BESET WITHOUT HOPE.
I cared little about the slaughter of the seals,--indeed, I rather
disliked it--and for several days my attention was excited solely by
the vessel which was beset so far from us.
My imagination drew many painful scenes. I endeavoured to picture
how long she had been there--weeks, months, it might be years!
Where was she from? What had she been--a ship, brig, or schooner?
for by the confusion of her rigging, and the distance at which she
lay from us, there was a difficulty in discovering this, even by by
our most powerful glasses, or whether the smoke ever rose from her
galley funnel.
How many of her crew were alive, or had she a crew at all? If so,
what were their sufferings--if abandoned, amid that world of ice,
whither had they gone, and where had their perilous journey ended?
On Greenland, on the Labrador, or in the grave?
These queries were for ever recurring to me, and that old beset
ship--I had made up my mind that she _was_ old--was the first object
to which my eyes turned when coming on deck in the morning, and the
last at night. Fogs--the dense fogs of the Arctic seas--came on and
shrouded us for days, till one's lungs almost filled with icy vapour,
and the pulses of the heart seemed to freeze. The wind blew a gale
at times, but the ice remained fast as adamant around us; but when
the obscurity passed away, there lay the beset ship in the dim
distance, wearing the same lifeless aspect as ever, so dreary and
forlorn amid that waste of cold white glistening ice, with its
endless vistas of hummocks and splintered bergs.
We became somewhat alarmed on discovering by observations that
instead of drifting into southern latitudes, where the ice-fields are
usually broken into floes, and a ship becomes free to shape her
course in any direction, we were being borne almost due west, and
with considerable rapidity. By this the temperature remained nearly
the same, and our besetting, like that of our unfortunate neighbour,
became a permanence, and would probably continue so, unless we
weathered Cape Farewell, of which Hartly had some doubts at that
season.
We had now reached the first week of April, and could only look
forward to the early days of May, when the field-ice breaks up, and
from the unknown seas and inlets of the north, floats southward in
masses so mighty, that a girdle of ice, sometimes two hundred miles
in breadth, environs the coasts of Newfoundland and the Labrador.
Ere long we became sensible of a tremendous pressure upon the sides
of the brig, a pressure so great that her timbers in some places
became distorted, and Hartly was seriously alarmed lest she might be
crushed and destroyed.
This unwonted pressure rendered us very anxious, and inspired many
with dread.
One night when it was greater than usual, I was on deck, and from
thence ascended into the main-rigging a little way to contemplate the
snow-covered scene--so vast, so silent, and so terrible in its beauty!
Spreading far as the eye could reach--far beyond the old deserted
ship, for such we deemed her now--lay the hummocks in uncounted
myriads, ascending here and there into bergs and mountains, so
impressive in their cold purity, so solemnizing in their silence and
monotony, their spiral peaks glistening and vitreous against the blue
immensity of the sky--an accumulation of ice and snow that would seem
to have lasted since the will and hand of God had first separated the
land from the water, and marked the limits of both.
While lost in reverie, and surveying this scene, a strange sound,
like that which might be caused by the rending of a vast rock
asunder, fell upon my ear; then there was a shock which made every
fibre in my body tingle. A mighty power below us seemed to be
hoisting the brig out of the ice, while her masts and hull began to
sway to and fro.
"Aloft, lads--all hands aloft!" cried Hartly; "we are about to be
crushed--God help us! for all is over with us now!"
All our men rushed into the rigging on hearing this terrible
announcement, and at the same moment there was another crashing
shock, and lo! about a league from us, there ascended slowly and
vertically into the air, a sheet or wall of ice, perhaps twenty feet
thick, nearly a hundred feet in height, and several miles in length!
Erect it stood for some moments, like a giant rampart, and then broke
into fragments, and as the field collapsed below, these fell with a
roar as if heaven and earth were coming together.
How many _millions of tons_ might have been in that erected mass no
man could conceive, but the thunder of their fall, as they crashed
and glittered in the moonlight, caused one's soul to shrink with awe
and wonder at the grandeur and sublimity of such a scene.
The ice around us cracked and rent in every direction, but though
there was a vibration, a seeming heaving of the icebound sea, the
brig settled down again into her bed, and we were only relieved of
that intense pressure which had threatened us with immediate
destruction.
"We are saved--for this time," said Hartly.
"Have the currents caused this?" I inquired.
"Partly: and the east edge of the ice-field has crashed upon a
western shore."
"Greenland?" suggested Paul Reeves.
"Of course."
"Then we are to the _north_ of Cape Farewell!"
I gazed wistfully towards the east. Hartly saw the glance, and
smiled.
"You wish to snuff the land," said he; "but whether the land on which
this mass of ice that imprisons us and our neighbour--a floating mass
perhaps as large as Ireland--be just below the horizon, or two
hundred miles distant, I have no means of ascertaining until I make a
correct observation at noon."
The morrow came duly, and at twelve o'clock, Hartly, on consulting
the sun and his chart, declared that we were at least one hundred and
seventy miles due westward of Cape Farewell, on the coast of
Greenland. We had thus drifted before the wind many hundred miles
with the ice. The cold had now rendered the action of our compasses
sluggish; but, situated as we were, that was of little consequence.
Our anxiety increased as our provisions diminished; we were placed
upon a scanty allowance; symptoms of scurvy became visible among our
seal-fishers; and how shall I find words to describe the intensity of
the cold?
As we huddled together in the cabin at night, the ice actually came
down the funnel of the stove, and formed a little arch above the
fire. Our breath froze on our beards and whiskers, and on the
blankets of our beds. The barrels of salted junk had to be dashed to
pieces ere the food could be separated from the brine and staves.
Stiff grog froze as hard as our beer; and every day a smoky haze rose
from the sea, and freezing as it rose, when blown about by the wind,
seemed to scrape the very skin off one's face. This frost-rime
frequently enveloped us like a dense fog for days, and when it
cleared, the wearied eye had no object to rest on but the everlasting
ice and the old ship in the dreary distance.
Chancing to stumble one day against the anchor, my bare hand touched
the fluke, and a portion of skin adhered to it as if it had been hot
iron.
We hunted diligently for seals, as they formed our staple food, when
cooked on a fire of blazing blubber. The flesh of the cub,
especially the heart and liver, when hashed, and well seasoned with
pepper, was not unacceptable to appetites sharpened by the northern
blast that came from the Arctic circle.
The middle of April came and passed away without a change, save that
the sun shone with a brilliance which somewhat alleviated the cold.
One day, at noon, I saw Hartly form a piece of pure fresh-water ice
from the scuttle-bucket into a lens, through which he concentrated
the rays of the sun as through a burning-glass, and thus igniting
little puffs of powder on the capstan-head, to the great astonishment
of our seamen, and the terror of Cuffy, who began to consider him a
species of Obi man.
So day followed day of captivity!
Seal-hunting and idling over, we would assemble, and sit for hour
after hour, crouching close together for warmth, around our little
fire, watching the glowing embers and the upward sparks; often in
dreamy silence, mentally wondering where, when, and _how_ this
monotony, misery, and suffering were to end!
At times each almost fancied himself the last man in the world--and
certainly we were the last men to be envied. Then terrible
sensations crept over us, and horror filled our souls--the horror of
being the _last survivor_, when famine and death came together among
us.
As a relief from this intolerable monotony, a party of us resolved to
visit the other ship. All were anxious to go; but Hartly said we
could never know the moment when the ice would partially break up;
thus half the crew at least must remain with him for the safety of
the whole.
Furnished with a sledge, on which we placed a supply of such
provisions as the _Leda_ could afford, a small breaker, or gang-cask
of stiff grog, hatchets, guns, a compass, plenty of blankets, and
tobacco, so as to be ready for any emergency or detention, twelve
men--Paul Reeves, Hans Peterkin, Tom Hammer, Cuffy, and myself
inclusive--departed one bright morning about an hour after dawn,
resolved to overhaul the stranger, and if we found her deserted, to
cut away her masts, and drag them to the brig for fuel, though she
lay now at least fifteen miles distant.