 CHAPTER XXV The schooner frees herself. All day long the weather remained sullen and still, and the swell powerful. I was on deck at noon, looking at an iceberg half a league distant when it oversat. It was a small berg, though large compared with most of the others, yet such a mighty volume of foam boiled up as gave me a startling idea of the prodigious weight of the mass. The sight made me very anxious about my own state, and to satisfy my mind I got upon the ice and walked round the vessel, and to get a true view of her posture went to the extreme end of the rocks beyond her boughs, and finally came to the conclusion that supposing the ice should crumble away from her sides so as to cause the weight of the schooner to render it top-heavy, her buoyancy on touching the water would certainly tear her keel out of its frosty setting and leave her floating. Indeed so sure was I of this that I saw next to the ice splitting and freeing her in that way the best thing that could happen would be its cap-saisal. I regained the ship, and had paused an instant to look over the side, when I perceived the very block of ice on which I had come to a halt, break from the bed with a smart clap of noise and completely roll over. Only a minute before had I been standing on it, and thus had sixty seconds stood between me and death, for most certainly must I have been drowned or killed by being beaten against the ice by the swell. I fell upon my knees and lifted my hands in gratitude to God, feeling extraordinarily comforted by this further mark of his care for me, and very strongly persuaded that he designed I should come off with my life after all, since his providence would not work so many miracles for my preservation if I was to perish by this adventure. These thoughts did more for my spirits than I can well express, and the intolerable sense of loneliness was mitigated by the knowledge that I was watched, and therefore not alone. The day passed I know not how. The shadow, as of tempest, hung in the air, but never a cat's paw did I see to blur the rolling mirror of the ocean. The hidden sun sank out of the breathless sky, tinging the atmosphere with a faint hectic, which quickly yielded to the deepest shade of blackness. The mysterious desperate silence, however, that on deck weighed oppressively on every sense as something false menacing and malignant in these seas, was qualified below by the peculiar straining noises in the schooner's hold, caused by the swinging of the ice upon the swell. I was very uneasy, I dreaded a gale. It was impossible, but that the vessel must quickly go to pieces in a heavy sea upon the ice if she did not liberate herself. But though this excited a depression melancholy enough, nothing else that I can recollect contributed to it. When I reviewed the apprehension the Frenchmen had raised, and reflected how unsupportable a burden he must have become, I was very well satisfied to be alone. Time had fortified me. I had passed through experiences so surprising, encountered wonders so preternatural, that superstitionly asleep in my soul, and I found nothing to occasion in me the least uneasiness in thinking of the lifeless shriveled figure of what was just now a fierce, cowardly, untamed villain lying in the forecastle. I made a good supper, built up a large fire, and mixed myself a hearty bowl of punch, not with the view of drowning my anxieties, God forbid. I was too grateful for the past, too expectant of the future to be capable of so brutish a folly. But that I might keep myself in a cheerful posture of mind, and being sick of my own company, took the lamp-thorn to the cabin lately used by the Frenchmen, and found in that chest there among sundry articles of attire a little parcel of books some in Dutch and Portuguese and one in English. It was a little old volume, the author's name not given, and proved to be a relation of the writers being taken by pirates and the many dangers he underwent. There was nothing in it to be sure that answered to my own case, yet it interested me mightily as an honest, unvarnished narrative of sea-perils, and I see myself now in fancy reading it, the lamp-thorn hanging by a lanyard close beside my head, the book in one hand, my pipe in the other, the furnace roaring pleasantly, my feet close to it, and the atmosphere of the oven, fragrant with the punch I had put there to prevent it from freezing. I had come to a certain page and was reading this passage. Soon after we were on board we all went into the great cabin where we found nothing but destruction. Two screwtores I had there were broke to pieces, and all the fine goods and necessaries in them were all gone. Moreover, two large chests that had books in them were empty, and I was afterwards informed they had all been thrown overboard, for one of the pirates on opening them swore there was jaw-work enough, as he called it, to serve a nation and proposed that they might be cast into the sea, for he feared there might be some books amongst them that might breed mischief enough and prevent some of their comrades from going on in their voyage to hell, whither they were all bound. I say I was reading this passage and not a little affected by the impiety of the rascal, for whose portrait my dead Frenchman might very well have sat, when I was terrified by an extraordinary loud explosion that burst so near and rang with such a prodigious clear note of thunder through the schooner that I vowed to God I believed the gunpowder below had blown up. And in this suspicion I honestly supposed myself right for a moment, for on running into the cabin I was dazzled by a crimson flame that clothed the whole interior with a wondrous gush of fire, but this being instantly followed by such another clap as the former I understood a thunderstorm had broken over the schooner. It was exactly overhead, and that accounted for the violence of the crashes, which were indeed so extreme that they sounded rather like the splitting of enormous bodies of ice close to than the flight of electric bolts. The hatch lay open. I ran on deck, but scarce had passed my head through the companion when down came a storm of hail, every stone as big as a pigeon's egg, and in all my time I never heard a more hellish clamour. There was not a breath of air. The hail fell in straight lines, which the fierce near lightning flashed up into the appearance of giant harp strings, on which the black hand of the night was playing those heavy notes of thunder. I sat in the shelter of the companion, very anxious and alarmed, for there was powder enough in the hold to blow the ship into atoms, and the lightning played so continuously and piercingly that it was like a hundred darts of fire, violet crimson and sun-coloured in the grasp of spirits who thrust at the sea all over its face with swift movement of the arms as though searching for the schooner to spear her. The hail storm ceased as suddenly as it had burst. I stepped on to the deck and was like treading on shingle. There was not the least motion in the air, and the stagnation gave an almost supernatural character to the thunder and lightning. The ocean was lighted up to its furthest visible confines by the flames in the sky, and the repeated explosions of thunder exceeded the roaring of the ordinance of a dozen squadrons in hot fight. The ice-coast in the east and the two score-burgs in the north and west leaping out of one hue into another. And were my days in this world to exceed those of old Abraham, I should to my last breath remember the solemn and terrible magnificence of that picture of lightning-coloured ice, the sulphur-tinctured shapes of the swollen bodies of clouds bringing their dark electric minds together in a huddle, the answering flash of the face of the deep to the lancing of each spiral dazzling bolt, with the air as still as the atmosphere of a cathedral for the thunder to roll its echoes through. There was a second furious shower of hail, and when that was over I looked forth and observed that the storm was settling into the northeast, whence I concluded that what draught there might be up there sat in the southwest. Nor was I mistaken for half an hour after the first of the outburst by which time the lightning played weak and that long intervals low down, and the thunder had ceased, I felt a crawling of air coming out of the southwest, which presently briskened into a small steady blowing, but not for long. It freshened yet and yet, the wrinkles crisped into whiteness on the black heavings. They grew into small surges with sharp, cubbish snarlings preludious of the lion's voice, and by ten o'clock it was blowing in strong squalls, the seas rising, and the clouds sailing swiftly in smoke-colored rags under the stars. The posture of the ice inclined the schooner's starboard bow to the billows, and in a very short time she was trembling in every bone to the blows of the surges which rolled boiling over the ice there and struck her, flinging dim clouds of spume in the air, which soon set the scuppers gushing. My case was that of a stranded ship, with this difference only, that a vessel ashore lies solid to the beating of the waves, whereas the ice was buoyant, it rose and fell, sluggishly it is true, and so somewhat mitigated the severity of the shocks of water. But spite of this I was perfectly sure that unless the bed broke under her, or she slipped off it, she would be in pieces before the morning. It was not in any hull put together by human hands to resist the pounding of those seas. The weight of the mighty ocean along whose breast they raced was in them, and though the wind was no more than a brisk gale, each billow by its stature showed itself the child of a giantess. The ice bed was like a whirlpool with the leap and flash and play of the froth upon it. The black air of the night was whitened by the storms of foam flakes which flew over the vessel. The roaring of the broken waters increased the horrors of the scene. I firmly believed my time was come. God had been merciful, but I was to die now. As to making any shift to keep myself alive after the ship should be broken up, the thought never entered my head. What could I do? There was no boat. I might have contrived some arrangement of booms and casks to serve as a raft. But to what purpose? How long would it take the wind and sea to freeze me? I crouched in the companion-way, harkening to the uproar round, seeing the convulsions of the schooner fully prepared for death, dogged and hopeless. No, I was not afraid. Suffering and expectation had brought me to that pass that I did not care. To such an end as hundreds and thousands of sailors have met, I remember thinking, it is the fittest exit for a mariner. I have sinned in my time, but the almighty God knows my heart. To this tune ran my thoughts. I held my arms tightly folded upon my breast, and with set lips waited for the first of those crashing and rending sounds which would be tokened the ruin and destruction of the schooner. So passed half an hour. Then, being half-perished with the cold, I went to the furnace, for when the vessel went to pieces it would matter little in what part of her I was, and warmed myself and took a dram as a felon swallows draught on his way to the scaffold. Were I to attempt to describe the character of the thunderous noises in the ship, I should not be believed. The seas raised a most deafening roaring as they boiled over the ice and rolled their volumes against the vessel's sides. Every curl swung a load of broken, frozen pieces against the bows and bends, and the shocks resounded through her like blows from cyclope and hammers. It was as if I had been seated in the central stagnant heart of a small revolving hurricane, feeling no faintest sigh of air upon my cheek, whist close around whirled the hellish tormenting conflict of white waters and yelling blasts. Then a sudden, in a breath, I felt the vessel rise. She was swung up with the giddy velocity of a hunter clearing a tall gate. She sank again, and there was a mighty concussion forward, then a pause of steadiness whilst you might have counted five, then a wild upward heave, a sort of sharp floating fall, a harsh grating along her keel and sides as though she was being smartly warped over rocks followed by an unmistakable free pitching and rolling motion. I had sprung to my feet and stood waiting, but the instant I gathered by the movements of her that she was released I sprang like a madman up the companion's steps. The sea, breaking over her bow, flew in heavy showers along the deck and half-blinded me. But I was semi-delirious, and having sat so long with Death's hand in mine was in a passionately defiant mood, with a perfect rage of scorn of peril in me, and I walked right on to the forecastle, giving the flying sheets of water there no heed. In a minute a block of sea tumbled upon me and left me breathless. The iciness of it cooled my mind's heat, but not my resolution. I was determined to judge as best I could by the light of the foam of what had happened, and holding on tenaciously to whatever came to my hand and progressing step by step I got to the forecastle and looked ahead. Where the ice was the water tumbled in milk, it was four or five ships' lengths distant, and I could distinguish no more than that. I peered over the lee-bow, but could see no ice. The vessel had gone clear, how I knew not, and can never know, but my own fancy is that she split the bed with her own weight when the sea rose and threw the ice up, for she had floated on a sudden and the noises which attended her release indicated that she had been forced through a channel. I returned aft, barely escaping a second deluge, and looked over the quarter. No ice was there visible to me. The vessel rolled horribly, and I perceived that she had a decided list to starboard, the result of the shifting of what was in her when the ice came away from the main with her, and it was this heel that brought the sea washing over the bow. I took hold of the tiller to try it, but either the helm was frozen immovable, or the rudder was jammed in its guzzins or in some other fashion fixed. Had she been damaged below, was she taking in water? I knew her to be so thickly sheathed with ice that, unless it had been scaled off in pieces by the breaking of her bed, I had little fear, until this covering melted or dropped off by the working of the frame, of the hull not proving tight. I should have been coated with ice myself had I stayed but a little longer in my wet clothes in that piercing wind, so I ran below and bringing an armful of clothes from my cabin to the cookroom was very soon in dry attire, and making an extraordinary figure I don't question, in the buttons, lace, and fripperies of the old fashion garments. The incident of the schooner's release from the ice had come upon me so suddenly, and at a time too when my mind was terribly disordered, that I scarce realized the full meaning of it until I had shifted myself and fortified my heart with a dram and got warm in the glow of the furnace. By this time she had fallen into the trough and was laboring like a cask. That she would prove a heavy roller in a sea-way, a single glance at her fat buttocks and swelling bilge might have persuaded me. But I never could have dreamt she would wallow so monstrously. The oscillation was rendered more formidable by her list, and there were moments when I could not keep my feet. She was shipping water very freely over her starboard rail. But this did not much concern me, for the break of the poop-deck kept the after-part of the vessel indifferently dry, and the forecastle and main hatches were well secured. But there was one great peril I knew not how to provide against. I mean the flotilla of icebergs in the north and west. They lay in a long chain upon the sea, and though to be sure there was no doubt a wide channel between each, through which it might have been easy to carry a ship under control, yet there was every probability of a vessel in the defenceless condition of the schooner, without a stitch of sail on her and under no other government of helm than a fixed rudder, being swept against one of those frozen floating hills, when indeed it would be a good night to her and to me too, for after such a catastrophe the sun would never rise for me or her again. Meanwhile I was crazy to ascertain if the schooner was taking in water. If there was a sounding rod in the ship I did not know where to lay my hands upon it. But he is a poor sailor who is slow at substitutes. There were several spears in the arms-room, piratical plunder, no doubt, with mere spikes for heads, like those weapons used by the kafries or other tribes in that country. They were formed of a hard, heavy wood. I took a length of rat-line-line and secured it to one of these spears and carried it on deck with the powder-room bullseye lamp. But when I probed the sounding pipe I found it full of ice, and as it was impossible to draw the pumps I flung my ingenious sounding-rod down in a passion of grief and mortification. Yet I was not to be beaten. Such was my temper had the devil himself confronted me, I should have defied him to do his worst, for I had made up my mind to weather him out. I entered the forecastle, lamp-thorn in hand, prized open the hatch and dropped into the hold. It needed an experienced ear to detect the sobbing of internal waters amid the yearning gushes, the long gurgling washings, the thunderous blows, and shrewd rain-like hissings of the seas outside. I listened with strained hearing for some minutes, but distinguished no sounds to alarm me with assurance of water in the hold. I could not mistake. I hearkened with all my might, but the sound was outside. I thanked God very heartily and got out of the hold and put the hatch on. There was no need to go aft and listen. The schooner was by the head, and there could be no water in the run that would not be forward too. Being reassured in respect of the staunchness of the hall, I returned to the fire and proceeded to equip myself for a prolonged watch on deck. First I was drawing on a great pair of boots I heard a knocking in the after-part of the vessel. I supposed she had drifted into a little field of broken ice and that she would go clear presently. And I finished arming myself for the weather, but the knocking continued. I went into the cabin where I heard it very plain, and walked as far as the lazarette hatch where I stood listening. The noises were a kind of irregular thumping, accompanied by a peculiar grinding sound. In a moment I guessed the truth, rushed on deck, and by the dim light in the air saw the long tiller mowing to and fro. The beat of the beam seas had unlocked the frozen bonds of the rudder, and there swung the tiller, as though like a dog the ship was wagging her tail for joy. The vessel lay along, rolling so as to bring her starboard rail to a level with the sea. Her main deck was full of water, and the froth of it combined with the ice that glazed her, made her look like a fabric of marble as she swung on the black fold ere it broke into snow about her. I seized the tiller and ran it over hard a starboard, and I had not held it in that posture half a minute, when to my inexpressible delight I observed that she was paying off. Her head fell slowly from the sea, she lurched drunkenly, and some tons of black water rolled over the bulwarks. She reeled consumedly tillerboard, and rose squarely and ponderously to the height of the surge that was now abaffed the beam. In a few moments she was dead before it, the helm at midships, the wind blowing sheer over the stern, with half its weight seemingly gone through the vessel running, the tall seas chasing her high stern and floating it upwards, till looking forward was like gazing down the slope of a hill. My heart was never fuller than then, I was half crazy with the passion of joy that possessed me. Consider the alternations of hope and bitter despair which it had crowded into that night. We may wonder in times of security that life should be sweet, and admit the justice of the arguments which several sorts of writers, and the poets even more than the persons, use in defence of death. But when it comes to the pinch, human nature breaks through. When the old man in Asip calls upon death to relieve him, and the skeleton suddenly arises, the old man changes his mind, and thinks he will go on trying for himself a little longer. I liked to live, and had no mind for a wet shroud, and this getting the schooner before the wind, along with the old familiar feeling of the decks reeling and soaring and sinking under my feet, was so cordial and assurance of life that, I tell you, my heart was full to breaking with transport. However, I was still in a situation that made prodigious demands upon my coolness and wits. The wind was south-west, the schooner was running north-east, the bulk of the icebergs lay on the larboard bow, but there were others right ahead, and to starboard, where also lay the extremity of the island, though I did not fear that if I could escape the rest. It was a dark night, me thinks there should have been a young moon curled somewhere among the stars, but she was not to be seen. The clouds flew dark and hurriedly, and the frosty orbs between were too few to throw a light. The ocean ahead and around was duskier for the spectral illumination of the near foam and the glimmer of the ice-coated ship. I tested the vessel with the tiller and found she responded but dully. She would be nimbler under canvas, no doubt, but it was enough that she should answer her helm at all. Oh, I say, I was mighty thankful, most humbly grateful. My heart was never more honest to its maker than them. She crushed along, pitching pitifully. The dark seas on either hand foaming to her quarters, and her rigging quarrelous with the wind. Had the Frenchman been alive to steer the ship, I might have found strength enough for my hands in the vigor of my spirit to get the spritzail yard square and chop its canvas loose. Nay, I might have achieved more than that even, but I could not quit the tiller now. I reckoned our speed at about four miles an hour, as fast as a hardy man could walk. The high stern, narrow as it was, helped us. It was like a mizzen in its way, and all aloft being stout to start with, and greatly thickened yet by ice, the surface up there gave plenty for the gale to catch hold on, and so we drove along. I could just make out the dim, pallid loom of the coast of ice upon the starboard beam, and a blob or two of faintness, most elusive and not to be fixed by the eye staring straight at them on the lordbird bow. But it was not long before these blobs, as I termed them, grew planar, and half a score swam into the dusk over the bowsport end and resembled dull, small, visionary openings in the dark sky there, or like stars magnified and dimmed into the mirrored spectral light by mist. I passed the first at a distance of a quarter of a mile. It slided by fantasmily, and another stole out right ahead. This I could have gone wide clear of by a little shift of the helm, but whilst I was in the act of starboarding three or four bergs suddenly shewed on the larboard bow, and I saw that unless I had a mind to bring the ship into the trough again, I must keep straight on. So I steered to bring the berg that was right ahead, a little on the bow, with a prayer in my soul that there might be no low lying block in the road for the schooner to split upon. It went by within a pistol-shot. I was very much accustomed to the sight of ice by this time, yet I found myself glancing at this mass with pretty near as much wonder and awe as if I had never seen such a thing before. It was not above thirty feet, but its shape was exactly that of a horse's head, the lips sipping the sea, the ears cocked, the neck arching to the water. You would have said it was some vast cursor rising out of the deep. The peculiar radiance of ice trembled off it like a luminous mist into the dusk. The water boiled about its nose, and suggested a frothing caused by the monster's steed's expelled breath. Let a fire have been kindled to glow red where you looked for the eye, and the illusion would have been frightfully grand. The poet speaks of the spirits of the vasty deep. If you want to know what exquisite artists they are, enter the frozen silences of the south. Thus threading my way I drove before the seas and wind, striking a piece of ice but once only, and that a small lump which hit the vessel on the bow and went scraping past, doing the fabric no hurt, but often forced to slide perilously close by the bergs. I needed twenty instead of one pair of eyes. With ice already on either bow, on a sudden it would glimmer out right ahead and I had to form my resolution on the instant. If ever you have been amid a pack of icebergs on a dark night in a high sea, you will understand my case. If not, the pen of a fielding or a defoe could not put it before you. For what magic has ink to express the roaring of swollen waters bursting into tall pale clouds against the motionless crystal heights? The mystery of the configuration of the faintness under the swarming shadows of the flying night. The sudden glares of breaking liquid peaks. The palpitating darkness beyond, the plunging and rolling of the ship, making her rigging ring upon the air with the reeling of her masts. The gradual absorption of the solid mass of dim luster by the gloom mustern. The swift spectral dawn of such another light over the boughs, with many phantasmal outlines slipping by on either hand, like a procession of giant ocean spectres travelling white and secretly towards the silent dominions of the pole. Half this ice came from the island, the rest of it was formed of birds too tall to have ever belonged to the north end of that great stretch. It took three hours to pass clear of them, and then I had to go on clinging to the tiller and steering in a most melancholy, famished condition for another long half-hour before I could satisfy myself that the sea was free. But now I was nearly dead with the cold. I had stood for five hours at the helm, during all which time my mind had been wound up to the fiercest tension of anxiety, and my eyes felt as if they were strained out of their sockets by their searching of the gloom ahead, and nature having done her best gave out suddenly, not to have saved my life could I have stood at the tiller for another ten minutes. The gear along the rail was so iron-hard that I could not secure the helm with it. So I softened some lashings by holding them before the fire, and finding the schooner on my return to be coming around to starboard. I helped her by putting the tiller hard afort and securing it. I then went below, built up the fire, lighted my pipe, and sat down for warmth and rest. CHAPTER XXVI 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. The weight of the wind in the rigging steadied the schooner somewhat, and prevented her from rolling too heavily to starboard, whilst her list corrected her larboard rolls. So as I sat below she seemed to me to be making tolerably good weather of it. Not much water came aboard. Now and again I would hear the clatter of a fall forwards, but at comfortably long intervals. I sat against the dresser, with my back upon it, and being dead tired must have dropped asleep on a sudden, indeed before I had half smoked my pipe out. And I do not believe I gave a thought to my situation before I slumbered, so wearied was I. The cold awoke me. The fire was out, and so was the candle in the land-thorn, and I was in coffin darkness. This the tinderbox speedily remedied. I looked at my watch, seven o'clock, as I was a sinner, so that my sleep had lasted between three and four hours. I went on deck, and found the night still black upon the sea, the wind the same brisk gale that was blowing when I quitted the helm, the sea no heavier, and the schooner tumbling in true Dutch fashion upon it. I looked very earnestly about, but could see no signs of ice. There would be daylight presently, so I went below, lighted the fire, and got my breakfast, and when I returned the sun was up, and the sea visible to its furthest reaches. It was a fine wintry piece, the sea green and running in ridges with frothing heads, the sky very pale among the dark, snow-laden clouds, the sun darting array now and again, which was swung into the north by the shadows of the clouds until they extinguished it. Remote in the northwest hung the gleam of an iceberg. There was nothing else in sight. Yes, something that comforted me exceedingly, though it was not very many days ago, that a like object had heavily scared me. An albatross, a noble bird, sailing on the windward close enough to be shot. The sight of this living thing was inexpressibly cheering. It put into my head a fancy of ships being at hand, thoughts of help and of human companions. In truth my imagination was willing to accept it as the same bird that I had frightened away when in the boat, now returned to silently reproach me for my treatment of it. Nay, my lonely eye, my subdued and suffering heart, might even have witnessed the good angel of my life in that solitary shape of ocean beauty, and have deemed that, though unseen, it had been with me throughout, and was now made visible to my gaze by the light of hope that had broken into the darkness of my adventure. Well, supposing it so, I should not have been the only man who ever scared his good angel away and found it faithful afterwards. I unlashed the tiller, and got the schooner before the wind, and steered until a little before noon, letting her drive dead before the sea which carried her northeast. Then securing the helm amid ships I ran for the quadrant, and whilst waiting for the sun to show himself, I observed that the vessel held herself very steadily before the wind, which might have been owing to her high stern and the great swell of her sides and her round bottom. But be the cause what it might, she ran as fairly with her helm amid ships as if I had been at the tiller to check her, a most fortunate condition of my navigation, for it privileged me to get about other work, whilst at the same time every hour was conveying me nearer to the track of ships and further from the bitter regions of the south. I got an observation, and made out that the vessel had driven about fifteen leagues during the night. She must do better than that, thought I, and when I had eaten some dinner I took a chopper and, going on to the forecastle, lay out upon the bowsprit, and after beating the spritz sail yard block clear of ice, cut away the gaskets that confined the sail to the yard, heartily beating the canvas that was like iron, till a clue of it fell. I then came in and braced the yard square, and the wind, presently catching the exposed part of the sail, blew more of it out, and yet more, until there was a good surface showing. Then, to a sudden hard blast of wind, the whole sail flew open with a mighty crackling, as though indeed it was form device. But to render it useful, I had to haul the sheets aft, which I could not manage without the help of the tackles we had used in slinging the powder over the side, so that, what with one hindrance and another, the setting of that sail took me an hour and a half. But had it occupied me all day, it would have been worth doing. Trifling as it was as a cloth, its effect upon the schooner was like that of a cordial upon a fainting man. It was not that she sensibly showed nimbler heels to it, its lifting tendency enabled her to ride the underrunning seas more buoyantly, and if it increased her speed by half a knot an hour, it was worth a million to me, whose business it was to take the utmost possible advantage of the southerly gale. I returned to the helm, warm with the exercise, and gazed forward, not a little proud of myself. Though the sail was eight and forty years old, and perhaps older, it offered as tough and stout as surface to the wind as if it was fresh from the sail-maker's hands, so great are the preserving qualities of ice. I looked wistfully at the top sail, but on reflecting that if it should come on to blow hard enough to compel me to heave the brig too, she would never haul with that canvas abroad. I resolved to let it lie, for I could cut away the sprit sail if the necessity arose, and not greatly regret its loss. But to lose the top sail would be a serious matter, though if I did not cut it adrift it might carry away the mast for me, so as I say I would not meddle with it. Seeing that the ship continued to steer herself very well, and the better for the sprit sail, I thought I would get the body of the old Frenchman overboard, and so obtain a clear hold for myself, so far as corpses went. I carried the lanthorn into the forecastle, but when I pulled the hammock off him, I confess it was not without a stupid fear that I should find him alive. One of his astounding vitality found something imperishable in that ugly anatomy, and though he lay before me as dead and cold as a stone, I yet had a fancy that the seeds of life were still in him, that was only the current of his being that had frozen, that if I were to thaw him afresh he might recover, and that if I buried him I should actually be dispatching him. But though these fancies possessed, they did not control me. I took his watch and whatever else he had in that way, carried him on deck, and dropped him over the side, using as little ceremony as he had employed in the disposal of his shipmates, but affected by very different emotions. For there was not only the idea that the vital spark was still in him, I could not but handle with awe the most mysterious corpse the eye had ever viewed, one who had lived through a stupor or death sleep for eight and forty years, in whom in a few hours time had compressed the wizardry he stretches in others over a half a century, who in a night had shrunk from the aspect of his prime into the lean, puckered, bleary-eyed, deaf and tottering expression of a hundred years. But now he was gone. The bubbles which rose to the plunge of his body were his epitaph. Had they risen blood red they would have better symbolized his life. The albatross stooped to the spot where he had vanished with a horse-salt scream like the laugh of a delirious woman, and the wind freshening momentarily in a squall made one think of the spirit of nature as eager to purify the air of heaven from the taint of the dead pirate's passage from the bulwarks to the water's surface. All that day and through the night that followed the schooner drove, rolling and plunging before the seas into the northeast to the pulling of the spritzail. I made several excursions into the forehold, but never could hear the sound of water in the vessel. Her sides in places were still sheathed in ice, but this crystal armor was gradually dropping off her to the working of her frame in the seas, so that since she was proving herself tight it was certain her staunchness owed nothing to the glassy plating. I had seen some strange craft in my day, but nothing to beat the appearance this old tub of a hooker submitted to my gaze as I viewed her from the helm. How so uncouth a structure with her tall stern, flaring boughs, fat buttocks, sloping masts, four-castle well, and massive head timbers ever managed to pursue an overhaul of chase was only to be unriddled by supposing all that she took to be more unwieldy and clumsy than herself. What would a pirate of these days in his clean-lined polaca or arrowy schooner have thought of such an instrument as this for the practice of his pretty trade? The ice aloft still held for her sparsen rigging the resemblance of glass, and to every sunbeam that flashed upon her from between the sweeping clouds she would sparkle out into many-colored twinklings, marvelously delicate in color, and changing their tints twenty times over in a breath through the swiftness of the reeling of the spars. I should but fatigue you to follow the several little stories of these hours one by one, how I got my food, snatched at sleep, stood at the helm, gazed around the sea-line and the like. Just before sundown I saw a large iceberg in the north, two leagues distant. No others were in sight, but one was enough to make me uneasy, and I spent a very troubled night repeatedly coming on deck to look about me. The schooner steered herself as if a man stood at the helm. The spritz sail further helped her in this, for if the curl of a sea under her forefoot brought her to larboard or starboard, the sail forced her back again. Still it was a very surprising happy quality in her, the next best thing to my having a shipmate, and a wonderful relief to me who must otherwise have brought her too under a lashed helm every time I had an occasion to leave the deck. The seaworthiness of the craft, coupled with the reasonable assurance of presently falling in with the ship, rendered me so far easy in my mind as to enable me to think very frequently of the treasure and how I was to secure it. If I fell in with an enemy's cruiser or a privateer I must expect to be stripped. This would be the fortune of war and I must take my chance. My concern did not lie that way. How was I to protect this property that was justly mine against my own countrymen? Suppose I had the good fortune to carry the schooner safely into English waters. I had a brother-in-law, Jeremiah Mason Esquire, a Turkey merchant in a small way of business, whose office was in the city of London, and, if I could manage to convey the treasure secretly to him, he would, I knew, find me a handsome account in his settlement of this affair. But it was impossible to strike out a plan. I must wait and attend the course of events. Yet riches being things which fever the coldest imaginations, I could not look ahead without excitement and irritability of fancy. I should reckon it a hard fate indeed after my cruel experiences, my freeing the vessel from the ice, my sailing her through some the thousands of miles of perilous seas and finally arriving in safety to be dispossessed of what was strictly mine, as much mine as if I had fished it up from the bottom of the sea, where it must otherwise have lain till the crack of doom. I remember that, among other ideas, it entered my head to tell the master of the first ship I met, if she were British, the whole story of my adventure, to acquaint him with the treasure, and offer to transship it and myself to his vessel and abandon the schooner, and to propose a handsome reward for his offices. But I could not bring my mind to trust any stranger with so great a secret. The mere circumstance of the treasure not being mine, in the sense of my having earned it, of its being piratical plunder, and as much ones as another's, might dull the edge of even a fair dealing conscience and expose me to the machinations of a heavily tempted mind. Therefore, though I had no plan, I was resolved at all hazards to stick to the schooner, and with a view to providing against the curiosity or rummaging of any persons who should come aboard, I fell to the following work after getting my breakfast. I hung lathorns in the run and hatchways and cabin to enable me to pass easily to and fro. I then emptied one of the chests in my cabin and carried it to where the treasure was. The chest I filled nearly three parts full with money, jewelry, and etc., which sank the contents of the other chests to the depth I wanted. I then fetched a quantity of small arms, such as pistols and hangers and cutlasses, and filled up the chests with them. First, placing a thickness of canvas over the money and jewelry that no glitter might show through. To improve the deception, I brought another chest to the run and wholly filled it with the cutlasses, powder horns, pistols, and the like, and so fixed it that it must be the first to come to hand. My cunning amounted to this, that suppose the run to be rummaged, the contents of the first chest were sure to be turned out. But on the other chests being opened and what they appeared to contain observed, it was as likely as not that the rummagers would be satisfied they were arms chests and quit meddling with them. Here now might I indulge in a string of reflections on the troubles and anxieties which money brings, quote from juvenile and other poets, and hold myself up to your merriment by a contemptuous exhibition of myself, a lonely sailor, laboring to conceal his gold from imaginary knaves, toiling in the dark depth of the vessel, and never heeding that, even whilst he so worked, his ship might split upon some half-tied rock of ice, and found her with him and his treasure too, and so on and so on. But the fact is I was not a fool. Here was money enough to set me up as a fine gentleman for life, and I meant to save it and keep it too, if I could. A man on his deathbed, a man in such peril that his end is certain, can afford to be sentimental. He is going where money is dross indeed, and he is in a posture when to moralize upon human greed and the vanity of wishes and riches becomes him. But would not a man whose health is hardy and who hopes to save his life be worse off than a sheep in the matter of brains not to keep a firm grip of fortune's hand when she extended it? I know I was very well pleased with my morning's work when I had accomplished it, and had no mind to qualify my satisfaction by melancholy and romantic musings on my condition and the uncertainty of the future. This was possibly owing to the fineness of the weather, a heavy black gale from the north would have doubtless given a very different turn to my humours. The wind at dawn had weakened and come into the west. There was a strong swell. Indeed, there always is in this ocean, but the seas ran small. The sky looked like marble, with its broad spreadings of high white clouds and the veins of blue sky between. I wished to make all the northing that was possible, but there was nothing to be done in that way with the spritzail alone. Had not the capstan been frozen, I should have tried to get the mainsail upon the ship. But without the aid of machinery I was helpless. So with helm amid ships, the schooner drove languidly along with their head due east, lifting as ponderously as a line of battleship to the floating launches of the high swell, and the albatross hung as steadfastly in the wake of my lonely ocean path, as though it had been some messenger sent by God to watch me into safety. CHAPTER 27 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 Dirksen. The Frozen Pirate by W. Clark Russell Chapter 27 I Encounter a Whaler I had been six days and nights at sea, and the morning of the seventh day had come. With the exception of one day of strong south westerly winds, which ran me something to the northwards, the weather had been fine, bitterly cold indeed, but bright and clear. In this time I had run a distance of about six hundred and fifty miles to the east, and with no other cloths upon the schooner than her spritzail. I confess, as the hours passed away and nothing hove into view, I grew dispirited and restless. Yet on the other hand I was comforted by the bright weather and the favourable winds, and particularly by the vessel steering herself, which enabled me to get rest, to keep myself warm with the fire, and dress my food, yet ever pushing onwards, however slowly, into the navigated regions of this sea. On the morning of the seventh day I came on deck, having slept since four o'clock. The wind was icy keen, pretty brisk, about west by south. The movement in the sea was from the south and rolled very grandly. There was a fog that way, too, that hid the horizon, bringing the ocean line to within a league of the schooner. But the other quarters swept in a dark, clear blue line against the sky, and there was such a clarity of atmosphere as made the distances appear infinite. I went below and lighted the fire, and got my breakfast all very leisurely, and when I was done I sat down and smoked a pipe. It was so keen on deck I had no mind to leave the fire, and, as all was well, I lounged through the best part of two hours in the cookhouse, when, thinking it was now time to take another survey of the scene, I went on deck. On looking over the larboard bulwark rail, the first thing I saw was a ship about two miles off. She was on the larboard tack, under courses top sails and main top gallant sail, heading as if to cross my boughs. The sunshine made her canvas look as white as snow against the skirts of the body of vapor that had trailed a little to leeward of her, and her black hull flashed as though she discharged a broadside every time she rose wet to the northern glory, out of the hollow of the swell, with a curl of silver utter cut water. My heart came into my throat, I seemed not to breathe. Not to have saved my life could I have uttered a cry, so amazed and transported was I by this unexpected apparition. I stared like one in a dream, and my head felt as if all the blood in my body had surged into it. But then, all on a sudden, there happened a revulsion of feeling. Suppose she should prove a privateer, a French war-vessel, of a nation hostile to my own. Thought so rotten me that I trembled like an idiot in fright. The telescope was too weak to resolve her. I could do better with my eyes. And I stood at the bulwark's gazing and gazing as if she were the spectership of the Scandinavian legend. There were flags below, and I could have hoisted a signal of distress, but to what purpose? If the appearance of the schooner did not sufficiently illustrate her condition, there was certainly no virtue in the language and declarations of bunting to exceed her own mute assurance. I watched her with a passion of anxiety, never doubting her intention to speak to me. Had all events to draw close and look at me, wholly concerning myself with her character. The swell made us both dance, and the blue brows of the rollers would often hide her to the height of her rails. But we were closing each other middling fast, she travelling at seven and I at four miles in the hour, and presently I could see that she carried a number of boats. A whaler thought I, and after a little I was sure of it by perceiving the rings over her top gallant rigging for the lookout to stand in. On being convinced of this I ran below for a shawl that was in my cabin, and jumping on to the bulwark's stood flourishing it for some minutes to let them know that there was a man aboard. She left to deaden her way that I might swim close, and as we approached each other I observed a crowd of heads forward looking at me, and several men aft, all staring intently. A man scrambled on to the rail, and with an arm clasping a backstay hailed me. Skooner ahoy, he bowled with a strong nasal twang in his cry, but ships that. The Bacchadel dragon I shouted back, Where are you from, and where are you bound to? I have been locked up in the ice, I cried, and am in want of help. Which ship are you? The Susan Tucker whaler of New Bedford, twenty-seven months out, he returned. Where in creation got you that hooker? I'm the only man on board, I cried, and have no boat. Send to me in the name of God, and let the master come. He waved his hand, bawling, Put your helm down, your forging ahead, and so saying dismounted. I immediately cast the tiller adrift, put it hard over and secured it, then jumped on to the bulwarks again to watch them. She was Yankee beyond doubt. I had rather met my own countrymen, but next to a British I would have chosen an American ship to meet. Somehow, despite the Frenchmen, I felt to have been alone throughout my adventure, and so sore was the effect of that solitude upon my spirits that it seemed twenty years since I had seen a ship, and since I had held commune with my own species. I was terribly agitated and shook in every limb. Life must have been precious always, but never before had it appeared so precious as now willst I gazed at that homely ship with her main top sail to the mast, swinging stately upon the swell, the faces of the seamen plain, the smoke of her galley-fire breaking from the chimney, the sounds of creaking blocks and groaning perils stealing from her. Such a fountain of joy broke out of my heart that my whole being was flooded with it, and had that mood lasted I believe I should have exposed the treasure in the run, and invited all the men of the whaler to share in it with me. They stared fixedly, little wonder that they should be astounded by such an appearance as my ship exhibited. One of the several boats which hung at her davits was lowered, the oars flashed, and presently she was near enough to be hit with a biscuit. But when there the master, as I supposed him to be, who was steering, sung out vast rowing, the boat came to a stand, and her people to a man stared at me with their chins upon their shoulders as if I had been a fiend. It was plain as a pike staff that they were frightened, and that the superstitions of the forecastle were hard at work in them whilst they viewed me. They looked a queer company. Two were negroes, the other pale-faced bearded men, wrapped up in clothes to the aspect of scarecrows. The fellow who steered had a face as long as a wet hammock, and it was lengthened yet to the eye by a beard like a goat hanging at the extremity of his chin. He stood up, a tall, lank figure with legs like a pair of compasses, and hailed me afresh. But the heist well, regular as the swing of a pendulum, interposed its brow between him and me, so that at one moment he was a sharply lined figure against the sky of the horizon, and the next, he and his boat and crew, were sheer gone out of sight, and this made an exchange of sentences slow and troublesome. Say, master, he sung out, what do you say the schooner's name is? The Bacchadel Dragon, I replied. And who are you, matey? An English sailor who's been cast away on an island of ice. I answered, talking very shortly that the replies might follow the questions before the swell sank him. Aye, aye, says he. That's very well, but when was you cast away, bully? I gave him the date. That's not a month ago, cried he. It's long enough, whatever the time, said I. Here, the crew fell a talking, turning from one another to stare at me, and the negro's eyes showed as big his saucers in the dismay of their regard. See here, master, sung out the long man, if you haven't been cast away more than a month, how come you clothed as men went dressed a century sin, eh? The reason of their misgivings flashed upon me. It was not so much the schooner as my appearance. The truth was, my clothes, having been wetted, I had ever since been wearing such thick garments as I met with in the cabin, keeping my legs warm with jackboots, and I had become so used to the garb that I forgot I had it on. You will judge, then, that I must have presented a figure very nicely calculated to excite the wonder and apprehension of a body of men whose superstitious instincts were already sufficiently fluttered by the appearance of the schooner. When I tell you that, in addition to the jackboots and a great fur cap, my costume was formed of a red plush waistcoat laced with silver, purple breeches, a coat of frieze with yellow braiding and huge cuffs, and the cloak that I had taken from the body of Mendoza. Captain, cried I, if so be you are the captain, in the name of God and humanity come aboard, sir. Here I had to wait till he reappeared. My story is an extraordinary one. You have nothing to fear. I am a plain English sailor. My ship was the Laughing Mary, bound and ballast, from Caleo to the Cape. Here I had to wait again. Praise, sir, come on board. There is nothing to fear. I am alone, in grievous distress and in want of help. Pray come, sir. There was so little of the goblin in this appeal that it resolved him. The crew hung in the wind, but he addressed them preemptorily. I heard him down them for a set of currs, and tell them that if they put him aboard, they might lie off till he was ready to return, where they would be safe as the devil could not swim. And presently they buckled to their oars again, and the boat came alongside. The long man, watching his chance, sprang with great agility into the chains and stepped on deck. I ran up to him and seized his hand with both of mine. Sir, cried I, speaking with difficulty, so great was the tumult of my spirits and the joy and gratitude that swelled my heart. I thank you a thousand times over for this visit. I am in the most helpless condition that can be imagined. I am not astonished that you should have been startled by the appearance of this vessel and by the figure I make in these clothes. But, sir, you will be much more amazed when you have heard my story. He eyed me steadfastly, examining me very earnestly from my boots to my cap, and then cast a glance around him before he made any reply to my address. He had the gauntness, soloness of complexion and deliberateness of manner peculiar to the people of New England. And though he was a very ugly, lank, uncouth man, I protest he was as fair in my sight as if he had been the ambrosial angel described by Milton. Well, cook my gizzard, he exclaimed presently, through his nose, and after another good look at me and along the decks and up aloft, if this ain't miraculous, too, darned if we didn't take this hooker for some ghost ship rizz up from the sea, in charge of a merman rigged out to fit her age. Y'all alone, Arya? All alone, said I. Broach me every barrel aboard, if ever I see such a vessel, he cried, his astonishment rising with the searching glances he directed aloft and alow. How old be she? She was cast away in seventeen hundred and fifty-three, said I. Well, I'm darned. She's froze hard, sir, re. I reckon she'll want a hot sun to thaw her. Split me, mister, if she ain't worth sailing home as a showbox. I interrupted his ejaculations by asking him to step below, where we could sit, warm, whilst I related my story. And I asked him to invite his boats crew into the cabin, that I might regale them with a bowl of such liquor as I ventured to say, had never passed their lips in this life. On this he went to the side, and, hailing the men, ordered all but one to step aboard and drink to the health of the lonesome sailor they had come across. The word drink acted like a charm. They instantly hauled upon the painter and brought the boat to the chains and tumbled over the side, one of the negroes remaining in her. They fell together in a body and surveyed me and the ship with a hundred marks of astonishment. My lads, said I. My rig is a strange one, but I'll explain all shortly. The clothes I was cast away in are below, and I'll show you them. I'm no specter, but as real as you, though I have gone through so much, that if I am not a ghost, it is no fault of old ocean, but owing to the mercy of God. My name is Paul Rodney, and I'm a native of London. You, sir, says I, addressing the long man, are I, presumed, the master of the Susan Tucker? At your service. Josiah Tucker is my name, and that ship is my wife Susan. Captain Tucker, and you men, will you please step below, says I. The weather promises to be fair, I have much to tell, and there is in that cabin, which will give you patience to hear me. I descended the companion's stairs, and they all followed making the interior that had been so long silent ring with their heavy tread. Wills from time to time, a gruff, hoarse whisper, broke from one of them. But superstition lay strong upon their imagination, and they were odd and quiet. The daylight came down the hatch, but for all that the cabin was darksome. I waited till the last man had entered, and then said, Before we settle down to a bowl and a yarn, Captain, I should like to show you this ship. It'll save me a deal of description and explanation, if you will be pleased to take a view. Late on, Mr., said he, but we shall have to snap our eyelids and raise fire in that way, for darned if I, for one, can see in the dark. I fetched three or four lathorns, and lading the candles distributed them among the men, and then, in a procession headed by the Captain and me, we made the rounds. I had half cleared the arms-room, but there were weapons enough left, and they stared at them like yokels in a booth. I showed them the cook-house and the forecastle, where the deck was littered with clothes and chests and hammocks, and after carrying them aft to the cabins gave them the sight of the hold. I never saw men more amazed. They filled the vessel with their exclamations. They never offered to touch anything, being too much odd, but stepped about with their heads uncovered, as quietly as they could, as though they had been in a crypt, and the influence of strange and terrifying memorials was upon them. I also showed them the clothes I had come away from the laughing Marianne, and that I might submit such an aspect to them as should touch their sympathies. I whipped off the cloak and put on my own pilot-cloth coat. There being nothing more to see, I led them to the cook-room, and there brewed a great hearty bowl of brandy-punch, which I seasoned with lemon, sugar, and spices, into as relishable a draft as my knowledge in that way could compass. And giving every man a panicin' bade him dip and welcome, myself first drinking to them with a brief speech, yet not so brief, but that I broke down towards the close of it, and ended with a dry sob or two. They would have been unworthy their country and their calling not to have been touched by my natural manifestation of emotion. Besides, the brandy was an incomparably fine spirit, and the very perfume of the steaming bowl was sufficient to stimulate the kindly qualities of sailors who had been locked up for months in a greasy old ship, with no diviner smells about than the stink of the tri-works. The captain, standing up, called upon his men to drink to me, promising me that he was very glad to have fallen in with my schooner, and then, looking at the others, made a sign, whereupon they all fixed their eyes upon me and drank his one man, every one emptying his pot and inverting it as proof, and fetching a rousing sigh of satisfaction. This ceremony ended, I began my story, beginning with the loss of the laughing merry, and proceeding step by step, I told them of the dead body of Mendoza, but said nothing about the Frenchman and the mate, and the Portugal boatswain, lest I should make them afraid of the vessel, and so get no help to work her. As to acquainting them with my recovery of Tassard after his stupor of eight and forty years, I should have been mute on that head in any case, for so extraordinary a relation could, from such people, have earned me but one of two opinions, either that I was mad and believed in an impossibility, or that I was a rogue and dealt in magic, and to be vehemently shunned. Yet there were wonders enough in my story without this, and I recited it to a running commentary of all sorts of queer, yanky exclamations. There were seven seamen, and the captain and I made nine, and we pretty near filled the cookroom. It was a scene to be handled by a Dutch brush. We were a shaggy company in several kinds of rude attire, and the crimson light of the furnace, whose playing flames darted shadows through the steady light of the lathorns, caused us to appear very wild. The mariner's eyes gleamed redly as their glances rove round the place, and had you come suddenly among us, I believe you would have thought this band of pale, fire-touched, hairy men, with the one ebony visage among them, rendered the vessel a vast deal more ghostly than ever she could have shone when sailing along with me alone on board. They were a good deal puzzled when I told them of the minds I had made and sprung in the ice. They reckoned the notion fine, but could not conceive how I had, single-handed, broken out the powder barrels, got them over the side and fixed them. Why, said I, was slow, heavy work, of course, but a man who labors for his life will do marvelous things, it is like the jump of a hunted stag. True for you, said the captain, a swim of two miles, and spends me in pleasure in, but I have swum eight miles to save my life, and stranded fresh as a new-hooked cod, what's your intention, sir? To sail the schooner-home, said I, if I can get help, she's too good to abandon, she'll fetch money in England. I, as a show, yes, and as a coalman, rigor-modernly carry your forecastle-deck into the head, captain, and she's a brave ship, fit for a Baltimore eye. He stroked down the hair upon his chin. Dip, captain, dip, my lads, there's enough of this to drown ye in the hold, said I, pointing to the bowl, come, this is a happy meeting for me, let it be a merry one, captain, I drink to the Susan Tucker. Sir, your servant, here's to your sweetheart, be she wife or maid, build, jump on deck, and take a look around, see to the boat, one of the men went out. Captain, said I, you were a full ship, that so, bound home, right away. You should have many enough and despair, lend me three of your hands and help me to the Thames, and I'll repay you thus. There should be near a hundred tons of wine and brandy, of exquisite vintage, and choice with age beyond language in the hold. Take what you will of that freight, there'll be ten times the value of your lay and your pickings, modest as you may prove. Help yourself to the clothes in the cabin and forecastle, they will turn to account. For the men you will spare, and who will volunteer to help me, this will be my undertaking. This ship and all that is in her, to be sold on her arrival, and the proceeds equally divided. Shall we call it a thousand pounds piece? Captain she's well found, her inventory would make a list as long as you. I'd name a bigger sum, but here she is, you shall overhaul her hold and judge for yourself. I watched him anxiously, no man spoke but every eye was upon him. He sat pulling down the hair on his chin, then jumping up on a sudden and extending his hand he cried, Shake! It's a bargain! If the metal dine! I'll dine, exclaimed a man, there was a pause. And me, said the negro, I was glad of this and looked earnestly at the others. Is she tight, said a man? As a bottle said I, they fell silent again. No Wilkinson and Washington Cromwell, them two giants, said the Captain. Bully's, he wants a third, don't speak altogether. The man named Bill at this moment returned to the cookroom and reported all well above. My offer was repeated to him, but he shook his head. This is the horn-mate, said he. There's a deal of water between this and the thames. How does she sail? No man knows. I want none but willing men, said I. Americans make as good sailors as the English. What an English seaman can face any of you can. There is another negro in the boat. Will you let him step aboard, Captain? He may join. A man was sent to take his place. Presently he arrived, and I gave him a cup of punch. In the business to him, sir, said the Captain, filling his panikin. His name's Billy Pitt. I did so, and when I told him that Washington Cromwell had offered, he instantly said, All right, Massa, I'd be of you. This was exactly what I wanted. And had there been a third negro, I'd have preferred him to the white man. But how are you going to navigate this craft home with three men, said the man billed to me. There'll be four. We shall do the fewer the more dollars, hey, Wilkinson? He grinned, and Cromwell broke into a ventral laugh. They seemed very well satisfied, and so was I. Chapter 28 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 Dirksen. The Frozen Pirate by W. Clark Russell. Chapter 28 I strike a bargain with the Yankee. The Captain put his cup down. The bowl was empty. I offered to brew another joram, but he thanked me and said no, adding significantly that he would have no more here, by which he meant that he would brew for himself in his own ship anon. The drink had made him cheerful and good-natured. He recommended that we should go on deck and set about trans-shipping whilst the weather held, for he was an old hand in these seas and never trusted the sky longer than a quarter of an hour. This here list, says he, once remedying, and that'll follow our easing of the hold. Yes, said I, and I should be mighty thankful if some of your men would see all clear aloft for me, that we might start with running rigging that will travel, cap stands that'll resolve, and sails that'll spread. Oh, we'll manage that for you, said he. Truly she's been bad-froze, very bad-froze, darned if I ever see a worse freeze. Whilst they were absent, I carried the Captain into the hold and left him to overhaul it. I told him that all the spirits, provisions, and the like were in the hold and lazarette, which was true enough. Wanting to keep him out of the run, though, thanks to the precaution I had taken, I was in no fear, even if he should penetrate so deep aft. Before he came out, five and twenty stout fellows arrived in four boats from the ship, and when we went on deck we found them going, the rounds of the vessel, scraping the guns to get a view of them, peering down the companion, overhauling the forecastle well, as I call the hollow beyond the forecastle, and staring aloft with their faces full of grinning wonder. The Captain sang out to them, and they all mustered out. Now, lads, said he, there's a big job before you, a big job for Cape Horn I mean, and you'll have to slip through it as if you was grease. When done there'll be a carouse, and I'll warrant you all such as sub, that the most romantic among you'll never cast another pine and thought in the direction of your mother's milk. Having delivered this preface, he divided the men into two gangs, one under the boatswain to attend to the rigging, clear the canvas of the ice, get the pumps and the capstowns to work, and see all ready for getting sail on the schooner, the other under the second mate to get tackles aloft and break out the cargo, taking care to trim ship whilst doing so. They fell to their several jobs with a will, tis the habit of our countrymen to sneer at Americans as sailors, affirming that if they ever win a battle at sea it is by the help of British renegades. But this I protest, after witnessing the smartness of those Yankee whalemen I would sooner charge the English than the Americans with loverliness came the nautical merits of the two nations ever before me to decide upon. They had the hatches open, tackles aloft, and men at work below whilst the mariners of other countries would have been standing looking on and jawing about the course to be taken. Some overran the fabric aloft, clearing, cutting away, pounding, making the ice fly in storms. Others sweated the capstowns till they clanked. Others fell to the pumps, working with hammers and kettles of boiling water. The wondrous old schooner was never busier, no, not in the heyday of her flag when her guns were blazing and her people yelling. I doubt whether even a man of war could have given this work the despatch the whaler furnished. She had eight boats and sixty men, and every boat was afloat and alongside us, ready to carry what she could to the ship. I wished to help, but the captain would not let me do so. He kept me walking and talking, asking me scores of questions about the schooner, and all so shrewd that, without appearing reserved, I professed to know little. The great show of clothes puzzled him. He also asked if the crucifix in the cabin was silver. I said I believed it was, fetched it, and asked him to accept it, saying if he would give me the smallest of his boats for it, I should be very much obliged. Oh, yes, says he, you can have a boat, the man would not sail with you without a boat. And after weighing the crucifix without the least exhibition of veneration in his manner, he put it in his pocket, saying he knew a man who would give him a couple of hundred dollars for the thing on his telling him that the pope had blessed it. Hey, but, says I, how do you know the pope has blessed it? Then I'll bless it, cried he, why, am I a cold Johnny cake that my blessing ain't as good as another man's? I was glad I had hidden the black flag, I mean, that I had stowed it away in the cabin of the Frenchman after he was dead. The Yankee needed but the sight to make his suspicions of the original character of the Boca del Dragon flame up. And you may suppose that I was exceedingly anxious he should not be sure that the schooner had been a pirate, lest he might have been tempted to scrutinize her rather more closely than would have been agreeable to me. He asked me if I had met with any money in her, and I answered evasively that in searching the dead man on the rocks I had discovered a few pieces in his pocket, said that I had left them, being much too melancholy and convinced of my approaching end to meddle with such useless commodity. From time to time he would quit me to go to the hatch and sing down orders to the second maid in the hold. How many casks he meant to take I did not know. When he asked me how much I would give I replied, leave me enough to keep me ballasted, that will satisfy me. The heist well demanded caution, but they managed wonderfully well. They never swung more than three casks into a boat, and with this cargo she would row away to the ship that lay, hold too close, and the men in her hoisted the casks aboard. The wind remained light till half past three, then it freshened a bit. Though all hands had knocked off at noon to get dinner, and a fine meal I gave them of ham, tongue, beef, biscuits, wine, and brandy, by half past three they had eased the hold of ten boatloads of casks, besides clearing out the whole of the clothes from the forecastle, along with as much of the bedding as we did not require. And I began to think that my Yankee intended to leave me a clean ship to carry home, though I durst not remonstrate. Yet it was my turn handsomely served, too. The pumps had been cleared and tried, and found to work well, and, which was glad news to me, the well found dry. The running rigging had been overhauled, and it travelled handsomely. The sails had been loosed and hoisted and lowered again, and the canvas found in good condition. The jibboom had been run out, and the stays set up. The stalk of fresh water had been examined and found plentiful, and the casks in the head brought out and secured on the main deck. In short, the American boatswain had worked with the judgment and care of a master rigger, of a great artist in ropes, booms, and sails, and the schooner was left to my hands as fit for any navigation as the whaler that rose and fell on our quarter. But as I have said, at half past three in the afternoon, the breeze began to sit in dark curls upon the water, and there was evidence enough in the haziness in the west, and in the loom of the shoulders of vapor in the dark blue obscure there, to warrant a sackful for this capful presently. I reckon, says the captain to me, after looking into the west, that we'd best knock off for now, there's snow and wind yonder, and we better see all snug while there's time. He called to one of the men, to tell the second mate to come up from below and get the hatches on, and bringing me to the rail he pointed to a boat, and asked if that would do. I said yes, and thanked him heartily for the gift, which was handsome I must say, the boat being a very good one, though to be sure he had got many times its value out of the schooner, and a party of men were forthwith told off to get the boat hoisted and stowed. Now, Mr. Rodney, said the captain, standing in the gangway, how can I serve you further? Sir, said I, you are very obliging, two things I stand sadly in need of, a chart of these waters, and a chronometer. I'll send you a chart, said he, that'll carry you as high as sand roke, but I've only got one chronometer, sir, and can't spare him. Well, then, said I, when you get aboard you'll give me the time by your chronometer, I'll set my watch by it, but I'll thank you very much for the chart, the tracings below are as shapeless as the moon setting in a fog. You shall have the chart, said he, and he called to Wilkinson and the two negroes. Lads, said he, you're quite content, I hope? They answered, yes. You've all three acclaimed upon me for the amount of what's owing you, said he, and when you turn up at New Bedford you shall have it, that's square. I see fifteen hundred dollars a man on this job. If so be as you don't broach too thirstly as you go along, Mr. Rodney. Joe hears a steady, spectable man, and I'll make you a good mate, Cromwell and Billy Pitt are black only in their hides, all else as good as white. He then shook me by the hand, and, calling farewell to Wilkinson and the negroes, climbed into the chains and dropped into his boat. Very highly satisfied I make no doubt with the business he had done that day. A boat's crew were left behind to help us to make sail, but the weather, looking somewhat wild in the west with the red light of the sun among the clouds there, and the dark heave of the swell running into a sickly crimson under the sun and then glowing out dusky again, I got them to treble-reef the mainsail and hoist it, and then, making them, advised them to be off. Then, putting Cromwell to the tiller, I went forward with the others, and set the top sail and four-stay sail, the spritz sail lying furrowed, which would be showy enough of canvas till I saw what the weather was to be like. I kept the top sail aback, waiting for a boat to arrive with my chart, and in a few minutes the boat we had cheered returned with what I wanted. Meanwhile they were shortening sail on the whaler, and though she was no beauty, yet I tell you, I found her as picturesque as any ship I had ever beheld, as she lay with her main top-gallant sail clued up, her top sail yards on the caps, and the heads of men knotting the reef points, showing black over the white cloths, her hull floating up out of the hollow and flinging a wet orange gleam to the west, a tumble of creamy foam about her to her rolling, shadows like the passage of phantom hands hurrying over her sails to the swaying of her masts, and the swelling sea darkling from her into the east. I hollowed my hands, and hailing the captain who was on the quarter-deck, asked him for the time by his chronometer. He flourished his arm and disappeared, and presently returning, showed him to know if I was ready. I put the key in my watch and answered yes, and then he gave me the time. My watch, though antique, was a noble piece of mechanism, and I have little doubt as trustworthy as his chronometer. But I was careful to let it lie snug in my hand. I did not want the negro at the tiller nor the others to see it. They would wonder that so fine a jeweled piece as this should be in the possession of the second mate of a little brig, and it was my business to manage that they never should have caused to wonder at anything in that way. The dusk of the evening came quick out of the east, and the wind freshened with a long cry in our rigging as if the eastern darkness was a foe it was rushing out of the west to meet. I brought the schooner north northeast by my compass and watched her behavior anxiously. The swell was on the quarter, and the wind and sea a trifle abaffed the larboard beam. She leaned a little to the weight of her clothes, but was surprisingly stiff considering how light she was. Wilkinson and the negro came and stood by my side. The sea broke heavily from the weatherbow, and the water roared white under the lee bands and spread a stern in a broad wake of foam. The whaler did not brace his yards up till after we had started, and now hung a pale faint mass in the windy darkness on the quarter. A tincture of rusty red hovered like smoke, colored by the furnace that produces it in the west. But the night had drawn down quick and dark. The washing noise of the water was sharp. The wind piercingly cold, each sweep of the schooner's mass to windward, was followed by a dull roaring of the blast rushing out of the hollows of the canvas. And she swung to the seas with wild yaws, but with regularity sufficient to prove the strict government of the helm. But it was being at sea, homeward bound, too. There was no wish of mine, and gendered by my hideous loneliness on the ice, by my abhorred association with the Frenchmen, that I could not refer to as, down to this moment, gratified. My heart bounded, my spirits could not have been higher had this ocean been the thames, and yonder dark flowing hills of water the banks of Ereth, and the gravacent shore. I turned to the three men. My lads, said I, you prove yourselves fine bold fellows by thus volunteering. Do not fear, if God guides us home to my home, I mean, you shall find a handsome account in this business. Six more chaps would have joined had the old man been willing, said Wilkinson, but best as it is, master, though she's a trifle short-handed. Why, yes, said I, but being foreign aft, you know, it isn't as if we'd got courses to hand and top sails to reef. Ah, ah, that's the truth, cried Billy Pitt, I told her that. Foreign aft makes the difference, don't guess I should have volunteer had she been a brig. There are four of us, said I. You're my chief mate, Wilkinson, choose your watch. I choose Cromwell, said he. He was in my watch aboard the whaler. Very well, I exclaimed, and this being settled in both negroes declaring themselves good cooks, we arranged that they should alternately have the dressing of our victuals, that Wilkinson should have the cabin next to mine, and the negroes, the one in which the Frenchman had slept, one taking the other's place as he was relieved. I asked Wilkinson what he thought of the schooner. He answered that he was watching her. There's nothing to find fault with yet, said he. She's a whale at Roland, certainly. I guess she walks, though. I reckon she's had enough of the sea, like me, and got the scent of the land in her nose. I guess old Noah wasn't far off when her lines was laid. Maybe his sons had the build another. There's something scriptural in her cut. How old's she master? Fifty years and more, said I. There's nothing particular in that, cried Cromwell. I know's a whistle that a hundred and four years old's help me as I stand. I don't know how the whaler's heading, said I, but this schooner's a canoe if we aren't dropping her. Indeed she was scarce visible astern, a mere windy flicker hovering upon the pale flashings of the foam. It might be perhaps that the whaler was making a more northerly course than we, and under very snug canvas, though ours was snug enough, too. But be this as it may, I was mighty pleased with the slipping qualities of the schooner. I could never have dreamt that so odd and ugly a figure of a ship would show such heels. But I think this, we are too prone to view the handy work of our sires with contempt. I do not know that their ships were as fast as ours. They made many good passages. They might have proved themselves fleet or navigators had they had the sextant and chronometer to help them along. The years hence perhaps mankind will be laughing at our crudities, at us by heaven, who flatter ourselves that the art of shipbuilding and navigation will never be carried higher than the pitch to which we have raised them. Cromwell being at the tiller I told Billy Pitt to go below and get supper, instructing him what to dress and how much to melt for a bowl, for as you know there was nothing but spirits and wine to season our repasts with. I saw Cromwell grin lowidly into the binnacle candle flame when he heard me talk of ham, tongue, sweet meats marmalade in the lake for supper, together with a can of hot claret, and knowing sailor's nature middling well I did not doubt that the fare of the schooner would bring the three men more into love with the adventure than even the reward that was to follow it. I had noticed that the bundles which had been sent from the sailor, as belonging to the poor fellows, were meager enough and showed indeed like the end of a long voyage. And I detained Billy Pitt a minute whilst I told them that there was a handsome stock of clothes in the cabins, together with linen, boots, and other articles of that sort, that, though the coats, breeches, and waistcoats were of bright color and old-fashioned, they would keep them as warm as if they had been cut by a tailor of today. These things, said I, you can wear at sea, keeping your own clothes ready to slip on, should we be spoken to, or wear when we arrive in England. Tomorrow they shall be divided among you, and they will become your property. The suit you saw me in today is all that I shall need. Both negroes burst into a most diverting laugh of joy on hearing this. Nothing delights a black man more than color to peril. They had seen the clothes in the forecastle, and guessed the kind of garments I meant to present them with. Whilst supper was getting, I walked the deck with Wilkinson, both of us keeping a bright look out, for it was blowing afresh, the darkness lay thick about us. There might be ice near us, and the schooner was storming under her reefed mainsail, top-sail, and stay-sail through the hollow seas, thundering with a great, roaring seething noise into the trough, and lifting to the foaming slope with her masks wildly aslant. I talked to my companion very freely, being anxious to find out what kind of person he was, and I must say there was something in his conversation that impressed me very favorably. He told me that he had a wife at New Bedford, that he was heartily sick of the sea, and that he hoped the money he would get by this adventure, added to his lay, would enable him to set up for himself a shore. Well, said I, we will see tomorrow what cargo Captain Tucker has left us, but that you may be under no misapprehension, Wilkinson, if we are fortunate to bring the ship safely to England, I will enter into a bond to pay you five hundred pounds sterling for your share one week after the date of our arrival. He answered that if he could get that sum he would be a made man for life, but it's too much to expect, sir, says he. I told him that he had no idea of the value of the cargo. The wines and spirits were of such a quality I would stake my interest in the schooner, and they're fetching a large sum of money. That'll depend, said he, on how much the Captain left us. He helped himself freely, I answered, but we are well off too, you shall judge tomorrow. Then there's the schooner, as she stands, besides a noble stock of stores of all kinds, sales, ropes, tools, ammunition, and several chests of small arms. I tell you I will give you five hundred pounds for your share. His satisfaction was expressed by his silence. But, continued I, we must act with judgment. What we have we must keep. Are the Negroes trustworthy men? Yes, they are honest fellows. I wouldn't a ship with them else. We shall not require much for ourselves, said I, and the rest will batten down and keep snug. There'll be some maneuvering needed, in order to come off clear with this booty when we arrive. But there's plenty of time to think that over. And our business till then is to look after the ship and pray for luck, to keep clear of anything hostile. And then we fell to other talk, in the course of which he told me he was an Englishman born, but having been pressed into a man of war, deserted her at Halifax, and made several voyages in American ships. He was wrecked on the Peruvian coast and became a beachcomber, and then got a berth and a whaler. He married New Bedford and sailed with Captain Tucker. This was his second whaling trip, he said, and he wanted no more. I told him I was glad to learn that he was a countryman of mine, but not surprised. His speech was well larded with Americanisms. But, said I, the true twang is wanting, and, added I, laughing, I should know you for Hampshire for all your reckons and guesses, if I had to eat you, should I be mistaken? The press gang's the best friend the Yankees has, said he a little sheepishly. Do any man suppose I hadn't sooner hail from my native town Southampton than from New Bedford? Half the American folks's is made of Yankees who'd prove hearts of oak, if it wasn't for the press. His candor gratified me as showing that he already looked upon me as a shipmate to be trusted, and, as I have said, this first chat with the man left me strongly disposed to consider myself fortunate in having him as an associate.