I MAKE FURTHER DISCOVERIES.
So long as I moved about and worked I did not feel the cold; but if I
stood or sat for a couple of minutes I felt the nip of it in my very
marrow. Yet, fierce as the cold was here, it was impossible it could be
comparable with the rigours of the parts in which this schooner had
originally got locked up in the ice. No doubt if I died on deck my body
would be frozen as stiff as the figure on the rocks; but, though it was
very conceivable that I might perish of cold in the cabin by sitting
still, I was sure the temperature below had not the severity to stonify
me to the granite of the men at the table.
Still, though a greater degree of cold--cold as killing as if the world
had fallen sunless--did unquestionably exist in those latitudes whence
this ice with the schooner in its hug had floated, it was so bitterly
bleak in this interior that 'twas scarce imaginable it could be colder
elsewhere; and as I rose from the cask shuddering to the heart with the
frosty motionless atmosphere, my mind naturally went to the
consideration of a fire by which I might sit and toast myself.
I put a bunch of candles in my pocket--they were as hard as a parcel of
marline-spikes--and took the lanthorn into the passage and inspected the
next room. Here was a cot hung up by hooks, and a large black chest
stood in cleats upon the deck; some clothes dangled from pins in the
bulkhead, and upon a kind of tray fixed upon short legs and serving as a
shelf were a miscellaneous bundle of boots, laced waistcoats,
three-corner hats, a couple of swords, three or four pistols, and other
objects not very readily distinguishable by the candle-light. There was
a port which I tried to open, but found it so hard frozen I should need
a handspike to start it. There were three cabins besides this; the last
cabin, that is the one in the stern, being the biggest of the lot. Each
had its cot, and each also had its own special muddle and litter of
boxes, clothes, firearms, swords, and the like.
Indeed, by this time I was beginning to see how it was. The suspicion
that the watches and jewellery I had discovered on the bodies of the men
had excited was now confirmed, and I was satisfied that this schooner
had been a pirate or buccaneer, of what nationality I could not yet
divine--methought Spanish from the costume of the first figure I had
encountered; and I was also convinced by the brief glance I directed at
the things in the cabin, particularly the wearing apparel, and the make
and appearance of the firearms, that she must have been in this position
for upwards of fifty years.
The thought awed me greatly: _twenty years before I was born_ those two
men were sitting dead in the cabin!--he on deck was keeping his blind
and silent look-out; he on the rocks with his hands locked upon his
knees sat sunk in blank and frozen contemplation!
Every cabin had its port, and there were ports in the vessel's side
opposite; but on reflection I considered that the cabin would be the
warmer for their remaining closed, and so I came away and entered the
great cabin afresh, bent on exploring the forward part.
I must tell you that the mainmast, piercing the upper deck, came down
close against the bulkhead that formed the forward wall of the cabin,
and on approaching this partition, the daylight being broad enough now
that the hatch lay open on top, I remarked a sliding door on the
larboard side of the mast. I put my shoulder to it and very easily ran
it along its grooves, and then found myself in the way of a direct
communication with all the fore portion of the schooner. The arrangement
indeed was so odd that I suspected a piratical device in this uncommon
method of opening out at will the whole range of deck. The air here was
as vile as in the cabins, and I had to wait a bit.
On entering I discovered a little compartment with racks on either hand
filled with small-arms. I afterwards counted a hundred and thirteen
muskets, blunderbusses, and fusils, all of an antique kind, whilst the
sides of the vessel were hung with pistols great and little,
boarding-pikes, cutlasses, hangers, and other sorts of sword. This
armoury was a sight to set me walking very cautiously, for it was not
likely that powder should be wanting in a ship thus equipped; and where
was it stowed?
There was another sliding door in the forward partition; it stood open,
and I passed through it into what I immediately saw was the cook-house.
I turned the lanthorn about, and discovered every convenience for
dressing food. The furnaces were of brick and the oven was a great
one--great, I mean, for the size of the vessel. There were pots, pans,
and kettles in plenty, a dresser with drawers, dishes of tin and
earthenware, a Dutch clock--in short, such an equipment of kitchen
furniture as you would not expect to find in the galley of an Indiaman
built to carry two or three hundred passengers. About half a chaldron of
small coal lay heaped in a wooden angular fence fitted to the ship's
side, for the sight of which I thanked God. I held the lanthorn to the
furnace, and observed a crooked chimney rising to the deck and passing
through it. The mouth or head of it was no doubt covered by the snow,
for I had not noticed any such object in the survey I had taken of the
vessel above. Strange, I thought, that these men should have frozen to
death with the material in the ship for keeping a fire going. But then
my whole discovery I regarded as one of those secrets of the deep which
defy the utmost imagination and experience of man to explain them.
Enough that here was a schooner which had been interred in a sepulchre
of ice, as I might rationally conclude, for near half a century, that
there were dead men in her who looked to have been frozen to death, that
she was apparently stored with miscellaneous booty, that she was
powerfully armed for a craft of her size, and had manifestly gone
crowded with men. All this was plain, and I say it was enough for me. If
she had papers they were to be met with presently; otherwise, conjecture
would be mere imbecility in the face of those white and frost-bound
countenances and iron silent lips.
I thrust back another sliding door and entered the ship's forecastle.
The ceiling, as I choose to call the upper deck, was lined with
hammocks, and the floor was covered with chests, bedding, clothes, and I
know not what else. The ringing of the wind on high did not disturb the
stillness, and I cannot convey the impression produced on my mind by
this extraordinary scene of confusion beheld amid the silence of that
tomblike interior. I stood in the doorway, not having the courage to
venture further. For all I knew many of those hammocks might be
tenanted; for as this kind of bed expresses by its curvature the rounded
shape of a seaman, whether it be empty or not, so it is impossible by
merely looking to know whether it is occupied or vacant. The dismalness
of the prospect was of course vastly exaggerated by the feeble light of
the candle, which, swaying in my hand, flung a swarming of shadows upon
the scene, through which the hammocks glimmered wan and melancholy.
I came away in a fright, sliding the door to in my hurry with a bang
that fetched a groaning echo out of the hold. If this ship were haunted,
the forecastle would be the abode of the spirits!
Before I could make a fire the chimney must be cleared. Among the
furniture in the arms-room were a number of spade-headed spears; the
spade as wide as the length of a man's thumb, and about a foot long,
mounted on light thin wood. Armed with one of these weapons, the like of
which is to be met with among certain South American tribes, I passed
into the cabin to proceed on deck; but though I knew the two figures
were there, the coming upon them afresh struck me with as much
astonishment and alarm as if I had not before seen them. The man
starting from the table confronted me on this entrance, and I stopped
dead to that astounding living posture of terror, even recoiling, as
though he were alive indeed, and was jumping up from the table in his
amazement at my apparition.
The brilliance of the snow was very striking after the dusk of the
interiors I had been penetrating. The glare seemed like a blaze of white
sunshine; yet it was the dazzle of the ice and nothing more for the sun
was hidden; the fairness of the morning was passed; the sky was
lead-coloured down to the ocean line, with a quantity of smoke-brown
scud flying along it. The change had been rapid, as it always is
hereabouts. The wind screamed with a piercing whistling sound through
the frozen rigging, splitting in wails and bounding in a roar upon the
adamantine peaks and rocks; the cracking of the ice was loud,
continuous, and mighty startling; and these sounds, combined with the
thundering of the sea and the fierce hissing of its rushing yeast, gave
the weather the character of a storm, though as yet it was no more than
a fresh gale.
However, though it was frightful to be alone in this frozen vault, with
no other society than that of the dead, not even a seafowl to put life
into the scene, I could not but feel that, be my prospects what they
might, for the moment I was safe--that is to say, I was immeasurably
securer than ever I could have been in the boat, which, when I had
emerged into this stormy sound and realized the sea that was running
outside, I instantly thought of with a shudder. Had the rock, I mused,
not fallen and liberated the boat, where should I be now? Perhaps
floating, a corpse, fathoms deep under water, or, if alive, then flying
before this gale into the south, ever widening the distance betwixt me
and all chance of my deliverance, and every hour gauging more deeply the
horrible cold of the pole. Indeed I began to understand that I had been
mercifully diverted from courting a hideous fate, and my spirits rose
with the emotion of gratitude and hope that attends upon preservation.
I speedily spied the chimney, which showed a head of two feet above the
deck, and made short work of the snow that was frozen in it, as nothing
could have been fitter to cut ice with than the spade-shaped weapon I
carried. This done, I returned to the cook-room, and with a butcher's
axe that hung against the bulkhead I knocked away one of the boards that
confined the coal, split it into small pieces, and in a short time had
kindled a good fire. One does not need the experience of being cast away
upon an iceberg to understand the comfort of a fire. I had a mind to be
prodigal, and threw a good deal of coals into the furnace, and presently
had a noble blaze. The heat was exquisite. I pulled a little bench,
after the pattern of those on which the men sat in the cabin, to the
fire, and, with outstretched legs and arms, thawed out of me the frost
that had lain taut in my flesh ever since the wreck of the _Laughing
Mary_. When I was thoroughly warm and comforted I took the lanthorn and
went aft to the steward's room, and brought thence a cheese, a ham, some
biscuit, and one of the jars of spirits, all which I carried to the
cook-room, and placed the whole of them in the oven. I was extremely
hungry and thirsty, and the warmth and cheerfulness of the fire set me
yearning for a hot meal. But how was I to make a bowl without fresh
water? I went on deck and scratched up some snow, but the salt in it
gave it a sickly taste, and I was not only certain it would spoil and
make disgusting whatever I mixed it with or cooked in it, but it stood
as a drink to disorder my stomach and bring on an illness. So, thought I
to myself, there must be fresh water about--casks enough in the hold, I
dare say; but the hold was not to be entered and explored without labour
and difficulty, and I was weary and famished, and in no temper for hard
work.
In all ships it is the custom to carry one or more casks called
scuttlebutts on deck, into which fresh water is pumped for the use of
the crew. I stepped along looking earnestly at the several shapes of
guns, coils of rigging, hatchways, and the like, upon which the snow lay
thick and solid, sometimes preserving the mould of the object it
covered, sometimes distorting and exaggerating it into an unrecognizable
outline, but perceived nothing that answered to the shape of a cask. At
last I came to the well in the head, passed the forecastle deck, and on
looking down spied among other shapes three bulged and bulky forms. I
seemed by instinct to know that these were the scuttlebutts and went
for the chopper, with which I returned and got into this hollow, that
was four or five feet deep. The snow had the hardness of iron; it took
me a quarter of an hour of severe labour to make sure of the character
of the bulky thing I wrought at, and then it proved to be a cask.
Whatever might be its contents it was not empty, but I was pretty nigh
spent by the time I had knocked off the iron bands and beaten out staves
enough to enable me to get at the frozen body within. There were
three-quarters of a cask full. It was sparkling clear ice, and chipping
off a piece and sucking it, I found it to be very sweet fresh water.
Thus was my labour rewarded.
I cut off as much as, when dissolved, would make a couple of gallons,
but stayed a minute to regain my breath and take a view of this well or
hollow before going aft. It was formed of the great open head-timbers of
the schooner curving up to the stem, and by the forecastle deck ending
like a cuddy front. I scraped at this front and removed enough snow to
exhibit a portion of a window. It was by this window I supposed that the
forecastle was lighted. Out of this well forked the bowsprit, with the
spritsail yard braced fore and aft. The whole fabric close to looked
more like glass than at a distance, owing to the million crystalline
sparkles of the ice-like snow that coated the structure from the vane at
the masthead to the keel.
Well, I clambered on to the forecastle deck and returned to the
cook-room with my piece of ice, struck as I went along by the sudden
comfortable quality of life the gushing of the black smoke out of the
chimney put into the ship, and how, indeed, it seemed to soften as if by
magic the savage wildness and haggard austerity and gale-swept
loneliness of the white rocks and peaks. It was extremely disagreeable
and disconcerting to me to have to pass the ghastly occupants of the
cabin every time I went in and out; and I made up my mind to get them on
deck when I felt equal to the work, and cover them up there. The
slanting posture of the one was a sort of fierce rebuke; the sleeping
attitude of the other was a dark and sullen enjoinment of silence. I
never passed them without a quick beat of the heart and shortened
breathing; and the more I looked at them the keener became the
superstitious alarm they excited.
The fire burned brightly, and its ruddy glow was sweet as human
companionship. I put the ice into a saucepan and set it upon the fire,
and then pulling the cheese and ham out of the oven found them warm and
thawed. On smelling to the mouth of the jar I discovered its contents to
be brandy.[1] Only about an inch deep of it was melted. I poured this
into a pannikin and took a sup, and a finer drop of spirits I never
swallowed in all my life; its elegant perfume proved it amazingly choice
and old. I fetched a lemon and some sugar and speedily prepared a small
smoking bowl of punch. The ham cut readily; I fried a couple of stout
rashers, and fell to the heartiest and most delicious repast I ever sat
down to. At any time there is something fragrant and appetizing in the
smell of fried ham; conceive then the relish that the appetite of a
starved, half-frozen, shipwrecked man would find in it! The cheese was
extremely good, and was as sound as if it had been made a week ago.
Indeed, the preservative virtues of the cold struck me with
astonishment. Here was I making a fine meal off stores which in all
probability had lain in this ship fifty years, and they ate as choicely
as like food of a similar quality ashore. Possibly some of these days
science may devise a means for keeping the stores of a ship frozen,
which would be as great a blessing as could befall the mariner, and a
sure remedy for the scurvy, for then as much fresh meat might be carried
as salt, besides other articles of a perishable kind.
[Footnote 1: I can give the reader no better idea of the cold of the
latitudes in which this schooner had lain, than by speaking of the
brandy as being frozen. This may have happened through its having lost
twenty or thirty per cent. of its Strength.--P. R.]