THE BRIG "LEDA."
We had twenty-four hands on board; twelve of these were landsmen,
being gunners and batmen, half agriculturists and half fishermen,
who, at times, in summer, left their families to till the scanty
soil, while they fished in open boats among the countless creeks and
bays which indent the peninsula of Avalon; and now in winter, when
all out-of-door operations were suspended, and the land was buried
under fourteen feet of frozen snow--and when the sea, even to the
distance of two hundred miles, would soon be bound with ice, they
became seal-fishers; and, like others, had shipped in the little
fleet which, on St. Patrick's Day, always departed from this
Iro-American isle for the stormy seas that lash the Labrador.
All these men were Irish and oft at sea; I have heard the poor
fellows, when seated under the leech of the foresail, with the icy
spray flying over them to leeward, singing the sweet or merry songs
they had learned at their mothers' knee, in the brave old land they
were fated never to see again--for the story of our crew is a sad one!
We had a negro, who was our cook (of course), Cuffy Snowball--I never
heard him named otherwise; and his adventures had been somewhat
singular.
Cuffy had been a warrior of Congo, and dwelt in a hut on the banks of
the Zaire, where, by dint of "his spear and shaggy shield," he had
amassed a wealth of baskets, gourds, carved calibashes, and wooden
spoons from cowards who could not defend them. He could tell, with
great simplicity, innumerable stories of his combats with other
tribes, and with lions, leopards, buffaloes, crocodiles, and
hippopotami; and in evidence of his prowess, he wore on his left arm
a bracelet formed entirely of lions' teeth--which form a kind of
"Order of Valour" in Congo. He had been very happy in his wigwam,
till the daughter of a Chenoo or chief--a beautiful damsel, with her
teeth painted blue and the bone of a shark through her nose--espied
him one day, and desired to have him for her husband, as it is the
right of these ladies to do.
The chosen, of whom she becomes absolute mistress and proprietress,
dare not refuse, so poor Cuffy was married to the Chenoo; there were
great rejoicings, and three prisoners of war were devoured at the
marriage-feast.
But his sable fair one tired of him in a short time, and by certain
artful means decoyed him one evening to the mouth of the Zaire, and
there sold him into slavery.
The slave-ship was wrecked; but Cuffy got ashore on the island of
Jamaica, where he was very much surprised to see some of his
countrymen, dressed and armed like white men, in coats of a red
colour, with light blue trousers; so he enlisted as a soldier in one
of her Majesty's West India Regiments.
Ere long Cuffy was made a corporal; and though he ground his sharp
teeth now and then when thinking of his wigwam in Congo, and the
treacherous Chenoo his wife, he was very happy, for he had plenty of
rice, yams, and sangaree, and as a corporal, carried his black snub
nose very high indeed!
From Jamaica his company was ordered to Trinidad, and the whole, a
hundred in number, were shipped on board of a Yankee barque which had
been freighted for the purpose. Her skipper, on seeing such a choice
lot of tall and handsome young negroes, proposed to their captain (a
reckless fellow, who was steeped to the lips in debt and all kinds of
West Indian dissipation) to bear away for the Southern States of the
Union, and there sell the whole as slaves. Singular as it may seem,
the captain, who owed more money in Trinidad than he could ever hope
to pay, accepted the proposal, and the soldiers of this company of
H.M. West India Regiment, instead of garrisoning the isle where the
"mother of the cocoa" blooms, were duly landed at Charleston in South
Carolina, where they were all sold to the highest bidders. The
skipper and captain put the money in their pockets, leaving the
astonished lieutenant and ensign to get back to headquarters in
Jamaica as they best could.
Cuffy's new master proved a severe one, and under his lash he often
sighed for the rice, yams, and his quiet duty as sentinel under a
sunshade, or the high authority he could wield as corporal over
Scipio, Sambo, or Julius Cæsar, in the days when he was the white
man's comrade; but one day Cuffy lost his temper, and gave his master
a tap on the head with a sugar-hoe!
Then, without waiting to see whether or not he had killed him, he
fled into the woods--crossed the Savannah river, and getting on board
a British vessel became a sailor, and within one year thereafter, was
shipped, as cook, on board the _Leda_.
The rest of our crew were all steady and hardy men, and Paul Reeves,
the senior mate, was the model of an English sailor.
The wind had changed during the night; thus, when next day dawned, we
were still in sight of Cape St. Francis--a snow-covered headland,
which shone white and drearily, as the sun came up from the blue sea.
Hartly expressed some impatience at our progress as we trod to and
fro aft the mainmast in the clear, cold, bracing air of the morning,
while the odour of a hot breakfast, which Cuffy was preparing, came
in whiffs from the galley.
"Never mind," said I; "the wind will soon change again--I can see by
the clouds there are contrary currents overhead; and when once among
the ice, we shall have great fun!"
"Fun! I don't know much about that," said Hartly, who, like every
seaman, was put in a sulky mood by a foul wind.
"We shall have perils to encounter!"
"Perils may be fun to one so young as you, Jack," said Hartly,
pausing thoughtfully; "however, in our trade, I have ever found that
peril and profit go together. Think over all we have read of what
Parry, Ross, Scoresby, Franklin, and Kane underwent in those regions
of ice and snow; and I do not remember the word _fun_ occurring once
in their narratives."
"Well," said I, abashed by his monitory tone, "we shall have
excitement, at all events."
"Both excitement and danger, I grant you," said he, as we resumed the
usual quarter-deck step and trod to and fro again: "it is a
well-paying speculation, a sealing expedition; and, by Jove! it would
need to be so to compensate poor fellows for all they undergo in such
a rigorous season, and in such seas as those which sweep round the
frozen rocks and shores of Newfoundland and the drearier Labrador in
the blustering month of March. Some crews are frozen in, far at sea,
for months and months, till all perish of starvation; others are lost
in detached parties on the ice-fields, in fogs, and are never found
again. Some are swept out to sea on broken floes, or fall through
holes in the ice, and are never more seen. Then the strongest ships
are often crushed, as you would crush an egg upon an anvil, by the
ice-fields, masses of which, perhaps a hundred miles in extent, are
whirled, dashed, and split against each other by opposite currents,
with a sound so frightful, that one might well imagine the last day
was at hand, or that chaos had come again! Ah, we should have some
profit, after encountering all that!"
"I should think so," said I while glancing at my watch, and
reflecting that Mr. Uriah Skrew would, about this time, find the
farewell letter I had left for him on my desk in the counting-room.
"But I do not say all this, Jack Manly, to cast you down," said
Hartly, laughing; "for you will always be safe with me, as you know I
never can be drowned, while wearing _this_ ring."
"Do you really believe in it?" I inquired.
"Why, I don't know, Jack; but I should not like to lose it now: we
sailors have strange fancies at times, but, with all our alleged
superstition, are, I cannot help thinking, more religious than you
landsmen. One who finds his daily bread upon the waters, and is for
ever struggling with the wild elements by night and day, must at
times think solemnly of the mighty Hand and Will that fashioned them
out of thin air."
"But your ring?"
"She who gave it me was a strange old woman, whom we called Mother
Jensdochter--a kind of Norna of the Fitful Head, who lived, or for
aught I know, lives still, in a hut at the base of Mount Hecla, in
Iceland. I was wrecked there, when on a voyage in the _Princess_, of
Hull, bound for Archangel, five years ago. This witch occupied a
regular Icelandic hut. It was built of wreck and drift wood, caulked
with moss and earth, roofed with rafters of whale-ribs covered with
turf, and having in the centre a hole for a chimney. Her bed was a
mere box of seaweed, feathers, and down; but I seldom saw any house
of a better kind in Iceland."
"Well?"
"She used to sell fair winds or foul, blessings or maledictions, as
the matter might be, to the fishermen of the fiords. She would give,
as the simple folks believed, a fair wind that would carry a craft as
far as Cape Horn without lifting tack or sheet; or a curse that would
sink the _Royal Albert_ line-o'-battle ship, for a loaf of ground
codfish, or a bottle of hockettle oil for the iron cruse that hung
from her whalebone rafters; but she conceived a strong regard for me,
because I had saved her miserable life in a snowstorm one night, and
carried her in my arms--ugh! what a precious armful she was!--to her
wigwam. She used to assure me that whenever there was a battle being
fought anywhere in the world, the terrible mountain that overhung her
dwelling vomited black ashes and stones; and then, as she sat at her
door, with her long grey locks hanging over her fierce red eyes, she
could see troops of infernal spirits carrying the souls of the
damned, shrieking through the air, towards the flaming crater. The
noise of the ice-floes dashed against the shore, she alleged to be
the groans of others, who were doomed to endure excess of cold for
eternity, even as those in Hecla were to endure excess of heat; and
she had many other fancies wild enough to make a poor Jack Tar's hair
stand up on end!
"Near her hut stood a conical knoll, covered with fine green grass,
and thence named the Groenbierg. There, she asserted, by putting an
ear to the ground, she could hear the large-headed gnomes and little
bandy-legged dwarfs, who dwelt in it, busy at work, fashioning
trinkets and curiously carved goblets--especially at Yule, where the
clink of their tiny hammers rang like chime-bells on little anvils;
and the puff of their bellows and forge could be heard, with the
jingle of gold and silver coins, and opening and shutting of
quaintly-carved and iron-bound treasure-chests, which they were
shoving to and fro, and hiding in the bowels of the mountain. She
fell asleep there one evening, and dreamed that the Grcenbierg
opened, and there came forth a little man in a red cloak and pair of
puffy breeches, with a white beard the entire length of his body
(that is, about two feet,) and he bestowed this ring upon her, with a
promise that whoever wore it was free from all danger hereafter. He
then vanished into a mole-track on the hill-side. Mother Jensdochter
awoke, and found the ring upon her finger, where it remained, until,
in a burst of gratitude, she bestowed it on me, with the comfortable
assurance (I give you the yarn, Jack, for what it is worth) that I
'could never be drowned while it remained on my finger.' Hans
Peterkin--forward there!"
"Ay, ay, sir."
"Brace those foreyards sharper up; set the fore and main staysails
and foretopmast staysail; and keep her a point or so further off the
land.--And now, Jack, come below, for Cuffy has gone down with the
bacon and coffee, piping hot, too."
Leaving Hans, the second mate, in charge of the deck, with orders to
announce the slightest indication of a change of wind, we descended
to breakfast with the appetites of hawks.
On this morning only two of our sealing companions were visible, and
these were at the far horizon to the eastward; so as we were forced
by change of wind to hug the land, we soon lost sight of them, and,
ere noonday, were alone upon the sea.