I could sleep but little during that long and wearying night.
Terrible thoughts haunted me--thoughts of my own peril and
loneliness, thoughts of the dead men that I had seen. Before
daybreak I was on deck, and in the dim light I noticed that the ice
which had been so scattered over the sea for the past few days had
almost disappeared.
At daylight, looking overboard at the hull of the dread ship
alongside, I observed two things. The first was that we were
drifting perceptibly southward; this was satisfactory. The second
was that the larger vessel had sunk at least a couple of inches
deeper in the water; this was alarming.
Now that it was daylight I was able to read the ship's name at her
stern, though I had first to knock away a quantity of ice and snow
from above the letters. I found that she was the Pilgrim of
Bristol. I had before perceived that she was not a whaler, nor did
she appear to have been fitted out for an Arctic voyage. I
marvelled much what had brought her to these seas, and whither she
had been bound, and what her cargo was.
More than all did I wonder what I was to do with her. Here was I,
placed by strange circumstances in command of two vessels, a
schooner and a barque, and without the power or skill to take
either of them into port--not knowing, indeed, where a port could
be found. Had Davie Flett, Peter, and Jerry still been with me on
the Falcon, we might have taken the Pilgrim to Stromness; we might
also have given to her crew, or what remained of them, the decent
burial for which they had waited so long. But, as things stood, I
should have been thankful if I could have simply foreseen the
possibility of getting out of my position of difficulty, regardless
of either vessel. The sight of those dead bodies on the Pilgrim had
made me utterly downcast. Their terrible fate had suggested to me
the uncertainty of my own.
When I had taken some breakfast, I again went aboard the Pilgrim. I
discovered that her cargo consisted for the most part of sulphur.
Now, sulphur I knew to be a product of Iceland, and I judged from
this that the ship had touched at that northern island.
I went into the chart room. A couple of charts were spread out on a
couch. One of them was a chart of the north of Scotland, including
the Orkney and Shetland Islands; the second was a continuation of
the first, and gave the whole coast of Iceland and the sea beyond
as high as the seventy-seventh degree of north latitude. The ship's
course was clearly traced upon the charts in lines of red ink, and,
following it, I could see that the Pilgrim (sailing, I suppose,
from Bristol or some other English port) had rounded Cape Wrath and
gone in at Kirkwall, in the Orkneys; thence the course was
continued in a regular zigzag northward to a port on the north of
Iceland, and then due east, as though she had been making for
Scandinavia. But here the line became broken and irregular, and
swept round suddenly to the far northwest, as though the vessel had
been carried away by some adverse current or contrary wind away
into the Arctic seas.
Here, then, I had a rough sort of explanation of the Pilgrim's
voyage.
I was leaving the captain's room, taking the charts with me, when,
on giving a last look round, I noticed a sleeping berth curtained
off by a plaid shawl. I drew the curtain aside, and saw something
sparkling. It was a beautiful diamond ring that encircled one of
the fingers of a man's thin white hand. The hand was clasped over
some small object that I did not see. Turning down a heavy fur rug
that covered the man's dead body I noticed that his clothing, his
appearance generally, were not those of a seaman. He had a long,
silky, brown beard, and a very handsome face, which, however, was
marred by an ugly scar on the brow. I judged him to be about
thirty-five years old. Lying on his breast was a thick notebook,
which, on opening the pages, I found to be filled with writing in a
foreign language.
Turning from the bed place I was again attracted by the man's
sparkling ring. I gently opened the hand and drew the ring from the
thin finger, and as I did so a small gold locket dropped from the
hand. It contained the painted portrait of a very beautiful girl
with fair hair and fine blue eyes. I looked in strange admiration
at the face. It had probably been the last object the dead man had
seen. With a feeling of reverence I put the locket back into his
hand. But with feelings that were less reverent I placed the
diamond ring on my own finger, and took possession of the notebook.
These, with the charts and the log book of the man in the after
cabin, I carried on board the Falcon.
That afternoon I chanced to look overboard at the Pilgrim's
waterline. She had sunk at least three more inches. I felt that,
whatever happened to myself and the schooner, the Pilgrim at least
would never again reach port, and I determined to save from the
vessel what articles might be of use to me in case I should be able
to return to land. I therefore went on board again and took
possession of the ship's papers, some firearms and cabin furniture,
a number of English books, and a small chest that I found in the
captain's room.
The wind had fallen almost to a dead calm very soon after I had
come alongside the Pilgrim, and I had thus been able to keep the
two vessels together without any difficulty. But that afternoon as
I sat before my fire reading a book on navigation--that part of it
relating to the art of taking an observation on the sun, moon, and
stars--the schooner listed over to larboard, as though the wind had
caught her sails. I rushed up on deck and found that a strong
breeze was blowing from the northwest, and was filling the sails of
both vessels. The Pilgrim, indeed, was sailing with considerable
speed, dragging the schooner along with her.
I ran forward and cast off the rope that held us together. Not too
soon, for the barque was leaning over on her port side and visibly
settling down.
As speedily as I could I trimmed the schooner's sails and got her
free. She took the wind bravely, and I left the Pilgrim to leeward.
I watched her struggling on the gradually rising waves as she
tossed about aimlessly for the space of about half an hour. Then I
saw her bows dip deep into the water and her stern rise high,
while, with a heavy plunge and a surging sound that came to me like
a melancholy groan, she disappeared, carrying her lifeless crew
with her to that tomb for which they had waited so long.