would presently topple and destroy us. But as days passed we grew strong
in our security, while our opening to the north, whence, in this
latitude, the sun sends its warmest comfort, became at midday a
wonderful gate of gold. We named it the “Portal of the Sun,” and through
it, less than two months later, we were to see that life-giving luminary
disappear. Would we be there to watch for its return when the long
winter night had passed? Who should say?
XVIII.
A “BORNING” AND A MYSTERY.
One morning, a week after our arrival, as we sat at breakfast, we felt
the Billowcrest suddenly rock beneath us, and a moment later there came
a roar so mighty that it seemed the whole world must shudder with it. We
looked at each other, our minds reverting to the moment of our arrival
with the Pacemaker. But there was a difference in the sound. That had
been a splitting, crashing terror. This also seemed the cry of a great
rending asunder, but followed by a splendid, universal groan of peace.
At first no one spoke, and we half rose to hasten on deck. But then, to
Ferratoni, came the truth.
“Have no fright,” he said, “it was but the borning of a giant.”
We felt the vessel now slowly rising beneath us. Going out we found the
water pouring into our harbor, displaced by the new-born berg. Had we
been outside, the Billowcrest might have repeated her diving experiment.
When the water receded we went out in the launch to investigate.
Following the wall for more than a mile we came to a wonderful gleaming
monster, an infant Titan, setting out clumsily on its first voyage.
Already there was a space between it and the mother barrier, and the
great life current of the ocean was tugging it to the east.
“It’s got a long trip before it,” said Gale. “It’ll be in many a tight
place and get lots of hard rubs before it sees home again. How long do
you suppose it will be?”
I shook my head.
“Depends a good deal on what luck it has, I suppose; same as with the
rest of us.”
We went a little way in behind the berg to inspect the new surface
there. It was smooth and transparent.
“Look!” cried Edith Gale, pointing up.
Our eyes followed in the direction indicated, and we saw in the clear
ice just above our heads something frozen. The light dazzled at first
and we moved to the other side. Then we saw a huge animal form enclosed
in the crystal. It was perfectly preserved. The body was smooth and
dark, with long flippers, and extending in front for many feet was a
slender neck or throat, ending in a head something like that of a great
bird. We looked at it in silence for some moments; Gale said:
“Are we going to find such things as that when we get inside? If we are
you can refund _my_ money, now.”
“That,” I said, “is a plesiosaurus, or an ichthyosaurus. I can never
quite remember which is which. But it’s some kind of a ‘saurus,’ and it
was washed up, or crept up there to die, probably more than a million
years ago. If this were a scientific expedition we would rejoice, and
dig it out. We might, anyway.”
“No,” dissented Gale, “I don’t want to bring down another iceberg just
yet, and besides, we’ve got other fish to fry.”
“One might say other _sauruses_ of amusement,” added Edith Gale, with
becoming solemnity.
“I think we’d better go home after that,” said her father.
Entering the harbor, Ferratoni pointed to the surface of the water, a
little way ahead, where something appeared to be floating. As we drew
nearer our wonder increased, for it proved to be a part of a small boat,
or canoe. It did not appear to have been in the water for any great
length of time, and did not much resemble any craft we could recall.
Captain Biffer decided that it was from some island of the South
Pacific, and had been brought to us by the salt undercurrent. It had
been forced into the harbor, he said, by the recent in-tide caused by
the new berg. To me, however, his argument did not seem tenable. I
believed the craft had been brought by our warm river from the inner
continent, battered to pieces on the way by rocks or crushed against the
ice overhead. Edith Gale quite agreed with me in this, as did Ferratoni.
Her father also seemed to favor the idea. We took the fragment—it was a
piece of a sharp bow—to the forward cabin of the Billowcrest. Here we
placed it on a little table, and gathering about it, Edith Gale,
Ferratoni, and I constructed some curious fancies of those whose hands
had fashioned it. To Ferratoni more than to us it seemed to speak; but,
on the other hand, he revealed less of what it told him.
XIX.
A LONG FAREWELL.
And now indeed the shadows gathered and closed in about us. Already our
day was but a brief period of mournful twilight. Soon there would be
only a chill redness in the northern sky at midday. Then this too would
leave us, and the electric glow of the Billowcrest would be our only
cheer.
With the coming of the dark, the friendly sea life—the penguins and the
seals—vanished. They had visited us numerously during the early days of
our arrival in Bottle Bay, and we did not realize what a comfort they
had been until they were gone. Neither did we quite understand why they
should go, when the water of the bay was still open. Yet we knew that
they must be wiser in the matter than we, and we could not help being a
bit depressed as we watched them becoming fewer each day, until the last
one had regarded us solemnly and with a harsh note of farewell had
deserted us for the open waters of the north.
Instinctively we drew nearer together and our interdependence became
daily more evident. What gave trifling pleasure to one was a signal for
a general rejoicing, while the slightest individual ailment became a
matter of heavy concern to all.
There were so few of us, and the darkening waste about was so wide and
desolate. Personal consideration and even tenderness crept into our
daily round, and any dim shadows of discontent that may have lingered
among us were gathered up by the approaching gloom.
The Captain informed us that on the Saturday before Easter we should see
the sun for the last time. Gale said he was glad Easter fell late that
year, and that we ought to do something special in the way of farewell
ceremonies.
So on Saturday immediately after breakfast we began our programme. We
were to have many other such diversions during the long night that
followed, and as our first was fairly representative of the others I
will give it somewhat in detail. There were a number of musical
instruments on board and most of us could play, or at least strum a
little. Edith Gale, who was a skilled musician, had composed something
for the occasion, and led on the harp. Ferratoni played well on the
violin, Gale had some mastery of the flute, and I could follow with
chords on the piano. Then we had singing, in which all joined, and the
great barrier behind us echoed for the first time in all its million
years to a grand old English ballad with a rousing chorus.
Now followed a literary series in which we were to give things of our
own composition. Edith Gale was first on this programme. She did not
need to read her effort. It was very brief.
“Beauty,” she said, “and a love of the truly beautiful, are nature’s
best gifts to men and women. We have only to look and to listen, and we
learn something of the joy of the Universe and the soothing spirit of
peace. Even in this loneliness, and through the long night that lies now
at our Gateway of the Sun, we may find, if we will understand it,
something beside desolation and unillumined dark. Within, we shall keep
the semblance and memories of summertime. Without, will fall a night,
mighty and solemn, and terrifying, but always majestic, always
beautiful. And in our hearts we shall not grow faint, or despair.”
After the acknowledgments Gale said:
“That’s the sort of thing that Johnnie used to carry to the homes and
hearthstones of Tangleside, and it’s wonderful the way they seemed to
take to it. What do you think about it, Bill? Do you think a love of the
beautiful will be our greatest comfort during a hundred-day night? Let’s
hear from you.”
Mr. Sturritt rose nervously.
“I—I am quite sure,” he began, “that Miss Gale understands her
bus—er—subject, I should say, but I would suggest, that, without proper
nourishment—that is—food we would find it not easy to appreciate the
less filling—er, I mean less material comforts of beauty.”
Here Mr. Sturritt glanced at a little paper in his hand and continued
more steadily.
“Without proper food man becomes ill in body and morals. With it, he
becomes hopeful, and inspired to high achievements. Different foods
result in varied trains of thought. Acting upon this I hope to produce a
condensed lozenge or wafer that shall assist each according to his
needs. The inventor, the artist and the poet will then be gently
stimulated in imagination, command of words or rhythmic forces, as may
be required.”
Mr. Sturritt lowered his paper.
“For those lacking in their love of the truly beautiful I may also get
up a dose—er, I should say—prepare a lozenge. For our long winter,
however, I have laid in a line of—er—uncondensed supplies which I hope
will make our memories of summer fonder, and the strangeness of the
night less—less discouraging.”
“Good for you, Bill,” laughed Gale as he sat down. “Johnnie’s all right
too, but in a case of this kind it’s the food question that I’m thinking
of. Who’s next? Let’s hear from you, Biffer.”
The Captain rose with some embarrassment, and rather ponderously.
“I’m with Miss Gale, mostly,” he began. “I’ve seen the sea in a storm so
beautiful that I wasn’t afraid, but the story I’m going to tell may seem
to side some with Mr. Sturritt, too.
“Twenty-five years ago last January I was captain of a three-masted
schooner in the colony trade, bound from Liverpool to Halifax. Five days
out we struck one of the hardest no’theast storms I ever met. In less
than an hour after she hit us we’d lost our mainmast, and our cook’s
galley was a wreck. Our deck was open at the seams in forty places and
everything, including our provision, was wet with salt water. I ought to
have run back but I didn’t, and we hadn’t more’n got out of that storm
till another hit us, and then another, until we’d had eleven hurricanes
in less than that many days, and were in the worst condition a vessel
could get into and keep afloat. We had none too much provision to start
with, and most of what we’d had was lost. There was no way to cook what
we did have, so it was half a loaf of bread and a pint of water a day,
and drifting along under a little dinky sail, with a signal of distress
flying. Well, the wind kept up and blew us across the ocean, somehow. We
got in sight of Halifax light one evening, and right there we struck a
nor’wester that laid us out proper. We rolled and pitched and
waterlogged, and went back to sea again—God knows where.
“Then hard times did begin. It was four ounces of bread and half a gill
of water a day for fifty days, and cold and freezing, trying to keep
afloat.”
“And then you were rescued! Then you were taken off!”
It was Edith Gale. She was leaning forward, and her eyes glistening.
“No, Miss Gale, then we ran out of bread and water.”
“Oh, Captain Biffer!”
“For seven days there wa’n’t any of either. Everybody laid down to die
except me. I kep’ up on responsibility, and stood at the wheel day and
night. I didn’t know where we was, and I didn’t care, but somehow I
couldn’t let go of the wheel. Mebbe, if I’d appreciated nature a little
more it would have helped, too, and I know a little food would have gone
a long ways. But nature didn’t seem to need us, and we didn’t need
nature. And all the food and water were gone, though pretty soon I
didn’t care for that, either. I didn’t even care much when I saw a big
steamer coming right toward us. I was glad, of course, but I didn’t care
enough to make any hurrah over it, and neither did the men. But after
we’d been carried on board, and I’d got through with a plate of soup,
down in the Captain’s room, I says; ‘What day is it, Captain?’ ‘Why,’ he
says, ‘didn’t you know? It’s Easter Sunday.’ ‘No,’ I says, ‘but the Lord
be praised.’”
The glisten in Edith Gale’s eyes had become tears. Captain Biffer and I
had had our differences. Perhaps in a general way he still believed me
an ass. But I had walked over and taken his hand before I remembered it.
“I want to shake a brave man’s hand,” I said.
“Mr. Larkins,” said Gale, “suppose you give us your experience. What’s
the best thing to keep up on through a long dark night?”
“Well, Admiral,” began Mr. Larkins, “I’ve never been shipwrecked, but I
remember something about a dark night, and a man as got out into the wet
of it. It was tin year ago, and I was comin’ out of Manchester on the
bark Mary Collins, bound fer Bombay. She was a shlow old towboat, an’
the sailors were makin’ fun of her from the shtarrt. But there was one
felly, named Doolan, who kep’ at it continual, an’ repeatin’ all day
that he could shwim to Bombay sooner than we could get there on the Mary
Collins. ‘An,’ Doolan,’ I says, ‘you may get a chance to thry it, if we
hit one o’ thim shqualls that I run into here two year ago.’ An’ it was
the next night that we did that same, an’ Doolan was up on the top-s’l
yarrd. An’ whin the thwist of the shquall hit Doolan, he wint off wid a
whoop an’ a currvin’ ploonge, an’ one of the men below yells out ‘Man
overboard!’ an’ heaves a life-buoy into the blackness of it. But by the
time we could put her about in that shquall, an’ get back, there was no
Doolan. We hadn’t expected there would be. For whin a man dhrifts
ashtern in a shquall on a darrk night his name _may_ shtay Doolan, but
it’s more than likely to be Dinnis. So afther callin’ an’ showin’ lights
a bit, we wint on to Bombay in the direction that Doolan might be
shwimmin’, if he had a mind, now, to thry. An’ whin we got to Bombay an’
I wint to the Cushtom House an’ walked in, I see a felly sthandin’ by
the rail, an’ a-grinnin’, an’ by the Ghost of me Great Gran’mother if it
wasn’t Doolan! ‘Don’t be frightened, sur,’ he says, ‘it’s me.’ ‘An’
Doolan!’ I says, ‘an’ how did you get here? ‘Shwimmin’,’ says Doolan,
‘an’ I told you I could beat the Mary Collins.’
“But it wasn’t shwimmin’ that saved Doolan, ner food, ner
reshponsibility, ner even the beauties of nature, though he had a chance
durin’ the night he fell over to view thim at close range. It was the
life-buoy that saved Doolan, an’ kep’ him floatin’ till he was picked up
next mornin’ by a shmarter boat that beat the Mary Collins to Bombay by
one tide. I’m not sayin’ but that the others air sushtainin’ too, but it
was the life-buoy that saved Doolan.”
“There are many kinds of life-buoys, Mr. Larkins,” laughed Edith Gale,
“and I confess that Mr. Doolan seems to have found the one best suited
to his needs. What is your experience, Mr. Emory?”
The quiet Second Officer was silent for a moment, and his face saddened.
“I was shipwrecked once,” he said. “We lost our vessel and drifted for a
long time in a leaky boat. A good many died. I was kept up by the memory
of a girl, waiting for me at home. When I got there——”
Mr. Emory paused as if to gather himself. It had grown very still in the
saloon.
“She was dead,” he concluded, “so you see my shipwreck and dark night
are not over yet.”
Our narrow round had indeed brought us close together. I doubt if Emory
had ever spoken of this before to any one. Edith Gale laid her hand on
his arm.
“And she is still waiting,” she said, “you must not forget that.”
“Suppose we hear from you, Chase,” said Gale, after a pause.
Matters had taken rather an unexpected turn. I felt that I could not
discuss what would best sustain me through the dark night ahead without
putting myself and one other person in a trying position. I made an
effort to gain time.
“I think we should hear from the Admiral, now,” I said.
“Oh, well,” said Gale, “I’m not bashful if I _have_ got new clothes on.
Here’s a few observations that I’ve jotted down from time to time, not
especially for a dark night, but for any old night, or day either, when
you happen to think about ’em.” Gale straightened back and pulled down
his vest comfortably. “Seventeen Observations,” he began, “by Chauncey
Gale. Homes and Firesides a Specialty.”
I. “This is a good world if we just think so. The toothache is about the
worst thing in it, and we can have the tooth pulled.
II. “There ain’t so many mistakes in this world as people think. A man’s
pretty apt to get where he belongs by the time he’s forty.
III. “It’s easy to get rich if people only know it. Most folks want to
make too hard work of it.
IV. “There may be men who could get rich playing poker, but I’ve only
happened to meet the ones that had _tried_ it.
V. “It isn’t hard work to judge human nature if you let the other man do
the talking.
VI. “A man’s word may be as good as his bond, but if it is he won’t mind
giving his bond, too.
VII. “The commuter who keeps his lawn mowed is a gentleman. If he mows
the vacant lot next to him, he’s fit for a better world.
VIII. “Many a man is a blamed fool with the best intentions in the
world.
IX. “A free show may be a good show, but if it is, the crowd will pay
for it.
X. “A mosquito has no fear of death, and a pound of them will ruin the
best addition ever laid out.
XI. “Luck is a good thing, but it’s the men that don’t count on it that
mostly have it.
XII. “It isn’t the biggest creature that can stand the most punishment.
A lick that will only amuse a fly will kill a baby.
XIII. “Distance depends a good deal on how fast a man can walk. No
addition should be more than five minutes from the station.
XIV. “A man can enjoy leisure just as well while he’s waiting for a
train as any other time if he’ll only think so.
XV. “I never saw a failure yet that wasn’t worth more than it cost, if
the fellow that failed made use of it.
XVI. “The best way to make yourself liked is to make yourself worth
liking.
XVII. “Never laugh at a lunatic’s plans. The biggest fool scheme to-day
may be a sound business proposition to-morrow.”
Gale sat down amid enthusiasm. Most of his observations were not new in
substance, and some of them I did not altogether agree with, but in them
all I recognized the characteristic philosophy that had made Chauncey
Gale the man I had learned to admire, and even to love. His last
“observation,” though uncomplimentary in form, explained to me our
presence in Bottle Bay at this moment. I would endeavor to make it hold
good.
“Come, Chase, it’s your turn, now!”
“This,” I said, rising, “is something I did while wandering about the
docks of New York City. The editors that saw it didn’t care for it, and
I don’t care very much for it now, myself. I have altered my opinion
about some things since then—not about the sea, I mean, but about
the—the most sustaining—that is, through a dark night—I mean, that
is—now——”
“Never mind what you mean now,” said Gale. “Suppose you read it and let
us see if we can tell what you meant then.”
I was glad enough for this interruption, and proceeded, forthwith:
SEA HERITAGE.
I was born with the sea in my blood—
The sea with its surge and its flow—
The voice of the tide at its flood
Keeps calling and calling to me,
And sooner or later I know
I must go back to the sea.
I hear it pound in the dark:
The salt mist creeps to my brain
As I lean from my window and hark
To the voice that keeps shouting for me
In vain—and yet, not in vain,
For I shall go back to the sea.
I long for the leap of the spray—
I lust for the swirl of the brine—
Though lingering day after day
(Land fetters still cumbering me)
Some morn I shall claim what is mine—
I will rise—I will go to the sea.
It may be a year, or a day—
It may be to-morrow—God knows!
When, to answer, I’ll up and away,
But when and wherever it be,
This birthright is bound to foreclose—
I must go back to the sea!
“Well, yes,” commented Gale, as I sat down. “I seem to gather what you
were driving at then, but it didn’t seem to me you meant quite the same
thing the day we sailed.”
Edith Gale came out of a reverie to join in the laugh. I wondered if she
knew what I had meant by my floundering about before beginning the
verses—if she realized that a word, or perhaps three words, from her
would mean more to me now than all the seas and lands of earth.
But Ferratoni, at a signal from Gale, had arisen. For days he had been
as one in a dream. We had thought him depressed by the oncoming night.
It seems doubtful, now, that he even realized that there was a night.
“Force!” he began. “In that word lies the secret of all the worlds and
skies.
“Force, and its visible symbol, vibration!
“Sound—it is vibration—all know it.
“Heat, light, color, Electricity—they are vibrations:—many recognize it.
“Life, thought, soul—these, too, are vibrations, yet more subtle:—I have
proved it.
“And from vibrations—harmony.
“Music—the fitting together or chording of sounds—the union of
vibrations—it is the form all know, it has soothed and charmed so many.”
He paused and looked toward Edith Gale.
“Beauty,” he continued, “that which _you_ so well offer to men as spirit
sustenance, what is it but the combining of life and color vibrations
into chords which bring joy to those whose souls awake to answer?
“Harmony—it is Nature’s law. Only the hand of man may work discord. Left
undisturbed for even a brief period, the wood and the stream, the meadow
and the hill, fall into rhyme and melody, while from the sun and moon
falls a quivering glory of light, and voices of the air come whispering
or shouting past to blend more perfectly the elemental chord.”
His eyes wandered about to the others in the room.
“Lives vibrating to lives—the chord is friendship.” His gaze came back
to Edith Gale, then to me. “Soul vibrates to soul—the chord is love.”
During the brief silence which followed this there was no question as to
vibrations on my part. They were distinct waves, in fact, and I did not
dare to look otherwise than straight ahead.
“For myself,” he continued, and I breathed again, “I have found the way
of mental unity which means the voiceless speaking.”
He motioned to Miss Gale, who struck a chord on the harp near her. From
the strings of the piano across the room came a faint yet perfect
answer.
“That,” he said—“it contains it all. Thus the electric chords answer to
each other and we speak without wires across the spaces. So the
vibrations of the thought awaken in the mind of another their echo, and
men are made to know, and may answer, without words.”
Once more he paused, and we had somehow a feeling that he was drifting
away from us. When he spoke again there was in his voice the quality of
one who, listening to faint far-off words, tries to repeat them.
“Somewhere,” he said, “from out of the land we are about to enter—there
is seeking us now such a message. It comes far through the spaces—the
strings of my thought are not perfectly adjusted to its tuning. Here, in
the close union of our daily round the difficulty is not. We have become
in mental adjustment—our minds have formed in a chord to which it is not
strange that I, who have given my life to such research, should have
found the key—should have become able to know without words, as in
another way I have been able to hear without wires.”
He roused, as it were, and once more came back to us—to me, in fact.
“You,” he continued, “are at this instant wondering if what I said of
the answering soul be true. It is, and you shall presently know it.
You,” turning to Gale, “are thinking of the hour. You wished to consult
your watch and hesitated out of consideration for me. You have no need.
The Captain who sits behind you has just done so, and it lacks still a
half-hour of midday.” He turned to Zar, who thus far had been a silent
observer of the ceremonies. “You,” he said, “are remembering a little
sunny cabin in the North, where thirty years ago you lived with your
little ones about you. One of them is grown, now; the others are dead.”
Zar had comprehended little or nothing of what had gone before of
Ferratoni’s words. She had been in a reverie, but at this point she
sprang to her feet excitedly.
“Good Lawd!” she cried, “what kin’ o’ man _is_ dat? Stan’ here an’ tell
me jes’ puzzacly what I thinkin’ dat berry minute! I gwine out o’ here!
I not gwine stay in no sech place!”
She set out hastily for the door. Her outbreak had brought the needed
relaxation, and we all laughed.
“Come back,” called Gale. “You haven’t made your speech yet. We want to
hear what you have to say.”
The old woman turned suddenly.