“HOW DID YOU manage with the rest of that rough voyage on the Minerva?”
I asked.
“I shall be glad to explain to you,” said Captain Littlepage, forgetting
his grievances for the moment. “If I had a map at hand I could explain
better. We were driven to and fro 'way up toward what we used to call
Parry's Discoveries, and lost our bearings. It was thick and foggy,
and at last I lost my ship; she drove on a rock, and we managed to get
ashore on what I took to be a barren island, the few of us that were
left alive. When she first struck, the sea was somewhat calmer than it
had been, and most of the crew, against orders, manned the long-boat and
put off in a hurry, and were never heard of more. Our own boat upset,
but the carpenter kept himself and me above water, and we drifted in.
I had no strength to call upon after my recent fever, and laid down to
die; but he found the tracks of a man and dog the second day, and
got along the shore to one of those far missionary stations that the
Moravians support. They were very poor themselves, and in distress;
'twas a useless place. There were but few Esquimaux left in that region.
There we remained for some time, and I became acquainted with strange
events.”
The captain lifted his head and gave me a questioning glance. I could
not help noticing that the dulled look in his eyes had gone, and there
was instead a clear intentness that made them seem dark and piercing.
“There was a supply ship expected, and the pastor, an excellent
Christian man, made no doubt that we should get passage in her. He was
hoping that orders would come to break up the station; but everything
was uncertain, and we got on the best we could for a while. We fished,
and helped the people in other ways; there was no other way of paying
our debts. I was taken to the pastor's house until I got better; but
they were crowded, and I felt myself in the way, and made excuse to join
with an old seaman, a Scotchman, who had built him a warm cabin, and had
room in it for another. He was looked upon with regard, and had stood by
the pastor in some troubles with the people. He had been on one of those
English exploring parties that found one end of the road to the north
pole, but never could find the other. We lived like dogs in a kennel, or
so you'd thought if you had seen the hut from the outside; but the main
thing was to keep warm; there were piles of bird-skins to lie on, and
he'd made him a good bunk, and there was another for me. 'Twas dreadful
dreary waitin' there; we begun to think the supply steamer was lost, and
my poor ship broke up and strewed herself all along the shore. We got to
watching on the headlands; my men and me knew the people were short of
supplies and had to pinch themselves. It ought to read in the Bible,
'Man cannot live by fish alone,' if they'd told the truth of things;
'taint bread that wears the worst on you! First part of the time, old
Gaffett, that I lived with, seemed speechless, and I didn't know what to
make of him, nor he of me, I dare say; but as we got acquainted, I
found he'd been through more disasters than I had, and had troubles that
wa'n't going to let him live a great while. It used to ease his mind to
talk to an understanding person, so we used to sit and talk together
all day, if it rained or blew so that we couldn't get out. I'd got a bad
blow on the back of my head at the time we came ashore, and it pained
me at times, and my strength was broken, anyway; I've never been so able
since.”
Captain Littlepage fell into a reverie.
“Then I had the good of my reading,” he explained presently. “I had
no books; the pastor spoke but little English, and all his books were
foreign; but I used to say over all I could remember. The old poets
little knew what comfort they could be to a man. I was well acquainted
with the works of Milton, but up there it did seem to me as if
Shakespeare was the king; he has his sea terms very accurate, and some
beautiful passages were calming to the mind. I could say them over until
I shed tears; there was nothing beautiful to me in that place but the
stars above and those passages of verse.
“Gaffett was always brooding and brooding, and talking to himself; he
was afraid he should never get away, and it preyed upon his mind. He
thought when I got home I could interest the scientific men in his
discovery: but they're all taken up with their own notions; some didn't
even take pains to answer the letters I wrote. You observe that I said
this crippled man Gaffett had been shipped on a voyage of discovery. I
now tell you that the ship was lost on its return, and only Gaffett and
two officers were saved off the Greenland coast, and he had knowledge
later that those men never got back to England; the brig they shipped on
was run down in the night. So no other living soul had the facts, and
he gave them to me. There is a strange sort of a country 'way up north
beyond the ice, and strange folks living in it. Gaffett believed it was
the next world to this.”
“What do you mean, Captain Littlepage?” I exclaimed. The old man was
bending forward and whispering; he looked over his shoulder before he
spoke the last sentence.
“To hear old Gaffett tell about it was something awful,” he said, going
on with his story quite steadily after the moment of excitement had
passed. “'Twas first a tale of dogs and sledges, and cold and wind and
snow. Then they begun to find the ice grow rotten; they had been frozen
in, and got into a current flowing north, far up beyond Fox Channel,
and they took to their boats when the ship got crushed, and this warm
current took them out of sight of the ice, and into a great open sea;
and they still followed it due north, just the very way they had planned
to go. Then they struck a coast that wasn't laid down or charted, but
the cliffs were such that no boat could land until they found a bay and
struck across under sail to the other side where the shore looked lower;
they were scant of provisions and out of water, but they got sight of
something that looked like a great town. 'For God's sake, Gaffett!' said
I, the first time he told me. 'You don't mean a town two degrees farther
north than ships had ever been?' for he'd got their course marked on an
old chart that he'd pieced out at the top; but he insisted upon it, and
told it over and over again, to be sure I had it straight to carry to
those who would be interested. There was no snow and ice, he said, after
they had sailed some days with that warm current, which seemed to come
right from under the ice that they'd been pinched up in and had been
crossing on foot for weeks.”
“But what about the town?” I asked. “Did they get to the town?”
“They did,” said the captain, “and found inhabitants; 'twas an awful
condition of things. It appeared, as near as Gaffett could express it,
like a place where there was neither living nor dead. They could see the
place when they were approaching it by sea pretty near like any town,
and thick with habitations; but all at once they lost sight of it
altogether, and when they got close inshore they could see the shapes
of folks, but they never could get near them,--all blowing gray figures
that would pass along alone, or sometimes gathered in companies as if
they were watching. The men were frightened at first, but the shapes
never came near them,--it was as if they blew back; and at last they all
got bold and went ashore, and found birds' eggs and sea fowl, like any
wild northern spot where creatures were tame and folks had never been,
and there was good water. Gaffett said that he and another man came near
one o' the fog-shaped men that was going along slow with the look of a
pack on his back, among the rocks, an' they chased him; but, Lord! he
flittered away out o' sight like a leaf the wind takes with it, or a
piece of cobweb. They would make as if they talked together, but there
was no sound of voices, and 'they acted as if they didn't see us, but
only felt us coming towards them,' says Gaffett one day, trying to tell
the particulars. They couldn't see the town when they were ashore. One
day the captain and the doctor were gone till night up across the high
land where the town had seemed to be, and they came back at night
beat out and white as ashes, and wrote and wrote all next day in their
notebooks, and whispered together full of excitement, and they were
sharp-spoken with the men when they offered to ask any questions.
“Then there came a day,” said Captain Littlepage, leaning toward me with
a strange look in his eyes, and whispering quickly. “The men all swore
they wouldn't stay any longer; the man on watch early in the morning
gave the alarm, and they all put off in the boat and got a little way
out to sea. Those folks, or whatever they were, come about 'em like
bats; all at once they raised incessant armies, and come as if to drive
'em back to sea. They stood thick at the edge o' the water like the
ridges o' grim war; no thought o' flight, none of retreat. Sometimes
a standing fight, then soaring on main wing tormented all the air.
And when they'd got the boat out o' reach o' danger, Gaffett said they
looked back, and there was the town again, standing up just as they'd
seen it first, comin' on the coast. Say what you might, they all
believed 'twas a kind of waiting-place between this world an' the next.”
The captain had sprung to his feet in his excitement, and made excited
gestures, but he still whispered huskily.
“Sit down, sir,” I said as quietly as I could, and he sank into his
chair quite spent.
“Gaffett thought the officers were hurrying home to report and to fit
out a new expedition when they were all lost. At the time, the men
got orders not to talk over what they had seen,” the old man explained
presently in a more natural tone.
“Weren't they all starving, and wasn't it a mirage or something of that
sort?” I ventured to ask. But he looked at me blankly.
“Gaffett had got so that his mind ran on nothing else,” he went on. “The
ship's surgeon let fall an opinion to the captain, one day, that 'twas
some condition o' the light and the magnetic currents that let them see
those folks. 'Twa'n't a right-feeling part of the world, anyway; they
had to battle with the compass to make it serve, an' everything seemed
to go wrong. Gaffett had worked it out in his own mind that they was
all common ghosts, but the conditions were unusual favorable for seeing
them. He was always talking about the Ge'graphical Society, but he never
took proper steps, as I viewed it now, and stayed right there at the
mission. He was a good deal crippled, and thought they'd confine him in
some jail of a hospital. He said he was waiting to find the right men to
tell, somebody bound north. Once in a while they stopped there to leave
a mail or something. He was set in his notions, and let two or three
proper explorin' expeditions go by him because he didn't like their
looks; but when I was there he had got restless, fearin' he might be
taken away or something. He had all his directions written out straight
as a string to give the right ones. I wanted him to trust 'em to me,
so I might have something to show, but he wouldn't. I suppose he's dead
now. I wrote to him an' I done all I could. 'Twill be a great exploit
some o' these days.”
I assented absent-mindedly, thinking more just then of my companion's
alert, determined look and the seafaring, ready aspect that had come to
his face; but at this moment there fell a sudden change, and the
old, pathetic, scholarly look returned. Behind me hung a map of North
America, and I saw, as I turned a little, that his eyes were fixed upon
the northernmost regions and their careful recent outlines with a look
of bewilderment.