In which the Ancient Mariner, continuing his Story,
borrows an Illustration from the "Ancient Mariner"
of Song, and then proceeds to tell how they
went into the Cold, and were cast away there.
"'And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold:
And ice mast-high came floating by,
As green as emerald.'
"I recite this from a famous poem because it suits so well what came of
us, for you must understand that, while all I have been telling you was
going on, we were approaching the northern regions, and were getting
into the sea where ice was to be expected. A man was accordingly kept
aloft all the time to look out for it: for you will remember that we
were going after seals, and it is on the ice that the seals are found.
The weather now became very cold, it being the month of April.
"At length the man aloft cried out that he saw ice. 'Where away?'
shouted the red-faced mate. 'Off the larboard bow,' was the answer. So
the course of the ship was changed, and we bore right down upon the ice,
and very soon it was in sight from the deck, and gradually became more
and more distinct. It was a very imposing sight. The sea was covered all
over with it, as far as the eye could reach,--a great plain of
whiteness, against the edge of which the waves were breaking and sending
the spray flying high in the air and sending to our ears that same
dull, heavy roar which the breakers make when beating on the land.
"As we neared this novel scene, I observed that it consisted mostly of
flat masses of ice, of various sizes (called by the sealers 'floes');
some were miles in extent, and others only a few feet. The surface of
these ice floes or fields rose only about a foot or so above the surface
of the water. Between them there were in many places very broad
openings, and when I went aloft and looked ahead, these ice-fields
appeared like a great collection of large and small flat white islands,
dotted about in the midst of the ocean. Through these openings between
the fields the ship was immediately steered, and we were soon surrounded
by ice on every side. To the south, whence we had come, there was in an
hour or so apparently just as much ice as there was before us to the
north, or to the right and left of us,--a vast immeasurable waste of ice
it was, looking dreary and frightful enough, I can assure you.
"I have said that the pieces of ice now about us were called 'floes,' or
ice-fields; the whole together was called 'the pack.' We were now in
perfectly smooth water, for you will easily understand that the ice
which we had passed broke the swell of the sea. But the crew of the ship
did not give themselves much concern about the ice itself; for it was
soon discovered that the floes were covered in many places with seals.
"Now you must understand that seals are not fish, but are air-breathing,
warm-blooded animals, like horses and cows, and therefore they must
always have their heads, or at least their noses, out of water when they
breathe. When the weather is cold, they remain in the water all the
time, merely putting up their noses now and then (for they can remain a
long time under water without breathing) to sniff a little fresh air,
and then going quickly down again. In the warm weather, however, they
come up bodily out of the sea, and bask and go to sleep in the sun,
either on the land or on the ice. Many thousands of them are often seen
together.
"As we came farther and farther into the 'pack,' the seals on the ice
were observed to be more and more numerous. Most of them appeared to be
sound asleep; some of them were wriggling about, or rolling themselves
over and over, while none of them seemed to have the least idea that we
had come all the way from New Bedford to rob them of their sleek coats
and their nice fat blubber.
"We were now fairly into our 'harvest-field,' and when a suitable place
was discovered the ship was brought up into the wind, that is, the helm
was so turned as to bring the ship's head towards the wind, when of
course the sails got 'aback,' and the ship stopped. Then a boat was
lowered, and a crew, of which I was one, got into it, with the end of a
very long rope, and we pulled away towards the edge of a large
ice-field, hauling out the rope after us, of course, from the coil on
shipboard. As we approached the ice, the seals near by all became
frightened, and floundered into the sea as quickly as they could, with a
tremendous splash. In a few minutes they all came up again, putting
their cunning-looking heads out of the water, all around the boat, no
doubt as curious to see what these singular-looking beings were that had
come amongst them, as the Indians were about Columbus and his Spaniards,
when they first came to America.
"As soon as we had reached the ice, we sprang out of the boat on to it,
and, after digging a hole into it with a long, sharp bar of iron, called
an ice-chisel, we put therein one end of a large, heavy, crooked hook,
called an ice-anchor, and then to a ring in the other end of this
ice-anchor we made fast the end of the rope that we had brought with us.
This done, we signalled to the people on board to 'haul in,' which they
did on their end of the rope, and in a little while the ship was drawn
close up to the ice. Then another rope was run out over the stern of the
ship, and, this being made fast to an ice-anchor in the same way as the
other, the ship was soon drawn up with her whole broadside close to the
ice, as snug as if she were lying alongside of a dock in New Bedford.
"And now began the seal-hunt. It would not interest you to hear all
about the preparations we made, first to catch the seals, and then to
preserve the skins and try out the oil from the blubber, and put it away
in barrels. For this latter duty some of the crew were selected, while
others were sent off to kill and bring in the seals. These latter were
chosen with a view to their activity, and I, being supposed to be of
that sort, was one of the party. I was glad enough, I can assure you, to
get off the vessel for once on to something firm and solid, even if it
was only ice, and at least for a little while to have done with rocking
and rolling about over the waves.
"Each one of the seal-catchers was armed with a short club for killing
the seals, and a rope to drag them over the ice to the ship. We
scattered in every direction, our object being each by himself to
approach a group of seals, and, coming upon them as noiselessly as
possible, to kill as many of them as we could before they should all
take fright and rush into the sea. In order to do this, we were obliged
to steal up between the seals and the water as far as possible.
"My first essay at this novel business was ridiculous enough, and,
besides nearly causing my death, overwhelmed me with mortification. It
happened thus. I made at a large herd of seals, nearly all of which
were lying some distance from the edge of the ice, and before they could
get into the water I had managed to intercept about a dozen of them.
Thus far I thought myself very lucky; but, as the poet Burns says,
'The best laid schemes o' mice and men
Gang aft a-gley,
And leave us naught but grief and pain
For promised joy,'--
so it fell out with me. The seals, of course, all rushed towards the
water as fast as they could go, the moment they saw me coming. But I got
up with them in time, and struck one on the nose, killing it, and was in
the act of striking another, when a huge fellow that was big enough to
have been the father of the whole flock, too badly frightened to mind
where he was going, ran his head between my legs, and, whipping up my
heels in an instant, landed me on his back, in which absurd position I
was carried into the sea before I could recover myself. Of course I sunk
immediately, and dreadfully cold was the water; but, rising to the
surface in a moment, I was preparing to make a vigorous effort to swim
back to the ice, when another badly frightened and ill-mannered seal, as
I am sure you will all think, plunged into the sea without once looking
to see what he was doing, and hit me with the point of his nose fairly
in the stomach.
"I thought now for certain that my misfortunes were all over, and that
my end was surely come. However, I got my head above the surface once
more, and did my best to keep it there; but my hopes vanished when I
perceived that I was at least twenty feet from the edge of the ice. It
was as much as I could do to keep my head above water, without swimming
forward, so much embarrassed was I by my heavy clothing, the great
cold, and the terrible pains (worse than those of colic) caused by the
seal hitting me in the stomach. I am quite certain that this would have
been the last of John Hardy's adventures, had not one of my companions,
seeing me going overboard on the back of the seal, rushed to my rescue.
He threw me his line for dragging seals (the end of which I had barely
strength to catch and hold on to), and then he drew me out as one would
haul up a large fish.
[Illustration: John Hardy takes a Ride without meaning it.]
"I came from the sea in a most sorry condition, as you can well imagine.
My mouth was full of salt water. I was so prostrated with the cold that
I could scarcely stand, and my pains were so great that I should
certainly have screamed had I not been so full of water that I could
not utter a single word. But I managed, after a while, to get all the
water spit out, and then, after drawing into my lungs a few good long
breaths of air, I felt greatly refreshed. I could still, however, hardly
stand, and was shivering with the cold. But I found that I had strength
enough to stagger back to the ship, where I was greeted in a manner far
from pleasant.
"The sailors looked upon my adventure as a great joke, never once
seeming to think how near I was to death's door, and the mate simply
cried out 'Overboard, eh? Pity the sharks didn't catch him!' It was
clear enough that this red-faced tyrant would show me no mercy; and
when, pale and cold and panting for breath, I asked him for leave to go
below for a while, he cried out, 'Yes, for just five minutes. Be lively,
or I'll warm your back for you with a rope's end.'
"The prospect of a 'back warming' of this description had the effect to
make me lively, sure enough, although I was shivering as if I would
shake all my teeth out, and tumble all my bones down into a heap. As
soon as I reached the deck, the mate cried out again for me to 'be
lively,' and when he set after me with an uplifted rope's end, his face
glaring at me all the while like a red-hot furnace, you may be sure I
was quite as lively as it was possible for me to be, and was over the
ship's side in next to no time at all, and off after seals again. After
a while I got warmed up with exercise, and this time, being more
cautious, I met with no similar misadventure, and soon came in dragging
three seals after me. The mate now complimented me by exclaiming, 'Why,
look at the lubber!'
"We continued at this seal-hunting for a good many days, during which we
shifted our position frequently, and made what the sealers called a good
'catch.' But still the barrels in the hold of the ship were not much
more than half of them filled with oil, when a great storm set in, and,
the ice threatening to close in upon us, we were forced to get
everything aboard, to cast loose from the ice-field, and work our way
south into clear water again, which we were fortunate enough to do
without accident. But some other vessels which had come up while we were
fishing, and were very near to us, were not so lucky. Two of them were
caught by the moving ice-fields before they could make their escape, and
were crushed all to pieces. The crews, however, saved themselves by
jumping out on the ice, and were all successful in reaching other
vessels, having managed to save their boats before their ships actually
went down. It was a very fearful sight, the crushing up of these
vessels,--as if they were nothing more than eggshells in the hand.
"This storm lasted, with occasional interruptions, thirteen days, but
the breaks in it were of such short duration that we had little
opportunity to 'fish' (as seal-catching is called) any more. We
approached the ice several times, only to be driven off again before we
had fairly succeeded in getting to work, and hence we caught very few
seals.
"By the time the storm was over the season for seal-fishing was nearly
over too; so we had no alternative, if we would get a good cargo of oil,
but to go in search of whales, which would take us still farther north,
and into much heavier ice, and therefore, necessarily, into even greater
danger than we had hitherto encountered. Accordingly, the course of the
vessel was changed, and I found that we were steering almost due north,
avoiding the ice as much as possible, but passing a great deal of it
every day. The wind being mostly fair, and the ice not thick enough at
any time to obstruct our passage, we hauled in our latitude very fast."
"Excuse me, Captain Hardy," here interrupted William, "what is hauling
in latitude?"
"That's for going farther north," answered the Captain. "Latitude is
distance from the equator, either north or south, and what a sailor
makes in northing or southing he calls 'hauling in his latitude,' just
as making easting or westing is 'hauling in his longitude.'"
"Thank you, Captain," said William, politely, when he had finished.
"Is it all clear now?" inquired the Captain.
"Yes," said William, "clear as mud."
"Clear as mud, eh! Well, that isn't as clear as the pea-soup was they
used to give us on board the _Blackbird_, for that was so clear that, if
the ocean had been made of it, you might have seen through it all the
way down to the bottom; indeed, one of the old sailors said that it
wasn't soup at all. 'If dat is soup,' growled he, 'den I's sailed forty
tousand mile trough soup,'--which is the number of miles he was supposed
to have sailed in his various voyages.
"But no matter for the soup. The days wore on none the less that the
soup was thin, and still we kept going on and on,--getting farther and
farther north, and into more and more ice. Sometimes our course was much
interrupted, and we had to wait several days for the ice to open; then
we would get under way again, and push on. At length it seemed to me
that we must be very near the North Pole. It was a strange world we had
come into. The sun was shining all the time. There was no night at
all,--broad daylight constantly. This, of course, favored us; indeed,
had there been any darkness, we could not have sailed among the ice at
all. As it was, we were obliged to be very cautious, for the ice often
closed upon us without giving us a chance to escape, obliging us to get
out great long saws, and cut out and float away great blocks of the ice,
until we had made a dock for the ship, where she could ride with safety.
We had many narrow escapes from being crushed.
"At first, when we concluded to go after whales, there were several
vessels in company with us. At one time I counted nine, all in sight at
one time; but we had become separated in thick weather; and whether they
had gone ahead of us, or had fallen behind, we could not tell. However,
we kept on and on and on; where we were, or where we were going, I, of
course, had not the least idea; but I became aware, from day to day,
that greater dangers were threatening us, for _icebergs_ came in great
numbers to add their terrors to those which we had already in the
ice-fields. They became at length (and suddenly too) very numerous, and
not being able to go around them on account of the field-ice, which was
on either side, we entered right amongst them. The atmosphere was
somewhat foggy at the time, and it seemed as if the icebergs chilled the
very air we breathed. I fairly shuddered as we passed the first opening.
The ice was now at least three times as high as our masts, and very
likely more than that, and it appeared to cover the sea in every
direction. It seemed to me that we were going to certain destruction,
and indeed I thought I read a warning written as it were on the bergs
themselves. Upon the corner of an iceberg to the left of us there stood
a white figure, as plain as anything could possibly be. One hand of this
strange, weird-looking figure was resting on the ice beside it, while
the other was pointing partly upwards toward heaven, and backwards
toward the south whence we had come. I thought I saw the figure move,
and, much excited, I called the attention of one of the sailors to it.
'Why, you lubber,' said he, 'don't you know that the sun melts the ice
into all sorts of shapes. Look overhead, if there isn't a man's face!' I
looked up as the sailor had directed me, and, sure enough, there was a
man's face plainly to be seen in the lines of an immense tongue of ice
which was projecting from the side of a berg on the right, and under
which we were about to pass.
"I became now really terrified. In addition to these strange spectral
objects, the air was filled with loud reports, and deep, rumbling
noises, caused by the icebergs breaking to pieces, or masses splitting
off from their sides and falling into the sea. These noises came at
first from the icebergs in front of us; but when we had got fairly into
the wilderness of ice which covered the sea, they came from every side.
It struck me that we had passed deliberately into the very jaws of
death, and that from the frightful situation there was no escape.
"I merely mention this as the feeling which oppressed me, and which I
could not shake off. Indeed, the feeling grew upon me rather than
decreased. The fog came on very thick, settling over us as if it were
our funeral shroud. Some snow also fell, which made the air still more
gloomy. The noises were multiplying, and we could no longer tell whence
they came, so thick was the air. We were groping about like a traveller
who has lost his way in a vast forest, and has been overtaken by the
dark night.
"It seemed to me now that our doom was sealed,--that all our hope was
left behind us when we passed the opening to this vast wilderness of
icebergs; and the more I thought of it, the more it seemed to me that
the figure standing on the corner of the iceberg where we entered,
whether it was ice or whatever it was, had been put there as a warning.
How far my fears were right you shall see presently.
"The fog, as I have said, kept on thickening more and more, until we
could scarcely see anything at all. I have never, I think, seen so thick
a fog, and it was with the greatest difficulty that the ship was kept
from striking the icebergs. Then, after a while, the wind fell away
steadily, and finally grew entirely calm. The current was moving us
about upon the dead waters; and in order to prevent this current from
setting us against the ice, we had to lower the boats, and, making lines
fast to the ship and to the boats, pull away with our oars to keep
headway on the ship, that she might be steered clear of the dangerous
places. Thus was made a slow progress, but it was very hard work. At
length the second mate, who was steering the foremost boat, which I was
in, cried out, 'Fast ice ahead.' Now 'fast ice' is a belt of ice which
is attached firmly to the land, not yet having been broken up or
dissolved by the warmth of the summer. This announcement created great
joy to everybody in the boats, as we knew that land must be near, and we
all supposed that we would be ordered to make a line fast to the ice,
that we might hold on there until the fog cleared up and the wind came
again. But instead of this we were ordered by the mate to pull away from
it. And then, after having got the vessel, as was supposed, into a good,
clear, open space of water,--at least, there was not a particle of ice
in sight,--we were all ordered, very imprudently, as it appeared to
every one of us, to come on board to breakfast.
"We had just finished our breakfast, and were preparing to go on deck,
and then into the boats again, when there was a loud cry raised. 'Ice
close aboard! Hurry up! Man the boats!' were the orders which I heard
among a great many other confusing sounds; and when I got on deck, I
saw, standing away up in the fog, its top completely obscured in the
thick cloud, an enormous iceberg. The side nearest to us hung over from
a perpendicular, as the projecting tongue on which I had before seen the
man's face. It was very evident that we were slowly drifting upon this
frightful object,--directly under this overhanging tongue. It was a
fearful sight to behold, for it looked as if it was just ready to
crumble to pieces; and indeed, at every instant, small fragments were
breaking off from it, with loud reports, and falling into the sea.
"We were but a moment getting into the boats. The boat which I was in
had something the start of the other two. Just as we were pulling away,
the master of the ship came on deck, and ordered us to do what, had the
red-faced mate done an hour before, would have made it impossible that
this danger should have come upon us. 'Carry your line out to the fast
ice,' was the order we received from the master; and every one of us,
realizing the great danger, pulled as hard as he could. The 'fast ice'
was dimly in sight when we started, for we had drifted while at
breakfast towards it, as well as towards the berg. Only a few minutes
were needed to reach it. We jumped out and dug a hole, and planted the
ice-anchor. The ship was out of sight, buried in the fog. A faint voice
came from the ship. It was, 'Hurry up! we have struck.' They evidently
could not see us. The line was fastened to the anchor in an instant, and
the second mate shouted, 'Haul in! haul in!' There was no answer but
'Hurry up! we have struck.' 'Haul in! haul in!' shouted the second mate,
but still there was no answer. 'They can't hear nor see,' said he,
hurriedly; and then, turning to me, said, 'Hardy, you watch the anchor
that it don't give way. Boys, jump in the boat, and we'll go nearer the
ship so they can hear.' The boat was gone quickly into the fog, and I
was then alone on the ice by the anchor,--how much and truly alone you
shall hear.
"Quick as the lightning flash, sudden as the change of one second to
another, there broke upon me a sound that will never leave my ears. It
was as if a volcano had burst forth, or an earthquake had instantly
tumbled a whole city into ruins. A fearful shock, like a sudden
explosion, filled the air. I saw faintly through the thick mists the
masts of the ship reeling over, and I saw no more;--vessel and iceberg
and the disappearing boat were buried in chaos. The whole side of the
berg nearest the vessel had split off, hurling thousands and hundreds of
thousands of tons of ice, and thousands of fragments, crashing down upon
the doomed ship. Escape the vessel could not, nor her crew, the shock
came so suddenly. The spray thrown up into the air completely hid
everything from view; but the noise which came from out the gloom told
the tale.
"Presently there was a loud rush. Great waves, set in motion by the
crumbling iceberg, with white crests that were frightful to look upon,
came tearing out of the obscurity, and, perceiving the danger of my
situation, I ran from it as fast as I could run. And I was just in time;
for the waves broke up the ice where I had been standing into a hundred
fragments, and crack after crack opened close behind me.
"I had not, however, far to run before I had reached a place of safety,
for the force of the waves was soon spent. And when I saw what had
happened, I fell down flat upon the ice, crying, 'Saved, but for what?
to freeze or starve! O that I had perished with the rest of them!'
"So now you see that I was really and truly _cast away in the cold_. In
almost a single instant the ship which had borne me through what had
seemed great perils was, so far as appeared to me, swallowed up in the
sea,--crushed and broken into fragments by the falling ice, and every
one of my companions was swallowed up with it. And there I was on an
ice-raft, in the middle of the Arctic Sea, without food or shelter,
wrapped in a great black, impenetrable fog, with the prospect of a
lingering death staring me in the face."
* * * * *
The Captain here paused as if to take breath, for he had been talking
very fast, and had grown somewhat excited as he recalled this terrible
scene. The eyes of the children were riveted upon him, so deeply were
they interested in the tale of the shipwreck; and it was some time
before any one spoke.
"Well!" exclaimed William at last, "that was being cast away in the cold
for certain, Captain Hardy. I had no idea it was so frightful."
"Nor I," said Fred, evidently doubting if Captain Hardy was really the
shipwrecked boy; but Alice said not a word, for she was lost in wonder.
"I should not have believed it was you, Captain Hardy," continued
William, "if you had not been telling the story yourself, this very
minute; for I cannot see how you should ever have got out of that
scrape. It's ever so much worse than going into the sea on the seal's
back."
The Captain smiled at these observations of the boys, and said: "It was
a pretty bad scrape to get into, and no mistake; but through the mercy
of Providence I got out of it in the end, as you see; otherwise I
shouldn't have been here to tell the tale; but how I saved myself, and
what became of the rest of the crew, you shall hear to-morrow, for it is
now too late to begin the story. The evening is coming on, and your
parents will be looking for you home; so good by, my dears. To-morrow
you must come down earlier,--the earlier the better, and if there's any
wind we'll have a sail." And now the children once more took leave of
the ancient mariner, with hearts filled with thanks, which they could
never get done speaking, and with heads filled with astonishment that
the Captain should be alive to tell the tale which they had heard.