THE FIRST ICE
Before they hove to the _Selache_, daylight broke on a frothing sea,
across which scudded wisps of smoke-adrift and thin showers of snow.
With two little wet rags of canvas set the schooner lay almost head on
to the big combers. Having little way upon her, she lurched over instead
of ramming the waves, and though now and then one curled on board across
her rail it was not often that there was much heavy water upon her
slanted deck.
All around the narrow circle a leaden sky met the sea. It was bitterly
cold, and the spray stung the skin like half-spent pellets from a gun.
There was only one man, in turn, exposed to the weather, and he had
little to do but brace himself against the savage buffeting of the wind
as he clutched the wheel. The _Selache_, for the most part, steered
herself, lifting buoyantly while the froth came sluicing aft from her
tilted bows, falling off a little with a vicious leeward roll when a
comber bigger than usual smote her to weather, and coming up again
streaming to meet the next. Sometimes she forged ahead in what is called
at sea, by courtesy, a "smooth," and all the time shroud and stay to
weather gave out tumultuous harmonies, and the slack of every rope to
leeward blew out in unyielding curves.
Three of the white men lay sleeping or smoking in the little cabin,
which was partly raised above and partly sunk beneath the after-deck. It
was a reasonably strong structure, but it worked, and sweated, as they
sat at sea, and the heat of the stove had further opened up the seams in
it. Moisture dripped from the beams overhead, moisture trickled up and
down the slanting deck, there were great globules of water on the
bulk-heading, and everything, including the men's clothes and blankets,
was wet. The men lay in their bunks from necessity, because it was a
laborious matter to sit. They said very little since it was difficult to
hear anything amid the cataclysm of elemental sound. It became at length
almost a relief to turn out into inky darkness or misty daylight, dimmed
by flying spray, to take a turn at the jarring wheel.
For three days the bad weather continued, and then, when the gale broke
and a little pale sunshine streamed down on the tumbling sea, changing
the gray combers to flashing white and green, the skipper gave her a
double-reefed mainsail, part of the boom-foresail, and a jib or two, and
thrashed her slowly back to the northward on the starboard tack. More
than one of the men glanced over the taffrail longingly as the schooner
gathered way. She was fast, and with a little driving and that breeze
over her quarter she would bear them south toward warmth and ease at
some two hundred miles a day, while the way they were going it would be
a fight for every fathom with bitter, charging seas, and there lay ahead
of them only cold and peril and toil incredible.
There are times at sea when human nature revolts from the strain that
the overtaxed body must bear, the leaden weariness of worn-out limbs,
and the subconscious effort to retain warmth and vitality in spite of
the ceaseless lashing of the icy gale. Then, as aching muscles grow lax,
the nervous tension becomes more insupportable, unless, indeed, utter
weariness breeds indifference to the personal peril each time the decks
are swept by a frothing flood, or a slippery spar must be clung to with
frost-numbed and often bleeding hands. The men on the _Selache_ knew
this, and it was to their credit that they obeyed when Dampier gave the
word to put the helm up and trim the sheets over. Wyllard, however,
stood a little apart with a hard-set face, and he looked forward over
the plunging bows, for he was troubled by a sense of responsibility such
as he had not felt since he had, one night several years before, asked
for volunteers. He realized that an account of these men's lives might
be demanded from him.
It was a fortnight later, and they had twice made a perilous landing
without finding any sign of life on or behind the hammered beach, when
they ran into the first of the ice. The gray day was near its end. The
long heave faintly twinkling here and there, ran sluggishly after them.
When creeping through a belt of haze they came into sight of several
blurrs of grayish white that swung with the dim, green swell. The
_Selache_ was slowly lurching over it with everything aloft to the
topsails then, and Dampier glanced at the ice with a feeling of deep
anxiety.
"Earlier than I expected," he commented. "Anyway, it's a sure thing
there's plenty more where that came from."
"Big patch away to starboard!" cried a man in the foremast shrouds.
Dampier turned to Wyllard. "What are you going to do?"
"What's most advisable?"
The skipper looked grave. "Well," he said, "that's quite simple. Get out
of this, and head her south just as soon as we can, but I guess that's
not quite what you mean."
"No," admitted Wyllard. "I meant for the next few hours or so. In a
general way, we're still pushing on."
"I'm not worrying much about pushing her through. That ice is light and
scattered, and as she's going it won't hurt her much if she plugs some
in the dark. It's what we're going to do the next two weeks that I'm not
sure about. If there's ice we mayn't fetch the creek, where we'd figured
on laying her up. It's still most a hundred miles to the north of us.
The other inlet I'd fixed on is way further south."
This brought them back to the difficulty with which they had grappled at
many a council. The men for whom they searched might have gone either
north or south, or they might have gone inland, if, indeed, any of them
survived.
"If we only knew how they had headed," said Wyllard quietly. "Still,
right or not, I'm for pushing on."
Then Charly, who held the wheel, broke in.
"I guess it's north," he assented. "They'd have no use for fetching up
among the Russians, and there's nobody else until you get to Japan. No
white men, anyway. Besides, from the Behring Sea to the Kuriles is quite
a long way."
"If you were dumped down ashore there, which way would you go?" Dampier
asked.
"If I'd a wallet full of papers certifying me as a harmless traveler, it
would be south just as hard as I could hit the trail. Guess I'd strike
somebody out prospecting, or surveying, and they'd set me along to the
Kuriles. Still, if I'd been sealing, I wouldn't head that way. No, sir.
That's dead sure."
There was a reason for this certainty, right or wrong, in the minds of
the sealers. How many of the skins they brought home were obtained in
open water where they could fish without molestation they alone knew;
but they were regarded in certain quarters as poachers and outlaws, who
deserved no mercy. They had their differences with the Americans who
owned the Pribilofs. It was admitted that the Americans had bought the
islands, and might reasonably be considered to have some claim upon the
seals which frequented them. The free-lances bore their execrations and
reprisals more or less resignedly, though that did not prevent them from
occasionally exchanging compliments with oar butts or sealing clubs. But
the Muscovite was a grim, mysterious figure they feared and hated.
"Then you'd have tried up north?" Wyllard suggested.
"Sure," answered the helmsman. "If I'd a boat and a rifle, and it was
summer, I'd have pushed across for Alaska. You can eat birds and walrus,
and a man might eat a fur-seal if he'd had nothing else for a week,
though I've struck nothing that has more smell than the holluschickie
blubber. If it was winter, I'd have tried the ice. The Huskies make out
on it for weeks together, and quite a few of the steam whaler men have
trailed an odd hundred or two miles over it one time or another. They
hadn't tents and dog-teams either."
Wyllard's face grew anxious. He had naturally considered both courses,
and had decided that they were out of the question. Seas do not freeze
up solid, and that three men should transport a boat, supposing that
they had one, over leagues of ice appeared impossible. An attempt to
cross the narrow sea, which is either wrapped in mist or swept by sudden
gales, in any open craft would clearly result only in disaster, but,
admitting that, he felt that, had he been in those men's place, he would
have headed north. There was one question which had all along remained
unanswered, and that was how they had reached the coast from which they
had sent their message.
"Anyway," he said, after a long pause, "we'll stand on, and run into the
creek we've fixed on, if it's necessary."
Dusk had closed down on them, and it had grown perceptibly colder. The
haze crystallized on the rigging, the rail was white with rime, and the
deck grew slippery, but they left everything on the _Selache_ to the
topsails, and she crept on erratically through the darkness, avoiding
the faint spectral glimmer of the scattered ice. The breeze abeam
propelled her with gently leaning canvas at some four knots to the hour,
and now and then Wyllard, who hung about the deck that night, fancied he
could hear a thin, sharp crackle beneath the slowly lifting bows.
Next day the haze thickened, and there seemed to be more ice about, but
the breeze was fresher, and there was, at least, no skin upon the
ruffled sea. They took off the topsails, and proceeded cautiously, with
two men with logger's pikepoles forward, and another in the eyes of the
foremast rigging. They struck nothing, fortunately, and when night came
the _Selache_ lay rolling in a heavy, portentous calm. Dampier and one
or two of the men declared their certainty that there was ice near them,
but, at least, they could not see it, though there was now no doubt
about the crackling beneath the schooner's side. It was an anxious night
for most of the crew, but a breeze that drove the haze aside got up with
the sun, and Dampier expected to reach the creek before darkness fell.
He might have succeeded but for the glistening streak on the horizon,
which presently crept in on them, and resolved itself into detached
gray-white masses, with openings of various sizes in and out between
them. The breeze was freshening, and the _Selache_ was going through it
at some six knots, when Dampier came aft to Wyllard, who was standing at
the wheel. There was a moderately wide opening in the floating barrier
close ahead of him. The rest of the crew stood silent watching the
skipper, for they were by this time more or less acquainted with
Wyllard's temperament.
"You can't get through that," said Dampier, pointing to the ice.
Wyllard looked at him sourly, and the white men, at least, understood
what he was feeling. So far, he had had everything against him--calm,
and fog, and sudden gale--and now, when he was almost within sight of
the end of the first stage of his journey, they had met the ice.
"You're sure of that?" he questioned.
Dampier smiled. "It would cost too much, or I'd let you try." He called
to the man perched high in the foremost shrouds, and the answer came
down: "Packed right solid a couple of miles ahead."
Wyllard lifted one hand, and let it suddenly fall again.
"Lee, oh! We'll have her round," he said, and spun the wheel.
The men breathed more easily as they jumped for the sheets, and with a
great banging and thrashing of sailcloth the vessel shot up to windward,
and turned as on a pivot. As the schooner gathered way on the other
tack, the men glanced at Wyllard, for the _Selache's_ bows were pointing
to the southeast again, and they felt that was not the way he was going.
Wyllard turned to Dampier with a gesture of impatience.
"Baulked again!" he said. "It would have been a relief to have rammed
her in. With this breeze we'd have picked that creek up in the next six
hours."
"Sure!" replied Dampier, who glanced at the swirling wake.
"Then, if we can't get through the ice we can work the schooner round.
Stand by to flatten all sheets in, boys."
They obeyed orders cheerfully, though they knew it meant a thrash to
windward along the perilous edge of the ice. Soon the windlass was caked
with glistening ice, and long spikes of it hung from her rail, while the
slippery crystals gathered thick on deck. Lumps and floes of ice
detached themselves from the parent mass, and sailed out to meet the
vessel, crashing on one another, while it seemed to the men who watched
him that Wyllard tried how closely he could shave them before he ran the
_Selache_ off with a vicious drag at the wheel. None of them, however,
cared to utter a remonstrance.
They brought the schooner around when she had stretched out on the one
tack a couple of miles, and, standing in again close-hauled, found the
ice thicker than ever. Then she came around once more, and, until the
early dusk fell, Wyllard stood at the jarring helm or high up in the
forward shrouds.
"We can't work along the edge in the dark," he said to Dampier.
"Well," answered the skipper dryly, "it wouldn't be wise. We could stand
on as she's lying until half through the night, and then come round and
pick up the ice again a little before sun-up."
Wyllard made a sign of acquiescence. "Then," he said, "don't call me
until you're in sight of it. A day of this kind takes it out of one."
He moved aft heavily toward the deck-house, and Dampier watched him with
a smile of comprehension, for he was a man who had in his time made many
fruitless efforts, and bravely faced defeat. After all, it is possible
that when the final reckoning comes some failures will count.
For several hours the _Selache_ stretched out close-hauled into what
they supposed to be open water, and they certainly saw no ice. They hove
her to, and when the wind fell light brought her round and crept back
slowly upon the opposite tack. Wyllard had gone to sleep after his day
of anxious work, and daylight was just breaking when he next went out on
deck. There was scarcely a breath of wind and the heavy calm seemed
portentous and unnatural. The schooner lay lurching on a sluggish swell,
with the frost-wool thick on her rigging, and a belt of haze ahead of
her. The ice glimmered in the growing light, but in one or two places
stretches of blue-gray water seemed to penetrate it, and Dampier, who
strode aft when he saw Wyllard, said he believed that there must be an
opening somewhere.
"By the thickness of it, that ice has formed some time, and as we've
seen nothing but a skin it must have come from further north," he added.
"It gathered up under a point or in a bay most likely, until a shift of
wind broke it out, and the stream or breeze sent it down this way. That
seems to indicate that there can't be a great deal of it, but a few
days' calm and frost would freeze it solid."
"Well?" Wyllard returned impatiently.
"It lies between us and the inlet, and it's quite clear that we can't
stay where we are. Once we got nipped, there'd probably be an end of
her. We must get into that inlet at once or make for the other further
south."
Wyllard shook his head. "It all leads back to the same point. We must
get through the ice. The one question is--how is it to be done?"
"With a working breeze I'd stand into the biggest opening, but as
there's none we'll wait until it clears a little, and then send a boat
in. The sun may bring the wind."
They had breakfast while they waited, but the wind did not come, and it
was several hours later when a pale coppery disc became visible and the
haze grew thinner. Then they swung a boat out hastily, for it would not
be very long before the light died away again. Two white men and an
Indian dropped into the boat and they pulled across half a mile of
sluggishly heaving water, crept up an opening, and presently vanished
among the ice. Soon afterward the low sun went out, and wisps of ragged
cloud crept up from the westward, while smears of vapor blurred the
horizon, and the swell grew steeper. There was no wind at all, but
blocks and canvas banged and thrashed furiously at every roll, until
they lowered the mainsail and lashed its heavy boom to the big iron
crutch astern. The boat remained invisible, but its crew had been given
instructions to push on as far as possible if they found clear water,
and Dampier, who did not seem uneasy about the men, paced up and down
the deck while the afternoon wore away.