THE DEATH-SHIP.
Inured though we were to the cold, we felt the toil and peril very
great when traversing the ice for fifteen miles; but fortunately the
day was clear, and not a speck of cloud appeared upon the blue
immensity of the sky.
The crew of the _Leda_ cheered us from time to time until we were at
some distance, when they hoisted a red flag at the mainmast-head; but
in the hollows between the hummocks and vast blocks of ice which were
jammed and piled upon each other by the recent concussion and
compression of the field, we lost sight of both ships at times, and
could only discover them while surmounting some of the frozen ridges.
We toiled bravely, anxious to attain the object of our journey ere
night came on, as we were assured of quarter on board, whatever might
be the circumstances of this strange-looking craft, the attention of
whose crew our colours by day, and our lanterns by night, had totally
failed to attract.
Fifteen miles over an ice-field--especially such an ice-field as that
which inclosed us, rent by chasms in some places, and piled in giant
blocks elsewhere--were equal to the toil of traversing forty miles on
land; thus about two P.M., we found ourselves only eight miles from
the _Leda_, but rapidly gaining on the hull of the strange craft,
which seemed to rise out of the ice as we approached, and the aspect
of which puzzled us more than ever. We halted for a brief space;
then each man partook of a biscuit and piece of seal's flesh boiled,
a ration of rum, and in ten minutes more we pushed on again, four
dragging our sledge, laden with stores, by shoulder-belts made for
the purpose, and relieved by other four at every two miles or so.
Our expedition was not without several dangers. Fog might come on
and conceal both ships from us; a blinding storm of snow might have
the same effect, and pile its drifts above our corpses for ever. The
ice-field might break up, and separate us from our ship so long that
when our slender stock of necessaries was expended, we should
infallibly perish. Each man among us thought of these possible and
terrible contingencies as the distance increased between us and the
_Leda_--our home amid the icy waste--but none spoke of them _then_;
all sang cheerily, and pushed on to overhaul the strange craft; thus
about five in the afternoon we found ourselves alongside, and all
paused to survey her with deep and undefinable emotions of awe in our
breasts, for she had evidently been long deserted, and now wore a
most chilling and desolate aspect.
She was an old-fashioned pink-built barque, of about six hundred
tons, with bulging ribs and bluff bows; broad and clumsy in the
counter and deep in the bends--all fenced about with iron bands; she
looked like a whaler of George the Second's time, for, with a fiddle
head, she had the remains of a jack-staff and spritsail yard upon her
bowsprit. Her hull and spars were thickly coated with ice.
Her fore and main topmasts were gone; her mizen was broken off at the
crosstrees, and hung, truck downward, in its gear.
The topping-lifts and braces of the yards had long since given way,
and tatters of them swung mournfully on the wind. Many of the yards
had dropped from their slings, and lay athwart the deck or among the
ice alongside, where the gales had tossed them.
Her ironwork was red and corroded; almost every vestige of paint and
tar had long since disappeared, as if she had been scraped by the
ice; beaten, battered, and washed by Arctic storms, American fogs,
and Greenland showers of sleet and rain, for many, many years must
have elapsed since the keel of this old craft had last been in blue
water, and first been frozen in the treacherous ice; years of
drifting to and fro in the far and frozen regions of the north, where
perchance not even the eye of the Esquimaux had seen her.
We seemed all to read and know her history instinctively at a glance;
but her crew--what had their fate been?
Inspired by a strange emotion, we hung back, while gazing at her, as
she stood like a silent ruin, or the ghost of a ship in the frosty
sunshine of the April evening; but no man attempted to board her,
till Paul Reeves, taking a hatchet from the sledge, exclaimed,
"Come on, shipmates--we'll overhaul her!" and proceeded at once to
mount from the ice into her mainchains. As he grasped the starboard
shrouds about the upper dead-eyes, the whole gave way from their
rotten cat-harpings and crashed about him, with a shower of the ice
that had coated them for years.
"By Jove! lads, 'twas not yesterday this craft left the rigger's
hands!" said he, as we clambered after him, and at length stood upon
her deck, which was coated about two feet deep with hard frozen snow,
on the pure whiteness of which no foot-track was visible.
Sailors are ever superstitious; but theirs is an honest and
reverential superstition, very different from that of the landsman;
thus in breathless silence our party paused upon her deck, as if it
had been the lid of a huge coffin.
"Go on--go on!" said several; yet no man moved, for there was a
deathlike silence in and around her.
Her main-hatch was battened down; but we could see that the companion
aft and the fore-hatch were partly open. Her long-boat was turned
keel upmost on deck, aft the foremast; and by other indications it
had doubtless formed a species of round-house. Various large white
bones, fragments of broken casks, coils of old bleached ropes, and
rusty harpoons were strewn about, and served to indicate that she had
been a whale-ship.
Urged by curiosity, I proceeded towards her cabin, my eleven
shipmates following closely at my heels.
The skylight was covered with snow; yet through a broken pane I could
perceive the figures of men below: then I turned to descend into her
dark, gloomy, and slimy cabin, on entering which I beheld a wondrous
scene of horror, such as can never be forgotten by me, nor was it by
those who accompanied me.
The red glow of the sun, now setting beyond the distant waste of ice,
shone from the west through her two square stern windows, pouring
athwart her cabin a sombre and dusky light. Its sides were covered
by a damp mould, which was green and thick as moss. Nearly three
feet of snow, which had drifted down the companion-hatch, was lying
upon its floor; half buried among it and huddled close together in a
corner, lay the bodies of three emaciated men, with fur caps tied
under their wasted jaws.
A blue and ghastly hand that hung over one of the cabin berths
announced that a dead man lay there; and seated at the table was
another, whose arms, head, and back were half covered by the snow,
that had drifted over him after he had sunk into the sleep of death.
His coat was old in fashion, with large brass buttons and square
pocket-flaps. Amid the snow that covered the table, and amid which
his face was hidden, there appeared the necks of one or two square
case-bottles--empty.
A quill was also standing amid the snow, and seemed to indicate that
the dead man had been writing, for it was still in the pewter
inkhorn, and near it stood a lamp, used by him probably to keep his
ink from freezing. Close by appeared the corner of a book, which I
drew with difficulty from amid the frozen snow, and then impelled by
a horror, of that cold dark floating grave, like frightened
schoolboys we rushed up the cabin-stairs, and regained the deck, just
as the last segment of the sun's red disc went down beyond the frozen
sea.
We stood in a group near the mouldering mainmast, gazing at each
other awe-struck, for we had looked on the faces of men who had been
dead for years--how many, we knew not.
"There is _something moving_ in the forehold!" exclaimed Tom Hammer,
the carpenter, while his teeth chattered alike with cold and fear.
"Something?" I reiterated.
"Ay, sir, and alive, too! Do you hear _that_?" added old Hans
Peterkin, in terror.
It was a strange, croaking sound; and then, as we approached the
half-open hatch of the forehold, we heard the flapping of large wings.
Though almost paralysed by hearing such an unwonted sound in such a
place, one of our seal-fishers fired his gun in his confusion. I
crept forward and peeped fearfully down, but could not distinguish
anything amid the gloom below.
Then we heard another croak, which sounded so loud and so dreadful to
our over-strained organs of hearing that it nearly made us all
scamper over the side; when suddenly two giant ravens, who had
doubtless long made the empty wreck their home, rose through the
fore-hatchway on their black booming pinions, and soaring high into
the clear air, winged their way directly to the east, and so swiftly
that they soon disappeared.
"The land lies where they are flying to," said Reeves.
"And it is not far off, as their presence here would indicate," added
a seaman.
This idea encouraged us all very much, as we forgot that they might
have floated with the ice-field for years. We were about to descend
into the forehold, but on lifting the other half of the decayed
hatch, we found the frozen remains of a man hanging there by the
neck, and half devoured by those obscene birds. A capstan-bar had
been placed athwart the combing, and to this he had suspended himself
by a well-greased rope.
Was this unfortunate the last survivor, who, in desperation, had thus
awfully ended his misery?
His situation seemed to say so.