ADRIFT ON THE DEAD FLOE.
All was obscurity around me--a chaos of tumbling waves, of crashing
ice and hissing hail.
I shouted wildly, fiercely, as the dying or despairing alone may
shout.
A faint response seemed to come through the drift and the hail that
was sowing the ice and pathless sea; but it might have been fancy, or
my own cry tossed back by the mocking wind. And now from time to
time I was covered by the icy _spoondrift_, as the water which the
wind sweeps from the wave-tops is named by seamen.
For a time I felt the impossibility of realizing the actual horrors
of such a situation, and murmured repeatedly--
"Oh, this cannot be reality; if so, it must soon come to an end, and
I shall be dead!"
The floe on which I sat surged and rolled heavily, as it was rasped,
dashed against others, and whirled round in the eddies they made. On
its slippery surface I was driven hither and thither, even when
seated; and at last, on finding myself among some large stones which
were frozen into the snow, and which I knew to be a portion of the
brig's ballast, I shuddered with instinctive dread when discovering
that I was adrift on that portion of the ice in which our dead were
buried, and which had lain on her starboard bow. Thus I learned that
at the moment of my separation from the Abbots, I had been within
half a mile of the _Leda_.
There was agony in this now useless conviction!
"Am I to find a grave here, after all?" was my thought.
If I could live till dawn, the crew of the _Leda_ (if she, too,
survived the night) might see and save me; but who could live on an
ice-floe through so many freezing hours?
After a time the wind lulled, the hail ceased, the clouds were
divided in heaven, and a star or two shone in its blue vault. The
ice-blocks ceased to crash against the floe, thus its motion became
steadier, and under the lee of a hummock, I endeavoured to keep
myself as warm as my upper garments, which were entirely composed of
seal-skins, would enable me.
The moon was rising, and its fitful light added to the chaotic
terrors of the scene around me. To be alone--_alone_ upon a floe at
midnight, with the open sea rolling around me! All seemed over with
me now. I felt that my sufferings could not last long, as I should
certainly pass away in the heavy slumber of those who perish by
exhaustion and intensity of cold. In spite of this horrible thought,
I gradually became torpid.
I had been, perhaps, an hour in this situation, when I seemed
suddenly to start to life, as a bank of vapour close by parted like a
crape curtain, and the moonbeams fell upon the white canvas of a
vessel. She was a brig--she was the _Leda_, under weigh, and distant
from the floe not more than one hundred yards!
She was under sail, with her foreyards aback to deaden her way, as
she was rasping along a lee of ice-floes and _brash_, as the smaller
fragments are technically named. The weather had now become so calm,
that her canvas, which glittered white as snow in the moonshine, was
almost, as the sailors say, _asleep_, there being just sufficient
wind to keep it from waking.
I endeavoured to shout, but my tongue was paralysed as if in a
nightmare; sobs only came from my heart, and I thought all sense
would leave me, as the brig, like a spectre, came slowly gliding
past. Again and again I endeavoured to hail her, but in vain.
I rushed to the edge of the floe, at the risk of slipping off it into
the sea. Then a faint shout reached my ear, and made my heart throb
with joy. Those on deck could not hear my voice, but they had seen
my figure in the moonlight; and in a few minutes I beheld a boat
shoved off from her, and heard the cheerful voice of old Hans
Peterkin, crying with his Orkney _patois_--
"Quick, my lads--lay out on your oars!" as they pulled through the
rack and drift towards me.
I was soon dragged on board the boat, and on reaching the deck of the
_Leda_, fainted, after all I had undergone, and the joy of escaping a
death so terrible. The last sounds I remember were the voice of
Hartly welcoming me, and the jarring of the yards and braces, as the
foreyards were filled, and the brig payed off bravely before the
gentle breeze.
Of my unfortunate companions, no trace was ever seen!