_The Crew of the Fish Killer Finds Refuge on an Iceberg,
and Discovers Greater Safety Elsewhere, after Which
the Cook is Mistaken for a Fool, but puts the Crew to
Shame_
ROBINSON caught the child from the berth. He paused--it was an instinct
born of Labrador experience--to wrap a blanket about her, though she
was clothed for the day. She reminded him quietly that she would catch
cold without her cap; and this he snatched in passing. Then he was on
deck--in the midst of a litter from aloft and of a vast confusion of
terrified cries.
Before she struck, the _Fish Killer_ had ascended a gently shelving
beach of ice, washed smooth by the sea. There she hung precariously.
Her stem was low, so low that the choppy sea came aboard and swamped
the cabin; and the bow was high on the ice. Her bowsprit was in
splinters, her topmast on deck, her spliced mainmast tottering; she was
the bedraggled wreck of a craft.
Beyond, the berg towered into the fog, stretched into the fog; only a
broken wall of blue-white ice was visible. The butt of the bowsprit
overhung a wide ledge. To scramble to the shattered extremity, to hang
by the hands, to drop to safe foothold: this would all have been easy
for children. The impulse was to seek the solid berg in haste before
the schooner had time to fall away and sink.
Robinson ran forward.
"Got that kid?" Skipper Libe demanded. "Ah, you has! Billy Topsail!" he
roared.
Billy answered.
"Get ashore on that ice!" the skipper ordered.
Billy ran out on the broken bowsprit and dropped to the berg. He looked
back expectantly.
"Take the kid!"
A push sent Robinson on the same road. He dropped Mary into Billy's
waiting arms. Then he, too, looked back for orders.
"Ashore with you!"
Robinson swung by the hands and dropped. Before he let go his hands he
had felt the vessel quiver and begin to recede from her position.
"Now, men," said the skipper, "grub! She'll be off in a minute."
Every man of them leaped willingly to the imperative duty. The food
was in the forecastle and hold; they disappeared. Skipper Libe kept
watch on deck. With the waves restless beneath her stern, the schooner
was perilously insecure. She was gradually working her way back to the
sea. The briefest glance below had already assured Skipper Libe that
her timbers were hopelessly sprung.
She was old--rotten with age and hard service. The water was pouring in
forward and amidships; it ran aft in a flood, contributing its weight
to the vessel's inclination to slip away from the berg. It was slow
in the beginning, this retreat; but through every moment the movement
was accelerated. Five minutes--four--three: in a space too brief to be
counted upon she would be wallowing in the sea.
"Haste!" the skipper screamed.
Waiting was out of the question. The _Fish Killer_ was about
to drop into the sea. Though the men had but tumbled into the
forecastle--though as yet they had had no time to seize the food of
which to-morrow would find them in desperate need--the skipper roared
the order to return.
"Ashore! Ashore!" he shouted.
They came back more willingly, more expeditiously, than they had gone;
and they came back empty-handed. Not a man among them had so much as a
single biscuit.
"Jim!" said the skipper.
With that, Jim Tall, the cook, clambered out on the bowsprit. The
others of the crew waited, each with an anxious eye upon the skipper.
"Bill!"
No sooner was Jim Tall at the end of the bowsprit than Bill was
underway. The skipper grimly watched his terrified progress.
"Jack!"
In turn, Jack Sop scrambled out and dropped to the berg. The schooner
was fast receding from the ledge. Alexander Budge, John Swan, Archibald
Mann, completing the fishing crew, with the exception of Tom Watt, the
first hand, and the skipper, won the ice.
"Now, Tom!" said the skipper.
"You, sir!"
"Tom!" Skipper Libe roared; and you may be sure that Tom Watt waited no
longer.
Only the skipper was left. The change from his passive attitude--from
his unbending, reposeful attitude, with a hand carelessly laid on the
windlass--was so sudden and unequivocal that Jim Tall, the cook, who
was ever the wag of the crew, startled even himself with laughter. It
was instant. Skipper Libe in a flash turned from a petrified man into a
terrified and marvellously agile monkey. He bounded for the bowsprit,
nimbly ran the broken length of it, and there stood swaying. The vessel
was now so far from the ledge, and so fast receding, that he paused.
Delay had but one issue. This was so apparent that horror tied the
tongues of the crew. Not a cry of warning was uttered. The situation
was too intense, too brief, for utterance.
"Tom," said the skipper to the first hand, "catch!"
He leaped.
"Skipper," said Tom Watt, in the uttermost confusion, an instant later,
"glad t' see you! Come in! You isn't a minute too early."
In this way, proceeding with admirable self-possession, the souls
aboard the _Fish Killer_ jumped from the frying-pan. Whether or not
it was into the fire was not for a moment in doubt. When the schooner
had once fairly reached the sea, which immediately happened, she sank.
They saw her waver, slowly settle, disappear; when her topmast went
tottering under water the end had come.
Whatever may be said of a frying-pan, nobody can accuse the crew of the
_Fish Killer_ of having come within reach of a fire. Aboard the berg
it was cold--awfully cold. Icebergs carry an atmosphere of that sort
even into the Gulf Stream; they radiate cold so effectively that the
captains of steamers take warning and evade them. It was cold--very,
very cold. There was nothing to temper the numbing bitterness of the
situation. And what the night might bring could only be surmised.
* * * * *
Though they were born to lives of hardship and peril, though they had
long been used to the chances of the sea, not one of the castaways had
ever before fallen into a predicament so barren of hope. Flung on an
iceberg, adrift on the wild North Atlantic, derelict where no ships
passed, at the mercy of the capricious winds, without food or fire:
there seemed to be no possibility of escape. But for a time they did
not despair; and, moreover, for a time each felt it a high duty to make
light of the situation, to joke of cold-storage and polar bears, that
the spirits of the others might be encouraged. As dusk approached,
however, the ghastly humour failed. Ruin, agony, grief, imminent death;
in the moody silence, they dwelt, rather, upon these things.
It was not yet dark when a faint shock, a hardly perceptible shiver,
a crash from aloft, a subsiding rumble, apprised the castaways of a
portentous change of condition.
"What's that, now?" growled the cook.
It was a cruelly anxious moment. Only the event itself would determine
whether or not the berg was to turn turtle. They waited.
"She's grounded, I 'low!" exclaimed the skipper.
There was no further disturbance. Whatever had happened, the
equilibrium of the berg had been maintained.
"I'm thinkin'," said the skipper, "that I'll take a little look about."
The skipper's "little look about" developed what appeared to be a
saving opportunity. The berg had grounded; it had also jammed a
wandering pack of drift-ice against the land. What that shore was,
whether mainland or island, the skipper did not wait to ascertain; it
was sufficient for him to know that the survivors of the _Fish Killer_
might escape from a disintegrating berg to solid ground.
He returned, breathless, with the enlivening news; and in lively
fashion, which almost approached a panic, the castaways abandoned the
berg. It was a hard, painful, dangerous scramble, made in the failing
light, and the cook had an unwelcome bath in the icy water between
two pans; but it had a successful issue. Before dark, they were all
ashore--more hopeful, now, than they had been, but still staring death
in the face.
So curious was Skipper Libe that, taking advantage of the last of the
light, he set out to discover the character of the refuge. He returned
discouraged.
"'Tis but a rock," said he. "'Tis no more than a speck o' land."
Then night fell. Robinson's little daughter was by this time on the
point of succumbing to the exposure. Cold, hunger and despair had
reduced her to a pitiable silence. She was in the extremity of physical
exhaustion. They made a deep hollow in the snow in the shelter of a
declivity of rock; and there they bestowed her, gladly yielding their
jackets to provide her with such comfort as they could. But this was
small mitigation of the hardship. The child was still hopeless and
cold. It was sadly apparent that she could not survive the night. And
Robinson knew that to-morrow and to-morrow--a long stretch of days--lay
before them all. There was no hope for a frail body; weakness was
death. In his heart he frankly admitted that he was about to lose his
child.
He lay down beside her. "Mary, dear," he pleaded, "don't give up!"
She pressed his hand.
"Don't give up!" he repeated.
A wan smile came and went. "I can't help it," she whispered.
Skipper Libe and his men withdrew. It was now near midnight. The fog
was lifting. Stars twinkled in patches of black sky. Low towards the
seaward horizon the moon was breaking through the clouds.
Suddenly the cook sat bolt upright. "Skipper," he demanded, "where is
we?"
"On the Devil's Teeth."
"An' what rock's this?"
"This?"
"Ay--_this_!"
"I'd not be s'prised," the skipper answered, "if 'tis what they calls
the Cocked Hat."
"Feather's Folly!" roared the cook.
"Which?" said the skipper, suspiciously.
The cook was on his feet--dancing in glad excitement. "Feather's
Folly!" he shouted "Feather's Folly!"
"Catch un!" said the skipper, quietly. "He've gone mad."
They set upon the poor cook. Before he could escape they had him fast.
He was tripped, thrown, sat upon.
"Don't let him up," the skipper warned. "He'll do hisself hurt. Poor
man!" he sighed. "He've lost his senses."
"Mad!" screamed the cook. "_You're_ mad. Feather's Folly! We're saved!"
"Hold un tight," said the skipper.
But the cook was not to be held. He wriggled free and bolted. Billy
Topsail and all took after him, the skipper in the lead; and by the
dim, changing light of that night he led them a mad chase over rock and
through drifted snow. They pursued, they headed him off, they laid hold
of his flying coat-tail; but he eluded them, dodged, sped, doubled.
If he were mad, there was method in his madness. He was searching
every square yard of that acre of uneven rock. At last, panting and
perspiring, he came to a full stop and turned triumphantly upon his
pursuers. He had found what he sought.
"Mad!" he laughed. "Who's mad, now? Eh? Who's crazy?"
The crew stared.
"Who's crazy?" the cook roared. "Look at that! What d'ye make o' that?"
"It looks," the skipper admitted, "like salvation!"
* * * * *
Old man Feather had indeed "seen that it wouldn't happen again." He
had provided for castaways on the Cocked Hat. There was a tight little
hut in the lee of the Bishop's Nose; within, there were provisions
and blankets and fire-wood and candles. Moreover, in the sprawling,
misspelled welcome, tacked to the wall, there was even the heartening
information that "seegars is in the kityun tabl." The passengers and
crew of the _Fish Killer_ were soon warm and satisfied. They spent
a happy night--a night so changed, so cozy, so bountiful, that they
blessed old man Feather until their tongues were tired. And old man
Feather, himself, who kept watch on the Cocked Hat with a spy-glass,
took them off to Hulk's Harbour in the clear weather of the next day.
"An' did you find the cigars, skipper?" he whispered, with a wide,
proud grin.
"Us did."
"An' was they good? Hist! now," the old fellow repeated, with a wink of
mystery, "_wasn't_ they good?"
"Well," the skipper drawled, not ungraciously, you may be sure, "the
cook made bad weather of it. But he double-reefed hisself an' lived
through. 'Twas the finest an' the first cigar he ever seed."
The old man chuckled delightedly.