Part 11 (2/2)
There is a bit of description of Banks Land, from the anthology of that country, which, so far as we know, consists of two poems by a seaman named Nelson, one of Captain McClure's crew. The highest temperature ever observed on this ”gem of the sea” was 53 in midsummer. The lowest was 65 below zero in January, 1853; that day the thermometer did not rise to 60 below, that month was never warmer than 16 below, and the average of the month was 43 below. A pleasant climate to spend three years in!
One day for talk was all that could be allowed, after Mr. Pim's amazing appearance. On the 8th of April, he and his dogs, and Captain McClure and a party, were ready to return to our friend the ”Resolute.” They picked up Dr. Domville on the way; he had got the broken sledge mended, and killed five musk-oxen, against they came along. He went on in the dog-sledge to tell the news, but McClure and his men kept pace with them; and he and Dr. Domville had the telling of the news together.
It was decided that the ”Investigator” should be abandoned, and the ”Intrepid” and ”Resolute” made room for her men. Glad greeting they gave them too, as British seamen can give. More than half the crews were away when the ”Investigator's” parties came in, but by July everybody had returned. They had found islands where the charts had guessed there was sea, and sea where they had guessed there was land; had changed peninsulas into islands and islands into peninsulas. Away off beyond the seventy eighth parallel, Mr. McClintock had christened the farthest dot of land ”Ireland's Eye,” as if his native island were peering off into the unknown there;--a great island, which will be our farthest now, for years to come, had been named ”Prince Patrick's Land,” in honor of the baby prince who was the youngest when they left home. Will he not be tempted, when he is a man, to take a crew, like another Madoc, and, as younger sons of queens should, go and settle upon this tempting G.o.d-child? They had heard from Sir Edward Belcher's part of the squadron; they had heard from England; had heard of everything but Sir John Franklin. They had even found an ale-bottle of Captain Collinson's expedition,--but not a stick nor straw to show where Franklin or his men had lived or died. Two officers of the ”Investigator” were sent home to England this summer by a s.h.i.+p from Beechey Island, the head-quarters; and thus we heard, in October, 1853, of the discovery of the Northwest Pa.s.sage.
After their crews were on board again, and the ”Investigator's” sixty stowed away also, the ”Resolute” and ”Intrepid” had a dreary summer of it. The ice would not break up. They had hunting-parties on sh.o.r.e and races on the floe; but the captain could not send the ”Investigators”
home as he wanted to, in his steam tender. All his plans were made, and made on a manly scale,--if only the ice would open. He built a storehouse on the island for Collinson's people, or for you, reader, and us, if we should happen there, and stored it well, and left this record:--
”This is a house which I have named the 'Sailor's Home,' under the especial patronage of my Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty.
”_Here_ royal sailors and marines are fed, clothed, and receive double pay for inhabiting it.”
In that house is a little of everything, and a good deal of victuals and drink; but n.o.body has been there since the last of the ”Resolute's” men came away.
At last, the 17th of August, a day of foot-racing and jumping in bags and wrestling, all hands present, as at a sort of ”Isthmian games,”
ended with a gale, a cracking up of ice, and the ”Investigators” thought they were on their way home, and Kellett thought he was to have a month of summer yet. But no; ”there is nothing certain in this navigation from one hour to the next.” The ”Resolute” and ”Intrepid” were never really free of ice all that autumn; drove and drifted to and fro in Barrow's Straits till the 12th of November; and then froze up, without anchoring, off Cape c.o.c.kburn, perhaps one hundred and forty miles from their harbor of the last winter. The log-book of that winter is a curious record; the ingenuity of the officer in charge was well tasked to make one day differ from another. Each day has the first entry for ”s.h.i.+p's position”
thus: ”In the floe off Cape c.o.c.kburn.” And the blank for the second entry, thus: ”In the same position.” Lectures, theatricals, schools, &c., whiled away the time; but there could be no autumn travelling parties, and not much hope for discovery in the summer.
Spring came. The captain went over ice in his little dog-sled to Beechey Island, and received his directions to abandon his s.h.i.+ps. It appears that he would rather have sent most of his men forward, and with a small crew brought the ”Resolute” home that autumn or the next. But Sir Edward Belcher considered his orders peremptory ”that the safety of the crews must preclude any idea of extricating the s.h.i.+ps.” Both s.h.i.+ps were to be abandoned. Two distant travelling parties were away, one at the ”Investigator,” one looking for traces of Collinson, which they found. Word was left for them, at a proper point, not to seek the s.h.i.+p again, but to come on to Beechey Island. And at last, having fitted the ”Intrepid's” engines so that she could be under steam in two hours, having stored both s.h.i.+ps with equal proportions of provisions, and made both vessels ”ready for occupation,” the captain calked down the hatches, and with all the crew he had not sent on before,--forty-two persons in all,--left her Monday, the 15th of May, 1854, and started with the sledges for Beechey Island.
Poor old ”Resolute”! All this gay company is gone who have made her sides split with their laughter. Here is Harlequin's dress, lying in one of the wardrooms, but there is n.o.body to dance Harlequin's dances. ”Here is a lovely clear day,--surely to-day they will come on deck and take a meridian!” No, n.o.body comes. The sun grows hot on the decks; but it is all one, n.o.body looks at the thermometer! ”And so the poor s.h.i.+p was left all alone.” Such gay times she has had with all these brave young men on board! Such merry winters, such a lightsome summer! So much fun, so much nonsense! So much science and wisdom, and now it is all so still! Is the poor ”Resolute” conscious of the change? Does she miss the races on the ice, the scientific lecture every Tuesday, the occasional racket and bustle of the theatre, and the wors.h.i.+p of every Sunday? Has not she shared the hope of Captain Kellett, of McClure, and of the crew, that she may _break out well!_ She sees the last sledge leave her. The captain drives off his six dogs,--vanishes over the ice, and they are all gone ”Will they not come back again?” says the poor s.h.i.+p. And she looks wistfully across the ice to her little friend the steam tender ”Intrepid,” and she sees there is no one there. ”Intrepid! Intrepid!
have they really deserted us? We have served them so well, and have they really left us alone? A great many were away travelling last year, but they came home. Will not any of these come home now?” No, poor ”Resolute”! Not one of them ever came back again! Not one of them meant to. Summer came. August came. No one can tell how soon, but some day or other this her icy prison broke up, and the good s.h.i.+p found herself on her own element again; shook herself proudly, we cannot doubt, nodded joyfully across to the ”Intrepid,” and was free. But alas! there was no master to take lat.i.tude and longitude, no helmsman at the wheel. In clear letters cast in bra.s.s over her helm there are these words, ”England expects each man to do his duty.” But here is no man to heed the warning, and the rudder flaps this way and that way, no longer directing her course, but stupidly swinging to and fro. And she drifts here and there,--drifts out of sight of her little consort,--strands on a bit of ice floe now, and then is swept off from it,--and finds herself, without even the ”Intrepid's” company, alone on these blue seas with those white sh.o.r.es. But what utter loneliness! Poor ”Resolute ”!
She longed for freedom,--but what is freedom where there is no law? What is freedom without a helmsman! And the ”Resolute” looks back so sadly to the old days when she had a master. And the short bright summer pa.s.ses.
And again she sees the sun set from her decks. And now even her topmasts see it set. And now it does not rise to her deck. And the next day it does not rise to her topmast. Winter and night together! She has known them before! But now it is winter and night and loneliness all together.
This horrid ice closes up round her again. And there is no one to bring her into harbor,--she is out in the open sound. If the ice drifts west, she must go west. If it goes east, she must east. Her seeming freedom is over, and for that long winter she is chained again. But her heart is true to old England. And when she can go east, she is so happy! and when she must go west, she is so sad! Eastward she does go! Southward she does go! True to the instinct which sends us all home, she tracks undirected and without a sail fifteen hundred miles of that sea, without a beacon, which separates her from her own. And so goes a dismal year.
”Perhaps another spring they will come and find me out, and fix things below. It is getting dreadfully damp down there; and I cannot keep the guns bright and the floors dry,” No, good old ”Resolute.” May and June pa.s.s off the next year, and n.o.body comes; and here you are all alone out in the bay, drifting in this dismal pack. July and August,--the days are growing shorter again. ”Will n.o.body come and take care of me, and cut off these horrid blocks of ice, and see to these sides of bacon in the hold, and all these mouldy sails, and this powder, and the bread and the spirit that I have kept for them so well? It is September, and the sun begins to set again. And here is another of those awful gales. Will it be my very last? all alone here,--who have done so much,--and if they would only take care of me I can do so much more. Will n.o.body come?
n.o.body?.... What! Is it ice blink,--are my poor old lookouts blind? Is not there the 'Intrepid'? Dear 'Intrepid,' I will never look down on you again! No! there is no smoke-stack, it is not the 'Intrepid.' But it is somebody. Pray see me, good somebody. Are you a Yankee whaler? I am glad to see the Yankee whalers, I remember the Yankee whalers very pleasantly. We had a happy summer together once.... It will be dreadful if they do not see me! But this ice, this wretched ice! They do see me,--I know they see me, but they cannot get at me. Do not go away, good Yankees; pray come and help me. I know I can get out, if you will help a little.... But now it is a whole week and they do not come! Are there any Yankees, or am I getting crazy? I have heard them talk of crazy old s.h.i.+ps, in my young days.... No! I am not crazy. They are coming! they are coming. Brave Yankees! over the hummocks, down into the sludge. Do not give it up for the cold. There is coal below, and we will have a fire in the Sylvester, and in the captain's cabin.... There is a horrid lane of water. They have not got a Halkett. O, if one of these boats of mine would only start for them, instead of lying so stupidly on my deck here! But the men are not afraid of water! See them ferry over on that ice block! Come on, good friends! Welcome, whoever you be,--Dane, Dutch, French, or Yankee, come on! come on! It is coming up a gale, but I can bear a gale. Up the side, men. I wish I could let down the gangway alone. But here are all these blocks of ice piled up,--you can scramble over them! Why do you stop? Do not be afraid. I will make you very comfortable and jolly. Do not stay talking there. Pray come in. There is port in the captain's cabin, and a little preserved meat in the pantry.
You must be hungry; pray come in! O, he is coming, and now all four are coming. It would be dreadful if they had gone back! They are on deck.
Now I shall go home! How lonely it has been!”
It was true enough that when Mr. Quail, the brother of the captain of the ”McLellan,” whom the ”Resolute” had befriended, the mate of the George Henry, whaler, whose master, Captain Buddington, had discovered the ”Resolute” in the ice, came to her after a hard day's journey with his men, the men faltered with a little superst.i.tious feeling, and hesitated for a minute about going on board. But the poor lonely s.h.i.+p wooed them too lovingly, and they climbed over the broken ice and came on deck. She was lying over on her larboard side, with a heavy weight of ice holding her down. Hatches and companion were made fast, as Captain Kellett had left them. But, knocking open the companion, groping down stairs to the after cabin they found their way to the captain's table; somebody put his hand on a box of lucifers, struck a light, and revealed--books scattered in confusion, a candle standing, which he lighted at once, the gla.s.ses and the decanters from which Kellett and his officers had drunk good by to the vessel. The whalemen filled them again, and undoubtedly felt less discouraged. Meanwhile night came on, and a gale arose. So hard did it blow, that for two days these four were the whole crew of the ”Resolute,” and it was not till the 19th of September that they returned to their own s.h.i.+p, and reported what their prize was.
All these ten days, since Captain Buddington had first seen her, the vessels had been nearing each other. On the 19th he boarded her himself; found that in her hold, on the larboard side, was a good deal of ice; on the starboard side there seemed to be water. In fact, her tanks had burst from the extreme cold; and she was full of water, nearly to her lower deck. Everything that could move from its place had moved; everything was wet; everything that would mould was mouldy. ”A sort of perspiration” settled on the beams above. Clothes were wringing wet. The captain's party made a fire in Captain Kellett's stove, and soon started a sort of shower from the vapor with which it filled the air. The ”Resolute” has, however, four fine force-pumps. For three days the captain and six men worked fourteen hours a day on one of these, and had the pleasure of finding that they freed her of water,--that she was tight still. They cut away upon the ma.s.ses of ice; and on the 23d of September, in the evening, she freed herself from her enc.u.mbrances, and took an even keel. This was off the west sh.o.r.e of Baffin's Bay, in lat.i.tude 67. On the shortest tack she was twelve hundred miles from where Captain Kellett left her.
There was work enough still to be done. The rudder was to be s.h.i.+pped, the rigging to be made taut, sail to be set; and it proved, by the way, that the sail on the yards was much of it still serviceable, while a suit of new linen sails below were greatly injured by moisture. In a week more they had her ready to make sail. The pack of ice still drifted with both s.h.i.+ps; but on the 21st of October, after a long northwest gale, the ”Resolute” was free,--more free than she had been for more than two years.
Her ”last voyage” is almost told. Captain Buddington had resolved to bring her home. He had picked ten men from the ”George Henry,” leaving her fifteen, and with a rough tracing of the American coast drawn on a sheet of foolscap, with his lever watch and a quadrant for his instruments, he squared off for New London. A rough, hard pa.s.sage they had of it. The s.h.i.+p's ballast was gone, by the bursting of the tanks; she was top-heavy and under manned. He spoke a British whaling bark, and by her sent to Captain Kellett his epaulettes, and to his own owners news that he was coming. They had heavy gales and head winds, were driven as far down as the Bermudas; the water left in the s.h.i.+p's tanks was brackish, and it needed all the seasoning which the s.h.i.+p's chocolate would give to make it drinkable. ”For sixty hours at a time,” says the spirited captain, ”I frequently had no sleep”; but his perseverance was crowned with success at last, and on the night of the 23d-24th of December he made the light off the magnificent harbor from which he sailed; and on Sunday morning, the 24th, dropped anchor in the Thames, opposite _New_ London, ran up the royal ensign on the shorn masts of the ”Resolute,” and the good people of the town knew that he and his were safe, and that one of the victories of peace was won.
As the fine s.h.i.+p lies opposite the piers of that beautiful town, she attracts visitors from everywhere, and is, indeed, a very remarkable curiosity. Seals were at once placed, and very properly, on the captain's book-cases, lockers, and drawers, and wherever private property might be injured by wanton curiosity, and two keepers are on duty on the vessel, till her destination is decided. But nothing is changed from what she was when she came into harbor. And, from stem to stern, every detail of her equipment is a curiosity, to the sailor or to the landsman. The candlestick in the cabin is not like a Yankee candlestick. The hawse hole for the chain cable is fitted as has not been seen before. And so of everything between. There is the aspect of wet over everything now, after months of ventilation;--the rifles, which were last fired at musk-oxen in Melville Island, are red with rust, as if they had lain in the bottom of the sea; the volume of Shakespeare, which you find in an officer's berth, has a damp feel, as if you had been reading it in the open air in a March north-easter. The old seamen look with most amazement, perhaps, on the preparations for amus.e.m.e.nt,--the juggler's cups and b.a.l.l.s, or Harlequin's spangled dress; the quiet landsman wonders at the gigantic ice-saws, at the cast-off canvas boots, the long thick Arctic stockings. It seems almost wrong to go into Mr. Hamilton's wardroom, and see how he arranged his soap-cup and his tooth-brush; and one does not tell of it, if he finds on a blank leaf the secret prayer a sister wrote down for the brother to whom she gave a prayer-book. There is a good deal of disorder now,--thanks to her sudden abandonment, and perhaps to her three months' voyage home. A little union-jack lies over a heap of unmended and unwashed underclothes; when Kellett left the s.h.i.+p, he left his country's flag over his arm-chair as if to keep possession. Two officers' swords and a pair of epaulettes were on the cabin table. Indeed, what is there not there,--which should make an Arctic winter endurable,--make a long night into day,--or while long days away?
The s.h.i.+p is stanch and sound. The ”last voyage” which we have described will not, let us hope, be the last voyage of her career. But wherever she goes, under the English flag or under our own, she will scarcely ever crowd more adventure into one cruise than into that which sealed the discovery of the Northwest Pa.s.sage; which gave new lands to England, nearest to the pole of all she has; which spent more than a year, no man knows where, self-governed and unguided; and which, having begun under the strict _regime_ of the English navy, ended under the remarkable mutual rules, adopted by common consent, on the business of American whalemen.
Is it not worth noting that in this chivalry of Arctic adventure, the s.h.i.+ps which have been wrecked have been those of the fight or horror?
They are the ”Fury,” the ”Victory,” the ”Erebus,” the ”Terror.” But the s.h.i.+ps which never failed their crews,--which, for all that man knows, are as sound now as ever,--bear the names of peaceful adventure; the ”Hecla,” the ”Enterprise,” and ”Investigator,” the ”a.s.sistance” and ”Resolute,” the ”Pioneer” and ”Intrepid,” and our ”Advance” and ”Rescue”
and ”Arctic,” never threatened any one, even in their names. And they never failed the men who commanded them or who sailed in them.
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