Part 11 (2/2)

The wreck--if a wreck she could be called--lay with her decks sloping seawards upon an inclined shelf or beach of ice, with a ma.s.s of rugged, abrupt stuff behind her, and vast coagulated lumps heaped like a Stonehenge at her bows and at her stern. When we approached the beach, as I may term it, Salamon Sweers said:

”I'll tell you what: I am not going to board that craft alone, Kerry.

Who's to tell what's inside of her? She may have been lying twenty years, for all we know, frozen up where it's always day or always night--where everything's out of the order of nature, in fact; and rat me if I'm going to be the first man to enter her cabin.”

”I'm along with you,” said I.

”So you are, David,” said he, ”and we'll overhaul her together, and the best way to secure the boat'll be to drag her high and dry”; and as he said this, the stem of the boat touched the ice, and we both of us jumped out, and, catching hold of her by the gunwale, walked her up the slope by some five times her own length, where she lay as snug as though chocked aboard her own mother, the schooner.

Sweers and I stood, first of all, to take a view of the barque--for a barque she was: her topgallantmasts down, but her topsail and lower yards across, sails bent, all gear rove, and everything right so far as we could see, saving that her flying jib-boom was gone. There was no need to look long at her to know that she hadn't been one of Franklin's s.h.i.+ps. Her name and the place she hailed from were on her stern: the _President_, New Bedford. And now it was easy to see that she was a Yankee whaler. Her sides bristled with cranes or davits for boats, but every boat was gone. The tackles were overhauled, and the blocks of two of them lay upon the ice. She was a stout, ma.s.sive, round-bowed structure, to all appearances as sound as on the day when she was launched. She was coppered; not a sheet of metal was off, not a rent anywhere visible through the length and breadth of the dingy green surface of it.

We first of all walked round her, not knowing but that on the other side, concealed from the landing-place by the interposition of the hull, some remains of her people might be lying; but there was nothing in that way to see. We united our voices in a loud ”Hallo!” and the rocks re-echoed us; but all was still, frozen, lifeless.

”Let's get aboard,” said Mr. Sweers, gazing, nevertheless, up at the s.h.i.+p's side with a flat face of reluctance and doubt.

I grasped a boat's fall and went up hand over hand, and Sweers followed me. The angle of the deck was considerable, but owing to the flat bilge of the whaler's bottom, not greater than the inclination of the deck of a s.h.i.+p under a heavy press of canvas. It was possible to walk. We put our legs over the rail and came to a stand, and took a view of the decks of the s.h.i.+p. Nothing, saving the boats, seemed to be missing. Every detail of deck furniture was as complete as though the s.h.i.+p were ready for getting under way, with a full hold, for a final start home. Caboose, scuttle-b.u.t.ts, harness-cask, wheel, binnacle, companion-cover, skylight, winch, pumps, capstan--nothing was wanting; nothing but boats and men.

”Is it possible that all hands can be below?” said Sweers, straining his ear.

I looked aloft and about me, wondering that the body of the vessel and her masts and rigging should not be sheathed with ice; but if ever the structure had been glazed in her time, when she lay hard and fast far to the north of Spitzbergen, for all one could tell, nothing was now frozen; there was not so much as an icicle anywhere visible about her.

The decks were dry, and on my kicking a coil of rope that was near my feet the stuff did not crackle, as one could have expected, as though frosted to the core.

”The vessel seems to have been thawed through,” said I, ”and I expect that this berg is only a fragment of the ma.s.s that broke adrift with her.”

”Likely enough,” said Sweers. ”Hark! what is that?”

”What do you hear?” I exclaimed.

”Why, _that_!” cried he, pointing to a shallow fissure in the icy rocks which towered above the s.h.i.+p: and down the fissure I spied a cascade of water falling like smoke, with a harsh, hissing noise, which I had mistaken for the seething of the sea. I ran my eye over the face of the heights and witnessed many similar falls of water.

”There'll not be much of this iceberg left soon,” said I, ”if the drift is to the southward.”

”What d'ye think,--that the drift's northerly?” exclaimed Sweers.

”I'll tell you what it is; it's these icebergs drifting in ma.s.ses down south into the Atlantic which cause the sudden spells of cold weather you get in England during seasons when it ought to be hot.”

As he said this he walked to the companion-hatch, the cover of which was closed, and the door shut. The cover yielded to a thrust of his hand. He then pulled open the doors and put his head in, and I heard him spit.

”There's foul air here,” said he; ”but where a match will burn a man can breathe, I've learnt.”

He struck a match, and descended two or three steps of the ladder, and then called out to me to follow. The air was not foul, but it was close, and there was a dampish smell upon it, and it was charged with a fishy odour like that of decaying sp.a.w.n and dead marine vegetation.

Light fell through the companion-way, and a sort of blurred dimness drained through the grimy skylight.

We thoroughly overhauled this interior, spending some time in looking about us, for Sweers' fear of beholding something affrighting vanished when he found himself in a plain s.h.i.+p's cabin, with nothing more terrible to behold than the s.h.i.+p's furniture of a whaleman's living-room of near half a century old. There were three sleeping-berths, and these we explored, but met with nothing that in any way hinted at the story of the s.h.i.+p. It was impossible to tell, indeed, which had been the captain's cabin. All three berths were filled alike with lockers, hammocks, wash-stands, and so forth; and two of them were lighted by dirty little scuttles in the s.h.i.+p's side; but the third lay athwarts.h.i.+ps, and all the light that it received came from the cabin through its open door.

I don't know how long we were occupied in hunting these cabins for any sort of papers which would enable Captain Funnel to make out the story of the barque. We were too eager and curious and interested to heed the pa.s.sage of time. There were harpoons and muskets racked in the state cabin, some wearing apparel in the berths, a few books on nautical subjects, but without the owners' names in them, and there was a bundle of what proved to be bear's skins stowed away in the corner of the berth that was without a scuttle. A door led to a couple of bulkheaded compartments in the fore part of the state cabin, and Sweers was in the act of advancing to it when he cried out:

”By the tunder of heaven, what is dot?” losing his customary hold of the English tongue in the excitement of the moment.

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