Part 12 (2/2)

But this was no better than idle and ironical chatter in the mouths of men so hideously situated as we were. For my part I had no thought of saving the s.h.i.+p; indeed, I had scarce any hope of saving my own life.

We found an American ensign in a small flag-locker that was lashed near the wheel, and we sent it half-mast high, with the stars inverted. Then we searched for fresh water, and found three iron tanks nearly full in the after-hold. The water stunk with keeping, as though it had grown rank in the bilge, but after it had stood a little while exposed to air it became sweet enough to use. There was no fear then of our peris.h.i.+ng from hunger and thirst whilst the whaler kept together. Our main and imminent danger lay in the sudden dissolution of the ice, or in the capsizal of the berg. It was our unhappy fortune that, numerous as were the cranes overhanging the whaler's side, we should not have found a boat left in one of them. Our only chance lay in a raft; but both Sweers and I, as sailors, shrank from the thought of such a means of escape. We might well guess that a raft would but prolong our lives in the midst of so wide a sea, by a few days, and perhaps by a few hours only, after subjecting us to every agony of despair and of expectation, and torturing us with G.o.d alone would know what privations.

We thoroughly overhauled the forecastle of the vessel, but found nothing of interest. There were a few seamen's chests, some odds and ends of wearing apparel, and here and there a blanket in a bunk; but the crew in clearing out appeared to have carried off most of their effects with them. Of course we could only conjecture what they had done and how they had managed; but it was to be guessed that all the boats being gone the sailors had taken advantage of a split in the ice to get away from their hard and fast s.h.i.+p, employing all their boats that they might carry with them a plentiful store of water and provisions.

I should but weary you to dwell day by day upon the pa.s.sage of time that Sweers and I pa.s.sed upon this s.h.i.+p that we had seen upon the ice.

We kept an eager look-out for craft, crawling to the mastheads so as to obtain a view over the blocks of ice which lay in ma.s.ses at the stem and stern of the whaler. But though we often caught sight of a distant sail, nothing ever approached us close enough to observe our signal. Once, indeed, a large steamer pa.s.sed within a couple of miles of the iceberg, and we watched her with devouring eyes, forever imagining that she was slowing down and about to stop, until she vanished out of our sight past the north end of the berg. Yet, we had no other hope of rescue than that of being taken off by a pa.s.sing s.h.i.+p.

I never recollect meeting at sea with such a variety of weather as we encountered. There would be clear suns.h.i.+ne and bright blue skies for a day, followed by dark and bellowing nights of storm. Then would come periods of thick fogs, followed by squalls, variable winds, and so on.

We guessed, however, that our trend was steadily southwards, by the steady cascading of the ice, by the frequent falls of large blocks, and by the increasing noises of sudden, tremendous disruptions, loud and heart-subduing as thundershocks heard close to.

”If we aren't taken off,” said Sweers to me one day, ”there's just this one chance for us. The ice is bound to melt. All these bergs, as I reckon, disappear somewhere to the nor'ard of the verge of the Gulf Stream. Well, now the Lord may be good to us, and it may happen that this berg'll melt away and leave the whaler afloat; and float she must if she isn't crushed by the ice. Let her leak like a sieve--there's oil enough in her to keep her standing upright as though she were a line-of-battle s.h.i.+p.”

Well, we had been a little more than a fortnight upon this s.h.i.+p hard and fast upon the ice. Many a vessel had we sighted, but never a one of them, saving the steamer I have mentioned, had approached within eyeshot of our distress signal. Yet our health was good, and our spirits tolerably easy; we had fared well, there was no lack of food and drink, and we were beginning to feel some confidence in the iceberg--by which I mean to say that the rapid thawing of its upper parts, where all the weight was, filled us with the hope that the ma.s.s wouldn't capsize as we had feared; that it would hold together so as to keep the s.h.i.+p on end as she now was until we were rescued, or, failing our being rescued, that it would dissolve in such a way as to leave the whaler afloat.

It was somewhere about the end of a fortnight, as I have said. My bed was a cabin locker, on which I had placed a mattress and a bear-skin.

Both Sweers and I turned in of a night, unless it was clear weather; though if I awoke I'd sometimes steal on deck to take a peep, for nothing could come of our keeping a look-out if it was blowing hard, and if it was black and thick.

This night it was a bit muddy and dark, with a moderate breeze out of the south-west, as far as we could guess at the bearings of the wind.

I was awakened from a deep slumber by an extraordinary convulsion in the s.h.i.+p. I was half-stupefied with sleep, and can therefore but imperfectly recall my sensations and the character of what I may term the throes and spasms of the vessel. I was thrown from the locker and lay for some moments incapable of rising by the shock of the fall. But one thing my senses, even when they were scarce yet awake, took note of, and that was a prodigious roaring noise, similar in effect to what might be produced by a cannon-ball rolling along a hollow wooden floor, only that the noise was thousands of times greater than ever could have been produced by a cannon-ball. The lamp was out, and the cabin in pitch blackness. I heard Sweers from some corner of the cabin, bawling out my name; but before I could answer, and even whilst I was staggering to my feet, a second convulsion threw me down again; the next instant there was a sensation as of the vessel being hove up into the air, attended by an extraordinary grinding noise, that thrilled through every beam of her; next, in the s.p.a.ce of a few beats of the heart, she plunged into the sea, raising such a boiling and roaring of waters, as, spite of the sounds being dulled to our ears by our being in the cabin, persuaded us that the vessel was foundering.

But even whilst I thus thought, holding my breath and waiting for the death that was to come with the pouring of the water down the open companion-way, I felt the s.h.i.+p right; she lifted buoyant under foot, and I sprang to the steps which conducted on deck, with Sweers--as I might know by his voice--close at my heels, roaring out, ”By tunder, we're adrift and afloat!”

The stars were s.h.i.+ning, there was a red moon low in the west, the weather had cleared, and a quiet wind was blowing. At the distance of some hundred yards from the s.h.i.+p stood a few pallid ma.s.ses--the remains of the berg. It was just possible to make out that the water in the neighbourhood of those dim heaps was covered with fragments of ice. How the liberation of the s.h.i.+p had come about neither Sweers nor I did then pause to consider. We were sailors, and our first business was to act as sailors, and as quickly as might be we loosed and hoisted the jib and foretopmast staysail, so that the vessel might blow away from the neighbourhood of the dangerous remains of her jail of ice. We then sounded the well, and, finding no water, went to work to loose the foresail and foretopsail, which canvas we made s.h.i.+ft to set with the aid of the capstan. I then lighted the binnacle lamp whilst Sweers held the wheel; and having sounded the well afresh, to make sure of the hull, we headed away to the eastwards, the wind being about W.S.W.

Before the dawn broke we had run the ice out of sight. Sweers and I managed, as I have no doubt, to arrive at the theory of the liberation of the s.h.i.+p by comparing our sensations and experiences. There can be no question that the berg had split in twain almost amids.h.i.+ps. This was the cause of the tremendous noise of thunder which I heard. The splitting of the ice had hoisted the shelf or beach on which the barque lay, and occasioned that sensation of flying into the air which I had noticed. But the lifting of the beach of ice had also violently and sharply sloped it, and the barque, freeing herself, had fled down it broadside on, taking the water with a mighty souse and crash, then rising buoyant, and lifting and falling upon the seas as we had both of us felt her do.

And now to bring this queer yarn to a close, for I have no s.p.a.ce to dwell upon our thankfulness and our proceedings until we obtained the help we stood in need of. We managed to handle the barque without a.s.sistance for three days, then fell in with an American s.h.i.+p bound to Liverpool, who lent us three of her men, and within three weeks of the date of our release from the iceberg we were in soundings in the Chops of the Channel, and a few days later had safely brought the barque to an anchor in the river Thames.

The adventure yielded Sweers and I a thousand pounds apiece as salvage money, but we were kept waiting a long time before receiving our just reward. It was necessary to communicate with the owners of the barque in America, and then the lawyers got hold of the job, and I grew so weary of interviews, so vexed and sickened by needless correspondence, that I should have been thankful to have taken two hundred pounds for my share merely to have made an end.

It seems that the _President_ had been abandoned two years and five months by her crew before the _Lightning_ sighted her on the ice. Her people had stuck to her for eight months, then made off in a body with the boats, carrying their captain and mates along with them. They regarded the situation of their s.h.i.+p as hopeless, and indeed, as it turned out, they were not very wrong, so far as their notions of reasonable detention went; for they never could have liberated the vessel by their own efforts; they must have waited, as we had, for the ice to free her; and this would have signified to them an imprisonment of two years and a half over and above the eight months they had already spent in her whilst ice-bound.

Sweers gave up the sea, started in business, and died, about ten years since, a fairly well-to-do man. And shall I tell you what I did with my thousand pounds? ... But my story has already run to greater length than I had intended when sitting down to write it.

THE END.

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