In this appalling situation we remained for ten days before any alteration in the position either of the brig or of the two icebergs was perceptible.
We missed our lost companions sorely, for the death of a shipmate in his hammock, or by falling overboard, makes a great impression on the secluded survivors at sea. His watery grave is in itself a fearful mystery, the depth of which we cannot realize or fathom. No stone or mound marks the place where he lies; he is hurled, as it were, soul and body into eternity, and blotted out of existence like the bubbles that break round the place where he sinks.
During these ten days Hartly was indefatigable in his efforts to keep his crew employed, and their spirits from depression. Lest provisions might become scarce, and our water fall short, he had portions of the seals, the hideous paws especially, cleaned, prepared, and pickled, while the snow and ice which adhered to the rigging was boiled down, and added to our supply of fresh water. To save our fuel, the fire for these purposes was fed with the fat of the seals, and the blubber (so long as it lasted) of the gigantic walrus I had slain.
The seal "flippers," hairy and bloody, like the claws of a baboon hewn off at the wrist, made a very cannibal-like repast when fricasseed. Remembering how I had shuddered on seeing such repulsive carrion sold at a penny per bunch in the streets of St. John, I could scarcely digest such a meal; though Cuffy Snowball, when he made them into sea-pies, rolled his eyes and grinned from ear to ear while declaring his handiwork "de berry best dish in de 'varsal creation!"
Our rigging was carefully inspected and prepared for any emergency, as if we expected to make sail on the brig at a moment's notice; but how was she ever to reach her natural element again?
On this subject, though we were wearied of it, conjecture became utterly lost!
Still, like a brave fellow, Hartly left nothing unsaid or undone to keep up our hopes, though his own sank at times. Save the watch on deck, he nightly assembled all hands in the cabin for companionship and also for warmth. There he sang songs, (while Cuffy accompanied him on the violin,) and told stories, or read aloud, and spoke again and again to the poor crest-fallen seal-fishers (who thought only of their wives and families) of their profits on the voyage, and the reward they would receive from the Governor of Newfoundland for destroying the obnoxious Black Schooner; and of that affair he drew up a statement, to be attested by all on board.
His example was invaluable, for he had somehow acquired the greatest influence over all his crew. "It is pleasing to see a family, a farm, or establishment of any kind (says Lorimer, in his "Letters to a Young Merchant-Mariner") when, from long servitude, the assistants and domestics are considered as humble friends or distant relations; and independently of the kind feelings thereby occasioned and cherished, all seems to prosper with them. Such a state of things is by no means unfrequent in this happy country, Britain; and I see no good reason why the same attachment to the master and to each other, should not be more frequent on shipboard; indeed, considering the dangers they are continually sharing, one is almost surprised that they can separate so readily. How to obtain a kind but powerful influence over, and a devoted attachment from, a crew, is a secret worth our deep consideration;" and Robert Hartly eminently possessed this secret, which, in the desperation of our circumstances, proved a priceless gift to him and to us.
Every night one story or yarn produced others, and so the time passed on, and peril was half forgotten.
Most of these narratives were gloomy enough, however. They told of ships whose crews were all poisoned save one man, by partaking of a mysterious fish, or whose crews turned pirates, and slaughtered all who opposed them; or of men who were marooned on lonely isles, and left to perish miserably.
Hans Peterkin, an Orkneyman, could tell us of queer shadowy craft, manned by spectres, demons, and evil spirits, who displayed lights to lure vessels ashore on Cape Wrath and the rocks of Ultima Thule, like the wreckers of Cornwall and Brittany.
Then Paul Reeves matched them by a curious tale of an enchanted island in the Indian Seas, on which the lights of churches and houses could be seen at night, and where the tolling of bells and the song of vespers could be heard, with many other sounds; but lo! as the ship approached, the isle would seem to recede till it sank into the sea and reappeared astern!
Then Tom Hammer, the carpenter, gave us a yarn of an ice-cliff in Hudson's Bay that long overhung a whaler he was once serving in. One day the cliff was changed in form, for a mighty piece had fallen from it into the sea; and wonderful to relate, there was seen a man's figure among the ice—a man imbedded up there a hundred feet above the sea. Telescopes were at once in requisition, and they made out that he was frozen—dead—hard and fast; but by his dress—a red doublet, trunk-hose, and a long black beard—they supposed he was some ancient mariner; and some there were on board who vowed he was no other than the famous voyager Hendrick Hudson, who discovered the bay, and was marooned by his mutinous crew in 1610.
But one night, when we were all nestling close together, muffled in our pea-jackets, and smoking, to promote warmth, a narration of Hartly's far exceeded all that preceded it in interest, being a veritable occurrence, and by its barbarity singular.
"My grandfather," said he, "as thoroughbred an old salt as ever faced a stiff topsail breeze, was skipper of the Dublin, a smart little ship of three hundred and fifty tons, pierced for twelve six-pounders, being a letter of marque that fought her own way when the way upon the high seas was somewhat more perilous than it is now.
"About the autumn of the year 1784—now a long time ago, my lads—she was chartered as an emigrant ship for Canada, and sailed from the Mersey with one hundred and eighty poor folks, half of whom were women and children, going to seek their bread in another laud; and a troublesome voyage the old gentleman had with them, for foul weather came on; many of his spars were knocked away, and then a heavy sickness broke out among the emigrants. Their little ones died daily and were hove overboard, till those whose children survived became wild with fear and apprehension that theirs would follow next; and, to make matters worse, there was no doctor on board; for this was in 1784, as I told you, and the lives of the poor were not worth much to any one, save themselves, in those old times.
"Well, my grandfather was a soft-hearted old fellow, and his heart bled for the poor people. His sick bay was crammed, and the sailmaker's needle was never idle, but made one little shroud after another till the man's heart sickened of the dreary task. So, when foul weather mastered the Dublin, and blew her out of her course, the old gentleman put his helm a-lee and bore up for the Canaries, which were once called the Fortunate Isles, and came in sight of Hierro, the most westerly of these islands, on the 6th December, 1784. He had his ensign flying; but knowing well what slippery devils the Spaniards are, and that the Dublin had rather a man-o'-war cut in her spars and bends, he hoisted a white flag at his foremast head, and so came peacefully to anchor about sunrise.
"The morning was beautiful; the shore was desolate, but fertile and green. The poor emigrants were mad with joy at the sight of land, and in an hour or two he set them all ashore, about a hundred in number, on the smooth sandy beach. Many of them were women with infants in their arms or at their skirts—men supporting their young wives or old parents; and new life and health seemed returning to them as they rambled on the sunny shore, or drank of the pure springs that gushed from the rocks, and as they pulled the green leaves and aromatic flowers, or the broad plantain leaves which always flourish best near the sea.
"Meanwhile, my grandfather had triced up his portlids, and a gang with buckets and swabs were busy cleaning, airing, and fumigating every place fore and aft, ere the live cargo were shipped again at night, when an unforeseen catastrophe took place——"
"A catastrophe!" said I; "the ship was blown out to sea?"
"Not at all," said Hartly, refilling his pipe.
"What then?"
"His poor people were all dead ere nightfall."
"Murdered?"
"Aye, in cold blood, as you shall hear. They were all enjoying themselves—the children were playing, gambolling and tumbling over each other in heaps on the warm sands; the women were busy washing, dressing and arranging each other's hair; the men smoking their pipes, and talking, perhaps regretfully, of that jolly old England they had left for ever and, it might be hopefully, of the new shores they were bound for, when a long line of bright bayonets that glittered ominously in the sunshine, appeared suddenly upon the steep rocks which completely enclosed the sandy cove, and three companies of lubberly Spanish militia commanded by Don Juan Briez de Calderon, encircled them on all sides, save towards the sea, where the Dublin lay at anchor about three-quarters of a mile off. The reason of this military display I shall explain.
"False rumours of a plague said to be raging in Europe had reached these isles, and filled the selfish and superstitious Spanish colonists with such alarm, that Señor the Governor, fearing, or pretending to fear, the strangers might bring it among them, instantly convened la Mesa del Consejo—his council-board, as they call it in their lingo—and quietly proposed to cut off all these voyagers root and branch!
"Some of the councillors vigorously opposed a course so revolting, and pled the cause of the poor Inglesos, the rights of religion and humanity, and called upon Don Juan to remember the honour of the king he represented, and that he was the lineal descendant of that adventurous Don Diego de Hierro, of Old Castile, who had captured the island in the days of Ferdinand the Catholic, King of Arragon, bestowing in memory thereof his own illustrious name upon it, and so forth.
"Señor Don Juan did not reply, but knit his fierce black brows, lighted a cigar, and puffed away with true Castilian imperturbability.
"'Señor el Gobernador,' urged a venerable Spanish friar, 'these poor people who have landed on our shores, after a long voyage apparently, we know not from whence, have been forced hither, as our mariners aver, by those recent storms which have swept over the Canary Isles——'
"'What is all this to me?' growled Don Juan.
"'Simply, Señor, that it will be alike cruel and unjust to inflict the penalty of death upon them all for this.'
"'Padre, they have transgressed the laws of Hierro,' thundered the Governor.
"'Laws temporarily made by yourself—laws with which they can in no way be acquainted. If they have sickness among them, let us send tents and supplies; but guard the avenues to the ground we may allot them, until they are all re-embarked with their wives and little ones. I will myself go among them,' continued the old friar, warming in his merciful advocacy, 'and say that you will graciously afford them succour, until the orders of the most illustrious señor, our Governor-General at Teneriffe, can be obtained.'
"'Silencio!' thundered Don Juan, and rudely threw the remains of his cigar in the old man's face; 'order out our troops—we shall march instantly and exterminate these dangerous vermin!'
"The drums were beat, and the militia, three hundred strong, with the valiant Don Juan at their head, marched to where the poor visitors, ignorant of the horrors that were impending, were still amusing themselves upon the beach. Some were gathering the brilliant shells, flowers, and leaves; others were filling little kegs and jars with the pure spring water that poured over the ledges of rock. The women were sitting in groups, with their children gambolling about them; others were gazing sadly on the evening sea, as if calculating the number of miles that lay between them and their old home; or the miles they had yet to traverse ere they found a new one amid the forests of the western world.
"To gather them all together, the villanous Briez de Calderon procured an empty sugar puncheon, and tossed it over the summit of the cliffs on which his men were posted. From thence, with a loud noise, it rolled to the beach below. Curiosity made all the loiterers rush towards it, as many of them thought it contained food, clothes, or other necessaries for them. The men gave a hurrah, and waved their hats in hearty English jollity to the crafty Spaniards, and gathered with the women and children around the puncheon.
"'Fire!' cried Don Juan.
"Savage as they were, the Spaniards paused a moment; but Don Juan was the first to fire a musket, and observing that his men were still reluctant, he knocked one down with the butt-end, and threatened the rest with death if they disobeyed him.
"'Fire!' he shouted again, and then on the unsuspecting crowd there was poured the concentrated volley of these three hundred miscreants; thus, in ten minutes the dreadful massacre was complete. On the beach all were lying dead and drenched in blood—husband and wife, parent and child—all save one woman, who, with her infant, concealed herself in the rocks, and her husband, who, with a ball lodged in his arm, sprang into the sea and endeavoured to swim to the ship.
"Failing in this, faint with loss of blood, weary and despairing, he turned about and sought the shore, where he was hewn to pieces by sabres as he clung to a seaweedy rock. On beholding this dreadful sight, his poor wife, who was concealed in a cleft of the cliffs not far off, uttered a shriek of dismay, which drew the murderers, now flushed with blood, towards her.
"She was soon dragged out, and with his own dagger Don Juan stabbed her to the heart, and then killed the child, which he tossed into the sea beside its father!
"Paralysed by rage and astonishment, my grandfather and his crew saw all this from the deck of the Dublin. They could see the red musketry flashing from the rocks, filling all the little cove with slaughtered corpses and smoke. They could hear the shrieks that were borne over the water on the evening wind; and after a time, when all was still, they could see the beach strewn with dead bodies, and in possession of the Spaniards, who were stripping them, and who brought up field-pieces to fire on the Dublin.
"He hoisted his anchor and bore away; but on coming abreast of the capital with British colours flying above the Spanish ensign reversed, he pitched a few shot into it from his carronades, sunk three craft at their anchors, with all their crews on board, and then bore away for England, and there was an end of it. We were at peace with Spain; but I never heard that satisfaction was given, or the atrocity revenged. That is my yarn, lads."*
* The papers of the time fully corroborate Hartly's story. "The news of this barbarity," says the Annual Register for 1785, "has been received at Teneriffe by all ranks of people with the deepest concern and regret, and by none more than the Governor-General, who deplores it extremely. He could not at first give credit to it; but was at last convinced of the fatal truth, by letters from the wretch Briez de Calderon himself. Exasperated to the highest pitch, he has given a commission to an officer of rank to go over to Hierro to take cognizance of this tragical affair,"—of which we hear no more.
Though our apprehensions were great, our chief sufferings were from cold in that lofty and listless situation; yet our dread of impending dangers was so keen, our hope of a change so great, that even the oldest seamen on board never turned into their berths or bunks at night but with their clothes on, "to be ready," as they said, "to turn up with all standing at a moment's notice."
Hartly, who was rather scientific and was wont to expatiate upon the theory of storms, and so forth, endeavoured to account for the intensity of the frost, which I deemed a somewhat unnecessary illustration to us who were on the summit of an iceberg.
"The thermometer—" he would begin.
"Ugh! don't speak of the thermometer, Bob," said I, one day, when trembling in every fibre, as we endeavoured to tread to and fro on the sloping deck. "It is so cold now, that the atmosphere can never be colder!"
"So you think; but wait until—"
"When?"
"—we are a few degrees further north, perhaps in the centre of an ice-field, and then you will know what cold is! But the degree of it depends upon the power of the wind, after passing over snow-covered wastes, rather than the actual state of the mercury;—that was all I was about to remark."
I was too miserable to thank him for the information, but said:
"I do not think our vicinity to that other atrocious iceberg adds to the pleasantness of our temperature."
"Of course not—but see," he added, raising his voice, "by Heaven, it is oscillating!"
Just as he spoke, the cold, glistening, and splintered peaks of the mighty berg seemed to topple over and sink into the sea, as it reversed with a stunning roar—its former base coming upward, and imparting an entirely new form to it.
All on board stood gazing at this reversal, which is a common occurrence with icebergs; but it filled us with a horror of what our fate would be should a similar capsize occur with us, for now the berg on which we were wedged heaved and surged in the foaming eddy made by the other.
"Icebergs have usually nine times as much of them below water as appears above it," said I.
"Yes, and at that ratio, if this one of ours reversed, we should find ourselves in a moment somewhere about six hundred and forty feet below the surface of the sea," replied Hartly, with a grim smile.
"Ay," added Paul Reeves, "and our poor little Leda would be adhering, keel upmost and trucks down, like a barnacle at the bottom of this vast floating island."
On the tenth day of our imprisonment, as I have elsewhere said, after rain had been falling all night in such torrents that we had battened all the hatches fore and aft, on day breaking, we found a very perceptible alteration in the position of the brig. From careening over to port, she had gradually righted, and now rested fairly on her keel, with her masts upright. The summit of the berg had again become soft and pulpy on its surface, and the Leda seemed to sink lower by her own weight every minute, while the ice on each side sloped upward, leaving her in a kind of valley; and so rapidly did this state of matters go on, that in four hours the sides were nearly eight feet above our deck, and suggested a new terror, that they might collapse—close over, and freeze us in more hopelessly than ever.
As the rain abated, the berg began palpably to oscillate, that portion of it which lay under the brig's head, however, became depressed, and then the rainwater and sludge that had collected in the valley where we lay, poured over its icy brow like a cataract, and we heard it thundering, as it fell into the sea below.
"She moves—the brig moves! she forges ahead!" exclaimed Hartly, in an excited voice, as the berg careened over more and more, and we all stood pale, breathless, speechless, and rooted to the deck, expecting a capsize that would bury her masts downward in the sea.
This change of position continued to progress, but very slowly.
There were about sixteen feet of ice from the cutwater of the Leda to the edge of the berg, and about forty from her stern-post to the edge in the other direction.
"If this depression forward continues slowly," said Hartly, "we shall be floating in the blue in two hours, my lads; clear away two hawsers, an ice-anchor, and kedge. Stand by with the capstan-bars, cast loose the jib and foretopsail, to lift her head a bit, if the wind serves when she slips off, and then stand by the braces to sheet home!"
These orders recalled us to life, for they filled us with hope, and inspired us with activity.
Led by Hartly, Hans Peterkin and two other adventurous fellows named Abbot clambered along the soft ice astern, and fixed there a kedge with our strongest hawser, which was to be eased gently off the capstan, as the brig continued to forge downward and a-head, for her motion was a double one. It was perilous work for these four brave men, as the rain had rendered the face of the berg slippery as wetted glass; but Hartly was full of inherent courage, and in the excitement of the moment forgot all his superstition about his ring, the gift of the reputed witch Jensdochter.
He was scarcely on board again, ere the depression continued so rapidly that the entire hull of the brig lay at an angle of forty-five degrees from the line of the water below—her bows being yet twenty feet distant from it.
This was a momentous crisis for us all!
A deathlike stillness was every where on board; on our pale lips, as we grasped the shrouds or belaying pins to preserve our footing; on the mighty isle of ice, from the shelving summit of which we were about to be precipitated; and from the lonely sea below, there came no sound; at least, we heard only its wavelets rippling against the cold, glistening, and glacial sides of our prison.
Slowly the brig moved, as if to protract that time of agonizing suspense. Every man compressed his lips and stifled his breathing. We seemed to speak our thoughts in silent and expressive glances, for all had the certainty now that in three minutes more, we should be floating on the free waters of the ocean, or foundered and sunk, headforemost, far beneath them.
Foot by foot she forged ahead, as the berg continued to heel over, and ere long our bowsprit projected in the air over the edge, and then the bows, headboards, and cutwater! The angle at which the Leda lay was fearful; we could no longer work the capstan; I clasped it with my arms, and shut my eyes. Then a heavy sob seemed to escape from me, as Reeves, by one slash with a sharp axe on the taffrail, parted the stern warp, which recoiled with a crack like a coach-whip. Then followed a rushing sound—a mighty plunge, and the waves dashed in foam on each side of us, as the Leda shot off the berg, and went souse, bows foremost into the sea; but rising up again, and shaking all the spray off her, as a duck would have done.
There was a deep silence after the shock and escape of this launch, and all seemed to await the signal to utter a hearty hurrah of joy and thankfulness for our miraculous preservation. Ere long it burst forth, but Hartly cut it short by his orders to sheet home the jib and foretopsail, to set the foresail, fore and aft mainsail and maintopsail.
Rapidly he was obeyed, and just as the Leda fell off, and bore away from the dangerous vicinity of the ice-island, it capsized, as its companion had done, and with a roar, as if defrauded of its prey.
The chainbobstay under the bowsprit was snapped, our rudder was split and its pintles were started, but these defects were soon repaired by the carpenter; and next day, at noon, Hartly and Reeves on comparing their observations, discovered that, unknown to ourselves, we had drifted nearly one hundred miles towards the western coast of Greenland, so a look-out was kept for the field-ice, as they were anxious to complete their interrupted seal-fishing, to haul up for St. John's, and then freight for Europe in the spring.
Poor fellows! ...
We seemed to have returned to life once more. Again we were dashing through the blue sea with a free sheet, with the white canvas bellying full upon the breeze; again, on waking in the morning, the first familiar sounds that met the ear were the decks undergoing their customary ablutions, by bucket and swab, and the rasping holystones; Cuffy singing some Congo melody as he lighted the cabin fire, the wind whistling through the rigging, the patter of the reef-points on the bosom of the swollen sails, the dashing of the spray over the sharp black bows, the occasional order issued on deck, the clatter of the rudder in its case, and the bubble of the water as it frothed past under the counter.
All these spoke of our wonted life of activity, and of the Leda being under canvas.
In a day or two we descried the slender white line of an ice-field, stretching for miles along the horizon towards the north, and approached it under easy sail, as the fields usually drift southward at this season. By the appearance of the ice and the state of the thermometer, we concluded this to be a much larger field than that from which we had been blown by the gale of wind.
While Reeves got ready the ice-hooks, sledges, warps, and gangs of seal-hunters, with their bats, guns, and other apparatus, Hartly and I were treading to and fro talking of various matters. I can remember that he was relating to me, how, in his last voyage with the Leda up the Mediterranean, St. Elmo's blue and phosphorescent light had enveloped fully three feet of her masts below the trucks, to the great terror of Cuffy Snowball, and others who were ignorant of the cause of that phenomenon, which lasted nearly an hour. He was proceeding with his narration, when Tom Hammer, who was repairing something aloft, hailed the watch.
"Deck—ahoy!"
"Hallo?" responded Hans Peterkin.
"There is a craft wedged in the ice, sir."
"Where away?"
"About twenty miles off."
"How does she bear?"
"On our lee bow."
"And what do you make her out to be?"
Hammer stood on the main-crosstrees, with his left arm embracing the mast, and through his telescope took a long and steady glance with a somewhat perplexed air at this vessel, which we could not see from the deck.
"She is a brig with her topgallant masts struck."
"Indeed!"
"No," stammered the carpenter.
"What then?"
"A ship with all her canvas unbent."
"Unbent! that is strange," said Hartly, shading his eyes, and peering away to leeward.
"No—now, sir, she looks like a brigantine, or hermaphrodite brig, with her yards topped up in different ways."
"Do you wish your nightcap sent up to you, Tom?" said the mate, drily; "look again, perhaps she is the Flying Dutchman."
"Or the ghost of the Black Schooner," said one.
"Or a whale," added another.
But on nearing the edge of the ice-field—so close that we sent off the mate in the jolly boat with the warps, and handed our canvas, preparatory to resuming the war against the seals—we could all see the vessel which Hammer had discerned, lying among the ice about fifteen miles off, and various were the discussions on board as to her rig and nation. Even our oldest seamen were puzzled. Her hull was scarcely visible, so high were the hummocks around her. She had two masts, but her spars were, as Tom said, topped up in various ways and at various angles, and seemed covered by long-accumulated ice and snow, from which we augured that she had been long beset.
We hoisted our colours and displayed the private signal of Messrs. Manly and Skrew, but received no response, by which we supposed that she had been deserted by her crew, or that her signal halliards had given way.
Some averred stoutly that they could distinguish a flag flying at her gaff peak; others that she had no gaff peak whatever, but had one man seated in her fore rigging. Hartly ridiculed these fancies, saying that the intensity of the cold, and the dazzling glare of the sun shining on a sea covered by white ice, bewildered the vision of most men; and so, full of vague conjectures as to what our neighbours might be, we saw the sun set and night close in upon us.
Next morning another large field of ice was discovered on our larboard quarter, closing in upon us with considerable rapidity. It extended along the offing for twelve or fourteen miles, and increased to the eye as it was borne towards us by an under-current.
Hartly conjectured it had drifted down Hudson's Strait from the Bay, and to avoid being beset like the unfortunate craft we had been observing, he brought off the ice-anchor and made sail on the brig, steering due west and keeping her close hauled with his starboard tacks on board; but the field of ice we endeavoured to leave kept close alongside, as if it sailed or floated with us, which I have no doubt it did.
Thus both fields verged towards each other rapidly, one before the wind, the other before a current; and so, ere sunset, we were closely wedged in a frozen sea—BESET, amid a wilderness of pack-ice, of bergs, and hummocks, which extended, as far as the eye could discern from the main-crosstrees, in every direction, and probably far beyond the horizon.
Though this predicament was not without great peril, still it was preferable by many degrees to our last situation; for here we could pursue the object of our expedition, and hoped to have our cargo complete, the hatches battened down, and all ready for our return to Newfoundland when the ice broke up, amid the warmer water of more southern latitudes, towards which we expected the field, like others, would be borne by the currents.
Alas! how little did we then foresee how long we and our desolate neighbour, whose disordered aspect and bare spars made her resemble a withered bush or bunch of reeds at the horizon, were to remain in sight of each other.
I cared little about the slaughter of the seals,—indeed, I rather disliked it—and for several days my attention was excited solely by the vessel which was beset so far from us.
My imagination drew many painful scenes. I endeavoured to picture how long she had been there—weeks, months, it might be years!
Where was she from? What had she been—a ship, brig, or schooner? for by the confusion of her rigging, and the distance at which she lay from us, there was a difficulty in discovering this, even by by our most powerful glasses, or whether the smoke ever rose from her galley funnel.
How many of her crew were alive, or had she a crew at all? If so, what were their sufferings—if abandoned, amid that world of ice, whither had they gone, and where had their perilous journey ended? On Greenland, on the Labrador, or in the grave?
These queries were for ever recurring to me, and that old beset ship—I had made up my mind that she was old—was the first object to which my eyes turned when coming on deck in the morning, and the last at night. Fogs—the dense fogs of the Arctic seas—came on and shrouded us for days, till one's lungs almost filled with icy vapour, and the pulses of the heart seemed to freeze. The wind blew a gale at times, but the ice remained fast as adamant around us; but when the obscurity passed away, there lay the beset ship in the dim distance, wearing the same lifeless aspect as ever, so dreary and forlorn amid that waste of cold white glistening ice, with its endless vistas of hummocks and splintered bergs.
We became somewhat alarmed on discovering by observations that instead of drifting into southern latitudes, where the ice-fields are usually broken into floes, and a ship becomes free to shape her course in any direction, we were being borne almost due west, and with considerable rapidity. By this the temperature remained nearly the same, and our besetting, like that of our unfortunate neighbour, became a permanence, and would probably continue so, unless we weathered Cape Farewell, of which Hartly had some doubts at that season.
We had now reached the first week of April, and could only look forward to the early days of May, when the field-ice breaks up, and from the unknown seas and inlets of the north, floats southward in masses so mighty, that a girdle of ice, sometimes two hundred miles in breadth, environs the coasts of Newfoundland and the Labrador.
Ere long we became sensible of a tremendous pressure upon the sides of the brig, a pressure so great that her timbers in some places became distorted, and Hartly was seriously alarmed lest she might be crushed and destroyed.
This unwonted pressure rendered us very anxious, and inspired many with dread.
One night when it was greater than usual, I was on deck, and from thence ascended into the main-rigging a little way to contemplate the snow-covered scene—so vast, so silent, and so terrible in its beauty!
Spreading far as the eye could reach—far beyond the old deserted ship, for such we deemed her now—lay the hummocks in uncounted myriads, ascending here and there into bergs and mountains, so impressive in their cold purity, so solemnizing in their silence and monotony, their spiral peaks glistening and vitreous against the blue immensity of the sky—an accumulation of ice and snow that would seem to have lasted since the will and hand of God had first separated the land from the water, and marked the limits of both.
While lost in reverie, and surveying this scene, a strange sound, like that which might be caused by the rending of a vast rock asunder, fell upon my ear; then there was a shock which made every fibre in my body tingle. A mighty power below us seemed to be hoisting the brig out of the ice, while her masts and hull began to sway to and fro.
"Aloft, lads—all hands aloft!" cried Hartly; "we are about to be crushed—God help us! for all is over with us now!"
All our men rushed into the rigging on hearing this terrible announcement, and at the same moment there was another crashing shock, and lo! about a league from us, there ascended slowly and vertically into the air, a sheet or wall of ice, perhaps twenty feet thick, nearly a hundred feet in height, and several miles in length!
Erect it stood for some moments, like a giant rampart, and then broke into fragments, and as the field collapsed below, these fell with a roar as if heaven and earth were coming together.
How many millions of tons might have been in that erected mass no man could conceive, but the thunder of their fall, as they crashed and glittered in the moonlight, caused one's soul to shrink with awe and wonder at the grandeur and sublimity of such a scene.
The ice around us cracked and rent in every direction, but though there was a vibration, a seeming heaving of the icebound sea, the brig settled down again into her bed, and we were only relieved of that intense pressure which had threatened us with immediate destruction.
"We are saved—for this time," said Hartly.
"Have the currents caused this?" I inquired.
"Partly: and the east edge of the ice-field has crashed upon a western shore."
"Greenland?" suggested Paul Reeves.
"Of course."
"Then we are to the north of Cape Farewell!"
I gazed wistfully towards the east. Hartly saw the glance, and smiled.
"You wish to snuff the land," said he; "but whether the land on which this mass of ice that imprisons us and our neighbour—a floating mass perhaps as large as Ireland—be just below the horizon, or two hundred miles distant, I have no means of ascertaining until I make a correct observation at noon."
The morrow came duly, and at twelve o'clock, Hartly, on consulting the sun and his chart, declared that we were at least one hundred and seventy miles due westward of Cape Farewell, on the coast of Greenland. We had thus drifted before the wind many hundred miles with the ice. The cold had now rendered the action of our compasses sluggish; but, situated as we were, that was of little consequence.
Our anxiety increased as our provisions diminished; we were placed upon a scanty allowance; symptoms of scurvy became visible among our seal-fishers; and how shall I find words to describe the intensity of the cold?
As we huddled together in the cabin at night, the ice actually came down the funnel of the stove, and formed a little arch above the fire. Our breath froze on our beards and whiskers, and on the blankets of our beds. The barrels of salted junk had to be dashed to pieces ere the food could be separated from the brine and staves. Stiff grog froze as hard as our beer; and every day a smoky haze rose from the sea, and freezing as it rose, when blown about by the wind, seemed to scrape the very skin off one's face. This frost-rime frequently enveloped us like a dense fog for days, and when it cleared, the wearied eye had no object to rest on but the everlasting ice and the old ship in the dreary distance.
Chancing to stumble one day against the anchor, my bare hand touched the fluke, and a portion of skin adhered to it as if it had been hot iron.
We hunted diligently for seals, as they formed our staple food, when cooked on a fire of blazing blubber. The flesh of the cub, especially the heart and liver, when hashed, and well seasoned with pepper, was not unacceptable to appetites sharpened by the northern blast that came from the Arctic circle.
The middle of April came and passed away without a change, save that the sun shone with a brilliance which somewhat alleviated the cold. One day, at noon, I saw Hartly form a piece of pure fresh-water ice from the scuttle-bucket into a lens, through which he concentrated the rays of the sun as through a burning-glass, and thus igniting little puffs of powder on the capstan-head, to the great astonishment of our seamen, and the terror of Cuffy, who began to consider him a species of Obi man.
So day followed day of captivity!
Seal-hunting and idling over, we would assemble, and sit for hour after hour, crouching close together for warmth, around our little fire, watching the glowing embers and the upward sparks; often in dreamy silence, mentally wondering where, when, and how this monotony, misery, and suffering were to end!
At times each almost fancied himself the last man in the world—and certainly we were the last men to be envied. Then terrible sensations crept over us, and horror filled our souls—the horror of being the last survivor, when famine and death came together among us.
As a relief from this intolerable monotony, a party of us resolved to visit the other ship. All were anxious to go; but Hartly said we could never know the moment when the ice would partially break up; thus half the crew at least must remain with him for the safety of the whole.
Furnished with a sledge, on which we placed a supply of such provisions as the Leda could afford, a small breaker, or gang-cask of stiff grog, hatchets, guns, a compass, plenty of blankets, and tobacco, so as to be ready for any emergency or detention, twelve men—Paul Reeves, Hans Peterkin, Tom Hammer, Cuffy, and myself inclusive—departed one bright morning about an hour after dawn, resolved to overhaul the stranger, and if we found her deserted, to cut away her masts, and drag them to the brig for fuel, though she lay now at least fifteen miles distant.
Inured though we were to the cold, we felt the toil and peril very great when traversing the ice for fifteen miles; but fortunately the day was clear, and not a speck of cloud appeared upon the blue immensity of the sky.
The crew of the Leda cheered us from time to time until we were at some distance, when they hoisted a red flag at the mainmast-head; but in the hollows between the hummocks and vast blocks of ice which were jammed and piled upon each other by the recent concussion and compression of the field, we lost sight of both ships at times, and could only discover them while surmounting some of the frozen ridges.
We toiled bravely, anxious to attain the object of our journey ere night came on, as we were assured of quarter on board, whatever might be the circumstances of this strange-looking craft, the attention of whose crew our colours by day, and our lanterns by night, had totally failed to attract.
Fifteen miles over an ice-field—especially such an ice-field as that which inclosed us, rent by chasms in some places, and piled in giant blocks elsewhere—were equal to the toil of traversing forty miles on land; thus about two P.M., we found ourselves only eight miles from the Leda, but rapidly gaining on the hull of the strange craft, which seemed to rise out of the ice as we approached, and the aspect of which puzzled us more than ever. We halted for a brief space; then each man partook of a biscuit and piece of seal's flesh boiled, a ration of rum, and in ten minutes more we pushed on again, four dragging our sledge, laden with stores, by shoulder-belts made for the purpose, and relieved by other four at every two miles or so.
Our expedition was not without several dangers. Fog might come on and conceal both ships from us; a blinding storm of snow might have the same effect, and pile its drifts above our corpses for ever. The ice-field might break up, and separate us from our ship so long that when our slender stock of necessaries was expended, we should infallibly perish. Each man among us thought of these possible and terrible contingencies as the distance increased between us and the Leda—our home amid the icy waste—but none spoke of them then; all sang cheerily, and pushed on to overhaul the strange craft; thus about five in the afternoon we found ourselves alongside, and all paused to survey her with deep and undefinable emotions of awe in our breasts, for she had evidently been long deserted, and now wore a most chilling and desolate aspect.
She was an old-fashioned pink-built barque, of about six hundred tons, with bulging ribs and bluff bows; broad and clumsy in the counter and deep in the bends—all fenced about with iron bands; she looked like a whaler of George the Second's time, for, with a fiddle head, she had the remains of a jack-staff and spritsail yard upon her bowsprit. Her hull and spars were thickly coated with ice.
Her fore and main topmasts were gone; her mizen was broken off at the crosstrees, and hung, truck downward, in its gear.
The topping-lifts and braces of the yards had long since given way, and tatters of them swung mournfully on the wind. Many of the yards had dropped from their slings, and lay athwart the deck or among the ice alongside, where the gales had tossed them.
Her ironwork was red and corroded; almost every vestige of paint and tar had long since disappeared, as if she had been scraped by the ice; beaten, battered, and washed by Arctic storms, American fogs, and Greenland showers of sleet and rain, for many, many years must have elapsed since the keel of this old craft had last been in blue water, and first been frozen in the treacherous ice; years of drifting to and fro in the far and frozen regions of the north, where perchance not even the eye of the Esquimaux had seen her.
We seemed all to read and know her history instinctively at a glance; but her crew—what had their fate been?
Inspired by a strange emotion, we hung back, while gazing at her, as she stood like a silent ruin, or the ghost of a ship in the frosty sunshine of the April evening; but no man attempted to board her, till Paul Reeves, taking a hatchet from the sledge, exclaimed,
"Come on, shipmates—we'll overhaul her!" and proceeded at once to mount from the ice into her mainchains. As he grasped the starboard shrouds about the upper dead-eyes, the whole gave way from their rotten cat-harpings and crashed about him, with a shower of the ice that had coated them for years.
"By Jove! lads, 'twas not yesterday this craft left the rigger's hands!" said he, as we clambered after him, and at length stood upon her deck, which was coated about two feet deep with hard frozen snow, on the pure whiteness of which no foot-track was visible.
Sailors are ever superstitious; but theirs is an honest and reverential superstition, very different from that of the landsman; thus in breathless silence our party paused upon her deck, as if it had been the lid of a huge coffin.
"Go on—go on!" said several; yet no man moved, for there was a deathlike silence in and around her.
Her main-hatch was battened down; but we could see that the companion aft and the fore-hatch were partly open. Her long-boat was turned keel upmost on deck, aft the foremast; and by other indications it had doubtless formed a species of round-house. Various large white bones, fragments of broken casks, coils of old bleached ropes, and rusty harpoons were strewn about, and served to indicate that she had been a whale-ship.
Urged by curiosity, I proceeded towards her cabin, my eleven shipmates following closely at my heels.
The skylight was covered with snow; yet through a broken pane I could perceive the figures of men below: then I turned to descend into her dark, gloomy, and slimy cabin, on entering which I beheld a wondrous scene of horror, such as can never be forgotten by me, nor was it by those who accompanied me.
The red glow of the sun, now setting beyond the distant waste of ice, shone from the west through her two square stern windows, pouring athwart her cabin a sombre and dusky light. Its sides were covered by a damp mould, which was green and thick as moss. Nearly three feet of snow, which had drifted down the companion-hatch, was lying upon its floor; half buried among it and huddled close together in a corner, lay the bodies of three emaciated men, with fur caps tied under their wasted jaws.
A blue and ghastly hand that hung over one of the cabin berths announced that a dead man lay there; and seated at the table was another, whose arms, head, and back were half covered by the snow, that had drifted over him after he had sunk into the sleep of death. His coat was old in fashion, with large brass buttons and square pocket-flaps. Amid the snow that covered the table, and amid which his face was hidden, there appeared the necks of one or two square case-bottles—empty.
A quill was also standing amid the snow, and seemed to indicate that the dead man had been writing, for it was still in the pewter inkhorn, and near it stood a lamp, used by him probably to keep his ink from freezing. Close by appeared the corner of a book, which I drew with difficulty from amid the frozen snow, and then impelled by a horror, of that cold dark floating grave, like frightened schoolboys we rushed up the cabin-stairs, and regained the deck, just as the last segment of the sun's red disc went down beyond the frozen sea.
We stood in a group near the mouldering mainmast, gazing at each other awe-struck, for we had looked on the faces of men who had been dead for years—how many, we knew not.
"There is something moving in the forehold!" exclaimed Tom Hammer, the carpenter, while his teeth chattered alike with cold and fear.
"Something?" I reiterated.
"Ay, sir, and alive, too! Do you hear that?" added old Hans Peterkin, in terror.
It was a strange, croaking sound; and then, as we approached the half-open hatch of the forehold, we heard the flapping of large wings.
Though almost paralysed by hearing such an unwonted sound in such a place, one of our seal-fishers fired his gun in his confusion. I crept forward and peeped fearfully down, but could not distinguish anything amid the gloom below.
Then we heard another croak, which sounded so loud and so dreadful to our over-strained organs of hearing that it nearly made us all scamper over the side; when suddenly two giant ravens, who had doubtless long made the empty wreck their home, rose through the fore-hatchway on their black booming pinions, and soaring high into the clear air, winged their way directly to the east, and so swiftly that they soon disappeared.
"The land lies where they are flying to," said Reeves.
"And it is not far off, as their presence here would indicate," added a seaman.
This idea encouraged us all very much, as we forgot that they might have floated with the ice-field for years. We were about to descend into the forehold, but on lifting the other half of the decayed hatch, we found the frozen remains of a man hanging there by the neck, and half devoured by those obscene birds. A capstan-bar had been placed athwart the combing, and to this he had suspended himself by a well-greased rope.
Was this unfortunate the last survivor, who, in desperation, had thus awfully ended his misery?
His situation seemed to say so.
We repaired to our sledge alongside, and dragging it a little way from the deserted barque, took a ration of grog (of which we stood much in need), and then I proceeded to examine the volume we had brought away. It proved to be the mouldered fragments of a log-book or diary kept by the mate—doubtless the dead man, who was seated on the stern locker, and whose body was reclining on the snow-covered cabin table.
From this book we could glean that she was the Royal Bounty, a Peterhead whaler, which had been beset in the ice off Cape Desolation in 1801, and that one by one all her crew had perished of cold, hunger, and despair!
The thick and crystalline coat of ice which covered every portion of the ship, from her tops to her chain-plates—a coat that had never melted or been disturbed—had protected her rigging, spars, and hull from the natural progress of decay; so let none suppose it marvellous that in a region or atmosphere of eternal snow, bodies are also thus preserved; for frequently the remains of elephants and mammoths which lived before the flood, and of pre-Adamite monsters, are found buried in the Arctic ice, unchanged, undecayed, and entire.
At the mouth of the Lena, in Siberia—a river which traverses the vast and uninhabited plains of Asiatic Russia—there was discovered, in 1805, a mammoth entire, with the hair on its skin four inches long, and all of a reddish-black; and so frequently are similar discoveries made along the shores of the Frozen Sea, that the poor Russians believe that race of animals to be still extant in their country, but existing like moles which dwell underground, and cannot endure the light of day; and their exhumation from the ice is ever deemed a forerunner of calamity, as it is said that all who see them die soon after. But to resume.
The book was much mouldered and decayed; only a few entries here and there could be traced, as its leaves, now soft and pulpy, perished in our fingers when we attempted to turn them over. A few passages ran thus:—
"March 3rd, 1801; a brisk breeze from the S.W. The Faroe Isles bearing about twenty miles off on our starboard quarter.
"At 7 P.M., took in the topgallant sails, and all fore and aft canvas ........ set the ........
"April 4, 8 P.M. Set more canvas—out reefs—set foretopmast and maintopgallant studdingsails. Ice-floes a head. Compasses not working well. The captain ordered ........, and Cairns ........
"9 P.M. Land ahead—supposed to be Cape Farewell. Weather squally. Beset by an ice-field in a strong current running N. and by E. Took in everything fore and aft—sent down the topgallantyards, and brought the masts on deck ........"
After a successful whale fishing in latitude 76°-77°, they had been again, or were still, beset.
"1st May, 1801; hoisted a garland of false flowers, made by our wives and sweethearts at home in Scotland, between the fore and mainmast........"
Then followed days and weeks, to the effect that they were still beset. These memoranda were in the handwriting of various persons, and were frequently mingled with earnest prayers for release. Then scurvy appears to have broken out among them, and disease was quickly followed by death.
"1802. Birnie from Buchan-ness, off duty, unwell—Birnie's teeth fell out of his head. Willie Cairns from Southhouse Head, off duty, unwell. Poor Birnie died, and was buried in the ice, where the others lie, half a mile off, on the starboard bow. God rest them!
"May 6th. Jobson ill with scurvy and blindness—Cairns died, and was buried beside Birnie ........."
Many leaves totally illegible followed, till we deciphered a passage like this—
"1802, 4th Dec. The captain died in his berth this day at 8 A.M., and we are too weak to move him. Smith, Arthur, and the cook are dead, or dying of hunger on the cabin floor! We have now been beset two years and twenty-one days. In that time twenty-four men have died out of a crew of nine-and-twenty—no hope! no mercy! My God! where is all this to end? We sailed upon a Friday, and this ........"
I shut the book abruptly, for I could perceive in the twilight a blank horror stealing over the pale features of my companions as we stood beside that old vessel—a frozen tomb; and favoured by the light of the rising moon, we proceeded to regain the Leda, with all the speed we could exert; for to some it appeared as if our future fate was fearfully foreshadowed in the story of this old doomed whale-ship. Half a mile distant, on her starboard bow, an ice-coated pole was visible. It seemed to indicate where her dead were buried.
Hans Peterkin and three others strapped the collar-ropes over their shoulders for the first "spell," and proceeded briskly in front with our sledge of blankets, &c. The rest followed in silence, and only turned from time to time to cast a backward glance at the old whaler, whose decaying spars, coated with ice, glimmered darkly against the starry sky. The moon arose in her full northern splendour—clear, glorious, and wondrous! The sharp summits of the bergs (the ice-mountains that rose from the plains of ice) gleamed and glittered like mighty prisms, or spires, pyramids, and obelisks of crystal and spar.
After all we had seen, the dead, the awful stillness of the frozen sea—that snow-clad plain, "the silence of which seemed to come from afar and to go afar," impressed us with deep and solemn emotions. Thus, for several miles we trod gloomily on, equally desirous of reaching the Leda and of leaving far behind the scene of gloom I have described.
The spirits of our party were sorely depressed; but Paul Reeves and I did everything in our power, by cheerfulness and anecdotes, to divert the gloomy current of their ideas; though poor Paul was not without fears that a day might come when he would be inserting in the log of the Leda, entries similar to those I have quoted from the mouldering volume we had brought away.
"We have found a ship of the dead," said he, "but that is nothing! What think you, shipmates, of a whole city full?"
"A city full!" reiterated our men.
"Not exactly a city like London—but a city, nevertheless."
"And where was this?" asked Hans, doubtfully.
"I read of it in a book—a real printed book—when I was in South Carolina. There was one Lionel Wafer, an English surgeon, who, having nobody to physic at home, took a voyage with the old buccaneers to the South Seas. Well, on one occasion, his craft was cruising off Vermijo, at the mouth of the Red River, in Peru. It was a wild and solitary place; but he went ashore with a boat's crew, and travelled four miles up the stream in quest of adventures; and there, from the margin of a fine sandy bay, a plain spread inland as wide as this ice-field, all covered with the ruins of streets, built of mighty blocks of stone carved with wonderful sculptures, like those of the Egyptians—only more terrible and quaint; and among these crumbling streets and mansions were thousands of graves half open, with the dead bodies of men, women, and little children in them, all mummified and light as cork, for they had been dead two hundred years or more.
"His men were terrified, and fled back to their boat; but on the way they met an old Indian, who related that, in the days of his forefathers, this arid plain had once been fruitful and green as the greenest savannah, and the country so populous, that a fish of the Red River could have been passed through the land from hand to hand, till it was laid at the foot of the throne of the Inca (that was their king, shipmates); but the cruel, murdering Spaniards came, with their guns and bloodhounds, and laid siege to the capital city. Its defence was long and desperate; and rather than yield, the inhabitants slew themselves, and buried each other in the sand, till there was only one man left, and he drowned himself in the Red River.
"In after years the stormy winds had blown the dry sand aside, and there the grim Mexicans lay in thousands—the women with the pearls of Vermijo at their ears and round their necks, their little children, their distaffs and hand-mills by their sides, and their long black hair filled with coins and precious stones. There, too, lay the warriors, with their flint axes and broken spears, and the war-paint yet traceable on their mummies. Lionel Wafer brought away the body of a child, but the buccaneers would not admit it on board lest it might bring a plague or a curse upon them; so he threw it into the Rio Grande."
This yarn produced others equally lively, of course; but while conversing we got over the dreary waste of hummocks more rapidly, and some time after midnight were welcomed on board the Leda, where those whom we had left were burning with curiosity to learn the result of our expedition.
The impression of all we had seen was so vivid, that a horror lest the same fate should befal us, made our men suggest and revolve every rash plan for release.
The flight of the two ravens eastward indicated that land could not be far off. Hans Peterkin, a hardy Orcadian, who was suffering from scurvy, proposed that if matters grew more desperate, we should travel over the field, taking with us the longboat upon sledge-runners. Some urged that we should bore through the ice with canvas set, while gangs went ahead blasting it up with gunpowder.
"Bore and blast through ice twenty feet thick, for a hundred miles, perhaps!" said Hartly, with sorrowful irony.
But scurvy continued to increase among us; and on the eighth day after our visit to the ship one of our crew died, and was buried in the ice; while the brig was thrown in mourning, her colours half-mast, her running-gear cast in loose bights, and her yards topped up variously.
After his funeral, which had a most depressing effect upon us all, I remarked to Hartly, that either by a strange coincidence or by an irresistible fatality, we had interred him half a mile distant on the starboard bow, exactly as the crew of the old whaler had interred their dead!
The last of our stone ballast had long since been thrown overboard on the ice, and was replaced by seal skins. We had now a valuable cargo, over which the hatches were barred and battened; but Hartly's hopes for an honest profit on his adventurous expedition were forgotten, or merged in the overwhelming desire for freedom and the safety of our lives and of the brig.
Already five deaths were recorded in her log; and Hartly vowed that if ever again her bows cut blue water, he would never more tempt Dame Fortune in the region of ice.
By this time our monotonous detention had so far exceeded every expectation and contingency; that our beer, rum, and other spirits, our salted beef, preserved meats, and lime-juice were consumed; and though our biscuits were doled out in very small rations indeed, grim starvation was before us, or food composed of seal and blubber alone; so scurvy in its worst forms assailed us all more or less. Our strongest seamen were the first who sank under it: their complexions became yellow, with swollen gums, loosened teeth, and fetid breath. These symptoms were accompanied by a difficulty in respiring, which, on the least exertion being made, amounted almost to suffocation.
Two of our gunners died one evening within an hour of each other. We wrapped them in blankets, and buried them quickly, under cloud of night, lest the survivors might be affected by the scene.
Hartly, Hans Peterkin, Cuffy, and I performed this melancholy office, when we had no lamp but the twinkling stars and the sharp streamers of the northern lights, shooting upward from the icebergs that edged the plain, over which the wind blew keen and bitingly.
Grim seemed the pale faces of the dead in that wavering gloom, as we lowered them into their last home, heaped the ice above them, and returned to the Leda, leaving them to sleep the sleep of death among their shipmates half a mile distant on her starboard bow.
And now with each day there sank a deeper horror over us—the horror that, like the old whaler at the horizon, the Leda was a ship foredoomed! Yet, like her, we had not sailed upon a Friday.
We were without a surgeon; but Hartly was a skilful fellow, and by administering such simples as we possessed, he endeavoured to ameliorate the condition of his suffering crew.
Common potatoes he washed, cut into thin slices, and gave raw to some, for the cure of their swollen and bleeding gums—usually a sovereign remedy in this case. To others he gave decoctions of tamarinds, scraped from an old gallipot, and boiled with cream of tartar; or a ship biscuit pounded into a panada, and sweetened with sugar; or gargles made of honey of roses and elixir of vitriol; but, ere long, even these remedies failed us; and we had Reeves, Hans Peterkin, and more than half our remaining crew, unable to raise their heads or hands, sick and despairing.
The miserable Esquimaux, by scraping the snow from their native rocks, can find coarse berries, sorrel, and cresses, with which to correct their blubber food; but in that world of ice we had no such boon accorded us.
Armed with our rifles and knives, I set forth with two of our healthiest men, Dick and James Abbot, two brothers, in search of a few fresh seals, as they had learned to shun our locality, and had ceased to venture through their holes in the ice for some time past.
We left the brig about two o'clock, P.M.
On this day the wind was blowing hard, the white scud was flying fast through the blue sky, and for the first time we felt a heaving motion in the ice, which warned us instinctively not to venture far from the Leda. After a ramble of three hours, we had only shot one seal and knocked two cubs on the head with our rifle-butts, when we sat down on a hummock to rest, at the distance of two miles or so from our ice-bound home.
"I wonder much how the masts of that old craft the Bounty have stood these many years?" said Dick Abbot, breaking a long silence.
"The coating of ice has saved them, as it has preserved everything on board—from decay, at least," replied his brother.
"Always thinking of that ship," said I, with an air of annoyance. "Come, let us talk of something more cheerful. You know that she—but where is she?" I added, as we swept the horizon in vain for her—the sole object on which our eyes had rested for so many dreary weeks.
"Sunk, by Jove! or can her old spars have gone by the board at last?" exclaimed James Abbot, starting up.
In great excitement we clambered to the summit of a mass of ice, and looked around us. Not a vestige of the old barque could be seen, but dense clouds that came heavily up from the north were overspreading the sky, against the blue of which her crystal-coated spars had so long been visible.
"We shall have foul weather," said Dick Abbot.
"And so they seem to think, sir, aboard the brig," added his brother: "see—they've run the ensign up to the gaff peak as a signal for us to return, Mr. Manly."
"But our three seals——"
"We must leave them where they are—that big hummock will mark where they lie till to-morrow."
"James is right, sir," said Dick Abbot; "let us get back to the brig as fast as we can."
"She is two miles distant, at least," said I.
"The sky darkens fast; and see—see!" he added, with wild joy expressed in all his features, his eyes, and voice; "the captain expects something—they've cast loose the courses, and are hoisting the topsailyards—THE ICE IS BREAKING UP!"
These words made every pulse quicken, and as if in corroboration of his surmise, we felt the field on which we trod agitated by convulsive throes, and these increased as the fierce and darkening blast, armed with showers of hailstones large as peas, that fell aslant the cold grey sky, deepened the atmosphere around us. Madly we toiled, scrambled, and rolled—fell, rose, and fell again—shouted and cheered to each other, as we surmounted the endless succession of glassy hummocks and snowy hollows to reach the Leda; but the gloom increased so fast, that in less than half an hour we could no longer distinguish where she lay.
We did not feel cold—our brains seemed on fire, our bloodshot eyes were wild and eager in expression, as we toiled on and on—but where was the brig?
A misty veil of hail and snow—an atmosphere dark as the twilight of the Scandinavian gods—enveloped us like a curtain. We paused at times in our desperation, and uttered a simultaneous hallo; but no voice replied, no sound responded, save the hiss of the hailstones as they showered on the hard hummocks. Then we heard from time to time a stunning crash, as the field was rent asunder into floes, that were surged and driven against each other with such force as the waves of an irresistible sea can alone exert.
To us this crisis was, as I have said, maddening. We tossed away our rifles, shot-belts, knives, bats, and everything that might impede our progress, and toiled in wild despair in search of the Leda—but alas, alas! the Leda was nowhere to be seen!
"Can we have passed her?" we asked repeatedly.
To return was to acknowledge still more that we were at fault.
Left upon the breaking ice, with night deepening, and a tempest, perhaps, coming on together; the ice-field rending into floes, and the Leda, when last seen, with her topsails loose for sea, and now we knew not where, but assuredly not within call of our united voices, which the envious wind, the very spirit of the wintry storm, swept from our trembling lips, as if in mockery of efforts and struggles so feeble as those of man when contending with the warring elements of God,—how terrible was our situation!
Inspired either by the activity of youth, or a greater dread of perishing, I left my companions some twenty yards behind me. In this race for life and death poor Dick Abbot was failing, and his younger brother was loth to leave him a single pace behind.
"Mr. Manly," I heard him cry, "take time, please; do you see anything yet, sir—of the brig, I mean?" "Not a vestige," said I, turning to wait until they joined me.
The ice was bursting in every direction, and the waves seemed to boil through the yawning rents in snowy foam; vast pieces, like bergs, arose from the water, and were dashed against each other, to sink into the deep, to arise, and then be dashed together again. Add to this the darkness of the gathering night, the roar of the biting wind, and the dense murkiness caused by the hail as it swept through that mighty waste, and the reader may have an idea of the scene when I paused and looked back for my two companions.
At that moment the ice heaved beneath my feet, I was thrown forward on my face and almost stunned. There was a terrific splitting sound as the field around us broke into a thousand floes: I found myself separated from my two friends, upon a piece of ice about half a mile square, and borne away with it, despairing and alone, into the mist and darkness of the stormy night.