CHAPTER XIII.
The Ancient Mariner takes the Little People on a LittleVoyage; and the Little People become convinced that anArctic Winter, an Aurora Borealis, and an AncientMariner, are very Wonderful Things.
A lively breeze was blowing over the little village of Rockdale, and ina lively way the tall trees were bending down their heads, and swingingto and fro as if they liked it; for the leaves were beating time, andwere singing joyously, and appeared to be saying all the while how gladthey would be to keep beating time and singing on forever, if the windwould only please to be so good as to help them on in the joyousbusiness; and the tall grass and grain were shining in the sun, androlling round in a very reckless manner, as if they meant to show offtheir great billows of green and gold, and make the staid and soberlittle waves that were ruffling up the surface of the bright blue watersof the bay quite ashamed.
"Ha, ha!" laughed our ancient friend, the Captain, when he saw what aday it was. "Ha, ha! what a day indeed!" and right away he began to callloudly for his boy, Main Brace,--
"Main Brace, Main Brace, come here! Come, bear a hand, and be livelythere, you plum-duff, chuckle-headed young landlubber, and waddle alongaft here on your sausage legs."
A feeble voice is heard to answer from the galley,--"Ay, ay, sir;comin', sir, comin'"; and the plum-duff head and the sausage legs followfeebly in after the voice, looking surprised.
"Main Brace,"--begins the Captain.
"Ay, ay, sir," responds Main Brace; and the plum-duff head lets fall itslower jaw, and looks amazed, the Captain is so much in earnest.
"Some bait, Main Brace! Do you hear, my lad? Be lively, boy, and getsome bait; and then overhaul the _Alice_, and stand by to be ready whenI come down. We'll go a-fishing to-day,--do you hear, my boy? And we'llhave a jolly time,--do you hear that? So be lively now, and be off withyour plum-duff head and your sausage legs. I tell you, away, away! forwe'll go a-sailin'. Away, away! for we'll go a-sailin', a-sailin',a-sailin'. Away, away! for we'll go a-sailin',--a-sailin' on the sea."
Without another word the sausage legs made off with the plum-duff head,which had no sooner got outside the door than it began to let out indislocated fragments, from a mouth that gradually expanded until itreached from ear to ear, "Away, away! we'll go a-fishin', a-fishin',a-fishin'; away, away! we'll go a-sailin', a-sailin', a-sailin'; away,away! we'll all be jolly, jolly, jolly,--we'll all be jolly"; and so onuntil the sausage legs had carried the plum-duff head and the refraintogether so far down among the trees, towards the water, that all theother "jollys" and the sailin's and the "fishin's," and the rest of it,were blown clean away by the wind.
And off went the Captain, too, hurrying up to the top of the hill behindthe cottage, as if the cosey little thing was all afire, and the dearold soul was running up for help; and when he reached the top of thehill, he began swinging round his old tarpaulin hat, making the longblue ribbons fairly whistle and speak, as if they would say, "Old man,old man, stop a bit, and take breath!--can't you now? and say, what'sthis all about, for goodness' sake!"
The Ancient Mariner becomes excited, and Main Brace makesan effort.]
But the old man knew well enough himself what it was all about; for hewas signalling his little friends; and every circle of his big arm, andevery shake of his long gray beard, and every swing of his old tarpaulinhat, seemed to sing out, "Hurrah, hurrah, for a jolly day! hurrah,hurrah, my children gay! hurrah, hurrah, let's up and away, upon thebright blue waters!"
By and by the children caught sight of the old tarpaulin hat and theblue ribbons and the Captain himself, all in this state of violentexcitement; and down they bore at once upon the ancient mariner, as ifhe were a regular bluff-bowed old East Indiaman, full of golden ingots,and they were clipper-built, copper-fastened, rakish fore-and-afters ofthe piratical pattern.
"Heyday!" (the old man never thought he had begun until he had thrownoff a heyday or so), "heyday, my hearties!" said the ancient mariner, asthe children came up to him,--"heyday, my dears! keep on that samecourse before the wind, and you'll fetch up in the right port"; and so,without further ado, he hurried "my hearties" down to the beach, andaboard the yacht; and then very soon Main Brace (whose mouth had neverleft off expanding at the prospect of "a fishin'" and "a sailin'" and "ajolly day" generally) had the anchor away; and then the Captain spreadthe white sails to the lively breeze; and there never was, since theworld began, a merrier little party, in a merrier little craft, afloatupon blue water on a merrier day. Indeed, the day was so merry, and thecraft was so merry, and the waves were so merry as they came leapinground the yacht, and the wind was so merry as it bulged out the sail andwent whistling through the rigging, and the little party in the yachtwere so merry, and everything and everybody was so merry, that it wouldbe strange indeed if the fish were not merry too; and the finnycreatures played round the pretty hooks, too merry by half to touchthem; and then they came merrily up, and poked their heads out close tothe top of the water, and stared at the merry-makers in the yacht, andthey seemed to be whispering to one another, "O, what a jolly lot ofcoves they are, to be sure! O, don't they wish they may catchus?--don't they though?" and then they dropped down again to look at thepretty hooks; but only the sober-sided ones that had no idea of beingmerry went near enough to bite, and these were surely bitten in return;for, if the hook once got into their red gills, they found themselvesjerked up before they could say Lobster, and heard merry voices shoutinground them, to their great astonishment.
And of these sober-sided fishes who were so unfortunate as to have noidea of being merry, the Captain and his little friends caught as manyas they wanted; and then the Captain said to his little friends, "Putaway your fishing-tackle now, and come down below into the little cabin,and I'll surprise you." And, sure enough, he did surprise them,--quiteas much, perhaps, as if some fairy queen had come, and called them to afairy banquet; as much indeed, perhaps, as if they had themselvessuddenly been turned to fairies, and were doing something that was nevereven dreamed of by mortal child before; for, while they had beenfishing, Main Brace had, by direction of the Captain, been building up afire in the little stove, and in the very centre of the cabin he had setout a little table, and upon the little table there was spread thewhitest little cloth, and on the cloth were set all round the daintiestlittle plates and knives and forks, and the neatest little napkins, andthe cunningest little cups, that were ever seen.
"And now," spoke up the Captain, laughing all the while to see hislittle friends so much surprised, "fall to, fall to! for we're going tohave a jolly feast, or my name isn't Ancient Mariner, nor John Hardyeither." And the Captain poured out some fresh foaming milk into thecunning little cups, from a big stone jug; and he brought some freshwhite rolls and some golden butter from a little locker; and soonafterward he drew from the little stove some dainty little fish, anddropped one, all crisp and hissing hot, upon each dainty little plate;and now for half an hour there was busy work enough for the daintylittle knives and forks. The Captain's little stove proved to beeverything that one could wish for in that line; and the Captain's styleof cooking showed plainly enough, as William said, that "the Captain hadnot travelled round the world, and been an ancient mariner, fornothing."
When the meal was over, and everything was cleared away, and the littlecabin was once more in ship-shape order, William proposed the Captain'shealth,--tossing back his head, and drinking a great quantity ofimaginary wine from an imaginary glass. "Here's to the health of CaptainHardy, ancient mariner, and other things too numerous to mention,--thejolliest Jack Tar that ever reefed a sail, or walked on the windwardside of a quarter-deck! May Davy Jones be a long while waiting for him;and when he does go into Davy's locker, may he go an Admiral!" And thenthe children all together "Hip, hip, hurrahed" the Captain, until theold man had nearly split himself with laughing at their childishmerriment.
* * * * *
"And now for the story," said the Captain, when the laugh was ended."What do yo
u say to that?"
"The story,--yes, yes, the story," shouted all the children, merrierthan ever.
"Down here, or up on deck?"
"Down here, just where we are; it's such a splendid place!"
"Then down here it shall be," went on the Captain, right well pleased."Down here it shall be, my dears, if I can only pick up the yarn againwhere I broke it off. Let me see"; and the old man put a finger to hisnose, as he always did when he was thoughtful.
"Aha!" cried he, at length, "I've got my bearings now, as neat as alight-house in a fog. You know, my dears, when we left off last time, wehad gone so far along with the story that you could see the Dean and Ihad got ourselves in soundings, as it were. We had seen the light-shipoff the harbor, and were steering for it, so to speak. We had, byworking very hard, and by persevering very much, and by using our witsas best we could, gathered about us everything that was needed to insureour present safety, and some things to make us comfortable. We had a hutto shelter us, and clothes to keep us warm, and fire to cook our food.
"But the winter was now coming on very fast, and we knew well enoughwhat that was likely to be. The grass and moss and flowers were dead ordying; the ice was forming on the little pools, and here and there uponthe sea; little spurts of snow were coming now and then; the winds weregetting to be more fierce and angry, and every day was growing colderand more dark. We knew that the long winter was close upon us, and thatthe shadow of the night would soon be resting on us all the time. Thebirds had hatched their young, and quitted their nests, and were flyingoff to the sunny south, where we so longed to go, and so longed to senda message by them to the loved ones far away. It made us sad--O, howvery, very sad!--to see the birds so happy on the wing, and sailing offand leaving us upon the island all alone. Alone,--all, all alone! Aloneupon a desert island in the Frozen Sea! Alone in cold and darkness! All,all alone!
"We made ourselves warm coats and stockings out of the skins of thebirds that we had caught; and we made caps, too, out of them,--pluckingoff the feathers, and leaving only the soft, warm, mouse-colored downupon the skin. And out of the seal's skin we made mittens and nice softboots, or rather, as I might call them, moccasins.
"The birds began to go away about the middle of August, as nearly as wecould tell, but it was more than a month after that before they had allleft the island. Meanwhile we had caught a great number of them,--twohundred and sixty-six in all; and we had collected, besides, ninetydozen of their eggs. These birds and eggs were all carefully stowed awayin our storehouses of ice and rocks near the glacier.
"In the matter of food, we had, therefore, done very well; but we feltthe need of some more blubber for our fire, and some warmer clothingthan the birds' skins. To supply this latter want, we tried very hard tocatch some foxes; but it was a long time before we were successful; fornot until all the ducks had gone away would the foxes trouble themselvesto go inside our traps. These traps were made of stones, and in buildingthem I had derived the only benefit which had ever resulted to me frommy indolent life on the farm. I was always fond of shirking away from myduties, and going into the woods to set rabbit-traps; and, rememberinghow I made them of wood, I easily contrived a stone one of the samepattern, and it was found afterwards to answer perfectly; for when therewere no longer eggs and ducks for them to eat, the foxes went into ourtraps, which we baited with flesh from the dead narwhal. The pelts ofthese foxes were thick and warm; and, by the time the weather got verycold, we had obtained a good number, and of them we made suits ofclothes at our leisure. There were two kinds of foxes; one was a sortof blue gray, and the other was quite white.
"As the weather grew colder, the little streams which had thus farsupplied us with water all froze up; and we had now nothing to dependupon but the freshly fallen snow, which we had, of course, to melt. Thusyou see how important it was that I should have found the soapstone inseason, and made a pot of it, else we should not only have been obligedto go without boiled food, but likewise without water. As for fuel, wewere for the present relieved from all anxiety by a dead walrus and asmall white whale which drifted in upon the beach during a westerlygale. The waves being very strong, they were landed so high up on thebeach that there was little fear of their being washed away again.
"It was no easy matter to cut these animals up with our one jack-knife,since, before we could get it done, they had frozen quite hard. Thetemperature had gone down until it was already below freezing all thetime; and very soon a great deal of snow fell, and was drifted intoheaps by the wind. The sea, soon after this, became frozen over quitesolid all about the island, although we could still see plenty of clear,open water in the distance. There was one satisfaction, at least, inthis freezing up of the sea: we could walk out upon it, and go allaround the island without having to clamber over the rough rocks.
* * * * *
"You have now seen pretty much what our life was on the island, and howwe were prepared for the winter. Well, the winter came by and by in goodearnest, I can tell you. The sunlight all went away, and then, soonafterward, the autumn twilight went away; and then came the darknessthat I told you is constant, in the winter, up towards the North Pole,for the winter there is but one long night, you know."
Here William, who was, as we have seen, of an inquiring turn of mind,interrupted the Captain to ask if he would not be so good as to mentionagain how dark it was in this polar winter.
"Dark as midnight," replied the Captain, promptly.
"Dark all the time, did you say, Captain Hardy?"
"Yes, dark all the time, my lad,--dark in the morning, dark in theevening, dark at midnight, dark at noon, dark, all the time, as anynight you ever saw; only, everything being white with snow, of coursemakes the night lighter than it does here, where the trees and thehouses, and other dark objects, help along the blackness and make itmore gloomy,--absorbing the light, you see, while the snow reflects it."
"But what," asked William, "did you do for light in this dark time,since you did not have a lamp?"
"Easy there, my lad," replied the Captain; "I'm just coming to that, yousee. Somebody has said that 'necessity is the mother of invention,' orwords to that effect; and darkness, I think, may be considered a'mother' of that description. First we made an open dish of soapstone,and put some oil in it; and then we made a wick out of the dry moss, andset fire to it; but this was found to make so much smoke that it droveus out of the hut, and it was given up. But we did not throw away thedish, and after a while it occurred to us to powder the dry moss byrubbing it between the hands, and with this powdered moss we lined oursoapstone dish all over on the inside with a layer a quarter of an inchthick. After smoothing this down all around the edge (this dish, whichwe called a lamp, was much like a saucer, only rougher and muchlarger), we filled it half full of oil, and again set fire to it allaround the edge; and this time it worked beautifully,--smoking verylittle, and giving us plenty of light."
"How cunning!" exclaimed the children, all at once.
"Rather so," replied the Captain, "but hardly more so than the twolittle drinking-cups we carved out of the same kind of soapstone that wemade the lamp and pot of."
"It must have felt very queer, Captain Hardy," said Fred, inquiringly,"to be in darkness all the time. I can't imagine such a thing as thewinter being all the time dark,--can you, Will?"
"No, I can't," replied William,--"can you, Sister Alice?"
"Yes, I think I can," said Alice, quickly.
"Why, how's that, my little dear?" asked the Captain, greatlyinterested.
"O," said Alice, in her gentle way, "I've only to think of poor blind Jogoing round with his little dog, begging from door to door, and neverseeing anything in all the world,--no sun, no moon, no stars, no anylight to him at all. Poor Jo's bright summer went out long ago; and bothlight and warmth were gone, never to come back again, when old Marthadied! and all's night to Jo,--and that's how I know what it is to be indarkness all the time"; and as little Alice made this little s
peechabout poor blind Jo, the beggar-man, her lovely face looked thoughtfulbeyond its years; and, as she finished, the Captain saw a tear stealingfrom her soft blue eye for poor Jo's sake; and he caught her in his armsright off, without stopping to think at all what he was doing, and hekissed away the tear; and, as he did it, a much bigger one came tearingout of his own great hazel eye, and hurried down into his shaggy beardto hide, as if it were quite frightened at what it had been doing withitself.
"Spoken like the little lady that you are, my dear," broke out theCaptain; "always thinking of the unfortunate. And you are very right, mychild. Poor blind Jo's darkness is much worse than ours ever was, up inthe Frozen Sea, upon the lonely island,--far worse indeed, poor man! foryou must know that the stars were shining brightly there upon us all thetime; and then the moon came every month; and when it came, it came forgood and all, and never set for several days; and then sometimes theaurora borealis would flash across the heavens, and clear away thedarkness for a little while, as if it were a huge broom sweeping cobwebsfrom the skies, and letting in the light of day beneath the stars. O,what a splendid sight it was!"
"O, tell us all about it, Captain Hardy, won't you?" asked all thechildren, with one voice.
"Of course, I will," replied the Captain, "only I can do no sort ofjustice to that species of natural scenery, don't you see? That's atouch beyond John Hardy's powers of description, as I can well assureyou."
The children all declared that they never could think anything beyondJohn Hardy's powers, and they believed it too.
"Well, well! Now let me see, my dears, what I can do for you. First, youknow the scientific chaps, especially my friend the Doctor, down inBoston, say that the aurora borealis is electricity broke loose, andtearing through the air, from pole to pole, for some purpose of its own.It can't be caught, nor bottled up, as Franklin bottled up thelightning, nor analyzed;--in short, nothing can be done with it; and soit goes tearing through the skies, as I have said before, from pole topole, just where it likes.
"Now this is what it is, so far as one can see. When you go away beyondthe Arctic Circle, you see great fiery streams start up from a fieryarch that stretches right across the sky before you; and from this fieryarch the fiery streams of light shoot up, and then fall backagain,--sometimes lasting for a little while, and waving in the sky, toand fro, like a silken curtain of many colors fluttering in the wind;and then again seeming to be phantom things playing hide-and-seek amongthe stars; sometimes like wicked spirits of the night, bent on mischief;sometimes like tongues of flame from some great fire in some great worldbeyond the earth, making one almost afraid that the heavens will breakout presently in a roaring blaze, and rain a shower of living coals andashes on his head.
"And O, how grand the colors are sometimes! The great arch of light thatspans the sky is often bright with all the colors of therainbow,--changing every instant. And from these flickering belts oflight the fiery streams fly up with lightning speed,--green, and orange,and blue, and purple, and bright crimson,--all mingling here and thereand everywhere above, while down beneath comes out in bold relief beforethe eye the broad, white plain of ice and snow upon the ocean, the greaticebergs that lie here and there upon it, the tall white mountains ofthe land, and the dark islands in the sea; and then the flood of lightdies away, and the dark islands in the sea, and the tall whitemountains, and the icebergs, and the white plain around, all vanish fromthe sight, and the mind retains only an impression that the icebergs,with all these bright hues reflected on them from above, had come fromspace and darkness, like the meteors, then to vanish, and leave thedarkness more profound.
"And thus the auroral light and color keep pulsating in the air, up anddown, up and down; and thus the icebergs seem to come and go; and thevery stars above seem to be rushing out with a bold bright glare, andgoing back again as quickly, singed and withered, as it were, into punysparks, and, utterly disheartened with the effort to keep their placesin the face of such a flood of brightness, are at length resolved nomore to try to twinkle, twinkle through the night.
"And that is all I can tell you about the aurora borealis, for that isall I know about it."
"O, isn't he a great one?" whispered William to Fred, who sat closebeside him on the locker,--"isn't he, indeed?--to say he can't describean aurora borealis, when he has blood, thunder, fire, and all creationon his tongue."
"But," went on the Captain, "in spite of this auroral light and themoonlight, the winter was dreary enough. At first we wanted to sleep allthe time; and we had much trouble to keep ourselves from giving way tothis desire. If we had done so, it would have made us very unhealthy andaltogether miserable. We had to keep up our spirits, whatever else wedid; and after a while, to help us with this, we got into regularhabits; and we set a great clock up in the sky to tell us the time ofday."
"A clock up in the sky!" exclaimed both the boys; "why, Captain Hardy,how was that?"
"Why, don't you see, my lads, the 'Great Bear' and all the otherconstellations of the north go round and round the Pole-star, which isright above your head; and it so happened that I knew the 'Great Bear,'and the two stars in its side called 'the Pointers' because they pointto the Pole-star. Now these two 'Pointers,' going around once in thefour-and-twenty hours, pointed up from the south at one time, and upfrom the north at another time, and up from the east and from the westin the same way; and thus you see we had a clock up in the sky to tellus the time of day, for we had an iceberg picked out all around forevery hour, and when 'the Pointers' stood over that particular berg weknew what time it was.
"We should have got along through the winter much more comfortably if wehad had some books, or some paper to write on, and pen and ink to writewith; but these things were quite beyond the reach of our ingenuity. Soour life was very monotonous; doing our daily duties,--that is, whateverwe might find to do,--and, after wading through the deep snow in doingit, we came back again to our little hut to get warm, and to eat andtalk and sleep.
"And much talking we did, as I can assure you, about each other, andeach other's life, and what great things we would do when we got awayfrom the island, hopeless though that seemed. Thus we came gradually toknow each other's history, and thus there came to be greater sympathybetween us, and more indulgence of each other's whims and fancies, as wegot better and better acquainted.
"The Dean had quite a story to relate of himself. He told me that he wasborn in the great city of New York. His father died before he couldremember, and his mother was very poor; but so long as she kept herhealth she managed, in one way or another, to live along from day to dayby sewing; and she managed, too, to send the Dean to school. She lovedher bright-haired little boy so very, very much that she would havespent the last cent she could ever earn, could she only give her darlingDean a little knowledge that might help him on in the world when he grewto be a man. And so she stinted herself and saved, all unknown to herdarling Dean; and she had not clothing or fire enough to keep her warmin the bleak winter, when the Dean was out, though she had a fine firewhen the Dean came back. All would have been well enough if the poorwoman had not, with her hard work and her efforts to save, become thinand weak, and then grown sick with fever; and now there was nothing forher but the hospital, for there was no money to pay for medicines, ordoctor's bills, to say nothing of rent and fire and clothes.
"And now for the first time the Dean began to realize the situation; anda vague impression crossed his mind, that the poor, pale woman, nowrestless with pain on a narrow bed in a great long ward of a drearyhospital,--his own dear mother, suffering here with strange hands onlyto comfort her,--had been brought to this for his sake; and when shegrew better, after a long, long time, but was still far from well, hethought and thought, and cried and cried, and prayed and prayed, andwished that he might do something to show his gratitude, and makeamends.
"By and by he got into a factory, and worked there early and late, untilhe too grew sick, and was carried to the hospital, and was laid besidehis poor sick mother, on a n
arrow bed. But he soon got well again,though his mother did not, and then (he could do nothing else) he wentto sea as cabin-boy of a ship sailing to Havana; and he came back too;and, with a proud heart beating in his little breast, he carried alittle purse of gold and silver coins that the captain gave him to hispoor sick mother; and then he went away again on the same ship, and cameback once more with another purse of money, twice as big as the first;but the good captain that had been so kind to him, and rewarded him sowell, fell sick, and died of yellow fever on the passage home, and themate, who got command of the ship, being a different sort of man,disliked the Dean, and told him not to come back any more. And so thepoor Dean didn't know what to do; until one of his old shipmates met himin the street, and took him off to New Bedford, and shipped him ascabin-boy of the _Blackbird_. 'And now here I am,' said the poor littleDean, 'and all the rest you know,--cast away in the cold, in this awfulplace, while my poor sick mother has no money and no friends in all theworld, and is thinking all the time what a wretch I am to run away anddesert her, when, God knows, I meant to do nothing of the sort!' and sothe Dean burst out crying, and, to tell you the truth, I could not helpcrying a little too.
"But the Dean was a right plucky little fellow, I can tell you; and sofull of hope and ambition was he, that nothing could keep him down verylong; and nothing, I believe, could ever make him despond for a singleminute but thinking of his mother, sick and far away, without friends ormoney, lying on a narrow bed, all through the weary, dreary days andnights, in the dreary ward of a crowded hospital. Poor Dean! he hadsomething to make him cry, and something always to make him sad, if hehad a mind to be; but what had I in comparison?--I who had gone awayfrom home with no good motive like the Dean's.
"After the recital of this story of the Dean's, we were both very sad,until the Dean suddenly roused himself, and said, 'Let's go and look atour traps, Hardy'; and so we sallied out into the moonlight, and wadedthrough the snow, to see if there were any foxes for us. To get outsideour hut was not so easy a matter now as it was when we first built it;for, in order to keep the cold winds away, we had made a long, low,narrow passage, with a crook in it, through which we crawled on ourhands and knees, before we reached the door.
"We walked all the way around the island, and visited all our traps, ofwhich we had seventeen, but only two of them had foxes in them; theothers were either filled with snow, or were completely covered overwith it, for the wind had been blowing very hard the day before.
"As we got farther and farther into the winter, we met with some verystrange adventures,--altogether different from anything I have told youof before; but you see the sun will soon be going down behind the trees,and we are a good long way from the 'Mariner's Rest,' so 'up anchor' 'sthe word now, my dears, and 'under way' again."
* * * * *
The merry little yacht was not long in carrying the merry little partyover to the Captain's favorite anchorage; and then they were all soonashore, and after many merry and many pleasant speeches, our littlefriends parted from the ancient mariner once more, leaving him standingin the shadow of the great tall trees, with a string of fish in onehand; while Fred and William, with Main Brace to help them, and withmerry Alice running on ahead, each carried off a string for their nextday's breakfast,--a trophy to be proud of, as they thought.