The Ancient Mariner takes the Little People on a Little
Voyage; and the Little People become convinced that an
Arctic Winter, an Aurora Borealis, and an Ancient
Mariner, are very Wonderful Things.
A lively breeze was blowing over the little village of Rockdale, and in
a lively way the tall trees were bending down their heads, and swinging
to and fro as if they liked it; for the leaves were beating time, and
were singing joyously, and appeared to be saying all the while how glad
they would be to keep beating time and singing on forever, if the wind
would only please to be so good as to help them on in the joyous
business; and the tall grass and grain were shining in the sun, and
rolling round in a very reckless manner, as if they meant to show off
their great billows of green and gold, and make the staid and sober
little waves that were ruffling up the surface of the bright blue waters
of the bay quite ashamed.
"Ha, ha!" laughed our ancient friend, the Captain, when he saw what a
day it was. "Ha, ha! what a day indeed!" and right away he began to call
loudly for his boy, Main Brace,--
"Main Brace, Main Brace, come here! Come, bear a hand, and be lively
there, you plum-duff, chuckle-headed young landlubber, and waddle along
aft here on your sausage legs."
A feeble voice is heard to answer from the galley,--"Ay, ay, sir;
comin', sir, comin'"; and the plum-duff head and the sausage legs follow
feebly in after the voice, looking surprised.
"Main Brace,"--begins the Captain.
"Ay, ay, sir," responds Main Brace; and the plum-duff head lets fall its
lower jaw, and looks amazed, the Captain is so much in earnest.
"Some bait, Main Brace! Do you hear, my lad? Be lively, boy, and get
some bait; and then overhaul the _Alice_, and stand by to be ready when
I come down. We'll go a-fishing to-day,--do you hear, my boy? And we'll
have a jolly time,--do you hear that? So be lively now, and be off with
your plum-duff head and your sausage legs. I tell you, away, away! for
we'll go a-sailin'. Away, away! for we'll go a-sailin', a-sailin',
a-sailin'. Away, away! for we'll go a-sailin',--a-sailin' on the sea."
Without another word the sausage legs made off with the plum-duff head,
which had no sooner got outside the door than it began to let out in
dislocated fragments, from a mouth that gradually expanded until it
reached from ear to ear, "Away, away! we'll go a-fishin', a-fishin',
a-fishin'; away, away! we'll go a-sailin', a-sailin', a-sailin'; away,
away! we'll all be jolly, jolly, jolly,--we'll all be jolly"; and so on
until the sausage legs had carried the plum-duff head and the refrain
together so far down among the trees, towards the water, that all the
other "jollys" and the sailin's and the "fishin's," and the rest of it,
were blown clean away by the wind.
And off went the Captain, too, hurrying up to the top of the hill behind
the cottage, as if the cosey little thing was all afire, and the dear
old soul was running up for help; and when he reached the top of the
hill, he began swinging round his old tarpaulin hat, making the long
blue ribbons fairly whistle and speak, as if they would say, "Old man,
old man, stop a bit, and take breath!--can't you now? and say, what's
this all about, for goodness' sake!"
[Illustration: The Ancient Mariner becomes excited, and Main Brace makes
an effort.]
But the old man knew well enough himself what it was all about; for he
was signalling his little friends; and every circle of his big arm, and
every shake of his long gray beard, and every swing of his old tarpaulin
hat, seemed to sing out, "Hurrah, hurrah, for a jolly day! hurrah,
hurrah, my children gay! hurrah, hurrah, let's up and away, upon the
bright blue waters!"
By and by the children caught sight of the old tarpaulin hat and the
blue ribbons and the Captain himself, all in this state of violent
excitement; and down they bore at once upon the ancient mariner, as if
he were a regular bluff-bowed old East Indiaman, full of golden ingots,
and they were clipper-built, copper-fastened, rakish fore-and-afters of
the piratical pattern.
"Heyday!" (the old man never thought he had begun until he had thrown
off a heyday or so), "heyday, my hearties!" said the ancient mariner, as
the children came up to him,--"heyday, my dears! keep on that same
course before the wind, and you'll fetch up in the right port"; and so,
without further ado, he hurried "my hearties" down to the beach, and
aboard the yacht; and then very soon Main Brace (whose mouth had never
left off expanding at the prospect of "a fishin'" and "a sailin'" and "a
jolly day" generally) had the anchor away; and then the Captain spread
the white sails to the lively breeze; and there never was, since the
world began, a merrier little party, in a merrier little craft, afloat
upon blue water on a merrier day. Indeed, the day was so merry, and the
craft was so merry, and the waves were so merry as they came leaping
round the yacht, and the wind was so merry as it bulged out the sail and
went whistling through the rigging, and the little party in the yacht
were so merry, and everything and everybody was so merry, that it would
be strange indeed if the fish were not merry too; and the finny
creatures played round the pretty hooks, too merry by half to touch
them; and then they came merrily up, and poked their heads out close to
the top of the water, and stared at the merry-makers in the yacht, and
they seemed to be whispering to one another, "O, what a jolly lot of
coves they are, to be sure! O, don't they wish they may catch
us?--don't they though?" and then they dropped down again to look at the
pretty hooks; but only the sober-sided ones that had no idea of being
merry went near enough to bite, and these were surely bitten in return;
for, if the hook once got into their red gills, they found themselves
jerked up before they could say Lobster, and heard merry voices shouting
round them, to their great astonishment.
And of these sober-sided fishes who were so unfortunate as to have no
idea of being merry, the Captain and his little friends caught as many
as they wanted; and then the Captain said to his little friends, "Put
away your fishing-tackle now, and come down below into the little cabin,
and I'll surprise you." And, sure enough, he did surprise them,--quite
as much, perhaps, as if some fairy queen had come, and called them to a
fairy banquet; as much indeed, perhaps, as if they had themselves
suddenly been turned to fairies, and were doing something that was never
even dreamed of by mortal child before; for, while they had been
fishing, Main Brace had, by direction of the Captain, been building up a
fire in the little stove, and in the very centre of the cabin he had set
out a little table, and upon the little table there was spread the
whitest little cloth, and on the cloth were set all round the daintiest
little plates and knives and forks, and the neatest little napkins, and
the cunningest little cups, that were ever seen.
"And now," spoke up the Captain, laughing all the while to see his
little friends so much surprised, "fall to, fall to! for we're going to
have a jolly feast, or my name isn't Ancient Mariner, nor John Hardy
either." And the Captain poured out some fresh foaming milk into the
cunning little cups, from a big stone jug; and he brought some fresh
white rolls and some golden butter from a little locker; and soon
afterward he drew from the little stove some dainty little fish, and
dropped one, all crisp and hissing hot, upon each dainty little plate;
and now for half an hour there was busy work enough for the dainty
little knives and forks. The Captain's little stove proved to be
everything that one could wish for in that line; and the Captain's style
of cooking showed plainly enough, as William said, that "the Captain had
not travelled round the world, and been an ancient mariner, for
nothing."
When the meal was over, and everything was cleared away, and the little
cabin was once more in ship-shape order, William proposed the Captain's
health,--tossing back his head, and drinking a great quantity of
imaginary wine from an imaginary glass. "Here's to the health of Captain
Hardy, ancient mariner, and other things too numerous to mention,--the
jolliest Jack Tar that ever reefed a sail, or walked on the windward
side of a quarter-deck! May Davy Jones be a long while waiting for him;
and when he does go into Davy's locker, may he go an Admiral!" And then
the children all together "Hip, hip, hurrahed" the Captain, until the
old man had nearly split himself with laughing at their childish
merriment.
* * * * *
"And now for the story," said the Captain, when the laugh was ended.
"What do you say to that?"
"The story,--yes, yes, the story," shouted all the children, merrier
than ever.
"Down here, or up on deck?"
"Down here, just where we are; it's such a splendid place!"
"Then down here it shall be," went on the Captain, right well pleased.
"Down here it shall be, my dears, if I can only pick up the yarn again
where I broke it off. Let me see"; and the old man put a finger to his
nose, as he always did when he was thoughtful.
"Aha!" cried he, at length, "I've got my bearings now, as neat as a
light-house in a fog. You know, my dears, when we left off last time, we
had gone so far along with the story that you could see the Dean and I
had got ourselves in soundings, as it were. We had seen the light-ship
off the harbor, and were steering for it, so to speak. We had, by
working very hard, and by persevering very much, and by using our wits
as best we could, gathered about us everything that was needed to insure
our present safety, and some things to make us comfortable. We had a hut
to shelter us, and clothes to keep us warm, and fire to cook our food.
"But the winter was now coming on very fast, and we knew well enough
what that was likely to be. The grass and moss and flowers were dead or
dying; the ice was forming on the little pools, and here and there upon
the sea; little spurts of snow were coming now and then; the winds were
getting to be more fierce and angry, and every day was growing colder
and more dark. We knew that the long winter was close upon us, and that
the shadow of the night would soon be resting on us all the time. The
birds had hatched their young, and quitted their nests, and were flying
off to the sunny south, where we so longed to go, and so longed to send
a message by them to the loved ones far away. It made us sad--O, how
very, very sad!--to see the birds so happy on the wing, and sailing off
and leaving us upon the island all alone. Alone,--all, all alone! Alone
upon a desert island in the Frozen Sea! Alone in cold and darkness! All,
all alone!
"We made ourselves warm coats and stockings out of the skins of the
birds that we had caught; and we made caps, too, out of them,--plucking
off the feathers, and leaving only the soft, warm, mouse-colored down
upon the skin. And out of the seal's skin we made mittens and nice soft
boots, or rather, as I might call them, moccasins.
"The birds began to go away about the middle of August, as nearly as we
could tell, but it was more than a month after that before they had all
left the island. Meanwhile we had caught a great number of them,--two
hundred and sixty-six in all; and we had collected, besides, ninety
dozen of their eggs. These birds and eggs were all carefully stowed away
in our storehouses of ice and rocks near the glacier.
"In the matter of food, we had, therefore, done very well; but we felt
the need of some more blubber for our fire, and some warmer clothing
than the birds' skins. To supply this latter want, we tried very hard to
catch some foxes; but it was a long time before we were successful; for
not until all the ducks had gone away would the foxes trouble themselves
to go inside our traps. These traps were made of stones, and in building
them I had derived the only benefit which had ever resulted to me from
my indolent life on the farm. I was always fond of shirking away from my
duties, and going into the woods to set rabbit-traps; and, remembering
how I made them of wood, I easily contrived a stone one of the same
pattern, and it was found afterwards to answer perfectly; for when there
were no longer eggs and ducks for them to eat, the foxes went into our
traps, which we baited with flesh from the dead narwhal. The pelts of
these foxes were thick and warm; and, by the time the weather got very
cold, we had obtained a good number, and of them we made suits of
clothes at our leisure. There were two kinds of foxes; one was a sort
of blue gray, and the other was quite white.
"As the weather grew colder, the little streams which had thus far
supplied us with water all froze up; and we had now nothing to depend
upon but the freshly fallen snow, which we had, of course, to melt. Thus
you see how important it was that I should have found the soapstone in
season, and made a pot of it, else we should not only have been obliged
to go without boiled food, but likewise without water. As for fuel, we
were for the present relieved from all anxiety by a dead walrus and a
small white whale which drifted in upon the beach during a westerly
gale. The waves being very strong, they were landed so high up on the
beach that there was little fear of their being washed away again.
"It was no easy matter to cut these animals up with our one jack-knife,
since, before we could get it done, they had frozen quite hard. The
temperature had gone down until it was already below freezing all the
time; and very soon a great deal of snow fell, and was drifted into
heaps by the wind. The sea, soon after this, became frozen over quite
solid all about the island, although we could still see plenty of clear,
open water in the distance. There was one satisfaction, at least, in
this freezing up of the sea: we could walk out upon it, and go all
around the island without having to clamber over the rough rocks.
* * * * *
"You have now seen pretty much what our life was on the island, and how
we were prepared for the winter. Well, the winter came by and by in good
earnest, I can tell you. The sunlight all went away, and then, soon
afterward, the autumn twilight went away; and then came the darkness
that I told you is constant, in the winter, up towards the North Pole,
for the winter there is but one long night, you know."
Here William, who was, as we have seen, of an inquiring turn of mind,
interrupted the Captain to ask if he would not be so good as to mention
again how dark it was in this polar winter.
"Dark as midnight," replied the Captain, promptly.
"Dark all the time, did you say, Captain Hardy?"
"Yes, dark all the time, my lad,--dark in the morning, dark in the
evening, dark at midnight, dark at noon, dark, all the time, as any
night you ever saw; only, everything being white with snow, of course
makes the night lighter than it does here, where the trees and the
houses, and other dark objects, help along the blackness and make it
more gloomy,--absorbing the light, you see, while the snow reflects it."
"But what," asked William, "did you do for light in this dark time,
since you did not have a lamp?"
"Easy there, my lad," replied the Captain; "I'm just coming to that, you
see. Somebody has said that 'necessity is the mother of invention,' or
words to that effect; and darkness, I think, may be considered a
'mother' of that description. First we made an open dish of soapstone,
and put some oil in it; and then we made a wick out of the dry moss, and
set fire to it; but this was found to make so much smoke that it drove
us out of the hut, and it was given up. But we did not throw away the
dish, and after a while it occurred to us to powder the dry moss by
rubbing it between the hands, and with this powdered moss we lined our
soapstone dish all over on the inside with a layer a quarter of an inch
thick. After smoothing this down all around the edge (this dish, which
we called a lamp, was much like a saucer, only rougher and much
larger), we filled it half full of oil, and again set fire to it all
around the edge; and this time it worked beautifully,--smoking very
little, and giving us plenty of light."
"How cunning!" exclaimed the children, all at once.
"Rather so," replied the Captain, "but hardly more so than the two
little drinking-cups we carved out of the same kind of soapstone that we
made the lamp and pot of."
"It must have felt very queer, Captain Hardy," said Fred, inquiringly,
"to be in darkness all the time. I can't imagine such a thing as the
winter being all the time dark,--can you, Will?"
"No, I can't," replied William,--"can you, Sister Alice?"
"Yes, I think I can," said Alice, quickly.
"Why, how's that, my little dear?" asked the Captain, greatly
interested.
"O," said Alice, in her gentle way, "I've only to think of poor blind Jo
going round with his little dog, begging from door to door, and never
seeing anything in all the world,--no sun, no moon, no stars, no any
light to him at all. Poor Jo's bright summer went out long ago; and both
light and warmth were gone, never to come back again, when old Martha
died! and all's night to Jo,--and that's how I know what it is to be in
darkness all the time"; and as little Alice made this little speech
about poor blind Jo, the beggar-man, her lovely face looked thoughtful
beyond its years; and, as she finished, the Captain saw a tear stealing
from her soft blue eye for poor Jo's sake; and he caught her in his arms
right off, without stopping to think at all what he was doing, and he
kissed away the tear; and, as he did it, a much bigger one came tearing
out of his own great hazel eye, and hurried down into his shaggy beard
to hide, as if it were quite frightened at what it had been doing with
itself.
"Spoken like the little lady that you are, my dear," broke out the
Captain; "always thinking of the unfortunate. And you are very right, my
child. Poor blind Jo's darkness is much worse than ours ever was, up in
the Frozen Sea, upon the lonely island,--far worse indeed, poor man! for
you must know that the stars were shining brightly there upon us all the
time; and then the moon came every month; and when it came, it came for
good and all, and never set for several days; and then sometimes the
aurora borealis would flash across the heavens, and clear away the
darkness for a little while, as if it were a huge broom sweeping cobwebs
from the skies, and letting in the light of day beneath the stars. O,
what a splendid sight it was!"
"O, tell us all about it, Captain Hardy, won't you?" asked all the
children, with one voice.
"Of course, I will," replied the Captain, "only I can do no sort of
justice to that species of natural scenery, don't you see? That's a
touch beyond John Hardy's powers of description, as I can well assure
you."
The children all declared that they never could think anything beyond
John Hardy's powers, and they believed it too.
"Well, well! Now let me see, my dears, what I can do for you. First, you
know the scientific chaps, especially my friend the Doctor, down in
Boston, say that the aurora borealis is electricity broke loose, and
tearing through the air, from pole to pole, for some purpose of its own.
It can't be caught, nor bottled up, as Franklin bottled up the
lightning, nor analyzed;--in short, nothing can be done with it; and so
it goes tearing through the skies, as I have said before, from pole to
pole, just where it likes.
"Now this is what it is, so far as one can see. When you go away beyond
the Arctic Circle, you see great fiery streams start up from a fiery
arch that stretches right across the sky before you; and from this fiery
arch the fiery streams of light shoot up, and then fall back
again,--sometimes lasting for a little while, and waving in the sky, to
and fro, like a silken curtain of many colors fluttering in the wind;
and then again seeming to be phantom things playing hide-and-seek among
the stars; sometimes like wicked spirits of the night, bent on mischief;
sometimes like tongues of flame from some great fire in some great world
beyond the earth, making one almost afraid that the heavens will break
out presently in a roaring blaze, and rain a shower of living coals and
ashes on his head.
"And O, how grand the colors are sometimes! The great arch of light that
spans the sky is often bright with all the colors of the
rainbow,--changing every instant. And from these flickering belts of
light the fiery streams fly up with lightning speed,--green, and orange,
and blue, and purple, and bright crimson,--all mingling here and there
and everywhere above, while down beneath comes out in bold relief before
the eye the broad, white plain of ice and snow upon the ocean, the great
icebergs that lie here and there upon it, the tall white mountains of
the land, and the dark islands in the sea; and then the flood of light
dies away, and the dark islands in the sea, and the tall white
mountains, and the icebergs, and the white plain around, all vanish from
the sight, and the mind retains only an impression that the icebergs,
with all these bright hues reflected on them from above, had come from
space and darkness, like the meteors, then to vanish, and leave the
darkness more profound.
"And thus the auroral light and color keep pulsating in the air, up and
down, up and down; and thus the icebergs seem to come and go; and the
very stars above seem to be rushing out with a bold bright glare, and
going back again as quickly, singed and withered, as it were, into puny
sparks, and, utterly disheartened with the effort to keep their places
in the face of such a flood of brightness, are at length resolved no
more to try to twinkle, twinkle through the night.
"And that is all I can tell you about the aurora borealis, for that is
all I know about it."
"O, isn't he a great one?" whispered William to Fred, who sat close
beside him on the locker,--"isn't he, indeed?--to say he can't describe
an aurora borealis, when he has blood, thunder, fire, and all creation
on his tongue."
"But," went on the Captain, "in spite of this auroral light and the
moonlight, the winter was dreary enough. At first we wanted to sleep all
the time; and we had much trouble to keep ourselves from giving way to
this desire. If we had done so, it would have made us very unhealthy and
altogether miserable. We had to keep up our spirits, whatever else we
did; and after a while, to help us with this, we got into regular
habits; and we set a great clock up in the sky to tell us the time of
day."
"A clock up in the sky!" exclaimed both the boys; "why, Captain Hardy,
how was that?"
"Why, don't you see, my lads, the 'Great Bear' and all the other
constellations of the north go round and round the Pole-star, which is
right above your head; and it so happened that I knew the 'Great Bear,'
and the two stars in its side called 'the Pointers' because they point
to the Pole-star. Now these two 'Pointers,' going around once in the
four-and-twenty hours, pointed up from the south at one time, and up
from the north at another time, and up from the east and from the west
in the same way; and thus you see we had a clock up in the sky to tell
us the time of day, for we had an iceberg picked out all around for
every hour, and when 'the Pointers' stood over that particular berg we
knew what time it was.
"We should have got along through the winter much more comfortably if we
had had some books, or some paper to write on, and pen and ink to write
with; but these things were quite beyond the reach of our ingenuity. So
our life was very monotonous; doing our daily duties,--that is, whatever
we might find to do,--and, after wading through the deep snow in doing
it, we came back again to our little hut to get warm, and to eat and
talk and sleep.
"And much talking we did, as I can assure you, about each other, and
each other's life, and what great things we would do when we got away
from the island, hopeless though that seemed. Thus we came gradually to
know each other's history, and thus there came to be greater sympathy
between us, and more indulgence of each other's whims and fancies, as we
got better and better acquainted.
"The Dean had quite a story to relate of himself. He told me that he was
born in the great city of New York. His father died before he could
remember, and his mother was very poor; but so long as she kept her
health she managed, in one way or another, to live along from day to day
by sewing; and she managed, too, to send the Dean to school. She loved
her bright-haired little boy so very, very much that she would have
spent the last cent she could ever earn, could she only give her darling
Dean a little knowledge that might help him on in the world when he grew
to be a man. And so she stinted herself and saved, all unknown to her
darling Dean; and she had not clothing or fire enough to keep her warm
in the bleak winter, when the Dean was out, though she had a fine fire
when the Dean came back. All would have been well enough if the poor
woman had not, with her hard work and her efforts to save, become thin
and weak, and then grown sick with fever; and now there was nothing for
her but the hospital, for there was no money to pay for medicines, or
doctor's bills, to say nothing of rent and fire and clothes.
"And now for the first time the Dean began to realize the situation; and
a vague impression crossed his mind, that the poor, pale woman, now
restless with pain on a narrow bed in a great long ward of a dreary
hospital,--his own dear mother, suffering here with strange hands only
to comfort her,--had been brought to this for his sake; and when she
grew better, after a long, long time, but was still far from well, he
thought and thought, and cried and cried, and prayed and prayed, and
wished that he might do something to show his gratitude, and make
amends.
"By and by he got into a factory, and worked there early and late, until
he too grew sick, and was carried to the hospital, and was laid beside
his poor sick mother, on a narrow bed. But he soon got well again,
though his mother did not, and then (he could do nothing else) he went
to sea as cabin-boy of a ship sailing to Havana; and he came back too;
and, with a proud heart beating in his little breast, he carried a
little purse of gold and silver coins that the captain gave him to his
poor sick mother; and then he went away again on the same ship, and came
back once more with another purse of money, twice as big as the first;
but the good captain that had been so kind to him, and rewarded him so
well, fell sick, and died of yellow fever on the passage home, and the
mate, who got command of the ship, being a different sort of man,
disliked the Dean, and told him not to come back any more. And so the
poor Dean didn't know what to do; until one of his old shipmates met him
in the street, and took him off to New Bedford, and shipped him as
cabin-boy of the _Blackbird_. 'And now here I am,' said the poor little
Dean, 'and all the rest you know,--cast away in the cold, in this awful
place, while my poor sick mother has no money and no friends in all the
world, and is thinking all the time what a wretch I am to run away and
desert her, when, God knows, I meant to do nothing of the sort!' and so
the Dean burst out crying, and, to tell you the truth, I could not help
crying a little too.
"But the Dean was a right plucky little fellow, I can tell you; and so
full of hope and ambition was he, that nothing could keep him down very
long; and nothing, I believe, could ever make him despond for a single
minute but thinking of his mother, sick and far away, without friends or
money, lying on a narrow bed, all through the weary, dreary days and
nights, in the dreary ward of a crowded hospital. Poor Dean! he had
something to make him cry, and something always to make him sad, if he
had a mind to be; but what had I in comparison?--I who had gone away
from home with no good motive like the Dean's.
"After the recital of this story of the Dean's, we were both very sad,
until the Dean suddenly roused himself, and said, 'Let's go and look at
our traps, Hardy'; and so we sallied out into the moonlight, and waded
through the snow, to see if there were any foxes for us. To get outside
our hut was not so easy a matter now as it was when we first built it;
for, in order to keep the cold winds away, we had made a long, low,
narrow passage, with a crook in it, through which we crawled on our
hands and knees, before we reached the door.
"We walked all the way around the island, and visited all our traps, of
which we had seventeen, but only two of them had foxes in them; the
others were either filled with snow, or were completely covered over
with it, for the wind had been blowing very hard the day before.
"As we got farther and farther into the winter, we met with some very
strange adventures,--altogether different from anything I have told you
of before; but you see the sun will soon be going down behind the trees,
and we are a good long way from the 'Mariner's Rest,' so 'up anchor' 's
the word now, my dears, and 'under way' again."
* * * * *
The merry little yacht was not long in carrying the merry little party
over to the Captain's favorite anchorage; and then they were all soon
ashore, and after many merry and many pleasant speeches, our little
friends parted from the ancient mariner once more, leaving him standing
in the shadow of the great tall trees, with a string of fish in one
hand; while Fred and William, with Main Brace to help them, and with
merry Alice running on ahead, each carried off a string for their next
day's breakfast,--a trophy to be proud of, as they thought.