CHAPTER XXV.
THE SCHOONER FREES HERSELF.
All day long the weather remained sullen and still, and the swellpowerful. I was on deck at noon, looking at an iceberg half a leaguedistant when it overset. It was a small berg, though large compared withmost of the others; yet such a mighty volume of foam boiled up as gaveme a startling idea of the prodigious weight of the mass. The sight mademe very anxious about my own state, and to satisfy my mind I got uponthe ice and walked round the vessel, and to get a true view of herposture went to the extreme end of the rocks beyond her bows, andfinally came to the conclusion that, supposing the ice should crumbleaway from her sides so as to cause the weight of the schooner to renderit top-heavy, her buoyancy on touching the water would certainly tearher keel out of its frosty setting and leave her floating. Indeed, sosure was I of this that I saw, next to the ice splitting and freeing herin that way, the best thing that could happen would be its capsizal.
I regained the ship, and had paused an instant to look over the side,when I perceived the very block of ice on which I had come to a haltbreak from the bed with a smart clap of noise, and completely rollover. Only a minute before had I been standing on it, and thus had sixtyseconds stood between me and death, for most certainly must I have beendrowned or killed by being beaten against the ice by the swell! I fellupon my knees and lifted up my hands in gratitude to God, feelingextraordinarily comforted by this further mark of His care of me, andvery strongly persuaded that He designed I should come off with my lifeafter all, since His providence would not work so many miracles for mypreservation if I was to perish by this adventure.
These thoughts did more for my spirits than I can well express; and theintolerable sense of loneliness was mitigated by the knowledge that Iwas watched, and therefore not alone.
The day passed I know not how. The shadow as of tempest hung in the air,but never a cats-paw did I see to blurr the rolling mirror of the ocean.The hidden sun sank out of the breathless sky, tingeing the atmospherewith a faint hectic, which quickly yielded to the deepest shade ofblackness. The mysterious desperate silence, however, that on deckweighed oppressively on every sense, as something false, menacing, andmalignant in these seas, was qualified below by the peculiar strainingnoises in the schooner's hold caused by the swinging of the ice upon theswell. I was very uneasy; I dreaded a gale. It was impossible but thatthe vessel must quickly go to pieces in a heavy sea upon the ice if shedid not liberate herself. But though this excited a depressionmelancholy enough, nothing else that I can recollect contributed to it.When I reviewed the apprehension the Frenchman had raised, and reflectedhow unsupportable a burden he must have become, I was very wellsatisfied to be alone. Time had fortified me; I had passed throughexperiences so surprising, encountered wonders so preternatural, thatsuperstition lay asleep in my soul, and I found nothing to occasion inme the least uneasiness in thinking of the lifeless shrivelled figure ofwhat was just now a fierce, cowardly, untamed villain, lying in theforecastle.
I made a good supper, built up a large fire, and mixed myself a heartybowl of punch, not with the view of drowning my anxieties--God forbid! Iwas too grateful for the past, too expectant of the future, to becapable of so brutish a folly--but that I might keep myself in acheerful posture of mind; and being sick of my own company took thelanthorn to the cabin lately used by the Frenchman, and found in a chestthere, among sundry articles of attire, a little parcel of books, somein Dutch and Portuguese, and one in English.
It was a little old volume, the author's name not given, and proved tobe a relation of the writer's being taken by pirates, and the manydangers he underwent. There was nothing in it, to be sure, that answeredto my own case, yet it interested me mightily as an honest unvarnishednarrative of sea perils; and I see myself now in fancy reading it, thelanthorn hanging by a laniard close beside my head, the book in onehand, my pipe in the other, the furnace roaring pleasantly, my feetclose to it, and the atmosphere of the oven fragrant with the punch thatI put there to prevent it from freezing. I had come to a certain pageand was reading this passage: "_Soon after we were on board we all wentinto the great cabin, where we found nothing but destruction. Twoscrutores I had there were broke to pieces, and all the fine goods andnecessaries in them were all gone. Moreover, two large chests that hadbooks in them were empty, and I was afterwards informed they had beenall thrown overboard; for one of the pirates on opening them swore therewas jaw-work enough (as he called it) to serve a nation, and proposedthat they might be cast into the sea, for he feared there might be somebooks amongst them that might breed mischief enough, and prevent some oftheir comrades from going on in their voyage to hell, whither they wereall bound_"--I say, I was reading this passage, not a little affected bythe impiety of the rascal, for whose portrait my dead Frenchman mightvery well have sat, when I was terrified by an extraordinary loudexplosion, that burst so near and rang with such a prodigious clear noteof thunder through the schooner that I vow to God I believed thegunpowder below had blown up. And in this suspicion I honestly supposedmyself right for a moment, for on running into the cabin I was dazzledby a crimson flame that clothed the whole interior with a wondrous gushof fire; but this being instantly followed by such another clap as theformer, I understood a thunderstorm had broken over the schooner.
It was exactly overhead, and that accounted for the violence of thecrashes, which were indeed so extreme that they sounded rather like thesplitting of enormous bodies of ice close to, than the flight ofelectric bolts. The hatch lay open; I ran on deck, but scarce had passedmy head through the companion when down came a storm of hail, everystone as big as a pigeon's egg, and in all my time I never heard a morehellish clamour. There was not a breath of air. The hail fell instraight lines, which the fierce near lightning flashed up into theappearance of giant harp strings, on which the black hand of the nightwas playing those heavy notes of thunder. I sat in the shelter of thecompanion, very anxious and alarmed, for there was powder enough in thehold to blow the ship into atoms; and the lightning played socontinuously and piercingly that it was like a hundred darts of fire,violet, crimson, and sun-coloured, in the grasp of spirits who thrust atthe sea, all over its face, with swift movement of the arms, as thoughsearching for the schooner to spear her.
The hailstorm ceased as suddenly as it had burst. I stepped on to thedeck, and 'twas like treading on shingle. There was not the least motionin the air, and the stagnation gave an almost supernatural character tothe thunder and lightning. The ocean was lighted up to its furthestvisible confines by the flames in the sky, and the repeated explosionsof thunder exceeded the roaring of the ordnance of a dozen squadrons inhot fight. The ice-coast in the east, and the two score bergs in thenorth and west leapt out of one hue into another; and were my days inthis world to exceed those of old Abraham, I should to my last breathremember the solemn and terrible magnificence of that picture oflightning-coloured ice, the sulphur-tinctured shapes of the swollenbodies of clouds bringing their dark electric mines together in ahuddle, the answering flash of the face of the deep to the lancing ofeach spiral dazzling bolt, with the air as still as the atmosphere of acathedral for the thunder to roll its echoes through.
There was a second furious shower of hail, and when that was over Ilooked forth, and observed that the storm was settling into thenorth-east, whence I concluded that what draught there might be up theresat in the south-west. Nor was I mistaken; for half an hour after thefirst of the outburst, by which time the lightning played weak and atlong intervals low down, and the thunder had ceased, I felt a crawlingof air coming out of the south-west, which presently briskened into asmall steady blowing. But not for long. It freshened yet and yet; thewrinkles crisped into whiteness on the black heavings; they grew intosmall surges with sharp cubbish snarlings preludious of the lion'svoice; and by ten o'clock it was blowing in strong squalls, the seasrising, and the clouds sailing swiftly in smoke-coloured rags under thestars.
The posture of the ice inclined the schooner's starboard bow to thebillo
ws; and in a very short time she was trembling in every bone to theblows of the surges which rolled boiling over the ice there and struckher, flinging dim clouds of spume in the air, which soon set thescuppers gushing. My case was that of a stranded ship, with thisdifference only, that a vessel ashore lies solid to the beating of thewaves, whereas the ice was buoyant, it rose and fell, sluggishly it istrue, and so somewhat mitigated the severity of the shocks of water.But, spite of this, I was perfectly sure that unless the bed broke underher or she slipt off it, she would be in pieces before the morning. Itwas not in any hull put together by human hands to resist the poundingof those seas. The weight of the mighty ocean along whose breast theyraced was in them, and though the wind was no more than a brisk gale,each billow by its stature showed itself the child of a giantess. Theice-bed was like a whirlpool with the leap and flash and play of thefroth upon it. The black air of the night was whitened by the storms offoam-flakes which flew over the vessel. The roaring of the broken watersincreased the horrors of the scene. I firmly believed my time was come.God had been merciful, but I was to die now. As to making any shift tokeep myself alive after the ship should be broken up, the thought neverentered my head. What could I do? There was no boat. I might havecontrived some arrangement of booms and casks to serve as a raft, but towhat purpose? How long would it take the wind and sea to freeze me?
I crouched in the companion-way hearkening to the uproar around, feelingthe convulsions of the schooner, fully prepared for death, dogged andhopeless. No, I was not afraid. Suffering and expectation had brought meto that pass that I did not care. "'Tis such an end as hundreds andthousands of sailors have met," I remember thinking; "it is the fittestexit for a mariner. I have sinned in my time, but the Almighty God knowsmy heart." To this tune ran my thoughts. I held my arms tightly foldedupon my breast, and with set lips waited for the first of those crashingand rending sounds which would betoken the ruin and destruction of theschooner.
So passed half an hour; then, being half perished with the cold, I wentto the furnace, for when the vessel went to pieces it would matterlittle in what part of her I was, and warmed myself and took a dram as afelon swallows a draught on his way to the scaffold. Were I to attemptto describe the character of the thunderous noises in the ship I shouldnot be believed. The seas raised a most deafening roaring as they boiledover the ice and rolled their volumes against the vessel's sides. Everycurl swung a load of broken frozen pieces against the bows and bends,and the shocks resounded through her like blows from cyclopean hammers.It was as if I had been seated in the central stagnant heart of a smallrevolving hurricane, feeling no faintest sigh of air upon my cheek,whilst close around whirled the hellish tormenting conflict of whitewaters and yelling blasts.
On a sudden--in a breath--I felt the vessel rise. She was swung up withthe giddy velocity of a hunter clearing a tall gate; she sank again,and there was a mighty concussion forward, then a pause of steadinesswhilst you might have counted five, then a wild upward heave, a sort ofsharp floating fall, a harsh grating along her keel and sides, as thoughshe was being smartly warped over rocks, followed by an unmistakablefree pitching and rolling motion.
I had sprung to my feet and stood waiting. But the instant I gathered bythe movements of her that she was released I sprang like a madman up thecompanion-steps. The sea, breaking on her bow, flew in heavy showersalong the deck and half blinded me. But I was semi-delirious, and havingsat so long with Death's hand in mine was in a passionately defiantmood, with a perfect rage of scorn of peril in me, and I walked right onto the forecastle, giving the flying sheets of water there no heed. In aminute a block of sea tumbled upon me and left me breathless; theiciness of it cooled my mind's heat, but not my resolution. I wasdetermined to judge as best I could by the light of the foam of what hadhappened, and holding on tenaciously to whatever came to my hand andprogressing step by step I got to the forecastle and looked ahead.
Where the ice was the water tumbled in milk; 'twas four or five ship'slengths distant, and I could distinguish no more than that. I peeredover the lee bow, but could see no ice. The vessel had gone clear; how,I knew not and can never know, but my own fancy is that she split thebed with her own weight when the sea rose and threw the ice up, for shehad floated on a sudden, and the noises which attended her releaseindicated that she had been forced through a channel.
I returned aft, barely escaping a second deluge, and looked over thequarter; no ice was there visible to me. The vessel rolled horribly, andI perceived that she had a decided list to starboard, the result of theshifting of what was in her when the ice came away from the main withher, and it was this heel that brought the sea washing over the bow. Itook hold of the tiller to try it, but either the helm was frozenimmovable or the rudder was jammed in its gudgeons or in some otherfashion fixed.
Had she been damaged below? was she taking in water? I knew her to be sothickly sheathed with ice that, unless it had been scaled off in placesby the breaking of her bed, I had little fear (until this coveringmelted or dropped off by the working of the frame) of the hull notproving tight. I should have been coated with ice myself had I stayedbut a little longer in my wet clothes in that piercing wind, so I ranbelow, and bringing an armful of clothes from my cabin to the cook-room,was very soon in dry attire, and making an extraordinary figure, I don'tquestion, in the buttons, lace, and fripperies of the old-fashionedgarments.
The incident of the schooner's release from the ice had come upon me sosuddenly, and at a time too when my mind was terribly disordered, that Iscarce realized the full meaning of it until I had shifted myself andfortified my heart with a dram and got warm in the glow of the furnace.By this time she had fallen into the trough and was labouring like acask; that she would prove a heavy roller in a sea-way a single glanceat her fat buttocks and swelling bilge might have persuaded me, but Inever could have dreamt she would wallow so monstrously. The oscillationwas rendered more formidable by her list, and there were moments when Icould not keep my feet. She was shipping water very freely over herstarboard rail, but this did not much concern me, for the break of thepoop-deck kept the after part of the vessel indifferently dry, and theforecastle and main hatches were well secured. But there was one greatperil I knew not how to provide against--I mean the flotilla of icebergsin the north and west. They lay in a long chain upon the sea, and thoughto be sure there was no doubt a wide channel between each, through whichit might have been easy to carry a ship under control, yet there wasevery probability of a vessel in the defenceless condition of theschooner, without a stitch of sail on her and under no other governmentof helm than a fixed rudder, being swept against one of those frozenfloating hills when indeed it would be good-night to her and to me too,for after such a catastrophe the sun would never rise for me or heragain.
Meanwhile I was crazy to ascertain if the schooner was taking in water.If there was a sounding-rod in the ship I did not know where to lay myhands upon it. But he is a poor sailor who is slow at substitutes.There were several spears in the arms-room (piratical plunder, no doubt)with mere spikes for heads, like those weapons used by the Caffres andother tribes in that country; they were formed of a hard heavy wood. Itook a length of ratline line and secured it to one of these spears, andcarried it on deck with the powder-room bull's-eye lamp; but when Iprobed the sounding-pipe I found it full of ice, and as it wasimpossible to draw the pumps, I flung my ingenious sounding-rod down ina passion of grief and mortification.
Yet was I not to be beaten. Such was my temper, had the devil himselfconfronted me, I should have defied him to do his worst, for I had madeup my mind to weather him out. I entered the forecastle, lanthorn inhand, prized open the hatch and dropped into the hold. It needed anexperienced ear to detect the sobbing of internal waters amid theyearning gushes, the long gurgling washings, the thunderous blows, andshrewd rain-like hissings of the seas outside. I listened with strainedhearing for some minutes, but distinguished no sounds to alarm me withassurance of water in the hold. I could not mistake. I hearkened withal
l my might, but the noise was outside. I thanked God very heartily,and got out of the hold and put the hatch on. There was no need to goaft and listen. The schooner was by the head, and there could be nowater in the run that would not be forward too.
Being reassured in respect of the staunchness of the hull, I returned tothe fire and proceeded to equip myself for a prolonged watch on deck.Whilst I was drawing on a great pair of boots I heard a knocking in theafter part of the vessel. I supposed she had drifted into a little fieldof broken ice, and that she would go clear presently, and I finishedarming myself for the weather; but the knocking continuing, I went intothe cabin where I heard it very plain, and walked as far as thelazarette hatch, where I stood listening. The noises were a kind ofirregular thumping accompanied by a peculiar grinding sound. In a momentI guessed the truth, rushed on deck, and by the dim light in the air sawthe long tiller mowing to and fro! The beat of the beam seas hadunlocked the frozen bonds of the rudder, and there swung the tiller, asthough like a dog the ship was wagging her tail for joy!
The vessel lay along, rolling so as to bring her starboard rail to alevel with the sea; her main deck was full of water, and the froth of itcombined with the ice that glazed her made her look like a fabric ofmarble as she swung on the black fold ere it broke into snow about her.I seized the tiller and ran it over hard a-starboard, and I had not heldit in that posture half a minute when to my inexpressible delight Iobserved that she was paying off. Her head fell slowly from the sea; shelurched drunkenly, and some tons of black water rolled over thebulwarks; she reeled consumedly to larboard, and rose squarely andponderously to the height of the surge that was now abaft the beam. In afew moments she was dead before it, the helm amidships, the wind blowingsheer over the stern with half its weight seemingly gone through thevessel running, the tall seas chasing her high stern and floating itupwards, till looking forward was like gazing down the slope of a hill.
My heart was never fuller than then. I was half crazy with the passionof joy that possessed me. Consider the alternations of hope and bitterdespair which had been crowded into that night! We may wonder in timesof security that life should be sweet, and admit the justice of thearguments which several sorts of writers, and the poets even more thanthe parsons, use in defence of death. But when it comes to the pinchhuman nature breaks through. When the old man in AEsop calls upon Deathto relieve him, and the skeleton suddenly rises, the old man changes hismind, and thinks he will go on trying for himself a little longer. Iliked to live, and had no mind for a wet shroud, and this getting theschooner before the wind, along with the old familiar feeling of thedecks reeling and soaring and sinking under my feet, was so cordial anassurance of life that, I tell you, my heart was full to breaking withtransport.
However, I was still in a situation that made prodigious demands upon mycoolness and wits. The wind was south-west, the schooner was runningnorth-east; the bulk of the icebergs lay on the larboard bow, but therewere others right ahead, and to starboard, where also lay the extremityof the island, though I did not fear _that_ if I could escape the rest.It was a dark night; methinks there should have been a young mooncurled somewhere among the stars, but she was not to be seen. The cloudsflew dark and hurriedly, and the frosty orbs between were too few tothrow a light. The ocean ahead and around was the duskier for thespectral illumination of the near foam and the glimmer of the ice-coatedship. I tested the vessel with the tiller and found she responded butdully; she would be nimbler under canvas no doubt, but it was enoughthat she should answer her helm at all. Oh, I say, I was mightythankful, most humbly grateful. My heart was never more honest to itsMaker than then.
She crushed along, pitching pitifully, the dark seas on either handfoaming to her quarters, and her rigging querulous with the wind. Hadthe Frenchman been alive to steer the ship, I might have found strengthenough for my hands in the vigour of my spirit to get the spritsail yardsquare and chop its canvas loose--nay, I might have achieved more thanthat even; but I could not quit the tiller now. I reckoned our speed atabout four miles an hour, as fast as a hearty man could walk. The highstern, narrow as it was, helped us; it was like a mizzen in its way; andall aloft being stout to start with and greatly thickened yet by ice,the surface up there gave plenty for the gale to catch hold on; and sowe drove along.
I could just make out the dim pallid loom of the coast of ice upon thestarboard beam, and a blob or two of faintness--most elusive and not tobe fixed by the eye staring straight at them--on the larboard bow. Butit was not long before these blobs, as I term them, grew plainer, andhalf a score swam into the dusk over the bowsprit end, and resembleddull small visionary openings in the dark sky there, or like starsmagnified and dimmed into the merest spectral light by mist. I passedthe first at a distance of a quarter of a mile; it slided byphantasmally, and another stole out right ahead. This I could have gonewidely clear of by a little shift of the helm, but whilst I was in theact of starboarding three or four bergs suddenly showed on the larboardbow, and I saw that unless I had a mind to bring the ship into thetrough again I must keep straight on. So I steered to bring the bergthat was right ahead a little on the bow, with a prayer in my soul thatthere might be no low-lying block in the road for the schooner to splitupon. It went by within a pistol-shot. I was very much accustomed to thesight of ice by this time, yet I found myself glancing at this mass withpretty near as much wonder and awe as if I had never seen such a thingbefore. It was not above thirty feet high, but its shape was exactlythat of a horse's head, the lips sipping the sea, the ears cocked, theneck arching to the water. You would have said it was some vast courserrising out of the deep. The peculiar radiance of ice trembled off itlike a luminous mist into the dusk. The water boiled about its nose, andsuggested a frothing caused by the monster steed's expelled breath. Leta fire have been kindled to glow red where you looked for the eye, andthe illusion would have been frightfully grand.
The poet speaks of the spirits of the vasty deep; if you want to knowwhat exquisite artists they are, enter the frozen silences of the south.
Thus threading my way I drove before the seas and wind, striking a pieceof ice but once only, and that a small lump which hit the vessel on thebow and went scraping past, doing the fabric no hurt; but often forcedto slide perilously close by the bergs. I needed twenty instead of onepair of eyes. With ice already on either bow, on a sudden it wouldglimmer out right ahead, and I had to form my resolution on the instant.If ever you have been amid a pack of icebergs on a dark night in a highsea you will understand my case; if not, the pen of a Fielding or aDefoe could not put it before you. For what magic has ink to express theroaring of swollen waters bursting into tall pale clouds against themotionless crystal heights, the mystery of the configuration of thefaintness under the swarming shadows of the flying night, the suddenglares of breaking liquid peaks, the palpitating darkness beyond, theplunging and rolling of the ship, making her rigging ring upon the airwith the reeling of her masts, the gradual absorption of the solid massof dim lustre by the gloom astern, the swift spectral dawn of suchanother light over the bows, with many phantasmal outlines slipping byon either hand, like a procession of giant ocean-spectres, travellingwhite and secretly towards the silent dominions of the Pole?
Half this ice came from the island, the rest of it was formed of bergstoo tall to have ever belonged to the north end of that great stretch.It took three hours to pass clear of them, and then I had to go onclinging to the tiller and steering in a most melancholy famishedcondition for another long half-hour before I could satisfy myself thatthe sea was free.
But now I was nearly dead with the cold. I had stood for five hours atthe helm, during all which time my mind had been wound up to thefiercest tension of anxiety, and my eyes felt as if they were strainedout of their sockets by their searching of the gloom ahead, and naturehaving done her best gave out suddenly, and not to have saved my lifecould I have stood at the tiller for another ten minutes.
The gear along the rail was so iron-hard that I could not secure thehelm
with it, so I softened some lashings by holding them before thefire, and finding the schooner on my return to be coming round tostarboard, I helped her by putting the tiller hard a port and securingit. I then went below, built up the fire, lighted my pipe, and sat downfor warmth and rest.