THE PIRATE'S STORY.
It was now time to think of myself. The watch showed the hour to be
after six. Whilst my supper was preparing I went on deck to close the
hatches to keep the cold out of the ship, and found the weather changed,
the wind having shifted directly into the west, whence it was blowing
with a good deal of violence upon the ice, ringing over the peaks and
among the rocks with a singular clanking noise in its crying, as though
it brought with it the echo of thousands of bells pealing in some great
city behind the sea. It also swept up the gorge that went from our
hollow to the edge of the cliff in a noisy fierce hooting, and this
blast was very freely charged with the spray of the breakers which
boiled along the island. The sky was overcast with flying clouds of the
true Cape Horn colour and appearance.
I closed the fore-scuttle, but on stepping aft came to the two bodies,
the sight of which brought me to a stand. Since there was life in one,
thought I, life may be in these, and I felt as if it would be like
murdering them to leave them here for the night. But, said I to myself,
after all, these men are certainly insensible if they be not dead; the
cold that freezes on deck cannot be different from the cold that froze
them below; they'll not be better off in the cabin than here. It will be
all the same to them, and to-morrow I shall perhaps have the Frenchman's
help to carry them to the furnace and discover if the vital spark is
still in them.
To be candid, I was the more easily persuaded to leave them to their
deck lodging by the very grim, malignant, and savage appearance of the
great figure that had leaned against the rail. Indeed, I did not at all
like the notion of such company in the cabin through the long night.
Added to this, his bulk was such that, without assistance, I could only
have moved him as you move a cask, by rolling it; and though this might
have answered to convey him to the hatch, I stood to break his arms and
legs off, and perhaps his head, so brittle was he with frost, by letting
his own weight trundle him down the ladder.
So I left them to lie and came away, flinging a last look round, and
then closing the companion-door upon me. The Frenchman, as I may call
him, was sleeping very heavily and snoring loudly.
I got my supper, and whilst I ate surveyed the mound of clothes he made
on the deck--a motley heap indeed, with the colours and the finery of
the lace and buttons of the coats I had piled upon him--and fell into
some startling considerations of him. Was it possible, I asked myself,
that he could have lain in his frozen stupor for fifty years? But why
not? for suppose he had been on this ice but a year only, nay, six
months--an absurdity in the face of the manifest age of the ship and her
furniture--would not six months of lifelessness followed by a
resurrection be as marvellous as fifty years? Had he the same aspect
when the swoon of the ice seized him as he has now? I answered yes, for
the current of life having been frozen, his appearance would remain as
it was.
I lighted my pipe and sat smoking, thinking he would presently awake;
but his slumber was as deep as the stillness I had thawed him out of had
been, and he lay so motionless that, but for his snoring and harsh
breathing, I should have believed him lapsed into his former state.
At eight o'clock the fire was very low. Nature was working out her own
way with this Frenchman, and I determined to let him sleep where he was,
and take my chance of the night. At all events he could not alarm me by
stirring, for if I heard a movement I should know what it was. So,
loitering to see the last gleam of the fire extinguished, I took my
lanthorn and went to bed, but not to sleep.
The full meaning of the man awakening into life out of a condition into
which he had been plunged, for all I knew, before I was born, came upon
me very violently in the darkness. There being nothing to divert my
thoughts, I gave my mind wholly to it, and I tell you I found it an
amazing terrifying thing to happen. Indeed, I do not know that the like
of such an adventure was ever before heard of, and I well recollect
thinking to myself, "I would give my left hand to know of other cases of
the kind--to be assured that this recovery was strictly within the
bounds of nature," that I might feel I was not alone, so strongly did
the thoughts of a satanic influence operating in this business crowd
upon me--that is to say, as if I was involuntarily working out some plan
of the devil.
The gale made a great roaring. The ship's stern lay open to the gorge,
and but for her steadiness I might have supposed myself at sea. There
was indeed an incessant thunder about my ears often accompanied by the
shock of a mass of spray flung thirty feet high, and falling like
sacks of stones upon the deck. Once I felt the vessel rock; I cannot
tell the hour, but it was long past midnight, and by the noise of
the wind I guessed it was blowing a whole gale. The movement was
extraordinary--whether sideways or downwards I could not distinguish;
but, seasoned as my stomach was to the motion of ships, this movement
set up a nausea that lasted some while, acting upon me as I have since
learned the convulsion of an earthquake does upon people. It took off my
mind from the Frenchman, and filled me with a different sort of alarm
altogether, for it was very evident the gale was making the ice break;
and, thought I to myself, if we do not mind our eye we shall be crushed
and buried. But what was to be done? To quit the ship for that piercing
flying gale, charged with sleet and hail and foam, was merely to
languish for a little and then miserably expire of frost. No, thought I,
if the end is to come let it find me here; and with that I snugged me
down amid the coats and cloaks in my cot, and, obstinately holding my
eyes closed, ultimately fell asleep.
It was late when I awoke. I lighted the lanthorn, but upon entering the
passage that led to the cabin I observed by my own posture that the
schooner had not only heeled more to larboard, but was further "down by
the stern" to the extent of several feet. Indeed, the angle of
inclination was now considerable enough to bring my shoulder (in the
passage) close against the starboard side when I stood erect. The noise
of the gale was still in the air, and the booming and boiling of the sea
was uncommonly loud. I walked straight to the cook-room, and, putting
the lanthorn to the Frenchman, perceived that he was still in a heavy
sleep, and that he had lain through the night precisely in the attitude
in which I had left him. His face was so muffled that little more than
his long hawk's-bill nose was discernible. It was freezingly cold, and I
made haste to light the fire. There was still coal enough in the corner
to last for the day, and before long the furnace was blazing cheerfully.
I went to work to make some broth and fry some ham, and melt a little
block of the ruby-coloured wine; and whilst thus occupied, turning my
head a moment to look at the Frenchman, I found him half started up,
staring intently at me.
This sudden confrontment threw me into such confusion that I could not
speak. He moved his head from side to side, taking a view of the scene,
with an expression of the most inimitable astonishment painted upon his
countenance. He then brought the flat of his hand with a dramatic blow
to his forehead, the scar on which showed black as ink to the fire-glow,
and sat erect.
"Where have I been?" he exclaimed in French.
"Sir," said I, speaking with the utmost difficulty, "I do not understand
your language. I am English. You speak my tongue. Will you address me in
it?"
"English!" he exclaimed in English, dropping his head on one side, and
peering at me with an incredible air of amazement. "How came you here?
You are not of our company? Let me see..." Here he struggled with
recollection, continuing to stare at me from under his shaggy eyebrows
as if I was some frightful vision.
"I am a shipwrecked British mariner," said I, "and have been cast away
upon this ice, where I found your schooner."
"Ha!" he interrupted with prodigious vehemence, "certainly; we are
frozen up--I remember. That sleep should serve my memory so!" He made as
if to rise, but sat again. "The cold is numbing; it would weaken a
lion. Give me a hot drink, sir."
I filled a pannikin with the melted wine, which he swallowed thirstily.
"More!" cried he. "I seem to want life."
Again I filled the pannikin.
"Good!" said he, fetching a sigh as he returned the vessel; "you are
very obliging, sir. If you have food there, we will eat together."
I give the substance of his speech, but not his delivery of it, nor is
it necessary that I should interpolate my rendering with the French
words he used.
The broth being boiled, I gave him a good bowl of it along with a plate
of bacon and tongue, some biscuit and a pannikin of hot brandy and
water, all which things I put upon his knees as he sat up on the
mattress, and to it he fell, making a rare meal. Yet all the while he
ate he acted like a man bewitched, as well he might, staring at me and
looking round and round him, and then dropping his knife to strike his
brow, as if by that kind of blow he would quicken the activity of memory
there.
"There is something wrong," said he presently. "What is it, sir? This is
the cook-room. How does it happen that I am lying here?"
I told him exactly how it was, adding that if it had not been for his
posture, which obliged me to thaw in order to carry him, he would now be
on deck with the others, awaiting the best funeral I could give him.
"Who are the others?" asked he.
"I know not," said I. "There were four in all, counting yourself; one
sits frozen to death on the rocks. I met him first, and took this watch
from his pocket that I might tell the time."
He took the watch in his hands, and asked me to bring the lanthorn
close.
"Ha!" cried he, "this was Mendoza's--the captain's. I remember; he took
it for the sake of this letter upon it. He lies dead on the rocks? We
missed him, but did not know where he had gone."
Then, raising his hand and impulsively starting upon the mattress, he
cried, whilst he tapped his forehead, "It has come back! I have it!
Guiseppe Trentanove and I were in the cabin; he had fallen blind with
the glare of the ice--if that was it. We confronted each other. On a
sudden he screamed out. I had put my face into my arms, and felt myself
dying. His cry aroused me. I looked up, and saw him leaning back from
the table with his eyes fixed and horror in his countenance. I was too
feeble to speak--too languid to rise. I watched him awhile, and then the
drowsiness stole over me again, and my head sank, and I remember no
more."
He shuddered, and extended the pannikin for more liquor. I filled it
with two-thirds of brandy and the rest water, and he supped it down as
if it had been a thimbleful of wine.
"By the holy cross," cried he, "but this is very wonderful, though. How
long have you been here, sir?"
"Three days."
"Three days! and I have been in a stupor all that time--never moving,
never breathing?"
"You will have been in a stupor longer than that, I expect," said I.
"What is this month?" he cried.
"July," I replied.
"July--July!" he muttered. "Impossible! Let me see"--he began to count
on his fingers--"we fell in with the ice and got locked in November. We
had six months of it, I recollect no more. Six months of it, sir; and
suppose the stupor came upon me then, the month at which my memory stops
would be April. Yet you call this July; that is to say, _four months of
oblivion_; impossible!"
"What was the year in which you fell in with the ice?" said I.
"The year?" he exclaimed in a voice deep with the wonder this question
raised in him; "the year? Why, man, what year but _seventeen hundred and
fifty-three_!"
"Good God!" cried I, jumping to my feet with terror at a statement I had
anticipated, though it shocked me as a new and frightful revelation.
"Do you know what year this is?"
He looked at me without answering.
"It is eighteen hundred and one," I cried, and as I said this I recoiled
a step, fully expecting him to leap up and exhibit a hundred
demonstrations of horror and consternation; for this I am persuaded
would have been my posture had any man roused me from a slumber and told
me I had been in that condition for eight-and-forty years.
He continued to view me with a very strange and cunning expression in
his eyes, the coolness of which was inexpressibly surprising and
bewildering and even mortifying; then presently grasping his beard,
looked at it; then put his hands to his face and looked at them; then
drew out his feet and looked at _them_; then very slowly, but without
visible effort, stood up, swaying a little with an air of weakness, and
proceeded to feel and strike himself all over, swinging his arms and
using his legs; after which he sat down and pulled the clothes over his
naked feet, and fixing his eyes on me afresh, said, "What do you say
this year is, sir?"
"Eighteen hundred and one," I replied.
"Bah!" said he, and shook his head very knowingly. "No matter; you have
been shipwrecked too! Sir, shipwreck shuffles dates as a player does
cards, and the best of us will go wrong in famine, loneliness, cold, and
peril. Be of good cheer, my friend; all will return to you. Sit, sir,
that I may hear your adventures, and I will relate mine."
I saw how it was--he supposed me deranged, a mortifying construction to
place upon the language of a man who had restored him to life; yet a few
moments' reflection taught me to see the reasonableness of it, for
unless he thought me crazy he must conclude I spoke the truth, and it
was inconceivable he should believe that he had lain in a frozen
condition for eight-and-forty years.
I stirred the fire to make more light and sat down near the furnace. His
appearance was very striking. The scar upon his forehead gave a very
dark sullen look to his brows; his eyes were small and were half lost in
the dusky hollows in which they were set, and I observed an
indescribably leering, cunning expression in them, something of which I
attributed to the large quantity of liquor he had swallowed. This
contrasted oddly with the respectable aspect he took from his
baldness--that is, from the nakedness of his poll, for, as I have before
said, his hair fell long and plentifully, in a ring a little above the
ears, so that you would have supposed at some late period of his life he
had been scalped.
I know not how it was, but I felt no joy in this man's company. For some
companion, for some one to speak with, I had yearned again and again
with heart-breaking passion; and now a living man sat before me, yet I
was sensible of no gladness. In truth, I was overawed by him; he
frightened me as one risen from the dead. Here was a creature that had
entered, as it seemed to me, those black portals from which no man ever
returns, and had come back, through my instrumentality, after hard upon
fifty years of the grave. Reason as I might that it was all perfectly in
nature, that there was nothing necromantic or diabolic in it, that it
could not have happened had it not been natural, my spirits were as much
oppressed and confounded by his sitting there alive, talking, and
watching me, as if, being truly dead, life had entered him on a sudden,
and he had risen and walked.
I have no doubt the disorder my mind was in helped to persuade him that
I had not the full possession of my senses. He ran his eye over my
figure and then round the cook-room, and said, "I am impatient to learn
your story, sir."
"Why, sir," said I, "my story is summed up in what I have already told
you." But that he might not be at a loss--for to be sure he had only
very newly collected his intellects--I related my adventures at large.
He drew nearer to the furnace whilst I talked, bringing his covering of
clothes along with him, and held out his great hands to toast at the
fire, all the time observing me with scarce a wink of the eye. Arrived
at the end of my tale, I told him how only last night I had dragged his
companion on deck, and how he was to have followed but for his posture.
"Ha!" cried he, "you might have caused my flesh to mortify by laying me
close to the fire. It would have been better to rub me with snow."
He poked up one foot after the other to count his toes, fearing some had
come away with his stockings, and then said, "Well, and how long should
I have slept had you not come? Another week! By St. Paul, I might have
died. Have you my stockings, sir?"
I gave them to him, and he pulled them over his legs and then drew on
his boots and stood up, the coats and wraps tumbling off him as he rose.
"I can stand," says he. "That is good."
But in attempting to take a step he reeled and would have fallen had I
not grasped his arm.
"Patience, my friend, patience!" he muttered as if to himself. "I must
lie a little longer," and with that he kneeled and then lay along the
mattress. He breathed heavily and pointed to the pannikin. I asked him
whether he would have wine or brandy; he answered, "Wine," so I melted a
draught, which dose, I thought, on top of what he had already taken,
would send him to sleep; but instead it quickened his spirits, and with
no lack of life in his voice he said, "What is the condition of the
vessel?"
I told him that she was still high and dry, adding that during the night
some sort of change had happened which I should presently go on deck to
remark.
"Think you," says he, "that there is any chance of her ever being
liberated?"
I answered, "Yes, but not yet; that is, if the ice in breaking doesn't
destroy her. The summer season has yet to come, and we are progressing
north; but now that you are with me it will be a question for us to
settle, whether we are to wait for the ice to release the schooner or
endeavour to effect our escape by other means."
A curious gleam of cunning satisfaction shone in his eyes as he looked
at me; he then kept silence for some moments, lost in thought.
"Pray," said I, breaking in upon him, "what ship is this?"
He started, deliberated an instant, and answered, "The _Boca del
Dragon_."[2]
[Footnote 2: So in Mr. Rodney's MS.]
"A Spaniard?"
He nodded.
"She was a pirate?" said I.
"How do you know that?" he cried with a sudden fierceness.
"Sir," said I, "I am a British sailor who has used the sea for some
years, and know the difference between a handspike and a poop-lanthorn.
But what matters? She is a pirate no longer."
He let his eyes fall from my face and gazed round him with the air of
one who cannot yet persuade his understanding of the realities of the
scene he moves in.
"Tut!" cried he presently, addressing himself, "what matters the truth,
as you say? Yes, the _Boca del Dragon_ is a pirate. You have of course
rummaged her, and guessed her character by what you found?"
"I met with enough to excite my suspicion," said I. "The ship's company
of such a craft as this do not usually go clothed in lace and rich
cloaks, and carry watches of this kind," tapping my breast, "in their
fobs and handfuls of gold in their pockets."
"Unless----" said he.
"Unless," I answered, "their flag is as black as our prospects."
"You think them black?" cried he, the look of resentment that was
darkening his face dying out of it. "The vessel is sound, is not she?"
I replied that she appeared so, but it would be impossible to be sure
until she floated.
"The stores?"
"They are plentiful."
"They should be!" he cried; "we have the liquor and stores of a galleon
and two carracks in our hold, apart from what we originally laid in for
the cruise. Everything will have been kept sweet by the cold."
"All the stores seem sound," said I; "we shall not starve--no, not if we
were to be imprisoned here for three years. But all the same our
prospects are black, for here is the ship high and fixed; the ice in
parting may crush her, and we have no boat."
"May, may!" he cried with a Frenchman's vehemence. "You have _may_ and
you also have _may not_ in your language. Let me feel my strength
improving; we shall then find means of throwing a light upon these black
prospects of yours."
He smiled, or rather grinned, his fangs making the latter term fitter
for the mirthless grimace he made.
"May I ask your name?" said I.
"Jules Tassard, at your service," said he, "third in command of the
_Boca del Dragon_, but good as Mate Trentanove, and good as Captain
Mendoza, and good as the cabin boy Fernando Prado; for we pirates are
republicans, sir, we know no social distinctions save those we order for
the convenience of working ship. Now let me tell you the story of our
disaster. We had come out of the Spanish Main into the South Seas,
partly to escape some British and French cruisers which were after us
and others of our kind, and partly because ill-luck was against us, and
we could not find our account in those waters. We sailed in December two
years ago----"
"Making the year----?" I interrupted.
He started, and then grinned again.
"Ah, to be sure!" cried he, "this is eighteen hundred and one; but to
keep my tale in countenance," he went on in a satirical apologetic way,
"let me call the year in which we sailed for the South Sea seventeen
hundred and fifty-one. What matters forty or fifty years to the
shipwrecked? Is not one day of an open boat, with no society but the
devils of memory and no hope but the silence at the bottom of the sea,
an eternity? Fill me that pannikin, my friend. I thank you. To proceed:
we cruised some months in the South Sea and took a number of ships. One
was a privateer that had plundered a British Indiaman in the Southern
Ocean, and had entered the South Sea by New Holland. This fellow was
full of fine clothes and had some silver in her. We took what we wanted,
and let her go with her people under hatches, her yards square, her helm
amidships, and her cabin on fire. Our maxim is, 'No witnesses!' That is
the pirate's philosophy. Who gives us quarter unless it be to hang us?
But to continue: we did handsomely, but were a long time about it, and
after careening and filling up with water 'twixt San Carlos and Chiloe
we set sail for the Antilles. Like your brig, we were blown south. The
weather was ferocious. Gale after gale thundered down upon us, forcing
us to fly before it. We lost all reckoning of our position; for days,
for weeks, sea and sky were enveloped in clouds of snow, in the heart of
which drove our frozen schooner. We were none of us of a nationality fit
to encounter these regions; we carried most of us the curly hair of the
sun, the chocolate cheek of the burning zone, and the ice chained the
crew, crouching like Lascars, below. We swept past many vast icebergs,
which would leap on a sudden out of the white whirl of thickness, often
so close aboard that the recoil of the surge striking against the mass
would flood our decks. At all moments of the day and night we were
prepared to feel the shock of the vessel crushing her bows against one
of these stupendous hills. The cabin resounded with Salves and Aves,
with invocations to the saints, promises, curses, and litanies. The cold
does not make men of the Spaniards, who are but indifferent seamen in
temperate climes, and we were chiefly Spanish with consciences as red as
your English flag."
He grinned, emptied the pannikin, and stretched his hands to the fire to
warm them.
"One morning, the weather having cleared somewhat, we found ourselves
surrounded by ice. A great chain floated ahead of us, extending far into
the south. The gale blew dead on to this coast; we durst not haul the
schooner to the wind, and our only chance lay in discovering some bay
where we might find shelter. Such a bay it was my good luck to spy,
lying directly in a line with the ship's head. It was formed of a great
steep of ice jutting a long way slantingly into the sea, the width
between the point and the main being about a third of a mile. I seized
the helm, and shouted to the men to hoist the head of the mainsail that
she might round to when I put the helm down. But the fellows were in a
panic terror and stood gaping at what they regarded as their doom,
calling upon the Virgin and all the saints for help and mercy. Into this
bay did we rush on top of a huge sea, Trentanove and the captain and I
swinging with set teeth at the tiller, that was hard a-lee; she came
round, but with such way upon her that she took a long shelving beach of
ice and ran up it to the distance of half her own length, and there she
lay, with her rudder within touch of the wash of the water. The men,
regarding the schooner as lost, and and concluding that if she went to
pieces her boats would be destroyed, and with them their only chance to
escape from the ice, fell frantic and lost their wits altogether. They
roared, 'To the boats! to the boats!' The captain endeavoured to bring
them to their senses; he and I and the mate, and Joam Barros, the
boatswain--a Portuguese--went among them pistols in hand, entreating,
cursing, threatening. 'Think of the plunder in this hold! Will you
abandon it without an effort to save it? What think you are your chances
for life in open boats in this sea? The schooner lies protected here;
the weather will moderate presently, and we may then be able to slide
her off.' But reason as we would the cowardly dogs refused to listen.
They had broached a spirit-cask aft, and passed the liquor along the
decks whilst they hoisted the pinnace out of the hold and got the other
boats over. The drink maddened, yet left them wild with fear too. They
would not wait to come at the treasure in the run--the fools believed
the ship would tumble to pieces as she stood--but entered the forecastle
and the officers' cabins, and routed about for whatever money and
trinkets they might stuff into their pockets without loss of time; and
then provisioning the boats, they called to us to join them, but we
said, No, on which they ran the boats down to the water, tumbled into
them, and pulled away round the point of ice. We lost sight of them
then, and I have little doubt that they all perished shortly
afterwards."
He ceased. I was anxious to hear more.
"You had been six months on the ice when the stupor fell upon you?"
"Ay, about six months. The ice gathered about us and built us in. I
recollect it was three days after we stranded that, going on deck, I saw
the bay (as I term it) filled with ice. We drew up several plans to
escape, but none satisfied us. Besides, sir, we had a treasure on board
which we had risked our necks to get, and we were prepared to go on
imperilling our lives to save it. 'Twas natural. We had a great store of
coal forwards and amidships, for we had faced the Horn in coming and
knew what we had to expect in returning. We were also richly stocked
with provisions and drink of all sorts. There were but four of us, and
we dealt with what we had as if we designed it should last us fifty
years. But the cold was frightful; it was not in flesh and blood to
stand it. One day--we had been locked up about five months--Mendoza said
he would get upon the rocks and take a view of the sea. He did not
return. The others were too weak to seek him, and they were half blind
besides; I went, but the ice was full of caves and hollows, and the
like, and I could not find him, nor could I look for him long, the cold
being the hand of death itself up there. The time went by; Trentanove
went stone-blind, and I had to put food and drink into his hands that he
might live. A week before the stupor came upon me I went on deck and saw
Joam Barros leaning at the rail. I called to him, but he made no reply.
I approached and looked at him, and found him frozen. Then happened what
I have told you. We were in the cabin, the mate seated at the table,
waiting for me to lead and support him to the cook-room, for he was so
weak he could scarce carry his weight. A sudden faintness seized me, and
I sank down upon the bench opposite him, letting my head fall upon my
arms. His cry startled me--I looked up--saw him as I have said; but the
cabin then turned black, my head sank again, and I remember no more."
He paused and then cried in French, "That is all! They are dead--Jules
Tassard lives! The devil is loyal to his own!" and with that he lay back
and burst into laughter.
"And this," said I, "was in seventeen hundred and fifty-three?"
"Yes," he answered; "and this is eighteen hundred and
one--eight-and-forty years afterwards, hey?" and he laughed out again.
"I've talked so much," said he, "that, d'ye know, I think another nap
will do me good. What coals have you found in the ship?"
I told him.
"Good," he cried; "we can keep ourselves warm for some time to come,
anyhow."
And so saying, he pulled a rug up to his nose and shut his eyes.