CHAPTER VIII.
NIX ET NOX.
The characteristic of the snowstorm is its blackness. Nature's habitualaspect during a storm, the earth or sea black and the sky pale, isreversed; the sky is black, the ocean white, foam below, darknessabove; a horizon walled in with smoke; a zenith roofed with crape. Thetempest resembles a cathedral hung with mourning, but no light in thatcathedral: no phantom lights on the crests of the waves, no spark, nophosphorescence, naught but a huge shadow. The polar cyclone differsfrom the tropical cyclone, inasmuch as the one sets fire to every light,and the other extinguishes them all. The world is suddenly convertedinto the arched vault of a cave. Out of the night falls a dust of palespots, which hesitate between sky and sea. These spots, which are flakesof snow, slip, wander, and flow. It is like the tears of a winding-sheetputting themselves into lifelike motion. A mad wind mingles with thisdissemination. Blackness crumbling into whiteness, the furious into theobscure, all the tumult of which the sepulchre is capable, a whirlwindunder a catafalque--such is the snowstorm. Underneath trembles theocean, forming and re-forming over portentous unknown depths.
In the polar wind, which is electrical, the flakes turn suddenly intohailstones, and the air becomes filled with projectiles; the watercrackles, shot with grape.
No thunderstrokes: the lightning of boreal storms is silent. What issometimes said of the cat, "it swears," may be applied to thislightning. It is a menace proceeding from a mouth half open andstrangely inexorable. The snowstorm is a storm blind and dumb; when ithas passed, the ships also are often blind and the sailors dumb.
To escape from such an abyss is difficult.
It would be wrong, however, to believe shipwreck to be absolutelyinevitable. The Danish fishermen of Disco and the Balesin; the seekersof black whales; Hearn steering towards Behring Strait, to discover themouth of Coppermine River; Hudson, Mackenzie, Vancouver, Ross, DumontD'Urville, all underwent at the Pole itself the wildest hurricanes, andescaped out of them.
It was into this description of tempest that the hooker had entered,triumphant and in full sail--frenzy against frenzy. When Montgomery,escaping from Rouen, threw his galley, with all the force of its oars,against the chain barring the Seine at La Bouille, he showed similareffrontery.
The _Matutina_ sailed on fast; she bent so much under her sails that atmoments she made a fearful angle with the sea of fifteen degrees; buther good bellied keel adhered to the water as if glued to it. The keelresisted the grasp of the hurricane. The lantern at the prow cast itslight ahead.
The cloud, full of winds, dragging its tumour over the deep, cramped andeat more and more into the sea round the hooker. Not a gull, not asea-mew, nothing but snow. The expanse of the field of waves wasbecoming contracted and terrible; only three or four gigantic ones werevisible.
Now and then a tremendous flash of lightning of a red copper colourbroke out behind the obscure superposition of the horizon and thezenith; that sudden release of vermilion flame revealed the horror ofthe clouds; that abrupt conflagration of the depths, to which for aninstant the first tiers of clouds and the distant boundaries of thecelestial chaos seemed to adhere, placed the abyss in perspective. Onthis ground of fire the snow-flakes showed black--they might have beencompared to dark butterflies flying about in a furnace--then all wasextinguished.
The first explosion over, the squall, still pursuing the hooker, beganto roar in thorough bass. This phase of grumbling is a perilousdiminution of uproar. Nothing is so terrifying as this monologue of thestorm. This gloomy recitative appears to serve as a moment of rest tothe mysterious combating forces, and indicates a species of patrol keptin the unknown.
The hooker held wildly on her course. Her two mainsails especially weredoing fearful work. The sky and sea were as of ink with jets of foamrunning higher than the mast. Every instant masses of water swept thedeck like a deluge, and at each roll of the vessel the hawse-holes, nowto starboard, now to larboard, became as so many open mouths vomitingback the foam into the sea. The women had taken refuge in the cabin, butthe men remained on deck; the blinding snow eddied round, the spittingsurge mingled with it. All was fury.
At that moment the chief of the band, standing abaft on the sternframes, holding on with one hand to the shrouds, and with the othertaking off the kerchief he wore round his head and waving it in thelight of the lantern, gay and arrogant, with pride in his face, and hishair in wild disorder, intoxicated by all the darkness, cried out,--
"We are free!"
"Free, free, free," echoed the fugitives, and the band, seizing hold ofthe rigging, rose up on deck.
"Hurrah!" shouted the chief.
And the band shouted in the storm,--
"Hurrah!"
Just as this clamour was dying away in the tempest, a loud solemn voicerose from the other end of the vessel, saying,--
"Silence!"
All turned their heads. The darkness was thick, and the doctor wasleaning against the mast so that he seemed part of it, and they couldnot see him.
The voice spoke again,--
"Listen!"
All were silent.
Then did they distinctly hear through the darkness the toll of a bell.