THE FIRST ICE.
Daylight broke on a frothing sea, across which there scudded wisps of
smoke-like drift and thin showers of snow, before they hove her to.
Then, with two little wet rags of canvas set she lay almost head on to
the big combers, and met their onslaught with a hove-up weather bow.
Having little way upon her, she lurched over instead of ramming them,
and though now and then one curled on board across her rail it was not
often that there was much heavy water upon her slanted deck.
All round the narrow circle a leaden sky met the sea. To weather the
combers were bitten into it in cleancut serrations, but to leeward the
dim horizon was blurred by flying spray, save when the snow whirled
down in thicker wisps and blotted it out altogether. It was bitterly
cold, and the spray stung the skin like half-spent pellets from a gun.
There was, however, only one man exposed to it in turn, and he had
little to do but brace himself against the savage buffeting of the wind
as he clutched the wheel. The _Selache_, for the most part, steered
herself, lifting buoyantly while the froth came sluicing aft from her
tilted bows, falling off a little with a vicious leeward roll when a
comber bigger than usual smote her to weather, and coming up again
streaming to meet the next. Sometimes she forged ahead in what is
called at sea, by courtesy, a "smooth," and all the time shroud and
stay to weather gave out tumultuous harmonies, and the slack of every
rope to leeward blew out in unyielding curves.
In the meanwhile, three of the white men lay sleeping or smoking in the
little cabin, which was partly raised above and partly sunk beneath the
after-deck. It was a reasonably strong structure, but it worked, and
sweated, as they say at sea, and the heat of the stove had further
opened up the seams of it. Moisture dripped from the beams overhead,
moisture trickled up and down the slanting deck, there were great
globules of it on the bulk-heading, and everything, including the men's
clothes and blankets, was wet. They lay in their bunks from necessity,
because it was a somewhat laborious matter to sit, and said very little
since it was difficult to hear anything amidst the cataclysm of
elemental sound. Indeed, it became at length almost a relief to turn
out into inky darkness or misty daylight dimmed by flying spray to take
a trick at the jarring wheel.
For three days this continued, and then, when the gale broke and a
little pale sunshine streamed down on the tumbling sea, changing the
grey combers to flashing white and green, they gave her a double-reefed
mainsail, part of the boom-foresail, and a jib or two, and thrashed her
slowly back to the northwards on the starboard tack. Still, more than
one of them glanced over the taffrail longingly as she gathered way.
She was fast, and with a little driving and that breeze over her
quarter she would bear them south towards warmth and ease at some two
hundred miles a day, while the way they were going it would be a fight
for every fathom with bitter, charging seas, and there lay ahead of
them only cold and peril and toil incredible.
There are times at sea when human nature revolts from the strain the
over-taxed body must bear, the leaden weariness of worn-out limbs, and
the sub-conscious effort to retain warmth and vitality in spite of the
ceaseless lashing of the icy gale. Then, as aching muscles grow lax,
the nervous tension becomes more insupportable, unless, indeed, utter
weariness breeds indifference to the personal peril each time the decks
are swept by a frothing flood, or a slippery spar must be clung to with
frost-numbed and often bleeding hands. That is, at least, on board the
sailing ships where man must still, with almost brutal valour, pit all
the feeble powers of flesh and blood against the forces of the elements.
They knew this, and it was to their credit that they obeyed when
Dampier gave the word to put the helm up and trim the sheets over.
Their leader, however, stood a little apart with a hard-set face, and
he looked forward over the plunging bows, for he was troubled by a
sense of responsibility such as he had not felt since he had, one night
several years ago, asked for volunteers. He realised that an account
of these men's lives might be demanded from him.
It was a fortnight later, and they had twice made a perilous landing
without finding any sign of life on or behind the hammered beach, when
they ran into the first of the ice. The grey day was almost over, and
the long heave ran sluggishly after them faintly wrinkled here and
there, when creeping through a belt of haze they came into sight of
several blurrs of greyish white that swung with the dim, green swell.
The _Selache_ was slowly lurching over it with everything aloft to the
topsails then. Dampier glanced at the ice disgustedly.
"Earlier than I expected," he said. "Anyway, it's a sure thing there's
plenty more where that came from."
"Big patch away to starboard!" cried a man in the foremast shrouds.
Dampier turned to Wyllard. "What are you going to do?"
"What's most advisable?"
The skipper laughed grimly. "Well," he said, "that's quite simple.
Get out of this, and head her south just as soon as we can, but I guess
that's not quite what you mean."
"No," admitted Wyllard. "I meant for the next few hours or so. In a
general way, we're still pushing on."
"Then I'm not worrying much about pushing her through. That ice is
light and scattered, and as she's going it won't hurt her much if she
plugs some in the dark. It's what we're going to do the next two weeks
I'm not sure about. If there's ice we mayn't fetch the creek the chart
shows where we'd figured on laying her up in. It's still most a
hundred miles to the north of us. The other inlet I'd fixed on is way
further south."
This brought them back to the difficulty they had grappled with at many
a council. The men they were in search of might have gone either north
or south; or they might, though this seemed less likely, have gone
inland, if, indeed, any of them survived.
"If we only knew how they'd headed," said Wyllard quietly. "Still,
right or not, I'm for pushing on."
Then Charly, who held the wheel, broke in.
"I guess it's north," he said. "They'd have no use for fetching up
among the Russians, and there's nobody else until you get to Japan. No
white men, any way. Besides, from the Behring Sea to the Kuriles is
quite a long way."
"If you were dumped down ashore there, which way would you go?" Dampier
asked.
"If I'd a wallet full of papers certifying me as a harmless traveller,
it would be south just as hard as I could hit the trail. Guess I'd
strike somebody out prospecting, or surveying, and they'd set me along
to the Kuriles. Still, if I'd been sealing, I wouldn't head that way.
No, sir. That's dead sure."
There was a reason for this certainty, right or wrong, in the minds of
the sealermen. How many of the skins they brought home were obtained
in open water where they could fish without molestation they alone
knew; but they were regarded in certain quarters as poachers and
outlaws, who deserved no mercy. They had their differences with the
Americans who owned the Prbyloffs, but the latter, it was admitted, had
bought the islands, and might reasonably be considered to have some
claim upon the seals which frequented them. The free-lances bore their
execrations and reprisals more or less resignedly, though that did not
prevent them occasionally exchanging compliments with oar butts or
sealing clubs, but the Muscovite was a grim, mysterious figure they
feared and hated.
"Then you'd have tried up north?" Wyllard suggested.
"Sure," said the helmsman. "If I'd a boat and a rifle, and it was
summer, I'd have pushed across for Alaska. You can eat birds and
walrus, and a man might eat a fur-seal if he'd had nothing else for a
week, though I've struck nothing that has more smell than the
holluschack blubber. If it was winter, I'd have tried the ice. The
Huskies make out on it for weeks together, and quite a few of the steam
whaler men have trailed an odd hundred or two miles over it one time or
another. They hadn't tents and dog-teams either."
Wyllard's face grew grave. He had naturally considered both courses,
and had decided that they were out of the question. Seas do not freeze
up solid, and that three men should transport a boat, supposing that
they had one, over leagues of ice appeared impossible. An attempt to
cross the narrow sea, which is either wrapped in mist or swept by
sudden gales, in any open craft would clearly only result in disaster,
but admitting that he felt that had he been in those men's place he
would have headed north. There was one question which had all along
remained unanswered, and that was how they had reached the coast from
which they had sent their message.
"Anyway," he said, "we'll stand on, and run into the creek we've fixed
on, if it's necessary."
In the meanwhile, dusk had closed down on them, and it had grown
perceptibly colder. The haze crystallised on the rigging, the rail was
white with rime, and the deck grew slippery, but they left everything
on her to the topsails, and she crept on erratically through the
darkness, avoiding the faint spectral glimmer of the scattered ice.
The breeze abeam propelled her with gently leaning canvas at some four
knots to the hour, and now and then Wyllard, who hung about the deck
that night, fancied he could hear a thin, sharp crackle beneath the
slowly lifting bows.
Next day the haze thickened, and there seemed to be more ice about, but
the breeze was fresher, and there was, at least, no skin upon the
ruffled sea. They took the topsails off her, and proceeded cautiously,
with two men with logger's pikepoles forward, and another in the eyes
of the foremast rigging. As it happened, they struck nothing, and when
night came the _Selache_ lay rolling in a heavy, portentous calm.
Dampier and one or two of the others declared their certainty that
there was ice near them, but, at least, they could not see it, though
there was now no doubt about the crackling beneath the schooner's side.
It was a somewhat anxious night for most of them, but a breeze that
drove the haze aside got up with the sun, and Dampier expected to reach
the creek before darkness fell.
He might have done it but for the glistening streak on the horizon,
which presently crept in on them, and resolved itself into detached
grey-white masses, with openings of various sizes in and out between
them. The breeze was freshening, and the _Selache_ going through it at
some six knots, when Dampier came aft to Wyllard, who was standing
rather grim in face at the wheel. There was a moderately wide opening
in the floating barrier close ahead of him. The rest of the crew stood
silent watching the skipper, for they were by this time more or less
acquainted with Wyllard's temperament.
"You can't get through that," said Dampier, pointing to the ice.
Wyllard looked at him sourly, and the white men, at least, understood
what he was feeling. So far, he had had everything against him--calm,
and fog, and sudden gale--and now, when he was almost within sight of
the end of the first stage of his journey, they had met the ice.
"You're sure of that?" he said.
Dampier smiled. "It would cost too much, or I'd let you try." He
called to the man perched high in the foremast shrouds, and the answer
came down:
"Packed right solid a couple of miles ahead."
Wyllard lifted one hand, and let it suddenly fall again.
"Lee, oh! We'll have her round," he said, and spun the wheel.
The rest of them breathed more easily as they jumped for the sheets,
and with a great banging and thrashing of sailcloth she shot up to
windward, and turned as on a pivot. Then, as she gathered way on the
other tack, they glanced at their leader, for her bows were pointing to
the south-east again. They felt that was not the way he was going.
In the meanwhile, Wyllard turned to. Dampier with a little wry smile.
"Baulked again!" he said. "It would have been a relief to have rammed
her in. With this breeze we'd have picked that creek up in the next
six hours."
"Sure!" said Dampier, who glanced at the swirling wake.
"Then, if we can't get through it we can work her round. Stand by to
flatten all sheets in, boys."
They did it cheerfully, though they knew it meant a thrash to windward
along the perilous edge of the ice, and, for the sea was getting up,
she flung the spray all over her forward half as she smashed the
growing combers with her bows. Soon the windlass was caked with
glistening ice, and long spikes of it hung from her rail, while the
slippery crystals gathered thick on deck. Then lumps and floes of ice
detached themselves from the parent mass, and sailed out to meet her,
crashing on one another, while it seemed to the men who watched him
that Wyllard tried how closely he could shave them before he ran the
schooner off with a vicious drag at the wheel. None of them, however,
cared to say a word to him.
They brought her round when she had stretched out on the one tack a
couple of miles, and standing in again close-hauled found the ice
thicker than ever. Then she came round once more, and until the early
dusk fell Wyllard stood at the jarring helm or high up in the forward
shrouds. Then he called Dampier aside.
"We can't work along the edge in the dark?" he said.
"Well," said Dampier drily, "it wouldn't be wise. We could stand on as
she's lying until half through the night, and then come round and pick
up the ice again a little before sun-up."
Wyllard made a sign of acquiescence. "Then," he said, "don't call me
until you're in sight of it. A day of this kind takes it out of one."
He moved aft heavily towards the deck-house, and Dampier watched him
with a smile of comprehension, for he was a man who had also in his
time made many fruitless efforts, and quietly faced defeat. After all,
it is possible that when the final reckoning comes some failures will
count.
For several hours the _Selache_ stretched out close-hauled into what
they supposed to be open water, and they certainly saw no ice. Then
they hove her to, and when the wind fell light brought her round and
crept back slowly upon the opposite tack. Wyllard had gone to sleep in
the meanwhile, and daylight was just breaking when he next went out on
deck. There was scarcely an air of wind, and the heavy calm seemed
portentous and unnatural. The schooner lay lurching on a sluggish
swell, with the frost wool thick on her rigging, and a belt of haze
ahead of her. On the edge of it, the ice glimmered in the growing
light, but in one or two places stretches of blue-grey water seemed to
penetrate it, and Dampier, who strode aft when he saw Wyllard, said he
fancied there must be an opening somewhere.
"By the thickness of it, that ice has formed some time, and as we've
seen nothing but a skin it must have come from further north," he
added. "It gathered up under a point or in a bay most likely, until a
shift of wind broke it out, and the stream or breeze set it down this
way. That seems to indicate that there can't be a great deal of it,
but a few days' calm and frost would freeze it solid."
"Well?" said Wyllard impatiently.
"It lies between us and the inlet, and it's quite clear that we can't
stay where we are. Once we got nipped, there'd probably be an end of
her. We have got to get into that inlet at once or make for the other
further south."
Wyllard smiled. "It all leads back to the same point. We must get
through the ice. The one question is--how's it to be done?"
"With a working breeze I'd stand into the biggest opening, but as
there's none we'll wait until it clears a little, and then send a boat
in. The sun may bring the wind."
They made breakfast in the meanwhile, but the wind did not come, and it
was some hours later when a pale coppery disc became visible and the
haze grew thinner. Then they swung a boat out hastily, for it would
not be very long before the light died away again, and two white men
and an Indian dropped into her. They pulled across half a mile of
sluggishly heaving water, crept up an opening, and presently vanished
among the ice. Soon afterwards the low sun went out, and wisps of
ragged cloud crept up from the westwards, while smears of vapour
blurred the horizon, and the swell grew steeper. There was no wind at
all, but blocks and canvas banged and thrashed furiously at every roll,
until they lowered the mainsail and lashed its heavy boom to the big
iron crutch astern. The boat remained invisible, but its crew had been
given instructions to push on as far as possible if they found clear
water, and Dampier, who did not seem uneasy about her, paced up and
down the deck while the afternoon wore away.