THE ICEBERG OF THE FIGURE-HEAD.—THE GLORY AND THE MUSIC OF THE
SEA AT EVENING.
LATE in the afternoon, and the breeze gone down. We are off on the
gentle rollers of the Bay of St. Louis, after a low, broad iceberg,
covering, say, an acre of surface, and grounded in forty fathoms of
water. It has upon one extremity a bulky tower of sixty feet, on the
other, forty, and in the middle a huge pile of ice blocks of all shapes
and sizes, the ruins of some spire. While the outside of this heap of
fragments is white, with tints of green, touched here and there with
what seems to be the most delicate bronze and gilding; every crevice,
where there is a shadow lurking, is a blue, the purity and softness of
which cannot be described nor easily imagined. To one who has any
feeling for color, it has a sentiment as sweet as any thing in all
visible nature. A pure, white surface, like this fine opaque ice, seen
through deep shade produces blue, and such a blue as one sees in the
stainless sky when it is full of warmth and light. It is quite beyond
the rarest ultramarine of the painter. The lovely azure appears to
pervade and fill the hollows like so much visible atmosphere or smoke.
One almost looks to see it float out of the crystal cells where it
reposes, and thin away into colorless air.
We have just been honored by a royal salute from the walls of the
alabaster fortress. Our kind angels will keep us at a safer distance
than we are disposed to keep ourselves. A projecting table has fallen
with that peculiarly startling crack, quick as lightning and loud as
thunder. It seems impossible for my nerves to become accustomed to the
shock. I tremble, in spite of myself, as one does after a fright. The
explosion unquestionably has the voice of the earthquake and volcano. To
my surprise, I find myself with cold feet and headache—those unfailing
symptoms of sea-sickness. By the painful expression of his face, I
suspect the painter is even worse off than myself. It is impossible to
avoid feeling both vexed and amused at this companionship in misery. In
his case, the climax has been attained. Laying down box and brushes with
uncommon emphasis, he made a rapid movement to the edge of the boat, and
looked over at his own image reflected in the glassy, oily-rolling
swell, with loud and violent demonstrations of disagreement with
himself. After this unhappy outbreak, he wiped away the tears, and
returned subdued and composed to the gentler employment of the
paint-box.
It is nearly nine o’clock in the evening, with the downiest clouds
dropped around the retiring sun. What light must be behind them to fill
them with such wealth of color, and dye their front with such rich and
varied red! The very waves below bloom with a crimson splendor. C——
has finished his pictures, and we row around the berg, a singularly
irregular one, both above and below the surface. The surrounding water,
to the eye nearly black, is irradiated, star-like, with tracts of the
clear, tender green. The effect upon us is indescribably fine. I think
of deep down caverns of light shining up through the dark sea. The
blocks and bowlders, wrecks of former towers, which lie scattered and in
heaps upon the main berg, are like the purest alabaster on their outer
and upper sides, but of that heavenly azure in their fissures and
spaces, although wrapped in the one great shade of evening. We now pause
at the corner of the ice, and look down both its northern and western
fronts; the upper stories, to all appearance, in rough marble—the
lower, polished as a mirror. Almost over us, a Greek-like figure-head,
sculptured from shining crystal, gazes with serene majesty upon the
white daylight in the northwest. Possessed with the mournful and nearly
supernatural beauty, we forget the dangers of this intimacy. There is a
strange fascination, and particularly at this hour, that draws like the
fabulous music of the Sirens. We are headed homeward, riding silently
over the glassy waves. The surf rings in the hollows of the iceberg, and
sounds upon the shores like the last blows of the weary day.