One day, some three years ago or so, I chanced to be down at Sheerness
dockyard, and, while there, utilised my time by inspecting the various
vessels scattered about this naval repository. Some of the specimens
exhibited all the latest "improvements" in marine architecture, being
built to develop every destructive property--huge floating citadels and
infernal machines; while others were old, and now useless, types of the
past "wooden walls of old England," ships that once had braved the
perils of the main in all the panoply of their spreading canvas, and
whose broadsides had thundered at Trafalgar, making music in the ears of
the immortal Nelson and his compeers.
Amongst the different craft that caught my eye--old hulks, placidly
resting their weary timbers on the muddy bosom of the Medway,
dismantled, dismasted, and having pent-houses like the roofs of barns
over their upper decks in lieu of awnings; armour-plated cruisers, in
the First Class Steam Reserve, ready to be commissioned at a moment's
notice; and ships in various degrees of construction, on the building
slips and in dry dock--was a vessel which seemed to be undergoing the
operation of "padding her hull," if the phrase be admissible as
explaining what I noticed about her, the planking, from which the copper
sheathing had been previously stripped, being doubled, apparently, and
protected in weak places by additional beams and braces being fixed to
the sides. Of course, I may be all wrong in this, but it was what
seemed to me to be the case.
On inquiry I learnt that the vessel was the _Alert_, which it may be
recollected was one of the two ships in the Arctic expedition commanded
by Sir George Nares. I wondered why so many workmen were busy about
her, hammering, sawing, planing, riveting, fitting and boring holes with
giant gimlets, so I asked the reason for this unwonted activity, when it
might have been reasonably supposed that the vessel had played her part
in the service, and might have been allowed to pass the remainder of her
days afloat, in an honourable retreat up the estuary on which the
dockyard stands.
But, no.
I was informed that the _Alert_ had yet many more days of Arctic
experience in store for her, our government having placed her at the
disposal of the United States authorities to take part in the relief of
Lieutenant Greeley's Polar expedition.--I may here mention in
parenthesis that the vessel subsequently successfully performed the task
committed to her substantial frame; and it was mainly by means of the
stores deposited by her in a _cache_ in Smith Sound that the survivors
of the expedition were enabled to be transported home again in safety.--
I, really, only mention the vessel's name on account of the man who told
me about her--a gentleman who entered into conversation with me about
the cold regions of the north generally, and of the escapes of ships
from icebergs in particular.
He was a seafaring man. I could see that at a glance, although he was
not one I should have thought who had donned her majesty's uniform, for
he lacked that dapper look that the blue-jackets of the service are
usually distinguished by; but he was a veritable old salt, or "shell-
back," none the less, sniffing of the ocean all over, and having his
face seamed with those little venous streaks of pink (as if he indulged
in a dab of rouge on the sly occasionally) which variegate the tanned
countenances of men exposed to all the rigours of the elements, and who
encounter with an equal mind the freezing blast of the frozen sea or the
blazing sun of Africa.
I told this worthy that once, when on a voyage in one of the Inman line
of steamers from Halifax to Liverpool, I had gone--or rather the vessel
had, to be more correct--perilously near an iceberg, when my nautical
friend proceeded to give vent to his own exposition of the "glacial
theory," saying that a lot of nonsense was written about the ice in the
Arctic regions by people who never went beyond their own firesides at
home and had never seen an iceberg. It made him mad, he said, to read
it!
"I daresay you've read a lot of rubbish on the subject?" said the old
gentleman, getting excited about the matter, as if he only wanted a good
start to be off and away on his hobby.
"I daresay I have," I replied.
"Well, what with all the fiction that has been written and the fabulous
stories told of the Arctic and its belongings, the `green hand' who
makes the voyage for the first time is full of expectations concerning
all the wonderful sights he's going to see in `the perennial realms of
ice and snow'--that's the phrase the newspaper chaps always use--
expectations which are bound to be disappointed,--and why?"
"I'm sure I can't tell!" said I.
"Because the things that he fancies he's going to see don't really
exist, nor never yet did in spite of what book-learned people may say!
The voyager who goes north for the first time is bound, let us say for
illustration, for Baffin's Bay; and, from what he has learnt beforehand,
bears and walruses, seals and sea-lions, whale blubber and the Esquimaux
who eat it, all occupy some considerable share of his imagination. But,
above all these, the first thing that he looks forward to see are the
icebergs, or floating mountains of ice, which are so especially the
creation of the cold regions, to which he is sailing. These icebergs,
sir, form the staple background of every Arctic view, without which none
would be deemed for a moment complete. Their gigantic peaks and jagged
precipices are familiar to most, in a score of pictures and engravings
drawn by artists who were never beyond the Lizard Lights; and really, I
believe that if one was sketched that wasn't at least a thousand feet
high or more, and didn't have a polar bear perched on top and a full
rigged ship sailing right underneath it, why, the generality of people
would think it wasn't a bit like the real thing!"
"And what is the `real thing' like?" I asked with some curiosity.
"There you have me," said the old sailor, who had from his speech
evidently received a good education; and if once "before the mast" had
now certainly risen to something much higher. "To men whose minds have
been wrought up to such a pitch of fancy and expectation, the first
sight of a real iceberg is a complete take-down to their imagination.
Your ship is pitching about, say, in the cross seas near the mouth of
Davis Strait, preparatory to entering within the smooth water of the
Arctic circle, when in the far distance your eye catches sight of a lump
of ice, looking, as it rises and falls sluggishly in the trough of the
sea, not unlike a hencoop covered with snow, after it had been pitched
overboard by some passing ship, or like a gigantic lump of foam tossed
on the crest of a wave. If the day is sunless, the reflection of light
which gives it that glistening appearance, so remarkable as the midnight
sun glances among an array of these objects, is wanting to add dignity
to the contour of what it is a rude dissipation of life's young dream to
learn is an iceberg--though on a very small scale. It is simply a wave-
worn straggler from the fleet which will soon be met sailing southward
out of the Greenland fjords. The warm waters of the Atlantic will in
the course of a few days be too much for it. The sun will be at work on
it; it will get undermined by the wash of the breakers, until, being
top-heavy, it will speedily capsize. Then the war between the ice and
the elements will begin afresh, until the once stately ice-mountain will
become the `bergy bit,' as whalers call the slowly-lessening mass of
crumbling, spongy ice, until it finally disappears in the waters; but
only to rise again in the form of vapour, which the cold of the north
will convert into snow, the parent of that inland ice about the polar
regions which forms the source of subsequent icebergs afresh--the
process being always going on, never ending!"
"Why, you are quite a philosopher," I observed.
"A bit of a one, sir," said the old gentleman with a smile. "Those who
go down to the sea in ships, you know, see wonders in the deep! But, to
continue what I was telling you about the icebergs. As your ship
proceeds further north they become more numerous and of larger
dimensions, until, as you pass the entrance of some of those great
fjords, or inlets, which intersect the Greenland coast-line, they pour
out in such numbers that the wary mariner is thankful for the continuous
daylight and summer seas that enable him so easily to avoid these
floating rocks. Here are several broken-up ones floating about in the
Waigat, a narrow strait between the island of Disco and the mainland of
Greenland, and in close vicinity to several fjords noted for sending big
bergs adrift in the channel way to float southward. These are the `ice-
mountains' of the fancy artist. One ashore close into the land, and yet
not stranded or on account of its depth in the water getting into any
very shallow soundings, you may see in your mind's eye, as I've seen
them scores of times in reality. It presents to your notice a dull
white mass of untransparent ice--not transparent, with objects to be
seen through it on the other side, as I have noticed in more than one
picture of the North Pole taken by an artist on the spot! This mass is
generally jagged at the top with saw-like edges, and it doesn't so very
much resemble those Gothic cathedral spires as Arctic writers try to
make out. Still, on the whole, the shape of this monster floating mass
of ice is very striking to those seeing it for the first time; and when
you come to look at it more closely, its size and general character lose
nothing by having the details ciphered down, as a Yankee skipper would
say."
"Are the icebergs very big?" I inquired.
"Well," said the old gentleman, quite pleased at being asked for
information on the subject, and evidently wishing to convert me to his
own practical way of thinking in opposition to Arctic fiction-mongers,
"they may sometimes be seen of a hundred and fifty feet high,
occasionally reaching to a couple of hundred, while sometimes I've seen
an iceberg that towered up more than double that height; but the
majority of them do not exceed a hundred feet at most. The colour, as
I've said, is not emerald green, as most folks think--that is, not
unless it is seen under what science-folks call the prismatic action of
light--but a dull white that is almost opaque. The sides are,
generally, dripping with the little streams of water formed by the
melting of the ice, and glistening in the rays of the sun; but a dull
white is the principal colour of the mass. Its base is broader than its
summit, and is here and there hollowed into little caverns by the action
of the waves. The pinnacles seen in the pictures of the illustrated
papers I've spoken of are not very plain. Indeed, both the one we are
supposing and the other bergs, that are always, like the `birds of a
feather' of the proverb, to be seen close together, are flattened on the
top; and if here and there worn into fantastic shapes by the weather,
they mostly go back to a shape which may be roughly described as broader
at the base than the top; otherwise the berg would speedily capsize.
When this happens, they go over with a tremendous splash, rocking and
churning up the sea for miles round, and sending wave circles spreading
and widening out as from the whirlpool in the centre, in the same way as
when a child pitches a stone into a pond.
"On some of the bergs are masses of earth, gravel and stone, proving
that they must lately have been connected with the land; for owing to
the old bergs becoming undermined by the waves, they soon turn over, and
so of course send _their_ load to the bottom. An examination of the
sides of the ice-mass also shows to the eye some other peculiarities.
The greater part of the ice is white and thoroughly full of air-bubbles,
which lie in very thin lines parallel to each other; but throughout the
white ice there are numerous slight cracks or streaks, of an intensely
blue and transparent ice, which, on being exposed to heat, before
melting, I've been told by the surgeon of the ship I was in, dissolve
into large angular grains. These blue cracks cross and cross over again
in the mass of the berg, and may possibly be water which has melted and
been frozen again either on the surface of the berg, or in its crevasses
or cracks, when it was a part of the glacier from which it first came.
But, besides the blue ice, in some icebergs may be seen a kind of
conglomerate of ice-blocks of various sizes, the spaces between them
being filled up with snow or crumbled ice. This conglomerate exists
usually in cracks, though it is found also in layers, and even forms
large masses of the larger bergs, mixed up with stones and earthy
lumps."
"Did you ever have any adventure amongst the icebergs?" I asked the old
gentleman at this juncture, thinking I had quite enough of the
scientific aspect of the subject, and dreading lest he might dive
further into the original composition of ice.
"Not in the Arctic Ocean," he replied; "but once, when I was only a
common sailor before the mast and aboard a vessel in the Australian
trade, I came across icebergs in the southern latitudes which were
mighty perilous; and one of these bergs was, by the way, bigger than any
I ever saw in northern seas."
"Tell me all about it," I said, glad to get him on to a regular sea
yarn.
The old gentleman was nothing loth; and I noticed that the moment he
began to speak of his old experiences as a merchant seaman, he dropped
the somewhat affected phraseology in which he had previously been
expounding his theories for my information concerning the polar regions
and the formation of icebergs--thenceforth speaking much more naturally
in the ordinary vernacular of Jack tars.
"I suppose it's forty years ago, more or less," he began, "since I
shipped in the brig _Jane_, John Jiggins master, bound from London to
Melbourne with an assorted cargo.
"She was a decent-sized brig enough, and handy to manage when she had
plenty of sea-room, and a wind right aft; but on a bowline, or when the
wind was on the quarter, and there was a bit of a sea on, she kept such
a stiff weather-helm, and was such a downright cranky vessel, never
bending down to a breeze or lifting to the swell, that it was no wonder
that as soon as the hands got used to her ways, and tumbled to her
contrary points--and she was that contrary sometimes as to remind you of
a woman's temper on washing days, most ladies then being not
particularly pleasant, and feeling more inclined to drive a man mad,
rather than to coax and wheedle him--as soon as we all got used to her
ways, I say, we christened her the `_Cranky Jane_,' and that she was
more or less, barring when she had a fair wind, with an easy sea and
everything agreeable for her, as I said before.
"Old Cap'en Jiggins, however, wasn't of our way of thinking.
"He was the part owner as well as master of the vessel; and loved the
old brig--the `Janey' he called her, the old fool!--like the very apple
of his eye, always praising her up to the nines and not allowing anybody
to say a word against her sea-going qualities.
"Sometimes, when the man at the wheel would be swearing at the lubberly
craft in a silent way, so that you could see he was suffocating himself
with passion and ready to burst himself, for the way in which she would
fall off, or bowse up into the wind's eye, and try to go her own way,
like a horse that gets the bit between his teeth and sets his ears back,
then you'd hear old Jiggins a-talking to himself about the blessed old
tub.
"`That's it, my beauty! Look how she rides, the darling, like a duck!
What a clipper she is, to be sure; so easy to handle! a child could
steer her with a piece of thread!'
"When, p'raps it took all one man's strength, and perhaps two, to bring
up the beast a single point to the wind!
"In spite of Cap'en Jiggins' praise, I never sailed in such an out-and-
out obstinate craft as that identical _Cranky Jane_. She seemed to have
been laid down on the lines and constructed, plank by plank, especially
to spile a man's temper! Somehow or other, with the very lightest of
breezes--except, as I've said before, we had the wind right dead aft--we
could never get her to lay to her course and keep it. She was always
falling off and breaking away in every way but the right one, and
wanting to go just in the very opposite direction, to what we did;
exactly like Paddy's pig when he's taking it to market, and he has to
whisper in its ear that he's going to Cork, when he really wants to meet
the dealer at Bandon!
"This peculiarity of the brig, of course, very naturally set the men
against her; as, although what is usually called a `dry ship'--that is,
the hands could sleep comfortably in the forecastle, instead of being
drenched through day and night, by the seas she took in over the bows,
as is the case in some clippers I've sailed in--she was so dreadfully
hard to steer that a man's trick at the wheel was like going on the
treadmill! And yet, that very peculiarity and contrariness that made us
cuss and swear too, only induced Captain Jiggins to say occasionally
when she was most outrageous wide in her yawing, `Pretty dear!' or some
such trash--this very peculiarity, I say, saved all our lives from the
most dreadful fate, and brought us home safe to England after
encountering one of the most deadly perils of the deep. Curious, isn't
it? But I'll tell you all about it. Here goes for the yarn.
"We had done the voyage out in pretty fair time from London to Port
Philip; for, most of the way, the wind was fair and almost dead aft from
the meridian of the Cape of Good Hope, down in the `roaring forties,'
till we got to the Heads. Consequently, the brig couldn't help herself
but go straight onward, when the trades were shoving her along and while
nobody wanted her to tack, or beat up, or otherwise perform any of those
delicate little points of seamanship which a true sailor likes to see
his ship go through, almost against his own interest, sometimes, as far
as hard work is concerned in reefing and furling and taking in sail, or
piling on the canvas and `letting her rip.' So long as nothing of this
sort was wanted from her the brig was as easy-going as you could wish
and all probably that Cap'en Jiggins thought her; but, you had only just
to try to get her to sail up in the wind's eye or run with the breeze a
bit ahead of the beam, and you'd soon have seen for yourself how
cantankerous she could be!
"No, it was all plain sailing to Port Philip Heads; and even after we
had unloaded our home cargo, and went round, first to Sydney, and
afterwards to the Fiji Islands--I shan't forget Suva Suva Bay in a
hurry, I can tell you. So far, everything went serene; for, no matter
where we wanted to go--and you see, the skipper wasn't tied to any
especial port to seek a cargo, but being part owner, could please
himself by going to the best market; which, being a shrewd man, with his
head screwed on straight, you can bet he did!--no matter where we wanted
to go, as I say, the wind seemed to favour us, for it was always right
astern, and everything set below and aloft, and the wind blowing us
there beautifully right before it all the way--just as the old _Jane_
liked it, sweet and not too strong!
"So far, going out to Australia, and looking in at Sydney and Fiji and
the islands for cargo, and loading up choke-full with just everything
that our skipper counted at the highest freight, with no dead weight to
break the brig's back--so far, everything went `high-falutin'' as the
Yanks say; but when we came to leave Polynesia--it ought to be
christened Magnesia, I consider, for it contains a bigger continent,
with a larger number of islands than Europe--and shape a course
homewards to the white cliffs of Old Albion, that we longed to see again
after our long absence, for we were away good two years in all, the
cap'en thinking nothing of time, being his own charterer, so long as he
got a good cargo from port to port, and we were engaged on a trading
voyage, and not merely out and home again directly--then it was that the
_Cranky Jane_ came out in her true colours, and made us love her--oh
yes! just as the skipper did--over the left!
"Why, sir, she was that aggravating, that, as Bill the boatswain and I
agreed, we should have liked to run her ashore on the very first land we
came to, beach her and chop her up there and then for firewood; and we
wouldn't have been content till we had burned up the very last fragment
of her obstinate old hull!
"After leaving Suva Suva Bay, Fiji, where we filled up the last
remaining space in the _Cranky Jane's_ hold with copra--which is a lot
of cocoa-nuts smashed up so as to stow easy, out of which they make oil
at home for moderator lamps--we went south further than I ever went
before in any ship. Captain Jiggins, as I heard him explaining to the
first officer when I was taking my trick at the wheel, and blessing the
brig as usual for her stiff helm, intended making the quickest passage
that ever was made, he said, by striking down into them outlandish
latitudes before he steered east and made the Horn; and I suppose he
knew what he was about, as he was as good a navigator as ever handled a
sextant. _He_ called it great circle sailing; but _I_ called it queer-
sailing; and so did most of the hands, barring Bill the boatswain, who
said the captain was right; but anyways, right or wrong, it led us into
an ugly corner, as you shall hear.
"Well, we went down the latitudes like one o'clock, the brig, running
free before the north-east monsoon as if she were sailing for a wager in
a barge-race on the Thames; and the weather as fine as you please, warm
and sunny--too much so, sometimes--so that a man hadn't to do a stroke
of work on board, save to take his turn at the wheel. Watch on deck,
and watch below, we had nothing to do but loll about, with a stray pull
at a brace here and a sheet there, or else walk into our grub and then
turn into our bunks; for Cap'en Jiggins was the proper sort of skipper.
None of your making work for him when there was nothing to do; but when
the hands were wanted, why he did expect them to look alive, and have no
skulking--small blame to him, say I, for one!
"We had run down below the parallel of Cape Horn, pretty considerable I
should think, when we at last had to ask the old brig to bear up
eastwards to lie her proper course; and then you should have seen the
tricks she played--confound her! Why, we had to treat her as gingerly
as if she were a yacht rounding a mark-boat to make her bear up a point
or go to the wind; although I'll give her the credit of saying, if she
were cranky--and she was that, and no mistake--she made no leeway, which
was a blessing at all events.
"It was some days after we had altered our course to East South East,
with as much more easterly as we could get out of her--and that wasn't
much, try all we could, with as much fore and aft sail as we could get
on her--when the weather began to change, and the wind, which had been
steadily blowing from the north-east, chopped round a bit more ahead,
the sea getting up, and a stray squall coming now and again, which made
us more alert trimming the sails, and taking in and letting out canvas
as occasion arose. It was no use, however, trying to drive the brig to
the eastward any longer with this wind shifting about, humour her as we
might; so the skipper altered her course again more to the south,
although we were then as far down as we ought to have gone.
"`The darling,' says he to the first officer when he gave the order to
lay her head South South East, `she's a little playful with the heavy
cargo we've got on board, and wants to keep warm as long as she can!
Let her run a hundred miles or so more south, and then we'll fetch up to
the Horn, and be able to spin along like winking, just as the beautiful
creature wants!'
"Well! it did make us mad to hear the old man talk like this about the
clumsy old tub; but of course we couldn't help ourselves, so we only
grinned, and said to each other,--`Catch us coming again in the _Cranky
Jane_ when once we're safe ashore!'
"Would you believe it? The blessed brig, although the new course she
was on brought the wind aft instead of on her beam, she was that
spiteful over it, that, as it was blowing much stronger than it had
been, it took two of us to keep her head from deviating from her proper
track, and we had hard work to prevent her from breaking off more than
she did.
"The wind came on towards the afternoon to blow harder and harder; and
by nightfall--you know it gets dark as soon as the sun goes down in
those latitudes--we had to shorten sail so much that the _Cranky Jane_
was staggering along at the rate of nearly fourteen knots an hour with
reefed top-sails and jib and main-sail besides the stay-sails.
"The weather got wilder and wilder as time went on, the heavens quite
dark overhead, except an occasional glint of a star which didn't know
whether he ought to show or not; but still, although we were pretty far
below the equator, the night was warm and even sultry, so that we
expected a hurricane, or cyclone, or something of that sort, for it was
quite unnatural to feel as if in the tropics when fifty degrees south!
"The cap'en, I know, thought it would blow by and by, for before he
turned in he caused even the reefed top-sails and stay-sails to be taken
in, and left her snug for the night, with only a close-reefed main-sail
and the jib on her.
"`Keep a good look-out, Mr Stanchion,' says he to the chief officer, as
he went down the companion-ladder to his cabin, `and call me if there's
the slightest change.'
"`Ay, ay, sir,' says Mr Stanchion; and so the skipper goes below with a
cheerful good-night, in spite of the weather looking dirty and squalls
being handy before morning.
"Now, as luck would have it--as some folks say, although others put it
down to something more than luck--Mr Stanchion wasn't like one of those
jolly, devil-may-care, slap-dash sort of officers, that your regular
shell-backs like best. He was a silent, quiet, reflective man, who
looked and spoke as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth; and yet he
thought deeper and further than your dash-and-go gentlemen, who act on
the spur of the moment without cogitating.
"As soon as the skipper had turned in, he did a thing which perhaps not
one officer in a hundred would have done in his place, considering we
were on the open ocean out of the track of passing vessels, and that it
wasn't much darker than it is on most nights when there's no moon, and
the sky is cloudy.
"What do you think it was? Why, he put a man on the look-out on the
forecastle, just as if we were going up channel, or in a crowded sea-
way! The skipper had meant him to look-out himself, but another
wouldn't be amiss, he said.
"Providentially, too, the very man whom he accidentally selected was the
very best person he could have placed as look-out, if he had picked the
whole crew over from the captain downward; although the mate did not
know this when he sang out to him to go on the forecastle.
"This was Pat O'Brien--`Paddy,' as all the hands called him--an
Irishman, of course, as you would judge from his name, who had been in
one of the Arctic expeditions, which we were speaking of just now. He
went out with Sir Leopold McClintock I think; but all I know is, that he
once was up a whole winter in the Polar Sea, and there had got laid on
his back with scurvy, besides having his toes frost-bitten, as he
frequently told us when yarning amongst the crew of an evening.
"Generally speaking, he was a careless, happy-go-lucky fellow, and one
might have wondered that Mr Stanchion called him from out the watch
that had just came on deck; but, as I said before, the mate could not
possibly have made a better selection, as it turned out afterwards.
"Pat O'Brien was a comic chap, full of fun, and always making jokes; so
that as soon as he opened his mouth almost to say anything the other
fellows would laugh, for they knew that some lark was coming.
"`Be jabers,' says Pat, as he goes forward in obedience to the chief
officer's order, `it's a nice pleasant look-out I'll have all by
meeself! while you're coilin' the ropes here, I'll be thinkin' of my
colleen there!' and he went out on the foc'sl.
"By and by we could hear him muttering to himself. `Wurrah, wurrah!
Holy mother, can't you let me be aisy!' he sang out presently aloud as
if he was suffering from something, or in pain.
"`Look-out, ahoy!' hails Mr Stanchion from aft; `what's the matter
ahead--what are you making all that row about?'
"`Sure an' it's my poor feet, save yer honour, that are hurting of me,
they feels the frost terrible!'
"The first mate naturally thought Master Paddy was trying to play off
one of his capers on him--for it wouldn't be the first time he tried the
game on; so this answer got up his temper, making him shout back an
answer to the Irishman that would tell him he wasn't going to catch him
napping.
"`Nonsense, man,' he calls out--`frost? Why, you are dreaming! The
thermometer is up to over sixty degrees, and it's warm enough almost for
the tropics.'
"The hands, of course, thought too that Pat was only joking in his usual
way and endeavouring to make fun of Mr Stanchion; and they waited to
hear what would come next from the Irishman, knowing that he was not
easily shut up when once he had made up his mind for anything. However,
they soon could tell from the tone of voice in which Pat spoke again
that he wasn't joking this time, or else he was acting very well in
carrying out his joke on the mate; for as we were laughing about his
`poor feet,' which was a slang term in those days, Paddy calls out again
in reply to the mate:--
"`Faix,' says he, `it's ne'er a lie I'm telling, yer honour. Be jabers!
my feet feel as if they were in the ice now, and frost-bitten all over!'
"Another officer in Mr Stanchion's place would, as likely as not, have
consigned poor Pat to a warmer locality in order to warm his limbs
there; but Mr Stanchion, as I've said, was a man of a different stamp,
and a reflective one, too; and the words of the Irishman made him think
of something he had read once of a frost-bitten limb having been
discovered by a well-known meteorologist to be an unfailing weather-
token of the approach of cold. Instead, therefore, of angrily telling
Pat to hold his tongue and look-out as he ought, Mr Stanchion went
forward and joined him; we on deck, of course, being on the look-out at
once.
"Presently, we could see the chief officer and the Irishman on the
forecastle, peering out together over the ship's bows as if looking for
something.
"`I'm certain, sir,' I heard Pat say earnestly, `we're near ice whenever
my feet feels the cold, yer honour; and there, be jabers, there's the
ice-blink, as they calls it in the Arctic seas, and we're amongst the
icebergs, as sure as you live!'
"At the same moment, the atmosphere lightened up with a whitish blue
light--somewhat like pale moonshine--and Mr Stanchion shouted out at
the top of his voice, louder than we ever dreamt he could speak--`Hard
a-starboard! Down with the helm for your life!'
"Bill, the boatswain, and I, who were together at the wheel, jammed down
the spokes with all our strength; but the blessed brig wouldn't come up
to the wind as we wanted her. She wouldn't, although we both almost
hung on the wheel and wrenched it off the deck. `Hard up with the helm,
men, do you hear?' again sings out the chief officer, rushing aft as he
spoke. `Hard up, men! all our lives are at stake!'
"And the brig wouldn't come up, try all we could. Bill and I could have
screamed with rage; but in another minute we were laughing with joy.
"The light got clear; and there, to our horror, just where we wanted the
dear old brig to go--and she wouldn't go, like a sensible creature,
although we cursed her for not obeying the helm--was an enormous iceberg
rising out of the depths of the ocean, and towering above the masts of
the poor _Jane_, which I feel loth to call `cranky' any longer--as high
almost as the eyes could see, like the cliffs at Dover, only a hundred
yards higher, without exaggeration! If the brig had come up to the
wind, as Mr Stanchion sang out for us to make her, why, two minutes
after, she would have struck full into the iceberg, and running, as she
was, good fourteen knots and more under her jib and main-sail, her bows
would have stoved in, and we'd all have been in Davy Jones's locker
before we could have said Jack Robinson!
"As it was, we weren't out of danger by any means. There were icebergs
to the right of us; icebergs astern of us, by which we had passed
probably when Pat first complained of feeling the cold; icebergs ahead
of us, through which we would have gingerly to make our way, for we had
no option with the gale that was blowing but to keep the same course we
were on, as to lie to amidst all that ice would be more dangerous even
than moving on; and the big, enormous berg we had just escaped was on
our left, or port side properly speaking--looking, for all the world,
like a curving range of cliffs on some rock-bound coast, as it spread
out more than five or six miles in length. It was certainly the biggest
iceberg I ever saw in my life, beating to nothing all that I afterwards
noticed in the Arctic seas when I went north in the _Polaris_; and
perhaps that is the reason why all the ice mounds I saw there became so
dwarfed by comparison that they looked quite insignificant.
"Pat kept on the forecastle, looking out and directing the course of the
vessel, as the cap'en, who had just come on deck, roused by the noise,
thought the Irishman's experience in the Arctic seas would make him more
useful even than himself in coursing the ship.
"The skipper was right as usual; and Pat had soon a chance of showing
that his choice had not been misplaced.
"`Kape her away! kape her away!' Pat shouted out in a minute or two
after the cap'en had come on deck `The top of the berg is loosenin', yer
honour; and sure it's falling on us it will be in a brace of shakes!
Kape her away, or, be jabers, it's lost we'll be for sartin!'
"The old brig, although she wouldn't come up to the wind when we wanted
her, and thus saved our lives by disobeying orders, now answered her
helm promptly without any demur, and dashed away from the mass of ice
before the gale at, I should be ashamed to say what speed.
"Bless the old _Cranky Jane_! How could we ever have reviled her and
despised her? She seemed almost as if she had human intelligence and a
kind of foresight.
"We only just weathered the berg when the summit toppled over with a
crash, missing the after-part of the brig by a very few yards, and
churning up the sea far around with a sort of creamy surf, that dashed
over our decks, and swept us fore and aft.
"It was a marvellous escape, and only second to that we had just before
had in avoiding running on to the same gigantic mass of floating ice,
which had probably come up from the Antarctic regions for the summer
season--at least, that was Pat O'Brien's explanation for our meeting
with it there.
"All that night and next morning we were passing through bergs of every
size, big and little, although none were so large as the one which had
been so risky to us--bergs that in their splendid architecture and
magnificence, with fantastic peaks and fine pinnacles, that glittered in
the rising sun with all the colours of the rainbow, flashing out rays
and lights of violet and purple, topaz blue and emerald green, blush
rose and pink and red, mingled with shades of crimson and gleams of
gold, with a frosting over all of silver and bright white light--Those
who haven't seen an iceberg at sea at sunrise have no idea of the depth
and breadth of beauty in nature, though I, one who has served his time
before the mast, says so. But, avast with such flummery and wordage!"
"Good gracious me!" I exclaimed, aghast at the old gentleman turning
round so completely from the statement he had made when we first entered
into conversation. "I thought you said just now that all icebergs were
a dull white without any other colour, save a streak of blue sometimes
running through them like a vein; and yet, here you are painting them in
all the varied tints of the rainbow!"
He was not a bit put out, however, by this accusation of inconsistency.
"This was how they looked at sunrise, which, like a brilliant sunset, as
you know, makes a very great difference in the appearance of objects,
causing even the most common things to look brilliant, and dignifying
the common so as to make it look sublime! But, with your permission,"
added the old gentleman courteously, "I will finish my story of the
brig's escape.
"After we passed all the ice, the wind came round, as the captain said
it would, right favourable for our course; and the _Cranky Jane_ behaved
like a good one. We made all our easting on one tack, and passed the
Cape still a good distance to the south, but in as good a latitude as we
could have passed it in for the weather we had, which was first-rate.
"And when we began to mount northwards again, towards the little island
which we all prize so much, although it is but a little spot on the map
of Europe, why, the wind changed too, still almost due aft as the dear
old _Cranky Jane_ liked, much to the delight and joy of everybody on
board, especially the skipper, who exclaimed, as he rubbed his hands
together in joy, and walked up and down the poop,--`Bless the darling,
she's a walker! And I wouldn't swop her for the best clipper in the
China trade!'
"We had a good land-fall all right, entering the Channel shortly after
sighting the Lizard, making the quickest passage ever known for a
sailing brig from Fiji; and, in spite of all the dear old craft's
shortcomings and temper and weather-helm, myself and the rest of the
crew, including of course Pat O'Brien and his `poor feet,' were willing,
even after all the perils we had passed through, and the dangers we had
escaped, every mother's son of us, with Captain Jiggins' permission, and
the chief officer's favour, to sign articles, and ship for another
voyage in the old _Cranky Jane_; and, what is more, we did too, sticking
to the brig till she went to pieces off Cape Lewis to the south of New
Zealand in her last voyage out. That's all!"
So saying, the old gentleman, bowing to me politely, took his departure
from Sheerness dockyard, which I also left soon afterwards, pleased with
all that I had seen and more than glad of having visited the place if
only for the chance it afforded me of hearing his yarn.