CHAPTER XXI.
WE EXPLODE THE MINES.
I don't design to weary you with a close account of our proceedings. Howwe opened the main-deck hatch, rigged up tackles, clapping purchases onto the falls, as the capstan was hard frozen and immovable; how wehoisted the powder-barrels on deck and then, by tackles on the foreyard,lowered them over the side; how we filled a number of bags which wefound in the forecastle with powder; how we measured the cracks in theice and sawed a couple of spare studding-sail booms into lengths toserve as beams whereby to poise the barrels and bags; would make butsailor's talk, half of which would be unintelligible and the restwearisome.
The Frenchman worked hard, and we snatched only half an hour for ourdinner. The split that had happened in the ice during the night showedby daylight as a gulf betwixt eight and ten feet wide at the seawardsend, thinning to a width of three feet, never less, to where it ended,ahead of the ship, in a hundred cracks in the ice that showed as if athunderbolt had fallen just there. I looked into this rent, but it wasas black as a well past a certain depth, and there was no gleam ofwater. When we went over the side to roll our first barrel of powder tothe spot where we meant to lower it, the Frenchman marched up to thefigure of Trentanove, and with no more reverence than a boy would showin throwing a stone at a jackass, tumbled him into the chasm. He thenstepped up to the body of the Portuguese boatswain, dragged him to thesame fissure, and rolled him into it.
"There!" cried he; "now they are properly buried."
And with this he went coolly on with his work.
I said nothing, but was secretly heartily disgusted with this brutaldisposal of his miserable shipmates' remains. However, it was his doing,not mine; and I confess the removal of those silent witnesses was a verygreat relief to me, albeit when I considered how Tassard had beenawakened, and how both the mate and the boatswain might have beenbrought to by treatment, I felt as though, after a manner, the Frenchmanhad committed a murder by burying them so.
It blew a small breeze all day from the south-west, the weather keepingfine. It was ten o'clock in the morning when we started on our labour,and the sun had been sunk a few minutes by the time we had rigged thelast whip for the lowering and poising of the powder. This left usnothing to do in the morning but light the matches, lower the powderinto position, and then withdraw to the schooner and await the issue.Our arrangements comprised, first, four barrels of powder in deep yawnsahead of the vessel, directly athwart the line of her head; second, twobarrels, a wide space between them, in the great chasm on the starboardside; third, about fifty very heavy charges in bags and the like for thefurther rupturing of many splits and crevices on the larboard bow of theship, where the ice was most compact. What should follow the mightyblast no mortal being could have foretold. I had no fear of the chargesinjuring the vessel--that is to say, I did not fear that the actualexplosion would damage her: but as the effect of the bursting of such amass of powder as we designed to explode upon so brittle a substance asice was not calculable, it was quite likely that the vast discharge,instead of loosening and freeing the bed of ice, might rend it intoblocks, and leave the schooner still stranded and lying in some wildposture amid the ruins.
But the powder was our only trumps; we had but to play it and leave therest to fortune.
We got our supper and sat smoking and discussing our situation andchances. Tassard was tired, and this and our contemplation of theprobabilities of the morrow sobered his mind, and he talked with acertain gravity. He drank sparely and forbore the hideous recollectionsor inventions he was used to bestow on me, and indeed could find nothingto talk about but the explosion and what it was to do for us. I was veryglad he did not again refer to his project to bury the treasure andcarry the schooner to the Tortugas. The subject fired his blood, and itwas such nonsense that the mere naming of it was nauseous to me.Eight-and-forty years had passed since his ship fell in with this ice,and not tenfold the treasure in the hold might have purchased for himthe sight of so much as a single bone of the youngest of thoseassociates whom he idly dreamt of seeking and shipping and sailing incommand of. Yet, imbecile as was his scheme, having regard to thehalf-century that had elapsed, I clearly witnessed the menace to me thatit implied. His views were to be read as plainly as if he had deliveredthem. First and foremost he meant that I should help him to sail theschooner to an island and bury the plate and money; which done he wouldtake the first opportunity to murder me. His chance of meeting with aship that would lend him assistance to navigate the schooner would be asgood if he were alone in her as if I were on board too. There would benothing, then, in this consideration to hinder him from cutting mythroat after we had buried the treasure and were got north. Two motiveswould imperatively urge him to make away with me; first, that I shouldnot be able to serve as a witness to his being a pirate, and next thathe alone should possess the secret of the treasure.
He little knew what was passing in my mind as he surveyed me through thecurls of smoke spouting up from his death's-head pipe. I talked easilyand confidentially, but I saw in his gaze the eyes of my murderer, andwas so sure of his intentions that had I shot him in self-defence, as hesat there, I am certain my conscience would have acquitted me of hisblood.
I passed two most uneasy hours in my cot before closing my eyes. I couldthink of nothing but how to secure myself against the Frenchman'streachery. You would suppose that my mind must have been engrossed withconsiderations of the several possibilities of the morrow; but that wasnot so. My reflections ran wholly to the bald-headed evil-eyed piratewhom in an evil hour I had thawed into being, and who was like todischarge the debt of his own life by taking mine. The truth is, I hadbeen too hard at work all day, too full of the business of planning,cutting, testing, and contriving, to find leisure to dwell upon what hehad said at breakfast, and now that I lay alone in darkness it was theonly subject I could settle my thoughts to.
However, next morning I found myself less gloomy, thanks to severalhours of solid sleep. I thought, what is the good of anticipating?Suppose the schooner is crushed by the ice or jammed by the explosion?Until we are under way, nay, until the treasure is buried, I havenothing to fear, for the rogue cannot do without me. And, reassuringmyself in this fashion, I went to the cook-room and lighted the fire; mycompanion presently arrived, and we sat down to our morning meal.
"I dreamt last night," said he, "that the devil sat on my breast andtold me that we should break clear of the ice and come off safe withthe treasure--there is loyalty in the Fiend. He seldom betrays hisfriends."
"You have a better opinion of him than I," said I; "and I do not knowthat you have much claim upon his loyalty either, seeing that you willcross yourself and call upon the Madonna and saints when the occasionarises."
"Pooh, mere habit," cried he, sarcastically. "I have seen Barros prayingto a little wooden saint in a gale of wind and then knock its head offand throw it overboard because the storm increased." And here he fell totalking very impiously, professing such an outrageous contempt for everyform of religion, and affirming so ardent a belief in the goodwill ofSatan and the like, that I quitted my bench at last in a passion, andtold him that he must be the devil himself to talk so, and that for mypart his sentiments awoke in me nothing but the utmost scorn, loathing,and horror of him.
His face fell, and he looked at me with the eye of one who takes measureof another and does not feel sure.
"Tut!" cried he, with a feigned peevishness; "what are my sentiments toyou, or yours to me? you may be a Quaker for all I care. Come, fill yourpannikin and let us drink a health to our own souls!"
But though he said this grinning, he shot a savage look of malice at me,and when he put his pannikin down his face was very clouded and sulky.
We finished our meal in silence, and then I rose, saying, "Let us nowsee what the gunpowder is going to do for us."
My rising and saying this worked a change in him. He exclaimed briskly,"Ay, now for the great experiment," and made for the companion-stepswith an air of bustle.
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The wind as before was in the south-west, blowing without much weight;but the sky was overcast with great masses of white clouds with a tintof rainbows in their shoulders and skirts, amid which the sky showed ina clear liquid blue. Those clouds seemed to promise wind and perhapssnow anon; but there was nothing to hinder our operations. We got uponthe ice, and went to work to fix matches to the barrels and bags, and tosling them by the beams we had contrived ready for lowering when thematches were fired, and this occupied us the best part of two hours.When all was ready I fired the first match, and we lowered the barrelsmartly to the scope of line we had settled upon; so with the others.You may reckon we worked with all imaginable wariness, for the stuff wehandled was mighty deadly, and if a barrel should fall and burst withthe match alight, we might be blown in an instant into rags, it beingimpossible to tell how deep the rents went.
The bags being lighter there was less to fear, and presently all thebarrels and bags with the matches burning were poised in the places andhanging at the depth we had fixed upon, and we then returned to theschooner, the Frenchman breaking into a run and tumbling over the railin his alarm with the dexterity of a monkey.
Each match was supposed to burn an hour, so that when the severalexplosions happened they might all occur as nearly as possible at once,and we had therefore a long time to wait. The margin may lookunreasonable in the face of our despatch, but you will not think itunnecessary if you consider that our machinery might not have workedvery smooth, and that meanwhile all that was lowered was in the way ofexploding. So interminable a period as now followed I do believe neverbefore entered into the experiences of a man. The cold was intense, andwe had to move about; but also were we repeatedly coming to a halt tolook at our watches and cast our eyes over the ice. It was like standingunder a gallows with the noose around the neck waiting for the cart tomove off. My own suspense became torture; but I commanded my face. TheFrenchman, on the other hand, could not control the torments of hisexpectation and fear.
"Holy Virgin!" he would cry, "suppose we are blown up too? suppose weare engulphed in the ice? suppose it should be vomited up in vast blockswhich in falling upon us must crush us to pulp and smash the decks in?"
At one moment he would call himself an idiot for not remaining on therocks at a distance and watching the explosion, and even make as if tojump off the vessel, then immediately recoil from the idea of settinghis foot upon a floor that before he could take ten strides might splitinto chasms, with hideous uproar under him. At another moment he wouldrun to the companion and descend out of my sight, but reappear after aminute or two wildly shaking his head and swearing that if waiting wasinsupportable in the daylight, it was ten thousand times worse in thegloom and solitude of the interior.
I was too nervous and expectant myself to be affected by his behaviour;but his dread of the explosion upheaving lumps of ice was sensibleenough to determine me to post myself under the cover of the hatch andthere await the blast, for it was a stout cover and would certainlyscreen me from the lighter flying pieces.
It was three or four minutes past the hour and I was lookingbreathlessly at my watch when the first of the explosions took place.Before the ear could well receive the shock of the blast the whole ofthe barrels exploded along with some twelve or fourteen parcels.Tassard, who stood beside me, fell on his face, and I believed he hadbeen killed. It was so hellish a thunder that I suppose the blowing upof a first-rate could not make a more frightful roar of noise. A kind oftwilight was caused by the rise of the volumes of white smoke out of theice. The schooner shook with such a convulsion that I was persuaded shehad been split. Vast showers of splinters of ice fell as if from thesky, and rained like arrows through the smoke, but if there were anygreat blocks uphove they did not touch the ship. Meanwhile, the otherparcels were exploding in their places sometimes two and three at atime, sending a sort of sickening spasms and throes through the fabricof the vessel, and you heard the most extraordinary grinding noisesrising out of the ice all about, as though the mighty rupture of thepowder crackled through leagues of the island. I durst not look forthtill all the powder had burst, lest I should be struck by some flyingpiece of ice, but unless the schooner was injured below she was as soundas before, and in the exact same posture, as if afloat in harbour, onlythat of course her stern lay low with the slope of her bed.
I called to Tassard and he lifted his head.
"Are you hurt?" said I.
"No, no," he answered. "'Tis a Spaniard's trick to fling down to abroadside. Body of St. Joseph, what a furious explosion!" and so sayinghe crawled into the companion and squatted beside me. "What has it donefor us?"
"I don't know yet," said I; "but I believe the schooner is uninjured._That_ was a powerful shock!" I cried, as a half-dozen of bags blew uptogether in the crevices deep down.
The thunder and tumult of the rending ice accompanied by the heavyexplosions of the gunpowder so dulled the hearing that it was difficultto speak. That the mines had accomplished our end was not yet to beknown; but there could not be the least doubt that they had not onlyoccasioned tremendous ruptures low down in the ice, but that thevolcanic influence was extending far beyond its first effects by makingone split produce another, one weak part give way and create otherweaknesses, and so on, all round about us and under our keel, as wasclearly to be gathered by the shivering and spasms of the schooner, andby the growls, roars, blasts, and huddle of terrifying sounds whicharose from the frozen floor.
It was twenty minutes after the hour at which the mines had been framedto explode when the last parcel burst; but we waited another quarter ofan hour to make sure that it _was_ the last, during all which time thegrowling and roaring noises deep down continued, as if there was abattle of a thousand lions raging in the vaults and hollows underneath.The smoke had been settled away by the wind, and the prospect was clear.We ran below to see to the fire and receive five minutes of heat intoour chilled bodies, and then returned to view the scene.
I looked first over the starboard side and saw the great split that hadhappened in the night torn in places into immense yawns and gulfs by thefall of vast masses of rock out of its sides; but what most delighted mewas the hollow sound of washing water. I lifted my hand and listened.
"'Tis the swell of the sea flowing into the opening!" I exclaimed.
"That means," said Tassard, "that this side of the block is dislocatedfrom the main."
"Yes," cried I. "And if the powder ahead of the bows has done its work,the heave of the ocean will do the rest."
We made our way on to the forecastle over a deep bed of splinters ofice, lying like wood-shavings upon the deck, and I took notice as Iwalked that every glorious crystal pendant that had before adorned theyards, rigging, and spars had been shaken off. I had expected to see awonderful spectacle of havoc in the ice where the barrels of gunpowderhad been poised, but saving many scores of cracks where none was before,and vast ragged gashes in the mouths of the crevices down which thebarrels had been lowered, the scene was much as heretofore.
The Frenchman stared and exclaimed, "What has the powder done? I seeonly a few cracks."
"What it may have done, I don't know," I answered; "but depend on't suchheavy charges of powder must have burst to some purpose. The dislocationwill be below; and so much the better, for 'tis _there_ the ice mustcome asunder if this block is to go free."
He gazed about him, and then rapping out a string of oaths, English,Italian, and French, for he swore in all the languages he spoke, which,he once told me, were five, he declared that for his part he consideredthe powder wasted, that we'd have done as well to fling a hand-grenadeinto a fissure, that a thousand barrels of powder would be but as apopgun for rending the schooner's bed from the main, and in short, withseveral insulting looks and a face black with rage and disappointment,gave me very plainly to know that I had not only played the fool myself,but had made a fool of him, and that he was heartily sorry he had evergiven himself any trouble to contrive the cursed mines or to assist mein a ridicul
ous project that might have resulted in blowing the schoonerto pieces and ourselves with it.
I glanced at him with a sneer, but took no further notice of hisinsolence. It was not only that he was so contemptible in all respects,a liar, a rogue, a thief, a poltroon, hoary in twenty walks of vice,there was something so unearthly about a creature that had been as goodas dead for eight-and-forty years, that it was impossible anything hesaid could affect me as the rancorous tongue of another man would. Ifeared and hated him because I knew that in intent he was already myassassin; but the mere insolences of so incredible a creature could notbut find me imperturbable.
And perhaps in the present instance my own disappointment put me intosome small posture of sympathy with his passion. Had I been asked beforethe explosions happened what I expected, I don't know that I should havefound any answer to make; and yet, though I could not have expressed myexpectations, which after all were but hopes, I was bitterly vexed whenI looked over the bows and found in the scene nothing that appearedanswerable to the uncommon forces we had employed. Nevertheless, I feltsure that my remark to the Frenchman was sound. A great show of uphoverocks and fragments of ice might have satisfied the eye; but the realwork of the mines was wanted below; and since the force of the mightyexplosion must needs expend itself somewhere, it was absurd to wish tosee its effects in a part where its volcanic agency would be of littleor no use.
"There is nothing to be seen by staring!" exclaimed the Frenchmanpresently, speaking very sullenly. "I am hungry and freezing, and shallgo below!" And with that he turned his back and made off, growling inhis throat as he went.
I got upon the ice and stepped very carefully to the starboard side andlooked down the vast split there. The sea in consequence of the slopedid not come so far, but I could hear the wash of the water very plain.It was certain that the valley in which we lay was wholly disconnectedfrom the main ice on this side. I passed to the larboard quarter, andhere too were cracks wide and deep enough to satisfy me that its holdwas weak. It was forward of the bows where the barrels had been explodedthat the ice was thickest and had the firmest grasp; but its surface wasviolently and heavily cracked by the explosions, and I thought to myselfif the fissures below are as numerous, then certainly the swell of thesea ought to fetch the whole mass away. But I was now half frozen myselfand pining for warmth. It was after one o'clock. The wind was pipingfreshly, and the great heavy clouds in swarms drove stately across thesky.
"It may blow to-night," thought I; "and if the wind hangs as it is, justsuch a sea as may do our business will be set running." And thus musingI entered the ship and went below.