ON AN ICEBERG.
Soon after this, in a dark and howling night, we were blown from our
moorings, and forced to run before the wind, with our topmasts
struck, and only our jib and a close-reefed foresail set, as we were
in the dangerous vicinity of innumerable broken floes, or masses
detached from the field-ice: the decks were so slippery that one
could scarcely keep afoot; and amid the arrowy sleet and snow that
rendered all so murky and obscure around us, and which stung the face
like showers of sharp needles, we were hurried on, expecting every
moment a collision which would stave our bows or snap the masts by
the board.
We were repeatedly frost-bitten in the ears, nose, or hands; but snow
scraped up in the scuppers and promptly applied, soon brought a hot
glow in the benumbed member, and proved our best, indeed our only
remedy.
All who could cultivate beards had permitted them to grow in Crimean
luxuriance, as any attempt at soapsudding in those latitudes produced
a coating of ice in a moment.
Surging on through blinding drift and pitchy darkness, amid the
howling of the fierce tempest, the _Leda_ went bravely! Her spars
and cordage straining and groaning, her timbers creaking, while wave
after wave broke over her decks and hardy crew, each leaving its
legacy of ice upon everything. From time to time we were conscious
of a rude shock, or a furious scraping sound, as she grazed upon the
passing floes; and now, to add to the gloomy horrors of that
tempestuous night, Paul Reeves, who was keeping an anxious look-out
forward, shouted back through his trumpet--
"Icebergs ahead! Hard to port, or we are foul of one!"
"Hard to port," echoed the two men at the wheel; sharply it revolved,
and in a moment we swept under the frowning cliff of a stupendous
iceberg, the cold white mass of which was discernible through the
gloom, as the arm of the mainyard grazed it!
We passed on and it vanished in the darkness astern.
"Thank Heaven!"
"Thank God!"
"A narrow escape!"
Such were the muttered exclamations of our half-frozen crew; but at
that instant an icy sea broke over us, and two men were swept into a
watery grave, without the possibility of our rendering them the least
assistance.
A minute had scarcely elapsed before we were sensible of a fierce
concussion; the masts reeled and the icicles fell in a shower as they
were shaken from our stiffened top-hamper. Then the brig's head was
tilted up and her stern correspondingly depressed; but still impelled
by the fury of the wind, she continued to advance upwards and _out of
the water_, as if she was being steamed up a landing-slip, or into a
dry dock.
"We are ashore--beached!" said some one, beholding this phenomenon.
"We are foul of an iceberg," exclaimed Hartly, while the brig
continued slowly to ascend till little more than the sternpost and
counter were in the water; then she heeled over to port and remained
there, wedged, with her jib-boom broken off at the cap, and dangling
in the jib-guys, her canvas bellying out so furiously that we thought
the masts would be carried away before the benumbed fingers of the
seamen could get it handed.
In a trice the _Leda_ was under bare poles, while around us the
tempestuous wind was bellowing, the surf was roaring, and vast blocks
of ice, many tons in weight, were crashing against each other, adding
to the dread horrors of this bewildering catastrophe!
It is impossible to depict the dismay of all on board, when finding
the vessel in this situation--high and dry upon a berg; for,
influenced by the storm, by the wind, or the slight additional weight
of the brig and her cargo, we felt the monstrous mass on which we
were wedged, _oscillating_ and gradually heeling forward ahead; thus
the stern of the _Leda_ was raised until her hull remained in the air
horizontally, just as she usually sat in the water.
In blank horror we endured the gloomy hours of that northern night,
amid the drift, the sleet, and a darkness so dense that we could in
no way discover our real position, or how to extricate ourselves from
it.
One fact, we were alarmingly alive to. It was this:--The sea no
longer dashed against the hull of our vessel, which lay on her side,
well careened over to port; and though we could _hear_ the roaring of
the waves, amid the oppressive gloom that enveloped us, we could no
longer _see_ them.
As day broke the tempest gradually lulled, and the sleet, the snow,
and wind passed away together. Then the increasing light enabled us
to see the perils of our situation.
We were nearly eighty feet above the ocean, on the flat, table-like
summit of a mighty iceberg; which, though it had presented a sloping
face _up_ which we had run last night before the furious wind and
sea, had now changed its position by heeling over, as icebergs always
do, from time to time, when their base in the ocean becomes
honeycombed and decayed.*
* Her Majesty's steam ship _Intrepid_, when commanded by Captain
Cator, was similarly carried bodily up the face of a berg, and left
high and dry in air, without injury.
The sky was clear now to the horizon; the icefield on which we had
pursued our hunting so successfully was no longer visible; but about
half a mile distant lay the island of floating ice we had escaped
last night; and around for miles, far as the eye could reach, the
sea, still perturbed by the past storm, was flecked by white floes,
the ruins probably of a third berg, which had been shattered by the
waves or by being dashed against others.
Both these icebergs were several miles in circumference. The summit
of ours was flat as a bowling-green; but that portion on which the
brig rested was soft, pulpy, and rotten by its long immersion in the
sea.
The other had many spiral pinnacles, some of them being several
hundred feet in height; and, save for the peril in which we were
situated, I could have admired the sublimity of that cold and silent
mass--so dazzlingly white when the beams of the rising sun fell on
it, so indigo-blue in its shadows--for it resembled a fairy isle,
which had steep hills, deep valleys, and chasms all fashioned of
alabaster; while around its base was a thick fringe of frozen foam of
snowy brilliance.
While we were gazing upon it that morning, one of its loftiest
pinnacles, with a mighty crash, fell thundering into the sea.
The _Leda_ was soon frozen into the bed she had ploughed by her keel
in the ice; and _how_ to get her launched again, _how_ to descend
from our perilous eminence, were the questions we asked of each
other, and which no one could answer.
The summit of the berg was nearly a mile in circumference, and, as I
have said, was more than eighty feet from the water. This we
ascertained as a fact, though there was no small peril in venturing
from the ship upon its surface, which was so glassy and smooth that
in some places the lightest among us would have slipped off, as if
shot by a catapulta, into the sea below.
Council and deliberation availed us nothing. Even Hartly, Reeves,
and Hans, with all their united skill, foresight, and seamanship,
found their invention fail in suggesting any means of release.
"There is nothing for it but to wait the event," said Hartly, after a
long and solemn council.
"But suppose that we waited a month, captain," asked Reeves,
gloomily, "where would our provisions be?--where our fresh water?"
"We may be driven south into warmer latitudes where the bergs melt
rapidly in the sunshine."
"But we may be drifted north into latitudes where the bergs freeze
harder, and where ice may close around us for ever," said Hans
Peterkin.
"Or," said one of the seamen, who all crowded anxiously to this
conference, which we held around the capstan-head, "the berg may
_capsize_, and what will become of us then?"
"Hold hard, my lads," exclaimed Hartly, "hold hard, and be stout of
heart and cheery. Remember that however miserable we may deem
ourselves, there is one Blessed Eye upon us--the eye of a kind, good
God," he added, uncovering his head reverently to the bitter frost,
"One who will never forget the poor sailor, if he is true to himself.
Think of the 'sweet little cherub that sits up aloft,' as the song
says, and rail not at fate, for fate guides man neither at home nor
abroad, at sea or on shore. Put all your trust aloft, my boys, and
hold on by poor Jack's best bower anchor!"
This harangue was exactly suited to his hearers. We tried to feel
hopeful and trusting, and to have patience. But we longed very much,
nevertheless, to be free of the iceberg, and to have the blue sea
dashing alongside once more.