CHAPTER VIII.
THE FROZEN SCHOONER.
I found myself on the summit of a kind of table-land; vast bodies ofice, every block weighing hundreds and perhaps thousands of tons layscattered over it; yet for the space of a mile or so the character wasthat of flatness. Southwards the range went upwards to a coastal frontof some hundred feet, with a huddle of peaks and strange configurationsbehind soaring to an elevation from the sea-line of two or three hundredfeet. Northwards the range sloped gradually, with such a shelving of itshinder part that I could catch a glimpse of a little space of the bluesea that way. From this I perceived that whatever thickness and surfaceof ice lay southwards, in the north it was attenuated to the shape of awedge, so that its extreme breadth where it projected its cape orextremity would not exceed a musket shot.
A companion might have qualified in my mind something of the sense ofprodigious loneliness and desolation inspired by that huge picture ofdazzling uneven whiteness, blotting out the whole of the south-eastocean, rolling in hills of blinding brilliance into the blue heavens,and curving and dying out into an airy film of silvery-azure radianceleagues away down in the south-west. But to my solitary eye thespectacle was an amazing and confounding one.
If I had not seen the tract of dark blue water in the north-east, Imight have imagined that this island stretched as far into the east andnorth as it did in the south and west. And one thing I quickly enoughunderstood: that if I wanted to behold the ocean on the east side of theice I should have to journey the breadth of the range, which here, whereI was, might mean one or five miles, for the blocks and lumps hid theview, and how far off the edge of the cliffs on the other side might beI could not therefore gather. This was not to be dreamt of, andtherefore to this extent my climb had been useless.
Being on the top of the range now, I could plainly hear the noises ofthe splitting and internal convulsions of this vast formation. Thesounds are not describable. Sometimes they seemed like the explosions ofguns, sometimes like the growlings and mutterings of huge fierce beasts,sometimes like smart single echoless blasts of thunder; and sometimesyou heard a singular sort of hissing or snarling, such as iron makeswhen speeding over ice, only when this noise happened the volume of itwas so great that the atmosphere trembled upon the ear with it. It wasimpossible to fix the direction of these sounds, the island was full ofthem; and always sullenly booming upon the breeze was the voice of theocean swell bursting in foam against the ice-coast that confronted it.
You may talk of the solitude of a Selkirk, but surely the spirit ofloneliness in him could not rival the unutterable emotion ofsolitariness that filled my mind as I sent my gaze over those miles offrozen stirless whiteness. He had the sight of fair pastures, of treesmaking a twinkling twilight on the sward, of grassy savannahs andpleasant slopes of hills; the air was illuminated by the gloriousplumage of flying birds; the bleat of goats broke the stillness in thevalleys; there was a golden regale for his eye, and his other senseswere gratified with the perfumes of rich flowers and engaging concertsamong the trembling leaves. Above all, there was the soothing warmth ofa delicious climate. But out upon those heaped and spreading plains ofsnow nothing stirred, if it were not once that I was startled by a loudreport, and spied a rock about half a mile away slide down the edge ofthe flat cliff and tumble into the sea. Nothing stirred, I say; therewas an affrighting solemnity of motionlessness everywhere. Thecountenance of this plain glared like a great dead face at the sky;neither sympathy, nor fancy, no, not the utmost forces of theimagination, could witness expression in it. Its unmeaningness wasghastly, and the ghastlier for the greatness of its bald and lifelessstare.
I turned my eyes seawards; haply it was the whiteness that gave theocean the extraordinarily rich dye I found in it. The expanse went inflowing folds of violet into the nethermost heavens, and though Godknows what extent of horizon I surveyed, the line of it, as clear asglass, ran without the faintest flaw to amuse my heart with even aninstant's hope.
There was more weight, however, in the wind than I had supposed. It blewfrom the west of north, and was an exquisitely frosty wind, despite thequarter whence it came. It swept in moans among the rocks, and therewere tones in it that recalled the stormy mutterings we had heard in theblasts which came upon the brig before the storm boiled down upon her.But my imagination was now so tight-strung as to be unwholesomely andunnaturally responsive to impulses and influences which at another timeI had not noticed. There were a few heavy clouds in the north-east, sosteam-like that methought they borrowed their complexion from the snowon the island's cape there. I was pretty sure, however, that there waswind behind them, for if the roll of the ocean did not signify heavyweather near to, then what else it betokened I could not imagine.
I cannot express to you how the very soul within me shrank from puttingto sea in the little boat. There was no longer the support of theexcitement and terror of escaping from a sinking vessel. I stood upon anisland as solid as land, and the very sense of security it impartedrendered the boat an object of terror, and the obligation upon me tolaunch into yonder mighty space as frightful as a sentence of death. YetI could not but consider that it would be equally shocking to me to belocked up in this slowly crumbling body of ice--nay, tenfold moreshocking, and that, if I had to choose between the boat and this hideoussolitude and sure starvation, I would cheerfully accept fifty times overagain the perils of a navigation in my tiny ark.
This reflection comforted me somewhat, and whilst I thus mused Iremained standing with my eyes upon the little group of fanciful fanesand spires of ice on the edge of the abrupt hollow. I had been toopreoccupied to take close notice; on a sudden I started, amazed by anappearance too exquisitely perfect to be credible. The sun shone with afine white frosty brilliance in the north-east; some of these spikes andfigures of ice reflected the radiance in several colours. In placeswhere they were wind-swept of their snow and showed the naked ice, thehues were wondrously splendid, and, mingling upon the sight, formed akind of airy, rainbow-like veil that complicated the whole congregationof white shaft and many-tinctured spire, the marble column, thealabaster steeple into a confused but most surprisingly dainty andshining scene.
It was whilst looking at this that my eye traced, a little distancebeyond, the form of a ship's spars and rigging. Through the labyrinth ofthe ice outlines I clearly made out two masts, with two square yards onthe foremast, the rigging perfect so far as it went, for the figurationshowed no more than half the height of the masts, the lower parts beingapparently hidden behind the edge of the hollow. I have said that thiscoast to the north abounded in many groups of beautiful fantasticshapes, suggesting a great variety of objects, as the forms of cloudsdo, but nothing perfect; but here now was something in ice that couldnot have been completer, more symmetrical, more faultlessly proportionedhad it been the work of an artist. I walked close to it and a little wayaround so as to obtain a clearer view, and then getting a fair sight ofthe appearance I halted again, transfixed with amazement.
The fabric appeared as if formed of frosted glass. The masts had a goodrake, and with a seaman's eye I took notice of the furniture, observingthe shrouds, stays, backstays, braces to be perfect. Nay, as though thespirit artist of this fragile glittering pageant had resolved to omit nodetail to complete the illusion, there stood a vane at the masthead,shining like a tongue of ice against the soft blue of the sky. Come,thought I, recovering from my wonder, there is more in this than it ispossible for me to guess by staring from a distance; so, striking mypole into the snow, I made carefully towards the edge of the hollow.
The gradual unfolding of the picture prepared my mind for what I couldnot see till the brink was reached; then, looking down, I beheld aschooner-rigged vessel lying in a sort of cradle of ice, stern-on to thesea. A man bulked out with frozen snow, so as to make his shape as greatas a bear, leaned upon the rail with a slight upwards inclination of hishead, as though he were in the act of looking fully up to hail me. Hisposture was even more lifelike than that of the man under t
he rock, buthis garment of snow robbed him of that reality of vitality which hadstartled me in the other, and the instant I saw him I knew him to bedead. He was the only figure visible. The whole body of the vessel wasfrosted by the snow into the glassy aspect of the spars and rigging, andthe sunshine striking down made a beautiful prismatic picture of thesilent ship.
She was a very old craft. The snow had moulded itself upon her andenlarged without spoiling her form. I found her age in the structure ofher bows, the headboards of which curved very low round to the top ofthe stem, forming a kind of well there, the after-part of which wasframed by the forecastle bulkhead, after the fashion of ship-building invogue in the reign of Anne and the first two Georges. Her topmasts werestanding, but her jibboom was rigged in. I could find no other evidenceof her people having snugged her for these winter quarters, in which shehad been manifestly lying for years and years. I traced the outlines ofsix small cannons covered with snow, but resting with clean-sculpturedforms in their white coats; a considerable piece of ordnance aft, andseveral petararoes or swivel-pieces upon the after-bulwark rails. Gaffsand booms were in their places, and the sails furled upon them. Thefiguration of the main hatch showed a small square, and there was acompanion or hatch-cover abaft the mainmast. There was no trace of aboat. She had a flush or level deck from the well in the bows to afathom or so past the main-shrouds; it was then broken by a shortpoop-deck, which went in a great spring or rise to the stern, that wasafter the pink style, very narrow and tall.
Though I write this description coldly, let it not be supposed that Iwas not violently agitated and astonished almost into the belief thatwhat I beheld was a mere vision, a phenomenon. The sight of the body Iexamined did not nearly so greatly astound me as the spectacle of thisice-locked schooner. It was easy to account for the presence of a deadman. My own situation, indeed, sufficiently solved the riddle of thatcorpse. But the ship, perfect in all respects, was like a stroke ofmagic. She lay with a slight list or inclination to larboard, but on thewhole tolerably upright, owing to the corpulence of her bilge. Thehollow or ravine that formed her bed went with a sharp incline underher stern to the sea, which was visible from the top of the cliffs herethrough the split in the rocks. The shelving of the ice put the wash ofthe ocean at a distance of a few hundred feet from the schooner; but Icalculated that the vessel's actual elevation above the water-line,supposing you to measure it with a plummet up and down, did not exceedtwenty feet, if so much, the hollow in which she rested being abovetwenty feet deep.
It was very evident that the schooner had in years gone by got embayedin this ice when it was far to the southward, and had in course of timebeen built up in it by floating masses. For how old the ice about thepoles may be who can tell? In those sunless worlds the frozen continentsmay well possess the antiquity of the land. And who shall name themonarch who filled the throne of Britain when this vast field broke awayfrom the main and started on its stealthy navigation sunwards?