The Frozen Pirate Read online

  CHAPTER II.

  THE ICEBERG.

  The loss of the spars I have named was no great matter, nor were we tobe intimidated by such weather as was to be expected off Cape Horn. Forwhat sailor entering this icy and tempestuous tract of waters but knowsthat here he must expect to find Nature in her most violent moods,crueller and more unreckonable than a mad woman, who one moment lookswith a silent sinister sullenness upon you, and the next is shriekingwith devilish laughter as she makes as if to spring upon you?

  But there was an inveteracy in the gale which had driven us down to thispart that bore heavily upon our spirits. It was impossible to trim theballast. We dared not veer so as to bring the ship on the other tack.And the slope of the decks, added to the fierce wild motions of thefabric, made our situation as unendurable as that of one who should beconfined in a cask and sent rolling downhill. It was impossible to lighta fire, and we could not therefore dress our food or obtain a warmdrink. The cold was beyond language severe. The rigging was glazed withice, and great pendants of the silvery brilliance of crystal hung fromthe yards, bowsprit, and catheads, whilst the sails were frozen to thehardness of granite, and lay like sheets of iron rolled up in gaskets ofsteel. We had no means of drying our clothes, nor were we able so tomove as by exercise we might keep ourselves warm. Never once did the sunshine to give us the encouragement of his glorious beam. Hour after hourfound us amid the same distracting scene: the tall olive-coloured seashurling out their rage in foam as they roared towards us in ranges ofdissolving cliffs; the wind screaming and whistling through our grey andfrozen rigging; the water washing in floods about our decks, with theends of the running gear snaking about in the torrent, and the livestock lying drowned and stiff in their coops and pen near the caboose.

  With helm lashed and yards pointed to the wind thus we lay, thus wedrifted, steadily trending with the send of each giant surge further anddeeper into the icy regions of the south-west, helpless, foreboding,disconsolate.

  It was the night of the fourth day of the month. The crew were forwardin the forecastle, and I knew not if any man was on deck saving myself.In truth, there was no place in which a watch could be kept, if it werenot in the companion hatch. Such was the violence with which the seasbroke over the brig that it was at the risk of his life a man crawledthe distance betwixt the forecastle and the quarter-deck. It had been asthick as mud all day, and now upon this flying gloom of haze, sleet, andspray had descended the blackness of the night.

  I stood in the companion as in a sentry-box, with my eyes just above thecover. Nothing was to be seen but sheets of ghostly white water sweepingup the blackness on the vessel's lee, or breaking and boiling towindward. It was sheer blind chaos to the sight, and you might havesupposed that the brig was in the midst of some enormous vaporousturmoil, so illusive and indefinable were the shadows of thestorm-tormented night--one block of blackness melting into another, withsometimes an extraordinary faintness of light speeding along the darksky like to the dim reflection of a lanthorn flinging its radiance fromafar, which no doubt must have been the reflection of some particularbright and extensive bed of foam upon a sooty belly on high, hanginglower than the other clouds. I say, you might have thought yourself inthe midst of some hellish conflict of vapour but for the substantialthunder of the surges upon the vessel and the shriek of the slung massesof water flying like cannon balls between the masts.

  After a long and eager look round into the obscurity, semi-lucent withfroth, I went below for a mouthful of spirits and a bite of supper, thehour being eight bells in the second dog watch as we say, that is, eighto'clock in the evening. The captain and carpenter were in the cabin.Upon the swing-tray over the table were a piece of corned beef, somebiscuit, and a bottle of hollands.

  "Nothing to be seen, I suppose, Rodney?" says the captain.

  "Nothing," I answered. "She looks well up, and that's all that can besaid."

  "I've been hove to under bare poles more than once in my time," said thecarpenter, "but never through so long a stretch. I doubt if you'll findmany vessels to look up to it as this here _Laughing Mary_ does."

  "The loss of hamper forward will make her the more weatherly," saysCaptain Rosy. "But we're in an ugly part of the globe. When bad sailorsdie they're sent here, I reckon. The worst nautical sinner can't be hoveto long off the Horn without coming out of it with a purged soul. Hemust start afresh to deserve further punishment."

  "Well, here's a breeze that can't go on blowing much longer," cries thecarpenter. "The place it comes from must give out soon, unless a newtrade wind's got fixed into a whole gale for this here ocean."

  "What southing do you allow our drift will be giving us, captain?" Iasked, munching a piece of beef.

  "All four mile an hour," he answered. "If this goes on I shall look tomake some discoveries. The Antarctic circle won't be far off presently,and since you're a scholar, Rodney, I'll leave you to describe what'sinside of it, though boil me if I don't have the naming of the tallestland; for, d'ye see, I've a mind to be known after I'm dead, andthere's nothing like your signature on a mountain to be remembered by."

  He grinned and put his hand out for the bottle, and after a pull passedit to the carpenter. I guessed by his jocosity that he had already beenmaking somewhat free; for although I love a bold face put upon adifficulty, ours was a situation in which only a tipsy man could findfood for merriment.

  At this instant we were startled by a wild and fearful shout on deck. Itsounded high above the sweeping and seething of the wind and the hissingof the lashed waters, and it penetrated the planks with a note that gaveit an inexpressible character of anguish.

  "A man washed overboard!" bawled the carpenter, springing to his feet.

  "No!" cried I, for my younger and shrewder ear had caught a note in thecry that persuaded me it was not as the carpenter said; and in aninstant the three of us jumped up the ladder and gained the deck.

  The moment I was in the gale the same affrighted cry rang down along thewind from some man forward: _"For God's sake tumble up before we areupon it!"_

  "What do you see?" I roared, sending my voice, trumpet-fashion, throughmy hands; for as to my own and the sight of Captain Rosy and thecarpenter, why, it was like being struck blind to come on a sudden outof the lighted cabin into the black night.

  Any reply that might have been attempted was choked out by the dive ofthe brig's head into a sea, which furiously flooded her forecastle andcame washing aft like milk in the darkness till it was up to our knees.

  "See there!" suddenly roared the carpenter.

  "Where, man, where?" bawled the captain.

  But in this brief time my sight had grown used to the night, and I sawthe object before the carpenter could answer. It lay on our lee beam,but how far off no man could have told in that black thickness. It stoodagainst the darkness and hung out a dim complexion of light, or ratherof pallidness, that was not light--not to be described by the pen. Itwas like a small hill of snow, and looked as snow does or the foam ofthe sea in darkness, and it came and went with our soaring and sinking.

  "Ice!" I shouted to the captain.

  "I see it!" he answered, in a voice that satisfied me the consternationhe was under had settled the fumes of the spirits out of his head. "Wemust drive her clear at all risks."

  There was no need to call the men. To the second cry that had beenraised by one among them who had come out of the forecastle and seen theberg, they had tumbled up as sailors will when they jump for theirlives; and now they came staggering, splashing, crawling aft to us, forthe lamp in the cabin made a sheen in the companion hatch, and theycould see us as we stood there.

  "Men," cried Captain Rosy, "yonder's a gravestone for our carcases if weare not lively! Cast the helm adrift!" (we steered by a tiller). "Twohands stand by it. Forward, some of ye, and loose the stay-foresail, andshow the head of it."

  The fellows hung in the wind. I could not wonder. The bowsprit had beensprung when the jibboom was wrenched from the cap by the fall of thetop-ga
llant-mast; it still had to bear the weight of the heavy spritsailyard, and the drag of the staysail might carry the spar overboard withthe men upon it. Yet it was our best chance; the one sail most speedilyreleased and hoisted, the one that would pay the brig's head offquickest, and the only fragment that promised to stand.

  "Jump!" roared the captain, in a passion of hurry. "Great thunder! 'tisclose aboard! You'll leave me no sea room for veering if you delay aninstant."

  "Follow me who will!" I cried out; "and others stand by ready to hoistaway."

  Thus speaking--for there seemed to my mind a surer promise of death inhesitation at this supreme moment than in twenty such risks as layingout on the bowsprit signified--I made for the lee of the weatherbulwarks, and blindly hauled myself forward by such pins and gear ascame to my hands. A man might spend his life on the ocean and never haveto deal with such a passage as this. It was not the bitter cold only,though perhaps of its full fierceness the wildness of my feelings didnot suffer me to be sensible; it was the pouring of volumes of waterupon me from over the rail, often tumbling upon my head with such weightas nearly to beat the breath out of my body and sink me to the deck; itwas the frenzy excited in me by the tremendous obligation of despatchand my retardment by the washing seas, the violent motions of the brig,the encumbrance of gear and deck furniture adrift and sweeping here andthere, and the sense that the vessel might be grinding her bows againstthe iceberg before I should be able to reach the bowsprit. All this itwas that filled me with a kind of madness, by the sheer force of whichalone I was enabled to reach the forecastle, for had I gone to my dutycoldly, without agitation of spirits, my heart must have failed mebefore I had measured half the length of the brig.

  I got on to the bowsprit nearly stifled by the showering of the seas,holding an open knife between my teeth, half dazed by the prodigiousmotion of the light brig, which, at this extreme end of her, was to befelt to the full height of its extravagance. At every plunge I expectedto be buried, and every moment I was prepared to be torn from my hold.It was a fearful time; the falling off of the brig into the trough--andnever was I in a hollower and more swelling sea--her falling off, I say,in the act of veering might end us out of hand by the rolling of a surgeover us big enough to crush the vessel down fathoms out of sight; andthen there was that horrible heap of faint whiteness leaping out of thedense blackness of the sky, gathering a more visible sharpness ofoutline with every liquid heave that forked us high into the flyingnight with shrieking rigging and boiling decks.

  Commending myself to God, for I was now to let go with my hands, Ipulled the knife from my teeth, and feeling for the gaskets or lineswhich bound the sail to the spar, I cut and hacked as fast as I couldply my arms. In a flash the gale, whipping into a liberated fold of thecanvas, blew the whole sail out; the bowsprit reeled and quivered underme; I danced off it with incredible despatch, shouting to the men tohoist away. The head of the staysail mounted in thunder, and theslatting of its folds and the thrashing of its sheet was like therattling of heavy field-pieces whisked at full gallop over a stony road.

  "High enough!" I bawled, guessing enough was shown, for I could not see."Get a drag upon the sheet, lads, and then aft with you for your lives!"

  Scarce had I let forth my breath in this cry when I heard the blast asof a gun, and knew by that the sail was gone; an instant after wash camea mountainous sea sheer over the weather bulwarks fair betwixt the foreand main rigging; but happily, standing near the fore shrouds, I washolding on with both hands to the topsail halliards whilst calling tothe men, so that being under the rail, which broke the blow of the sea,and holding on too, no mischief befell me, only that for about twentyseconds I stood in a horrible fury and smother of frothing water,hearing nothing, seeing nothing, with every faculty in me so numbed anddulled by the wet, cold, and horror of our situation, that I knew notwhether in that space of time I was in the least degree sensible of whathad happened or what might befall.

  The water leaving the deck, I rallied, though half-drowned, andstaggered aft, and found the helm deserted, nor could I see any signs ofmy companions. I rushed to the tiller, and putting my whole weight andforce to it, drove it up to windward and secured it by a turn of its ownrope; for ice or no ice--and for the moment I was so blinded by the wetthat I could not see the berg--my madness now was to get the brig beforethe sea and out of the trough, advised by every instinct in me that suchanother surge as that which had rolled over her must send her to thebottom in less time than it would take a man to cry "O God!"

  A figure came out of the blackness on the lee side of the deck.

  "Who is that?" said he. It was Captain Rosy.

  I answered.

  "What, Rodney! alive?" cried he. "I think I have been struckinsensible."

  Two more figures came crawling aft. Then two more. They were thecarpenter and three seamen.

  I cried out, "Who was at the helm when that sea was shipped?"

  A man answered, "Me, Thomas Jobling."

  "Where's your mate?" I asked; and it seemed to me that I was the onlyman who had his senses full just then.

  "He was washed forward along with me," he replied.

  Now a fifth man joined us, but before I could question him as to theothers, the captain, with a scream like an epileptic's cry, shrieked,"It's all over with us! We are upon it!"

  I looked and perceived the iceberg to be within a musket-shot, whence itwas clear that it had been closer to us when first sighted than theblackness of the night would suffer us to distinguish. In a time likethis at sea events throng so fast they come in a heap, and even if theintelligence were not confounded by the uproar and peril, if indeed itwere as placid as in any time of perfect security, it could not possiblytake note of one-tenth that happens.

  I confess that, for my part, I was very nearly paralyzed by the nearnessof the iceberg, and by the cry of the captain, and by the perceptionthat there was nothing to be done. That which I best recollect is theappearance of the mass of ice lying solidly, like a little island, uponthe seas which roared in creaming waters about it. Every blow of theblack and arching surge was reverberated in a dull hollow tremble backto the ear through the hissing flight of the gale. The frozen body wasnot taller than our mastheads, yet it showed like a mountain hangingover us as the brig was flung swirling into the deep Pacific hollow,leaving us staring upwards out of the instant's stagnation of the troughwith lips set breathlessly and with dying eyes. It put a kind of filmof faint light outside the lines of its own shape, and this served tomagnify it, and it showed spectrally in the darkness as though itreflected some visionary light that came neither from the sea nor thesky. These points I recollect; likewise the maddening and maddenedmotion of our vessel, sliding towards it down one midnight declivity toanother.

  All other features were swallowed up in the agony of the time. Onemonstrous swing the brig gave, like to some doomed creature's lastdelirious struggle; the bowsprit caught the ice and snapped with thenoise of a great tree crackling in fire. I could hear the masts breakingoverhead--the crash and blows of spars and yards torn down and strikingthe hull; above all the grating of the vessel, that was now head on tothe sea and swept by the billows, broadside on, along the sharp andmurderous projections. Two monster seas tumbled over the bows, floatedme off my legs, and dashed me against the tiller, to which I clung. Iheard no cries. I regained my feet, clinging with a death-grip to thetiller, and, seeing no one near me, tried to holloa, to know if any manwere living, but could not make my voice sound.

  The fearful grating noise ceased on a sudden, and the faintness of theberg loomed upon the starboard bow. We had been hurled clear of it andwere to leeward; but what was our condition? I tried to shout again, butto no purpose; and was in the act of quitting the tiller to go forwardwhen I was struck over the brows by something from aloft--a block, as Ibelieve--and fell senseless upon the deck.