 CHAPTER 29 I VALUE THE LATING The day had been so full of business, there had been so much to engage my mind, that it was not until I was seated at supper in the old cookroom in which I had passed so many melancholy hours that I found myself able to take a calm survey of my situation, and to compare the various motions of my fortunes. I could scarcely indeed believe that I was not in a dream, from which I should awake presently, and discover myself still securely imprisoned in the ice, and all those passages of the powder blasts, the liberation of the schooner, my lonely days in her afloat, my encounter with the whaler, as visionary and vanishing as those dusky forms of vapor which had swarmed in giant shape over my little open boat. But even if confirmation had been wanting, in the sable visage of Billy Pitt, who sat near the furnace munching away with prodigious enjoyment of his food, and bringing his can of hot spiced wine from his vast blubber lips with a mighty sigh of deep delight, I must have found it in each hissing leap and roaring plunge of the old piratical bucket, so full of the vitality of the windswollen canvas, so quick with all the life instincts of a vessel storming through the deep, with buoyant keel and under full control, oh, heaven, how different from the dull ambling of the morning, the sluggish pitching and rolling to the weak pulling of the spritzail. Wilkinson and Cromwell kept the deck whilst Billy Pitt and I got our supper, and I had some talk with my negro, who seemed a very simple childish fellow, heartily in love with his stomach and very eager to see England. He told me that he had heard it was a fine country, and his wish to see it was one reason of his volunteering. They say, said he, that London's a very fine place, bigger in Philadelphia, and that a man's skin don't tell again him among the yellow girls there. I laughed and said that in my country people were judged rather by the color of their hearts than by the hue of their faces. But Dulles count for some too-suspects, said he. Why, yes, said I, with dollars enough you can make black white in England. Oh, cried he, scratching his head. I guess it'd take a almighty loaded dollars to make me white, Massa. Put money in your pocket and chink it, said I, and your face'll be found white enough, I warrant. But golly, cried he, I'll do it then, so help me, Lord Massa. I chink twenty years for a white face, that comes of being civilized. Tell you what they do, Massa, they makes you feel like a white man, but they let you keep black, blast them. I checked his excitement by telling him that in my country he would find the negro was a person held in very high esteem, that women in particular valued him for that very dinginess which the Americans found distasteful, and told him that I could name several ladies of quality who had married their black servants. He looked surprised but not incredulous, and said in his peculiar dialect that he had no doubt I spoke the truth, as he had always heard that England was a fine country to live in. I then led him insensibly from this topic to talk out the sea in his experiences, and found that he had seen a very great deal, having been freed when young, and keeping to the ocean ever since in many different sorts of craft. Indeed I was as much pleased with him as with Wilkinson, but then I had foreseen a simplicity in both the negroes, and in expectation of finding this quality, so useful to one in my strange position, I was overjoyed when they consented to help me sail the schooner to the Thames. We went on to the deck to relieve Wilkinson and Cromwell. Billy Pitt took the tiller, and I walked to either rail, and stared into the darkness. It was very thick with occasional squalls of snow, which put a screaming as of tortured cats into the wind as they swung through it. The sea was high, but the schooner was making excellent weather of it, whilst she rolled and pitched through the troubled darkness at seven knots in the hour. It was noble useful sailing, yet a speed not to be relished in these waters amid so deep a shadow. Still, the temptation to hold on all, as we say, was very great. Every mile carried us by so much nearer to the temperate parallels, and shortened to that extent the long, long passage that lay before us. I was pacing the deck briskly, for the wind was horribly keen. When Pitt suddenly called out, Ah, say, Massa! Hello, I replied. Sir, he cried, I smell ice! I knew that this was a capacity not uncommon among men who had voyaged much in the frosty regions of the deep, and instantly exclaimed, Lough then! Lough, shake the way out of her, sniffing as I spoke, but detecting no added shrewdness in the air that was already freezingly cold. He put the helm down, and I called to the others below to come on deck and flatten in the main sheet. They were up in a trice and tailed on with me, asking no questions, till we had the boom nearly amid ships. I was about to speak when Wilkinson cried out, I smell ice! he sniffed a moment. Yes, there's an island aboard, anybody see it? Hey, dare it, I am sure enough, cried Cromwell. There, on the lee-bow, see it, sir, see it, Billy? Yes, I saw it plain enough, when I knew where to look for it. It was just such another lump of faintness as had wrecked the Laughing Mary, a mass of dull spectral light upon the throbbing blackness, and it lay exactly in a line with the course we had been steering when Pitt first called out, so that assuredly we had not shifted our helm a minute too soon. We chopped and wallowed past it slowly, keeping a sharp lookout for like apparitions in other quarters, and when it had disappeared I made up my mind to heave the schooner too and keep her in that posture till daylight, unless the night cleared. So we got the mainsail down and stowed it, clued up the top sail, which I lent a hand to roll up, and let the vessel lie under the reefed foresail with her helm lashed. The weather, however, must have ultimately compelled what the thickness had required, for by ten o'clock it was blowing a hard gale, with a frequent hoariness of clouds of snow upon the blackness, the seas very high in foaming, and the wind crying madly in the rigging. I let some time go by, and then sounded the well and found no more water than the depth at which the pumps sucked. This did wonders in the way of reassuring the man, who were rendered uneasy by the violent motions of the unwieldy vessel, and by the very harsh straining noises which rose out of the hold, which latter they would naturally attribute to the craziness of the fabric, though the true cause of it lay in the number of loose, movable bulkheads. It's amazing to me that she holds together at all, cried Wilkinson, so ancient she is. She's only old, said I, in the sound of years she's been in existence. The ice has kept her young. Would the hams and tongues were eating be taken to be a half-century old? Yet where could you buy sweeter and better meat of the kind ashore? A ship's well is your only honest reporter of her condition. Ours has vouched in a way that should keep you easy. Ordered, Susan Tucker, this is like being hung up to dry, exclaimed one of the negros. It were pomp, pomp-dare, and no mistake. I called this a very beautiful little ship, Masa. Yes, save me, Lord, there's nothing could persuade me she ain't what I says she am. However, I was up and down a good deal during the night. But for the treasure I should have been less anxious, I dare say. I had come so successfully to this point, that I was resolved if my hopes were to miscarry, the fortune should not be owing to want of vigilance on my part. And there happened an incident which should inevitably tended to sharpen my watchfulness. Though I was perfectly conscious, there was a million to one against its occurring a second time. I came on deck to relieve Wilkinson at midnight, after a half-hour's nodding doze by the furnace below. He went to his cabin. I stood under the lee of a cloth seized in the weather main rigging. Pitt arrived, and I told him he could return to the cookhouse, and stay there till I called him. The helm being lashed, and the schooner doing very well, nothing wanted watching in particular. Yet I would not have the deck abandoned, and meant to keep a lookout, turn and turn about with Pitt, as Wilkinson and Cromwell had. The snow had ceased, but it was very dark and thick, the ocean a roaring shadow palpitating upon the eyes enrolling folds of blackness, with the quick expiring flash of foam to windward. On a sudden, looking over the weather-quarter, me thought I discerned a deeper shade in the night there than was elsewhere perceptible. It was like a great blot of ink upon the darkness. Even whilst I speculated it drew out in the shape of a ship running before the gale. She seemed to be heading directly for us. The roof of my mouth turned dry as desert sand. My tongue and limbs refused their office. I could neither cry nor stir, being indeed paralyzed by the terrible suddenness of that apparition and the eminence of our peril. It all happened whilst you could have told thirty. The great black mass surged up with the water boiling about the boughs. She brought a thunder along with her in her rigging and sails as she soared to the crowns of the seas she was sweeping before. I could not tell what canvas she was under, but her speed was a full ten knots, and as I did not see her till she was close, she looked to come upon us as with a single bound. She passed us to windward, within a stone's throw, and vanished. Like a dark cloud melting into the surrounding blackness. Not a gleam of light broke from her. You heard nothing but the boiling at her boughs and the thunderous peeling of the gale in her canvas. A quarter turn of the wheel would have sent us to the bottom, and her no doubt on top of us. Whether she was the Susan Tucker or some other whaler, or a big south sea man driven low and getting what easting she could out of the gale, I know not. She was as complete a mystery of the ocean night as any spectral fabric, and a heavier terror to me than a phantasm worked by ghosts could have proved. I knew such a thing could not happen again, yet when I called Pitt I talked to him about it as though we must certainly be run down if he did not keep a sharp look out, and when my watch below came round at four o'clock, I was so agitated that I was up and down till daybreak as though my duty did not end till then. The gale moderated at sunrise, and though it was a gloomy, true caporn morning, with dark driving clouds, the sea a dusky olive, very hollow, and frequent small quick squalls of sleet which brought the wind to us and sharp guns. Yet as we could see where we were going I got the schooner before it, heading her east northeast, and under a reefed top sail, main sail, and stay sail, the old bucket stormed through it with the sputter and rage of a line of battleship. There was a log reel and line on deck, and I found a sand-glass in the chest in my cabin in which I had met with the quadrants, perspective glass and the like, and I kept this log regularly going, marking a point of departure on the chart the American captain had given me, which I afterwards found to be within two leagues and a half of the true position. But for three days the weather continued so heavy that there was nothing to be done in the shape of gratifying the men's expectations by overhauling what was left of the cargo. Indeed we had no leisure for such work. All our waking hours had to be strictly dedicated to the schooner, and in keeping a lookout for ice. But the morning of the fourth day broke with a fine sky and brisk breeze from a little to the east of south, to which we showed every cloth the schooner had to throw abroad, and being now by dead reckoning within a few leagues of the meridian of sixty degrees I shaped a course north by east by my compass with the design of getting a view of Staten Island that I might correct my calculations. When we had made sail and got our breakfast I told Wilkinson and Cromwell, Pitt being at the tiller, that now was a good opportunity for inspecting the contents of the hold, and, not to be tedious in this part of my relation, however I may have sinned in this respect elsewhere, we carried lathorns below and spent the better part of the forenoon in taking stock. From a copy of the memorandum I made on that occasion, still in my possession, we discovered that the Yankee captain had left us the following. Thirty casks of rum, twenty-eight hogs heads of claret, seventy-five casks of brandy, fifty of sherry, and eighteen cases of beer in bottles. In addition to this were the stores in the lazarette, besides a quantity of several kinds of wine in jars, etc. Elsewhere enumerated, besides all the ship's furniture, her guns, powder, small arms, etc., as well as the ship herself. I took the men into the run and showed them the chests, opening the little one which I had stocked with small arms, and lifting the lids of two or three of the others. They were perfectly satisfied, fully believing all the chests to be filled with small arms and nothing else, and so we came away and returned to the cabin. Where to please them I put down the value of the cargo at a venture, setting figures against each article, and making out a total of two thousand six hundred and forty pounds. This of course included the ship. How much debt be a man, Mesa? asked Cromwell. Six hundred and sixty pounds, I answered. The poor fellow was so transported that, after staring at me in silence with the corners of his mouth stretched to his ears, he tossed up his hands, burst into a roar of laughter, and made several skips about the deck. Of course, said I, addressing Wilkinson, my figures may be ahead or short of the truth, but if you are disposed to take the chance I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll stand by my figures, accepting the risk of the value of the lading, being less than what I say it is, and undertake to give each man of you six hundred and sixty pounds for your share. Well, sir, said he, I don't know that I ought to object, but a few pounds is a matter of great consequence to me, and I reckon if these here goods and the vessel should turn out to be worth more than yet offer, the loss would go again the grit, I, if, to our twenty dollars a man. I laughed, and told him to let the matter rest. There was plenty of time before us. I should be willing to stand my offer, even if I lost by it, so heartily obliged was I to them for coming to my assistance. And in this I spoke the truth, though, as you will understand who know my position, I had to finesse. Went against my conscience to make out that the chests were full of small arms, but I should have been mad to tell them the truth, and perhaps, by the truth made devils of men who were, and, promised to remain, steady, temperate, honest fellows. I was not governed by the desire to keep all the treasure to myself, no, I vowed to God I should have been glad to give them a moiety of it, had I not apprehended the very gravest consequences if I were candid with them. But this, surely, must be so plain that it is idle to go on insisting on it. The fine weather, the golden issue that was to attend our successful navigation, the satisfactory behaviour of the schooner, put us into a high good humour with one another, and when it came to my collecting all the clothes in the after-cabins and distributing them among the three men, I thought Billy Pitt and Cromwell would have gone mad with the light. To the best of my recollection, the apparel that had been left us by the American captain, who, as you know, had cleared the forecastle of the clothes there, consisted of several coats of cut velvet, trimmed with gold and silver lace, some frocks of white drab with large plate buttons, brocade waistcoats of blue satin and green silk, crimson and other coloured cloth breeches, along with some cloaks, three-corner hats, black and white stockings, a number of ruffled shirts and other articles of which I recollect the character, though my ignorance of the costumes of that period prevents me from naming them. Anyone acquainted with the negro's delight in coloured clothes will hardly need to be told of the extravagant joy raised in the black breasts of Cromwell and Pitt by my distribution of this fine attire. The lace, to be sure, was tarnished, and some of the colours faded, but all the same the apparel furnished a brave show, and such was the avidity with which the poor creatures snatched at the garments as I offered them first to one and then another, that I believe they would have been perfectly satisfied with the clothes alone as payment for their services. I made this distribution on the quarter-deck, or little poop, rather, that all might be present. Wilkinson was at the tiller and appeared highly delighted with the bundle allotted him, saying he might reckon upon a hearty welcome from his wife when she came to know what was in his chest. The negro's were wild to clothe themselves at once. I advised them to wait for the warm weather, but they were too impatient to put on their fine feathers to heed my advice. They ran below and were gone half an hour, during which time I have no doubt that they put on all they had, and when at last they returned, their appearance was so exquisitely absurd that I laughed till I came near to suffocating. Each negro had tied a silver-laced hat onto his woolly head. One wore a pair of crimson, the other a pair of black velvet breeches. Over their cucumber shanks they had drawn white silk stockings, regardless of the cold. Their feet were encased in buckled shoes, and their costumes were completed by scarlet and blue waistcoats which fell to their knees, and crimson and blue coats with immense skirts. What struck me as most astonishing was their gravity. Their self-complacency was prodigious. They eyed each other with dignified approbation and strutted with the air of provincial mayors and aldermen newly arrived from the presence of royalty. There in keeping with the schooner, anyways, said Wilkinson, and so perhaps they were. The antique fabric needed the sparkle of those costumes on her deck, to make her aspect fit in with the imagination she bred. But as I had anticipated, the cold proved too powerful for their conceit, and they were presently glad to ship their more modern trousers, though they clung obstinately to their waistcoats, and could not be persuaded to remove their hats on any account, whatever. Chapter 30 of the Frozen Pirate This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. When I started to relate my adventure, I never designed to write an account of the journey home at large. On the contrary, I foresaw that by the time I had arrived at this part, you would have had enough of the sea. Let me now, then, be as brief as possible. The melting of the ice and the slowly increasing power of the sun were inexpressibly consoling to me, who had had so much of the cold that I do protest if Elysium were bleak, no matter how radiant, and the abode of the fiends as hot as it is pictured, I would choose to turn my back upon the angels. I cannot say, however, that the schooner was properly thought until we were hard upon the parallels of the Falkland Islands. She then showed her timbers, naked to the sun, and exposed a brown solid deck rendered ugly by several dark patches which, scrape as we might, we could not elaborate. We struck the guns into the hold for the better ballasting of the vessel, got studying sail booms aloft, overhauled her suits of canvas, and found a great square sail which proved of inestimable importance in light winds and in running. After the ice was wholly melted out of her frame, she made a little water, yet not so much, but that a half an hour's spell at the pump twice a day easily freed her. But, curiously enough, at the end of a fortnight she became tight again, which I attribute to the swelling of her timbers. We were a slender company, but we managed extraordinarily well. The men were wonderfully content. I never heard so much as a murmur escape one of them. They never exceeded their rations, nor asked for a drop more of liquor than we had agreed among us should be served out. But, as I had anticipated, our security lay in our slenderness. We were too few for disaffection. The Negroes were as simple as children. Wilkinson looked to find his account in a happy arrival, and if I was not, strictly speaking, their captain, I was their navigator, without whom their case would have been as perilous as mine was on the ice. Outside the natural dangers of the sea we had but one anxiety, and that concern are being chased and taken. This fear was heartily shared by my companions, to whom I also represented that it must be our business to give even the ships of our own country a wide berth. For though I had long since flung all the compromising bunting overboard, and destroyed all the papers I could come across, which being written in a language I was ignorant of, might, for all I knew, contain some damning information, a British ship would be sure to board us and I should have to tell the truth or take the risks of prevaricating. If I told the truth then I should have to admit that the lading of the vessel was a piratical plunder. And though I knew not how the law stood with regard to booty rescued from certain destruction after the lapse of heart upon half a century, yet it was a hundred to one that the whole would be claimed in the king's name under a talk of restitution, which signified that we should never hear more of it. On the other hand, prevarication would not fail to excite suspicion, and on our not being able to satisfactorily account for our possession of the ship and what was in her, it might end in our actually being seized as pirates and perhaps executed. This reasoning went very well with the men, and filled them with such anxiety that they were forever on the lookout for a sail. But as you may guess, my own solicitude sank very much deeper. For supposing the schooner to be rummaged by an English crew, it was as certain as that my hand was affixed to my arm that the chests of treasure would be trans shipped and lost to me by the law's trickery. Now till we were to the north of the equator we sighted nothing. No in all those days not a single sail ever hoven to view to break the melancholy continuity of the sea line. But between the parallels of twelve degrees and twenty-two degrees north we met with no less than eight ships, the nearest within a leak. We watched them as cats watch mice, making a point to bear away if they were going our road, or if they were coming towards us to shift our helm, but never very markedly, so as to let them pass us the widest possible distance. Some of them showed a colour, but we never answered their signals. That they were all harmless traitors I will not affirm, but none of them offered to chase us. Yet could I have been sure of a ship? I should have been glad to speak. My longitude was a little more than guesswork, my latitude not very certain, and my compass was out. However, I supported my own and the spirits of my little company by telling them of the early navigators, how Columbus, Candish, Drake, Shouten, and other heroic marine worthies of distant times had navigated the globe, discovered new worlds, penetrated into the most secret solitudes of the deep without any notion of longitude, and with no better instruments to take the sun's height than the force staff and astrolab. We were better off than they, and I had not the least doubt I told them, of bringing the old schooner to a safe berth off deal or gravacend. But it happened that we were chased when on the polar verge of the northeast trade wind. It was blowing brisk, the sea breaking in snow upon the weather bow, the sky overcast with clouds, and the schooner washing through it under a single reefed mainsail and whole top sail. It was noon, I was taking an observation, when Pitt at the tiller sang out, sail ho, and looking I spied the swelling cloud-like canvas of a vessel on a line with our starboard cat head. I told Pitt to let the schooner fall off three points, and with slackened sheets the old Boca del Dragon hummed through it brilliantly, flinging the foam as far aft as the gangway. The strange sail rose rapidly and the lifting of her hull discovered her to be a line of battleship. We held on as we were, hoping to escape her notice. But whether she did not like our appearance, or that there was something in the figure we cut that excited her curiosity, she, on a sudden, put her helm up and steered a true course for us. At the first sight of her I called Wilkinson and Cromwell on deck, and I now cried out, Lads, do you see, she's after us. If she catches us, our dream of dollars is over. Lively now, boys, and give her all she can stagger under, and what she can't carry, she must drag. And we sprang to make sail, briskly as apes, and everyone working with two man power. I knew the old Boca's best point. It was with the wind a point abaffed the beam. We put her to that, got the great square sail on her, shook out all reefs, and gave all she had to the wind. The wake roared away from her like a white torrent that flies from the foot of a foaming cataract. She had the pirate's instincts, and being put to her trumps was nimble. God, how she did swing through it! Never had I driven the aged bucket before like this, and I understood that speed at sea is not irreconcilable with odd bodies. But the great ship to Windward hung steady, a cloud of bland and swelling cloths. When we had set the studying sail we had nothing more to fly with, and so we stood looking. She slapped six shots at us, one after another, as a haughty hint to us to stop, but we meant to escape. And at last we did, out-sailing her by thirteen inches to her foot, one foot to her twelve, though she stuck to our skirts the whole afternoon, and kept us in an agony of anxiety. The sun was setting when she abandoned us. She was then some five or six miles distant on our weather-quarter. What her nation was I do not know, but Wilkinson reckoned her French when she gave us up. We rushed steadily along the same course into the darkness of the night, and then, shortening sail, brought the schooner to the wind again, after which we drank to the frisky old jade in an honestly earned bowl. It was on the fifth of December that we cited the silly aisles. I guessed what the land was, but so vague had been my navigation that I durced not be sure, until, spying a smack with her nets over, I steered for her and got the information I needed from her people. They answered us with an air of fear, and in truth the fellows had reason. For, besides the singular appearance of the ship, the four of us were apparelled in odds and ends of the antique clothes, and I have little doubt they considered us lunatics of another country, who had run away with a ship belonging to parts where the tastes and fashions were behind the age. Now, as you may suppose, by this time I had settled my plans, and as we sailed up the channel I unfolded them to my companions. I pointed out that before we entered the river it would be necessary to discharge our lading into some little vessel that would smuggle the booty ashore for us. The figure the schooner made was so peculiar, she would inevitably attract attention. She would instantly be boarded in the thames, on our coming to anchor, and, if I told the truth, she would be seized as a pirate, and ourselves dismissed with a small reward, and perhaps nothing. My scheme, said I, is this. I have a relative in London to whom I shall communicate the news of my arrival, and tell him my story. You, Wilkinson, must be the bearer of this letter. He is a shrewd, active man, and I will leave it to him to engage the help we want. There is no lack of the right kind of serviceable man at deal, and if they are promised a substantial interest in smuggling our lading ashore, they will run the good successfully, do not fear. As there is sure to be a man of war stationed in the Downs, we must keep clear of that anchorage. I will land you at Lid, once you will make your way to Dover, and thence to London. Gromwell and Pitt will return and help me to keep cruising. My letter to my relative will tell him where to seek me, and I shall know his boat by her flying a jack. When we have discharged our lading we will sail to the Thames, and then let who will come aboard, for we shall have a clean hold. This, continued I, is the best scheme I can devise. The risk of smuggling attendant, to be sure, but against those risks we have to put the certainty of our forfitting are just claims to the property if we carry the schooner to the Thames. Even suppose, when there, that we should not be immediately visited, and so be provided with an opportunity to land our stuff, whom have we to trust? The Thames abounds with river thieves, with lumpers, scuffle hunters, mud larks, glutmin, rogues of all sorts, to hire whom would mean to bribe them with the value of half the lading and to risk their stealing the other half. But this is the lesser difficulty. The main one lies in this. There are some 1600 men employed in the London Custom House, most of whom are on the river duty as watchmen. Thirty of these people are clapped aboard an East India man, five or six West India ships, and alike proportion in other vessels. So strange a craft as ours would be visited, dependant, and smartly too. Do you see the danger, lads? What do you say that to my scheme? The Negroes immediately answered that they left it to be. I knew best. They would be satisfied with whatever I did. Wilkinson mused awhile and then said, smuggling was risky work. How would it be if we represented that we found the schooner washing about with nobody aboard? The tale wouldn't be credited, said I. The age of the vessel would tell against such a story, even if you removed all other evidence by throwing the clothes in small arms overboard, and whatever else might go to prove that the schooner must have been floating about abandoned since the year 1750. Mustn't lose the clothes, Massa? On no account, cried Pitt. Well, sir, says Wilkinson, after another spell of reflection. I reckon you're right. If so, be the law would seize the vassal and goods on the grounds that she had been a pirate, and all that's in her was plunder, while then certainly I don't see nothing else but to make a smuggling job of it, as you say, sir. This being settled, Wilkinson's concurrence being rendered the easier by my telling him that, providing the lading was safely run, I would adhere to my undertaking to give them six hundred and sixty pounds each for their share, I went below and spent half an hour over a letter to Mr. Jeremiah Mason. There was no ink, but I found a pencil, and for paper I used the fly leaves of the books in my cabin. I opened with the sketch of my adventures, and then went on to relate that the bokeh was a rich ship, that as she had been a pirate I risked her seizure by carrying her to London, that I stood grievously in need of his counsel and help, and begged him not to lose a moment in returning with the messenger to deal, and there, hiring a boat and coming to me, whom he would find cruising off beachy-head, that I might know his boat, I bait him fly a jack a little below the mast-head. As for the Boca del Dragon, I added, Wilkinson would recognize her if she were in the middle of a thousand sail, and, indeed, a farmer's boy would be able to distinguish her for her uncommon oddness of figure. I was satisfied to underscore the words a rich ship, quite certain his imagination would be sufficiently fired by the expression. At anything further I durst not hint, as the letter would be open for Wilkinson to read. When I had finished, I took a lantern and the keys of the chest, and went very secretly and expeditiously to the run, and removing the layers of small arms from the top of the case that held the money, I picked out some English pieces, quickly returned the small arms, locked the chest, and returned. All this time we were running up the channel before a fresh westerly wind. It was true December weather, very raw, and the horizon thick, but I knew my road well, and whilst the loom of the land showed, I desired nothing better than this thickness. But weary sailing delayed us, and it was not till ten o'clock on the night of the seventh, that we hoved the schooner to off the shingly beach of Lid within sound of the wash of the sea upon it. The bay sheltered us, we got the boat over, I gave Wilkinson the letter, and ten guineas, bidding him keep them hidden, and to use them cautiously with the silver change he would receive. For they were all guineas of the first George, and might excite comment if he, a poor sailor, ill-clad, should pull them out and exhibit them. Happily in the hurry of the time he did not think to ask me how I had come by them. He thrust them into his pocket, shook my hand, and dropped into the boat, and the negroes immediately rode him ashore. I stood holding a lantern upon the rail to serve them as a guide, waiting for the boat to return, and never breathed more freely in my life than when I heard the sound of oars. The two negroes came alongside, and, clapping the tackles onto the boat, we hoisted her with the capstan, and then under very small canvas stood out to see again. End of Chapter 30 Recording by Barbara Dirkson Chapter 31 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 Barbara Dirkson The Frozen Pirate by W. Clark Russell Chapter 31 The End I should require to write to the length of this book over again, to do full justice by description, to the difficulties and anxieties of the days that now followed. If it had not been thick weather all the time, I do not know how I should have fared I am sure. I was between two fires, so to say. On the one side the French cruisers and privateers, and on the other side the ships of my own country, and particularly the revenue-cutters and the sloops and the like cruising after the smugglers. As I knew that my relative could not be with me under four days, I steered out of sight of land into the middle of the Channel, betwixt Beechie Head and the Sien Coast, and there dodged about under very small canvas, heartily grateful for the haze that shrouded the sea to within a mile of me. I scarcely closed my eyes in sleep, and though my worries were now of a very different kind from those which had racked me on the ice, they were in their way to the fall as tormenting. Every sail that loomed in the dinginess filled me with alarm. Several ships passed me close, and I could scarce breathe till they were out of sight. Indeed I lay skulking out upon that sea as if I was some common thief broken loose from jail. However it pleased heaven that I should manage to keep out of sight of those whom I most strenuously desired not to see, and the afternoon of the fourth day found the bokeh lying off Beechie Head and I peering over the rail with a haggard face at the dark shadow of the land. It had been blowing and snowing all day. The seas ran short and spitefully. It was a dismal December afternoon, and the more sensibly disgusting to us who were fresh from several weeks of the balm and glory of the tropics, and yet I would not have exchanged it for a clear fine day for all that I was like to be worth. It was the most reasonable thing in the world that a vessel should be hoved to in such somber weather, and so I was under no concern that our posture in this respect would excite suspicion, should we be described. The hours stole away one by one. Now and again a little coaster would pass, some hoi bound west, a sloop for the Thames, a lager on some unguessable mission, all small ships oozing dark and damp out of the snow and mist and passing silently. I kept the land close aboard to be out of the way of the bigger craft, and held the vessel in the wind till it was necessary to reach to our station. The three of us were mighty pensive and eager, staring incessantly with all our eyes, but it looked as if we were not to expect anything that day when the night put its darkness into the weather. Then as I foresaw a serious danger if the wind shifted into the south, and as I could not obtain a glimpse of a shorelight, I resolved to bring up and ride till dawn. Long ago we got the schooner's old anchors at the cat heads and the cables bent, so lowering the mainsail and hauling down the stay foresail, we let fall the starboard anchor, and the ship came to astound. I put the lead over the side that we might know if she dragged, hung a lantern on the forestay, and one on either quarter that our presence might be marked by my relative should he be out in quest of us, and went below, leaving Cromwell to keep the look out. I was extremely fretful and anxious, and had no patience to talk with Billy Pitt. There were too many risks, too many vague chances in this exploit to render contemplation of it tolerable. Suppose my relative should be dead, suppose Wilkinson should be robbed of his money, fall to the cutting of capers, as a sailor newly delivered to the pleasures of the land with ten guineas in his pocket, get locked up for breaking the peace, blab of us in his cups and start the customs on our trail. There was no am to such conjectures, and I made myself so melancholy that I was fool enough to think that the treasure was no better than a curse, and that on the whole I was better off on the ice than here with the anchor in English ground and my native soil within gunshot. I was up and about till midnight, and then, being in the cabin and exhausted, I fell asleep across the table, and in that posture lay as one dead, someone dragging at my arm with very little tenderness awoke me. I was in the midst of a dream of the schooner having been boarded by a party of French privateersmen, with Tassard at their head, and the roughness with which I was aroused was exactly calculated to extend into my waking the horror and grief of my sleep. I instantly sprang to my feet and saw Washington Cromwell. Masarodny, he bold, Masarodny, de gents long side, him and Wilkinson, yes, by de good lord, they's both there, they hail me and I answer, and say, Who are you, and they say, Are you de Boca? Well, I am, I say, and they say, I had stood stupidly staring at him, but my full understanding, coming to me on a sudden, I jumped to the ladder and darted on deck. I heard voices over the starboard side and ran there. It was not so dark, but that I could see the outline of a deal lugger. Whilst I was peering, the voice of my man Wilkinson cried out, On deck there, Cromwell, Billy, where's Mr. Rodney? Here I am, cried I. My God, Paul, exclaimed the voice of Mr. Mason, this encounter is fortunate indeed. I shouted to the negroes to show a light, and in a few minutes Mr. Mason, Wilkinson, and a couple of deal boatmen came over the side. I grasped my relative by both hands, I had not seen him for four years. This is good of you indeed, I cried, but you must be perished with the cold of that open boat. Come below at once. Come, Wilkinson, and you men, there is a fire in the cookroom, and a drink to warm us. And down I bundled, in the wildest condition of excitement, followed by Mason and the others. My relative was warmly clad, and did not seem to suffer from the cold. He took me by the hand and brought me to the lantern light, and stood viewing me. Hey, said he, you are your old self, a bit worried looking, but that'll pass, stout and burnt. God's heart, Paul, if you have passed through the experiences Wilkinson has given me a sketch of, we must have your life, man, we must have your life, for the booksellers. Well, I need not detain you by reciting all the civilities and congratulations which he and I exchanged. He and Wilkinson had arrived at deal at three o'clock that afternoon, and, after a hurried meal, had hired a lugger and started at once for beachy head. It was now three o'clock in the morning, and what I may consider a truly extraordinary circumstance is, that they had sailed as true a course for the schooner as if she had lain plain to the gaze at the very start, that since the night had drawn down they had met no vessel of any kinder description until they came up to us, that in all probability they would have run stem on into us if they had not seen our lights, and that their seeing our lights had caused them to hail us, their ship ahoy being instantly answered by Cromwell. Well, said I, there are stranger things to tell of than this even. Now, Wilkinson, and you, Billy, and Cromwell, get us a good supper and mix a proper bowl. How many more of you are in the lugger? For, sir, says one of the boatmen, then fetches many as may safely leave the boat, said I. Billy, get candles and make a good light here. Throw on coal, boys, there's enough to carry us home. I saw Mason gazing curiously about him. Tis like a tale out of the Arabian Nights, Paul, he exclaimed. Hey, said I, but written in better prose, and no hint of enchantment anywhere. But thank God you are come. I have passed a dismal time of expectation, I promise you, I added softly. I have something secret. We will sup first, man. I shall amaze you. We must talk apart presently. He bowed his head. Three more boatmen arrived, giving us the company of five of them. Soon there was a hearty sound of frying and a smell of good things upon the air. Pit put plates and glasses upon the cabin table. Two great bowls of punch were brewed, and in a little time we had all fallen too. I whispered Wilkinson, who sat next to me. These boatmen know nothing of our business. I shall have to take Mr. Mason apart and arrange with him. These fellows may not be fit for our service. Let no hint escape you. Right, sir, said he. This I said to disarm his suspicions, should he see me talking alone with Mr. Mason. He entertained us with an account of his excursion to London, and then, partly to appease the profound curiosity of the boatmen, and partly to save time when I should come to confer with my relative, I gave them the story of my shipwreck, and told how I had met with the schooner, and how I had managed to escape with her. And now, Mason, said I, we'll stir friends here empty these bowls, come you with me to the cookroom. And with that we quitted the cabin. Do you mean to tell me, Paul, was the first question my relative asked, that this vessel was on the ice eight and forty years? Yes, I replied. Surely you dream. I think not. What have we been eating and drinking? Is that forty-eight years old, too? I an older. Well, such a thing shall make me credulous enough to duck old women for witches. But what brandy, what brandy! Never had spirits such a bouquet. Every pint is worth its weight in guineas to a rich man, to think of deal boatmen and niggers swilling such nectar. Mason, said I, speaking low, give me now your attention. In the run of this schooner are ten chests loaded with money, bars of silver and gold and jewelry. This vessel was a pirate, and her people valued their booty at ninety to a hundred thousand pounds. His jaw fell. He stared as if he knew not whether it was he or I that was mad. Here is the evidence that I speak the truth, said I. A little sample only, but look at it. And I put the pirate captain's watch into his hand. He eyed it as though he discredited the intelligence of his sight, turned it about, and returned it to me with a faint, heaven preserve me, then he said still faintly. You found some of the pirates alive? No. Who told you that the people of the vessel valued their plunder at that amount? I answered by giving him the story of the recovery of the Frenchman. He listened with a gaze of consternation. I saw how it was. He believed my sufferings had affected my reason. There was only one way to settle his mind. I took a lamp-thorn and asked him to follow me. As we passed through the cabin I whispered Wilkinson that I meant to show my relative the lading below, and bade him keep the deal-men about him. I had the keys of the chest in my pocket, lifting the after-hatch, we entered the lazarette, and Mason gazed about him with astonishment. But I was in too great a hurry to return to suffer him idly, stand, and stare. I opened the second hatch, and descended into the run, and, crawling to the jewel-chest, opened it. Removed a few of the small arms, and bade him look for himself. Incredible! Incredible, he cried! Is it possible? Is it possible? Well, to be sure, and for some moments he could find no more to say so amazed and confounded was he. I quickly showed him the gold and silver ingots, and then returned the firearms and locked the chests. These, I said emphatically, pointing to the chests, have been my difficulty, not the lading, though there is value there, too. My crew knew nothing of these chests, of their value, I mean. They believed them to be cases of small arms. How am I to get them ashore? If I tell the truth, these will be seized as piratical plunder. If I equivocate, I may tumble into a pit of difficulties. I durst not carry them to the Thames. The river swarms with thieves and custom-hose people. I am terrified to linger here lest I be boarded in the booty discovered. There is but one plan, I think. We must hire some deal smugglers to run these chests and the cargo for us. The boat now alongside might serve, and I don't doubt the men are to be had at their own price. My relative had regained his wits, which the sight of the treasure had temporarily scattered, and surveyed me thoughtfully whilst I spoke, and then said, Let us return to the fire. I think I have a better scheme than yours. The men still sat around the table talking, some liquor yet lay in one of the bowls, and the fellows were happy enough. I smiled at Wilkinson as I passed, that he might suppose our inspection below very satisfactory, and I saw him look meaningly and pleasantly at Washington Cromwell, who sat with a laced hat on his head. Paul, said Mason, sitting down unfolding his arms. Your smuggling plan will not do. It would be the height of madness to trust those chests, to the risk of running, and to the honesty of the rogues engaged in that business. What is to be done? Tell me your lading, said he. I gave it to him as accurately as I could. Why, he exclaimed, a single boat would take a long time to discharge he. Observe the perils. Several boats would mean a large number of men. They would eat you up. They would demand so much, you would have nothing left. And suppose they opened the chests. Know your scheme is worthless. What's to do then in God's name? I'll tell you, he exclaimed, smiling with the complacency of a man who is master of great fancy. I shall sail to Dover at once, to is now a quarter past four. Give me twelve hours to make Dover. I shall post straight to London, and be there by the early morning. Now Paul, attend you to this. Today is Wednesday. By tomorrow night you must contrive to bring your ship to an anchor off barking level. The thames, I cried, he nodded. I looked at him anxiously. He leaned to me, putting his hand on my leg. I own a lighter, said he. She will be alongside of you at dusk. I have people of my own whom I can trust. The lighter will empty your hold and convey the lading to a ship chartered by me, arrived from the Black Sea on Sunday, and lying in the pool. The stuff can be sold from that ship as it is. But the chests, the chests maysum. They shall be lowered into another boat and taken ashore and put into a wagon that will be in waiting. I in it and driven to my home. I clapped him on the shoulder in a transport. Nobly schemed indeed, I cried. But we have nothing to fear from the customs people. No, not low down the river and at dark. You bring up for convenience, do you see? Mind it is dark when you anchor. A lighter and boat shall be awaiting you. It is down the river, you know, that all the lumpers drop with the lighters they go adrift in from ship's sides. There's more safety in smuggling over Thames mud than on this coast shingle. One more thought. You say that Wilkinson believes the chests hold small arms? Yes. Then account to him for sending the chests away separately by saying that I have found a purchaser and that they are going to him direct. You have your cue, you see all. All. Let me hurry then, Paul. That brandy should fetch you half a guinea pint. You are in luck's way, Paul. See that you bring your ship along safely. Till tomorrow night. He clasped and wrung my hand and ran into the cabin. Now lads, off with us he cried. Off to Dover. Put me ashore there smartly and you shall find your account. Off now, time presses. Five minutes afterwards the boat was gone. When fortune falls in love with a man she makes him a bountious mistress. Everything fell out as I could have desired. We got our anchor at five and by daybreak were off hastings jogging quietly along towards London River. The weather conveniently obscure. The wind south and forty hours before us to do the run in. I exactly explained my relatives' scheme to Wilkinson and the others, who declared themselves perfectly satisfied, Wilkinson adding that though he had not objected to the deal smuggling project, he throughout considered the risk too heavy to adventure. I told them that Mr. Mason believed he could immediately find a purchaser for the small arms, in which case they would have to be sent privately ashore, and to give a proper colour to this ruse I made them pack away all the remaining weapons in the arms room and carry them to the run, ready to be taken with the other chests. Once fairly round the four lands, half my anxieties fell from me. There was no longer the French cruiser or privateer to be feared, and however wanderingly the people of my own country's vessels might stare at the uncommon figure of my schooner, they could find no excuse to board us. Besides, as I have said, I was greatly helped by the weather, which continuing hazy, though happily never so thick as to oblige me to stop, delivered me to the sight of only such vessels as past close, and offered me as a mere smudge to the shore. We arrived off marking level on the Thursday night and dropped anchor close to a lighter that lay there with a large boat hanging by her. It was then very dark. The first person who came on board was Mason. He was followed by several men, one of whom he introduced to me as his head clerk, who would see to the unloading of the schooner and to the transshipment of the goods to the ship in the pool. He informed me there was a covered van waiting on shore, and telling Wilkinson that the small arms had been disposed of, and that Mr. Mason would hand over the proceeds on or calling at his office, I went with a party of my relatives' men into the run, and presently had the whole of the chests in the boat. Mason went with her. Then, as she disappeared in the darkness, but not till then, did I draw the first easy breath I had fetched since the hour of the collision of the laughing merry with the iceberg. A sob shook me. I had gone through much. Many wonderful things had happened to me. I had been delivered from such perils that the mere recollection of them will stir my hair, though it is years since. My duty I knew, and I discharged it by withdrawing to my cabin, and kneeling with humble and grateful heart before the throne of that being to whom I owed everything. Come visit me at lalalime.blogspot.com To be wished that he had found the patience to tell us a little more. The circumstance of his dying in 1823, worth thirty-one thousand pounds, leads me to suspect that his associate, Tassard, greatly exaggerated the value of the treasure. I am assured that he lived very quietly, and that the lady he married, who bore him two children, both of whom died young, was of a none-like simplicity of character, and loved show and extravagance as little as her husband. Hence there is no reason to suppose that he squandered any portion of the fortune that had in the most extraordinary manner ever heard of fallen into his hands. I have ascertained that he very substantially discharged the great obligation that his relative Mason laid him under, and that his three men received a thousand pounds apiece. It is possible, then, that the pirates were themselves deceived, that what they had taken to be gold or silver ingots were not all so, or it might be that the case of jewelry was less valuable than the admiring and astonished eyes of a plain sailor, who admits that he had never before seen such a sight, figured it. Be this, however, as it may, it is nevertheless certain, as proved by Mr. Rodney's last will and testament, that he did uncommonly well out of his adventure on the ice. Whatever may be thought of his story of the Frenchman's restoration to life in other directions, Mr. Rodney's accuracy seems unimpeachable. It is quite conceivable that a stoutly built vessel locked up in the ice and thickly glazed should continue in an excellent state of preservation for years. The confession of his superstitious fears exhibits honesty and candor. It is related that a Captain Warren, master of an English merchant ship, found a derelict in August 1775 that had long been icebound, with her cabins filled with the bodies of the frozen crew. His own sailors, however, would not suffer him to search the vessel thoroughly through superstition and wished to leave her immediately. A pity they did not try their hands at thawing one of the poor fellows. The result might have kept Mr. Rodney's strange experience and countenance. Accounts of vast bodies of ice, such as that which Mr. Rodney fell in with, will be found in the South Atlantic Directory, for instance. Quote, Sir James C. Ross crossed Wiedel's track in latitude 65 degrees south, and where he had found an open sea, Ross found an ice pack of an impassable character, along which he sailed for 160 miles. And again, when only one degree beyond the track of Cook, who had no occasion to enter the pack, Ross was navigating among it for 56 days. But these appear insignificant when compared with a body of ice reputed to have been passed by 21 ships during the months of December 1854 and January, February, March, and April 1855, floating in the South Atlantic from latitude 44 degrees south, longitude 28 degrees west, to latitude 40 degrees south, longitude 20 degrees west. Its elevation in no case exceeded 300 feet. The first account of it was received from the Great Britain, which in December 1854 was reported to have steamed 50 miles along the outer side of the longer shank. One ship was lost upon it, others imbade. The End. End of Postscript. End of The Frozen Pirate by W. Clark Russell.