Part 3 (2/2)

”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 embarra.s.sed 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 s.h.i.+vering with the cold. But I found that I had strength enough to stagger back to the s.h.i.+p, 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 s.h.i.+vering 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 s.h.i.+p'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 s.h.i.+fted our position frequently, and made what the sealers called a good 'catch.' But still the barrels in the hold of the s.h.i.+p 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 fis.h.i.+ng, 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 s.h.i.+ps actually went down. It was a very fearful sight, the crus.h.i.+ng up of these vessels,--as if they were nothing more than eggsh.e.l.ls 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-fis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sing a great deal of it every day. The wind being mostly fair, and the ice not thick enough at any time to obstruct our pa.s.sage, we hauled in our lat.i.tude very fast.”

”Excuse me, Captain Hardy,” here interrupted William, ”what is hauling in lat.i.tude?”

”That's for going farther north,” answered the Captain. ”Lat.i.tude is distance from the equator, either north or south, and what a sailor makes in northing or southing he calls 'hauling in his lat.i.tude,' 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 s.h.i.+p, 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s.

”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 ma.s.ses 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 pa.s.sed deliberately into the very jaws of death, and that from the frightful situation there was no escape.

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