WE EXPLODE THE MINES.
I don't design to weary you with a close account of our proceedings. How
we opened the main-deck hatch, rigged up tackles, clapping purchases on
to the falls, as the capstan was hard frozen and immovable; how we
hoisted the powder-barrels on deck and then, by tackles on the foreyard,
lowered them over the side; how we filled a number of bags which we
found in the forecastle with powder; how we measured the cracks in the
ice and sawed a couple of spare studding-sail booms into lengths to
serve as beams whereby to poise the barrels and bags; would make but
sailor's talk, half of which would be unintelligible and the rest
wearisome.
The Frenchman worked hard, and we snatched only half an hour for our
dinner. The split that had happened in the ice during the night showed
by daylight as a gulf betwixt eight and ten feet wide at the seawards
end, thinning to a width of three feet, never less, to where it ended,
ahead of the ship, in a hundred cracks in the ice that showed as if a
thunderbolt had fallen just there. I looked into this rent, but it was
as black as a well past a certain depth, and there was no gleam of
water. When we went over the side to roll our first barrel of powder to
the spot where we meant to lower it, the Frenchman marched up to the
figure of Trentanove, and with no more reverence than a boy would show
in throwing a stone at a jackass, tumbled him into the chasm. He then
stepped up to the body of the Portuguese boatswain, dragged him to the
same fissure, and rolled him into it.
"There!" cried he; "now they are properly buried."
And with this he went coolly on with his work.
I said nothing, but was secretly heartily disgusted with this brutal
disposal of his miserable shipmates' remains. However, it was his doing,
not mine; and I confess the removal of those silent witnesses was a very
great relief to me, albeit when I considered how Tassard had been
awakened, and how both the mate and the boatswain might have been
brought to by treatment, I felt as though, after a manner, the Frenchman
had committed a murder by burying them so.
It blew a small breeze all day from the south-west, the weather keeping
fine. It was ten o'clock in the morning when we started on our labour,
and the sun had been sunk a few minutes by the time we had rigged the
last whip for the lowering and poising of the powder. This left us
nothing to do in the morning but light the matches, lower the powder
into position, and then withdraw to the schooner and await the issue.
Our arrangements comprised, first, four barrels of powder in deep yawns
ahead of the vessel, directly athwart the line of her head; second, two
barrels, a wide space between them, in the great chasm on the starboard
side; third, about fifty very heavy charges in bags and the like for the
further rupturing of many splits and crevices on the larboard bow of the
ship, where the ice was most compact. What should follow the mighty
blast no mortal being could have foretold. I had no fear of the charges
injuring the vessel--that is to say, I did not fear that the actual
explosion would damage her: but as the effect of the bursting of such a
mass of powder as we designed to explode upon so brittle a substance as
ice was not calculable, it was quite likely that the vast discharge,
instead of loosening and freeing the bed of ice, might rend it into
blocks, and leave the schooner still stranded and lying in some wild
posture amid the ruins.
But the powder was our only trumps; we had but to play it and leave the
rest to fortune.
We got our supper and sat smoking and discussing our situation and
chances. Tassard was tired, and this and our contemplation of the
probabilities of the morrow sobered his mind, and he talked with a
certain gravity. He drank sparely and forbore the hideous recollections
or inventions he was used to bestow on me, and indeed could find nothing
to talk about but the explosion and what it was to do for us. I was very
glad he did not again refer to his project to bury the treasure and
carry the schooner to the Tortugas. The subject fired his blood, and it
was such nonsense that the mere naming of it was nauseous to me.
Eight-and-forty years had passed since his ship fell in with this ice,
and not tenfold the treasure in the hold might have purchased for him
the sight of so much as a single bone of the youngest of those
associates whom he idly dreamt of seeking and shipping and sailing in
command of. Yet, imbecile as was his scheme, having regard to the
half-century that had elapsed, I clearly witnessed the menace to me that
it implied. His views were to be read as plainly as if he had delivered
them. First and foremost he meant that I should help him to sail the
schooner to an island and bury the plate and money; which done he would
take the first opportunity to murder me. His chance of meeting with a
ship that would lend him assistance to navigate the schooner would be as
good if he were alone in her as if I were on board too. There would be
nothing, then, in this consideration to hinder him from cutting my
throat after we had buried the treasure and were got north. Two motives
would imperatively urge him to make away with me; first, that I should
not be able to serve as a witness to his being a pirate, and next that
he alone should possess the secret of the treasure.
He little knew what was passing in my mind as he surveyed me through the
curls of smoke spouting up from his death's-head pipe. I talked easily
and confidentially, but I saw in his gaze the eyes of my murderer, and
was so sure of his intentions that had I shot him in self-defence, as he
sat there, I am certain my conscience would have acquitted me of his
blood.
I passed two most uneasy hours in my cot before closing my eyes. I could
think of nothing but how to secure myself against the Frenchman's
treachery. You would suppose that my mind must have been engrossed with
considerations of the several possibilities of the morrow; but that was
not so. My reflections ran wholly to the bald-headed evil-eyed pirate
whom in an evil hour I had thawed into being, and who was like to
discharge the debt of his own life by taking mine. The truth is, I had
been too hard at work all day, too full of the business of planning,
cutting, testing, and contriving, to find leisure to dwell upon what he
had said at breakfast, and now that I lay alone in darkness it was the
only subject I could settle my thoughts to.
However, next morning I found myself less gloomy, thanks to several
hours of solid sleep. I thought, what is the good of anticipating?
Suppose the schooner is crushed by the ice or jammed by the explosion?
Until we are under way, nay, until the treasure is buried, I have
nothing to fear, for the rogue cannot do without me. And, reassuring
myself in this fashion, I went to the cook-room and lighted the fire; my
companion presently arrived, and we sat down to our morning meal.
"I dreamt last night," said he, "that the devil sat on my breast and
told me that we should break clear of the ice and come off safe with
the treasure--there is loyalty in the Fiend. He seldom betrays his
friends."
"You have a better opinion of him than I," said I; "and I do not know
that you have much claim upon his loyalty either, seeing that you will
cross yourself and call upon the Madonna and saints when the occasion
arises."
"Pooh, mere habit," cried he, sarcastically. "I have seen Barros praying
to a little wooden saint in a gale of wind and then knock its head off
and throw it overboard because the storm increased." And here he fell to
talking very impiously, professing such an outrageous contempt for every
form of religion, and affirming so ardent a belief in the goodwill of
Satan and the like, that I quitted my bench at last in a passion, and
told him that he must be the devil himself to talk so, and that for my
part his sentiments awoke in me nothing but the utmost scorn, loathing,
and horror of him.
His face fell, and he looked at me with the eye of one who takes measure
of another and does not feel sure.
"Tut!" cried he, with a feigned peevishness; "what are my sentiments to
you, or yours to me? you may be a Quaker for all I care. Come, fill your
pannikin and let us drink a health to our own souls!"
But though he said this grinning, he shot a savage look of malice at me,
and when he put his pannikin down his face was very clouded and sulky.
We finished our meal in silence, and then I rose, saying, "Let us now
see what the gunpowder is going to do for us."
My rising and saying this worked a change in him. He exclaimed briskly,
"Ay, now for the great experiment," and made for the companion-steps
with an air of bustle.
The wind as before was in the south-west, blowing without much weight;
but the sky was overcast with great masses of white clouds with a tint
of rainbows in their shoulders and skirts, amid which the sky showed in
a clear liquid blue. Those clouds seemed to promise wind and perhaps
snow anon; but there was nothing to hinder our operations. We got upon
the ice, and went to work to fix matches to the barrels and bags, and to
sling them by the beams we had contrived ready for lowering when the
matches were fired, and this occupied us the best part of two hours.
When all was ready I fired the first match, and we lowered the barrel
smartly to the scope of line we had settled upon; so with the others.
You may reckon we worked with all imaginable wariness, for the stuff we
handled was mighty deadly, and if a barrel should fall and burst with
the match alight, we might be blown in an instant into rags, it being
impossible to tell how deep the rents went.
The bags being lighter there was less to fear, and presently all the
barrels and bags with the matches burning were poised in the places and
hanging at the depth we had fixed upon, and we then returned to the
schooner, the Frenchman breaking into a run and tumbling over the rail
in his alarm with the dexterity of a monkey.
Each match was supposed to burn an hour, so that when the several
explosions happened they might all occur as nearly as possible at once,
and we had therefore a long time to wait. The margin may look
unreasonable in the face of our despatch, but you will not think it
unnecessary if you consider that our machinery might not have worked
very smooth, and that meanwhile all that was lowered was in the way of
exploding. So interminable a period as now followed I do believe never
before entered into the experiences of a man. The cold was intense, and
we had to move about; but also were we repeatedly coming to a halt to
look at our watches and cast our eyes over the ice. It was like standing
under a gallows with the noose around the neck waiting for the cart to
move off. My own suspense became torture; but I commanded my face. The
Frenchman, on the other hand, could not control the torments of his
expectation and fear.
"Holy Virgin!" he would cry, "suppose we are blown up too? suppose we
are engulphed in the ice? suppose it should be vomited up in vast blocks
which in falling upon us must crush us to pulp and smash the decks in?"
At one moment he would call himself an idiot for not remaining on the
rocks at a distance and watching the explosion, and even make as if to
jump off the vessel, then immediately recoil from the idea of setting
his foot upon a floor that before he could take ten strides might split
into chasms, with hideous uproar under him. At another moment he would
run to the companion and descend out of my sight, but reappear after a
minute or two wildly shaking his head and swearing that if waiting was
insupportable in the daylight, it was ten thousand times worse in the
gloom and solitude of the interior.
I was too nervous and expectant myself to be affected by his behaviour;
but his dread of the explosion upheaving lumps of ice was sensible
enough to determine me to post myself under the cover of the hatch and
there await the blast, for it was a stout cover and would certainly
screen me from the lighter flying pieces.
It was three or four minutes past the hour and I was looking
breathlessly at my watch when the first of the explosions took place.
Before the ear could well receive the shock of the blast the whole of
the barrels exploded along with some twelve or fourteen parcels.
Tassard, who stood beside me, fell on his face, and I believed he had
been killed. It was so hellish a thunder that I suppose the blowing up
of a first-rate could not make a more frightful roar of noise. A kind of
twilight was caused by the rise of the volumes of white smoke out of the
ice. The schooner shook with such a convulsion that I was persuaded she
had been split. Vast showers of splinters of ice fell as if from the
sky, and rained like arrows through the smoke, but if there were any
great blocks uphove they did not touch the ship. Meanwhile, the other
parcels were exploding in their places sometimes two and three at a
time, sending a sort of sickening spasms and throes through the fabric
of the vessel, and you heard the most extraordinary grinding noises
rising out of the ice all about, as though the mighty rupture of the
powder crackled through leagues of the island. I durst not look forth
till all the powder had burst, lest I should be struck by some flying
piece of ice, but unless the schooner was injured below she was as sound
as before, and in the exact same posture, as if afloat in harbour, only
that of course her stern lay low with the slope of her bed.
I called to Tassard and he lifted his head.
"Are you hurt?" said I.
"No, no," he answered. "'Tis a Spaniard's trick to fling down to a
broadside. Body of St. Joseph, what a furious explosion!" and so saying
he crawled into the companion and squatted beside me. "What has it done
for us?"
"I don't know yet," said I; "but I believe the schooner is uninjured.
_That_ was a powerful shock!" I cried, as a half-dozen of bags blew up
together in the crevices deep down.
The thunder and tumult of the rending ice accompanied by the heavy
explosions of the gunpowder so dulled the hearing that it was difficult
to speak. That the mines had accomplished our end was not yet to be
known; but there could not be the least doubt that they had not only
occasioned tremendous ruptures low down in the ice, but that the
volcanic influence was extending far beyond its first effects by making
one split produce another, one weak part give way and create other
weaknesses, and so on, all round about us and under our keel, as was
clearly to be gathered by the shivering and spasms of the schooner, and
by the growls, roars, blasts, and huddle of terrifying sounds which
arose from the frozen floor.
It was twenty minutes after the hour at which the mines had been framed
to explode when the last parcel burst; but we waited another quarter of
an hour to make sure that it _was_ the last, during all which time the
growling and roaring noises deep down continued, as if there was a
battle of a thousand lions raging in the vaults and hollows underneath.
The smoke had been settled away by the wind, and the prospect was clear.
We ran below to see to the fire and receive five minutes of heat into
our chilled bodies, and then returned to view the scene.
I looked first over the starboard side and saw the great split that had
happened in the night torn in places into immense yawns and gulfs by the
fall of vast masses of rock out of its sides; but what most delighted me
was the hollow sound of washing water. I lifted my hand and listened.
"'Tis the swell of the sea flowing into the opening!" I exclaimed.
"That means," said Tassard, "that this side of the block is dislocated
from the main."
"Yes," cried I. "And if the powder ahead of the bows has done its work,
the heave of the ocean will do the rest."
We made our way on to the forecastle over a deep bed of splinters of
ice, lying like wood-shavings upon the deck, and I took notice as I
walked that every glorious crystal pendant that had before adorned the
yards, rigging, and spars had been shaken off. I had expected to see a
wonderful spectacle of havoc in the ice where the barrels of gunpowder
had been poised, but saving many scores of cracks where none was before,
and vast ragged gashes in the mouths of the crevices down which the
barrels had been lowered, the scene was much as heretofore.
The Frenchman stared and exclaimed, "What has the powder done? I see
only a few cracks."
"What it may have done, I don't know," I answered; "but depend on't such
heavy charges of powder must have burst to some purpose. The dislocation
will be below; and so much the better, for 'tis _there_ the ice must
come asunder if this block is to go free."
He gazed about him, and then rapping out a string of oaths, English,
Italian, and French, for he swore in all the languages he spoke, which,
he once told me, were five, he declared that for his part he considered
the powder wasted, that we'd have done as well to fling a hand-grenade
into a fissure, that a thousand barrels of powder would be but as a
popgun for rending the schooner's bed from the main, and in short, with
several insulting looks and a face black with rage and disappointment,
gave me very plainly to know that I had not only played the fool myself,
but had made a fool of him, and that he was heartily sorry he had ever
given himself any trouble to contrive the cursed mines or to assist me
in a ridiculous project that might have resulted in blowing the schooner
to pieces and ourselves with it.
I glanced at him with a sneer, but took no further notice of his
insolence. It was not only that he was so contemptible in all respects,
a liar, a rogue, a thief, a poltroon, hoary in twenty walks of vice,
there was something so unearthly about a creature that had been as good
as dead for eight-and-forty years, that it was impossible anything he
said could affect me as the rancorous tongue of another man would. I
feared and hated him because I knew that in intent he was already my
assassin; but the mere insolences of so incredible a creature could not
but find me imperturbable.
And perhaps in the present instance my own disappointment put me into
some small posture of sympathy with his passion. Had I been asked before
the explosions happened what I expected, I don't know that I should have
found any answer to make; and yet, though I could not have expressed my
expectations, which after all were but hopes, I was bitterly vexed when
I looked over the bows and found in the scene nothing that appeared
answerable to the uncommon forces we had employed. Nevertheless, I felt
sure that my remark to the Frenchman was sound. A great show of uphove
rocks and fragments of ice might have satisfied the eye; but the real
work of the mines was wanted below; and since the force of the mighty
explosion must needs expend itself somewhere, it was absurd to wish to
see its effects in a part where its volcanic agency would be of little
or no use.
"There is nothing to be seen by staring!" exclaimed the Frenchman
presently, speaking very sullenly. "I am hungry and freezing, and shall
go below!" And with that he turned his back and made off, growling in
his throat as he went.
I got upon the ice and stepped very carefully to the starboard side and
looked down the vast split there. The sea in consequence of the slope
did not come so far, but I could hear the wash of the water very plain.
It was certain that the valley in which we lay was wholly disconnected
from the main ice on this side. I passed to the larboard quarter, and
here too were cracks wide and deep enough to satisfy me that its hold
was weak. It was forward of the bows where the barrels had been exploded
that the ice was thickest and had the firmest grasp; but its surface was
violently and heavily cracked by the explosions, and I thought to myself
if the fissures below are as numerous, then certainly the swell of the
sea ought to fetch the whole mass away. But I was now half frozen myself
and pining for warmth. It was after one o'clock. The wind was piping
freshly, and the great heavy clouds in swarms drove stately across the
sky.
"It may blow to-night," thought I; "and if the wind hangs as it is, just
such a sea as may do our business will be set running." And thus musing
I entered the ship and went below.