stood in the doorway, and sent off each with such a merry blessing that
it lasted long after the doors of the other houses were closed. Even the
forlorn Mrs. Starkey seemed to go back almost as happy as when she had
issued forth in the evening with her newly found nephew. The sudden
gleam of hope which his unlooked-for coming had let in upon a toilsome
and thankless life--for we know more about her position in Mr. Manlius's
household than we have been at liberty to disclose--had, indeed, gone
out in darkness; but the Christmas merriment, and the kindness which for
one evening had flowed around her, had so fertilized one little spot in
her life, that, however dreary her pilgrimage, nothing could destroy the
bright oasis. It gave hope of others, too, no less verdant; and with
this hope uppermost in her confused brain the lonely widow entered the
land of Christmas dreams. Let us hope, too, that the pachydermatous Mr.
Manlius felt the puncture of her disappointment, and that Miss Pix's
genial warmth had made him cast off a little the cloak of selfishness in
which he had wrapped himself; for what else could have made him say to
his echoing wife that night, "Caroline, suppose we let Eunice take the
children to the panorama to-morrow. It's a quarter more; but she was
rather disappointed about that young fellow"? The learned Doctor
Chocker, who had, in all his days, never found a place to compare with
his crowded study for satisfaction to his soul, for the first time now,
as he entered it, admitted to himself that Miss Pix's arbor-like parlor
and Mrs. Blake's simple room had something that his lacked; and in the
frozen little bedroom where he nightly shivered, in rigid obedience to
some fancied laws of health, the old man was aware of some kindly
influence thawing away the chill frost-work which he had suffered to
sheathe his heart. Nor did Mr. Le Clear toast his slippered feet before
his cheery fire without an uncomfortable misgiving that his philosophy
hardly compassed the sphere of life.
Christmas-eve in the court was over. Strange things had happened; and,
for one night at least, the Five Sisters had acted as one family. Little
Miss Pix, reviewing the evening, as she dropped off to sleep, could not
help rubbing her hands together, and emitting little chuckles. Such a
delightful evening as she had had! and meaning to surprise others, she
had herself been taken into a better surprise still; and here,
recollecting the happy union of the lone, but not lonely, Mrs. Blake
with a child of her old age, as it were, Miss Pix must laugh aloud just
as the midnight clock was sounding. Bless her neighborly soul, she has
ushered in Christmas-day with her laugh of good-will toward men. The
whole hymn of the angels is in her heart; and with it let her sleep till
the glorious sunshine awakes her.
ICE AND ESQUIMAUX.
CHAPTER II.
THE ICE IN ITS GLORY.
_June 17._--On this anniversary of the Battle of Bunker's Hill we sailed
from Sleupe Harbor. Little Mecatina, with its blue perspective and
billowy surface, lifted itself up astern under flooding sunshine to tell
us that this relentless coast could have a glory of its own; but we
looked at it with dreamy, forgetful eyes, thinking of the dear land, now
all tossed into wild surge and crimson spray of war, which, how far
soever away, is ever present to the hearts of her true children.
Next day we dropped into the harbor of Caribou Island, a
mission-station, and left again on the 20th, after a quiet
Sunday,--Bradford having gone with others to church, and come back much
moved by the bronze-faced earnestness, and rough-voiced, deep-chested
hymning of the fisherman congregation. Far ahead we saw the strait full
of ice. Not that the ice itself could be seen; but the peculiar,
blue-white, vertical striae, which stuccoed the sky far along the
horizon, told experienced eyes that ice was there. Away to the right
towered the long heights of Newfoundland, intensely blue, save where,
over large spaces, they shone white with snow. They surprised us by
their great elevation, and by the sharp and straight escarpments with
which they descended. Here and there was a gorge cut through as with a
saw. We then took all this in good faith, on the fair testimony of our
eyes. But experience brought instruction,--as it will in superficial
matters, whether in deeper ones or no. In truth, this appearance was
chiefly a mirage caused by ice.
For, of all solemn prank-players, of all mystifiers and magicians, ice
is the greatest. Coming out of its silent and sovereign dreamland in the
North, it brings its wand, and goes wizard-working down the coast. A
spell is about it; enchantment is upon it like a garment; weirdness and
illusion are the breath of its nostrils. Above it, along the horizon, is
a strange columned wall, an airy Giant's Causeway, pale blue, paling
through ethereal gray into snow. Islands quit the sea, and become
islands in the sky, sky-foam and spray seen along their bases. Hills
shoot out from their summits airy capes and headlands, or assume upon
their crowns a wide, smooth table, as if for the service of genii. Ships
sail, bergs float, in the heavens. Here a vast obelisk of ice shoots
aloft, half mountain high; you gaze at it amazed, ecstatic,--calculating
the time it will take to come up with it,--whistling, if you are still
capable of that levity, for a wind. But now it begins to waver, to dance
slowly, to shoot up minarets and take them back, to put forth arms which
change into wands, wave and disappear; and ere your wonder has found a
voice, it rolls itself together like a scroll, drops nearly to the
ocean-level, and is but a gigantic ice-floe after all!
The day fell calm; a calm evening came; the sea lay in soft, shining
undulation, not urgent enough to exasperate the drooping sails. The ship
rose and declined like a sleeper's pulse. We were all under a spell.
Soon the moon, then at her full, came up, elongating herself laterally
into an oval, whose breadth was not more than three fifths its length;
her shine on the water likewise stretching along the horizon, sweet and
fair like childhood, not a ray touching the shadowed water between.
Presently, as if she discerned and did not disdain us,--wiser than
"positive philosophers" in her estimate of man,--she gathered together
her spreading shine, and threw it down toward us in a glade of scarcely
more than her own breadth, of even width, and sharply defined at the
sides. It was a regular roadway on the water, intensest gold verging
upon orange, edged with an exquisite, delicate tint of scarlet, running
straight and firm as a Roman road all the way from the meeting-place of
sky and sea to the ship. Or rather, not quite to the ship; for, when
near at hand, it broke off into golden globes, which, under the
influence of the light swell, came towards us by softly sudden leaps,
deepening and deepening as they came, till at the last leap they
disappeared, more shining than ever, far down in the liquid, lucent
heart of the sea. It was impossible to feel that these had faded, so
triumphant was their close. Rather, one felt that they had been elected
to a more glorious office,--had gone, perhaps, to light some hall of
Thetis, or some divine, spotless revel of sea-nymphs.
I had gone below, when, at about ten o'clock, there was a hail from the
deck.
"Come up and see a crack in the water!"
"A what?"
"A crack in the water!"
"Not joking?"
"No, indeed; come and see."
Up quickly! this is the day of wonders! It was a line of brilliant
phosphorescence, exceedingly brilliant, about two inches wide, perfectly
sharp at the edges, which extended along the side of the ship, and ahead
and astern out of sight. "Crack in the water" is the seaman's name for
it. I have been a full year on the water, but never saw it save this
once, and had never heard of it before.
At half past eleven, the Parson and I went on deck, and read ordinary
print as rapidly as by daylight. It took some ten seconds to get
accustomed to the light, being fresh from the glare of the kerosene
lamp; but afterwards we read aloud to each other with entire ease and
fluency.
At a quarter past two, Captain Handy, a man made of fine material, with
an eye for the beautiful as well as for right-whales, broke my sleep
with a gentle touch, and whispered, "Come on deck, and see what a
morning it is." What a morning, indeed! Thanks, old comrade! Call me
next time, when there is such to see; and if I am too weak to get out of
my berth, take me up in those strong arms, across that broad,
billow-like chest of yours, and bear me to the deck!
It was dead calm,--no, _live_ calm, rather; for never was calm so vivid.
The swell had fallen; but the sea breathes and lives even in its sleep.
Dawn was already blushing, "celestial rosy red, love's proper hue," in
the--_east_, I was about to say, but _north_ would be truer. The centre
of its roseate arch was not more than a point (by compass) east of
north. The lofty shore rose clear, dark, and sharp against the morning
red; the sea was white,--white as purity, and still as peace; the moon
hung opposite, clothed and half hidden in a glorified mist; a schooner
lay moveless, dark-sailed, transformed into a symbol of solitude and
silence, beneath. I thought of the world's myriad sleepers, and would
fain have played Captain Handy to them all. But Nature is infinitely
rich, and can afford to draw costly curtains about the slumber of her
darling. For, without man, she were a mother ever in anguish of travail,
and ever wanting a child to nurse with entire joy at her breast. Sleep
on, man, while, with shadows and stars, with dying and dawning of day,
not forgetting sombreness of cloud and passion of storm, the eternal
mother dignifies your slumber, and waits till her _two_ suns arise and
shine together!
Morning,--ice, worlds of it, the wide straits all full! A light wind had
been fanning us for the last two or three hours; and now the ice lay
fair in view, just ahead. We had not calculated upon meeting it here. At
Port Mulgrave they told us that the last of it had passed through with a
rush about a week before. Bradford was delighted, and quickly got out
his photographic sickle to reap this unexpected harvest: for the wise
man had brought along with him a fine apparatus and a skilful
photographer. In an hour or two the schooner was up with it, and finding
it tolerably open, while the wind was a zephyr, and the sea smooth as a
pond, we entered into its midst. Water-fowl--puffins, murres, duck, and
the like--hung about it, furnishing preliminary employment to those of
our number who sought sport or specimens. It was a delightsome day, the
whole of it: atmosphere rare, pure, perfect; sun-splendor in deluge;
land, a cloud of blue and snow on one side, and a tossed and lofty
paradise of glowing gray, purple, or brown, on the other. The day would
have been hot but for being tempered by the ice. This seasoned its
shining warmth with a crisp, exhilarating quality, making the sunshine
and summer mildness like iced sherry or Madeira. It is unlike anything
known in more southern climates. There are days in March that would
resemble it, could you take out of them the damp, the laxness of nerve,
and the spring melancholy. There are days in October that come nearer;
but these differ by their delicious half-languors, while, by their
gorgeousness of autumn foliage, and their relation to the oldening year,
they are made quite unlike in spirit. This day warmed like summer and
braced like winter.
Once fairly taken into the bosom of the ice-field, we had eyes for
little else. Its forms were a surprise, so varied and so beautiful. I
had supposed that field-ice was made up of flat cakes,--and _cake_ of
all kinds is among the flattest things I know! But here if was,
simulating all shapes, even those of animated creatures, with the art of
a mocking bird,--and simulating all in a material pure as amber, though
more varied in color. One saw about him cliffs, basaltic columns, frozen
down, arabesques, fretted traceries, sculptured urns, arches supporting
broad tables or sloping roofs, lifted pinnacles, boulders, honey-combs,
slanting strata of rock, gigantic birds, mastodons, maned lions,
couching or rampant,--a fantasy of forms, and, between all, the shining,
shining sea. In sunshine, these shapes were of a glistening white
flecked with stars, where at points the white was lost in the glisten;
in half shadow the color was gray, in full shadow aerial purple; while,
wherever the upper portions projected over the sea, and took its
reflection, they often did, the color was an infinite, emerald intensity
of green; beneath all which, under water, was a base or shore of dead
emerald, a green paled with chalk. Blue was not this day seen, perhaps
because this was shore-ice rather than floe,--made, not like the floes,
of frozen sea, but of compacted and saturated snow.
Just before evening came, when the courteous breeze folded its light
fans fell asleep, we left this field behind, and, seeing all clear
ahead, supposed the whole had been passed. In truth, as had soon to
learn, this twenty-mile strip of shore-ice was but the advance-guard of
an immeasurable field or army of floe. For there came down the northern
coast, in this summer of 1864, more than a thousand miles' length, with
a breadth of about a hundred miles, of floe-ice in a field almost
unbroken! More than a thousand miles, by accurate computation! The
courtesy of the Westerner--who, having told of seeing a flock of pigeons
nine miles long, so dense as to darken the sun at noonday, and meeting
objections from a skeptical Yankee, magnanimously offered, as a personal
favor, to "take out a quarter of a mile from the thinnest part"--cannot
be imitated here. I must still say _more_ than a thousand miles,--and
this, too, the second run of ice!
Captain Linklater, master of the Moravian supply-ship, a man of acute
observation and some science, had, as he afterwards told me at Hopedale,
measured the rate of travel of the ice, and found it to be twenty-seven
miles a day. Our passengers were sure they saw it going at the rate of
three or four miles an hour. Captain Handy, looking with experienced
eye, pronounced this estimate excessive, and said it went from one to
one and a half miles an hour,--twenty-four to thirty-six miles a day.
Captain Linklater, however, had not trusted the question to his
judgment, but established the rate by accurate scientific observation.
Now we were headed off by the ice and driven into as harbor on the 22d
of June; we left Hopedale and began our return on the 4th of August; and
between these two periods the ice never ceased running. The Moravian
ship, which entered the harbor of Hopedale half a mile ahead of us, on
the 31st of July, pushed through it, and found it eighty-five miles
wide. Toward the last it was more scattered, and at times could not be
seen from the coast. But it was there; and on the day before our
departure from Hopedale, August 3, this cheering intelligence
arrived:--"The ice is pressing in upon the islands outside, and an
easterly wind would block us in!"
What becomes of this ice? Had one lain in wait for it two hundred miles
farther south, it is doubtful if he would have seen of it even a
vestige. It cannot melt away so quickly: a day amidst it satisfies any
one of so much. Whither does it go?
Put that question to a sealer or fisherman, and he will answer, "_It
sinks._"
"But," replies that cheerful and confident gentleman, Mr. Current
Impression, "ice doesn't sink; ice floats." Grave Science, too, says the
same.
I believe that Ignorance is right for once. You are becalmed in the
midst of floating ice. The current bears you and it together; but next
morning the ice has vanished! You rub your eyes, but the fact is one not
to be rubbed out; the ice was, and isn't, there! No evidence exists that
it can fly, like riches; therefore I think it sinks. I have seen it,
too, not indeed in the very act of sinking, but so water-logged as
barely to keep its nose out. A block four cubic feet in dimension lay at
a subsequent time beside the ship, and there was not a portion bigger
than a child's fist above water. Watching it, again, when it has been
tolerably well sweltered, you will see air-bubbles incessantly escaping.
Evidently, the air which it contains is giving place to water. Now it is
this air, I judge, which keeps it afloat; and when the process of
displacement has sufficiently gone on, what can it do but drown, as men
do under the circumstances? This reasoning may be wrong; but the fact
remains. The reasoning is chiefly a guess; yet, till otherwise informed,
I shall say, the ice-_lungs_ get full of water, and it goes down.
But we have wandered while the light waned, and now return. It was a
gentle evening. That "day, so cool, so calm, so bright," died sweetly,
as such a day should. The moon rose, not a globe, but a tall cone of
silver,--silver that _blushed_; ice-magic again. But she recovered
herself, and reigned in her true shape, queen of the slumber-courts; and
the world slept, and we with it; and in our cabin the sleep-talk was
quieted to ripples of murmur.
_June 22._--Rush! Rush! The water was racing past the ship's side, close
to my ear, as I awoke early. On deck: the strait ahead was packed from
shore to shore with ice, like a boy's brain with fancies; and before a
jolly gale we were skimming into the harbor of Belles Amours. Five days
here: tedious. The main matters here were a sand-beach, a girl who read
and loved Wordsworth, a wood-thrush, a seal-race, a "killer's" head, and
a cascade.
Item, sand-beach, with green grass, looking like a meadow, beyond. Not
intrinsically much of an affair. The beach, on close inspection, proved
soft and dirty, the grass sedge, the meadow a bog. In the distance,
however, and as a variety in this unswarded cliff-coast, it was sweet, I
laugh now to think how sweet, to the eyes.
Item, girl. There was one house in the harbor; not another within three
miles. Here dwelt a family who spoke English,--not a patois, but
English,--rare in Labrador as politicians in heaven. The French
Canadians found in Southern Labrador speak a kind of skim-milk French,
with a little sour-milk English; the Newfoundland Labradorians say
"Him's good for he," and in general use a very "scaly" lingo, learned
from cod-fish, one would think. Here was a mother, acceptable to Lindley
Murray, who had instructed her children. One of these--S----, our best
social explorer, found her out--owned and read a volume of Plato, and
had sent to L'anse du Loup, twenty-four miles, to borrow a copy of
Wordsworth. This was her delight. She had copied considerable portions
of it with her own hand, and could repeat from memory many and many a
page.
"Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air."
But Heaven has its own economies; and perhaps floral "sweetness" is
quite as little wasted upon the desert as upon Beacon Street or Fifth
Avenue.
Item, a bird. We were seeking trout,--only to obtain a minnow tricked in
trout-marks. The boat crept slowly up a deep, solemn cove, over which,
on either side, hung craggy and precipitous hills; while at its head was
a slope covered with Liliputian forest, through which came down a broad
brook in a series of snowy terraces. It was a superb day, bright and
bracing,--just bracing enough to set the nerves without urging them, and
exalt one to a sense of vigorous repose. The oars lingered, yet not
lazily, on the way; there seemed time enough for anything. At length we
came, calm, wealthy in leisure, silently cheerful, to a bit of pleasant
yellow beach between rocks. And just as our feet were touching the tawny
sands,--
"The sweetest throat of Solitude
Unbarred her silver gates, and slowly hymned
To the great heart of Silence, till it beat
Response with all its echoes: for from out
That far, immortal orient, wherein
His soul abides 'mid morning skies and dews,
A wood-thrush, angel of the tree-top heaven,
Poured clear his pure soprano through the place,
Deepening the stillness with diviner calm,
That gave to Silence all her inmost heart
In melody."
It was a regal welcome. What is like the note of the wood-thrush?--so
full of royalty and psalm and sabbath! Regal in reserve, however, no
less than utterance, the sovereign songster gave a welcome only, and
then was silent; while a fine piping warbler caught up the theme, and
discoursed upon it with liberal eloquence. The place to hear the song of
the wood-thrush is wherever you can attain to that enjoyment by walking
five or ten miles; the place so to hear it that the hearing shall be, by
sober estimation, among the memorable events of your life, is at the
head of a solemn, sunny cove, on three yards of tawny beach, in the
harbor of Belles Amours, Labrador.
Item, seal-race. The male seals fight with fury in the season of their
rude loves. Two of these had had a battle; the vanquished was fleeing,
the victor after him. They were bounding from the water like dolphins.
For some time I thought them such, though I have seen dolphins by
thousands. It was a surprise to see these leisurely and luxurious
animals spattering the water in such an ecstasy of amative rage.
Item, "killer." This is a savage cetacean, probably the same with the
"thrasher," about fifteen feet in length, blunt-nosed, strong of jaw,
with cruel teeth. On its back is a fin beginning about two thirds the
way from tip to tail, running close to the latter, and then sloping away
to a point, like the jib of a ship. In the largest this is some five
feet long on the back, and eight or ten feet in height,--so large, that,
when the creature is swimming on the surface, a strong side-wind will
sometimes blow it over. It is a blue-fish on a big scale, or a Semmes in
the sea, hungry as famine, fierce as plague, dainty as a Roman epicure,
yet omnivorous as time. The seal is its South-Down mutton, the tongue of
the whale its venison; for whenever its numbers are sufficient, it will
attack this huge cetacean, and torture him till he submits and gives a
horrible feast to their greed. Captain Handy had seen thirty or forty of
them at this business. They fly with inconceivable fury at their victim,
aiming chiefly at the lip, tearing great mouthfuls away, which they
instantly reject while darting for another. The bleeding and bellowing
monster goes down like a boulder from a cliff, shoots up like a shell
from a mortar, beats the sea about him all into crimsoned spray with his
tail; but plunge, leap, foam as he may, the finny pirates flesh their
teeth in him still, still are fresh in pursuit, until at length, to end
one torment by submitting to another, the helpless giant opens his
mouth, and permits these sea-devils to devour the quivering morsel they
covet. A big morsel; for the tongue of the full-sized right-whale weighs
a ton and a half, and yields a ton of oil. The killer is sometimes
confounded with the grampus. The latter is considerably larger, has a
longer and slenderer jaw, less round at the muzzle, smaller teeth, and
"isn't so clean a made fish"; for, in nautical parlance, cetaceans are
still fish. Killers frequently try to rob whalers of their prize, and
sometimes actually succeed in carrying it down, despite the lances and
other weapons with which their attack is so strenuously resisted.
Item, cascade. A snowy, broken stripe down a mountain-side; taken to be
snow till the ear better informed the eye. Fine; but you need not go
there to see.
_June 26._--Off to Henley Harbor, sixty-five miles, at the head of the
Strait of Belle Isle. Belle Isle itself--sandstone, rich, the Professor
said, in ancient fossils--lay in view. The anchor went down in deep
water, close beside the notable Castle Island.