 CHAPTER 26 OF THE FROZEN PIRATE The weight of the wind in the rigging steadied the schooner somewhat, and prevented her from rolling too heavily to starboard, whilst her list corrected her laboured rolls. So as I sat below, she seemed to me to be making tolerably good weather of it. Not much water came aboard. Now and again I would hear the clatter of a fall forwards, but at comfortably long intervals. I sat against the dresser with my back upon it, and, being dead tired, must have dropped asleep on a sudden, indeed, before I had half-smoked my pipe out, and I do not believe I gave a thought to my situation before I slumbered, so wearied was I. The cold awoke me. The fire was out, and so was the candle in the lantern, and I was in coffin darkness. This the tinder-box speedily remedied. I looked at my watch, seven o'clock, as I was a sinner, so that my sleep had lasted between three and four hours. I went on deck, and found the night still black upon the sea. The wind, the same brisk ale that was blowing when I quitted the helm, the sea no heavier, and the schooner tumbling in true Dutch fashion upon it. I looked very earnestly around, but could see no signs of ice. There would be daylight presently, so I went below, lighted the fire, and got my breakfast, and when I returned, the sun was up, and the sea visible to its further streaches. It was a fine, wintry peace, the sea green, and running in ridges with frothing heads, the sky very pale among the dark snow-laden clouds. The sun darting array now and again, which was swung into the north by the shadows of the clouds until they extinguished it. Remote in the north-west hung the gleam of an iceberg. There was nothing else inside. Yes, something that comforted me exceedingly, though it was not very many days ago that a lyke object had heavily scared me, an albatross, a noble bird, sailing on the windward, close enough to be shot. The sight of this living thing was inexpressibly cheering. It put into my head a fancy of ships being at hand, thoughts of help and of human companions. In truth my imagination was willing to accept it as the same bird that I had frightened away when in the boat, now returned to silently reproach me for my treatment of it. No, my lonely eye, my subdued and suffering heart might even have witnessed the good angel of my life in that solitary shape of ocean beauty, and have deemed that, though seen, it had been with me throughout, and was now made visible to my gaze by the light of hope that had broken into the darkness of my adventure. Well, supposing it so, I should not have been the only man who ever scared his good angel away and found it faithful afterwards. I unlashed the tiller, and got the schooner before the wind, and steered until a little before noon, letting her drive dead before the sea, which carried her northeast. Then securing the helm amid ships, I ran for the quadrant, and whilst waiting for the sun to show himself, I observed that the vessel held herself very steadily before the wind, which might have been owing to her high stern and the great swell of her sides and her round bottom. But, be the cause what it might, she ran as fairly with her helm amid ships as if I had been at the tiller to check her, a most fortunate condition of my navigation, for it privileged me to get about her the work, whilst at the same time every hour was conveying me nearer to the track of ships, and further from the bitter regions of the south. I got an observation, and made out that the vessel had driven about fifteen leagues during the night. She must do better than that, thought I. And when I had eaten some dinner, I took a chopper, and, going on to the folksal, lay out upon the bowsprit, and after beating the spritzail yard block clear of the ice, cut away the gaskets that confined the sail to the yard, heartily beating the canvas that was like iron, till a clue of it fell. I then came in, and braced the yard square, and the wind, presently catching the exposed part of the sail, blew more of it out, and yet more, until there was a good surface showing. Then to a sudden hard blast of wind, the whole sail flew open with a mighty crackling, as though indeed it was formed of ice. But to render it useful, I had to haul the sheets off, which I could not manage without the help of the tackles we had used in slinging the powder over the side, so that, what with one hindrance and another, the setting of that sail took me an hour and a half. But had it occupied me all day, it would have been worth doing. Being as it was as a cloth, its effect upon the schooner was like that of a cordial upon a fainting man. It was not that she sensibly showed nimble heels to it. Its lifting tendency enabled her to ride the underrunning seas more buoyantly, and if it increased her speed by half a knot an hour, it was worth a million to me, whose business it was, to take the utmost possible advantage of the southerly gale. I returned to the helm, warm with the exercise, and gazed forward, not a little proud of my work. Though the sail was eight and forty years old, and perhaps older, it offered as tough and stout a surface to the wind, as if it was fresh from the sail-maker's hands. Also great are the preserving qualities of eyes. I looked wistfully at the top-sail, but on reflecting that if it should come on to blow hard enough to compel me to heave the break too, she would never hull with that canvas abroad. I resolved to let it lie, for I could cut away the spritzel if the necessity arose, and not greatly regret its loss. But to lose the top-sail would be a serious matter, though if I did not cut it a drift, it might carry away the mast for me, so, as I say, I would not meddle with it. Finding that the ship continued to steer herself very well, and the better for the spritzel, I thought I would get the body of the old Frenchman overboard, and so obtain a clear hold for myself, so far as corpses went. I carried the land-horn into the folk-sall, but when I pulled the hammock off him I confess it was not without a stupid fear that I should find him alive. Recollection of his astounding vitality found something imperishable in that ugly anatomy, and though he lay before me as dead and cold as stone, I yet had a fancy that the seeds of life were still in him. That was only the current of his being that had frozen, that if I were to thaw him afresh he might recover, and that if I buried him I should actually be dispatching him. But though these fancies possessed they did not control me. I took his watch and whatever else he had in that way, carried him on deck, and dropped him over the side, using as little ceremony as he had employed in the disposal of his shipmates, but affected by very different emotions. For there was not only the idea that the vital spark was still in him. I could not but handle with awe the most mysterious corpse the eye had ever viewed, one who had lived through a stupor or death-sleep for eight and forty years, in whom in a few hours time had compressed the wizardry he stretches in others over half a century, who in a night had shrunk from the aspect of his prime into the lean, puckered, bled-eyed, deaf and tottering expression of a hundred years. But now he was gone. The bubbles which rose to the plunge of his body were his epitaph. Had they risen blood red they would have better symbolised his life. The albatross stooped to the spot where he had vanished with a horse-salt scream like the laugh of a delirious woman, and the wind, freshening momentarily in a squall, made one think of the spirit of nature as eager to purify the air of heaven from the taint of the dead pirate's passage from the ball-works to the water's surface. All that day and through the night that followed the schooner drove, rolling and plunging before the seas, into the north-east, to the pulling of the spritzel. I made several excursions into the forehold, but never could hear the sound of water in the vessel. Her sides in places were still sheathed in ice, but this crystal armour was gradually dropping off her to the working of her frame in the seas, so that, since she was proving herself tight, it was certain her staunchness owed nothing to the glassy plating. I had seen some strange craft in my day, but nothing to beat the appearance this old tub of a hooker submitted to my gaze as I viewed her from the helm. How so uncouth a structure with her tall stern, flaring bells, fat buttocks, sloping masts, folks all well, and massive head timbers ever managed to pursue and overhaul a chase, was only to be unriddled by supposing all that she took to be more unwieldy and clumsy than herself. What would a pirate of these days, in his clean-lined pelaka, or arrowy schooner, have thought of such an instrument as this for the practice of his pretty trade? The ice aloft still held for her sparsen rigging the resemblance of glass, and to every sunbeam that flashed upon her from between the sweeping clouds, she would sparkle out into many-coloured twinklings, marvellously delicate in colour, and changing their tints twenty times over in a breath through the swiftness of the reeling of the spars. I should but fatigue you to follow the several little stories of these hours one by one. How I got my food, snatched at sleep, stood at the helm, gazed around the sea-line and the like. Just before sundown I saw a large iceberg in the north, two leagues distant. No others were in sight, but one was enough to make me uneasy, and I spent a very troubled night, repeatedly coming on deck to look about me. The schooner steered herself as if a man stood at the helm. The spritzel further helped her in this, for if the curl of a sea under her forefoot brought her to Larbud, or starbud, the sail forced her back again. Still it was a very surprising happy quality in her, the next best thing to my having a shipmate, and a wonderful relief to me who must otherwise have brought her too under a lashed helm every time I had occasion to leave the deck. The seaworthiness of the craft, coupled with the reasonable assurance of presently falling in with a ship, rendered me so far easy in my mind as to enable me to think very frequently of the treasure and how I was to secure it. If I fell in with an enemy's cruiser or a privateer I must expect to be stripped. This would be the fortune of war, and I must take my chance. My concern did not lie that way. How was I to protect this property that was justly mine against my own countrymen, suppose I had the good fortune to carry the schooner safely into British waters? I had a brother-in-law, Jeremiah Mason Esquire, a turkey merchant in a small way of business whose office was in the city of London, and if I could manage to convey the treasure secretly to him, he would, I knew, find me a handsome account in his settlement of this affair. But it was impossible to strike out a plan. I must wait and attend the course of events. Yet, riches being things which fever the coldest imaginations, I could not look ahead without excitement and irritability of fancy. I should reckon it a hard fate, indeed, after my cruel experiences, by freeing the vessel from the ice, by sailing her through some thousand of miles of perilous seas, and arriving finally in safety to be dispossessed of what was strictly mine, as much mine as if I had fished it up from the bottom of the sea, where it must otherwise have lain till the crack of doom. I remember that, among other ideas, it entered my head to tell the master of the first ship I met, if she were British, the whole story of my adventure, to acquaint him with the treasure, to offer to transship it and myself to his vessel, and abandon the scooner, and to propose a handsome reward for his officers. But I could not bring my mind to trust any stranger with so great a secret. The mere circumstance of the treasure not being mine, in the sense of my having earned it, of its being piratical plunder, and as much ones as another's, might dull the edge, even of a fair deal in conscience, and expose me to the machinations of a heavily tempted mind. Therefore, though I had no plan, I was resolved at all hazards to stick to the scooner, and with a view to providing against the curiosity or rummaging of any persons who should come aboard, I fell to the following work after getting my breakfast. I hung lanterns in the run and hatchways and cabin, to enable me to pass easily to and fro. I then emptied one of the chests in my cabin, and carried it to where the treasure was. The chest I filled, nearly three parts full with money, jewellery, etc., which sank the contents of the other chests to the depth I wanted. I then fetched a quantity of small arms, such as pistols and hangers and cutlasses, and filled up the chests with them, first placing a thickness of canvas over the money and jewellery, that no glitter might show through. To improve the deception, I brought another chest to the run, and wholly filled it with cutlasses, pelderhorns, pistols and the like, and so fixed it that it must be the first to come to hand. My cunning amounted to this, that suppose the run to be rummaged, the contents of the first chest were sure to be turned out, but on the other chest being opened, and what they appeared to contain observed, it was as likely as not that the rummages would be satisfied they were arms' chests, and quit meddling with them. Here now might I indulge in a string of reflections on the troubles and anxieties which money brings. Quote from juvenile and other poets, and hold myself up to your merriment, by a contemptuous exhibition of myself, a lonely sailor laboring to conceal his gold from imaginary knaves, toiling in the dark depth of the vessel, and never heeding that, even whilst he so worked, his ship might split upon some half-tied rock of ice, and founder with him, and his treasure too, and so on, and so on. But the fact is, I was not a fool. Here was money enough to set me up as a fine gentleman for life, and I meant to save it, and keep it too, if I could. A man on his deathbed, a man in such peril that his end is certain, can afford to be sentimental. He is going where money is dross indeed, and he is in a posture when to moralise upon human greed, and the vanity of wishes and riches becomes him. But would not a man whose health is hearty, and who hopes to save his life, be worse off than a sheep in the matter of brains, not to keep a firm grip of fortune's hand when she extended it? I know I was very pleased with my morning's work when I had accomplished it, and had no mind to qualify my satisfaction by melancholy and romantic musings on my condition and the uncertainty of the future. This was possibly owing to the fineness of the weather. A heavy black guile from the north would doubtless have given a very different turn to my humours. The wind at dawn had weakened, and come into the west. There was a strong swell. Indeed, there always is in this ocean, but the seas ran small. The sky looked like marble, with its broad spreadings of high white clouds and the veins of blue sky in between. I wished to make all the northing that was possible, but there was nothing to be done in that way with the spritzel alone. Had not the capstan been frozen, I should have tried to get the mainsail upon the ship. But without the aid of machinery I was helpless. So, with the helmer midships, the schooner drove languidly along with her head due east, lifting as ponderously as a line of battleship to the floating launchers of the high swell, and the albatross hung as steadfastly in the wake of my lonely ocean path, as though it had been some messenger sent by God to watch me into safety. End of I am troubled by thoughts of the treasure. CHAPTER XXVII. I encounter a whaler. I had been six days and nights at sea, and the morning of the seventh day had come. With the exception of one day of strong southwestern winds, which ran me something to the northwards, the weather had been fine. Bitterly cold indeed, but bright and clear. In this time I had run a distance of about six hundred and fifty miles to the east, and with no other cloths upon the schooner than her spritz sail. I confess, as the hours passed away and nothing hoeve into view, I grew dispirited and restless. But on the other hand I was comforted by the bright weather and the favorable winds, and particularly by the vessel steering herself, which enabled me to get rest, to keep myself warm at the fire, and to dress my food. Yet ever pushing onwards, however slowly, into the navigated regions of this sea. On the morning of the seventh day I came on deck, having slept since four o'clock. The wind was icy keen, pretty brisk, about west by south. The movement in the sea was from the south, and rolled very grandly. There was a fog that way, too, that hid the horizon, bringing the ocean line to within a league of the schooner. But the other quarters swept in a dark, clear, blue line against the sky, and there was such a clarity of atmosphere as made the distance appear infinite. I went below and lighted the fire and got my breakfast, all very leisurely, and when I was done I sat down and smoked a pipe. It was so keen on deck that I had no mind to leave the fire, and, as always well, I lounged through the best part of two hours in the cookhouse. When thinking it was now time to take another survey of the scene, I went on deck. On looking over the larboard, bulwark, rail, the first thing I saw was a ship about two miles off. She was on the larboard tack, under courses, top sails, and main top gallant sail, heading as if to cross my boughs. The sunshine made her canvas look as white as snow against the skirts of the body of vapor that had trailed a little to leeward of her, and her black hull flashed as though she discharged a broadside every time she rose wet to the northern glory out of the hollow of the swell with the curl of silver at her cut water. My heart came into my throat. I seemed not to breathe, not to have saved my life could I have uttered a cry, so amazed and transported was I by this unexpected apparition. I stared like one in a dream, and my head felt as if all my blood in my body had surged into it. But then, all of a sudden, there happened a revulsion of feeling. Suppose she should prove a privateer, a French war vessel, of a nation hostile to my own. Though so wrought in me that I trembled like an idiot in a fright. The telescope was too weak to resolve her. I could do better with my eyes, and I stood at the bulwarks, gazing and gazing as if she were the spectership of the Scandinavian legend. There were flags below, and I could have hoisted a signal of distress, but to what purpose? If the appearance of the schooner did not sufficiently illustrate her condition, there was certainly no virtue in the language and declaration of bunting to exceed her own mute assurance. I watched her with the passion of anxiety, never doubting her intention to speak to me, at all events to draw close and look at me, fully concerning myself with her character. The swell made us both dance, and the blue brows of the rollers would often hide her to the height of her rails. But we were closing each other middling fast. She travelling at seven, and I at four miles in the hour, and presently I could see that she carried a number of boats. A whaler thought I, and after a little I was sure of it by perceiving the rings over her top gallant rigging for the lookout to stand in. When being convinced of this, I ran below for a shawl that was in my cabin, and, jumping onto the bulwarks, stood flourishing it for some minutes to let them know that there was a man aboard. She left to deaden her way, that I might swim close, and as we approached each other I observed a crowd of heads forward looking at me, and several men aft, all staring intently. A man scrambled on to the rail, and with an arm clasping a backstay hailed me. "'Scooner ahoy,' he bawled, with a strong nasal twang in his cry. What ship's that?' "'The Boca del Dragón,' I shouted back. "'Where are you from, and where are you bound to? I've been locked up in the ice,' I cried, and I'm in want of help. What ship are you?' The Susan Tucker Whaler of New Bedford, twenty-seven months out, he returned, where in creation got you that hooker? "'I'm the only man aboard,' I cried, and have no boat. Send to me, in the name of God, and let the master come.' He waved his hand bawling. "'Put your helm down. You're forging ahead,' and so saying, dismounted. I immediately cast the tiller adrift, put it hard over, and secured it, then jumped on to the bulwarks again to watch them. She was a Yankee beyond doubt. I had rather met my own countrymen, but next to a British I should have chosen an American ship to meet. Somehow, despite the Frenchmen, I felt to have been alone throughout my adventure, and so sore was the effect of that solitude upon my spirits, that it seemed twenty years since I had seen a ship, and since I had held commune with my own species. I was terribly agitated, and shook in every limb. Life must have been precious always, but never before had it appeared so precious as now, whilst I gazed at that homely ship, with her main top sail to the mast, swinging stately upon the swell, the faces of the seamen plain, the smoke of her galley-fire breaking from the chimney, the sounds of creaking blocks and groaning perils stealing from her. Such a fountain of joy broke out of my heart, that my whole being was flooded with it, and had that mood lasted, I believe I should have exposed the treasure in the run, and invited all the men of the whaler to share it with me. They stared fixededly, little wonder that they should be astounded by such an appearance as my ship exhibited. One of the several boats, which hung at her davits, was lowered, the oars flashed, and presently she was near enough to be hit with a biscuit. But when there the master, as I suppose him to be, who was steering sung out, vast rowing, the boat came to a stand, and her people to a man stared at me with their chins upon their shoulders as if I had been a fiend, it was plain as a pike staff that they were frightened, and that the superstitions of the forecastle were hard at work in them whilst they viewed me. They looked a queer company, two were negros, the others, pale-faced, bearded men, wrapped up in clothes to the aspect of scarecrows. The fellow who steered had a face as long as a wet hammock, and it was lengthened yet to the eye by a beard like a goat's hanging at the extremity of his chin. He stood up, a tall, lank figure, with legs like a pair of compasses, and hailed me fresh, but the high swell, regular as the swing of a pendulum, interposed its brow between him and me, so that at one moment he was a sharply lined figure against the sky of the horizon, and the next he and his boat and crew were sheer gone out of sight, and this made an exchange of sentences slow and troublesome. Say, master, he sung out, what ye say the schooner's name is. The Boca del Dragón, I replied. And who are you, matey? An English sailor who has been cast away on an island of ice, I answered, talking very shortly that the replies might follow the questions before the swell sank him. Aye-aye, says he, that's very well, but when was you cast away, bully? I gave him the date. That's not a month ago, cried he. It's long enough whatever the time, said I. Here the crew fell a-talking, turning from one another to stare at me, and the negro's eyes showed as big as saucers in the dismay of their regard. See here, master, sang out the long man. If you hadn't been cast away more than a month, how come you clothed as men went dressed a century sin, hey? The reasons of their misgivings flashed upon me. It was not so much the schooner as my appearance. The truth was, my clothes, having been wedded, I had ever since been wearing such thick garments as I met with in the cabin, keeping my legs warm with jackboots, and I had become so used to the garb that I forgot I had it on. You will judge, then, that I must have presented a figure very nicely calculated to excite the wonder and apprehension of a body of men whose superstitious instincts were already sufficiently fluttered by the appearance of the schooner. When I tell you that, in addition to the jackboots and a great fur cap, my costume was formed of a red plush waistcoat, laced with silver purple breeches, a coat of frieze with yellow braiding and huge cuffs, and the cloak that I had taken from the body of Mendoza. Captain, cried I, if so be you are the captain, in the name of God and humanity, come aboard, sir. Here I had to wait till he reappeared. My story is an extraordinary one. You have nothing to fear. I am a plain English sailor. My ship was the Laughing Mary, bound in ballast from Clow to the Cape. Here I had to wait again. Pray, sir, come aboard. There is nothing to fear. I am alone, in grievous distress, and in want of help. Pray, come, sir. There was so little of the goblin in this appeal that it resolved him. The crew hung in the wind, but he addressed them preemptorily. I heard him dam them for a set of currs, and tell them that if they put him aboard they might lie off till he was ready to return, where they would be safe, as the devil could not swim, and presently they buckled to their oars again and the boat came along side. The long man, watching his chance, sprang with great agility into the chains, and stepped on deck. I ran up to him and seized his hand with both mine. Sir, cried I, speaking with difficulty, so great was the tumult of my spirits, and the joy and gratitude that swelled my heart. I thank you a thousand times over for this visit. I am in the most helpless condition that can be imagined. I am not astonished that you should have been startled by the appearance of this vessel, and by the figure I make in these clothes. But, sir, you will be much more amazed when you have heard my story. He eyed me steadfastly, examining me very earnestly from my boots to my cap, and then cast a glance around him before he made any reply to my address. He had the gauntness, soloness of complexion, and the liberteness of manner peculiar to the people of New England. And though he was a very ugly, lank, uncouth man, I protest he was just as fair in my sight as if he had been the embrosial angel described by Milton. Well, cook my gizzard, he exclaimed presently, through his nose, and after another good look at me, and along the decks and at the loft, if this ain't me miraculous, too, durnd if we didn't take this hooker for some ghost ship riz from the sea, in charge of a merman rigged out to fit her age, yet all are all alone, are you? All alone, said I, broach me every barrel aboard if ever I see sick a vessel, he cried, his astonishment rising with the searching glances he directed aloft and alow. How old be she? She was cast away in seventeen hundred and fifty-three, said I. Well, I'm durnd. She's froze hard, sirree. I reckon she'll want a hot sun to thaw her. Split me, mister, if she ain't worth sailing home as a show-box. I interrupted his ejaculations by asking him to step below, where we could sit warm whilst I related my story, and I asked him to invite his boat's crew into the cabin, that I might regale them with a bowl of such liquor as I ventured to say had never passed their lips in this life. On this he went to the side, and, hailing the men, ordered all but one to step aboard and drink to the health of the lonesome sailor they had come across. The word drink acted like a charm. They instantly hauled upon the painter and brought the boat to the chains and tumbled over the side, one of the negroes remaining in her. They fell together in a body, and surveyed me and the ship with the hundred marks of astonishment. My lads, said I, my rig is a strange one, but I'll explain all shortly. The clothes I was cast away in are below, and I'll show you them. I'm no specter, but as real as you, though I have gone through so much that, if I am not a ghost, it is no fault of the old ocean, but owing to the mercy of God. My name is Paul Rodney, and I'm a native of London. You, sir, says I, addressing the long man, or I presume the master of the Susan Tucker. Your service. Josiah Tucker is my name, and that ship is my wife Susan. Captain Tucker, you are. Men, will you please step below, says I. The weather promise is fair. I have much to tell, and there is that in the cabin which will give you patience to hear me. I descended the companion's stairs, and they all followed, making the interior that had been so long silent ring with their heavy tread, whilst from time to time a gruff horse whisper broke from one of them. But superstition lay strong upon their imagination, and they were odd and quiet. The daylight came down the hatch, but for all that the captain was darksome. I waited till the last man had entered, and then said, Before we settle down to a bowl and a yarn, Captain, I should like to show you this ship. It'll save me a deal of description and explanation if you'll be pleased to take a view. Lead on, Mr. said he, but we shall have to snap our eyelids and raise fire in that way, for during defy, for one can see in the dark. I fetched three or four lanterns, and, lighting the candles, distributed them among the men, and then, in a procession headed by the captain and me, we made the rounds. I had half cleared the arms room, but there were weapons enough left, and they stared at them like yokels in a booth. I showed them the cookhouse and the forecastle, where the deck was still littered with clothes and chests and hammocks, and, after carrying them aft to the cabins, gave them a sight of the hold. I never saw men more amazed. They filled the vessel with their exclamations. They never offered to touch anything, being too much odd, but stepped about with their heads uncovered, as quietly as they could, as though they had been in a crypt, and the influence of strange and terrifying memorials was upon them. I also showed them the clothes I had come away from the laughing Marianne, and that I might submit such an aspect to them as should touch their sympathies, I whipped off the cloak and put on my own pilot-cloth coat. There being nothing more to see, I led them to the cookroom, and there brewed a great hearty bowl of brandy punch, which I seasoned with lemon, sugar, and spices into as relishable a draught as my knowledge in that way could compass, and, giving every man a panic in, bade him dip and welcome. Myself first drinking to them with a brief speech, yet not so brief, but that I broke down toward the close of it, and ended with a dry sob or two. They would have been unworthy their country and their calling not to have been touched by my natural manifestations of emotion. Besides, the brandy was an incomparably fine spirit, and the very perfume of the steaming bowl was sufficient to stimulate the kindly qualities of sailors who had been locked up for months in a greasy old ship, with no diviner smells about than the stink of the tri-works. The captain, standing up, called upon his men to drink to me, promising me that he was very glad to have fallen in with my schooner, and then, looking at the others, made a sign whereupon they all fixed their eyes upon me and drank as one man, every one emptying his pot and inverting it as a proof and fetching a rousing sigh of satisfaction. This ceremony ended, I began my story, beginning with the loss of the laughing Mary, and proceeding step by step. I told them of the dead body of Mendoza, but said nothing about the Frenchman and the mate, and the Portugal boat swain, lest I should make them afraid of the vessel, and so get no help to work her. As to acquainting them with my recovery of Tassard, after his stupor of eight and forty years, I should have been mute on that head in any case, for so extraordinary a relation could, from such people, have earned me but one of two opinions, either that I was mad and believed in an impossibility, or that I was a rogue and dealt in magic, and to be vehemently shunned. Yet there were wonders enough in my story without this, and I recited it to a running commentary of all sorts of queer, Yankee exclamations. There were seven seamen and a captain and I made nine, and we pretty nearly filled the cookroom. It was a scene to be handled by a Dutch brush. We were a shaggy company, in several kinds of rude attire, and the crimson light of the furnace, whose playing flames darted shadows through the steady light of the lanterns, caused us to appear very wild. The mariner's eyes gleamed redly, as their glances rove round the place, and had you come suddenly among us, I believe you would have thought this band of pale, fire-touched, hairy men, with the one Iban visage among them, rendered the vessel of ass deal more ghostly than ever she could have been shown when sailing along with me alone on board. They were a good deal puzzled when I told them of the minds I had made and sprung in the ice. They reckoned the notion fine, but could not conceive how I had, single-handed, broken out the powder barrels, gotten them over the side, and fixed them. Why, said I, to a slow, heavy work, of course, but a man who labors for his life will do marvelous things. It is like the jump of a hunted stag. True for you, says the captain, a swim of two miles spends me in pleasure in, but I've swum eight miles to save my life, and stranded fresh as a new-hooked cod. What's your intention, sir? To sail the schooner home, said I, if I can get help. She's too good to abandon. She'll fetch money in England. I, it shows. Yes, and as a Coleman, rig her modernly, and carry your forecastle deck into the head, captain, and she's a brave ship, fit for a Baltimore eye. He stroked down the hair upon his chin. Dip, captain, dip my lads, there's enough of this to drown ye in the hold, said I, pointing to the bowl. Come, this is a happy meeting for me. Let it be a merry one. Captain, I drink to the Susan Tucker. Sir, your servant, here's to your sweetheart. Be she wife or maid. Fill, jump on deck, and take a look around. See to the boat. One of the men went out. Captain, said I, you are a full ship? That so? Found home? Straight away. You have men enough and to spare. Lend me three of your hands to help me to the Thames, and I'll repay you thus. There should be near a hundred tons of wine and brandy, of exquisite vintage, and choice with age beyond language in the hold. Take what you will of that freight. There'll be ten times the value of your lay in your pickings, modest as you may prove. Help yourself to the clothes in the cabin, and forecastle. They will turn to account. For the men you will spare, and who will volunteer to help me, this will be my undertaking. The ship and all that is in her to be sold on her arrival, and the proceeds equally divided. Shall we call it a thousand pounds a piece? Captain, she's well found. Her inventory would make a list as long as you. I'd name a bigger sum. But here she is. You shall overhaul her hold and judge for yourself. I watched him anxiously. No man spoke, but every eye was upon him. He sat pulling down the hair on his chin, then jumping up on a sudden and extending his hand he cried, Shake! It's a bargain if the men'll gin! I'll gin, exclaimed a man. There was a pause. And me, said the negro. I was glad of this and looked earnestly at the others. Is she tight? said a man. As a bottle said I. They fell silent again. Joe Wilkinson and Washington Cromwell. Them two giants, said the Captain. Bullies. He wants a third. Don't speak altogether. The man named Bill at this moment returned to the cookroom and reported all well above. My offer was repeated to him, but he shook his head. This is the horn, mates, said he. There's a deal o' water between this and the tums. How do she sail? No man knows. I want none but willing men, said I. Americans make as good sailors as the English. What an English seaman can face any of you can. There is another negro in the boat. Will you let him step aboard, Captain? He may join. A man was sent to take his place. Presently he arrived, and I gave him a cup of punch. Explain the business to him, sir, said the Captain, filling his panic in. His name is Billy Pitt. I did so, and when I told him that Washington Cromwell had offered, he instantly said, All right, Massa, I'll be abya. This was exactly what I wanted, and had there been a third negro, I'd have preferred him to the white man. But how are you going to navigate this craft-home with three men, said the man, Bill, to me? There'll be four, we shall do. The fewer the more dollars, hey, Wilkinson? He grinned, and Cromwell broke into a ventral laugh. They seemed very well satisfied, and so was I. CHAPTER XXVIII. I STRIKE A BARGON WITH THE YANKY. The Captain put his cup down. The bowl was empty. I offered to brew another joram, but he thanked me and said no, adding significant that he would have no more here, by which he meant that he would brew for himself in his own ship a non. The drink had made him cheerful and good-natured. He recommended that we should go on deck and set about trans-shipping whilst the weather held, for he was an old hand in these seas and never trusted the sky longer than a quarter of an hour. This here list, says he, wants remedying, and that'll follow our easin' of the hold. Yes, said I, and I should be mighty thankful if some of your men would see all clear loft for me, that we might start with runnin' riggin' that will travel, capstins that'll revolve and sails that'll spread. Oh, we'll manage that for you, said he. Truly, she's been bad-froze, very bad-froze, darned if I ever see a worse freeze. Also saying, he called to Bill, who seemed the principal man of the boat's crew, and gave him some directions, and immediately afterwards all the men entered the boat and rode away to the ship. Whilst they were abstent, I carried the captain into the hold and left him to overhaul it. I told him that all the spirits, provisions, and the like were in the hold and the lazarette, which was true enough, wanting to keep him out of the run, though, thanks to the precaution I had taken, I was in no fear even if he should penetrate so deep aft. Before he came out, five and twenty stout fellows arrived in four boats from the ship, and when we went on deck we found them going the rounds of the vessel, scraping the guns to get a view of them, peering down the companion, overhauling the four-castle well, as I call the hollow beyond the four-castle, and staring aloft with their faces full of grinning wonder. The captain sang out to them and they all mustered aft. Now lads, said he, there's a big job before you, a big job for Cape Horn, I mean, and you'll have to slip through it as if you was grease. When done, there'll be a carouse, and I'll warrant ye all such as sub, that the most romantic among ye'll never cast another pine in thought in the direction of your mother's milk. Having delivered this preface, he divided the men into two gangs, one under the boatswain, to attend to the rigging, clear the canvas of the ice, get the pumps and the capstins to work in, and see all ready for getting sail on the schooner, the other under the second mate to get tackles aloft and break out the cargo, taking care to trim ship whilst so doing. They fell to their several jobs with a will. Tis the habit of our countrymen to sneer at the Americans as sailors, affirming that if ever they went a battle at sea it is by the help of British renegades. But this I protest. After witnessing the smartness of those Yankee whalemen, I would sooner charge the English than the Americans, with loverliness, came the nautical merits of the two nations ever before me to decide upon. They had the hatches open, tackles aloft, and men at work below whilst the mariners of other countries would have been standing, looking on, and jawn upon the course to be taken. Some overran the fabric aloft, clearing, cutting away, pounding, making the ice fly in storms. Others sweated the capstins till they clanked. Others fell to the pumps, working with hammers and kettles of boiling water. The wondrous old schooner was never busier. No, not in the heyday of her flag when her guns were blazing and her people yelling. I doubt whether even a man of war could have given this work the dispatch the whaler furnished. She had eight boats and sixty men, and every boat was afloat and alongside us ready to carry what she could to the ship. I wished to help, but the captain would not let me do so. He kept me walking and talking, asking me scores of questions about the schooner, and also shrewd that without appearing reserved I professed to know little. The great show of clothes puzzled him. He also asked if the crucifix in the cabin was silver. I said I believed it was, fetched it, and asked him to accept it, saying if he would give me the smallest of his boats for it I should be very much obliged. Oh, yes, says he, you can have a boat. The men would not sail with you without a boat. And after weighing the crucifix without the least exhibition of veneration in his manner he put it in his pocket, saying he knew a man who would give him a couple hundred dollars for the thing on his telling him that the pope had blessed it. I, but, says I, how do you know the pope has blessed it? Then I'll bless it, cried he. Why, am I a cold Johnny cake that my blessing ain't as good as another man's? I was glad I had hidden the black flag, I mean that I had stowed it away in the cabin of the Frenchman after he was dead. The Yankee needed but the sight to make his suspicions of the original character of the Boca del Dragón flame up, and you may suppose that I was exceedingly anxious he should not be sure that the schooner had been a pirate, lest he might have been tempted to scrutinize her rather more closely than would have been agreeable to me. He asked me if I had met with any money in her, and I answered evasively that in searching the dead man on the rocks I had discovered a few pieces in his pocket, but that I had left them, being much too melancholy and convinced of my approaching end to meddle with such a useless commodity. From time to time he would quit me to go to the hatch and sing down orders to the second mate in the hold. How many casks he meant to take I did not know. When he asked me how much I would give, I replied, leave me enough to keep me ballasted, that will satisfy me. The heist well demanded caution, but they managed wonderfully well. They never swung more than three casks into a boat, and with this cargo she would row away to the ship that lay hoof too close. And the men in her hoisted the casks aboard. The wind remained light till half-past three, then freshened a bit. Though all hands had knocked off at noon to get dinner, and a fine meal I gave them of ham, tongue, beef, biscuits, wine, and brandy, by half-past three they had eased the hold of ten boatloads of casks, besides clearing out the hold of the clothes from the forecastle along with as much of the bedding as we did not require. And I began to think that my Yankee intended to leave me a clean ship to carry home, though I durst not remain straight. Yet was my turn handsomely served too. The pumps had been cleared and tried, and found to work well, and, which was glad news to me, the well found to dry. The running rigging had been overhauled, and it traveled handsomely. The sails had been loosed and hoisted and lowered again, and the canvas found in good condition. The jibboom had been run out, and the stays set up. A stock of freshwater had been examined and found plentiful, and the casks in the head brought out and secured on the main deck. In short, the American boatswain had worked with the judgment and care of a master rigger, of a great artist in ropes, booms, and sails, and the schooner was left to my hands as fit for any navigation as the whaler that rose and fell on our quarter. But as I have said, as half-past three in the afternoon, the breeze began to sit in dark curls upon the water, and there was evidence enough in the haziness in the west, and in the loom of the shoulders of vapor in the dark blue obscure there, to warrant a sackful for this capful presently. I reckon, says the captain to me after looking into the west, that we best knock off now, there's snow and wind yonder, and we'd better all see snug while there's time. He called to one of the men to tell the second mate to come up from below and get the hatches on, and bringing me to the rail he pointed to a boat and asked if that would do. I said yes, and thanked him heartily for the gift, which was handsome, I must say, the boat being a very good one, though to be sure he had got many times its value out of the schooner, and a party of men were forthwith told off to get the boat whole-easted and stowed. Now, Mr. Rodney, said the captain, standing in the gangway, how can I serve you further? Sir, said I, you are very obliging. Two things I stand sadly in need of, a chart of these waters and a chronometer. I'll send you a chart, said he, that'll carry you as high as San Roque, but I've only got one chronometer, sir, and can't despair him. Well then, said I, if when you get aboard you'll give me the time by your chronometer, I'll set my watch by it, but I'll thank you very much for the chart, the tracings below are as shapeless as the moon setting in a fog. You shall have the chart, said he, and then called to Wilkinson in the two negroes. Lance, said he, you're quite content, I hope? They answered yes. You've all three acclaim upon me for the amount of what's owein' ya, he said, and when you turn up at New Bedford you shall have it, that's square. I see fifteen hundred dollars a man on this job, if so be as you don't broach too thirstily as you go along. Mr. Rodney, Joe, here is a steady, spectable man, and they'll make you a good mate. Cromwell and Billy Pitt are black only in their hides, all else is good as white. He then shook me by the hand, and calling a farewell to Wilkinson and the negroes, scrambled into the chains and dropped into his boat, very highly satisfied, I make no doubt, with the business he had done that day. A boat's crew were left behind to help us make sail, but the weather looking somewhat wild in the west, with the red light of the sun among the clouds there, and the dark heave of the swell running into a sickly crimson under the sun and then glowing out dusky again. I got them to treble reef the main sail and hoist it, and then thanking them and viced them to be off. Then putting Cromwell to the tiller, I went forward with the others and set the top sail and the four to sail, the spirit sail, lying furled, which would be show enough of canvas till I saw what the weather was to be like. I kept the top sail aback, waiting for a boat to arrive with my chart, and in a few minutes the boat we had sheared returned with what I wanted. Meanwhile they were shortening sail on the whaler, and though she was no beauty, yet I tell you, I found her as picturesque as any ship I had ever beheld, as she lay with her main top-gallant sail clued up, her top sail yards on the caps, and the heads of men knotting the reef points showing black over the white cloths, her hull floating up out of the hollow and flinging a wet orange gleam to the west, a tumble of creamy foam about her to rolling. Shadows like the passage of phantom hands hurrying over her sails to the swaying of her masts, and the swelling sea darkling from her into the east. I hollowed my hands and hailing the captain who was on the quarter-deck, asked him for the time by his chronometer. He flourished his arm and disappeared, and presently returning shouted to know if I was ready. I put the key in my watch and answered yes, and then he gave me the time. My watch, though antique, was a noble piece of mechanism, and I have little doubt, as trustworthy as his chronometer. But I was careful to let it lie snug in my hand. I did not want the negro at the tiller nor the others to see him. They would wonder that so fine a jeweled piece as this should be in the possession of the second mate of a little brig, and it was my business to manage that they never should have caused to wonder at anything in that way. The dusk of the evening came quick out of the east, and the wind freshened with a long cry in our rigging as if the eastern darkness was a foe, it was rushing out of the west to meet. I brought the schooner north, north east by my compass, and watched her behavior anxiously. The swell was on the quarter, and the wind and sea a trifle abaffed the larburd beam. She leaned a little to the weight of her clothes, but was surprisingly stiff considering how light she was. Wilkinson and the negro came and stood by my side. The sea broke heavily from the weather bow, and the water roared white under the lee bends, and spread a stern in a broad wake of foam. The whaler did not brace his yards up till after we had started, and now hung a pale, faint mass in the windy darkness on the quarter. A tincture of rusty red hovered like smoke, colored by the furnace that produces it, in the west, but the night had drawn down quick and dark. The washing noise of the water was sharp, the wind piercingly cold. Each sweep of the schooner's masts to winward was followed by a dull roaring of the blast rushing out of the hollows of the canvas, and she swung to the seas with wild yaws, but with regularity sufficient to prove the strict government of the helm. But it was being at sea, homeward bound, too. There was no wish of mine engendered by my hideous loneliness on the ice, by my abhorred association with the Frenchman that I could not refer to as, down to this moment, gratified. My heart bounded. My spirits could not have been higher had this ocean been the Thames and yonder dark flowing hills of water, the banks of Ereth and the Graveson's shore. I turned to the three men. My lads said I, you prove yourselves fine bold fellows by thus volunteering. Do not fear. If God guides us home, to my home I mean, you shall find a handsome account in this business. Six more chaps would adjourn had the old man been willing, said Wilkinson, but best as it is, master, though she's a trifle short-handed. Why, yes, said I, but being four and aft, you know, it isn't as if we got courses to hand and top sales to reef. Aye, aye, that's the truth, cried Billy Pitt. I tore to that. Four and aft makes the difference. Don't guess I should have volunteered has she been a brig. There are four of us, said I, you are my chief mate, Wilkinson, choose your watch. I'd choose Cromwell, said he, he was in my watch aboard the whaler. Very well, I exclaimed, and this being settled, and both Negroes declaring themselves good cooks, we arranged that they should alternately have the dressing of our victuals, that Wilkinson should have the cabin next to mine, and the Negroes the one in which the Frenchman had slept, one taking the other's place as he was relieved. I asked Wilkinson what he thought of the schooner, he answered that he was watching her. There's nothing to find fault with yet, said he. She's a whale at rolling, certainly. I guess she walks, though. I reckon she's had enough of the sea like me, and has got scent of the land in her nose. I guess old Noah wasn't far off when her lines was laid. Maybe his sons had the building of her. There's some scriptural in her cut. How old is she, master? Fifty years and more, said I. There's nothing particular in that, cried Cromwell. I know as a vessel that I'm a hundred and four-year-old. Salt me as I stand. I don't know how the whaler's heading, said I, but the schooner's a canoe if we aren't dropping her. Indeed, she was scarce visible as turn, a mere windy flicker hovering upon the pale flashings of the foam. It might be, perhaps, that the whaler was making a more northerly coals than we, and under very snug canvas, though ours was snug enough, too. But be this as it may, I was mighty pleased with the slipping qualities of the schooner. I never could have dreamt that so odd and ugly a figure of a ship would show such heels. But I think this. We are too prone to view the handiwork of our sires with contempt. I do not know but that their ships were as fast as ours. They made many good passages. They might have proved themselves fleet or navigators had they had the sextant and chronometer to help them along. Fifty years hence perhaps mankind will be laughing at our crudities, at us, by heaven, who flatter ourselves that the art of shipbuilding and navigation will never be carried higher to the pitch to which we have raised them. Cromwell, being at the tiller, I told Billy Pitt to go below and get supper, instructing him what to dress and how much to melt for a bowl. For, as you know, there was nothing but spirits and wine to season our repasts with. I saw Cromwell grin widely into the binnacle candle flame when he heard me talk of ham, tongue, sweetmeats, marmalade, and the like for supper, together with a can of hot claret, and knowing sailor's nature middling well I did not doubt that the fair of the schooner would bring the three men more into love with the adventure than even the reward that was to follow it. I had noticed that the bundles which had been sent from the whaler as belonging to the poor fellows were meager enough and showed indeed like the end of a long voyage, and I detained Billy Pitt a minute, whilst I told them that there was a handsome stock of clothes in the cabin, together with linen, boots, and other articles of that sort, that, though the coats, breeches, and waistcoats were of bright color and old-fashioned, they would keep them as warm as if they had been cut by a tailor of today. These things, said I, you can wear at sea, keeping your own clothes ready to slip on should we be spoken, or to wear when we arrive in England. Tomorrow they shall be divided among you, and they will become your property. The suit you saw me in today is all that I shall need. Both negroes burst into a most diverting laugh of joy on hearing this. Nothing delights a black man more than color to peril. They had seen the clothes in the forecastle and guessed the kind of garments I meant to present them with. Whilst supper was getting, I walked the deck with Wilkinson, both of us keeping a bright look out, for it was blowing fresh, the darkness lay thick about us, there might be ice near us, and the schooner was storming under her reefed mainsail, top sail, and stay sail through the hollow seas, thundering with a great roaring, seething noise into the trough, and lifting to the foaming slope with her masks wildly aslant. I talked to my companion very freely, being anxious to find out what kind of person he was, and I must say that there was something in his conversation that impressed me very favorably. He told me that he had a wife at New Bedford, that he was heartily sick of the sea, and that he hoped the money he would get by this adventure added to his lay would enable him to set up for himself ashore. Well, I said, we will see tomorrow what cargo Captain Tucker has left us, but that you may be under no misapprehension, Wilkinson. If we are fortunate enough to bring the ship safely to England, I will enter into a bond to pay you five hundred pounds sterling for your share one week after the date of our arrival. He answered that if he could get that sum he would be a made man for life. But it's too much to expect, sir, says he. I told him that he had no idea of the value of the cargo. The wine and spirits were of such a quality I would stake my interest in the schooner in their fetching a large sum of money. That'll depend, said he, on how much the Captain left us. He helped himself freely, I answered, but we are well off too. You shall judge tomorrow. Then there's the schooner, as she stands, besides a noble stock of stores of all kinds, sales, ropes, tools, ammunition, and several chests of small arms. I tell you, I will give you five hundred pounds for your share. His satisfaction was expressed by his silence. But, continued I, we must act with judgment. What we have we must keep. Are the Negroes trustworthy men? Yes, they are honest fellows. I wouldn't have shipped with them else. We shall not require much for ourselves, said I, and the rest will batten down and keep snug. There'll be some maneuvering needed in order to come off clear with this booty when we arrive, but there's plenty of time to think that over, and our business till then is to look after the ship and pray for luck to keep clear of anything hostile. And then we fell to other talk. In the course of which he told me he was an Englishman born, but having been pressed into a man-a-war deserted her at Halifax and made several voyages in American ships. He was wrecked on the Peruvian coast and became a beachcomber, and then got a birth and a whaler. He married at New Bedford and sailed with Captain Tucker. This was a second whaling trip, he said, and he wanted no more. I told him I was glad to learn that he was a countryman of mine, but not surprised. His speech was well ordered with Americanisms. But, said I, the true twang is wanting, and, added I, laughing, I should know you for Hampshire for all your reckons and guesses if I had to eat you should I be mistaken. The press gang's the best friend the Yankees has, he said, a little sheepishly. Do any man suppose I hadn't sooner hail from my native town Southampton than from New Bedford? Half the American folks is made up of Yankees who'd prove hearts of oak if it wasn't for the press. His candor gratified me as showing that he already looked upon me as a shipmate to be trusted, and, as I have said, this first chat with a man left me strongly disposed to consider myself fortunate in having him as an associate. End of Chapter 28 Chapter 29 of the Frozen Pirate This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by K. Han. The Frozen Pirate by William Clark Russell. Chapter 29 I value the lading. The day had been so full of business there had been so much to engage my mind that it was not until I was seated at supper in the old cookroom in which I had passed so many melancholy hours that I found myself able to take a calm survey of my situation and to compare the various motions of my fortunes. I could scarcely indeed believe that I was not in a dream from which I should awake presently and discover myself still securely imprisoned in the ice and all those passages of the powder blasts, the liberation of the schooner, my lonely days in her afloat, my encounter with the whaler, as visionary and vanishing as those dusky forms of vapor which had swarmed in giant shape over my little open boat. But even if confirmation had been wanting in the sable visage of Billy Pitt who sat near the furnace munching away with prodigious enjoyment of his food and bringing his can of hot spiced wine from his vast blubber lips with a mighty sigh of deep delight, I must have found it in each hissing leap and roaring plunge of the old paradical bucket, so full of the vitality of the wind-swollen canvas so quick with all the life instincts of a vessel storming through the deep and buoyant keel and under full control. Oh heaven, how different from the dull ambling of the morning the sluggish pitching and rolling to the weak pulling of the spritzail. Wilkinson and Cromwell kept to the deck whilst Billy Pitt and I got our supper and I had some talk with my Negro who seemed to be a very simple childish fellow heartily in love with his stomach and very eager to see England. He told me that he had heard it was a fine country and his wish to see it was one reason of his volunteering. They say, said he, that London's a very fine place, sir, bigger than Philadelphia, and that a man's skin don't tell again him among the yellow gals dare. I laughed and said that in my country people were judged rather by the color of their hearts than by the hue of their faces. But dollars count for something too, sir, I specs, said he. Why, yes, said I, with dollars enough you can make black-white in England. Hum, cried he, scratching his head. I guess it'd take an almighty load of dollars to make me white, Massa. Put money in your pocket and chink it, said I, and your face will be found white enough, I warrant. Buy golly, cried he. I'll do it then. Salt me to Lord, Massa. I chinked 20 years for a white face. That comes of being civilized, tell you what they do, Massa. They make you feel like a white man, but they let you keep black, blast them. I checked his excitement by telling him that in my country he would find that the Negro was a person held in very high esteem, that the women in particular valued him for that very dinginess which the Americans found distasteful, and told him that I could name several ladies of quality who had married their black servants. He looked surprised but not incredulous and said in his peculiar dialect that he had no doubt I spoke the truth as he had always heard that England was a fine country to live in. I then led him insensibly from this topic to talk of the sea and his experiences and found that he had seen a very great deal, having been freed when young and keeping to the ocean ever since in many different sorts of craft. Indeed I was as much pleased with him as with Wilkinson, but then I had foreseen a simplicity in both the Negroes and in expectation of finding this quality, so useful to one in my strange position, I was overjoyed when they consented to help me sail the schooner to the Thames. We went on deck to relieve Wilkinson and Cromwell. Billy Pitt took the tiller and I walked to either rail and stared into the darkness. It was very thick with occasional squalls of snow which put a screaming as of tortured cats into the wind as they swung through it. The sea was high but the schooner was making excellent weather of it whilst she rolled and pitched through the troubled darkness at seven knots in the hour. To his noble useful sailing yet a speed not to be relished in these waters amid so deep a shadow. Still the temptation to hold on all as we say was very great. Every mile carried us by so much nearer to the temperate parallels and shortened to that extent the long long passage that lay before us. I was pacing the deck briskly for the wind was horribly keen when Pitt suddenly called out I say Massa Hello I replied Suh he cried I smell ice I knew that this was a capacity not uncommon among men who had voyaged much in the frosty regions of the deep and instantly exclaimed luff then luff shake the way out of her sniffing as I spoke but detecting no added shrewdness in the air that was already freezingly cold. He put the helm down and I called to the others below to come on deck and flatten in the main sheet. They were up in a trice and tailed on with me asking no questions till we had the boom nearly amid ships. I was about to speak when Wilkinson cried out I smell ice. He sniffed a moment. Yes there's an island aboard anybody see it? I dare it am sure enough cried Cromwell there on the Liebao see it Suh see it Billy yes I saw it plain enough when I knew where to look for it Twas just such another lump of faintness as had wrecked the laughing merry a mass of dull spectral light upon the throbbing blackness and it lay exactly in a line with the course we had been steering when Pitt first called out so that assuredly we had not shifted our helm a minute too soon. We chopped and wallowed past it slowly keeping a sharp look out for like apparitions in other quarters and when it had disappeared I made up my mind to heave the schooner too and keep her in that posture till daylight unless the night cleared so we got the main sail down and stowed it glued up the top sail which I lent a hand to roll up and let the vessel lie under a reefed foresail with her helm lashed the weather however must have ultimately compelled what the thickness had required for by ten o'clock it was blowing a hard gale with a frequent whoriness of clouds of snow upon the blackness the seas very high and foaming and the wind crying madly in the rigging I let some time go by and then sounded the well and found no more water than the depth at which the pumps sucked this did wonders in the way of reassuring the men who were rendered uneasy by the violent motions of the unwieldy vessel and by the very harsh straining noises which rose out of the hold which latter they would naturally attribute to the craziness of the fabric though the true cause of it lay in the number of loose movable bulkheads it's amazing to me that she holds together at all cried Wilkinson so ancient she is she's only old said I in the sound of the years she's been in existence the ice has kept her young with the hams and tongues were eating be taken to be half a century old yet where could you buy sweeter and better meat of the kind of shore a ship's well is your only honest reporter of her condition ours has vouched in a way that should keep you easy order to Susan Tucker this is like being hung up to dry exclaimed one of the negroes it wore a pump pump there and no mistake I called this a weary beautiful little sheep Massa yes salt me to lord there's nothing could persuade me she ain't what I says she am however I was up and down a good deal during the night but for the treasure I should have been less anxious I dare say I had come so successfully to this point that I was resolved if my hopes were to miscarry the misfortune should not be owing to want a vigilance on my part and there happened an incident which inevitably tended to sharpen my watchfulness though I was perfectly conscious that there was a million to one against it occurring a second time I came on deck to relieve Wilkinson at midnight after a half hours nodding doze by the furnace below he went to his cabin I stood under the lee of a cloth seas in the weather main ringing Pitt arrived and I told him he could return to the cook house and stay there till I called him the helm being lashed and the schooner doing very well nothing wanted watching in particular yet I would not have the deck abandoned and meant to keep a lookout turn and turn about with Pitt as Wilkinson and Cromwell had the snow had ceased but it was very dark and thick the ocean a roaring shadow palpitating upon the eyes enrolling folds of blackness with a quick expiring flash of foam to windward on a sudden looking over the weather quarter we thought I discerned a deeper shade in the night there than was elsewhere perceptible it was like a great blot of ink upon the darkness even whilst I speculated it drew out in the shape of a ship running before the gale she seemed to be heading directly for us the roof of my mouth turned dry as desert sand my tongue and limbs refused their office I could neither cry out nor stir being indeed paralyzed by the terrible suddenness of that apparition and the eminence of our peril it all happened whilst you could have told thirty the great black mass surged up with the water boiling about the boughs she brought a thunder along with her in her rigging and sails as she soared to the crowns of the seas she was sweeping before I could not tell what canvas she was under but her speed was a full ten knots and as I did not see her till she was close she looked to come upon us as with a single bound she passed us to windward within a stone's throw and vanished like a dark cloud melting into the surrounding blackness not a gleam of light broke from her you heard nothing but the boiling and her bows and the thunderous peeling of the gale in her canvas a quarter turn of the wheel would have sent us to the bottom and her no doubt on top of us whether she was the susan tucker or some other whaler or a big south sea man driven low and getting what easting she could get out of the gale I knew not she was as complete a mystery of the ocean night as any spectral fabric at a heavier terror to me than a phantasm worked by ghosts could have proved I knew such a thing could not happen again yet when I called pit I talked to him about it as though we must certainly be run down if he did not keep a sharp look up and when my watch below came round at four o'clock I was so agitated that I was up and down till daybreak as though my duty did not end until then the gale moderated at sunrise and though it was gloomy true cape horn morning with dark driving clouds the sea a dusky olive very hollow and frequent small quick squalls of sleep which brought the wind to us in sharp guns yet as we could see where we were going I got the schooner before it heading her east northeast and under a reefed top sail main sail and stay sail the old bucket stormed through it with the sputter and rage of a line of battleship there was a log reel and a line on deck and I found a sand glass in the chest in my cabin in which I had met with the quadrants perspective glass and the like and I kept this log regularly going marking a point of departure on the chart the American captain had given me which I afterwards found to be within two leagues and a half of the true position but for three days the weather continued so heavy that there was nothing to be done in the shape of gratifying the men's expectations by overhauling what was left of the cargo indeed we had no leisure for such work all our waking hours had to be strictly dedicated to the schooner and in keeping a lookout for ice but the morning of the fourth day broke with a fine sky and a brisk breeze from a little to the east of south to which we showed every cloth the schooner had to throw a board and being now by dead reckoning within a few leagues of the meridian of 60 degrees I shaped a course north by east by my compass with the design of getting a view of Staten Island that I might correct my calculations when we had made sailing got our breakfast I told Wilkinson and Cromwell Pitts being at the tiller that now was a good opportunity for inspecting the contents of the hold and not to be tedious in this part of my relation however I may have sinned in this respect elsewhere we carried lanterns below and spent the better part of the forenoon in taking stock from a copy of the memorandum I made on that occasion still in my possession we discovered that the Yankee captain had left us the following 30 casks of rum 28 hogs heads of clearit 75 casks of brandy 50 of sharing and 18 cases of beer in bottles in addition to this were the stores and the lacerat besides a quantity of several kinds of wine in jars etc elsewhere enumerated besides all the ships furniture her guns powder small arms etc as well as the ship herself I took the men into the run and showed them the chests opening the little one which I had stocked with small arms and lifting the lids of two or three of the others they were perfectly satisfied fully believing all the chests to be filled with small arms and nothing else and so we came away and returned to the cabin whereas please them I put down the value of the cargo at a venture setting figures against each article and making out a total of 2,640 pounds this of course included the ship how much shall that be a man Massa asked Cromwell 660 pounds I answered the poor fellow was so transported that after staring at me in silence with the corners of his mouth stretched to his ears he tossed up his hands burst into a roar of laughter and made several skips about the deck of course said I addressing Wilkinson my figures may be ahead or short of the truth but if you are disposed to take the chance I'll tell you what I'll do I'll stand by my figures accepting the risk of the value of the lading being less than what I say it is an undertake to give each man of you 660 pounds for your share well sir said he I don't know that I ought to object but a few pounds is a matter of great consequence to me and I reckon if these hear goods and the vessel should turn out to be worth more than you offer the loss would go again the grit A if it tore $20 a man I laughed and told him to let the man arrest there was plenty of time before us I should be willing to stand to my offer even if I lost by it so heartily obliged was I to them for coming to my assistance and in this I spoke the truth though as you will understand who know my position I had to finesse it went against my conscious to make out that the chess were full of small arms but I should have been mad to tell them the truth and perhaps by the truth may devils of the men who were and promised to remain steady temperate honest fellows I was not governed by the desire to keep all the treasure to myself no I vowed to God I should have been glad to give them a moiety of it had I not apprehended the very gravest consequences if I were candid with them but this surely must be so plain that it is idle to go on insisting it the fine weather the golden issue that was to attend our successful navigation the satisfactory behavior of the schooner put us into a high good humor with one another and when it came to my collecting all the clothes in the after cabins and distributing them among the three men I thought Billy Pitt and Cromwell would have gone mad with delight to the best of my recollection the apparel that had been left us by the American captain who as you know had cleared the forecastle of the clothes there consisted of several coats of cut velvet trimmed with gold and silver lace some frocks of white drab with large plate buttons brocade waistcoats of blue satin and green silk crimson and other colored cloth breeches along with some cloaks three corner hats black and white stockings a number of ruffled shirts and other articles of which I recollect the character though my ignorance of the costumes of that period prevents me from naming them anyone acquainted with the Negro's delight in colored clothes will hardly need to be told of the extravagant joy raised in the black breasts of Cromwell and Pitt by my distribution of this fine attire the lace to be sure was tarnished and some of the colors faded but all the same the apparel furnished a brave show and such was the avidity with which the poor creatures snatched at the garments as I offered them first to one and then another that I believe they would have been perfectly satisfied with the clothes alone as payment for their services I made this distribution on the quarter deck or little poop rather that all might be present Wilkinson was at the tiller and appeared highly delighted with the bundle allotted him saying that he might reckon upon a hearty welcome from his wife when she came to know what was in his chest the Negro's were wild to clothe themselves at once I advised them to wait for the warm weather but they were too impatient to put on their fine feathers to heed my advice they ran below and were gone half an hour during which time I have no doubt they put on all they had and when at last they returned their appearance was so exquisitely absurd that I laughed till I came near to suffocating each Negro had tied a silver laced hat onto his woolly head one more a pair of quimson the other a pair of black velvet breeches over their cucumber shanks they had drawn white silk stockings regardless of the cold their feet were encased in buckled shoes and their costumes were completed by scarlet and blue waistcoats which fell to their knees and crimson and bluecoats with immense skirts what struck me as most astonishing was their gravity their self complacency was prodigious they eyed each other with dignified approbation and strutted with the air of provincial mayors and alderman newly arrived from the presence of royalty they're in keeping with the schooner anyways said Wilkinson and so perhaps they were the antique fabric needed the sparkle of those costumes on her deck to make her aspect fit in with the imaginations she bred but as I had anticipated the cold proved too powerful for their conceit and they were presently glad to ship their more modern trousers though they clung obstinately to their waistcoats and could not be persuaded to remove their hats on any account whatever end of chapter 29 Chapter 30 of The Frozen Pirate This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Patrick Middleton The Frozen Pirate by William Clark Russell Our progress to the channel When I started to relate my adventure I never designed to write an account of the journey home at large On the contrary I foresaw that by the time I had arrived at this part you would have had enough of the sea Let me now then be as brief as possible The melting of the ice and the slowly increasing power of the sun were inexpressibly consoling to me who had had so much of the cold that I do protest if Elysium were bleak no matter how radiant and the abode of the fiends as hot as it is pictured I would choose to turn my back upon the angels I cannot say however that the schooner was properly thought until we were hard upon the parallels of the Falkland Islands She then showed her timbers naked to the sun and exposed a brown solid deck rendered ugly by several dark patches which scrape as we might we could not obliterate We struck the guns into the hold for the better ballasting of the vessel Got studying sail booms aloft Overhauled her suits of canvas and found a great square sail which proved of inestimable importance in light winds and in running After the ice was wholly melted out of her frame she made a little water yet not so much but that half an hour spell at the pump twice a day easily freed her But curiously enough at the end of a fortnight she became tight again which I attribute to the swelling of her timbers We were a slender company but we managed extraordinarily well The men were wonderfully content I never heard so much as a murmur escape from one of them They never exceeded their rations nor asked for a drop more of liquor than we had agreed among us should be served out But as I had anticipated our security lay in our slenderness We were too few for disaffection The Negroes were as simple as children Wilkinson looked to find his account in a happy arrival and if I was not strictly speaking their captain I was their navigator without whom their case would have been as perilous as mine was on the ice Outside the natural dangers of the sea we had but one anxiety and that concerned our being chased and taken This fear was heartily shared by my companions to whom I also represented that it must be our business to give even the ships of our country a wide berth For though I had long since flung all the compromising bunting overboard and destroyed all the papers I could come across which being written in a language I was ignorant of might, for all I knew contain some damning information A British ship would be sure to board us and I should have to tell the truth or take the risks of pre-vericating If I told the truth then I should have to admit that the lading of the vessel was peratical plunder and though I knew not how the law stood with regard to booty rescued from certain destruction after the lapse of heart upon half a century yet it was a hundred to one that the whole would be claimed in the king's name under a talk of restitution which signified that we should never hear more of it On the other hand pre-verification would not fail to excite suspicion and on our not being able to satisfactorily account for our possession of the ship and what was in her it might end in our actually being seized as pirates and perhaps executed The reasoning went very well with the men and filled them with such anxiety that they were forever on the lookout for a sail But as you may guess my own solicitude sank very much deeper For supposing the schooner to be rummaged by an English crew it was as certain as that my hand was affixed to my arm that the chests of treasure would be trans-shipped and lost to me by the law's trickery Now till we were to the north of the equator we sighted nothing No, in all those days not a single sail ever hoeven to view to break the melancholy continuity of the sea-line But between the parallels of 12 degrees and 22 degrees north we met with no less than eight ships the nearest within a league We watched them as cats watched mice making a point to bear away if they were going our road Or if they were coming towards us to shift our helm but never very markedly so as to let them pass us at the widest possible distance Some of them showed a color but we never answered their signals That they are our all harmless traders I will not affirm but none of them offered to chase us Yet could I have been sure of a ship I should have been glad to speak My longitude was little more than guesswork My latitude not very certain and my compass was out However, I supported my own in the spirits of my little company by telling them of the early navigators how Columbus, Candish, Drake, Shouten, and other heroic marine worthies of distant times had navigated the globe discovered new worlds penetrated into the most secret solitudes of the deep without any notion of longitude and with no better instruments to take the sun's height than the four staff and the astrolab We were better off than they and I had not the least doubt I told them of bringing the old schooner to a safe berth off deal or grave's end But it happened that we were chased when on the polar verge of the northeast trade wind It was blowing brisk the sea breaking in snow upon the weather bow the sky overcast with clouds and the schooner washing through it under a single reefed mainsail and whole top sail It was noon I was taking an observation when Pitt at the tiller sang out Sail ho! and looking I spied the swelling cloud-like canvas of a vessel on a line with our starboard cat-head I told Pitt to let the schooner fall off three points and with slack and sheets the old Boca del Drogon hummed through it brilliantly flinging the foam as far aft as the gangway The strange sail rose rapidly and the lifting of her hull discovered her to be a line of battleship We held on as we were hoping to escape her notice but whether she did not like our appearance or that there was something in the figure we cut that excited her curiosity She, on a sudden, put her helm up and steered a true course for us At the first sight of her I had called Wilkinson and Cromwell on deck and now I cried out Lads, you see she's after us If she catches us our dream of dollars is over lively now boys and give her all she can stagger under and what she can't carry she must drag And we sprang to make sail briskly as apes and everyone working with two-man power I knew the old Boca's best point It was with the wind a point above the beam We put her to that Got the great square sail on her shook out all wreaths and gave all she had to the wind The wake roared away from her like a white torrent that flies from the foot of a foaming cataract She had the pirate's instincts and being put to her trumps was nimble God, how she did swing through it Never had I driven the aged bucket before like this and I understood that speed at sea is not irreconcilable with odd bodies But the great ship to windward hung steady a cloud of bland and swelling cloths When we had set the studying sail we had nothing more to fly with and so we stood looking She slapped six shots at us one after another as a haughty hint to us to stop But we meant to escape and at last we did out sailing her by 13 inches to her foot One foot to her 12 Though she stuck to our skirts the whole afternoon kept us in an agony of anxiety The sun was setting when she abandoned us She was then some five or six miles distant on our weather quarter What her nation was I did not know But Wilkinson reckoned her French when she gave us up We rushed steadily along the same course into the darkness of the night and then shortening sail brought the schooner to the wind again after which we drank to the frisky old jade in an honestly earned bowl It was on the 5th of December that we sighted the silly islands I guessed what that land was but so vague had been my navigation that I durst not be sure until spying a smack with her nets over I steered for her and got the information I needed from her people They answered us with an air of fear and in truth the fellows had reason for besides the singular appearance of the ship the four of us were apparelled in odds and ends of the antique clothes and I have little doubt they considered us lunatics of another country who would run away with a ship belonging to parts where the tastes and fashions were behind the age Now as you may suppose by this time I had settled my plans and as we sailed up channel I unfolded them to my companions I pointed out that before we entered the river it would be necessary to discharge our lading into some little vessel that would smuggle the booty ashore for us The figure the schooner made was so peculiar she would inevitably attract attention She would instantly be boarded in the Thames on our coming to anchor and if I told the truth she would be seized as a pirate and ourselves dismissed with a small reward and perhaps with nothing My scheme, said I, is this I have a relative in London to whom I shall communicate the news of my arrival and tell him my story You, Wilkinson, must be the bearer of this letter He's a shrewd act of man and I will leave it to him to engage the help we want There is no lack of the right kind of serviceable men at deal and if they are promised a substantial interest in smuggling our lading ashore they will run the goods successfully do not fear As there is sure to be a man of war stationed in the Downs we must keep clear of that anchorage I will land you at lead once you will make your way to Dover and then to London Cromwell and Pitt will return and help me to keep cruising My letter to my relative will tell him where to seek me and I shall know his boat by her flying a jack When we have discharged our lading we will sail to the Thames and then let who will come aboard for we shall have a clean hold This, continued I, is the best scheme I can devise the risk of smuggling attendant to be sure but against those risks we have to put the certainty of our forfitting our just claims to the property if we carry the schooner to the Thames even suppose when there that we should not be immediately visited and so be provided with an opportunity to land our stuff whom have we to trust the Thames abounds with river thieves with lumpers scuffle hunters mudlarks glutton rogues of all sorts to hire whom would mean to bribe them with the value of half the lading and to risk their stealing the other half but this is the lesser difficulty the main one lies in this there are some 1600 men employed in the London Custom House most of whom are on river duty as watchmen 30 of these people are clapped aboard in East India men 5 or 6 on West India ships and a like proportion in other vessels so strange a craft as ours would be visited depend on it and smartly too do you see the danger lads what do you say then to my scheme the Negroes immediately answered that they left it to me I knew best they would be satisfied with whatever I did Wilkinson mused a while and then said smuggling was risky work how would it be if we represented that we had found the schooner washing about with nobody aboard the tale wouldn't be credited said I the age of the vessel would tell against such a story even if you removed all other evidence by throwing the clothes and small arms overboard and whatever else might go to prove that the schooner must have been floating about abandoned since the year 1750 mustn't lose these clothes masa on no account right pit well sir says Wilkinson after another spell of reflection I reckon you're right if so be the law would seize the vessel and goods on the ground such that she had been a pirate and all that's in her was plunder why then certainly I don't see nothing else but make a smuggling job of it as you say sir this being settled Wilkinson's concurrence being rendered the easier by my telling him that providing the lading was safely run I would adhere to my undertaking to give them 660 pounds each for their share I went below and spent half an hour over a letter to Mr. Jeremiah Mason there was no ink but I found a pencil and for paper I used the fly leaves of the books in my cabin I opened with a sketch of my adventures and then went on to relate that the Boca was a rich ship that as she had been a pirate I risked her seizure by carrying her to London that I stood grievously in need of his counsel and help and begged him not to lose a moment in returning with the messenger to deal and there hiring a boat and coming to me whom he would find cruising off beachy head that I might know his boat I bait him fly a jack a little below the masthead as for the Boca del Dragoon I added Wilkinson would recognize her if she were in the middle of a thousand sail and indeed a farmer's boy would be able to distinguish her for her uncommon oddness of figure I was satisfied to underscore the words a rich ship quite certain his imagination would be sufficiently fired by the expression at anything further I durst not hint as the letter would be open for Wilkinson to read when I had finished I took a lantern and the keys of the chest and went very secretly and expeditiously to the run and removing the layers of small arms from the top of the case that held the money I picked out some English pieces quickly returned the small arms locked the chest and returned all this time we were running up channel before a fresh westerly wind it was true December weather very raw and the horizon thick but I knew my road well and whilst the loom of the land showed I desired nothing better than this thickness but weary sailing delayed us and it was not till 10 o'clock on the night of the 7th that we hobed the schooner to off the shingly beach of lead within sound of the wash of the sea upon it the bay sheltered us we got the boat over I gave Wilkinson the letter and 10 guineas bidding him keep them hidden and to use them cautiously with the silver change he would receive for they were all guineas of the first George and might excite comment if he a poor sailor ill-clad should pull them out and exhibit them happily in the hurry of the time he did not think to ask me how I'd come by them he thrust them into his pocket shook my hand and dropped into the boat and the Negroes immediately rode him ashore I stood holding a lantern upon the rail to serve them as a guide waiting for the boat to return and never breathed more freely in my life than when I heard the sound of oars the two Negroes came alongside and clapping the tackles onto the boat we hoisted her with the capstan and then under very small canvas stood out to see again end of chapter 30