I beheld nothing of the ship, no smudge nor deeper dye upon the darkness anywhere to indicate her presence. I stood up and looked and looked, waiting for the toss of the sea to strain my gaze; then, with an awful despair in my heart, and the full rushing weight of my doom upon my spirits, I threw myself down into the stern sheets to die.
That I should have lived through that night is the miracle of my life. There is no lack of suffering in the maritime records, but I vow that mine in those hours of darkness which I passed in that open boat is not to be topped, though it may be matched. Perhaps it was that all my organs were sound, whilst Friend perished from the shock of immersion, and from failure of some vital power—doubtless the heart.
Be this as it may, I lived through that night and through the icy darkness of the morning, till daylight came crawling in a sallow green over the sky, low, broken and flying. It might be that Friend's oilskins preserved my life by excluding the needle-like tide of frost-black wind from my flesh. When it was fairly daylight I stood up. My sight was clear; but I felt as though formed of stone. I could poise my figure to the wild leaping of the boat, but I could not lift my arms: each shoulder felt brittle as glass; it seemed to me that if either limb should be grasped and pulled, it must break short off.
The body of Friend lay ghastly in the bows. It was on its side, the cheek on the floor of the boat, and every time the little craft dived, the water in her boiled about the figure, which bristled with ice, and the head seemed nailed to the bottom boards by long spikes of crystal. I could not bear it, and made a step to cast it overboard, but, finding my arms helpless, stood still and looked round for the ship.
No wilder, drearier dawn ever broke over that cold, stormy, and desolate ocean. I guessed the wind about north; a strong wind, with a shriek as shrill as salt as it fled spray-charged past the ear, flaying as though it were a naked edge of sharp steel. A large squall was darkening the sea to leeward of the boat; when I was thrown up I saw the dim whiteness of ice in several places. I gazed slowly around in a broken way, for in every other breath there stood a wall of water betwixt me and the horizon.
All on a sudden when my eyes went astern I saw, not above a mile distant, a dark object: it reared and sank, came and went; sometimes froth leapt in a light of snow about it. I stared, scarcely daring to hope as yet that it was more than an illusion of the vision, a reappearing shape of green surge, a hard reforming moulding of brine, looking like—looking like——
And then with a short choking cry of transport I recognised it. It was the dismasted hull: that wreck of the 'Lady Emma' we had been in search of.
I watched her to make sure, dreading some cheat of delirious imagination—but it was the wreck; I marked her rise with the sea, a firm, defined, black shape against the root of the thick large squall that was blowing to leeward of her. A dim sheen of the gloomy day was in her wet side or sheathing as she soared, heeling not above a mile off and dead to leeward.
The sight gave life to my dead limbs, as it put spirit into my dying heart. I got the use of my arms and hands with a sudden frenzy of resolution, like to the effect of the panic terror that will compel a bedridden man to rise, though till thus started he has lain helpless as the mattress he springs from. I went into the bows, and getting hold of the body of Friend turned it over the gunwale. The corpse as I have said was that of a stout burly man, yet I found it light as a baby. How was that? Unless it was that the strength of half a dozen had come into me with the passion of life and hope the sight of the wreck had inspired.
I pulled in the pair of oars the boat had been riding to and took my chance of the broadside send of sea; the fierce sweep and sharp angle nearly flung me overboard, and thrice whilst I was clearing the oars which were heavy and difficult with ice, the boat was almost capsized. In a few minutes I got an oar over the stern and sculled the boat's head round for the wreck. She shot forward, and I sat square that my back might break any smaller sea which should foam tall and curl faster than the boat could rise. For the rest—for the peril of a great sea, for the swamping by seething waters uniting on either side the gunwale—I was in God's hands.
The wind and the sea swept me so swiftly onwards that the hull was close ahead all on a sudden, a large black mass, rolling heavily with violently quick recoveries; she lifted her channels foaming, and again and again a sea shot up her side in a height of white brine, which blew into the water on the other side of her in a cloud like steam. There was nothing for it but to drive for her stem on and take my chance. I tore off the oilskins for the freer use of my limbs, and when I was close to the wreck, having headed the boat fair for the main-chains, I sprang forward and seized the end of the painter; the boat's nose smote the hull as she was roaring from me. I got a turn with the painter round a chain plate; the boat swung in, but so swift were the motions of the hull that she was rolling down upon me even in that time, and, letting go the painter, I jumped in a single bound into the chains and was stumbling over the rail, spiked with ice, as the hulk swept her streaming side out again from the sea, with such a slant of deck that if I had not flung myself into a squatting posture and made the athwartship run of the hard frozen surface on my hams, I must have broken my neck or fled sheer overboard through the openings where the bulwarks had been smashed level.
I was crazy with hunger and thirst and cold, and could think of nothing but shelter and food and drink. I took a hurried look along the deck hoping to see smoke from the galley or cabin chimney, for I reckoned of course upon finding the three people the 'Planter' had searched for alive in this hull. I saw no signs of life. I cautiously crawled aft, and coming to the companion-way tried to open it; the doors were thickly glazed, whence I judged they had been kept closed for some time. I pulled out my clasp knife—all that I carried was in my pocket as it had been before the boat capsized—and after scraping and dislodging the ice in sheets like plate glass, I got one of the companion-doors open and descended, pulling the door to behind me.
After the long hours of exposure and the ceaseless crackling noises of warring waters, the shelter, the comparative warmth and stillness down here, were like the gift of a new life. It was dark, yet not so gloomy but that I could see. The daylight lay upon the snow on the skylight, and that large square of whiteness sifted a sort of dim illumination of its own into the dusk.
My first look was for those whom the boatswain Wall had told us the crew left behind them when they abandoned the hull. Nobody was here. An unlighted lamp swung violently over the table. I beheld a dull gleam of looking-glasses upon the ship's side, and thought in the glance I cast round that I could make out the equipment of a small, comfortable state cabin. I quickly spied a rack half circling the trunk of the mizzenmast; in it were some decanters; three were half full of red and yellow wine. I put the mouth of one to my lips and drank heartily of its contents, but whether it was claret or sherry I could not say; excessive thirst seemed to have robbed my palate of the power of tasting. I then went straight to the first cabin my eye rested upon, intending to go the rounds for the pantry; but this cabin proved to be the pantry, where, after a short hunt, I found cheese, biscuit, preserved meat, and jams. I fell to wolfishly, breaking off only to fetch another decanter of the wine from the cabin.
And now having eaten with a dangerous heartiness, and drank as much as would have brimmed two tumblers, I stepped into the cabin, refreshed and warm, a new man, almost my old self again, needing little more to perfectly comfort me than a shift of clothes, which might be obtained by seeking. But first I stood still, holding by the table to listen. I heard nothing but the sounds of the labouring of the hull. Had the captain and the two women been taken off the wreck? I should have believed so but for having found the companion-doors closed and glazed; ice could not have collected to the thickness I had found it had people been coming and going by the companion-way. And yet it is true they might have been taken off, and before going some one of the rescuing party had closed the companion-door with a kick or a thrust as he stepped on deck.
I saw no fire in the stove; the lamp was out; it did not seem as if there were human life in the hull. I went to a door on the starboard side, the next to or second door past the pantry, and entered a berth. I could scarcely see. The porthole was submerged every other moment and the sight blinded with a sudden plunge of foam-thick twilight. After gazing awhile I made out that this berth had been occupied by the captain and his wife. I observed a quantity of male and female apparel hanging from a row of pegs running along the bulk-head; also I made out two bunks, a table with certain navigating appliances upon it, a couple of chronometer cases on a shelf, and sundry other matters not worth cataloguing. I lifted a locker, and after groping came across some flannel garments and under-linen. If the captain were aboard I guessed that in any case he would give me leave to help myself, so, after feeling over the clothes upon the bulk-head, I shifted to the frozen flesh of me.
Scarcely was I warmly and dryly clothed, when so heavy a drowsiness came upon my eyelids that I could instantly have sunk upon the deck in a sound sleep. But first I was resolved to ascertain the condition of the hull; likewise whilst it was daylight to see if there were any signs of the 'Planter,' and if the weather gave me any promise of her. The idea of falling into a trance-like sleep which might run into hours, from which, for all I could tell as things stood, I should be awakened by finding myself strangling in a cabin full of water, and the hull already fathoms under, put such a fear and horror into my spirits as enabled me to thrust back into my brain the heavy, stupefying weight of slumber, that was making my eyes ache as though the balls of vision had been wrung and unseated. I shook my body as a dog does when fresh from the water, and beat my arms upon my breast with all my strength; then, with a wild yawn, strode into the stateroom and went up the steps.
The first thing I saw was the boat I had gained the wreck in: she was flinging and leaping upon the seas about a hundred fathoms off on the port quarter; being light and released she had blown away quickly. Every time a surge forked her on high the pouring blast smote and swirled her further yet to leeward. This would go on till she filled. I hardly took thought of her, abhorring her as I did as the theatre of that drama of anguish and hopelessness I had been forced to act in during the long black hours of the past night: and yet I very well understood that she had been bound to go adrift, as I had taken but a slippery turn with the painter round the chain plate at the instant when the hull brought her main chains crushing down upon me for that spring by which I had saved my life.
I crossed to the port bulwarks to hold on by: t'other side was full of ugly yawns and rents, a dangerous, ragged wreckage of bulwark through which down the ice-hard slant a man would shoot, with a sudden roll, to his death. The galley was standing: all the boats were gone: the wheel and binnacle remained, and the apparatus of the helm looked sound. The decks were littered with frozen gear. Nothing showed of the main and mizzen masts but a barbed block, scarce a foot high above the mast-coats. But the stump of the foremast rose to perhaps twelve feet. The pumps were frozen: the sounding rod lay close to, but I could do nothing with it. Yet, as an old hand, I could feel the life of a ship in my feet, and I was sure, by the hull's buoyant jumps, her cork-like recovery from the headlong dives, and the loneliness of her rolls that there was nothing in the water she had drained in so far to make me uneasy.
Cheered by this conviction, I pushed forwards, clawing along by the pins in the rail, by whatever else came to my hand, till I was abreast of the galley, whose port sliding-door lay half open, and going to it and looking in, there on the deck I saw lying on her back the body of a woman. I peered close, the light being weak. The body was warmly but plainly clothed; the colour of the face fresh as though she slept. I should not have guessed her dead by her looks: it was her lying there that made me know it. She seemed a woman of between forty and forty-five, flat of face, treble-chinned, and she showed as a person that had been fat and heavy in life.
The sight startled me: I had not thought to find anything dead. Had she been the wife of the captain? Where was he? And where the young lady that had sailed as passenger with them? Were they both lying frozen in other parts of the vessel? But there yet remained two or three cabins below to look into.
I came out of the galley shocked and low-spirited, and, still pushing forward, came to the forecastle and called down the hatch. I got no answer and descended. Here I found a number of hammocks, a few sea chests, and some odds and ends of seamen's apparel scattered about the deck. The forecastle lamp swung black under its grimy beam. I could scarcely see. Water—though no depth of it—seethed over the planks as the vessel pitched and rolled: this water I reckoned had tumbled down the forecastle hatch, and when I returned on deck I drew the slide of the scuttle over.
I went to the stump of foremast that was ringed with some pins, and holding on by one of them, looked round and round the sea, waiting for every lofty heave to dart my glances; but there was nothing in sight save ice, the peaks of bergs afar, coming and going past the rounds of the swell, and the rush of the surge flickering into foam. It was blowing half as strong again as it had been an hour before, and the seas were racing with a weight and spite of headlong yeast which must have drowned me out of hand in the jolly-boat. A low sky of thick black cloud coiling, revolving, like sooty pourings from countless factory chimneys, was sweeping southwards. I crawled aft for the shelter of the cabin—the wind was marrow-freezing; and scarce was I within the comparative warmth and stillness of the interior, when slumber again oppressed me; and nature now giving out I stretched myself upon a cushioned locker and was asleep in a minute.
When I awoke I started instantly into an upright posture, beholding a figure gazing at me; in some muddled fashion I seemed to realise my situation, whilst I imagined that the cabin was half full of people who had come to save me. Then, getting my wits fully, I made out that the person who stood close was a young woman. Her figure was inclined towards me, and so she stood despite the swaying of her with the motions of the deck: it was a posture of fear, incredulity, amazement, incommunicable in words.
It was too dim in that cabin to note more of her than that incomparable attitude of fright and astonishment.
It had been past noon when I lay down to sleep: the strong feeling of refreshment within me was assurance, true as the sun's evidence could have been, that I had slept through more than the two remaining hours of daylight. It was daylight now, consequently I understood that whatever might be the hour, I had been sleeping since noon on the previous day.
I stared at the girl, for a young girl I now perceived her to be, and exclaimed:
'Are you Miss Otway?'
'Oh!' she shrieked, 'have you come to save me?' and she dropped on her knees and grasped my hand. 'Save me!' she cried, 'I am alone here. I have been alone for days. I am in darkness. When did you come? Where are your companions? Why were you sleeping here? And take me on deck. Is your ship near? If the boat that brought you can live in this sea she can carry me on board your vessel.'
I cannot express the agony of heart in her voice. Her terror at seeing me had been changed into another passion by my naming her.
'Where's the captain?' said I, obliging her to rise, and seating her on the locker beside me.
'He is drowned,' she answered.
'When?'
'A long time ago. Seven or eight days ago. I have lost the day. I do not know how long I have been alone. Why don't we go on deck? Is the sea too rough for your boat to leave this wreck?'
'Why, poor young lady,' said I, trying to catch a fair view of her face; but it was too dim for that, and then again she was thickly furred about the neck, and her hat, that seemed of velvet without a brim, sat low. 'I would take you away from this rolling hulk at once if I could. Under God I may yet save you. I am as much shipwrecked as you are. But we needn't despair. This hull dances tightly; she has been washing about now for some days, and I should doubt by the feel of her jumps if there's two foot of water in her hold. Who's that dead woman in the galley?'
'The captain's wife,' she answered, staring at me.
'How came she to perish there?'
'She went with her husband to help him affix a lantern to the bowsprit. He slipped overboard with the light and was drowned. I waited for them here and went to find them, and saw Mrs. Burke lying on the deck. She had fallen and broken her leg. I was too weak to carry or drag her into this cabin and I pulled her into the galley for the shelter of it, and there she lay, and I could not help her,' she cried, clasping her hands with strange, piteous, involuntary motions of her head. 'I don't know whether she died of grief, or from the injury of her fall, or whether the cold killed her. It was black in the galley, and I could not see her. I often called her name, but she never answered me. Oh, what an awful time was that night! I stayed by her until long after I knew she was dead, and then came down here, and have remained in this place ever since—no, three times I have been on deck to look for a ship: it was always snowing—it has been enough to drive me mad,' said she, passing her hand with a wild gesture across her eyes.
'Mad indeed!' said I to myself, all thought of my own situation vanishing in the presence of the anguish of this poor gentle young woman: she had a sweet soft voice: I supposed she had been alone in this labouring hulk for hard upon a week. It was wonderful she should have kept her mind. Indeed it put a sort of craziness even into my seasoned head when I paused in contemplation of her, and realised how it might have been with me had I been alone in this straining, creaking, wallowing fabric with no one aboard beside myself but a dead woman, an atmosphere of stinging cold, nigh twenty hours of blackness every day.
'But you've not been starving all this while?' said I.
'When there was daylight,' she answered, 'I'd get some food and wine from yonder;' she pointed to the pantry. 'I took a little stock to my cabin. Where is your ship? Have you no companions? Take me on deck to see your boat and the vessel,' and she extended her hand.
I saw she had not understood me, and I told her how it had come to pass that I was on board the hulk with her. She listened in silence, saying nothing when I spoke of the men who had been lifted aboard the 'Planter' out of the 'Lady Emma's' long-boat, frozen to death, and nothing whilst I described what I myself had undergone in the jolly-boat. She seemed slow to understand; but at last, when I was done, after continuing to stare at me, for our faces were a sort of glimmer one to the other in that gloom, she gave a shriek, and crying 'There is no hope for me, then! there is no hope for me, then!' buried her face and shook and swayed in a passion of weeping.
I could do nothing but let her cry; yet, knowing there is no better medicine for such misery and fear as hers than action and the sight of it, I got up and went to the pantry for materials to trim and light the lamp. I found oil and bundles of wick, but no matches. I returned and asked the poor weeping young lady to tell me if she knew where I might find a box of matches; she went to a cabin which I supposed was hers, one on the port side, almost aft. I was struck by her walk: not once did she stumble or pause, wild as the play of the plank was. In a few minutes she rejoined me with a box of wax lights, and, unhooking the lamp, I filled and trimmed it and hung it up, and it swung burning brightly.
Now I could see Miss Otway, and as much of her face as showed was remarkable for delicacy and refinement. She was very pale, her eyes light, whether blue or grey I could not then tell; her hair was of a soft, rather dark amber. She had perfectly even small white teeth, but her lips were pale and marked a want of red blood. She was of medium height, but of a shape not to be guessed at, heaped as her form was with clothes. What she wore was very rich and fine, and a little diamond sparkled in each ear. She seemed fragile, in delicate health, just the sort of girl to whom the doctors, despairing of their physic, would recommend the breezes of the world's oceans.
Her eyes were red with weeping, and when I glanced at her after hanging up the lamp I found her staring at me with looks of anxiety and expectation piteous with passion.
'This,' said I, casting up my gaze at the lamp, 'makes the cabin cheerful. I hope there is plenty of oil aboard to keep us in light till we are taken off.'
'When will that be?' she cried.
'Why, perhaps to-day and perhaps tomorrow,' said I. 'My ship can't be far off; her captain is one of the humanest hearts afloat. He thinks three of you are aboard here, and he'll cruise for you. If he don't find us the reason will lie in the weather, not in his not hunting.' Then, looking towards the stove, I exclaimed, 'You'll have been ice cold down in this well. Let's build a fire, there's plenty of coal in the hull: the boatswain Wall said so.'
'Who were the dead?' she exclaimed.
'Two seamen and the steward. A fourth—the doctor—lies fearfully frostbitten. He stands to lose his feet and hands.'
'They wanted to take me with them,' she cried. 'Captain Burke would not let me go; Mrs. Burke was against it: had I gone I might now be safe in your ship.'
'Don't imagine that,' said I, deeply pitying as I looked at her. 'You capable of enduring two nights of exposure in the seas in that open boat! They proved sound friends who kept you here. Here you're alive and you shall be saved—you shall be saved!' I exclaimed heartily.
A faint smile put a look of spirit into her pale face. I went to the stove, and beside it, secured so they should not fetch away, were three or four buckets of coal, but no wood. I was in no temper to rummage the ship for a faggot, and, having noticed a chopper in the pantry, I fetched a bunk-board from the captain's cabin and split it, and presently had a roaring fire.
'Did the crew cook their victuals here before leaving?' said I, noticing a kettle, a frying-pan, and other galley furniture lying near the stove.
She answered that some cooking had been done for the crew in this cabin.
'Pray sit you here,' said I, catching her gently by the wrist and bringing her close to the stove, and seating her on a small cleated sofa beside it. 'I believe a pannikin of hot drink—tea, coffee, or cocoa—and something to eat, will do us both good. Keep you here and thaw through and through whilst I get a kettleful of water.'
She was watching me with some life: the cuddy fire threw a warm, cheerful colour upon her face, and the flames shone in her eyes, filling them as with a dance of courage. When I spoke of fetching some fresh water, she cried out eagerly, extending her arms:
'Oh! mind you do not slide overboard. The decks are deadly. I can't be left alone again.'
I smiled and bade her not fear for me, and picking up the kettle and dropping the chopper into my coat pocket—it was an immensely thick pilot-cloth coat I had found in the captain's cabin and put on—I went on deck.
This was a lead-coloured day with a confusion of ragged black cloud thronging southward where the vapour was crowded and darkening into a look of thunder. I saw no signs of the 'Planter,' nothing but the ice afar. Secretly I had no hope that Captain Parry would persevere in his quest. I made no doubt he would suppose all hands in the jolly-boat had been drowned, which, God knows, was very near the truth; and this would dispirit him, his forecastle working strength would be weakened also, for, saving Wall, the 'Lady Emma's' men were of no use, and I reckoned he would be glad to stick his ship north, clear of the perils of the ice and the blinding snow-storms.
But whether it was because I was a young fellow of a heart naturally lively, or whether because I had escaped a dreadful death, so that the being on board this hull was almost as a rescue, 'tis true I felt no depression, no despondency in any marked degree when I looked round on stepping on deck and saw the leaden, rolling, frosting ocean bare, and viewed the tumbling, dismasted, mutilated hull, white fore and aft, bright with a hundred figures in ice, a most forlorn and dismal object as she bowed her naked bowsprit into the sallow trough, wearily leaning off the slant, with cataracts of foam hissing from the channels and scaling her sloping side. I could not but reflect that, though we were far south, whalers in plenty were to be met with in these seas, and that the hulk was stout and buoyant, and bade fair to last us our time in her, which might not extend beyond the morrow.
So, with a good heart and a vow besides to do my manhood's best to cheer up my poor companion, to make her as comfortable as the means of the hulk and my sailor's judgment would allow, and to help preserve her life in God's own time, I looked along the deck, and then seeing how it must be, went to a scuttlebutt lashed forwards of the port gangway, and finding it half full, went to work on it with the chopper, knocked the hoops off, and the staves tumbled to the deck, letting slip a mass of fresh-water ice, shaped cask-wise. I struck off as much as would fill a kettle, leaving the rest to lie, and returned to the cabin.
'Now,' said I, knowing the tonic worth of work in a time like this, 'melt this for us, if you please. When the kettle boils we'll go to breakfast.'
'Is your ship in sight?' said she, getting up and taking the kettle and ice.
'No,' I answered, 'but something will be coming along soon. This is a great whaling ocean, you know.'
'What is your name?' she asked.
'Ralph Selby,' I replied.
'How did you know my name?'
'Wall, the boatswain, was full of you and Captain Burke and his wife when he was brought aboard out of the long-boat.'
'Yes, yes, I understand,' said she. 'I should have guessed it.'
'There are things to be done whilst you get the kettle to boil,' said I. 'You move about very easily, I see.'
'I am used to this dreadful monotonous rolling,' she answered.
'Can you lay your hands upon what we may want in the pantry?'
'Oh, yes. I know what's there. Shall I boil some coffee?'
'If you please,' said I, smiling to find her talking with a show of life. 'I am going to the captain's cabin to look to one or two matters,' and with that I left her.
I entered the berth I had shifted myself in, and which I knew had been the captain's by its appointments, and first I looked at the chronometers, and, finding them still going, carefully wound them afresh, guessing by the revolutions of the key that they would have stopped shortly. I then sought for and found the ship's papers, and overhauled them to gather the character of the supplies aboard. The cargo consisted of stout, brandy, and whiskey; samples of preserved potatoes and articles of potted food, a quantity of theatrical scenery, builders' stuff, such as doors and window frames; patent fuel, oil cake, india rubber, and certain other commodities. I observed that amongst the samples was a quantity of preserved milk: there was also a consignment of one hundred iron cases, each containing two hundred and fourteen biscuits, weighing one pound each, and specified as six inches square by one and a half inches thick.
In short the paper indicated half a shipload of food and liquor. But I made nothing of this then. Such a plenty was not likely to seem of any use to two people who looked to be taken off the wreck in a few days at the outside, and for whom therefore a single cask of beef, a single barrel of ship's bread, along with the little stock of delicacies I had observed in the pantry, would be more than enough.
I lingered to overhaul the nautical appliances, intending, should a phantom of sun show, to get an observation. It was very gloomy here. I found a small brass clock ticking stoutly, and this I wound up, the plain silver watch in my pocket having stopped when the jolly-boat capsized: the time by the little clock was a quarter after eleven. I went out and set a clock under the skylight to this hour. I guessed it would comfort the girl's eye to see the time. Nothing in such a situation as ours could make one feel more outcast, more hopelessly removed from human reach and sympathy, than a lifeless clock silently telling the same hour always. It would be as though time itself had abandoned one.
The ice was melted and the kettle boiling, and Miss Otway was making a potful of coffee. She had lifted the fiddles and spread a cloth, and put some preserved meat, cheese, jam, biscuit, and the like upon the table. The lamp and the flames in the grate made a light like noon, and, now looking round, I beheld a very rosy interior, a quantity of books, mirrors for decoration, comfortable armchairs and couches, and sundry fal-lals; all designed, no doubt, to render the voyage of Miss Otway cheerful and pleasant.
Turning, she cried out: 'Oh, Mr. Selby, you cannot imagine what it is to see someone—to have someone to speak to. Only God could say how lonely I have felt. The dreadfully long nights; the endless hours of darkness——' Her voice broke and her head drooped.
'No need to tell me what you have undergone,' said I. 'Never in all sea story did any girl suffer upon the ocean as you have. But you've a brave look. You'll keep up your tears now. I'm a sailor and I give you my word we are very well off. We need but patience, and faith in that God who has watched over us both.'
On this she raised her head and viewed me a little while steadily, as one who stares critically to make sure of another.
I took the pot of coffee from her and we seated ourselves. She had suffered so long from what I may truly call a very anguish of loneliness—and, indeed, one had need to be locked up in that same rolling hull, in the blackness and the cold, with the seas roaring outside, and within always the same soul-maddening noise of creaking bulkheads and harshly strained fastenings, to realise what this poor, gentle, delicate lady had endured—that I was sure she'd find a wonderful ease in talking freely. I therefore questioned her whilst we sat eating, and she told me who she was, where she lived, how the wife of the master of the vessel had been her old nurse, with other matters which she herself relates.
She warmed up in talking. I think she found a sort of hope in merely speaking of her father and her home and the gentleman, Mr. Archibald Moore, to whom, but for her health, so she told me, she would have been married some months before the date of her sailing. I so questioned her that the early despair in her manner died out when she talked of her father and sweetheart. I took care to converse as though they were within reach, and the meeting a matter of a little waiting only. In short, my resolution to cheer her mastered her fears and perhaps her convictions; and even whilst we sat I beheld a new life stealing into her, speaking in her raised, hopeful, more eager voice, and softening the haggard, wild look in her eyes.
Presently she put some question which I had to fence with.
'My dread,' she said, 'all the while I was alone here, was ice; the ship lies helpless; I never knew but that an iceberg was close to, and that every next hurl of the sea would dash the wreck against some frozen cliff. Is there any ice in sight?'
'Yes,' I answered, 'but a good way off.'
'Suppose we drift towards an iceberg, what shall we do?'
'No good in supposing at sea,' I said. 'Time enough to deal with a difficulty when it's within hail.'
'Does the hull remain in one place? Or are we being driven by the seas and the wind?'
'If the sun will put his nose out,' said I, with a glance at the thickly snow-coated skylight, 'I'll find out where we are.'
'Do you understand navigation?'
I replied with a grave nod.
'If we are moving at all, which way are we driving, do you think?'
'The sextant will tell us,' said I.
Thus she plied me, straining her poor eyes with consuming anxiety. I answered warily but always on the side of hope.
When I was going on deck she wanted to accompany me, but I bade her stop where she was till I had stretched some lifelines along. When I looked out I saw there was no chance of obtaining an observation. The sky was near, and thick with rolling clouds: the windy dusk had shrunk the sea-girdle, and the distant ice was out of sight: the leaden surge broke in against the snow-soft gloom. No more desolate ocean-picture had I ever viewed; its spirit sank into me in a depression that brought me to an idle halt for some minutes whilst I wrestled with myself. I started, and my very soul shrank within me when I asked myself: If we are not fallen in with what is to become of us? Where are we drifting? Then I plucked up with the reflection that we were in navigated seas; any moment might give me the sight of a sail; and my immediate business therefore was to render our distress a visible thing upon the face of the rolling waters.
I shut the companion doors that the girl might be warm below, and, that I might move with security, went to work to stretch lines along the deck. A great plenty of gear lay frozen all about; I got hold of an end and worked a length into some sort of suppleness, and with much hard labour succeeded in setting up life-lines in short scoops, so as to bring them taut, for the winch and capstan were frozen motionless, and I could do nothing with them.
This business carried me abreast of the galley, where I saw with a sudden recoil once again the body of the captain's wife. She seemed asleep, so fresh, living and breathing she looked, with even a sort of colour in her face, and the expression of her mouth easy and placid. But since she was dead it was fit she should be buried, and as her presence added to the ghastliness of this picture of wreck, and weighed like an assurance of doom upon the spirits, I resolved to turn her over the side without ado; so, with averted face—for I could not bear to look upon her, she lay so life-like: it was like drowning rather than burying her—I took the body under the arms, and with all reverence gently dragged it to a great gap of smashed bulwark, when, just whispering, 'May God receive you, poor woman, and may He have mercy upon those who are left,' I slided her overboard, and instantly quitted the side, not choosing to get a memory of her as she lay floating ere the drenched clothes sucked her under.
Constantly I cast my eyes into the north for a sight of the sun; but he never showed himself. There stood about twelve foot of splintered foremast. I meant to fly a flag by day and hoist a lighted lantern by night; but how to shin up so as to secure a block at the head?
I mused a bit, and then went in search of the carpenter's chest, which I found in the forecastle. It was a huge chest, cleated and lashed down against the bulk-head that divided the men's sea-parlour from the hold, and it lay in such gloom that I could make nothing of it, so I returned to the cabin for a lantern. I found a couple of bull's-eye lamps in the pantry. Whilst I filled and trimmed one of them, Miss Otway came from the stove to the door and stood looking in.
'Can't I help you?' said she.
'No,' said I.
'What are you going to do?'
'I am going to hoist a distress signal.'
'Is there anything in sight?' she shrieked.
I shook my head.
'Why won't you let me help you?' said she. 'It's horrible to be left alone down here. Make me of use. It will do me good to help you.'
But I would not allow her to come on deck merely to look on and be frozen to the marrow by the pouring wind; so, cheerily saying I'd find her employment by-and-by, I carried the lighted bull's-eye on deck and made my way to the forecastle, holding by the life-lines, so that I moved as briskly as if the hull lay quiet.
I quickly found what I immediately wanted, namely, a quantity of long iron spikes. I took a handful of these and a hammer on deck and drove a spike deep into the wood, a little above the other; and thus I made a ladder of spikes, every projection of iron yielding me room for my foot and for a grip of one hand. When I had driven in the spikes as high as was needful, I came down, and after hunting over the gear upon the deck found a small block through which I rove a line that looked like a length of the fore-royal signal halliards. I climbed the mast again with this block and line and, driving a spike into the head of the stump, I secured the block to it and descended for good, this business being finished.
I had taken notice of a flag locker under a grating abaft the wheel; I went to it and found a complete code of Marryatt's signals, a large and small ensign, and a jack. There was too much bunting in the big ensign for such weather as this, and for such winds as might burst upon us at any moment: so I bent on the small ensign to my halliards and ran it, jack downwards, to the head of the stump of foremast, where it flared bravely, chattering like a thing of life.
Yet I found it but a mocking signal after all, when I sent my glance from it round the thick swollen and breaking seas, and noticed that even already the dye of the early night seemed in the air, and that in little more than an hour that streaming, flame-like appeal would, as a call to the eye, be as useless as the stump it blew from.
I was now extremely anxious to ascertain the depth of water in the hold, and went to the pumps to see what was to be done with the ice there. The sounding tube was perhaps solid with ice half-way to the hold; I thought then I would try and draw one of the pumps, and having the pantry chopper in my hand, let fly, bruising and splintering so as to free the bucket. In the midst of my chopping Miss Otway called out. I stopped and saw her head in the companion way.
'Oh,' she cried, with a note in her voice that sounded almost like joy, pointing with a gesture of rapture to the inverted ensign, 'that will bring help to us! That will be seen for miles and miles. How clever! How did you manage to climb that slippery mast?' And then, catching sight of the spikes, she exclaimed, 'I see. I see. It's wonderfully done.'
'It's too cold for you on deck,' said I, scarcely keeping grave over this girlish praise. 'Remain below in the warmth. No use taking a voyage for your health only to lose your toes and fingers as your doctor has.'
But paying no heed to this, she stepped out of the companion way, and putting her thickly-gloved hand upon one of the life-lines, came to where I was letting fly at the pump and watched me.
It was the best light I had yet viewed her in; and now indeed I perceived that she was a very delicate, sweet-looking young lady, about two-and-twenty years of age, pale, but of a transparency of complexion that made a beauty of her pallor; nor were her eyes wanting in expression, though they would be too light to faithfully reflect the deeper and subtler passions and sensations of her spirit.
I thought her the most refined-looking lady I had ever seen; which perhaps is not saying much, seeing how many of my years had been passed upon the ocean. I saw the quality and breeding of her in her face and heard it in her voice, and I think anyone, no matter how inexperienced in such things, but would, on looking at her, have said to himself, this is an English lady.
After chopping and hammering for some time, I freed the bucket and drew the pump; and, the sounding-rod lying handily by, I dropped it, and after several casts, so hard did I find it to get the level of the water betwixt the swift abrupt rolls of the hull, I made a little more than a foot and a half. I was astonished, but wonderfully heartened. Here was a hull that had not been pumped out for eight or ten days: she had been straining heavily in the hollow hour after hour: and yet there was no more water in her than a single spell of a watch on deck at the pumps might free her of!
I refitted the pump and fell to work at the brake and brought up some water.
'Let me help you,' said Miss Otway.
'It won't hurt you,' said I, and brought a coil of rope across the deck for her to stand on, that her feet might be clear of the water as it washed with the slant of the planks. We then went to work: the water bubbled, the clank of the brake ran a noise of life through the hulk; the exercise flushed the girl's face, and, in a pause for breath, I told her it would do her more good than sitting by the fire.
In that same pause whilst she breathed quickly she glanced with a sudden look of pain and consternation in the direction of the galley, and exclaimed:
'The body of my poor old nurse lies there. I had forgotten her.'
'I buried her,' said I.
'Where?'
I told her. She was shocked and her eyes filled, and she turned her head to hide her face.
'It was not a thing to keep,' said I.
'Oh no,' she cried, looking round at me, eagerly and yet piteously. 'I don't mean that. You threw her into the sea as she lay—without a prayer——'
'No,' said I, shortly.
She viewed me a little gratefully. I grasped the brake: she put her hand upon it, and we fell to afresh.
We worked in this fashion for above half an hour, and then Miss Otway, glowing with the labour and in no wise distressed by it, saving that her breathing was quick, went below. I fetched the telescope and stayed to carefully search the horizon before it fell dark. But point the tubes as I would they gave me nothing. The near sea-line tumbled dimly in long ragged wings of dark vapour, which as they lifted with the wind stretched overhead like lengths of smoke; and betwixt them I spied a higher platform of cloud, mouse-coloured here and there as though touched by some wild stormy light. I saw no ice, but the wind blew as though ice were close aboard: the sting of it was insufferable when you faced it standing. A noise of rattling sometimes came from the forecastle as though the spray froze in leaping, and fell with the weight of hail in the tropics, and already the pump we had been plying was as thick and hard bound as the other.
And still I lingered, not indeed with the hope of sighting a sail before the blackness fell upon us, but with the idea of making some sort of blind guess at the drift of the hull. The strong breeze blew out of the north, and the tall coils of sea ran in wide flashings from that quarter, but the large ocean swell was about north-west. I was not very well acquainted with these waters and scarcely knew what to recollect of the currents hereabouts. I was aware that the set of the ice was to the northwards. But then the bergs struck deep root into motions of the sea which had no influence atop; so that there might be very well a surface-trend to the southward through wind and surge and swell, when, some fathoms under, the body of the water was slowly streaming in another direction.
A dismal picture with the sadness of despair coming into me out of it, when I looked at that square of bunting flaming in mute appeal from the stump-head to the blind horizon! But we had life, and so there must be hope, and rallying my spirits with a will, I strode the length of the life-line to the halliards, hauled the flag down, and went to the cabin to find and trim a lantern to hoist in its place.
I left a light burning brightly at the mast-head: the wild meteoric dance of that gleam was a sort of hope: no ship sighting it but would guess from the rapidity of its oscillations that it danced on an open boat, or shone from some short height upon a dismasted hull.
The wind was freshening with a long deep moan in the rush of it through the flying dusk when I left the deck: but I gathered from a general atmospheric hardening all round, a firmer line in the curl of the surge, a distincter flash in the foam of it, that it was to be a clear night, with perhaps a star or two by-and-by. The hull made good play: she was like a live thing; and no helm and no fragment of canvas vexing her, she took up her own position and wallowed dryly, save that now and again in a sharp pitch she'd meet some lateral run of sea and whiten in the air forward into the look of a snow-storm: but the froth mostly blew clear, and the water when it came streaming aft quickly froze into the snow.
Miss Otway sat beside the stove: she had removed her hat, otherwise was wrapped up to the throat in furs; her yellow hair was shot with amber light when the swing of the lamp flashed the radiance upon it, but her looks were white, and something wild with grief, anxiety and fear. She asked me if there was any ice in sight.
'None that I can see in the dusk,' I answered.
'I'm all the while dreading the ice,' said she. 'I should not fear this high sea and our lying dismasted in it, if it were not for the ice.'
'There's none near to hurt us just now,' said I.
'When I first came into this cabin,' she exclaimed, 'in the Thames, a chill ran through me that was cold as ice itself. It was warm, and yet I shivered as though freezing. Was it an omen? The memory has been haunting me in my time of loneliness here. A little while before we were dismasted we sighted a huge iceberg that was like a cathedral: it had a beach of frozen foam, and the snow whirled in white dust on one side of it against the dark clouds. Oh, Mr. Selby,' she cried, 'think of this helpless hull striking against such a mountain of ice as that, and our getting upon it and perishing with the cold—the awful cold!'
'Why, Miss Otway,' said I with a bustle of voice and manner as I got up to set the kettle on the stove. 'This sort of talk is good for neither of us. Do you believe in omens? But don't be scared till danger's come, and not then. There's plenty to eat and drink in this ship and I'm for faring heartily for the sake of hoping heartily, and working heartily, should work be wanted. Come, you shall fry some ham; it's my turn to prepare the table.'
Presently we were seated as before. I talked more reassuringly than I had ventured on earlier, for now that her hat was off I saw her face very clearly, how refined she was, how gentle, how well nurtured; my very heart pitied her: I felt as though commanded by God Himself to take charge of her, to watch over her, to keep her heart up; I can't express indeed how she appealed to me out of her gentleness and refinement, the horrible situation she was in, the unspeakably dreadful time she had passed through alone.
And often I would catch her in the intervals of our speech eyeing me under drooping lids with an eager searching look of enquiry, as though she would comfort her poor little self by finding out what sort of a man was I who had come into this rolling hull where she was alone? I wished her to find out quickly that she might be easy; but we both needed time, I to act and she to discover.
I cleared the table and went on deck. The lantern burned brightly. The night lay black, but the atmosphere was hard as when I had gone into the cabin, and you found a distance in the gloom. All was as well with the hull as one could dare hope for, and, closing the companion doors, I re-entered the cabin.
It was about six o'clock then. I lighted a bull's-eye and went into the captain's berth for the log-book which I had noticed upon the table, and to overhaul a bag of charts. I brought the log-book and the chart I wanted to the cabin table: Miss Otway seeing me at this, came opposite and stood there looking on. I wished to see the last entry in the log-book; which done, I opened the chart, and was startled to observe that, supposing the drift of the vessel to have been continuously to the southward, as somehow I imagined it was, that group of islands called the South Orkneys, stretching some sixty-five miles east and west, could not be farther than twenty-five or thirty leagues.
'Are you finding out where we are?' said Miss Otway.
'I shall know exactly when I get an observation,' said I, and carried the log-book and chart back into the captain's cabin.
But I confess my heart was sunk. To be sure, throughout I had vaguely known our place—could have named it within fifty or eighty miles perhaps—yet the business I had been about ever since I woke up stopped me from realising till I looked on the chart, when of course I understood that if our drift was south we stood to go to pieces upon land that would be the most God-forsaken on the wide face of the oceans of the globe, if it were not that, hard by them, covering a range of eight or nine degrees of longitude, lay groups of rocks with a range of mountainous continent stretching due south (magnetic) even more desolate, naked and iron-sheathed.
But we were not ashore yet: nor could I know certainly that our drift was south; and then there was to-morrow's daylight with its hope of succour.
I sat beside the stove and talked with Miss Otway. She spoke of the voyage and of the apparition which had haunted the memory and depressed the spirits of Captain Burke down to the hour of his death. I sought to amuse her by relating certain experiences of my own; and she forgot her situation whilst listening to some of my yarns. The truth is I had gone to sea at the age of thirteen and had followed the life fourteen years, during which I had served in several capacities in many kinds of vessels, though my experiences lay chiefly in the India and China trade. I had plenty then to talk about: it amused me to yarn, and she listened with more life and intelligence than I should have expected in one with so fixed an expression of dismay, of hearkening consternation and mourning.
After satisfying myself with a look around on deck, I returned, and going to the bookshelves, read the names of some of the volumes. It was a good collection of books: the best of the poets and novelists were there, with odds and ends of scrappy reading like Hone's and D'Israeli's. Here I found dear old 'Peter Simple,' and carrying the tale to the stove, I read bits aloud, and once or twice she laughed. Then something suggesting the topic, I got telling her about shipwrecks, my notion being to let her understand how much better off were we than others who had suffered from disasters at sea. I talked of the raft of the 'Medusa,' described that pathetic, lamentable scene in the round-house of the 'Abergavenny'—the wax-lights, the captain clasping his daughters to him—related the loss of the 'Amphitrite,' as told to me by a man I had sailed with who had been one of the survivors of that most tragic of shipwrecks, which littered the Boulogne sands with scores of bodies of handsome, finely built young women.
'Are there instances of people,' she asked, 'who have been wrecked upon icebergs and survived?'
I spun her a few yarns of polar experiences in this way: of Russian seamen found floating on ice: of a whaler half full of men stranded on a berg and floating in her giant cradle down into open waters where she was boarded and the people taken out of her.
'How long had they been locked up?'
'Several months.'
'Were their sufferings great?'
Not knowing, I had to invent, and to cheer her, said: 'Oh, no. They kept up good fires, had plenty of beef and tobacco, heartened themselves by singing songs, telling stories, playing at games of their own invention, and fashioning ornaments out of whale ivory. It came right with them. When things come right it's the same as if they never were wrong. Nothing counts but the loss of time whilst you're waiting for the settlement. How soon, when you get well, you forget that you were ill! How quickly you forget the weather! Who's it says it's always too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry, but that God so contrives it, at the end of the year it's all the same? Keep up your heart, Miss Otway, and reflect that when this is ended and you're safe ashore with your people it'll be no more than an experience to talk about.'
'Yes,' said she, with a faint smile, 'it will be all right when I am ashore; but who's that other person who says, philosophy triumphs over past and future ills, but present ills triumph over philosophy?'
This passed my plain understanding, and I let the subject go.
I went on deck for more ice to melt and boil, and found it blowing pretty strong. A high sea, ridged in lines of ebony against the light of their own foam, and melted in roaring snowdrifts under the hull that was topping them with a wonderful buoyancy. I looked for a star, but all was sweeping blackness aloft, save the point of light at the stump-head.
Knowing this hard heave of sea must certainly give us a steady trend southward, helped as the hull was by the blast every time she soared into the icy howl of it, I fetched a bull's-eye, and observing by the binnacle that the hulk's head pointed about east by north, I went to the starboard rail and overlay it, staring with desperate searching eyes into the hard gloom till I was almost frozen. But I could see nothing that looked like ice, no faintness, no spectral sheen, all that glared was foam running from the arched back of the surge; so I went below, where I boiled some coffee, and, shortly after eight, Miss Otway withdrew to her berth.
I took the bull's-eye to find me more clothes in the captain's cabin, and when I was wrapped up to the bigness of a Greenland's-man, I returned to the stove, dimming the lamp to a light that was just enough to see by, and lay down upon a couch. Presently I was startled out of a reverie by seeing a great rat come close to the fire, as though for the warmth. Very quietly putting my hand in my pocket, I pulled out my clasp knife, which I opened; the blade was dagger-shaped. Then, quick as lightning, I lanced the weapon at the beast and half severed its head. This pleased me, for in the course of our talks Miss Otway had said that in her time of loneliness, a huge rat had come into the cabin and looked at her till she was motionless with disgust and fear. I could not know, however, that this was the rat that had so served her; though it made one less aboard, and I dropped it into a coal-bucket to chuck over the side next day.
The sight of the bleeding, lifeless beast set my thoughts running on the hours the girl, whilst alone, had spent in this hull, and I wondered when I looked at the rat and listened to the shrieking and grinding noises, that she had not days before gone off her head. I guessed that her mind had been cast in a heroic mould; never else could she have come through such a term of loneliness with her wits all right. Less had driven strong men overboard, gaping madmen.
Whilst I sat following the wild and flying motions of the hull, testing them by sensation to gather if the buoyancy diminished, I was addressed. I looked round with a sudden surprise that was nearly fright: it was Miss Otway, furred and clothed from head to foot as she had left me.
'Are you going to sit up all night?' she exclaimed.
'I'm going to sit here,' I answered. 'I shall snooze at intervals.'
'Let me watch whilst you sleep,' said she.
'There's nothing to watch,' I answered, 'nothing to keep a look-out for.'
'A ship might see our lantern and come down to us.'
'She could do nothing in this weather.'
'But to think of being asleep whilst a vessel is coming down to see what the light means! Think of her hailing, getting no answer and passing on. It might be our only chance.'
I told her that might happen even though we both kept watch all night in the cabin. How, down here, should we hear a hail from the water? We'd need to keep a look-out on deck, which would kill her quickly and me soon after.
'Pray go and rest,' said I, 'and trust me to see anything that may come along and to hear anything that may hail.'
She looked reluctant, very white, her eyes dim and large with tragic expectancy as though she never knew but that in the next minute something frightful would happen.
I picked the rat up by the tail. 'Is this your friend?' said I.
She shrieked, believing it alive; then, shuddering and shuddering, staggered somewhat blindly in the direction of the cabin.
I jumped up and supported her, encouraging her by every promise and hope my brain could frame.
'You have not slept for nights,' said I, pausing at her door. 'Best now that I am here, if only that you may have strength enough to leave the hull and health enough to carry you to your home.'
She had removed her gloves: I grasped her ice-cold hand and returned to my couch.
The night crept away. I dozed at intervals, visiting the deck perhaps half a dozen times. In the morning watch I slept soundly upon the couch by the stove, and when I awoke it was nine by the clock under the skylight, still black as thunder, and the hull rolling heavily. I was cold to the heart, and before quitting the cabin kindled a fire to boil some water for a hot drink, then went up the steps to take a look.
It was still blowing fresh, but the wind had shifted north-west, and the sky was a clear, sparkling heaven of stars from sea-line to sea-line, the sea running in steady hills of ink to where you saw the horizon throbbing close under the pale lights of the night low down, so clear was the gale. The mast-head lamp burned dimly; but it would be daybreak shortly. I stared around the sea, and saw nothing north and west and east, but my sight going south was arrested by a low, irregular, dim line: it rose with the heave of the hull, and it was as far off as the horizon. It looked like the sheen of a long face of coast covered with snow: it was a mere attenuated film of faintness stretched where sky and water met, and I looked and looked, believing it a bank of cloud that would dissolve whilst I watched; but it hung steady, and still it was so elusive that sometimes I saw it, and when the hull sprang from the trough again it was gone; and yet again, when she roared to the height of a surge, it was there.
Well, daylight was at hand to resolve it. For my part I had no doubt it was ice; indeed it had astonished me to find these seas so open at this time of the year; only, if that sheen out in the morning darkness under the stars was ice, the drift had been ours to carry us to a sight of it: which signified a slide of keel running into knots: for that steamlike hovering down there had not been in sight two or three hours earlier, when my eye, as now, followed the hard curls of sea working into distance, though the sky was not starry.
I went below, trimmed the lamp, and prepared the table for breakfast. Whilst I was thus occupied, Miss Otway appeared. She came straight to the stove and held her hands to the blaze, and asked me when it would be daylight. I answered, 'Within an hour.'
'This almost perpetual darkness,' she exclaimed, 'is one of the most awful parts of this dreadful time.'
'I hope you slept well?'
'Yes, I slept soundly, and awoke only about a quarter of an hour ago. What is the time?' I named the hour. 'You've seen no signs of a ship during the night, I fear?'
'Nothing. It has blown hard. It still blows a fresh breeze of wind. This is the most seawardly vessel that was ever launched. It is lucky for us her cargo is a light one. Think of her laden to her chain-plate bolts with some dead weight of iron goods. She would have been under water day and night, and by this time have ceased to be a hull.'
'When were you last on deck, Mr. Selby?'
'I'm just now from the deck.'
'Is there anything in sight?'
'I'm waiting for daybreak to make sure.'
My answer caused her to make a step from the stove, and to advance her white face whilst she stared at me.
'Is there ice near us?' she asked.
'I find an appearance in the southward that may prove ice,' said I. 'But what else are you to expect in these seas?' I added carelessly. 'Here we are somewhere down in sixty degrees, and, since I have been aboard, the horizon has been almost clear. What shall we have for breakfast? Will you boil some coffee whilst I search the pantry? Suppose daylight should reveal ice—it may also show us a whaler fishing in the thick of the bergs!'
And assuming a cheerful, bustling manner I lighted a bull's-eye, whistling some sea tune the while, and went into the pantry, where, after a brief overhaul of the closet and shelves, I laid hands upon a tin of herrings, sardines, and some kind of delicate sausage.
'I am making free,' said I, putting the stuff upon the table.
'These things were laid in for you. I'll take an inventory of what's left by-and-by; I allow that everything for cabin use will be stowed in the lazarette. When you're transhipped the delicacies must go along with you. The whaleman's our chance, and his cupboard has no reputation for dainties.'
I waited for her to sit, attended upon her, then fell to myself. But all the while we remained seated she was straining her eyes at the porthole facing her, then turning to the porthole behind her as though she thought through the gleaming ebony of the glass, white with the foam it rose from, to behold the ice I had spoken about.
Day broke before I had breakfasted; it lay white in the snow on the skylight ere I rose, and the grey of it in the cabin windows was growing blue when I went on deck accompanied by Miss Otway. And now I looked at what, for the hour past, I had dreaded to see. The day had dawned in cold splendour; the sun was flashing in rose, at this moment perhaps two degrees above the horizon; a number of small clouds were floating near his face and looked like bits of gilt scaling off the rayless target-like luminary; otherwise the heavens sloped clear in a sheer vault of deeply dark blue, under which ran the sea of the rich hue of the sky, but full of gleams and the snow of melting crests, and here and there spaces of an exquisite ice-like green snaking currentwise over the heaving waters.