The Frozen Pirate
CHAPTER XIII.
I EXPLORE THE HOLD AND FORECASTLE.
It was pitch dark when I awoke, and I conceived it must be the middle ofthe night, but to my astonishment, on lighting the lanthorn and lookingat the watch, which I had taken the precaution to wind up overnight, Isaw it wanted but twenty minutes of nine o'clock, so that I had passedthrough twelve hours of solid sleep. However, it was only needful torecollect where I was, and to cast a glance at the closed door and port,to understand why it was dark. I had slept fairly warm, and awoke withno sensation of cramp; but the keen air had caused the steam of mybreath to freeze upon my mouth in such a manner that, when feeling thesticky inconvenience I put my finger to it, it fell like a little mask;and I likewise felt the pain of cold in my face to such an extent thathad I been blistered there my cheeks, nose, and brow could not havesmarted more. This resolved me henceforward to wrap up my head and facebefore going to rest.
I opened the door and passed out, and observed an amazing differencebetween the temperature of the air in which I had been sleeping and thatof the atmosphere in the passage--a happy discovery, for it served toassure me that, if I was careful to lie under plenty of coverings and tokeep the outer air excluded, the heat of my body would raise thetemperature of the little cabin; nor, providing the compartment wasventilated throughout the day, was there anything to be feared from thevitiation of the air by my own breathing.
My first business was to light the fire and set my breakfast to thaw,and boil me a kettle of water; and some time after I went on deck toview the weather and to revolve in my mind the routine of the day. Onopening the door of the companion-hatch I was nearly blinded by theglorious brilliance of the sunshine on the snow; after the blackness ofthe cabin it was like looking at the sun himself, and I had to stand afull three minutes with my hand upon my eyes before I could accustom mysight to the dazzling glare. It was fine weather again; the sky over theglass-like masts of the schooner was a clear dark blue, with a few lightclouds blowing over it from the southward. The wind had shifted at last;but, pure as the heavens were, the breeze was piping briskly with theweight and song of a small gale, and its fangs of frost, even in thecomparative quiet of the sheltered deck, bit with a fierceness that hadnot been observable yesterday.
The moment I had the body of the vessel in my sight I perceived thatshe had changed her position since my last view of her. Her bows weremore raised, and she lay over further by the depth of a plank. I staredearnestly at the rocky slopes on either hand, but could not have sworntheir figuration was changed. An eager hope shot into my mind, but itquickly faded into an emotion of apprehension. It was conceivable indeedthat on a sudden some early day I might find the schooner liberated andafloat, and this was the first inspiriting flush; but then came the fearthat the disruption and volcanic throes of the ice might crush her, afear rational enough when I saw the height she lay above the sea, andhow by pressure those slopes which formed her cradle might be jammed andwelded together. The change of her posture then fell upon me with a kindof shock, and determined me, when I had broken my fast, to search herhold for a boat or for materials for constructing some ark by which Imight float out to sea, should the ice grow menacing and force me fromthe schooner.
I made a plentiful meal, feeling the need of abundance of food in such atemperature as this, and heartily grateful that there was no need why Ishould stint myself. The having to pass the two figures every time Iwent on deck and returned was extremely disagreeable and unnerving, andI considered that, after searching the hold, the next duty I owed myselfwas to remove them on deck, and even over the side, if possible, for oneplace below was as sure to keep them haunting me as another, and theywould be as much with me in the forecastle as if I stowed them away inthe cabin adjoining mine.
Whilst I ate, my mind was so busy with considerations of the change inthe ship's posture during the night that it ended in determining me totake a survey of her from the outside, and then climb the cliffs andlook around before I fell to any other work. I fetched the cloak I hadstripped the body on the rocks of and thawed and warmed it, and put iton, and a noble covering it was, thick, soft, and clinging. Then, armingmyself with a boarding-pike to serve as a pole, I dropped into thefore-chains and thence stepped on to the ice, and very slowly andcarefully walked round the schooner, examining her closely, and boringinto the snow upon her side with my pike wherever I suspected a hole orindent. I could find nothing wrong with her in this way, though what athaw might reveal I could not know. Her rudder hung frozen upon itspintles, and looked as it should. Some little distance abaft her rudder,where the hollow or chasm sloped to the sea, was a great split three orfour feet wide; this had certainly happened in the night, and I musthave slept as sound as the dead not to hear the noise of it. Such a rentas this sufficed to account for the subsidence of the after-part of theschooner and her further inclination to larboard. Indeed, the hollow wasnow coming to resemble the "ways" on which ships are launched; and youwould have conceived by the appearance of it that if it should slope alittle more yet, off would slide the schooner for the sea, and in theright posture too--that is, stern on. But I prayed with all my mightand main for anything but this. It would have been very well had thehollow gone in a gentle declivity to the wash of the sea, to the wateritself, in short; but it terminated at the edge of a cliff, not veryhigh indeed, but high enough to warrant the prompt foundering of anyvessel that should launch herself off it. Happily the keel was toosolidly frozen into the ice to render a passage of this descriptionpossible; and the conclusion I arrived at after careful inspection wasthat the sole chance that could offer for the delivery of the vessel toher proper element was in the cracking up and disruption of the bed onwhich she lay.
Having ended my survey of the schooner, I addressed myself to the ascentof the starboard slope, and scaled it much more easily than I hadyesterday managed to make my way over the rocks. I climbed to thehighest block that was nearest me on the summit, and here I had a verylarge view of the scene. Much to my astonishment, the first objectswhich encountered my eye were four icebergs, floating detached but closetogether at a distance of about three miles on my side of the north-easttrend of the island. I counted them and made them four. They swam low,and it was very easily seen they had formed part of the coast there,though, as the form of the ice that way was not familiar to me, and as,moreover, the glare rendered the prospect very deceptive, I could notdistinguish where the ruptures were. But one change in the face of thiswhite country I did note, and that was the entire disappearance of twoof the most beautiful of the little crystal cities that adorned thenorthward range. The gale of the night had wrought havoc, and theunsubstantiality of this dazzling kingdom of ice was made startlinglyapparent by the evanishment of the delicate glassy architecture, and bythose four white hills floating like ships under their courses andtopsails out upon the flashing hurry and leaping blue and yeast of thewater.
It was blowing harder than I had imagined. The wind was extraordinarilysharp, and the full current of it not long to be endured on myunsheltered eminence. The sea, swelling up from the south, ran high, andwas full of seething and tumbling noises, and of the roaring of thebreakers, dashing themselves against the ice in prodigious bodies offoam, which so boiled along the foot of the cliffs that their fronts,rising out of it, might have passed for the spume itself freezing as itleapt into a solid mass of glorious brilliance. The eye never explored ascene more full of the splendour of light and of vivid colour. Here andthere the rocks shone prismatically as though some flying rainbow hadshivered itself upon them and lay broken. The blue of the sea and skywas deepened into an exquisite perfection of liquid tint by the blindingwhiteness of the ice, which in exchange was sharpened into a wonderfuleffulgence by the hues above and around it. Again and again, along thewhole range, far as the sight could explore, the spray rose in statelyclouds of silver, which were scattered by the wind in meteoricscintillations of surpassing beauty, flashing through the fires of thesun like millions of little blazing stars. There we
re twenty differentdyes of light in the collection of spires, fanes, and pillars near theschooner, whose masts, yards, and gear mingled their own particularradiance with that of these dainty figures; and wherever I bent my gazeI found so much of sun-tinctured loveliness, and the wild white gracesof ice-forms and the dazzle of snow-surfaces softening into an azuregleaming in the far blue distances, that but for the piercing wind Icould have spent the whole morning in taking into my mind the marvellousspirit of this ocean picture, forgetful of my melancholy condition inthe intoxication of this draught of free and spacious beauty.
Satisfied as to the state of the ice and the posture of the schooner,viewed from without, I sent a slow and piercing gaze along the oceanline, and then returned to the ship. The strong wind, the dance of thesea, the grandeur of the great tract of whiteness, vitalized by theflying of violet cloud-shadows along it, had fortified my spirits, andbeing free (for a while) of all superstitious dread, I determined tobegin by exploring the forecastle and ascertaining if more bodies werein the schooner than those two in the cabin and the giant form on deck.I threw some coal on the fire, and placed an ox-tongue along with thecheese and a lump of the frozen wine in a pannikin in the oven (for Ihad a mind to taste the vessel's stores, and thought the tongue wouldmake an agreeable change), and then putting a candle into the lanthornwalked very bravely to the forecastle and entered it.
I was prepared for the scene of confusion, but I must say it staggeredme afresh with something of the force of the first impression. Sailors'chests lay open in all directions, and their contents covered the decks.There was the clearest evidence here that the majority of the crew hadquitted the vessel in a violent hurry, turning out their boxes to cramtheir money and jewellery into their pockets, and heedlessly flingingdown their own and the clothes which had fallen to their share. This Ihad every right to suppose from the character of the muddle on thefloor; for, passing the light over a part of it, I witnessed a greatvariety of attire of a kind which certainly no sailor in any age everwent to sea with; not so fine perhaps as that which lay in the cabins,but very good nevertheless, particularly the linen. I saw several wigs,beavers of the kind that was formerly carried under the arm, women'ssilk shoes, petticoats, pieces of lace, silk, and so forth; all directlyassuring me that what I viewed was the contents of passengers' luggage,together with consignments and such freight as the pirates would seizeand divide, every man filling his chest. Perhaps there was less on thewhole than I supposed, the litter looking great by reason of everythinghaving been torn open and flung down loose.
I trod upon these heaps with little concern; they appealed to me only asa provision for my fire should I be disappointed in my search for coal.The hammocks obliged me to move with a stooped head; it was onlynecessary to feel them with my hand--that is, to test their weight bypushing them in the middle--to know if they were tenanted. Some wereheavier than the others, but all of them much lighter than they wouldhave been had they contained human bodies; and by this rapid method Isatisfied my mind that there were no dead men here as fully as if I hadlooked into each separate hammock.
This discovery was exceedingly comforting, for, though I do not knowthat I should have meddled with any frozen man had I found him in thisplace, his being in the forecastle would have rendered me constantlyuneasy, and it must have come to my either closing this part of the shipand shrinking from it as from a spectre-ridden gloom, or to my disposingof the bodies by dragging them on deck--a dismal and hateful job. Therewere no ports, but a hatch overhead. Wanting light--the candle makingthe darkness but little more than visible--I fetched from the arms-rooma handspike that lay in a corner, and, mounting a chest, struck at thehatch so heartily that the ice cracked all around it and the cover rose.I pushed it off, and down rolled the sunshine in splendour.
Everything was plain now. In many places, glittering among the clothes,were gold and silver coins, a few silver ornaments such as buckles, andwatches--things not missed by the pirates in the transport of theirflight. In kicking a coat aside I discovered a couple of silvercrucifixes bound together, and close by were a silver goblet and thehilt of a sword broken short off for the sake of the metal it was of.Nothing ruder than this interior is imaginable. The men must have beenmighty put to it for room. There was a window in the head, but the snowveiled it. Maybe the rogues messed together aft, and only used thisforecastle to lie in. Right under the hatch, where the light wasstrongest, was a dead rat. I stooped to pick it up, meaning to fling iton to the deck, but its tail broke off at the rump, like a pipe-stem.
Close against the after bulkhead that separated the forecastle from thecook-room was a little hatch. There was a quantity of wearing-apparelupon it, and I should have missed it but for catching sight of somethree inches of the dark line the cover made in the deck. On clearingaway the clothes I perceived a ring similar to that in the lazarettehatch, and it rose to my first drag and left me the hold yawning blackbelow. I peered down and observed a stout stanchion traversed by ironpins for the hands and feet. The atmosphere was nasty, and to give ittime to clear I went to the cook-house and warmed myself before thefire.
The fresh air blowing down the forecastle hatch speedily sweetened thehold. I lowered the lanthorn and followed, and found myself on top ofsome rum or spirit casks, which on my hitting them returned to me asolid note. There was a forepeak forward in the bows, and the caskswent stowed to the bulkhead of it; the top of this bulkhead was openfour feet from the upper deck, and on holding the lanthorn over andputting my head through I saw a quantity of coals. If the forepeak wentas low as the vessel's floor, then I calculated there would not be lessthan fifteen tons of coal in it. This was a noble discovery to fallupon, and it made me feel so happy that I do not know that the assuranceof my being immediately rescued from this island could have given alighter pulse to my heart.
The candle yielded a very small light, and it was difficult to see abovea yard or so ahead or around. I turned my face aft, and crawled over thecasks and came to under the main-hatch, where lay coils of hawser,buckets, blocks, and the like, but there was no pinnace, though here shehad been stowed, as a sailor would have promptly seen. A little waybeyond, under the great cabin, was the powder-magazine, a smallbulkheaded compartment with a little door, atop of which was a smallbull's-eye lamp. I peered warily enough, you will suppose, into thisplace, and made out twelve barrels of powder. I heartily wished themoverboard; and yet, after all, they were not very much more dangerousthan the wine and spirits in the lazarette and fore-hold.
The run remained to be explored--the after part, I mean, under thelazarette deck to the rudder-post--but I had seen enough; crawling aboutthat black interior was cold, lonesome, melancholy work, and it wasrendered peculiarly arduous by the obligation of caution imposed by myhaving to bear a light amid a freight mainly formed of explosives andcombustible matter. I had found plenty of coal, and that sufficed. So Ireturned by the same road I had entered, and sliding to the bulkheaddoor to keep the cold of the forecastle out of the cook-room, I stirredthe fire into a blaze and sat down before it to rest and think.