Part 11 (1/2)

It was very cold, the wind about north-west, the sky a pale grey, with patches of weak hazy blue in it here and there; and here and there again lay some darker shadow of cloud curled clean as though painted.

There was nothing in sight saving the topmost cloths of a little barque heading eastwards away down to leeward. Quiet as the morning was, not once during the pa.s.sage had I found the temperature so cold.

I was glad when the job of was.h.i.+ng down was over, and not a little grateful for the hook-pot of steam tea which I took from the galley to my quarters in the steerage.

I breakfasted in true ocean fas.h.i.+on, off s.h.i.+p's biscuit, a piece of pork, the remains of yesterday's dinner, and a potful of black liquor called tea, sweetened by mola.s.ses and thickened with sodden leaves and fragments of twigs; and then, cutting a pipeful of tobacco from a stick of cavendish, I climbed into my hammock, and lay there smoking and trying to read in Norie's _Epitome_ until my pipe went out, on which I fell asleep.

I was awakened by young Halsted, whose hand was upon the edge of my hammock.

”Not time to turn out yet, I hope?” I exclaimed. ”I don't feel to have been below ten minutes.”

”There's the finest sight to see on deck,” said he, ”that you're likely to turn up this side of Boston. Tumble up and have a look if only for five minutes”; and without another word he hastened up the ladder.

I dropped out of my hammock, pulled on my boots and monkey-jacket, and went on deck, noting the hour by the cabin clock to be twenty minutes before eleven. The captain stood at the mizzen-rigging with a telescope at his eye, and beside him stood Mr. Sweers, likewise holding a gla.s.s, and both men pointed their telescopes towards the sea on the lee bow, where--never having before beheld an iceberg--I perceived what I imagined to be an island covered with snow.

An iceberg it was--not a very large one. It was about five miles distant; it had a ragged sky line which made it resemble a piece of cliff gone adrift--such a fragment of cliff as, let me say, a quarter of a mile of the chalk of the South Foreland would make, if you can imagine a ma.s.s of the stuff detaching itself from under the verdure at the top and floating off jagged and precipitous. There was nothing to be seen but that iceberg. No others. The sea ran smooth as oil, and of a hard green, piebald foam lines as in the earlier morning, with but a light swell out of the west, which came lifting stealthily to the side of the schooner. There was a small breeze; the sky had a somewhat gloomy look; the schooner was at this hour crawling along at the rate of about four and a half knots.

I said to Halsted: ”There was nothing in sight when I went below at eight bells. Where's that berg come from?”

”From behind the horizon,” he answered. ”The breeze freshened soon after you left the deck, and only slackened a little while since.”

”What can they see to keep them staring so hard?” said I, referring to the captain and Mr. Sweers, who kept their gla.s.ses steadily levelled at the iceberg.

”They've made out a s.h.i.+p upon the ice,” he answered; ”a s.h.i.+p high and dry upon a slope of foresh.o.r.e. I believe I can see her now--the gleam of the snow is confusing; there's a black spot at the base almost amids.h.i.+ps of the berg.”

I had a good sight in those days. I peered awhile and made out the object, but with the naked eye I could never have distinguished it as a s.h.i.+p at that distance.

”She's a barque,” I heard Mr. Sweers say.

”I see that,” said the captain.

”She's got a pretty strong list,” continued the mate, talking with the gla.s.s at his eye; ”her topgallantmasts are struck, but her topmasts are standing.”

”I tell you what it is,” said the captain, after a pause, likewise speaking whilst he gazed through his telescope, ”that s.h.i.+p's come down somewhere from out of the North Pole. She never could have struck the ice and gone ash.o.r.e as we see her there. She's been locked up; then the piece she's on broke away and made sail to the south. I've fallen in with bergs with live polar bears on them in my time.”

”What is she--a whaler?” said Mr. Sweers. ”She's got a lumbersome look about the bulwarks, as though she wasn't short of cranes; but I can't make out any boats, and there's no appearance of life aboard her.”

”Let her go off a point,” said the captain to the fellow at the wheel.

”Mr. Sweers, she'll be worth looking at,” he continued, slowly directing his gaze round the sea-line, as though considering the weather. 'You've heard of Sir John Franklin?'

”Have I heard?” said the mate, with a Dutch shrug.

”It's the duty of every English sailor,” said the captain, ”to keep his weather eye lifting whenever he smells ice north of the equator; for who's to tell what relics of the Franklin expedition he may not light on? And how are we to know,” continued he, again directing his gla.s.s at the berg, ”that yonder vessel may not have taken part in that expedition?”

”There's a reward going,” said Mr. Sweers, ”for the man who can discover anything about Sir John Franklin and his party.”

The captain grinned and quickly grew grave.

We drew slowly towards the iceberg, at which I gazed with some degree of disappointment; for, never before having beheld ice in a great ma.s.s like the heap that was yonder, I had expected to see something admirable and magnificent, an island of gla.s.s, full of fiery sparklings and ruby and emerald beams, a shape of crystal cut by the hand of King Frost into a hundred inimitable devices. Instead of which, the island of ice, on which lay the hull of the s.h.i.+p, was of a dead, unpolished whiteness, abrupt at the extremities, about a hundred and twenty feet tall at its loftiest point, not more picturesque than a rock covered with snow, and interesting only to my mind because of the distance it had measured, and because of the fancies it raised in one of the white, silent, and stirless princ.i.p.alities from which it had floated into these parts.

”Get the jolly-boat over, Mr. Sweers,” said the captain, ”and take a hand with you, and go and have a look at that craft there; and if you can board her, do so, and bring away her log-book, if you come across it. The newspapers sha'n't say that I fell in with such an object as that and pa.s.sed on without taking any notice.”

I caught Mr. Sweers' eye. ”You'll do,” said he, and in a few minutes he and I were pulling away in the direction of the ice, I in the bow and he aft, rowing fisherman fas.h.i.+on, face forward. The schooner had backed her yards on the fore when she was within a mile of the berg, and we had not far to row. Our four arms made the fat little jolly-boat buzz over the wrinkled surface of the green, cold water.