"Midnight soft and fair above,
Midnight fierce and dark beneath,
All on high the smile of love,
All below the frown of death:
"Waves that whirl in angry spite
With a phosphorescent light,
Gleaming ghastly in the night,
Like the pallid sneer of Doom."
Tupper.
Scene: In Baffin's Sea. Shipwrecked mariners afloat on an iceberg,
which rises and falls on the smooth-rolling waves.
Morning broke grey and hazily; the wind, as if it had done its worst and
spent its fury, went down, but the sea still ran very high, dashing in
cold spray over the bergs on which the shipwrecked mariners were huddled
together for warmth, and leaving a thick coating of ice on top of the
sail that covered them.
Captain Blunt had gone on board one berg with half the crew, about ten
all told, and Leonard, with Douglas, on board the other, along with the
remainder, the two friends determining to be together to the bitter end,
if indeed the end were to come.
The sea itself went down at last, as far as broken water was concerned;
only a big round heaving swell continued, on which the icebergs rose and
fell with a strange kind of motion that made all on board them drowsy.
When Leonard looked about him in the morning sunlight never a sign could
be seen of the other berg. Nor all that day was it seen or on any
other. It was gone. Other icebergs there were in dozens, but none with
men on them.
Leonard heaved a sigh, and wished that he only had the wings of one of
those happy sea-birds, that went wheeling and screaming round in the
air, sometimes coming nearer and nearer, tack and half-tack, so close,
out of mere curiosity, that they could have been knocked down with a
boat-hook. All that day and all the next and next the berg floated
silently on,--
"As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean."
Almost every day strange, wondering creatures came up out of the water
to gaze at them. The tusked walrus, the gazelle-eyed seal--yes, even
the narwhal must have spied them, and felt curiosity, for he shifted his
course, and ploughed down towards the berg to have a look; then, as if
satisfied that his mind could not fathom so great a mystery, went on his
silent, solitary way once more.
Happily for the poor sailors, they had provisions. Had the ship gone
down at once when struck, as vessels do sometimes go, they would now
have been in a pitiful plight indeed.
But the cold was intense. There was no keeping it out by day hardly;
only by constant exercise, which, thanks to the magnitude of the
iceberg, they were able to maintain.
But at night it was intense, chilling every one to the bone and spinal
marrow.
They lay there pressed together; not a corner of the sail was left open
to admit a breath of the frost-laden air, but even then they were not
warm. It was impossible to sleep for hours and hours after lying down,
and when at last they did drop off, the cold, the bitter, bitter cold,
was with them still--with them in their dreams, with them in their
hearts, and on their very brains.
When morning light came they would stagger up, looking wonderingly at
each other's pale, pinched faces. To stand for a time was an
impossibility. They managed to light a little fire of wood on an iron
slab, morning, noon, and evening, to make a little coffee; this, with
biscuit and raw pork, was their only diet, and right thankful they were
to have such fare.
It was on a Tuesday the _Fairy Queen_ went down, and five long weary
days rolled slowly on their course. For five weary nights they suffered
and shivered, and when the Sabbath morning came round they were, to all
appearance, as far from help as ever.
Hope itself began to fade in their hearts, especially when two of their
number sank and died before their eyes.
They committed their bodies to the deep, and, horrible to relate, saw
them devoured; for till now they had no idea that the sea around them
was swarming with sharks. Some they had seen, it is true, but nothing
like the number that now came up to the ghastly feast.
It was the Sabbath, and although every morning and evening they had
prayed and sung hymns, after the fashion common in Scotland on this
day--His day--many chapters of the Book of books were read, and first
Douglas and then Leonard gave the men some earnest exhortations.
Leonard never knew his friend Douglas could speak so feelingly before,
or that his heart was such a well--now bubbling over--of religious
feeling and fervour.
"Ah, my dear fellows!" he ended with these words, "we never really feel
our need of a Saviour until the prospect of death stares us in the face.
Then we feel the need of a friend, and, looking around, as it were, we
find Him by our side, and right willing are we to take Him then, to
grasp His hand, and trust our all in all to Him."
"Amen!" said the sailors fervently.