THE THICK OF IT
My instant belief was we were foul of ice, scaling some side of crystal
mountain smooth as though chiselled. But when I opened the companion
door I was nearly flung to the bottom of the steps by a very volcanic
shock of gale, white as a cloud with snow and hail. I sprang again
and gained the deck, and, shutting the door, got to leeward of the
companion.
A furious Cape Horn squall was blowing over the ocean in smoke--from
what quarter I had then to find out. The still scene of starlight night
and sluggish rolling ocean was vanished. Already, with the magical
swiftness of the weather of these regions, a sea was got up and
beginning to race and foam. There was nothing to see. The night was
blind with howling storm. When I had left the deck there was not so
much as a rag of cloud to be seen in the sky; and now it was blowing a
whole gale, which looked to boil with the snow that fled with it, and
everywhere it was of a midnight blackness.
The rush of the wind was over the port quarter; but then the hull would
be slewing for the trough, and how her head was when I had gone below I
could not have told. Keeping this bearing of the wind in mind, I rushed
to the cabin, picked up the burning bull's-eye, and, springing to the
captain's berth, darted the flame on to the tell-tale, and saw that
this squall or gale was out of about south-south-west.
When I took my eyes from the compass I saw Miss Otway standing, white
as milk, in the doorway.
'What is it?' she asked.
'A heavy squall--perhaps the first of a gale: but that,' said I, with
a flourish of the bull's-eye to the compass, 'gives us good news; we
shall blow clear of the ice. The wind is sou'-sou'-west. What do you
say to that?' and, forcing the noise of a jolly laugh, I came out of
the berth and hooked up the bull's-eye ready to my hand.
We had seen the ocean all day long, clear of ice north and east;
icebergs we knew were there, but their summits had settled--our drift
had put leagues betwixt them and us; therefore I was not immediately
fearful--on the score of ice, I mean. But if it was going to blow as
hard as I had just now felt it, what was to become of the hull? Such
fury and weight of wind must speedily raise the seas into cliffs, and
then God knows how it would fare with the sheer hulk with not a rag,
nor the means of stretching a rag, to enable her to look up to it,
to shoulder it off with her bow, to lie hove to, in short, as a ship
should.
In an hour, the dance was wild even to madness; my own brain reeled to
it; sick I was _not_ in the sense of nausea. Was it sickness of soul
then? But I recollect that many times when the hull fell off the top
of a sea into the valley, sliding as though she was shooting off some
Niagara-like edge, a horrible feeling of faintness and prostration
attended the descent. Never before had I suffered so at sea; but then,
never before had I been tossed in a dismasted hull in a gale of wind
sixty degrees south latitude.
Miss Otway lay almost lifeless. I shored her up on a couch by backs
of chairs which I lashed; I heaped clothes from her bed on her, and
got hot brandy for her, and encouraged her as best I could. There was
nothing to be done on deck. The sea was flying in white sheets over
the waist and forecastle; the glare of the brine breaking close aboard
showed you the snow; but looking around was like staring into a well.
It was a strange sort of snow, too, that fell. Once in the cabin I took
notice of it on my coat: it was in small grains, round as shot, of a
size from mustard seed to buckshot; a dry, pure white: not hail.
But two hours after the gale began, the snow ceased and the wind
lessened; I watched from the companion-way, and observed but little
water flying athwart. With such observations I was forced to be
satisfied, and spent the hours in the cabin, keeping an eye on the
stove, boiling a hot drink now and again for the life and support of
it, tending Miss Otway, from time to time peering through the hatch
where the iron sweep of the wind seemed to unflesh the face, wondering,
for ever wondering, whether the next hurl would be followed by a crash
of the side, and how long we should be in perishing when the hull split.
I should have in agined myself too anxious--nay, to put it plainly, too
alarmed to sleep, and it seemed that I went up many times to take a
look around; and still I must have slept, for I started from my chair
in a sudden terror of dream or noise, and with a lurch of the hull fell
upon my knees, but was up instantly.
The motion of the craft had changed; the moment I had my wits I felt
that the sea was pyramidal, which told me there had been a quite
recent shift of wind. I cannot imagine anything more dislocating,
more unnerving, more brain sickening, than the leaps and rolls of the
hull upon the sea that, by the movement, I knew was darting in almost
perpendicular thrusts, spear shaped billows lifting in ebon darts and
daggers, and putting a frightful wildness into the flings of the fabric.
Miss Otway lay with her eyes shut, and seemed asleep; a small fire
glowed in the stove, and the lighted lantern swung in the centre of the
cabin as though some invisible hand grasped it, seeking to jerk it off
its hook. I took the bull's-eye and went on deck, and found the wind a
dry gale, but observed a thickness as of fog in it, but it was too dark
to make sure. I staggered to the binnacle and saw the wind was blowing
out of north again: a cruel shift! I stared and smelt for ice, but saw
no loom, and tasted no more than the freezing coldness of the blast.
What was the hour? I went below and found it half-past eight o'clock.
Oh! what an interminable darkness was that! Where was the ice? It could
not be far off. What and whither was our drift? I felt like a madman
then.
Miss Otway slept on. I believe it might have been an hour and a half
after I had awakened that, not knowing but that the poor young heart in
her had been stopped by terror, or the delicate blood in her frozen,
I stooped to view her face, the lamp burning dimly; she showed like
a piece of exquisitely chiselled marble: I can't tell why, but her
whiteness seemed to my mood to exactly fit the bitterness of this
time, the frost, the snow, the ice, the wild gale and foaming waters;
was I as mad then as I had felt some time before, to bend over her and
get a fancy of her into my head as a spirit of these wild and desolate
parts? Put yourself in my place and you'll not wonder to find your brow
hot with fancies more desperately and tragically strange than such a
crazy notion as this.
She opened her eyes whilst I looked, and I stood erect with a sigh of
relief, half turning to fling my cap down whilst I ran the length of my
sleeve along my forehead for the refreshment of the wet of the snow.
She sat up and watched me, whilst I saw in her face she was heeding the
extravagant tumbling of the hull.
'It seems to be blowing a gale,' she said.
'Ay,' said I, 'but we're still alive. Feel these jumps: no empty cask
could better them.'
'Will you remove these chairs that I may sit up?'
I did so. Whilst I knelt beside her to cast the lashings adrift she
eyed me intently, as though she would read my very brain; she then
sighed, but said nothing, and the road being clear she drew her feet
out of the covering and sought to rise, but, after a short struggle
with the furious deck, sat again.
I stood before the stove waiting for daybreak, my eye glancing from one
frothing cabin window to another and thence to the skylight. At last
she said:
'You've a brave heart, Mr. Selby, but it can hold out no longer; I read
despair in your face. If the end is to come, may it come quickly. You
have behaved to me with a noble kindness. I can but thank you--I can
but thank you,' and she held out her hand with her eyes full of tears.
I bowed my head over her hand; it was an excuse to fetch a breath or
two, I would not just then trust myself to speak. Then said I:
'I'll not disguise the truth: our situation is perilous, as God, who,
let us believe, is watching over us, knows. But I should be no true man
to feel the despair you tell me you read in my face. Daylight may find
us a sight to hearten us.'
She shook her head.
'Well, but don't let your spirits die. If a wish could help us I'd be
above, if _your_ safety was to be got at so small a cost. But see, now,
I'll run up on deck and let you know if there's anything like the loom
of ice about. It _may_ prove all right with us--it _may_ end in our
lives being preserved.'
But all the same, with a heart as heavy as ever hers could be, I clawed
my way to the companion steps for yet another stare into the blackness.
It was not yet daybreak; but when some while after the faint, grey
light sifted through the blowing, swelling, roaring gloom, the sight
struck to my very heart and I was sure we were doomed. The sea was
running in hills of liquid lead; many clouds of mist were in the wind
and they blew athwart the hull like bursts of steam; snow in places was
rushing in horizontal lines out of dark low clouds flying southwards.
Ice was all about us. The first object that dawn revealed, whilst I
stood in the companion-way watching, was a mountain of ice on the bow;
as features of it stole out a snow-squall looked to have fouled a whole
stack of pinnacles on the left of the berg; it was dark as smoke there,
with snow whirling in a very maelstrom of froth-like whiteness; the
seas slipped their foam up its side to a height of fifty feet, and the
brine flashed in clouds of crystals against the dull, marble-like face,
which showed smooth as a wall through the haze and the whirl of flying
vapour that shrieked athwart our decks to it.
_It_ was but one. I counted twenty coming and going amid the shadows
of the squalls and flying masses of fog. You would have supposed that
a fleet somewhere hidden were firing great guns, so thunderous was the
splintering of those bergs majestically rocking their mighty masses.
The nearest--that on the starboard bow--was about a mile off. Others
showed to port and astern: one heap, like an island, darkened the haze
on the port bow. The gale had apparently broken up the barrier and we
were in the thick of the floating bodies.
Miss Otway came to the foot of the companion steps and waited for me to
make way for her. I stepped out and she ascended the steps and looked
round the sea, but in silence. Her face was hardened into stone by
despair. Hours of suspense and grief, hours spent in the most awful
kind of loneliness the imagination can figure, with the darkness of the
spirit of death for ever upon her heart, had done their work with the
poor young lady: sensation was dumb.
And now there was nothing to do but await the end, come what might. I
let her stand a little, looking, then taking her by the arm, gently but
firmly, conducted her below and seated her where she had lain during
the night. I was resolved that my own despair should not be visible
to her, and partly to cover myself, so to speak, and partly for the
good of the thing, I boiled some coffee, and put food on the deck near
the stove; but one looked at such a repast with the emotions of a
malefactor to whom breakfast is served whilst the hangman waits.
Whilst I was at this work she addressed me calmly:
'There is no doubt, I suppose, that we shall strike the ice?'
'It's most inevitable,' I answered.
'If it happens, shall we be better off down here than on deck?'
'Let it happen,' said I.
'If we are to strike the ice,' she said, 'I should wish to be drowned
quickly. I would rather die at once than be thrown soaked on the ice to
lie a little and freeze--it would take time--I fear the sufferings. I
am not afraid of death, I wish it to be quick.'
'There's no ice nearer to us than a mile, that I can make out,' I said,
then handed her a pannikin of coffee. 'Pray drink this.'
She took it and raised it to her lips.
'If the hull strikes, will it go to pieces instantly?' she asked.
'Who can tell? She might beach herself and find us a home till the berg
floated north, where the smoke of our fire will be seen.'
She sank into silence with her eyes fastened upon the deck. When I
offered her food she shook her head. My breakfast consisted of half a
cup of coffee.
Within a quarter of an hour I was on deck again, but the scene was the
same as before, saving that the ice mountain that had been upon our
starboard bow was now right ahead, whilst on our starboard quarter,
within perhaps half a mile, was a small island of ice, about sixty feet
high, not before visible. The compass gave me the wind blowing steadily
from one quarter. But then I could make nothing of bearings within
three or four points on board a helpless hull, swinging in a high sea,
with a send of her head when she was rushed out of a hollow that made
me sometimes think she was going to give her stern to the weather.
At one o'clock it was a savage and tremendous scene of warring
waters and flying sky of soot, and giant forms of ice vanishing and
reappearing amid headlong flights of wool-white vapour, and through
all, in deep notes, ran the thunder of the surge-smitten, frozen
heights, with frequent rending and crashing noises of dislocation. I
was now very sure that our drift was not less than three miles an
hour, and perhaps four. This I gathered by observing a vast shape of
ice that suddenly showed off the starboard bow. It was nearly a mile
long, and I should think two hundred feet high. It was a grand, truly
sublime ocean piece, with its numerous lofty arches and caverns, out of
which the sea, in recoil, flashed in immense bursts of foam. I spied
the white wings of birds glancing upon it, but I had it not often
very clear in sight, for the steam-like smother drove down at quick
intervals, leaving some pale eminence gleaming on high against the
whirl of the clouds, to vanish in some swift outfly of snow, so that
the whole thing would be as completely gone to the eye as if it had
sunk.
But by staying and watching it as often as it emerged in whole or
in part, I got at the rate of our drift. It was quickly on our port
bow with others coming out of the thickness to leeward, all wild and
terrific in that dull light of storm, with the glare of the leaping
foam at their base and their own ghastly stare through the rent
curtains of cloud flying under the dark sky.
Soon after two, when it was almost dark, I thought we were lost, for
I saw the loom of an iceberg right abeam to leeward; but whether it
was God's guidance of the devoted hull, or that the set of the long
rolling sea ran a sort of sweep of tide round these floating islands,
when we were within a musket shot of the mass, with an occasional
shock of loose ice sounding through the hulk, our drift made a little
departure. I vow it was for all the world as though the fabric was
alive and, dreading her fate, avoided it, or as though she were under
command, with a cool hand and a critical eye for sea measurement at the
helm. Certain it is we drove past clear; it might be that we owed our
preservation to the rebound of the sea.
It was almost black with the night when that berg was on our lee
quarter, but I knew by a sudden enormous roar of water, and by an
indescribably hissing sound lasting for a few minutes, as though a
thousand locomotives were blowing off steam, that an immense mass of
the island had fallen, not very many ships' lengths distant, which I
have no genius to do justice to, nor even to communicate, though I need
but close my eyes to behold the terrible picture, with its uproar of
trampling seas, and howling wind, and cracking masses. A little after
four in the morning, whilst I sat in the cabin with Miss Otway, every
instant expecting the hull to strike, her motions grew suddenly quiet.
I felt her rise and fall upon a long swell, and knew instinctively by
the feel of her that she was under the lee of something.
I sprang to my feet and ran on deck. It was pitch dark, with a strange
phantasmal glimmer on either hand, so vague, so indeterminable I could
not see it when I looked at it. The roar of the gale, the hiss and
beat of the driven seas, came as from a distance. Thrice as high as the
masthead of a ship sounded the low, continuous thunder of the wind, as
though it blew over mountain tops; but down where we were it was calm.
Icy gusts came in moans from half a dozen quarters. The long, invisible
heave was as rhythmic as the ocean pulse of swell. I understood we were
embayed and foresaw certainly now that our being stranded, or being
hammered to pieces against the ice, was only a question of minutes.
I went into the cabin with a loathing of life coming into me out of
the sheer despair that was as frost on my heart, caring not a curse
how it went, so sick I was of it all after the unendurable hours of
watching and expectation I had passed through; and then again I felt
that, whatever was to happen, it was right I should be by the poor
girl's side: not that it was in my power to comfort her--not, indeed,
if the hull went to pieces, that I could be of the least use to her or
myself, but I was company for her, and out of me she'd get some solace
of companionship in what I reckoned these dying minutes of ours.
'Has the wind fallen? Where are we?' she shrieked as I approached her.
'We are embayed,' I answered. 'We are got under the lee of something.'
Just as I spoke those words a harsh, grating roar ran through the hull;
the vessel trembled as though in the first throe of bursting; another
like roar succeeded; I felt the thrill of the scraping of the bilge and
keel as the fabric was rushed by some ponderous heave of swell. Again,
another huge thrust of the sea, another long roar of scraping keel and
bilge, another quiver and thrill throughout the hulk as though every
timber was straining ere flying to the shock of an explosion. She lay
right over to starboard. The lamp swung and lay hard against the upper
deck. Whatever was movable fetched away. So acute was the angle that
Miss Otway, unable to maintain her seat upon the couch, shot from it to
me; but I was firmly planted, saw her coming, and received her so that
she was not hurt, and with a vigorous swing I cleared and placed her
breathless and moaning in a cleated armchair that stood close to where
I sat.
The blind, soft, thunderous thrusts of the sea continued. I heard the
water in tons washing over the decks, but every time this happened a
roar of grinding and scaling shook the hull as she was driven by the
wash of the swell higher and yet higher. The companion was closed and
no water descended. I knew by the noise of the sea that the hull lay
broadside to the swing of the swell. I got out of my chair, but was
heavily thrown, and could scarcely regain my feet, so extreme was the
slant, and so completely did it pin me against the cabin wall.
As regular as the rush of the floating folds was the thrust of them,
and now I grew sensible that the heave was like to strand us high and
dry, the job of it being a different labour than rocks or the grit of
the beach of earth would have made, so greasy was the ice. The water
poured over the decks every time the swell struck the hull, but in a
little while I found each volume to be weakening in weight, and after
the fabric had been driven in this grinding way in a sort of pulsing of
blows, deafening with the bursts of the brine against the side and over
the decks, each onward slide grew shorter and shorter, until presently
she lay without motion, with an occasional shudder running through her
from the beat of the sea, but at intervals so varying as to persuade
me she was fairly high and dry, and within the wash of the foam of the
larger rollers only.
But the list or angle was horrible. I was unable to move without going
on all fours. I crawled in this wise to Miss Otway, and told her to
remain where she was, not to attempt to stir lest she should break her
neck, whilst I crept on deck to take a look at our situation if it was
visible.
'What has happened do you think?' she cried.
'We are stranded upon some beach of an ice island I expect,' I replied.
'Hark to that!' she shrieked, as a sudden sea smote the bilge and
roared in foaming recoil. 'If you go on deck you'll be washed away.'
'I'll see to it. That blow was weak. We have been thrust high. Feel
what a desperate slope it is. I pray God no sudden shock of sea may
launch us afresh.'
With that I crawled to the companion steps, every bone aching like
rheumatism with the contortions of my figure in my efforts to move.