But where was the iceberg? We were not a little disappointed when all
Torbay was before us, and nothing but dark water to be seen. To our
surprise, no one had ever seen or heard of it. It must lie off Flat
Rock Harbor, a little bay below, to the north. We agreed with the
supposition that the berg must lie below, and made speedy preparations
to pursue, by securing the only boat to be had in the village,--a
substantial fishing-barge, laden rather heavily in the stern with at
least a cord of cod-seine, but manned by six stalwart men, a motive
power, as it turned out, none too large for the occasion. We embarked
at the foot of a fish-house ladder, being carefully handed down by the
kind-hearted men, and took our seats forward on the little bow-deck.
All ready, they pulled away at their long, ponderous oars with the
skill and deliberation of lifelong practice, and we moved out upon the
broad, glassy swells of the bay towards the open sea, not indeed with
the rapidity of a Yankee club-boat, but with a most agreeable
steadiness, and a speed happily fitted for a review of the shores,
which, under the afternoon sun, were made brilliant with lights and
shadows.
We were presently met by a breeze, which increased the swell, and made
it easier to fail in close under the northern shore, a line of
stupendous precipices, to which the ocean goes deep home. The ride
beneath these mighty cliffs was by far the finest boat-ride of my
life. While they do not equal the rocks of the Saguenay, yet, with all
their appendages of extent, structure, complexion, and adjacent sea,
they are sufficiently lofty to produce an almost appalling sense of
sublimity. The surges lave them at a great height, sliding from angle
to angle, and fretting into foam as they slip obliquely along the face
of the vast walls. They descend as deeply as two hundred feet, and
rise perpendicularly two, three, and four hundred feet from the water.
Their stratifications are up and down, and of different shades of
light and dark, a ribbed and striped appearance that increases the
effect of height, and gives variety and spirit to the surface. At one
point, where the rocks advance from the main front, and form a kind of
headland, the strata, six and eight feet thick, assume the form of a
pyramid,--from a broad base of a hundred yards or more running up to
meet in a point. The heart of this vast cone has partly fallen out,
and left the resemblance of an enormous tent with cavernous recesses
and halls, in which the shades of evening were already lurking, and
the surf was sounding mournfully. Occasionally it was musical, pealing
forth like the low tones of a great organ with awful solemnity. Now
and then, the gloomy silence of a minute was broken by the crash of a
billow far within, when the reverberations were like the slamming of
great doors.
After passing this grand specimen of the architecture of the sea,
there appeared long rocky reaches like Egyptian temples,--old, dead
cliffs of yellowish gray, checked off by lines and seams into squares,
and having the resemblance, where they have fallen out into the ocean,
of doors and windows opening in upon the fresher stone. Presently we
came to a break, where there were grassy slopes and crags
intermingled, and a flock of goats skipping about, or ruminating in
the warm sunshine. A knot of kids--the reckless little creatures--were
sporting along the edge of a precipice in a manner almost painful to
witness. The pleasure of leaping from point to point, where a single
misstep would have dropped them hundreds of feet, seemed to be in
proportion to the danger. The sight of some women, who were after the
goats, reminded the boatmen of an accident which occurred here only a
few days before: a lad playing about the steep fell into the sea, and
was drowned.
We were now close upon the point just behind which we expected to
behold the iceberg. The surf was sweeping the black reef that flanked
the small cape, in the finest style,--a beautiful dance of breakers of
dazzling white and green. As every stroke of the oars shot us forward,
and enlarged our view of the field in which the ice was reposing, our
hearts fairly throbbed with an excitement of expectation. "There it
is!" one exclaimed. An instant revealed the mistake. It was only the
next headland in a fog, which unwelcome mist was now coming down upon
us from the broad waters, and covering the very tract where the berg
was expected to be seen. Farther and farther out the long, strong
sweep of the great oars carried us, until the depth of the bay between
us and the next headland was in full view. It may appear almost too
trifling a matter over which to have had any feeling worth mentioning
or remembering, but I shall not soon forget the disappointment, when
from the deck of our barge, as it rose and sank on the large swells,
we stood up and looked around and saw, that, if the iceberg, over
which our very hearts had been beating with delight for twenty-four
hours, was anywhere, it was somewhere in the depths of that untoward
fog. It might as well have been in the depths of the ocean.
While the pale cloud slept there, there was nothing left for us but to
wait patiently where we were, or retreat. We chose the latter. C. gave
the word to pull for the settlement at the head of the little bay just
mentioned, and so they rounded the breakers on the reef, and we turned
away for the second time, when the game was fairly ours. Even the
hardy fishermen, no lovers of "islands-of-ice," as they call them,
felt for us, as they read in our looks the disappointment, not to say
a little vexation. While on our passage in, we filled a half-hour with
questions and discussions about that iceberg.
"We certainly saw it yesterday evening; and a soldier of Signal Hill
told us that it had been close in at Torbay for several days. And you,
my man there, say that you had a glimpse of it last evening. How
happens it to be away just now? Where do you think it is?"
"Indeed, Sir, he must be out in the fog, a mile or over. De'il a bit
can a man look after a thing in a fog, more nor into a snow-bank.
Maybe, Sir, he's foundered; or he might be gone off to sea,
altogether, as they sometimes do."
"Well, this is rather remarkable. Huge as these bergs are, they escape
very easily under their old cover. No sooner do we think we have them,
than they are gone. No jackal was ever more faithful to his lion, no
pilot-fish to his shark, than the fog to its berg. We will run in
yonder and inquire about it. We may get the exact bearing, and reach
it yet, even in the fog."