OLD JOE'S YARN.
AT seven o'clock the three lads gathered round the old sailor forward.
Joe having got his pipe to draw to his satisfaction, proceeded to relate
the story of his shipwreck.
"It happened," he said, "on the very first v'yage I made as an A.B.; and
proud I was, as you may guess, that I had done at last with being
ordered here and ordered there, and kicked here and cuffed there. I was
just twenty-one then, and as active and hearty a young chap as you would
want to see; not over big, you know, and spare in flesh, but as strong
and active as any on board a ship. Well, it came on to blow just about
the same latitude where the storm struck us the other day, but much
heavier. I never saw a worse sky in all my v'yges, and when the blow
came it seemed to me there was an end of everything at once. I need not
tell you about the storm; you just take the last one and pile it up
about ten times, and you have got it.
"Although we were ready and prepared for it, and had snugged down till
we scarce showed a rag of sail, over she went at the first blow, till we
all thought as she was going to turn turtle. We cut away her main and
mizzen, and at last got her before it and run. That gale blew for ten
days right on end. The sea was tremendous. Over and over again we were
pooped, our bulwarks were carried away, the boats smashed, the caboose
and pretty nigh everything else on deck swept clean off. Five of the
hands had been washed overboard, another three men were down below badly
hurt, and the first-mate had his leg broke. We were all pretty well
exhausted, as you may guess. Where we'd got to none knew, for we had
never had a glimpse of the sun since the gale began; and it would not
have made much difference if we had, because, you see, we could do
nothing but just run before the wind wherever it liked to take us. But
we knew anyhow we had got down into high latitudes, for the gale had
been blowing pretty steady from the north-west.
"The air got bitterly cold all of a sudden; and though we could not see
above a mile anywhere round us, we were pretty sure we were in the
neighbourhood of ice. Towards the afternoon of the tenth day the weather
cleared just a little, though the wind seemed as high as ever, and we
caught sight of some big bergs. The captain, who was as good a sort as
ever sailed, had done his best all along to keep up our spirits. The
cook had been washed overboard in his caboose; but the skipper had kept
his steward at work boiling water over a little spirit-stove he had aft,
and kept a supply of hot coffee there at all hours for us; and with that
and biscuits we had got on fairly well. Now he told us that he thought
the gale would soon blow itself out, and that as soon as it abated
enough to set a rag or two of sail he would try and bring us up under
the lee of a berg.
"But it wasn't to be. It had just struck four bells, and there was a
gleam of daylight; I was at the helm, with the captain, who had never
lain down for above an hour at a time since the gale began, beside me.
Suddenly I saw it become lighter ahead, just like a gray shadow against
the blackness. I had but just noticed it when the skipper cried out,
'Good God! there is a berg straight ahead, it is all over with us!' and
then he gave a shout, 'All hands on deck!'
"There was nothing to do. We could not have changed our course a point
if we had tried ever so much, and the berg, as we could see in another
minute, stretched right away on both sides of us.
"'You can leave the helm, Joe,' says the skipper; 'we have done all that
men could do, we are in God's hands now.' I went forward with the rest,
for I knew well that the only chance was to get on to the berg when she
struck. It did not seem much of a chance, but it is wonderful how one
clings to the hope of a few hours' more life.
"It was not five minutes from the time when we first saw the gray shadow
ahead that we struck. The crash was tremendous. The mast snapped off as
if it was a pipe-stem. The whole front of the ship seemed stove in, and
I believe that more than half of those gathered forward were killed,
either by the fall of the mast or by the breaking up of the bows. The
bowsprit was driven aft, through the bits against the stump of the
foremast, and did its share in the work. I was standing in the
fore-chains, having got over there to avoid the fall of the mast. Though
I was holding tight to the shrouds I was well-nigh wrenched from my
hold. There was one terrible cry, and then the ship seemed to break up
as if she were glass, and I was in the water. A great wave came
thundering down on me; it seemed to me as if I was being carried right
up into the air, then I felt a shock, and it was sometime before I knew
anything more.
"When I came to myself it was daylight. For a bit I could not move, and
I thought my ribs were staved in; but at last, after much trouble, I
made a shift to work myself out and found that I was about fifty feet
above the water. The wave had carried me upon its crest as it swept up
the face of the berg, and just as it was at its highest had, by God's
mercy, jammed me in between two pinnacles of ice, and though I daresay
others had swept up as high, none of them had moved me. I sat for a time
dazed and stupid, and then began to take a view of my position. The ship
was gone. There was not a sign of a bit of floating timber or any of my
messmates. I suppose all the wreckage had been swept away by the
current.
"The iceberg had, I reckon, been floating a long time, for it was seamed
all over with cracks and crevices. It had been up under a pretty hot sun
before the long gale blew it and us south, and the surface was rough and
honey-combed. I did not feel as grateful as I ought to have done, lads,
that I had been cast up, for I saw nothing but death before me; and
thought that it would have been better to have died when I lost my
senses in the water than to have to die again as it were by cold or
hunger on the berg. However I set-to to climb over the berg and down to
the other side so as to get under its lee. It took me two or three hours
of hard work, but by the end of that time my clothes were dry, and I got
some spirit and hope in me again.
"Once over there I was pretty comfortable; the berg sheltered me from
the wind, and the sun began to shine out a bit through the clouds, and
in the afternoon, although it was still blowing hard, there was a blue
sky overhead. There were a good many other bergs in sight, but none of
them seemed near as big as the one that I was on. Fortunately I had a
couple of biscuits in my pocket, having thrust them in there when I ran
up when there was a call for an extra hand at the helm. One of these I
ate, then I lay down on a broad ledge and went off sound asleep. When I
awoke it was night. I was warmly clad when we struck, having my thick
oil-skin over my pea-jacket, but I felt a bit cold. However I was soon
off again, and when I awoke morning had broken. I ate half my last
biscuit, took a drink out of a pool--I do not know whether it was melted
ice or rain-water--and then climbed up to the top of the berg and looked
round.
"I had not expected to see a sail, and I didn't, for we were far out of
the track of ships. Still it was just possible one might have been
driven south as we had been. The wind had pretty well dropped now, and
the sea was going down. I could see by some small bergs near us that we
were driving through the waters at a good rate. When a great mountain of
ice like that, you know, gets way on it, it will keep it for a mighty
long time. It did not make much difference to me which way we were
going; I had only half a biscuit left, and no chance of getting more. I
sat down and wondered how long I should last, and whether it would not
be easier to go down and jump off into the water than to sit there and
die by inches. As I was thinking I was looking at what I had taken for
another big berg, away in the distance, right on the course we were
making, and it suddenly came to me that it was not the same colour as
the others. I looked up to see if there was a bit of a cloud anywhere
about that might have thrown it into shadow, but there weren't, and at
last I felt sure that it wasn't no iceberg at all, but an island.
"I jumped on my feet now quick enough. An island would be better than
this berg anyhow. There might be shell-fish and fruit--though fruit did
not seem likely so far south--and birds and seals. I had heard tales
from others as to islands in the South Seas, and though I knew well
enough that I should not find cocoa-nuts and such like, I thought I
might get hold of something with which to make a shift to hold on until
some whaler happened to pass along. For an hour or two I stood watching;
at the end of that time I was sure it was land, and also that we were
driving pretty straight towards it. As we got near I could see it was a
big island that stretched right across our course, but was still a long
way off. I felt sure we should ground somewhere in the night, for I had
heard that icebergs drew a tremendous lot of water, and were two or
three times as deep below the surface as they were above it. We were two
or three hundred feet high, so unless the water kept deep right up to
the island we should take ground a good way off it.
"When it got dark I went down on the other side of the berg, for I had
sense enough to know that just in the same way as the masts of a ship
went straight forward when she struck, the pinnacles of the berg would
go toppling down towards the island when she grounded. I was hungry
enough, I can tell you, that day, but I kept my last half-biscuit until
the morning, so as to give me strength to swim. I dosed off for a bit,
but about eight bells, as near as I can guess, I heard a deep grating
sort of noise. Then I felt myself rising up. I went higher and higher,
till I began to wonder whether there was any chance of the berg turning
over. There was a noise like thunder as the pieces of ice broke off and
went crashing down the other side. Then slowly I began to sink down
again, and I should say for an hour the berg rolled up and down. Then I
went off to sleep.
"As you may guess, I was on the top of the berg at daybreak, and saw we
had drifted into a big bay, and had grounded about midway. The cliffs in
most places rose sheer up out of the water, but here and there there
were breaks, and I could see that the land beyond was rough and
desolate-looking. I ate my last half-biscuit, and then made my way down
to the water's edge. The shore seemed to me about half a mile away--a
longish swim in cold water; but I was a good swimmer, and the sea
between the berg and the land was as smooth as a pond. I took off my
clothes, put them in the middle of my oil-skin and wrapped it round
them, tying one of my stockings round the neck of the bag to keep it all
together. I had bought the oil-skin just before I started on that
voyage, and knew that it would keep out the water tidy. I could not get
down nearer than twenty feet of the sea, so I dropped the bag in and
then jumped.
"As I had hoped, the thing floated light. I pushed it before me as I
swam, and found that by putting my hands on it it would keep me up well
when I wanted to rest. However, I did not want much of that. The water
was too cold to be idle in, and I never stopped swimming until I got to
shore at the point I had marked out as easiest to land on. I wasn't long
opening the bag and getting into my things, which were perfectly dry. My
first thought was of food. While I had been swimming I thought I heard a
sort of barking noise, and I wasn't long in seeing that there were a lot
of seals on the rocks. I picked up a goodish chunk of stone, and then
lay down and set to crawling towards them. I had heard from sailors who
had been whaling that the way to kill a seal was to hit him on the nose,
and I kept this in my mind as I crawled up. They did not seem to notice
me, and I got close among them without their moving. Then I jumped up.
There was a young seal lying not ten feet from me, and before he had
time to turn I smashed down my bit of rock between his eyes, and there
he lay dead.
"Raw seal's flesh ain't a sort of food as you would take for choice, but
I was too hungry to think about cooking, and I ate as big a meal as ever
I had in my life. Up till then I hadn't really thought as there was any
chance of my being saved in the long run. Now I felt as there was, and
for the first time I felt really grateful that I had not shared in the
fate of my messmates, and I knelt down and thanked God for having
brought me safe to shore. Then I set-to to climb up to the top of the
cliffs. It was hard work, and, as I afterwards found, I had just hit, by
God's mercy, on the only spot on that part of the island where I could
have got up, for in most places the cliffs rose pretty near straight up
four or five hundred feet above the sea.
"When I got to the top I saw that there were some mighty high hills
covered with snow to the south-east, which might have been fifteen or
twenty miles away. It was a dreary kind of country--rocky and desolate,
with tufts of thin grass growing in the crevices of the rocks; and I saw
that there was precious little chance of picking up a living there, and
that if I was to get grub it was to the sea I must look for it. I
thought the best thing to do was to try and find out some sheltered sort
of cove where, perhaps, I might find a bit of a cave, for I knew that
when winter came on there would be no chance for me in the open; so I
set out to walk. I brought up with me a big hunk of flesh that would
last me for three or four days, and what I had got to look for was fresh
water. I walked all that day, keeping along pretty close to the edge of
the cliff. I found plenty of little pools of rain-water among the rocks,
and did pretty well. I was not hungry enough to tackle raw flesh that
night, and had nothing to make a fire with. I had got matches in my
pocket in a tight-fitting brass box which had kept them dry, but there
was no fuel.
"The next morning I started again, and after walking for four or five
hours came to a spot where the cliffs broke away sudden. Getting to the
edge I saw that there was a narrow bay stretching some way up into the
island. An hour's walk brought me to its head. Here, as I had hoped, I
found a little stream running down into it. When you find a bay, most
times you will find water running in at its head. The ground sloped
gradually here in great terraces; the rock was hard and black, and
looked as if it had been burnt. I have heard since that it was what they
call volcanic. Being so sheltered there were more things growing here,
wherever a little earth had gathered; and I saw some things for all the
world like cabbages, and made up my mind to try them, when I got a
chance, with my seal-meat.
"At last I got down near the water. Just at the head of the bay was a
shelving shore, and along at the sides, as far as I could see it was
rocky, and there were plenty of seals here too. Along on the beach and
on the rock and on the terraces were quantities of birds--penguins, as I
knew from what I had heard of them. They did not try to get out of my
way, but just made an angry sort of noise. 'I will talk to you
presently, my hearties,' I said; 'what I have got to do now is to look
for a shelter.' It was the end of April, and I knew that it would not be
long before winter would be upon me, and if I was not out of it by that
time I should soon be frozen stiff. I did not go near the seals, for I
did not want to frighten them. I looked about the rest of that afternoon
and all next day, but I could not find what you might properly call a
cave, and so determined to make use of the best place I could fix upon.
This was a spot in the lower terrace, in the face of the rock. It seemed
as if the lower part was softer than the upper, which was black and hard
and almost like glass. Underneath this the rock had crumbled away
perhaps six feet in depth.
"This soft rock was about four feet thick. It was more gone in some
places than others. I chose a spot where a hole was about eight feet
long, and made up my mind to close up the front of this, just leaving a
hole big enough for me to crawl in and out. First of all I brought up
some big stones and built a wall and filled up the crevices with tufts
of grass. Then I brought up smaller stones and piled against them,
shooting in sand from the beach till I had made a regular solid bank,
four feet thick, against the wall. Then I levelled the bottom of the
cave with sand and spread it thickly with dried grass. All this took me
five days' hard work. There was no difficulty about food. I had only to
go and pick up a few stones and go among the penguins and knock them
over. I made a shift to cook them over fires made of dry tufts of grass.
"I had been careful not to disturb the seals. I did not want any of them
until the weather got cold enough to freeze their flesh. I thought of
oil from their blubber, but I had nothing to hold it. When I had
finished my hut I began to hunt about to see if I could find drift-wood,
but I could only find a few pieces in the cove, and gave it up, for I
did not see how I could anyhow keep up a fire through the winter. Then I
bethought me that the penguins could furnish me with feathers, and I set
to work at them with earnest, and in a week had filled my cave two feet
deep with feathers.
"Every day I could feel that it got colder, and at night there was a
sharp frost; so I determined now to set-to at the seals. There were none
of the sort that you get fur from, and there was not much warmth to be
had from the skins, still they would do to block up the entrance to my
den. I killed five or six of them, and found that some of the young ones
were furry enough to make coats of. As I was sitting on the ground by
them next morning, lamenting I had nothing to boil down their blubber
in, an idea struck me. I might use the blubber as candles, sticking
wicks into it. I set to work and stripped the blubber off all the seals,
and cut it in squares of about six inches. Then I got a bit of one of
the fresh skins, bent it up all round, of the right size for the squares
to fit into, fastened it, and spread it on the rocks to dry. The thought
of how I was to make wicks bothered me. I could not spare my clothes. At
last, after trying different things, I found that some of the grass was
very tough. I put a bundle of this in a pool, and let it lay there for a
week; for I was a North of Ireland boy, and knew how they worked flax.
At the end of that time I took it out, let it dry, and then bruised it
between flat stones, and found that it had a tough fibre. I thanked God,
and picked a lot more of it and put it to soak. You may guess I tried
the experiment that night; I made six big wicks and put them in one of
the cakes of blubber and lighted them, and found that they burned
famously and gave out a lot of heat. I killed some more seals; and by
the time the winter set in in earnest I had a stock of meat enough to
last me for months, and two or three hundredweight of cakes of blubber.
"I had made several bowls and plates out of the seals' skins, and had
fashioned myself, in a mighty rough way, some suits of young seal-skins
with a hood that covered all my head and face except just my mouth and
eyes. From the first I had eaten the cabbages regular with my food. I
could not cook them, because I had nothing to boil the water in, and
they were rather bitter to eat raw; but they were better than nothing
with the flesh, and I knew that I must eat green food if I wanted to
keep healthy. Among the drift-wood I had luckily found a couple of
broken oars. To these I had fastened with seal sinews two sharp and
strong bones, and they made very fair spears.
"By the end of May the ground was covered deep with snow, and the cold
set in bitter. What had bothered me most of all was where I was to store
my stock of frozen meat and blubber. I knew that there was a chance of
bears coming, and that they would scent it out however I might hide it.
At last I determined to put it in a hole something like that I had made
into a den for myself. This hole was not like mine, on a level with the
ground, but was on the face of a smooth cliff about forty feet high. I
made a rope of seal-skin, fastened it to a projection in the rock over
the hole, and lowered myself down. I found the place would do well, and
was quite big enough for all my store, while the face of the rock was
too steep to climb, even for a bear. So I carried all my stock up to the
top, and climbing up and down the rope, stored it in the hole, except
what I wanted for a week's consumption.
"Well, lads, I passed the winter there. However cold it was outside--and
I can tell you it was bitter--it was warm enough in my den. At the very
coldest time I had two of my lamps burning, but most of the time one
kept it warm enough. I used to nestle down in the feathers and haul a
seal-skin over me; and however hard it blew outside, and however hard
it froze, I was warm there. I used to frizzle my meat over the lamp, and
every day, when the weather permitted, I went out and brought in a stock
of the cabbages. I always kept a good stock of blubber in the den and
several bundles of my wicks.
"One night I heard a sound of snuffing outside my cave, and knew at once
that the bears had come. I had thought over what I should do, and was
ready for them. The hole through the bank into the cave was only big
enough for me to crawl through, and I knew a bear could not come in till
he had scraped it a good bit bigger. I tied a bunch of the flax to the
end of one of my spears, poured a little melted grease from the lamp
over it, and then drew aside the seal-skin over the entrance and peeped
out.
"It was a moonlight night, and I could see a big head trying to thrust
itself in at the other end of the hole. A moment later he began to
scrape away at the sides. I lit the bundle of flax. It flared up
fiercely, and I thrust it out full into the beast's face. He gave a
roar, and off he went as fast as his feet would carry him. They tried it
a dozen times if they did it once; but the torch was too much for them,
and the seal bone in its middle must have given them some nasty wounds,
for I generally saw blood on the snow in the morning. Whenever I went to
get a fresh store of meat and blubber I could see how they had trampled
on the snow at the foot of the rock, and how they had scratched its face
in trying to get up at it, but it was all no manner of good. I was
chased two or three times by them when I went out to gather my cabbages,
but I always managed to get into my hole before they overtook me, and
they had learned to give that a wide berth.
"It seemed to me that winter was never going to be over; but I was young
and had good spirits and was fond of a song, and I used to lie there and
sing by the hour. Then I used to go over in my mind all the v'yges I had
made and to remember the yarns I had heard, and would go over the talks
I had had with Jack and Tom and Harry. You would be surprised how I kept
my spirits up. You see I was a young fellow, and young fellows take
things cheerful and make light of what would break them down when they
get older. I never had a day's illness, which I set down to them
cabbages. I never saw them anywhere else, and I larnt arterwards that
Kerguelen Island--for that was the place I was thrown on--was famous for
them.
"When spring came and the snow melted I made up a package of forty
pounds of meat, for the seals had not come yet, and started to make a
tour of the island. I thought such a place as this was pretty well sure
to be used by whalers in summer; and if so, I should find signs of their
having been there. I made a few excursions first, and found I was pretty
near the middle of the island--of course on the westerly side. I climbed
a high hill, but I did not learn much except that the island was a big
one, and there were hills both to the north and south that looked to me
as if they must be thirty or forty miles away. As far as I could see of
the west coast of the island the cliffs were everywhere precipitous; and
though at the east they did not seem much better, I concluded to try
that first. You see at this point the island was not more than fifteen
miles across, but it seemed to bulge out both ways, and where I was
looked like a sort of neck connecting two big islands. It was an awful
country to traverse, all hill and rock; but after three weeks' tramping
I gave a shout, for in a bay in front of me was a large hut.
"I had had a hard time of it and was pretty well done up. My meat had
lasted me well enough on short rations and I had filled up on cabbages;
but I was often a long time without water, having to depend entirely on
melted snow in the hollows of the rocks. I hurried down to the hut; it
was a rough shed evidently erected for the use of whalers, and round it
were ashes of fires, empty meat-tins, and other signs of the stay of
sailors here. For the next month I lived here. The birds were returning.
There was a stream close at hand, and enough drift-wood on the shores to
enable me to keep up a constant fire. I woke up one morning in November
to see a vessel entering the bay. The crew would scarce believe me when
I told them that I passed the winter on the island alone, and that I had
lived for six months on seal-meat, penguins, and cabbages. I learned
from them that the bay was known as Hillsborough Bay, and the cove where
the whaler entered as Betsy Cove, and that it was a regular rendezvous
of whalers. I fished with them all through the summer, and went home in
the ship, and was soon down again on the books of Godstone & Son."
"Well, that was a go, and no mistake, Joe!" Jim Tucker said. "Fancy
having to live for six months on seal frizzled over a lamp and raw
cabbages! You did not tell us how you did for drink."
"Melted snow," Joe replied. "I used to fix one of the basins of dried
seal-skin a foot or so above the lamp, so that it would be hot enough to
melt the snow without a risk of its burning itself. Then I used to pour
the water from one basin to another for half an hour. Melted snow-water
is poor stuff if you don't do that. I do not know the rights of it, but
I have heard tell that it's 'cause there ain't no air in it, though for
my part I never could see no air in water, except in surf. I had heard
that that was the way they treated condensed water, and anyhow it was a
sort of amusement like, and helped to pass the time."
"Well, it is a capital story to listen to, Joe," Jack said; "but I
should not like to go through it myself. It must have been an awful
time, shut up in a hole with a stinking lamp, for I expect it did stink,
all those months."
"It did use to smell powerful strong sometimes, lad, and many a time at
first it turned me as sick as a youngster on his first v'yage; but I got
accustomed to it after a bit. The great thing was to keep your wick
short."
"And now about your other wreck not far from here?"
"I will tell you that to-morrow evening, lads. That was a more ordinary
kind of thing. It wasn't pleasant; I don't know that wrecks ever are,
but it wasn't such an out-of-the-way thing as being chucked up on to an
iceberg."