CHAPTER XI.
I MAKE FURTHER DISCOVERIES.
So long as I moved about and worked I did not feel the cold; but if Istood or sat for a couple of minutes I felt the nip of it in my verymarrow. Yet, fierce as the cold was here, it was impossible it could becomparable with the rigours of the parts in which this schooner hadoriginally got locked up in the ice. No doubt if I died on deck my bodywould be frozen as stiff as the figure on the rocks; but, though it wasvery conceivable that I might perish of cold in the cabin by sittingstill, I was sure the temperature below had not the severity to stonifyme to the granite of the men at the table.
Still, though a greater degree of cold--cold as killing as if the worldhad fallen sunless--did unquestionably exist in those latitudes whencethis ice with the schooner in its hug had floated, it was so bitterlybleak in this interior that 'twas scarce imaginable it could be colderelsewhere; and as I rose from the cask shuddering to the heart with thefrosty motionless atmosphere, my mind naturally went to theconsideration of a fire by which I might sit and toast myself.
I put a bunch of candles in my pocket--they were as hard as a parcel ofmarline-spikes--and took the lanthorn into the passage and inspected thenext room. Here was a cot hung up by hooks, and a large black cheststood in cleats upon the deck; some clothes dangled from pins in thebulkhead, and upon a kind of tray fixed upon short legs and serving as ashelf were a miscellaneous bundle of boots, laced waistcoats,three-corner hats, a couple of swords, three or four pistols, and otherobjects not very readily distinguishable by the candle-light. There wasa port which I tried to open, but found it so hard frozen I should needa handspike to start it. There were three cabins besides this; the lastcabin, that is the one in the stern, being the biggest of the lot. Eachhad its cot, and each also had its own special muddle and litter ofboxes, clothes, firearms, swords, and the like.
Indeed, by this time I was beginning to see how it was. The suspicionthat the watches and jewellery I had discovered on the bodies of the menhad excited was now confirmed, and I was satisfied that this schoonerhad been a pirate or buccaneer, of what nationality I could not yetdivine--methought Spanish from the costume of the first figure I hadencountered; and I was also convinced by the brief glance I directed atthe things in the cabin, particularly the wearing apparel, and the makeand appearance of the firearms, that she must have been in this positionfor upwards of fifty years.
The thought awed me greatly: _twenty years before I was born_ those twomen were sitting dead in the cabin!--he on deck was keeping his blindand silent look-out; he on the rocks with his hands locked upon hisknees sat sunk in blank and frozen contemplation!
Every cabin had its port, and there were ports in the vessel's sideopposite; but on reflection I considered that the cabin would be thewarmer for their remaining closed, and so I came away and entered thegreat cabin afresh, bent on exploring the forward part.
I must tell you that the mainmast, piercing the upper deck, came downclose against the bulkhead that formed the forward wall of the cabin,and on approaching this partition, the daylight being broad enough nowthat the hatch lay open on top, I remarked a sliding door on thelarboard side of the mast. I put my shoulder to it and very easily ranit along its grooves, and then found myself in the way of a directcommunication with all the fore portion of the schooner. The arrangementindeed was so odd that I suspected a piratical device in this uncommonmethod of opening out at will the whole range of deck. The air here wasas vile as in the cabins, and I had to wait a bit.
On entering I discovered a little compartment with racks on either handfilled with small-arms. I afterwards counted a hundred and thirteenmuskets, blunderbusses, and fusils, all of an antique kind, whilst thesides of the vessel were hung with pistols great and little,boarding-pikes, cutlasses, hangers, and other sorts of sword. Thisarmoury was a sight to set me walking very cautiously, for it was notlikely that powder should be wanting in a ship thus equipped; and wherewas it stowed?
There was another sliding door in the forward partition; it stood open,and I passed through it into what I immediately saw was the cook-house.I turned the lanthorn about, and discovered every convenience fordressing food. The furnaces were of brick and the oven was a greatone--great, I mean, for the size of the vessel. There were pots, pans,and kettles in plenty, a dresser with drawers, dishes of tin andearthenware, a Dutch clock--in short, such an equipment of kitchenfurniture as you would not expect to find in the galley of an Indiamanbuilt to carry two or three hundred passengers. About half a chaldron ofsmall coal lay heaped in a wooden angular fence fitted to the ship'sside, for the sight of which I thanked God. I held the lanthorn to thefurnace, and observed a crooked chimney rising to the deck and passingthrough it. The mouth or head of it was no doubt covered by the snow,for I had not noticed any such object in the survey I had taken of thevessel above. Strange, I thought, that these men should have frozen todeath with the material in the ship for keeping a fire going. But thenmy whole discovery I regarded as one of those secrets of the deep whichdefy the utmost imagination and experience of man to explain them.Enough that here was a schooner which had been interred in a sepulchreof ice, as I might rationally conclude, for near half a century, thatthere were dead men in her who looked to have been frozen to death, thatshe was apparently stored with miscellaneous booty, that she waspowerfully armed for a craft of her size, and had manifestly gonecrowded with men. All this was plain, and I say it was enough for me. Ifshe had papers they were to be met with presently; otherwise, conjecturewould be mere imbecility in the face of those white and frost-boundcountenances and iron silent lips.
I thrust back another sliding door and entered the ship's forecastle.The ceiling, as I choose to call the upper deck, was lined withhammocks, and the floor was covered with chests, bedding, clothes, and Iknow not what else. The ringing of the wind on high did not disturb thestillness, and I cannot convey the impression produced on my mind bythis extraordinary scene of confusion beheld amid the silence of thattomblike interior. I stood in the doorway, not having the courage toventure further. For all I knew many of those hammocks might betenanted; for as this kind of bed expresses by its curvature the roundedshape of a seaman, whether it be empty or not, so it is impossible bymerely looking to know whether it is occupied or vacant. The dismalnessof the prospect was of course vastly exaggerated by the feeble light ofthe candle, which, swaying in my hand, flung a swarming of shadows uponthe scene, through which the hammocks glimmered wan and melancholy.
I came away in a fright, sliding the door to in my hurry with a bangthat fetched a groaning echo out of the hold. If this ship were haunted,the forecastle would be the abode of the spirits!
Before I could make a fire the chimney must be cleared. Among thefurniture in the arms-room were a number of spade-headed spears; thespade as wide as the length of a man's thumb, and about a foot long,mounted on light thin wood. Armed with one of these weapons, the like ofwhich is to be met with among certain South American tribes, I passedinto the cabin to proceed on deck; but though I knew the two figureswere there, the coming upon them afresh struck me with as muchastonishment and alarm as if I had not before seen them. The manstarting from the table confronted me on this entrance, and I stoppeddead to that astounding living posture of terror, even recoiling, asthough he were alive indeed, and was jumping up from the table in hisamazement at my apparition.
The brilliance of the snow was very striking after the dusk of theinteriors I had been penetrating. The glare seemed like a blaze of whitesunshine; yet it was the dazzle of the ice and nothing more for the sunwas hidden; the fairness of the morning was passed; the sky waslead-coloured down to the ocean line, with a quantity of smoke-brownscud flying along it. The change had been rapid, as it always ishereabouts. The wind screamed with a piercing whistling sound throughthe frozen rigging, splitting in wails and bounding in a roar upon theadamantine peaks and rocks; the cracking of the ice was loud,continuous, and mighty startling; and these sounds, combined with thethundering of the sea and the fie
rce hissing of its rushing yeast, gavethe weather the character of a storm, though as yet it was no more thana fresh gale.
However, though it was frightful to be alone in this frozen vault, withno other society than that of the dead, not even a seafowl to put lifeinto the scene, I could not but feel that, be my prospects what theymight, for the moment I was safe--that is to say, I was immeasurablysecurer than ever I could have been in the boat, which, when I hademerged into this stormy sound and realized the sea that was runningoutside, I instantly thought of with a shudder. Had the rock, I mused,not fallen and liberated the boat, where should I be now? Perhapsfloating, a corpse, fathoms deep under water, or, if alive, then flyingbefore this gale into the south, ever widening the distance betwixt meand all chance of my deliverance, and every hour gauging more deeply thehorrible cold of the pole. Indeed I began to understand that I had beenmercifully diverted from courting a hideous fate, and my spirits rosewith the emotion of gratitude and hope that attends upon preservation.
I speedily spied the chimney, which showed a head of two feet above thedeck, and made short work of the snow that was frozen in it, as nothingcould have been fitter to cut ice with than the spade-shaped weapon Icarried. This done, I returned to the cook-room, and with a butcher'saxe that hung against the bulkhead I knocked away one of the boards thatconfined the coal, split it into small pieces, and in a short time hadkindled a good fire. One does not need the experience of being cast awayupon an iceberg to understand the comfort of a fire. I had a mind to beprodigal, and threw a good deal of coals into the furnace, and presentlyhad a noble blaze. The heat was exquisite. I pulled a little bench,after the pattern of those on which the men sat in the cabin, to thefire, and, with outstretched legs and arms, thawed out of me the frostthat had lain taut in my flesh ever since the wreck of the _LaughingMary_. When I was thoroughly warm and comforted I took the lanthorn andwent aft to the steward's room, and brought thence a cheese, a ham, somebiscuit, and one of the jars of spirits, all which I carried to thecook-room, and placed the whole of them in the oven. I was extremelyhungry and thirsty, and the warmth and cheerfulness of the fire set meyearning for a hot meal. But how was I to make a bowl without freshwater? I went on deck and scratched up some snow, but the salt in itgave it a sickly taste, and I was not only certain it would spoil andmake disgusting whatever I mixed it with or cooked in it, but it stoodas a drink to disorder my stomach and bring on an illness. So, thought Ito myself, there must be fresh water about--casks enough in the hold, Idare say; but the hold was not to be entered and explored without labourand difficulty, and I was weary and famished, and in no temper for hardwork.
In all ships it is the custom to carry one or more casks calledscuttlebutts on deck, into which fresh water is pumped for the use ofthe crew. I stepped along looking earnestly at the several shapes ofguns, coils of rigging, hatchways, and the like, upon which the snow laythick and solid, sometimes preserving the mould of the object itcovered, sometimes distorting and exaggerating it into an unrecognizableoutline, but perceived nothing that answered to the shape of a cask. Atlast I came to the well in the head, passed the forecastle deck, and onlooking down spied among other shapes three bulged and bulky forms. Iseemed by instinct to know that these were the scuttlebutts and wentfor the chopper, with which I returned and got into this hollow, thatwas four or five feet deep. The snow had the hardness of iron; it tookme a quarter of an hour of severe labour to make sure of the characterof the bulky thing I wrought at, and then it proved to be a cask.Whatever might be its contents it was not empty, but I was pretty nighspent by the time I had knocked off the iron bands and beaten out stavesenough to enable me to get at the frozen body within. There werethree-quarters of a cask full. It was sparkling clear ice, and chippingoff a piece and sucking it, I found it to be very sweet fresh water.Thus was my labour rewarded.
I cut off as much as, when dissolved, would make a couple of gallons,but stayed a minute to regain my breath and take a view of this well orhollow before going aft. It was formed of the great open head-timbers ofthe schooner curving up to the stem, and by the forecastle deck endinglike a cuddy front. I scraped at this front and removed enough snow toexhibit a portion of a window. It was by this window I supposed that theforecastle was lighted. Out of this well forked the bowsprit, with thespritsail yard braced fore and aft. The whole fabric close to lookedmore like glass than at a distance, owing to the million crystallinesparkles of the ice-like snow that coated the structure from the vane atthe masthead to the keel.
Well, I clambered on to the forecastle deck and returned to thecook-room with my piece of ice, struck as I went along by the suddencomfortable quality of life the gushing of the black smoke out of thechimney put into the ship, and how, indeed, it seemed to soften as if bymagic the savage wildness and haggard austerity and gale-sweptloneliness of the white rocks and peaks. It was extremely disagreeableand disconcerting to me to have to pass the ghastly occupants of thecabin every time I went in and out; and I made up my mind to get them ondeck when I felt equal to the work, and cover them up there. Theslanting posture of the one was a sort of fierce rebuke; the sleepingattitude of the other was a dark and sullen enjoinment of silence. Inever passed them without a quick beat of the heart and shortenedbreathing; and the more I looked at them the keener became thesuperstitious alarm they excited.
The fire burned brightly, and its ruddy glow was sweet as humancompanionship. I put the ice into a saucepan and set it upon the fire,and then pulling the cheese and ham out of the oven found them warm andthawed. On smelling to the mouth of the jar I discovered its contents tobe brandy.[1] Only about an inch deep of it was melted. I poured thisinto a pannikin and took a sup, and a finer drop of spirits I neverswallowed in all my life; its elegant perfume proved it amazingly choiceand old. I fetched a lemon and some sugar and speedily prepared a smallsmoking bowl of punch. The ham cut readily; I fried a couple of stoutrashers, and fell to the heartiest and most delicious repast I ever satdown to. At any time there is something fragrant and appetizing in thesmell of fried ham; conceive then the relish that the appetite of astarved, half-frozen, shipwrecked man would find in it! The cheese wasextremely good, and was as sound as if it had been made a week ago.Indeed, the preservative virtues of the cold struck me withastonishment. Here was I making a fine meal off stores which in allprobability had lain in this ship fifty years, and they ate as choicelyas like food of a similar quality ashore. Possibly some of these daysscience may devise a means for keeping the stores of a ship frozen,which would be as great a blessing as could befall the mariner, and asure remedy for the scurvy, for then as much fresh meat might be carriedas salt, besides other articles of a perishable kind.
[Footnote 1: I can give the reader no better idea of the cold of thelatitudes in which this schooner had lain, than by speaking of thebrandy as being frozen. This may have happened through its having losttwenty or thirty per cent. of its Strength.--P. R.]