THE ICE IN THE SOUTH
I left a light burning brightly at the mast-head: the wild meteoric
dance of that gleam was a sort of hope: no ship sighting it but would
guess from the rapidity of its oscillations that it danced on an open
boat, or shone from some short height upon a dismasted hull.
The wind was freshening with a long deep moan in the rush of it through
the flying dusk when I left the deck: but I gathered from a general
atmospheric hardening all round, a firmer line in the curl of the
surge, a distincter flash in the foam of it, that it was to be a clear
night, with perhaps a star or two by-and-by. The hull made good play:
she was like a live thing; and no helm and no fragment of canvas
vexing her, she took up her own position and wallowed dryly, save that
now and again in a sharp pitch she'd meet some lateral run of sea and
whiten in the air forward into the look of a snow-storm: but the froth
mostly blew clear, and the water when it came streaming aft quickly
froze into the snow.
Miss Otway sat beside the stove: she had removed her hat, otherwise was
wrapped up to the throat in furs; her yellow hair was shot with amber
light when the swing of the lamp flashed the radiance upon it, but her
looks were white, and something wild with grief, anxiety and fear. She
asked me if there was any ice in sight.
'None that I can see in the dusk,' I answered.
'I'm all the while dreading the ice,' said she. 'I should not fear this
high sea and our lying dismasted in it, if it were not for the ice.'
'There's none near to hurt us just now,' said I.
'When I first came into this cabin,' she exclaimed, 'in the Thames,
a chill ran through me that was cold as ice itself. It was warm, and
yet I shivered as though freezing. Was it an omen? The memory has been
haunting me in my time of loneliness here. A little while before we
were dismasted we sighted a huge iceberg that was like a cathedral: it
had a beach of frozen foam, and the snow whirled in white dust on one
side of it against the dark clouds. Oh, Mr. Selby,' she cried, 'think
of this helpless hull striking against such a mountain of ice as that,
and our getting upon it and perishing with the cold--the awful cold!'
'Why, Miss Otway,' said I with a bustle of voice and manner as I got up
to set the kettle on the stove. 'This sort of talk is good for neither
of us. Do you believe in omens? But don't be scared till danger's come,
and not then. There's plenty to eat and drink in this ship and I'm for
faring heartily for the sake of hoping heartily, and working heartily,
should work be wanted. Come, you shall fry some ham; it's my turn to
prepare the table.'
Presently we were seated as before. I talked more reassuringly than I
had ventured on earlier, for now that her hat was off I saw her face
very clearly, how refined she was, how gentle, how well nurtured;
my very heart pitied her: I felt as though commanded by God Himself
to take charge of her, to watch over her, to keep her heart up; I
can't express indeed how she appealed to me out of her gentleness and
refinement, the horrible situation she was in, the unspeakably dreadful
time she had passed through alone.
And often I would catch her in the intervals of our speech eyeing me
under drooping lids with an eager searching look of enquiry, as though
she would comfort her poor little self by finding out what sort of a
man was I who had come into this rolling hull where she was alone? I
wished her to find out quickly that she might be easy; but we both
needed time, I to act and she to discover.
I cleared the table and went on deck. The lantern burned brightly. The
night lay black, but the atmosphere was hard as when I had gone into
the cabin, and you found a distance in the gloom. All was as well with
the hull as one could dare hope for, and, closing the companion doors,
I re-entered the cabin.
It was about six o'clock then. I lighted a bull's-eye and went into the
captain's berth for the log-book which I had noticed upon the table,
and to overhaul a bag of charts. I brought the log-book and the chart I
wanted to the cabin table: Miss Otway seeing me at this, came opposite
and stood there looking on. I wished to see the last entry in the
log-book; which done, I opened the chart, and was startled to observe
that, supposing the drift of the vessel to have been continuously to
the southward, as somehow I imagined it was, that group of islands
called the South Orkneys, stretching some sixty-five miles east and
west, could not be farther than twenty-five or thirty leagues.
'Are you finding out where we are?' said Miss Otway.
'I shall know exactly when I get an observation,' said I, and carried
the log-book and chart back into the captain's cabin.
But I confess my heart was sunk. To be sure, throughout I had vaguely
known our place--could have named it within fifty or eighty miles
perhaps--yet the business I had been about ever since I woke up
stopped me from realising till I looked on the chart, when of course I
understood that if our drift was south we stood to go to pieces upon
land that would be the most God-forsaken on the wide face of the oceans
of the globe, if it were not that, hard by them, covering a range of
eight or nine degrees of longitude, lay groups of rocks with a range
of mountainous continent stretching due south (magnetic) even more
desolate, naked and iron-sheathed.
But we were not ashore yet: nor could I know certainly that our drift
was south; and then there was to-morrow's daylight with its hope of
succour.
I sat beside the stove and talked with Miss Otway. She spoke of the
voyage and of the apparition which had haunted the memory and depressed
the spirits of Captain Burke down to the hour of his death. I sought
to amuse her by relating certain experiences of my own; and she forgot
her situation whilst listening to some of my yarns. The truth is I
had gone to sea at the age of thirteen and had followed the life
fourteen years, during which I had served in several capacities in many
kinds of vessels, though my experiences lay chiefly in the India and
China trade. I had plenty then to talk about: it amused me to yarn,
and she listened with more life and intelligence than I should have
expected in one with so fixed an expression of dismay, of hearkening
consternation and mourning.
After satisfying myself with a look around on deck, I returned, and
going to the bookshelves, read the names of some of the volumes. It
was a good collection of books: the best of the poets and novelists
were there, with odds and ends of scrappy reading like Hone's and
D'Israeli's. Here I found dear old 'Peter Simple,' and carrying
the tale to the stove, I read bits aloud, and once or twice she
laughed. Then something suggesting the topic, I got telling her about
shipwrecks, my notion being to let her understand how much better off
were we than others who had suffered from disasters at sea. I talked
of the raft of the 'Medusa,' described that pathetic, lamentable scene
in the round-house of the 'Abergavenny'--the wax-lights, the captain
clasping his daughters to him--related the loss of the 'Amphitrite,'
as told to me by a man I had sailed with who had been one of the
survivors of that most tragic of shipwrecks, which littered the
Boulogne sands with scores of bodies of handsome, finely built young
women.
'Are there instances of people,' she asked, 'who have been wrecked upon
icebergs and survived?'
I spun her a few yarns of polar experiences in this way: of Russian
seamen found floating on ice: of a whaler half full of men stranded on
a berg and floating in her giant cradle down into open waters where she
was boarded and the people taken out of her.
'How long had they been locked up?'
'Several months.'
'Were their sufferings great?'
Not knowing, I had to invent, and to cheer her, said: 'Oh, no.
They kept up good fires, had plenty of beef and tobacco, heartened
themselves by singing songs, telling stories, playing at games of their
own invention, and fashioning ornaments out of whale ivory. It came
right with them. When things come right it's the same as if they never
were wrong. Nothing counts but the loss of time whilst you're waiting
for the settlement. How soon, when you get well, you forget that you
were ill! How quickly you forget the weather! Who's it says it's always
too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry, but that God so contrives it,
at the end of the year it's all the same? Keep up your heart, Miss
Otway, and reflect that when this is ended and you're safe ashore with
your people it'll be no more than an experience to talk about.'
'Yes,' said she, with a faint smile, 'it will be all right when I _am_
ashore; but who's that other person who says, philosophy triumphs over
past and future ills, but present ills triumph over philosophy?'
This passed my plain understanding, and I let the subject go.
I went on deck for more ice to melt and boil, and found it blowing
pretty strong. A high sea, ridged in lines of ebony against the light
of their own foam, and melted in roaring snowdrifts under the hull
that was topping them with a wonderful buoyancy. I looked for a star,
but all was sweeping blackness aloft, save the point of light at the
stump-head.
Knowing this hard heave of sea must certainly give us a steady trend
southward, helped as the hull was by the blast every time she soared
into the icy howl of it, I fetched a bull's-eye, and observing by the
binnacle that the hulk's head pointed about east by north, I went to
the starboard rail and overlay it, staring with desperate searching
eyes into the hard gloom till I was almost frozen. But I could see
nothing that looked like ice, no faintness, no spectral sheen, all that
glared was foam running from the arched back of the surge; so I went
below, where I boiled some coffee, and, shortly after eight, Miss Otway
withdrew to her berth.
I took the bull's-eye to find me more clothes in the captain's cabin,
and when I was wrapped up to the bigness of a Greenland's-man, I
returned to the stove, dimming the lamp to a light that was just enough
to see by, and lay down upon a couch. Presently I was startled out of
a reverie by seeing a great rat come close to the fire, as though for
the warmth. Very quietly putting my hand in my pocket, I pulled out my
clasp knife, which I opened; the blade was dagger-shaped. Then, quick
as lightning, I lanced the weapon at the beast and half severed its
head. This pleased me, for in the course of our talks Miss Otway had
said that in her time of loneliness, a huge rat had come into the cabin
and looked at her till she was motionless with disgust and fear. I
could not know, however, that this was the rat that had so served her;
though it made one less aboard, and I dropped it into a coal-bucket to
chuck over the side next day.
The sight of the bleeding, lifeless beast set my thoughts running
on the hours the girl, whilst alone, had spent in this hull, and I
wondered when I looked at the rat and listened to the shrieking and
grinding noises, that she had not days before gone off her head. I
guessed that her mind had been cast in a heroic mould; never else could
she have come through such a term of loneliness with her wits all
right. Less had driven strong men overboard, gaping madmen.
Whilst I sat following the wild and flying motions of the hull,
testing them by sensation to gather if the buoyancy diminished, I
was addressed. I looked round with a sudden surprise that was nearly
fright: it was Miss Otway, furred and clothed from head to foot as she
had left me.
'Are you going to sit up all night?' she exclaimed.
'I'm going to sit here,' I answered. 'I shall snooze at intervals.'
'Let me watch whilst you sleep,' said she.
'There's nothing to watch,' I answered, 'nothing to keep a look-out
for.'
'A ship might see our lantern and come down to us.'
'She could do nothing in this weather.'
'But to think of being asleep whilst a vessel is coming down to see
what the light means! Think of her hailing, getting no answer and
passing on. It might be our only chance.'
I told her that might happen even though we both kept watch all night
in the cabin. How, down here, should we hear a hail from the water?
We'd need to keep a look-out on deck, which would kill her quickly and
me soon after.
'Pray go and rest,' said I, 'and trust me to see anything that may come
along and to hear anything that may hail.'
She looked reluctant, very white, her eyes dim and large with tragic
expectancy as though she never knew but that in the next minute
something frightful would happen.
I picked the rat up by the tail. 'Is this your friend?' said I.
She shrieked, believing it alive; then, shuddering and shuddering,
staggered somewhat blindly in the direction of the cabin.
I jumped up and supported her, encouraging her by every promise and
hope my brain could frame.
'You have not slept for nights,' said I, pausing at her door. 'Best now
that I am here, if only that you may have strength enough to leave the
hull and health enough to carry you to your home.'
She had removed her gloves: I grasped her ice-cold hand and returned to
my couch.
The night crept away. I dozed at intervals, visiting the deck perhaps
half a dozen times. In the morning watch I slept soundly upon the couch
by the stove, and when I awoke it was nine by the clock under the
skylight, still black as thunder, and the hull rolling heavily. I was
cold to the heart, and before quitting the cabin kindled a fire to boil
some water for a hot drink, then went up the steps to take a look.
It was still blowing fresh, but the wind had shifted north-west,
and the sky was a clear, sparkling heaven of stars from sea-line to
sea-line, the sea running in steady hills of ink to where you saw the
horizon throbbing close under the pale lights of the night low down,
so clear was the gale. The mast-head lamp burned dimly; but it would
be daybreak shortly. I stared around the sea, and saw nothing north
and west and east, but my sight going south was arrested by a low,
irregular, dim line: it rose with the heave of the hull, and it was
as far off as the horizon. It looked like the sheen of a long face of
coast covered with snow: it was a mere attenuated film of faintness
stretched where sky and water met, and I looked and looked, believing
it a bank of cloud that would dissolve whilst I watched; but it hung
steady, and still it was so elusive that sometimes I saw it, and when
the hull sprang from the trough again it was gone; and yet again, when
she roared to the height of a surge, it was there.
Well, daylight was at hand to resolve it. For my part I had no doubt
it was ice; indeed it had astonished me to find these seas so open at
this time of the year; only, if that sheen out in the morning darkness
under the stars was ice, the drift had been ours to carry us to a sight
of it: which signified a slide of keel running into knots: for that
steamlike hovering down there had not been in sight two or three hours
earlier, when my eye, as now, followed the hard curls of sea working
into distance, though the sky was not starry.
I went below, trimmed the lamp, and prepared the table for breakfast.
Whilst I was thus occupied, Miss Otway appeared. She came straight to
the stove and held her hands to the blaze, and asked me when it would
be daylight. I answered, 'Within an hour.'
'This almost perpetual darkness,' she exclaimed, 'is one of the most
awful parts of this dreadful time.'
'I hope you slept well?'
'Yes, I slept soundly, and awoke only about a quarter of an hour ago.
What is the time?' I named the hour. 'You've seen no signs of a ship
during the night, I fear?'
'Nothing. It has blown hard. It still blows a fresh breeze of wind.
This is the most seawardly vessel that was ever launched. It is lucky
for us her cargo is a light one. Think of her laden to her chain-plate
bolts with some dead weight of iron goods. She would have been under
water day and night, and by this time have ceased to be a hull.'
'When were you last on deck, Mr. Selby?'
'I'm just now from the deck.'
'Is there anything in sight?'
'I'm waiting for daybreak to make sure.'
My answer caused her to make a step from the stove, and to advance her
white face whilst she stared at me.
'Is there ice near us?' she asked.
'I find an appearance in the southward that may prove ice,' said I.
'But what else are you to expect in these seas?' I added carelessly.
'Here we are somewhere down in sixty degrees, and, since I have been
aboard, the horizon has been almost clear. What shall we have for
breakfast? Will you boil some coffee whilst I search the pantry?
Suppose daylight should reveal ice--it may also show us a whaler
fishing in the thick of the bergs!'
And assuming a cheerful, bustling manner I lighted a bull's-eye,
whistling some sea tune the while, and went into the pantry, where,
after a brief overhaul of the closet and shelves, I laid hands upon a
tin of herrings, sardines, and some kind of delicate sausage.
'I am making free,' said I, putting the stuff upon the table.
'These things were laid in for you. I'll take an inventory of what's
left by-and-by; I allow that everything for cabin use will be stowed
in the lazarette. When you're transhipped the delicacies must go along
with you. The whaleman's our chance, and his cupboard has no reputation
for dainties.'
I waited for her to sit, attended upon her, then fell to myself. But
all the while we remained seated she was straining her eyes at the
porthole facing her, then turning to the porthole behind her as though
she thought through the gleaming ebony of the glass, white with the
foam it rose from, to behold the ice I had spoken about.
Day broke before I had breakfasted; it lay white in the snow on the
skylight ere I rose, and the grey of it in the cabin windows was
growing blue when I went on deck accompanied by Miss Otway. And now I
looked at what, for the hour past, I had dreaded to see. The day had
dawned in cold splendour; the sun was flashing in rose, at this moment
perhaps two degrees above the horizon; a number of small clouds were
floating near his face and looked like bits of gilt scaling off the
rayless target-like luminary; otherwise the heavens sloped clear in a
sheer vault of deeply dark blue, under which ran the sea of the rich
hue of the sky, but full of gleams and the snow of melting crests,
and here and there spaces of an exquisite ice-like green snaking
currentwise over the heaving waters.
It no longer blew hard, but it was still a fresh breeze, spray-clouded
in the frequent guns of it that shrieked in gusts over the bulwarks to
the loftier lifts of the hull. But what my sight went to and remained
fastened upon whilst, I own, my breath came and went quickly with
the surprise of the magnificent, but to us the terrible, sight, was
the scene of the southern quarter of the sea. There, stretching for
miles and miles, was ice in bergs which to the naked sight looked to
lie so close, the picture was that of a compacted coast of alabaster,
broken with pinnacles and acclivities of a thousand shapes, curving in
places as though in bays, the whole on either hand dying out in films
of white, whilst over the bows and over the stern, too, every time we
rose to the height of a sea I saw ice, plentiful as the breasts of the
canvas of a vast fleet; and through the southern sky low down ran a
long glinting line or gleam as though a continent of ice was reflected
in its face; it was like the pearly radiance that hovers just off the
edges of sails when lightly swelling in the tropics against a soft blue
sky.
I glanced at Miss Otway: she was staring at the sight with large
nostrils and a gaze of terror under the little frown that the strain
of her gaze had knitted her brows into.
'That is ice,' she cried.
'Ay, miles of it' said I. 'But is there nothing good for us amidst that
prodigious huddle of sail-like stuff?'
I took the telescope out of the companion and knelt with it to steady
the tubes, and slowly and carefully swept the whole of that wonderful
range, from film to film blue in the air. The sun's rosy light was full
upon it; only the brush of an artist could show you what I saw as the
surge ran me into a clear view of the horizon. It looked like a hundred
cities of marble and alabaster, all of them going to pieces. It was
no compact coast. There were many wide gaps, titanic streets fit for
the tread of such ocean giant-spirits as would inhabit those colossal
structures of crystal. The nearest point seemed about ten miles
distant. All was clear sea between, and northwards I saw no ice.
Miss Otway stood beside me holding by a belaying pin in the rail. Again
and again she would say:
'Do you see any signs of a ship? Is not that the canvas of a
ship--_there_, just where your telescope now points?'
I saw no ship, but I looked with impassioned intentness till my eyeball
seemed to melt dim through the lens under the brass it was pressed
against, conceiving that in so vast an arm of ice some vessel might lie
embayed.