 CHAPTER 17 THE TREASURE When his pipe was out, he rose and made several strides about the cook room, then took the lantern and entering the cabin stood a while surveying the place. So, this would have been my coffin before you, Mr. Rodney, said he. I was in good company, though, pointing over his shoulder at the crucifix with his thumb. Lord, how the rogues prayed and cursed in the same cabin! In fine weather and when all was well, the sharks in our wake had more religions than they. But the instants they were in danger, down they tumbled upon their quivering knees, and if heaven was twice as big as it is, it could not have held sense enough for those valets to petition. You were nearly all Spaniards? Aye, the worst class of men a ship could enter the seas with. But for our calling, they are the fittest of all the nations in the world, better even than the Portuguese and with truer trade instincts than the trained mulatto, nimbler artists in rogues than ever one of them. I despise their superstition, but they are the better pirates for it. They carry it as a man might afeather bed, it enables them to fall soft. Do you take me? He gave one of his short, loud laughs, and said, I hope this slope won't increase. The angle stiff enough as it is to be like living on the roof of a house. I have a mind to see how she lies. What do you say, Mr. Rodney? Shall I venture into the open? Why not, said I. You can move briskly. You have as much life as ever you had. Let's go then, he exclaimed. And climbing the ladder, he pushed open the companion door and stepped onto the deck. I followed with but little solicitude, as you may suppose, as to what might attend his exposure. The blast of the gale, though it was broken into downwards eddying dartings by the rocks, made him bawl out with the sting of it, and for some moments he could think of nothing but the cold, stamping the deck and beating his hands. Ha! cried he, grinning to the smart of his cheeks. This is not the cook room, eh? Great Sunder, you will not have it that this ice has been drifting north. Why man, it is icy about twenty degrees than when we first locked up. I hope not, said I, and I think not. Your blood doesn't course strong yet, and you are fresh from the furnace. Besides it is blowing a bitter cold gale. Look at that sky and listen to the thunder of the sea. The commotion was indeed terribly uproarious. The spume as before was blowing in clouds of snow over the ice, and fled in very startling flashes of whiteness under the livid drapery of the sky. The wind itself sounded like the prolonged echo of a discharge of monster ordinance, and it screeched and whistled hideously where it struck the peaks and edges of the cliffs and swept through the schooner's mess. The rending noises of the ice in all directions were distinct and fearful. The Frenchman looked about him with consternation, and to my surprise, crossed himself. May the blessed virgin preserve us, he said. Do you say we have drifted north? If this is not the heart of the South Pole, you shall persuade me we are on the equator. It cannot storm too terribly for us, as you just now said, I replied. I want this island to go to pieces. As I said this, a solid pillar of ice just beyond the brow of the hill on the starboard side was dislodged or blown down. It fell with a mighty crash, and filled the air with crystal splinters. The side started back with a faint cry of, Bon Dieu! Judge for yourself how the ship lies, said I. This is freezing work. He went aft and looked over the stern, then walked to the labored rail, and peered over the side. Is there ice beyond that opening? He asked, pointing over the taff rail. No, I answered. That goes to the sea. There is a low cliff beyond. Like that cloud of white, it is the spray hurled upward the mouth of this hollow. Good, he mumbled, with his teeth chattering. This changes marvellous. There was asked for a quarter of a mile where that slope ends. It is too cold to converse here. There are your companions, said I, pointing to the two bodies lying a little distance before the main mast. He marched up to them, and exclaimed, Yes, this is Trentonove, and that is Barros. Both were blind, but they are blinder now. Would they thank you to arouse them out of their comfortable sleep, and force them to feel as I do, this cold to which they are now as insensible as I was? By heaven for my part, I can stand it no longer! And with that he ran briskly to the hatch. I followed him to the cookroom, and he crept so close to the furnace, that I thought he had a mind to roast himself. No doubt newly come to life as he was, the cold hurt him more than me, and maybe the tide of those animal spirits which had in his former existence furnished him with a brute courage had not yet flowed full into his mind. Still I questioned even in his heyday if there had ever been much more than the swashbuckler in him, which, opinion, however, could only increase the anxiety his companionship was likely to cause me by obliging me to understand that I must prepare myself for treachery, and on no account whatever to suppose for a moment that he was capable of the least degree of gratitude, or was to be swerved from any design he might form by considerations of my claim upon him as his preserver. It is among the wonders of human nature that antagonisms should be found to flourish under such conditions of hopelessness, misery, and anguish as make those who languish under them the most pitiful wretches under God's eye. But so it has been, so it is, so it will ever be, two men in an open boat at sea, their lips frothing with thirst, their eyes burning with famine, shall fall upon each other and fight to the death. Two men on an island, two miserable castaways whose dismal end can only be a matter of a week or two, eye each other morosely, give each other injurious words, break away and sullenly live, each man by himself on opposite sides of their desert prison. Beasts do not act thus, nor birds nor reptiles, only man. What was in the Frenchman Tassard's mind I do not know? In mine was fear, dislike, profound distrust, a great uneasiness, albeit we were alone. We were brothers in affliction and distress, as completely sundered from the world to which we belonged, as if we lay stranded in the icy moon, speaking in the same tongue and believing in the same God. The heat comforted him presently, and he put a lump of wine into the oven to melt, and this comforted him also. I can converse now, said he, perhaps after all the danger lies more in the imaginations than in the fact. But it is a hideous naked scene, and needs no such coloring as the roaring of wind, the rushing of seas, and the crashing falls of masses of ass to render it fratful. You tell me, said I, that when you fell asleep, I would sometimes express his frozen state thus, there was a quarter of a mile of ice beyond the schooner's stern. At least a quarter of a mile, he answered, day after day it would be built up till it came to a face of that extent. I thought to myself, if it has taken forty-eight years of the wear and tear of storm and surge to extinguish a quarter of a mile, how long a time must elapse before this island splits up? But then I reflected that during the greater part of those years this seat of ice had been stuck very low south where the cold was so extreme as to make it defy dissolution, that since then it was come away from the main and steeling north so that what might have taken thirty years to accomplish in seventy degrees of south latitude might be performed in a day on the parallel of sixty degrees in the summer season in these seas. Tassard continued speaking with the panic in his hand, and his eyes shut as if to get the picture of the schooner's position fair before his mind's vision. There was a quarter of a mile of ice beyond the ship, I have it very plain in my sight, it was a great model of elix, for the ice pressed thick and hard and raised us and vomited of peaks and rocks to disqueeze. Suppose I have been asleep a week, here he opened his eyes and gazed at me. Well, said I, I say, he continued in the tone of one easily excited into passion, a week, it will not have been more, it is impossible, never mind about your eighteen hundred and one, showing his fangs in a sarcastic grin, a week is long enough friend, then this is what I mean to say, that the breaking away of a quarter of a mile of ice in a week is fine work, full of grand promise. The next wrench, which might come now as I speak, or tomorrow, or in a week, the next wrench may bring away the rock on which we are lodged, and the rest is a matter of patience, which we can afford, eh? For we are but two, there is plenty of meat and liquor, and the reward afterwards is a princely independence. Mr. Paul Rodney, I was struck with the notion of the bed of ice on which the schooner lay going afloat, and said, are sea and wind to be helped, thank you? If the block on which we lie could be detached, it might beat a bit against its parent stock, but would not unite again. The schooner's canvas might be made to help it along, though suppose it capsized? We must consider, said he, there is no need to hurry. When the wind falls, we will survey the ice. He warmed himself afresh, and after remaining silent with the air of one turning many thoughts over in his mind, he suddenly cried, Do you know, I have a mind to view the plate and money below. What say you? His little eyes seemed to sparkle with suspicion as he directed them at me. I was confident he suspected I had lied in saying I knew nothing of this treasure, and that he wanted to see if I had meddled with those chests. One of the penalties attached to a man being forced to keep the company of liars is he himself is never believed by them. I answered instantly, Certainly, I should like to see this wonderful booty. It is right that we should find out at once if it is there. For supposing it vanished, we should be no better than madmen to sit talking here of the fine lives we shall live if ever we get home. He picked up the lantern and said, I must go to your cabin. It was the captains. These of the chests should be in one of his boxes. He marched off, and was so long gone that I was almost of belief he had tumbled down in a fit. However, I had made up my mind to act a very wary part, and particularly never to let him think I distrusted him, and so I would not go to see what he was about. But what I did was this. The arms room was next door. I lighted a candle, entered it, and swiftly armed myself with a sort of dagger, a kind of boarding knife, a very murderous little two-edged sword, the blade about seven inches long, and the half of brass. There were some fifty of these weapons, and I took the first that came to my hand and dropped it into the deep side pocket of my coat, and returned to the cook room. It was not that I was afraid of going unarmed with this man into the hold. There was no more danger to me there than here. Should he ever design to dispatch me, one place was the same as another, for the dead above could not testify. There were no witnesses in this white and desolate kingdom. What resolved me to go armed was the fear that should the treasure be missing, and who was to swear that the schooner had never been visited once in eight and forty years. The Frenchman, who was persuaded his stupor had not lasted above a week, and who was doubtless satisfied the chests were in the hold down to the period when he lost recollection, would suspect me of foul play, and in the barbarous rage of a pirate fall upon and endeavor to kill me. Thus you will see that I had no very high opinion of the morals and character of the man I had given life to, and indeed, after I had armed myself and was seated again before the furnace, I felt extremely melancholy, and underwent the severest dejection of spirits that had yet visited me, fearing that my humanity had achieved nothing more than to bring me into the society of a devil, who would prove a fixed source of anxiety and misery to me. Was it conceivable that the others should be worse then, or even as bad as this creature, his hair showed him hoary and vice? The Italian was a handsome man, and let him have been as profligate as he would, as cruel and fierce a pirate as Tassard had painted him, he would at all events have proved a sightly companion, and harmless as being blind, though to be sure for that reason of no use to me. Yet though his blindness would have made him a burden, I had rather have thought him into life than the Frenchman. To me a thought of feeling under an obligation to arm myself filled me with such vindictive passions that I protest as I sat alone waiting for him. I felt as if it were a duty I owed myself to return him to the condition in which I found him, which was to be easily contrived by my binding him in his sleep and dragging him to the deck and leaving him to stupify alongside the body of the giant Joan Barros. Peace! cried I to myself with a shiver, villain that thou art to harbour such thoughts, thou art a hundredfold worse than the wretch against whom Satan is setting thee plotting to think thus vilely. I gulped down this ballast of conscience with the help of a draft of wine, and it did me good. Lord how dangerous is loneliness to a man, depend upon it, your seeker after solitude is only hunting for the road that leads to Bedlam. It might be that he was long because of having to seek for the keys, but my own conviction was that he found the keys easily and stayed to rummage the boxes for such jewels and articles of value as he might there find. I think he was gone near half an hour. He then returned to the cookhouse saying briefly, I have the keys, and jingling them, and after warming himself said, let us go. I was moving towards the forecastle, not that way for Zoran, cried he. Is there a hatch aft? I asked. Certainly, in the Lazarit. I wish I had known that, said I, I should have been spared a stifling scramble over the casks and raffle forwards. He led the way, and coming to the trap hatch that conducted to the Lazarit, he pulled it open and we descended. He held the lantern and threw the light around him and said, as there are plenty of stores here, we reckoned upon provisions for twelve months, and we were seventy a crew. A strange figure he looked, just touched by the yellow candlelight, and standing out upon the blackness like some vision of a distempered fancy, in his hair cap and flaps, and with his long nose and beard and little eyes shining as he rolled them here and there. We made our way over the casks, bales, and the like, till we were right aft, and here there was a small clear space of deck in which lay a hatch. He lifted by its ring, and down through the aperture did he drop, eye following. The Lazarit deck came so low that we had to squat when still and move upon our knees. At the foremost end of this division of the ship, so far as it was possible for my eyes to pierce the darkness, for it seems that this run went clear to the forehold bulkhead, that is to say under the powder room, to where the forehold began, were stowed the spare sails, ropes for gear, and a great variety of furniture for the equipment of a ship's yards and mast. But immediately under the hatch stood several small chests and cases, painted black, stowed side by side so that they could not shift. Desard ran his eye over them, counting. Ratt! cried he. O de lantern, Mr. Rodney! I took the light from him, and, pulling the keys from his pocket, he fell to trying them at the lock of the first chest. One fitted, the bolt shot with a hard click, like cocking a trigger, and he raised the lid. The chest was full of silver money. I picked up a couple of the coins, and, bringing them to the candle, perceived them to be Spanish pieces of eight. The money was tarnished, yet it reflected a sort of dull metallic light. The Frenchman grasped a handful and dropped them, as though, like a child, he loved to hear the chink the pieces made as they fell. There's a brave pocketful there, said I. Tut! cried he, scornfully. It is a mere show of money. Resolve it into gold, and it becomes a lean bit of plunder. This we got from the conquistador. It was all she had in this way. Destined for some monastery, I recollect, but this appointment is good for only fathers. It makes them more honest in their devotions, and keeps their punches from swelling. He let fall the lid of the chest, which locked itself, and then, after a short trial of the keys, opened the one beside it. This was stored to the top with what I had took to be pigs of lead, and when he pulled out one and bade me feel the weight of it, I still thought it was lead, until he told me it was virgin silver. This was good booty! cried he, taking the lantern and swinging it over the blocks of metal. It would have been missed, but for me. Our men found it in the hold of the bocaneer in a chest half again as deep as this, and sought it to be a case of marmalade, for there were two layers of boxes of marmalade stored on top. I routed them out and found those pretty bricks of ore snug beneath. I believe Mendoza made the value of the two chests, silver though it may be, to be equal to 6,000 pounds of your money. The next chest he opened was filled with jewelry of various kinds, the fruits, I dare say, of a dozen pillages, for not only had this pirate robbed honest traders, but a pickaroon as well that had also plundered in her turn another of her own kidney, so that, as I say, this chest of jewelry might represent the property of the passengers of as many as a dozen vessels. It was as if the contents of the shop of a jeweler, who was at once a goldsmith and a silversmith, had been emptied into this chest. You could scarce name an ornament that was not here, watches, snuff boxes, buckles, bracelets, pounce boxes, vinaigrettes, earrings, crucifixes, stars for the hair, necklaces, but the list grows tiresome, in silver and gold, but chiefly in gold, all shot together and lying scramble fashion as if they had been potatoes. This is a fine sight, said Tassard, pouring upon the sparkling mass with falcon nose and ravenous eyes. Here is a dainty little watch. Fifty guineas would not purchase it in London or Paris. Where is the white breast upon which that cross there once glittered? Ah, the perfume has faded, bringing a vinaigrette to his hawk's bill. The soul is gone. The body is the immortal potter in this case. Now, my friend, talk to me of the patient drudgery of honorable life after Zeiss. Collecting the chests, so to say, to my view with a sweep of the hand. Men will break their hearts for a hundred levers ashore and be hanged for the price of a pinchback dial. When I was in London, I saw five men carted to the gallows. One had forged. One was a highwayman. I forget the other's businesses, but I recollect on inquiring the value of their baggings, that for which they were hanged, it did not amount to four guineas a man. Look at Zeiss. He swept his great hand again over the chests. Is not here something worth going to the scaffold for? His bosom swelled, his eyes sparkled, and he made as if to strike a heroic posture, but this he could not contrive on his hands. I was thunderstruck, as you will suppose, by the sight of all this treasure, and looked and stared like a fool, as if I was in a dream. I had never seen so many fine things before, and indulged in the most extravagant fancies of the worth. Here and there in the glittering huddle my eye lighted on an object that was a hundred, perhaps two hundred, years old, a cup, very choicelessly wrought, that may have been in a family for several generations, a watch of a curious figure, and the like. There might have been the pickings of the cabins, trunks, and portmanteau of a hundred opulent men and women in this chest, and so far as I could judge from what lay atop, the people plunder represented several nationalities. But there were other chests and cases to explore, ten in all. Two of these were filled with silver money, a third with plate, a fourth with English, French, Spanish, and Portugal coins and gold, but the one over which Tassard hung longest in a transport that held him dumb was the smallest of all, and this was packed with gold in bars. The stuff had the appearance of moldy yellow soap, and having no sparkle nor variety did not affect me as the jewelry had, though in value this chest came near to being worth as much as all the others put together. The fixed transported posture of the pirate, his little shining eyes and tent upon the bars, his form in the candlelight looking like a sketch of a strange, wildly apparel'd man done in phosphorus, coupled with the loom of the black chests, the sense of our desolation, the folly of our enjoyment of the sight of the treasure in the face of our pitiable and dismal plight, the melancholy storming of the wind, moaning like the rumble of thunder heard in a vault, and above all the feeling of unreality inspired by the thought of my companion having lain for eight and forty years as good as dead. Combined to render the scene so startlingly impressive that it remains at this hour painted as vividly upon the eye of memory as if I had come from it five minutes ago. So cried the Frenchman suddenly, slamming the lid of the chest. Disall here! Now's end, to the business of considering how to come off with it. He thrust the keys in his pocket, and we returned to the cookroom. End of Chapter 17 CHAPTER 18 OF THE FROSEN 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 Aidan Mayne. THE FROSEN PIRATE by William Clark Russell. CHAPTER 18 WE TALK OVER OUR SITUATION That night, as afterwards, Tessard occupied the birth that he was used to sleep in before he was frozen. Although I had not then the least fear that he would attempt any malignant tricks with me whilst we remained in this posture, the feeling that he lay in the birth next but one to mine made me uneasy in spite of my reasoning, and I was so nervous as to silently shoot a great iron bolt so that it would have been impossible to enter without beating the door in. In sober truth, the sight of the treasure had put a sort of fever into my imagination, of the heat and effects of which I was not completely sensible until I was alone in my cabin and swinging in the darkness. That the value of what I had seen came to ninety or a hundred thousand pounds of our money I could not doubt, and I will not deny that my fancy was greatly excited by thinking of it. But there was something else. Suppose we should have the happiness to escape with this treasure. Then I was perfectly certain the Frenchman would come between me and my share of it. This apprehension, threading my heated thoughts of the gold and silver, kept me restless during the greater part of the night, and I also held my brains on the stretch with devices for saving ourselves and the treasure, yet I could not satisfy my mind that anything was to be done unless nature herself assisted us in freeing the schooner. However, as it happened, the gale roared for a whole week, and the cold was so frightful and the air so charged with spray and hail that we were forced to lie close below with the hatches on for our lives. It was true Cape Horn weather, with seas as high as cliffs, and a westering tendency in the wind that flung sheets of water through the ravine, which must have quickly filled the hollow and built us up in ice to the height of the rails, but for the strong slope down which the water rushed as fast as it was hurled. I never needed to peep an inch beyond the companion way to view the sky, nor for the matter of that was there ever any occasion to leave the cabin to guess at the weather, for the perpetual thunder of it echoed strong in every part of the vessel below, and the whole fabric was constantly shivering to the blows of the falls of water on her decks. At first, the Frenchman and I would sit in the greatest fear imaginable, constantly expecting some mighty disaster, such as the rending of the ice under our keel and our being swallowed up, or the coming together of the slopes in such a manner as to crush the ship, or the fall upon her of ice weighty enough to beat her flat, though perhaps this we least feared, for unless the storm changed the whole face of the cliffs, there was no ice in our neighborhood to serve us in that way. But as the time slipped by and nothing worse happened than one sharp movement only in the vessel, following the heels of a great noise like a cannon discharged just outside, though this movement scared us nearly out of our senses and held us in a manner dumb founded for the rest of the day, I say the time passing and nothing more terrifying than what I have related happening, we took heart and waited with some courage and patience for the gale to break, never doubting that we would find a wonderful change when we surveyed the scene from the heights. We lived well, sparing ourselves in nothing that the vessel contained, the abundance rendering stint idle, the Frenchman cooked for he was a better hand than I at that work and provided several relishable sea-pies, cakes, and broths. As for liquor, there was enough on board to drown the pair of us twenty times over. Wines of France, Spain, Portugal, very choicelessly fine brandy, rum in plenty, such variety indeed as enabled us to brew a different kind of punch every day in the seven. But we were much more careful with the coal and spared it to the utmost by burning the hammocks, bedding, and chests that lay in the forecastle, that is to say we burnt these things by degrees, the stock being excessive, and by judiciously mixing them with coal and wood, they made good warming fires and as tinder lasted long too. We occupied one morning in thoroughly overhauling the castle for such articles of value as the sailors had dropped or forgotten in their flight, but found much less than I had expected from the site of the money and other things on the deck. There was little in this way to be found in the cabins. I mean in the captain's cabin which I used, and the one next to it that had been the mates, for of course I did not search Mr. Tassard's birth. But though it was quite likely that the seamen had plundered these cabins before they left the ship, I was also sure that the Frenchman had made a clean sweep of what they had overlooked when he pretended to search for the keys of the treasure chests. On this suspicion I seemed to find confirmed by the appearance of the captain's boxes. One of these boxes contained books, papers, a telescope, some nautical instruments, and the like. I looked at the books and the papers in the hope of finding something to read, but they were written and printed in the Spanish tongue, and might have been Hebrew for all the good they were to me. Our life was extraordinarily dismal and melancholy. How much so I am unable to express. It was just the same as living in a dungeon. There is no crevice for the daylight to shine through, and had there been we must have closed it to keep the cold out. Nothing could be imagined more gloomy to the spirits than the perpetual night of the schooner's interior. The furnace, it is true, would, when it flamed heartily, throw a brightness about it. But often it sank into redness that did but in purple the gloom. We burned but one candle at a time, and its light was very small so that our time was spent chiefly in a sullen twilight. Added to all this was my dislike of my companion. He would half-fuddle himself with liquor, and in that condition hiccup out twenty kinds of villainous yarns of piracy, murder, and bloodshed, boasting of the number of persons he had dispatched of his system of torturing prisoners to make them confess what they had concealed and where. He would drivel about his amours of the style in which he lived when ashore and the like, but whether reticence had grown into a habit too strong even for drink to break down, he never once gave me so much as a hint touching his youth and early life. He was completely a Frenchman in his vanity, and you would have thought him entirely odious and detestable for the successive quality in him alone. Me thanks I see him now, sitting before me with one- half of him reflecting the light of the furnace, his little eyes twinkling with a cruel merriment of wine, telling me a lying story of the adoration of a noble queenly-looking captive for his person, some lovely Spanish courtlady whom, with others, they had taken out of a small frigate bound to Old Spain. To test her sincerity he offered to procure her liberty at the first opportunity that offered, but she wept, raved, tore her hair. No, without her jewels life would be unendurable. Her husband, her country, her king, nay, even the allurements and sparkle of the court had grown disgusting, and so on and so on. And I think a monkey would have burst into laughter to see the bald-headed old Seder beat his bosom, flourish his arms, ogle, languish, and simper, all with a cutthroat expression too, soften his voice, and act in short as if he was not telling me as big a lie as was ever related on shipboard. It naturally rendered me very melancholy to reflect that I had restored this old villain to life, and I protest it was a continuous shock to such religious feelings as I had managed to preserve, to reflect that what had been as good as nearly half a century of death had done nothing for this elderly rogue's morals. It entered my head once to believe that if I could succeed in getting him to believe he had lain frozen for eight and forty years he might be seized with a fright, for he was a white-livered creature, and in some directions mend, and so come to a sense of the service I had done him, of which he appeared wholly insensible, and qualify me to rid my mind of the fears which I entertained concerning our association, should we manage to escape with the treasure. I said to him bluntly, not apropos, to use his own lingo, of anything we were talking about. "'Tis odd, Mr. Tassard, you should doubt my assurance that this is the year eighteen hundred and one.' He stared and grinned and said, "'Do you think so?' "'Well,' said I, "'perhaps it is not so odd after all, but you should suffer me to have as good an idea of the passage of time as yourself. You cannot tell me how long your stupor lasted.' "'Till the day is if you like,' he interrupted vehemently. "'Why more? Why longer than a day?' "'How do you know that I had sunk into the condition in which you found me longer than an hour or two when you landed?' "'How do you know, eh?' "'How do you know?' And he snapped his fingers. "'I know by the date you name, and by the year that this is,' said I defiantly. He uttered a coarse French expression and added, "'You want to prove that I have been insensible for forty-eight years?' "'It is the fact,' said I. He looked so wild and fierce that I drew myself erect, ready for him if he should fall upon me. Then, slowly wagging his head whilst the anger in his face softened out, he said, "'Oorain's in France now.' I said, "'There is no king.' He was beheaded. "'What was his name?' Said he. "'Louis the sixteenth,' I answered. "'Ha!' cried he with an arch-sneer. "'Louis the sixteenth, eh?' "'Are you sure it wasn't Louis the seventeenth?' "'He is dead, too.' "'This is news, Missal Rodney,' said he scornfully. "'Whilst you have been here,' said I, many mighty changes have happened. France has produced as great a general and has dangerous a villain as the world ever beheld. His name is Bonaparte. He shrugged his shoulders with an air of mocking pity. "'Who is your king?' He asked. "'George the third,' said I. "'God bless him.' "'So George and Louis, Louis and George, I see how it is, stick to your dates, sir, but my friend never set up as a schoolmaster.' This sally seemed to delight him, and he burst into a loud laugh. "'Eighteen hundred and one.' He cried. "'A man I knew once lost ten thousand leave at a coup. What do you think happened?' They settled in him here.' He patted his belly. He went about bragging to everybody that he was made of money and was nicknamed the walking boss. One day he asked a friend to dine with him. When the bill was presented, he felt in his pockets and exclaimed, "'I left my purse at home.' "'No matter. There is plenty here.' With which he seized a table knife and ripped himself open. "'Eighteen hundred and one, do you call it? Swah! But let it be your secret, my friend. The world will not love you for making it fifty years old as and it is.' It was ridiculous to attempt to combat such obstinacy as this, and as the subject produced nothing but excitement and irritation, I dropped it and meddled with it no more, leaving him to his conviction that I was cracked in this one particular. In fact, it was a matter of no consequence at all. What came very much closer home was the business of our deliverance, and over this we talked long and very earnestly, for he forgot to be mean and fierce and boastful, and I to dislike and fear him when we spoke of getting away with our treasure and returning to our native home. For hour after hour would we go on plotting and planning and scheming, stepping about the cookhouse in our earnestness and entirely engrossed with the topic. His contention was that if we were to save the money in plate, we must save the schooner. Unless we build a vessel, said I, out of what? Out of the schooner. Are you a carpenter? said he. No, I replied. Neither am I, said he. It's possible we might contrive such a structure as would enable us to save our lives. But we have not the skill to produce a vessel big enough to contain those chests as well as ourselves and the stores we should require to take. Besides, do you know there is no labor more fatiguing than knocking such a craft as this to pieces? This I very well believed, and it was truer of such a vessel as the Boca Del Dragon that was a perfect bed of timber and, like the Laughing Mary, built as if she was to keep the seas for 300 years. And supposing, said he, after infinite toil we succeeded in breaking up as much of her as we wanted, what appliances have we for reshaping the curved timbers? And where are we to lay the keel? Labor as we might, the cold would prove too much for us. No, Mr. Rodney, to save the treasure, I, and to save ourselves, we must save the ship. Let us put our minds to that. In this way we would reason, and I confess he talked very sensibly, taking very practical views and indicating difficulties which my more ardent and imaginative nature might have been blind to till they immovably confronted me and rendered days of labor useless. But how was the ship to be saved? Was it possible to force nature's hand? In other words, to anticipate our release by the dissolution of the ice? We were both agreed that this was the winter season in these seas, though he instantly grew sulky if I mention the month, for he was as certain I was as mad in this, as in the year, and he would eye me very malignantly if I persisted in calling it July. But, as I have said, we were both agreed that the summer was to come, and though we could not swear that the ice was floating northwards, we had a right to believe so, in spite of the fierceness of the cold, this being the trick of all those frozen estates when they fetched to the heights under which we lay, and we would ask each other whether we should let our hands and minds rest idle and wait to see what the summer would do for us, or essay to launch the schooner. If, said he, we wait for the asked to break up, it may break us up too. Yes, said I, but how are we to cut the vessel out of the ice in which she is seated to above the garbored streak? Waiting is odious and intolerable work, but my own conviction is, nothing is to be done till the sun comes this way, and the ice crumbles into bergs. The island is leagues long, and vanishes in the south, but it is wasting fast in the north, and when this gale is done, I shall expect to see twenty bergs where it was before all compact. As you may guess, our long conversations left us without plans, bitter as was our need, and vigorous as were our efforts to strike upon some likely scheme. However, if they achieved no more, they served to beguile the time, and what was better yet, they took my companion's mind off his nauseous and revolting recollections, so that it was only now and again when he had drained a full bowl, and his little eyes danced in their thick-shagged caves, that he regaled me with his memories of murder, rapin, plank walking, hanging, treacheries of all kinds, and cruelties too barbarous for belief. End of Chapter 18. This brought us into the first week of August. The wind fell in the night, and I was awakened by the silence, which you will not think strange if you consider how used were my ears to the fierce seething and strong bellowing of the blast. I lay listening, believing that it had only veered, and that it would come on again in gusts and guns, but the stillness continued, and there was no sound whatever, saving the noises of the ice, which broke upon the air like slow answers from batteries near and distant, half whose cannons have been silenced. I slept again, and when I awoke, it was half past nine o'clock in the morning. The Frenchman was snoring lustily. I went on deck before entering the cookhouse, and had liked to have been blinded by the astonishing brilliance of the sunshine upon the ice and snow. All the wind was gone. The air was exquisitely frosty and sharp, but there was a heavy sound coming from the sea which gave me to expect the sight of a strong swell. The sky was a clear blue, and there was no cloud on as much of its face as showed betwixt the prowls of the slopes. The schooner was a most wonderful picture of jubing icicles, a more beautiful and radiant sight you could not figure, from every rope, from the yards forward, from the rails, from whatever water could run in a stream, hung glorious ice pendants of prismatic splendor. No snow had fallen to frost the surfaces, and every pendant was as pure and polished as cut glass and reflected a hundred brilliant colors. The wind hurled over, and on the schooner had frozen upon the masts, riggings, and decks, and as this ice, like the pendants, was very sparkly bright, it gave back all the hues of the sunbeam, so that, stepping from the darkness of the cabin into this effulgent scene, you might easily have persuaded yourself that before you stood the fabric of the ship fashioned out of a rainbow. My attention, however, was quickly withdrawn from this shining spectacle by the appearance of the starboard cliff over against our quarter. The whole shoulder of it had been broken away, and I could just catch a view of the horizon of the sea from the deck by stretching my finger. The sight of the ocean showed me that the breakage had been prodigious, or to have come to that prospect before, I should have had to climb to the height of the main lower mast head. No other marked or noteworthy change did I detect from the deck, but on stepping to the larboard side to peer over, I spied a split in the ice that reached from the very margin of the ravine, I mean to that end of it, where it terminated in a cliff, to pass the bows of the schooner by at least four times her own length. I returned to the cook room and went about the old business of lighting the fire and preparing the breakfast, this job by an understanding between the Frenchman and me, falling to him who was first out of bed, and in about twenty minutes, Tassard arrived. The wind is gone, he said. Yes, I replied. It is a bright still morning. I have been on deck. There has been a great fall of ice close to. Does it block us? No, on the contrary, it clears the way to the sea. The ocean is now visible from the deck. Not that it men's our case, I added, but there is a great rent in the ice that puts a fancy into my head. I'll speak of it later, after a closer look. The breakfast was ready, and we fell into a hurry. The Frenchman gobbling like a hog in his eagerness to make an end. When we were finished, he wrapped himself up in three or four coats and cloaks, warming the under ones before folding them about him, and completing his preparations for the excursion by swallowing half a pint of raw brandy. I bade him arm himself with a short-headed spear to save his neck, and thus equipped we went on deck. He stood stuck still with his eyes shut on emerging through the hatch, crying out with a number of French oaths that he had been struck blind. This I did not believe, though I readily suppose that the glare made his eyeball smart so as to cause him a good deal of agony. Indeed, all along I had been surprised that he should have found his sight so easily after having sat in blindness for 48 years, and it was not wonderful that the amazing brilliance on deck, smiting his sight on a sudden, should have caused him to cry out as if he had lost the use of his eyes forever. I waited patiently, and in about ten minutes he was able to look about him, and then it was not long before he could see without pain. He stood a minute gazing at the glories upon the rigging, and in that piercing light I noticed the unwholesome color of his face. His cap hid the scar, and nothing of his countenance was to be seen but the cheeks, eyes, and nose. He was much more wrinkled than I had supposed, and me thought the spirit of cruelty lay visible in every line. I had never seen eyes so full of cunning and treachery, so expressive, I should say, of these qualities. Yet they were no bigger than mere punctures. I was sensible of a momentary fear of the man, not, let me say, an emotion of cowardice, but a sort of mixture of alarm and awe, such as a ghost might inspire. This I put down to the searching light in which I watched him for a moment or two, an irradiation subtle enough to give the sharpest form to expression, to exquisitely define every meaning that was distinguishable in his graveyard physiognomy. I left him to stare and judge for himself of the posture in which the long, hard gale had put the schooner and stepped over to the two bodies. They were shrouded in ice from head to foot, as though they had each man been packed in a glass case cuttingly wrought to their shapes. Their faces were hid by the crystal masks. Tassar, join me. Small chance for your friends now, said I, even if you were agreeable to my proposal to the attempt to revive them. So cried he, touching the body of the mate with his foot, and this is the end of the irresistible Trentonove. For what conquests has death robed him so bravely? See, the colors shining him like fifty different kinds of ribbons. Poor fellow, he cannot curl his mustachios now, though the loveliest eyes in Europe were fixed in passionate admiration on him. He'll never slit another throat, nor hiccup Petrarch over a goblet, nor remonstrate with me on my humanity. Shall we toss the bodies over the side? They are your friends, said I. Do as you please. But we must empty their pockets first. Business before sentiment, Mr. Rodney. He stirred the figure again with his foot. Well, presently, said he, this armor will want the hatchet. Now, my friend, to view the work of the gale. The increased heel of the ship brought the larboard four-channel low, and we stepped without difficulty from it onto the ice. The renter fissure that I have before spoken of went very deep. It was nearly two feet wide in places, but though the light poured brilliantly upon it, I could see no bottom. If only such another split as this would happen to other side, said the Frenchman, I believe this block would go adrift. Well, said I, after musing a little whilst I ran my eye over the hollows. I'll tell you what was in my mind just now. There is a great quantity of gunpowder in the hold, ten or a dozen barrels. By dropping large parcels of it into the crevices on the right there, and firing it with slow matches, he interrupted me with a cry. By St. Paul, you have it! What crevices have you? We walked briskly around the vessel, and all about her beam and starboard quarter I found, in addition to the seams I had before noticed, many great cracks and features, caused no doubt by the fall of the shoulder of the slope. I pushed on further yet, going down the ravine, as I have called it, until I came to the edge. And here I looked down from a height of some 12 or 14 feet, so greatly had the ice sunk, or been changed by the weather, upon the ocean. I called to Tassard. He approached warily. I believe he feared I might be tempted to give him a friendly shove over the edge. Observe this hollow, said I. The slit there goes down to the water, and you may take it that the block is wholly disconnected on that side. Now look at the face of the ice, said I, pointing to the starboard or right hand side. That crack goes as far as the vessel's quarter, and the weakness is carried on to pass the bows by the other rents. Mr. Tassard, if we could burst this body of ice by an explosion from its moorings ahead of the bowsprit, where it is all too compact, this cradle with the schooner in it will go free of the parent body. He answered promptly, Yes, it is the one and only plan. That crack to starboard is like telling us what to do. It is while you came here, we should not have seen it from the top. This valley runs steep. You must expect no more than the surface to be liberated, for the foot of the cliff will go deep. I desire no more. Will the ship stand such a launch, supposing we bring it about, said he? I responded with one of his own shrugs and said, Nothing is certain. We have one of two courses to choose, to venture this launch or stay till the ice breaks up, and take our chance of floating or of being smashed. You are right, he exclaimed. Here is an opportunity. If we wait, Bergs may gather about this point and build us in. As to this island dissolving, we are yet to know which way to heading. Suppose it should be traveling south, hey! He struck the ice with his spear, and we toiled up the slippery rocks with difficulty to the ship. We walked past the bows to the distance of the vessel's length. Here were many deep holes and cracks, and as if we were to be taught how these came about, even whilst we were viewing them an ear-splitting crash of noise happened within twenty fathoms of us, a rock many tons in weight rolled over and left a black gulf behind it. The Frenchman started, muttered, and crossed himself. Holy Virgin, he cried, rolling his eyes. Let us return to the schooner. We shall be swallowed up here. I own, I was not a little terrified myself by the sudden blast and the thunder of the uprooted rock, and the sight of the huge black rent. But I meant to view the scene from the top and to consider how best to dispose of the powder in the cracks and said, There is nothing to be done on board. Skulking below will not deliver us or preserve the treasure. Here are several fissures big enough to receive barrels of gunpowder. See, Mr. Tassard, as they stand they cover the whole width of the hollow. And I proceeded to give him my ideas as to lowering, fixing the barrels, and the like. He nodded his head and said, Yes, very good. Yes, it will do. And so on. What was too scared in his heart, I believe, to see my full meaning. He was perpetually moving, as if he feared the ice would split under his feet and his eyes traveled over the face of the rocks with every manifestation of alarm in their expression. I wondered how so poor a creature should ever have had stomach enough to serve as a pirate. No doubt his spirit had been enfeebled by his long sleep, but then it is also true that the greatest bullies in most bloodthirsty rogues prove themselves despicable curves under conditions which make no demand upon their temper or their loss for plunder. He would have returned to the ship had I encouraged him, but on seeing me start to climb to the brow he followed, the prospect disappointed me. I had expected to witness a variety of surprising changes, but southward the scene was scarce altered. It was a wonderfully fair morning, the sky clear from sea line to sea line and of a very soft blue, the ocean of a like hue, with a heist while running, that was a majestic undulation even from the height at which I surveyed it. The sun stood over the ice in the northeast and the dazzle kept me weeping. So intolerable was the effulgence. Half of the delicate architecture that had enriched the slopes and surfaces that way was swept down and I slay piled in places to an elevation of many feet where before it had been flatter hollow. However, there was no question but that the gale had played havoc with the north extremity of the island. I counted no less than 20 birds floating off the main and it was quite likely the sea was crowded beyond though my sight could not travel so far. However, when I came to look close and to recollect the features of the shore as they showed when I first landed, I found some vital changes near at hand, where my haven had been the ice had given way and left a gap half a mile broad and a hundred feet deep. The fall on the schooner's starboard quarter was very heavy and the ice was split in all directions and in parts was so loose that a point of cliff hard upon the sea rocked with the swell. When Tassard came to a stand he looked about him north and south shading his eyes with his hand and then swearing very savagely in French he cried out in English freely employing oaths as he spoke. Why, here's as much ice as there was before I fell asleep. See yonder, pointing to the south. It dies out in the distance if it does not join the pole there may the devil rise before me as I speak. Thumb during fury I had hoped to see it shriveled to an ordinary burg. What, in a week? cried I as if I believed his stupor had not lasted longer. He returned no answer and gaped about him full of consternation and passion. And are we to wait for our deliverance till this continent breaks up, he bawled? The day of judgment will be a thing of the past by that time. Travelling north, stealth, he roared, his mouth full of the expletives of his day, French and English. Who but a madman could suppose that this ice is not as fixed as the Antarctic Circle to which it is moored? Why, six months ago it was no bigger than it is now. And he sent a furious terrified gaze into the white solitudes vanishing in the zero faintness in the southwest. It was not a thing to reason upon. I was as much disappointed as he by the trifling changes the gale had made, and my heart felt very heavy at the sight of the great field disappearing in the south. The bergs in the north signified little. It is true they indicated demolition, but demolition so slow as to be worthless to us. It was not to be questioned that the island was proceeding north, but at what rate? Here, perhaps, might be a frozen crescent of forty or fifty leagues, and at what speed, appreciable enough to be of the least consequence to our calculations, should such a body travel? I looked at the Frenchman. This must decide us, said I. We must fix on one of two courses, endeavor to launch the ship by blowing up the ice, or turn to and rig up the best arrangement we can contrive and put to sea. Yes, he answered, scowling as he darted his enraged eyes over the ice. Better set a slow match in the magazine and drink ourselves senseless, and so blow ourselves to hell than linger here in the hope that this continent will dissolve and release us. Where's Mendoza's body? I stared about me, and then pointing to the huge gap the ice had made, answered. It was there. Where it is now, I know not. He shrugged his shoulders, took another view of the ice and the ocean, and then cried impatiently, Let us return! The powder barrels must have the first chance, and he made for the schooner, savagely striking the ice with his spear and growling curses to himself as he plowed and climbed and jumped his way along. End of Chapter 19 Chapter 20 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 Angela Jeffries The Frozen Pirate by William Clark Russell Chapter 20 A Merry Evening By the time we had reached the bottom of the hollow, Tassard was blowing like a bellows with the uncommon exertion, and swearing that he felt the cold penetrating his bones and that he should be stupefied again if he did not mind, he climbed into the ship and disappeared. I loved him so little that secretly I very heartily wished that nature would make away with him. I mean that something it would be impossible in me to lay to my conscience should befall him, as becoming comatose again, and so lying like one dead. Assuredly, in such a case, it was not this hand that would have wasted a drop of brandy in returning an evil, white-livered, hectoring old rascal to a life that smelled foully with him and the like of him. It was so still a day that the cold did not try me sorely. There was vitality, if not warmth, in the light of the sun, and I was heated with clamoring. So I stayed a full half hour after my companion had vanished, examining the ice about the schooner, which careful inspection repaid me to the extent of giving me to see that if by blasts of gunpowder I could succeed in rupturing the ice ahead of the schooner's boughs. There was a very good chance of the mass on which she lay going adrift. Yet I will not deny that though I recognized this business of dislocation as our only chance, for I could see little or nothing to be done in the way of building a boat proper to swim and ply, I foreboded the dismal issue to our adventure, even should we succeed in separating this block from the main. In fine, what I feared was that the weight of the schooner would overset the ice and drown her and us. I entered the ship and found Tassard roasting himself in the cookhouse. How melancholy is this gloom, said I, after the glorious white sunshine. Yes, said he, but as warm. This is enough for me. Curse the cold, say I, it robs a man of all spirit. To grapple with this rigor, one should have fed all one's life on blubber. I defy a man to be brave when he is half-frozen. I feel a match for any three men now, but on the heights a flea would have made me run. He pulled apart from the bricks and filled his panic in. I have been surveying the ice, said I, drawing to the furnace, and have very little doubt that if we wisely bestow the powder in great quantities, we shall succeed in dislocating the bed on which we are lying. Good, he cried, but after, said I, what? As much of this bed, as may be dislodged, will not be deep. Ice-burgs, as of course you know, capsize in consequence of their becoming top-heavy by the wasting of the bulk that is submerged. This block will make, but a small burg should reliberate it, and I very much fear that the weight of the schooner will overset it the instant we are launched. Body of Moses, he cried angrily, knitting his brows, whereby he stretched the scar to half its usual width. What's to be done, then? She is a full ship, said I, and weighty. If the liberated ice be thin, she may sit upon it, and keep it under. We have a right to hope in that direction, perhaps. Yet there is another consequence. She may leak like a sieve. Why, he exclaimed, she took the ice smoothly, she has not been strained, she was as tight as a bottle before she stranded. The coating of ice will have cherished her, and a stout ship like this does not suffer from six months of lying up. Six months, thought I. Well, it may be as you say, but if she leaks, it will not be in our forearms to keep her free. He exclaimed hotly, Mr. Rodney, if we are to escape, we must venture something. To stay here means death in the end. I am persuaded that this ice is joined with some vast main body far south, and that it does not move. What is there, then, to wait for? There is promise in your gunpowder proposal. If she capsizes, then the devil will get his own. And with the savage flourish of the panican, he put it to his lips, and drained it. His selling determination that we should stand or fall by my scheme was not very useful to me. I had looked for some shrewdness in him, some capacity of originating and weighing ideas, but I found he could do little more than curse and swagger and ply his can, in which he found most of his antidotes and recollections and not a little of his courage. I pulled up my watch, as I must call it, and observed that it was hard upon one o'clock. Tis lucky, said he, eyeing the watch greedily and coming to it away from the great subject of our deliverance, as though the sight of the fine gold thing with its jeweled letter extinguished every other thought in him. That you removed that watch from Mendoza, but he will have carried other good things to the bottom with him, I fear. His flask and tobacco box I took away, said I, he had nothing of consequence besides. They must go into the common-chest, cried he, Tis share and share, you know. I, said I, but what I found Mendoza is mine by the highest right under heaven. If I had not taken the things, they would now be at the bottom of the sea. What of that, cried he savagely, if we had not plundered the galleon, she might have been erect and taken all that she had down with her, yet should such a consideration hinder a fair division as between us, between you who had nothing to do with the pillage and me who risked my life in it? I said very well, be it all as you say, appearing to consent, for there is something truly absurd in an altercation about a few guineas worth of booty in the face of our melancholy and most perilous situation. Though it not only enabled me to send a deeper glance into the mind of this man that I had yet been able to manage, but made me understand a reason for the bloody and furious quarrels which have again and again arisen among persons standing on the brink of eternity, to whom a cup of drink or the side of a ship had been more precious than the contents of the Bank of England. I said about getting the dinner. Whilst you are at that work, cried he, starting up, I'll overhaul the pockets of the bodies on deck, and picking up a chopper away he went. And I heard him cursing in his native tongue as he stumbled up to the companion ladder through the darkness in the cabin. His rapacity was beyond credence. There was an immense treasure in the hold, yet he could not leave the pockets of the two poor wretches on deck alone. I did not envy him his task. The frozen figures would bear a deal of hammering, and besides, he had to work in the cold. Ah, I thought with the groan, I should have left him to make one of them. I had finished my dinner by the time he arrived. He produced the watch I had taken from and returned to the mate's pocket when I had searched him for a tinder-box, also a gold snuff-box set with diamonds and a few Spanish pieces in gold. On seeing these things, I remembered that I had found some rings and money in his pockets whilst overhauling him for means to obtain fire, but I held my peace. Should not we have been imbeciles to sacrifice these beauties, he cried, viewing the watch and snuff-box with a rapturous grin. They were hard to come at, I expect. No, he answered, pocketing them and turning to a piece of beef in the oven. I knocked away the ice, and after a little wretching, got at the pockets. But poor Trentonove, do you know, his nose came away with the mask of ice. He is no longer lovely to the sight. He broke into a guffaw, then stuffed his mouth full and talking in the intervals of chewing. There is nothing worth taking on boroughs. They are both overboard. Overboard, I cried. Why, yes, said he. They are no good on deck. I stood them against the rail, then tipped them over. This was an illustration of his strength. I did not much relish. I doubt if I could have lifted boroughs, said I. Not you, he exclaimed, running his eye over me. A dead Dutchman would have had the weight of a ferry alongside boroughs. Well, Mr. Tessard, said I. Since you are so strong, you will be very useful to our scheme. There is much to be done. Give me a sketch of your plans that I may understand you, he exclaimed, continuing to eat very heartily. First of all, said I, we shall have to break the powder barrels out of the magazine and hoist them on the deck. There are tackles, I suppose. You should be able to find what you want among the boatswain stores in the run, he replied. There are some splits wide enough to receive a whole barrel of powder, said I. I counted four such yawns all happily lying in a line of thwart. The ice passed the boughs. I proposed to sink these barrels twenty feet deep, where they must hang from a piece of spar across the aperture. He nodded. Have you any slow matches aboard? Plenty among the gunner's stores, he replied. There are but you and me, said I. These operations will take time. We must mind not to be blown up by one barrel whilst we are suspending another. We shall have to lower the barrels with their matches on fire, and they must be timed to burn an hour. I, certainly at least an hour, he exclaimed. Two hours would be better. Well, that must depend upon the number of parcels of matches we meet with. There will be a good many mines to spring, and one must not explode before another, tis the united forces of the several blasts which we must reckon on. The contents of at least four more barrels of powder we must distribute amongst the other chinks and splits in such parcels as they will be able to receive. And then? And then, said I, we must await the explosion and trust to the mercy of Heaven to help us. He made a hideous face, as if this was a sort of talk to nauseate him, and said, Do you propose that we should remain on board or watch the effects from a distance? Why remain on board, of course, I answered. Suppose the mines liberated the ice on which the schooner lies and it floated away. What should we, watching at a distance, do? True, cried he, but it is cursed perilous. The explosion might blow the ship up. No, it will not do that. We shall be bad engineers if we bring such a thing about. The danger will be, provided the schooner is released, in her cap-sizing, as I have pointed out. Enough, cried he, charging his panic in for the third time. We must chance her cap-sizing. If I had a crew at my back, said I, I would carry an anchoring cable to the shoulder of the cliff at the end of the slope, to hold the ship if she swam. I would also put a quantity of provisions on the ice, along with materials for making us a shelter, and the whole of the stock of coal, so we could go on supporting life here if the schooner capsized. Then, said he, you would remain ashore during the explosion? Most certainly, but as all these preparations would mean a degree of labour impractical by us two men, I am for the bold venture. Prepare and fire the mines, return to the ship, and leave the rest to Providence. He made another ugly face, and indulged himself in a piece of profanity that was inexpressibly disgusting and mean in the mouth of a man who was used to cross himself when alarmed and swear by the saints. But perhaps he knew, even better than I, how little he had to expect from Providence. He filled his pipe, explaining that when he had smoked it out, we should fail to work. Now that I had settled a plan, I was eager to put it into practice, hot and wild indeed with the impatience and hope of the castaway animated with the dream of recovering his liberty and preserving his life, and I was the more anxious to set about the business at once, on account of the weather being fair and still, for it came on to blow a stormy wind again, we should be forced as before under the hatches. But I had to wait for the Frenchman to empty his pipe. He was so complete essentialist that I believe nothing short of terror could have forced him to shorten the period of a pleasure by a second of time. He went on puffing so deliberately, with such leisurely enjoyment of the flavour of the smoke, that I expected to see him fall asleep, and my patience was becoming exhausted. I jumped up, but by this time his boil held nothing but black ashes. Now he cried to work, and he rose with a prodigious yawn and seized the lathorn. Our first business was to hunt among the boatswain stores in the run for tackles to hoist the powder barrels up with. There was a good collection, as might have been expected in a pirate whose commerce lay in slinging goods from other ships' holds into her own. But the ropes were frozen as hard as iron, to remedy which we carried an armful to the cookhouse, and left the tackles to lie in soften. We also conveyed to the cookhouse a quantity of rat-line stuff, a thin rope used for making of the steps in the shroud ladders, this being a line that would exactly serve to suspend the smaller parcels of powder in the splits. Before touching the powder barrels, we put a lighted candle in the bull's eye lamp over the door, and removed the lathorn to a safe distance. Tassard was perfectly well acquainted with the contents of this storeroom, and on my asking for the matches put his hand on one of several bags of them. They varied in length, some being six inches, and some making a big coil. There was nothing for it but to sample and test them. And this, I told Tassard, could be done that evening. The main hatch was just forward of the gunroom bulkhead. We seized a hand-spike apiece, and went to work to prize the cover open. It was desperate, tough labor, as bad as trying to open an oyster with the soft blade. The Frenchman broke out into many strange, old-fashioned oaths in his own tongue, imagining the hatch to be frozen. But though I don't doubt the frost had something to do with it, its obscenity was mainly owing to time that had soldered it, so to speak, with the stubbornness that eighty and forty years will communicate to a fixture which ice has cherished and kept sound. We got the hatch open at last. Be pleased to know that I am speaking of the hatch in the lower deck, for there was another immediately over it on the upper, or main deck. And returning to the powder room, rolled the barrels forward, ready for slinging and hoisting away, when we should have rigged it tackle aloft. We had not done much, but what we had done had eaten far into the afternoon. I am tired, and hungry, and thirsty, said the Frenchman. Let us knock off. We have made good progress. No use opening the main deck hatched to-night. The vessel is cold enough, even when hermetically corked. Very well, said I, bringing my watch to the lamp-horn and observing the time to be sundown, so carefully extinguishing the castle and the bull's-eye lamp, we took each of us a bag of matches and went to the cookroom. There was neither tea nor coffee in the ship. I had so pined for these soothing drinks that I would have given all the wine in the vessel for a few pounds of either one of them. A senseless, ungracious yearning indeed in the face of the plenty that was aboard. But it was the plenty, perhaps, that provoked it. There was chocolate, which the Frenchman frothed and drank with hearty enjoyment. He also devoured handfuls of saccades, which he would wash down with wine. These things made me sick, and for drink I was forced upon the spirits in wine, the latter of which was so generous that it promised to combine with the enforced laziness of my life under hatches to make me fat, so that I am of the opinion had we waited for the ice to release us, I should have become so corpulent as to prove a burden to myself. I mention this here that you may find an excuse in it for the only act of folly in the way of drinking that I can lay to my account whilst I was in this pirate. For I must tell you that, on returning to the furnace, we to refresh us after our labor made a bowl of punch, of which I drank so plentifully that I began to feel myself very merry. I forgot all about the matches and my resolution to test them that night. The Frenchman, enjoying my condition, continued to pledge me till his little eyes danced in his head. Luckily for me, being at the bottom of a very jolly disposition, drink never served me worse than develop that quality in me. No man could ever say that I was quarrelsome in my cups. My progress was marked by stupid smiles, terminating in unmeaningful laughter. The Frenchman sang a ballad about love and pickety and the like, and I gave him Hearts of Oak, the sentiments of which song kept him shrugging his shoulders and drunkenly looking contempt. We continued singing alternately for some time, until he fell to setting up his throat when I was at work, and this confused and stopped me. He then favored me with what he called the pirate stance, a very wild, grotesque movement with no elegance whatever to be hurt by his being in liquor, and I think I see him now, whipping off his coat and sprawling and flapping about in high boots and a red waistcoat, flourishing his arms, snapping his fingers, and now and again bursting into a stave to keep step to. When he was done, I took the floor with hornpipe, whistling the air and double shuffling, toe and healing, and quivering from one leg to another very briskly. He lay back against the bulkhead, grasping a can half full of punch, roaring loudly at my antics, and when I sat down, breathless, would have had me go on, hiccuping that though he had known scores of English sailors he had never seen that dance better performed. By this time I was extremely excited and extraordinarily merry, and losing hold of my judgment began to indulge in sundry pleasantries concerning his nation and countrymen, asking with many explosions of laughter how it was that they continued at the trouble of building ships for us to use against them, and if he did not think that the flower-de-laus, a neater symbol for people who put snuff into their soup, and restricted their ablutions to their faces than the tricolor, being too muddled to consider that he was ignorant of that flag, and in short I was so offensive, in spite of my ridiculous merriment, that his savage nature broke out. He assailed the English with every injurious term in his drunken condition, suffering him to recollect, and starting up with his little eyes wildly rolling, he clasped his hands to his side, as if feeling for a sword, and calling me a very ugly French word, bade me come on, and he would show me the difference between a Frenchman and a beast of an Englishman. I laughed at him with all my might, which so enraged him that, swaying to right and left, he advanced as if to fall upon me. I started to my feet and tumbled over the bench I had jumped from, and lay sprawling, and the bench oversetting close to him, he kicked against it and fell too, fetching the deck of very hard blow. He groaned heavily and muttered that he was killed. I tried to rise, but my legs gave way, and then the fumes of the punch overpowered me, for I recollect no more. When I awoke it was pitch dark. My hands, legs, and feet seemed formed of ice, my head of burning brass. I thought it was in my cot, and felt with my hands till I touched the sword's cold, bald head, which so terrified me that I uttered a loud cry and sprang erect. Then recollection returned, and I heartily cursed myself for my folly and wickedness. Good God thought I that I should be so mad as to drown my senses when never was any wretch in such need of all his reason as I. The boat-swain's tinder-box was in my pocket. I groped, found a candle, and lighted it. It was twenty minutes after three in the morning. Tassard lay on his back, snoring hideously, his legs overhanging the cap-sized bench. I pulled and hauled at him, but he was too drunk to awake. And that he might not freeze to death, I fetched a pile of clothes out of his cabin and covered him up, and put his head on a coat. My head ached horribly, but not worse than my heart. When I considered how our orgy might have ended in bloodshed and murder. How I had insulted God's providence by drinking and laughing and roaring out songs and dancing at a time when I most needed his protection. With death standing close beside me, as I may say, I could have beaten my head against the deck in the anguish of my contrition and shame. My passion of sorrow was so extravagant indeed that I remember looking at the Frenchman, as if he was the devil incarnate, who had put himself in my way to thaw and recover, that he might tempt me on the loss of my soul. Fortunately these fancies did not last. I was parched with thirst, but the water was ice, and there was no fire to melt it with. So I broke off some chips and sucked them, and held a lump to my forehead. I went to my cabin and got into my hammock, but my head was so hot and ate so furiously, and I was so vexed with myself besides, that I could not sleep. The schooner was deathly still. There was not apparently the faintest murmur of air to awaken an echo in her. Nothing spoke but the near and distant cracking of the ice. It was miserable work lying in the cabin sleepless and reproaching myself. And as my burning head robbed the cold of its formidableness, I resolved to go on deck and take a brisk turn or two. The night was wonderfully fine. The velvet dusk so crowded with stars that in parts it resembled great spaces of cloth of silver hovering. I turned my eyes northwards to the stars low down there and thought of England, and the home where I was brought up until the tears gathered, and with them went something of the dreadful burning aching out of my head. Those distant, silent, shining bodies amazingly intensified the sense of my loneliness and remoteness, and yonder southern cross and the luminous dust of the Magellic clouds seem not farther off than my native country. It is not in language to express the savage naked beauty, the wild mystery of the white still scenes of ice shining back to the stars with the light that owed nothing to their glory, nor conveying how the hole was heightened to every sense by the element of fear, put into the pictures by the sound of the splitting ice and the softened regular roaring of the breakers along the coast. I started with fresh shame and horror when I contrasted this ghastly calmness of pale ice and the brightness of the holy stars looking down upon it with our swineish revelry in the cabin, and I thought with loathing of the drunken ribaldry of the pirate and my own tipsy songs piercing the ear of the mighty spirit of the solitude. The exercise improved my spirits. I stepped the length of the little-raised deck briskly. My thoughts, very busy. On a seddon the ice split on the starboard hand with the noise louder than the explosion of a twenty-four pounder. The schooner swayed to a level keel with so sharp a rise that I lost my balance and staggered. I recovered myself, trembling, and greatly agitated by the noise and the movement coming together, without the least hint having been given me, and grasping a backstay waited, not knowing what was to happen next, unless it be the heave of an earthquake. I can imagine no motion capable of giving one such swooning, nauseating, terrifying sensation as the rending of ice under a fixed ship. In a few moments there were several sharp cracks, all on the starboard side, like a snapping of musketry, and I felt the schooner very faintly heave. But this might have been a deception of the senses. For though I set star against the mast head and watched it, there was no movement. I looked over the side and observed that the split I had noticed on the face of the cliff had by this rupture been extended traversely right across the schooner's starboard bow, the thither side being several feet higher than on this. It was plain that the bed on which the vessel rested had dropped as to bring her upright, and I was convinced by this circumstance alone, that if I used good judgment in disposing of the powder the weight of the mast would complete its own dislocation. I stepped a little way forward to obtain a clearer sight of the splits about the schooner, and on putting my head over I was inexpressibly dismayed and confounded by the apparition of a man with his arms stretched out before him, his face up turned, and his posture that of starting back as though terrified at beholding me. I had met with several frights whilst I had been on this island, but none worse than this, none that so completely paralyzed me as to very nearly deprive me of the power of breathing. I stared at him, and he seemed to stare at me, and I know not which of the two was the more motionless. The whiteness made a light of its own, and he was perfectly plain. I blinked and puffed, conceiving it might be some illusion of the wine I had drunk, and finding him still there, and acting as though he warded me off in terror, as if my showing myself unawares had led him to think me the devil. I say finding him perfectly real, I was seized with an agony of fear, and should have been rushed to my cabin had my legs been equal to the task of transporting me there. Then thought I, idiot that you are. What think you, you fool? It is but the body of Tretenovey. Very enough it was, and putting my head a little farther over the rail, I saw the figure of the Portuguese baros lying close under the bends. No doubt it was the movement of the ice that had shot the Italian into the lifelike posture. It being indescribable he should have fallen so on being trampled overboard by the Frenchmen. But there he was, resting against a lump of ice, looking as living in his frozen posture as ever he had shown in the cabin. The shock did my head good. I went below and got into my cot, and after tossing for half an hour or so fell asleep. I awoke and went to the cookhouse, where I found Tassard preparing the breakfast, and a great fire burning. I hardly knew what reception he would give me, and what therefore not a little agreeably surprised by his thanking me for covering him up. You have a stronger head than mine, said he. The punch used you well. You made me laugh, though. You was very diverting. I, much too diverting to please myself, said I, and I sounded him cautiously to remark what his memory carried of my insults, but found that he re-elected nothing more than I danced with vigor and sang well. I said nothing about my contrition, my going on deck, and the like, contending myself with asking if he had heard the explosion in the night. No, cried he, staring and looking eagerly. Well, then, said I, there has happened a mighty crack in the ice, and I do soberly believe that with the blessing of God we shall be able by blasts of powder to free the block on which the schooner rests. Good, cried he, come let us hurry with this meal. How is the weather? Quiet, I believe. I have not been on deck since the explosion around me early this morning. Whilst we ate, he said, suppose we get the schooner afloat. What do you propose? Why, I answered, if she proved tight and seaworthy, why but carry her home? What, you and I alone? No, said I, certainly not. We must make shift to sail her to the nearest port, and ship accrue. He looked at me attentively and said, What do you mean by home? England, said I. He shrugged his shoulders and exclaimed in French, to his nacheral, then proceeding in English. Pray, said he, showing his fangs. Do not you know that the Boca de la Dragoon is a pirate? Do you want to be hanged that you propose to carry her to a port to shipmen? I have no fear of that, said I. After all these years she will be clean forgotten, as if she had never had existence. Look ye here, Mr. Rodney, cried he in a passion. Let's have no more of this sniveling nonsense about years. You may be as mad as you please on that point, but it shan't hang me. It needs more than a few months to make men forget a craft that is carried on such traffic as our hold represents. You'll not find me venturing myself nor the schooner into any of your ports for men. No, no, my friend. I am in no stupor now, you know. And I've slept the punch off also, did ye see? What, betray our treasure and be hanged for our generosity? He made me an iconical bow grinning with wrath. Let's get the schooner afloat first, said I. I, that's all very well, he cried, but better stop here than dangling chains. No, my friend. Our plan must be very different one from your proposal. I suppose you want your share of the booty, said he, snapping his fingers. I deserve it, said I, smiling that I might soften his passion. And yet you would convey the most noted pirate of the age, with plunder in her to the value of thousands of doubloons, to a port in which we should doubtless find ships of war, a garrison, magistrates, governors, prisons, and the whole of the machinery it is our business to give our stern to, ma foie, Mr. Rodney, sure you are out in something more than your reckoning of time. What do you propose, said I? Ha! he exclaimed, whilst his little eyes twinkled with cunning. Now you speak sensibly. What do I propose? This, my friend. We must navigate the schooner to an island and bury the treasure. Then head for the shipping highways, and obtain help from any friendly merchantmen we may fall in with. Home, with us, means the tortugas. There we shall find the company we need to recover for us what we shall have hidden. We shall come by our own, then. But to sail with this treasure on board, without a crew to defend the vessel, by this hand, the first cruiser that sighted us would make a clean sweep, and then, ho, for the hangman, Mr. Rodney. How much I relished the scheme, you will imagine. But to reason with him would have been mere madness. I knitted my brows, and seemed to reflect, and then said, Well, there's a great deal of plain good sense in what you say. I certainly see the wisdom of your advice in recommending that we should bury the treasure. Nor must we leave anything on board to convict the ship of her true character. His greedy eyes sparkled with self-complacency. He tapped his forehead and cried, Trust to this. There is mine behind this surface. Your plan for releasing the schooner is great. Mine for preserving the treasure is great, too. You are the sailor, I the strategist. By combining our genius we shall oppose an invulnerable front to adversity, and must end our days as princes. Your hand, Paul. I laughed, and gave him my hand, which he squeezed with many contortions of face and figure. But though I laughed, I don't know that I ever so much disliked and distrusted and feared the old leering rogue as at that moment. Come, cried I, jumping up, let's get about our work, and with that I pulled open a bag of matches and fell to testing them. They burnt well. The fire ate into them as smoothly as if they had been prepared the day before. They were all of one thickness. I cut them to equal lengths, and fired them and waited, watch in hand. One was burnt out in two minutes before the other, and each length took about ten minutes to consume. This was good enough to base my calculations upon. Chapter 21 We Explore the Minds I don't design to wear you with a closer count of our proceedings. How we opened the main deck hatch, rigged up tackles, clapping purchases onto the falls, as the capstan was hard frozen and immovable. How we hoisted the powder barrels on deck, and then, by tackles on the four-yard, lowered them over the side. How we filled a number of bags which we found in the fossil, with powder. How we measured the cracks in the ice and sawed a couple of spare studying sail booms into lengths, to serve as beams whereby to poise the barrels and bags. Would make but sailor's talk half of which would be unintelligible, and the rest wearisome. The Frenchman worked hard, and we snatched only half an hour for our dinner. The split that had happened in the ice during the night showed by daylight as a gulf betwixt eight and ten feet wide at the seaward's end, thinning to a width of three feet, nevertheless, to where it ended ahead of the ship, in a hundred cracks in the ice that showed as if the thunderbolt had fallen just there. I looked into this rent, but it was as black as a well, past a certain depth, and there was no gleam of water. When we went over the side to roll our first barrel of powder to the spot where we meant to lower it, the Frenchman marched up to the figure of Trenteneuve, and with no more reverence than a boy would show in throwing a stone at a jackass, tumbled him into the chasm. Then he stepped up to the body of the Portuguese boson, dragged him to the same fissure, and rolled him into it. There, he cried, now they are properly buried. And with this he went coolly on with his work. I said nothing, but was secretly heartily disgusted with this brutal disposal of his miserable shipmates' remains. However, it was his doing, not mine, and I confess the removal of those silent witnesses was a very great relief to me, albeit when I considered how Tassar had been awakened, and how both the mate and the boson might have been brought to by treatment. I felt as though, after a manner, the Frenchman had committed a murder by burying themself. It blew a small breeze all day from the south west, the weather keeping fine. It was ten o'clock in the morning when we started on our labour, and the sun had been sunk a few minutes by the time we had rigged the last whip, for the lowering and poisoning of the powder. This left us nothing to do in the morning but like the matches, lower the powder into position, and then withdraw to the schooner and await the issue. Our arrangements comprised first four barrels of powder, in deep yawns ahead of the vessel directly a thwart the line of her head, second two barrels of wide space between them, in the great chasm on the starboard side, third about fifty very heavy charges in bags and the like, for the further rupturing of many splits and crevices on the laboured bow of the ship, where the ice was most compact. What should follow the mighty blast no mortal being could have foretold? I had no fear of the charges injuring the vessel, that is to say I did not fear that the actual explosion would damage her, but as the effect of the bursting of such a massive powder as we designed to explode upon so brittle a substance as ice was not calculable, it was quite likely that the vast discharge, instead of loosening and freeing the bed of ice, might rend it into blocks and leave the schooner still stranded and lying in some wild posture amid the ruins. But the powder was our only trumps, we had but to play it and leave the rest to fortune. We got our supper and sat smoking in discussing our situation and chances, Thassar was tired and this and our contemplation of our probabilities of the morrow sobered his mind and he talked with a certain gravity. He drank sparely and for bore the hideous recollections or inventions he was used to bestow on me and indeed could find nothing to talk about but the explosion and what it was to do for us. I was very glad he did not again refer to this project to bury the treasure and carry the schooner to the tortugas. The subject fired his blood and it was such nonsense that the mere naming of it was nauseous to me. Eight and forty years had passed since his ship fell in with this ice and not tenfold the treasure in the hold might have purchased for him the sight of so much as a single bone of the youngest of those associates whom he idly dreamt of seeking and shipping and sailing in command of. Yet Inbisselas was his scheme having regard to the half-century that had elapsed. I clearly witnessed the menace to me that it implied. His views were to be read as plainly as if he had delivered them. First and foremost he meant that I should help him to sail the schooner to an island and bury the plate and money. Which done he would take the first opportunity to murder me. His chance of meeting with a ship that would lend him assistance to navigate the schooner would be as good if he were alone in her as if I were on board too. There would be nothing then in this consideration to hinder him from cutting my throat after we had buried the treasure and were got north. Two motives would imperatively urge him to make a way with me. First that I should not be able to serve as a witness to his being a pirate and next that he alone should possess the secret of the treasure. He little knew what was passing in my mind as he surveyed me through the curls of smoke spouting up from his death-heads pipe. I talked easily and confidentially but I saw in his gaze the eyes of my murderer and was so sure of his intentions that had I shot him in self-defense as I sat there I am certain my conscience would have acquitted me of his blood. I passed two most uneasy hours in my cot before closing my eyes. I could think of nothing but how to secure myself against the Frenchman's treachery. You would suppose that my mind must have been engrossed with considerations of the several possibilities of the morrow but that was not so. My reflections ran wholly to the bold-headed evil-eyed pirate whom in an evil hour I had thawed into being and who was like to discharge the debt of his own life by taking mine. The truth is I have been too hard at work all day, too full of the business of planning, cutting, testing and contriving, to find leisure to dwell upon what he had said at breakfast and now that I lay alone in darkness it was the only subject I could settle my thoughts to. However next morning I found myself less gloomy thanks to several hours of solid sleep. I thought what is the good of anticipating? Suppose the schooner is crushed by the ice or jammed by the explosion. Until we are under way, nay, until the treasure is buried, I have nothing to fear, for the rogue cannot do without me. And reassuring myself in this fashion I went to the cookroom and lighted the fire. My companion presently arrived and we sat down to our morning meal. I dreamt last night, said he, that the devil sat on my breast and told me that we should break clear of the ice and come off safe with the treasure. There is loyalty in the fiend, he seldom betrays his friends. You have a better opinion of him than I, said I, and I do not know that you have much claim upon his loyalty either, seeing that you will crush yourself and call upon the Madonna and Saints when the occasion arises. Poo, mere habit, cried he sarcastically. I have seen barrows praying to a little wooden saint in a gale of wind and then knock its head off and throw it overboard because the storm increased. And here he felt a talking very imperiously, professing such an outrageous contempt for every form of religion and affirming so ardent a belief in the good will of Satan and the like, that I quitted my bench last in a passion and told him that he must be the devil himself to talk so, and that for my part his sentiments awoke in me nothing but the utmost scorn, loathing, and horror of him. His face fell, and he looked at me with the eye of one who takes measure of another and does not feel sure. Tucked, cried he, with a feigned peevishness, what are my sentiments to you or yours to me? You may be a quaker for all I care. Come, fill your panicking and let us drink her health to our own souls. But though he said this grinning, he shot a savage look of malice at me, and when he put his panicking down, his face was very clouded and sulky. We finished our meal in silence, and then I rose, saying, let us now see what the gunpowder is going to do for us. My rising and saying this worked a change in him. He exclaimed briskly, I now for the great experiment, and made for the companion steps with an air of bustle. The wind as before was in the southwest, blowing without much weight, but the sky was overcast with great masses of white clouds, with a tint of rainbows in their shoulders and skirts, amid which the sky showed in a clear liquid blue. Those clouds seemed to promise wind and perhaps snow and on, but there was nothing to hinder our operations. We got upon the ice, and went to work to fix matches to the barrels and bags, and to slim them by the beams we had contrived ready for lowering when the matches were fired, and this occupied us the best part of two hours. When all was ready, I fired the first match, and we lowered the barrels smartly to the scope of line we had settled upon. So, with the others, you may reckon we work with all imaginable weariness, for the stuff we handled was mighty deadly, and if a barrel should fall and burst with the match alight, we might be blown in an instant into rags, it being impossible to tell how deep the rents went. The bags being lighter, there was less to fear, and presently, all the barrels and bags with the matches burning were poised in the places and hanging at the depth we had fixed upon, and we then returned to the schooner, the Frenchman breaking into a run and tumbling over the rail in his alarm with the dexterity of a monkey. Each match was supposed to burn an hour, so that when the several explosions happened, they might all occur as nearly as possible at once, and we had therefore a long time to wait. The margin may look unreasonable in the face of our dispatch, but you will not think it unnecessary if you consider that our machinery might not have worked very smooth, and that meanwhile, all that was lowered was in the way of exploding. So, interminable a period is now followed, I do believe never before entered into the experiences of a man. The cold was intense and we had to move about, but also were we repeatedly coming to a halt to look at our watches and cast our eyes over the ice. It was like standing under a gallows with the noose around the neck, waiting for the cart to move off. My own suspense became torture, but I commanded my face. The Frenchman on the other hand could not control the torments of his expectation and fear. Holy virgin! he would cry. Suppose we are blown up too. Suppose we are engulfed in the ice. Suppose it should be vomited up in the vast blocks, which in falling upon us must crush us to pulp and smash the decks in. At one moment he would call himself an idiot for not remaining on the rocks at a distance and watching the explosion and even make us if to jump off the vessel, then immediately recall from the idea of setting his foot upon a floor that before he could take ten strides might split into chasms with hideous uproar under him. At another moment he would run to the companion and descend out of my sight, but reappear after a minute or two wildly shaking his head and swearing that if waiting was insupportable in the daylight it was ten thousand times worse in the gloom and solitude of the interior. I was too nervous and expectant myself to be affected by his behaviour, but his dread of the explosion up heaving lumps of ice was sensible enough to determine me to post myself under the cover of the hatch and there await the blast for it was a stout cover and would certainly screen me from the lighter flying pieces. It was three or four minutes past the hour and I was looking breathlessly at my watch when the first of the explosions took place. Before the year could well receive the shock of the blast the whole of the barrels exploded along with some twelve or fourteen parcels. Tassar who stood beside me fell on his face and I believed he had been killed. It was so hellish a thunder that I suppose the blowing up of a first rate could not make a more frightful roar of noise. A kind of twilight was caused by the rise in the volumes of white smoke out of the ice. The schooner shook with such a convulsion that I was persuaded she had been split. Vast showers of splinters of ice fell as if from the sky and rained like arrows through the smoke. But if there were any great blocks up hoe they did not touch the shink. Meanwhile the other parcels were exploding in their places sometimes two and three at a time sending a sort of sickening spathems and throws through the fabric of the vessel. And you heard the most extraordinary grinding noises rising out of the ice all about as though the mighty rupture of the powder crackled through leaps of the island. I durst not look forth till all the powder had burst, lest I should be struck by some flying piece of ice. But unless the schooner was injured below she was as sound as before and in the exact same posture as if a floating harbour only that the course of her stern lay low with the slope of her bed. I called to Tassar and he lifted his head. Are you hurt? said I. No, no, he answered. It is a Spaniard to fling down to a broadside. Body of Saint Joseph what a furious explosion. And so saying he crawled into the companion and squatted beside me. What has it done for us? I don't know yet. said I. But I believe the schooner is uninjured. That was a powerful shock. I cried as a half dozen of bags flew up together in the crevices deep down. The thunder and tumult of the rending ice accompanied by the heavy explosions of the gunpowder so dulled the hearing that it was difficult to speak. That the mind had accomplished our end was not yet to be known. But there could not be the least doubt that they had not only occasioned tremendous ruptures low down in the ice but that the volcanic influence was extending far beyond its first effects by making one split produce another. One weak part give way and create other weaknesses and so on. All round about us and under our keel as was clearly to be gathered by the shivering and spathums of the schooner and by the growls roars and huddle of terrifying sounds which rose from the frozen floor. It was 20 minutes after the hour at which the minds have been framed to explode when the last parcel burst. But we waited another quarter of an hour to make sure that it was the last during which time the growling and roaring noises deep down continued as if there was a battle of a thousand lions raging in the vaults and hollows underneath. The smoke had been settled away by the wind and the prospect was clear. We ran below to see to the fire and received five minutes of heat into our chilled bones and then returned to view the scene. I looked first over the starboard side and saw the great split that had happened in the night torn in places into immense yawns of gulfs by the fall of vast masses of rock out of its sides. But what most delighted me was the hollow sound of washing water. I lifted my hand and listened. It is as well of the sea flowing into the opening I exclaimed. That means, said Tassar, that this side of the block is dislocated from the main. Yes, cried I, and if the powder ahead of the bowels has done its work, the heave of the ocean will do the rest. We made our way onto the fossil over a deep bed of splinters of ice lying like wood shavings upon the deck. And I took notice as I walked that every glorious crystal pendant that had before adorned the yards, rigging and spars had shaken off. I had expected to see a wonderful spectacle of havoc in the ice where the barrels of gunpowder have been poised. But saving many scores of cracks where none was before and vast raggy gashes in the mouths of the crevices down which the barrels had been lowered, the scene was much as heretofore. The Frenchman stared and exclaimed, What has the powder done? I see only a few cracks. What it may have done I don't know, answered, but dependant, such heavy charges of powder must have burst to some purpose. The dislocation will be below and so much the better, but is there the ice must come asunder if this block is to go free. He gazed about him and then wrapping out a string of oaths, English, Italian and French, for he swore in all the languages he spoke, which he once told me were five. He declared that for his part he considered the powder wasted, that we'd have done as well to fling a hand grenade into a fissure, that a thousand barrels of powder would be but as a pop gun for rending the schooner's bed from the main, and in short with several insulting looks and a face blank with rage and disappointment gave me very plainly to know that I had not only played the fool myself but had made a fool of him and that he was heartily sorry he had ever given himself any trouble to contrive the cursed minds or to assist me in a ridiculous project that might have resulted in blowing the schooner to pieces and ourselves with it. I glanced at him with a sneer but took no further notice of his insolence. It was not only that he was so contemptible in all respects a liar, a rogue, a thief, a paltrue, whorey and twenty walks of vice. There was something so unearthly about a creature that had been as good as dead for eight and forty years that it was impossible anything he said could affect me as the rancorous tongue of another man would. I feared and hated him because I knew that in intent he was already my assassin but the mere insolences of so incredible a creature could not but find me imperturbable. And perhaps in the present instance my own disappointment put me into some small posture of sympathy with his passion. Had I been asked before the explosions happened what I expected I don't know that I should have found any answer to make and yet though I could not have expressed my expectations which after all were but hopes I was bitterly vexed when I looked over the bowels and found in the scene nothing that appeared attributable to the uncommon forces we had employed. Nevertheless I felt sure that my remark for the Frenchman was sound. A great show of up-pove rocks and fragments of ice might have satisfied the eye but the real work of the minds was wanted below and since the force of the mighty explosion must needs expend itself somewhere it was absurd to wish to see its effects in a part where its volcanic agency would be of little or no use. There is nothing to be seen by staring exclaimed the Frenchman presently speaking very sullenly. I am hungry and freezing and shall go below and with that he turned his back and made off growling in his throat as he went. I got upon the ice and stepped very carefully to the starboard side and looked down the vast split there. The sea in consequence of the slope did not come so far but I could hear the wash of the water very plain. It was certain that the valley in which we lay was wholly disconnected from the main ice on this side. I passed to the labored quarter and here too were cracks wide and deep enough to satisfy me that its hold was weak. It was forward of the boughs where the barrels had been exploded that the ice was thickest and had the firmest grasp but its surface was violently and heavily cracked by the explosions and I thought to myself if the fishers below are as numerous then certainly the swell of the sea ought to fetch the whole mass away but I was now half frozen myself and pining for warmth. It was after one o'clock the wind was piping freshly and the great heavy clouds in swarms drove stately across the sky. It may blow tonight thought I and if the wind hangs as it is just such a sea as may do our business will be set running and thus musing I entered the ship and went below. End of chapter 21