Transcriber's Note:
Obvious typographic errors have been corrected.

HEART OF OAK

VOL. II.

PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON

HEART OF OAK

A THREE-STRANDED YARN

BY

W. CLARK RUSSELL

AUTHOR OF
'THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR' 'THE PHANTOM DEATH'
'THE CONVICT SHIP' ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES—VOL. II.

LONDON
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1895

CONTENTS

OF

THE SECOND VOLUME

HEART OF OAK

CHAPTER XI THE CREW LEAVE

The sail shone like a peak of ice against a belly of soft snow-cloud right ahead—that is, ahead as the hull's bows lay. I should have supposed it ice, but for the captain, who stood close beside the companion holding the ship's glass: he said, 'There she is, miss.'

'Is she coming this way?' cried I, shivering with cold and passion.

'I can't tell as yet. She's only just been sighted. Bear a hand with the first empty tar barrel you can get hold of,' he bawled, moving forwards, and he continued to shout, but I could not gather the instructions he delivered.

Presently Mrs. Burke joined me, and then Mr. Owen swathed to the nostrils.

'It's almost too good to credit,' he exclaimed! 'Can they be mistaken? Is it ice? If it should prove a ship!'

He went sliding and staggering towards some men in the waist, and stood questioning them, heedless of the captain.

With the promptitude of seamen the crew collected a lot of stuff for making a smoke; they stacked a large heap of material near the gangway and set fire to it, and in about ten minutes a thick body of blue smoke was rolling over the rail, and clouding upwards with many a sparkling ruddy gleam shooting up tongue-shaped or arrow-like into the throat of the sooty pouring.

It was wide daylight and the antarctic day young, but the clouds rimmed the horizon with the shadow of night, and the crimson light of the flare promised as swift an intelligence of our forlorn condition as the smoke. The seamen continued to feed the fire; and all the while Captain Burke was stretching his telescope at the distant gleam; the men again and again turning their eyes from it to him with looks growing dark with impatience and consuming anxiety. Mr. Owen had fetched his binocular glass and strained his eyes through them without intermission. Mrs. Burke and I standing in the companion, which was the one sheltered part of that long stretch of frozen deck and smashed bulwarks, gazed without speech.

Suddenly a sailor, one who had been most active in feeding the fire, sprang on to the rail: he grasped a spear-shaped projection of ice, which broke short off and he fell on his back; he sprang again with an oath, and after looking, turned to others who were standing near the fire and roared:

'Mates, she's leaving us, by God!'

'She takes us for a whaler trying out. There's no good in smoke as a signal down here,' said a sailor.

'It's our chance,' bawled the fellow who had sprung and fallen, now throwing himself back on to the deck. 'There mayn't come another for weeks. What's to happen then? Are we to drive about in this fired ocean till we ends as froze-up corpses? I'm for following her.'

'Take her bearings, bo'sun, while she's in sight,' shouted a seaman, and the huge sailor, as obedient as though the captain had given the command, rolled aft and put the sharp of his hand upon the compass bowl.

'Captain Burke,' exclaimed one of the seamen, in a voice startling with its sudden savage note of revolt, 'we've had enough of this. There's nothen that's a-going to be of any use to us in them booms.' He pointed behind him with his thumb. 'There's our chance. We'll run ourselves into her sight and she'll pick us up.'

'Hold your jaw, you Johnson!' said Captain Burke, who was as white as the deck in the face, though his eyes showed dangerously, like a madman's who watches his chance to leap upon you.

'Hold my jaw?' growled the seaman, a hairy scowling man in a yellow sou'-wester, dropping his head into an insolent butting posture. 'Why, so I will arter I've told yer that when them masts went we was quit of your blistered articles, and here's one as ain't for stopping one bloomin' minute longer to mess and muck about with jury-masts, pennorths of parasol to be blowed over the bows as soon as they're up. Mates,' he yelled, 'I'm after that ship whilst there's time. Who's for coming?'

As though there had been something quickening and thrilling as magnetism in the sailor's shout, the whole of the men made a jump for the boat, one of the first being the boatswain who was coming aft from the compass when the seaman bawled the invitation.

The smoke of the flare had flittered down into a curl of pale blue vapour, which blew over the rail feather-shaped to the sea. The captain stood this side of it, watching the men in a staring idle way whilst they went to work at the boat with gleaming knives, hacking and cutting at her fastenings—he seemed as though deprived of his reason—then he roared out:

'Leave that boat alone. Don't touch that boat. She belongs to the ship. She's my property. Overboard and swim for that vessel there if she's your chance, you dogs! But leave that boat alone.'

A few turned their heads to look at him and then went on passing their knives through the lashings, clearing away the booms and so forth.

'Stop him!' shrieked Mrs. Burke. 'Help, Mr. Owen! What can he do? What's the use of it? They'll kill him!' and I too screamed when I saw the captain rush upon the nearest of the men regardless of their naked knives; he struck out right and left, flooring two, but a third—none of them I observed offering to hit him back—crooked his leg at the poor man's heels, and he fell, fetching the iron-hard snow-coated plank a thump that left him motionless.

Mrs. Burke rushed to his side. The boatswain cried out:

'He's no right to stop us, mum. It's our lives we're working for and thinking of. You and him and the lady'll come along too. Now, mates, whilst there's daylight, for God's sake!'

Mr. Owen crossed to the captain's side and assisted Mrs. Burke to drag him aft. His figure slipped over the frozen snow as though he was lifeless, but they had not dragged him a dozen paces in the direction of the companion-hatch when he cried out and struggled. Mr. Owen let go; with the help of his wife he got on his feet.

'Get me some brandy,' said he.

I heard him and made with what speed I might for the cabin, my face bloodless and my heart beating as fast as a watch ticks. That brief scene of conflict, like to one of those terrible mutinies I had read of in sea tales, had been shocking to witness, on top as it was of our helpless and awful situation, and all the anguish of expectation and fear which had filled the past few days. I was sick and nearly fainted. I sat down to catch my breath and press my temples. Before I found strength to rise, Mrs. Burke descended, followed by her husband.

He seated himself at the table, upon which he lay his right arm and buried his face in it. She coaxed him after a little into taking some brandy, and then observing my state she got me to take a sip.

Meanwhile overhead I heard the crew busy with the long-boat; her keel thundered as they ran her to the side for launching. Their movements were full of feverish bustle; in truth they were working for life or death; they meant to catch the ship and there remained but a very few hours of daylight.

'Does your head pain you, Edward?'

'No,' he answered, and strained his hearing to catch what was passing above.

'Will they let us know when they're ready to take us?' I cried.

'Take us!' the captain exclaimed, with a sudden anger in his whole manner as he turned towards me. 'They may take you, but I stop here.'

'No, no, Miss Marie,' cried my poor old nurse, 'they must not take you without me, and my place is by my husband's side wherever he is. Think if they should miss the ship, which is more than likely: they'll be in an open boat in this frozen ocean! Fancy being in an open boat in such weather as that of the night before last! You would not live to see to-morrow's dawn. And how should their going concern us? If they fall in with the ship they'll report we are here and the vessel may return. If they miss her they are in an exposed open boat, and we are in a dry, comfortable hull, with a good warm cabin to sit in, and no worse off than if all the crew were aboard. For what can they do? If the ship comes, she'll come whether the crew are on board or not.'

'But are the three of us to be left alone?' I exclaimed.

'The dogs could have helped me,' muttered the captain. 'We blew northwards yesterday and to-day we sighted a sail. They are villains to steal my boat, the only remaining boat. But I am too few for them—I am too few for them.' He clasped his hands upon the back of his head as though he was in pain there.

Just then four or five seamen came tumbling down the companion-ladder: one held a lighted lantern. This man exclaimed:

'Capt'n, the boat's alongside, and all's ready.'

'What are you doing down here?' thundered the captain.

'The victuals we want are in the lazarette,' answered the man. 'No good lifting the main-hatch and overhauling the cargo when all we need's handy here.'

Even whilst he spoke the rest had pulled up a little square hatch cover with an iron ring in it; it fitted a large manhole a few paces abaft the companion-ladder; this hatch conducted to a part of the after-hold called the lazarette, a sort of store-room in which the cabin provisions and wines with other commodities were stowed.

Captain Burke jumped from his seat; his wife fell upon him shrieking, and with her arms about his neck forced him to sit, beseeching him to have patience, to let the men have their way, to attempt no violence or they would kill him. He trembled with rage and weakness and grief, but he understood his powerlessness—which was merciful, for there was an angry stubbornness in the hurry and motions of the men which was as good as advising their captain, with a curse and a threat wrapped up in the hint, not to meddle with them, not to offer to hinder them if he valued his life.

Very promptly the lot emerged from the lazarette, bearing cases and sacks, hams, cheeses, and so forth. They no doubt guessed they'd come to want plenty of provisions should they miss the ship they were after. They ran headlong up the ladder, none heeding us, but not above two minutes afterwards the boatswain's burly figure showed in the companion-way, and he bawled down:

'Capt'n Burke, we're all ready, and there isn't a second to lose. Ain't you going to join us along with the ladies?'

He received no reply.

He repeated the question, roaring it out in a bull-like bellowing, and then came a step or two down the ladder to stretch his neck that he might see us. I cried out:

'Are we to be left alone?' for I cannot express the horror that chilled me when I thought of the sailors leaving us to save themselves, insomuch that they might be on board another ship sailing towards the sun ere the Southern Cross was trembling in the south that night, whilst the three of us who stayed—two of them women—might go on rolling about in a wrecked and crusted hull till she grew sodden and sank, or split against an iceberg.

'Come you along with us, miss, if the captain and his wife won't leave the vessel!' cried the boatswain.

'No!' shrieked Mrs. Burke. 'Would you expose a delicate young lady in these seas in an open boat? Fools are you yourselves to go. You'll be heard of no more.'

The boatswain without another word withdrew his great developed bulk from the hatch, but he was instantly replaced by another figure, and Mr. Owen's voice, shrill with excitement and hurry, cried down:

'Mrs. Burke, Miss Otway, aren't you coming? They'll be putting off without you if you pause.'

'He does not ask my husband to join them,' screamed Mrs. Burke, 'the wretch! does he think I would leave my husband?'

Mr. Owen came swiftly down into the cabin and talked like a man in delirium.

'You have no right to keep this young lady with you. Captain Burke sticks to his hull from sordid motives. That's his look-out. Life's more precious than cargo. Miss Otway was entrusted to my care. I insist upon her being permitted to accompany us. Her father looks to me for her well-being. She is eager to go with us and you will not suffer it.' Thus he raved on.

'Leave this cabin,' cried the captain, springing up. His face was full of blood, his blue eyes blazed; he had already been worked up into madness, and I was certain by his insane manner of starting from his chair, if the doctor did not go instantly the captain would destroy him.

But it was at that moment that the boatswain bawled on deck. 'Come up!' were the words I caught, sounding through the companion-hatch in a muffled note of thunder. 'Up with them who's going.' More was said which I did not hear.

'By keeping her, you are murdering her, and her blood is on your head!' cried Mr. Owen like a woman in a frenzy of passion, and rushed up the ladder.

'Don't believe him,' exclaimed Mrs. Burke, grasping my hand, with a wild, short, passionate laugh that had the note of an hysteric sob. 'You shall see the boat presently. You shall see it out upon the water. You will judge then who would kill you. Oh, not I, not I, my flower; not I, your poor old nurse!'

I clasped her round the neck and sobbed. When I looked up Captain Burke had left the cabin.

We were apparelled for the deck, and finding the captain gone, we followed, and though scarcely five minutes had elapsed since the boatswain bawled, already the long-boat was some ship's lengths distant, bowed almost to the line of her lee rail by a great square of white canvas, shaded here and there where the moisture had not dried out of it. She looked full of people as she rose to the head of the folds, ripping through it with the icy breeze fresh off her bow, till the lift of the foam sparkled in a fountain-like arch right athwart her forward, and her speed raised two humps of froth on either quarter, and shot a long milk-white glance of wake, bright as a meteor's line of light, far astern of her, lifting and falling on the swell, and defined to its extremity even amidst the smoke and snap of the running seas.

Captain Burke with one hand grasping the edge of the companion stood watching her. When we came up his first words were, after a brief pause:

'They'll overhaul the ship if they can only get a sight of her. Look how she sails, and how finely she is handled.'

'She may be the means of saving us,' cried Mrs. Burke. 'What use were they on board of us? But they're useful there. They'll be sighted and rescued, and we shall be hunted after.'

But I did not want her nor her husband after I had watched the boat a little to tell me that, unless they quickly encountered succour, their situation, crowded together in a small exposed space, would be terrible. Also, since Mrs. Burke would not have left her husband, I should have been the only woman in her. I cannot say how the mere sight of her as she swept onwards, dwindling as you gazed into a mere toy, regularly sinking out of sight till nothing showed but a gleaming curve of her topmast cloths, wan and slender as a distant sea-fowl's pinion, then taking the slope till she leaned, poised and foaming for a breathless instant, upon the flying summit: I cannot tell you, I say, how solemnly and awfully that mere toy, full of human beings, emphasised to my perception the vastness and the loneliness of this cold, green, heaving breast of ocean.

Captain Burke took the telescope out of the companion and swept the sea for some little distance on either hand the boat's bows, pausing on the lee side of the fabric where, my sight being good, I spied a point like a light tipping the sea-line against some dark clouds there whenever the hull soared.

'That's the ship,' said he, pointing. 'They may catch her! Why, had I thought of it—but who's going to make proposals to mutineers?—the scoundrels have stolen my only boat. How do they know in leaving us what's to become of us without a boat?'

'Had you thought of what?' said his wife.

'I'd have given them a handful of rockets.'

We stood watching the boat till the white spot she became was one with the breaking seas. The hull looked indescribably forlorn. The sense of all life, saving us three, having gone out of her, brought a deeper spirit of desolation into her labouring shape. Oh, the heart-sickness that came into you out of her dismal regular rolling in the trough! The swell lifted her, the seas burst upon her weather side as against a rock, broke into smoke, and smote the hollow they sprang from with the loud hissing of a hail squall. There was a constant dreary gleam of ice as the fabric swayed, pallid glares along her side, blue glancings from the long barbs at the catheads; the frozen snow the whole length of the deck had a shrewd keen sparkle. In places along the working line of the sea hung motionless the faint marble of bergs; but long before the boat was lost to view the feather-tip of sail she was pursuing had vanished.

Captain Burke carefully and closely swept the horizon, then replaced the telescope.

'A few hours often make a mighty difference at sea,' said he. 'By this time tomorrow we may be towing northwards.'

'Have the men gone away without a compass?' said Mrs. Burke.

'The bo'sun owned a compass that was a curiosity of casting and graving: I remember he showed it to the mate. They'll have taken that with them. And now,' said he, speaking with more cheerfulness than I had observed in him for some days, 'let us go below and get something to eat. There's fuel enough to keep the stove going for a long spell. The hull's as staunch as she was on the day we sailed. Any moment you may see something that will look like ice climbing the sea into a whaler's breast of topsail and stump topgallant masts. So call things at their worst, miss,' said he, 'for then we may believe that their mending's at hand.'

Mrs. Burke and I went below; the captain remained on deck. Between us we dressed the dinner table. She did not want me to help her. She said it was her duty and joy to wait upon me. 'To think of Miss Marie Otway,' she exclaimed, 'laying a table-cloth and putting knives and forks upon the table that a plain merchant-skipper and his wife may dine.'

I kissed and went on helping her; any sort of occupation was welcome: for, argue as the captain and Mrs. Burke might, the abandonment of the wreck by the whole of the sailors had raised a horror in me, and filled my heart with deep secret distress and dread; so that, whenever I thought of our situation, it was with a shudder at the emptiness of the rolling broken hull.

I believe the hour was not far from two o'clock. Already the gloom of the early antarctic night was in the cabin, but the lamp swung in flashes through the shadow, and you could only have told that the gloom was gathering when you looked at the portholes. We sat beside the stove waiting for Captain Burke; by-and-bye his wife grew uneasy, and went on deck to seek him and call him down to dinner.

I was then alone, and sat very cold and wretched. I had been alone in this cabin before—that is, since the masts had gone; but then there had been the tread of feet overhead, the knowledge of a plentiful, hearty life in the ship. Now all was as hushed as the tomb in that way.

After I had been waiting four or five minutes, I saw two small points of light in the gloom where a locker ended, and where some few feet of ship's wall ran clear. I stared, suspecting an illusion, and then believed it was phosphorus or something jewelled with light by decay as rotten timber is. But on a sudden the two shining spots came stealing out into the whiskers and ribbed shape of a huge lean, grey rat. I jumped up with a shriek and the thing vanished.

My nerves gave way, and, marvelling at Captain and Mrs. Burke's absence, I went on deck to look for them, trembling with disgust and terror.

The daylight was small, but the snow along the decks made a whiteness in the air, so that perhaps even in the darkest hour you would be able to detect anything in motion betwixt the rails. Here and there about the leaden rolling ocean broke sudden glares of froth. The shadow had blended the sea-circle with sky, and nothing was visible save a smoky thickness of vapour breaking up to windward where it soared, and ashy in places with rain or snow. I stood in the hatch and looked along the deck and saw nobody. This so frightened me that I shrieked out Mrs. Burke's name. Nothing answered. I trembled with dread and the bitter cold of the wind, and crossing the deck that I might have something to hold by, went forward, occasionally screaming out the name of Mrs. Burke, but never getting an answer.

The galley door was open: nobody was in it. I was half fainting with terror; I could not imagine what had become of my companions. Was I alone in the ship? Oh, never could I make you understand what my feelings were whilst I stood running my eyes first forward and then aft, straining along the ghostly slanting glimmer of the decks for a sight of one or another of my friends, hearing nothing but a strange moaning noise of wind in the sky, and the long rolling thunder of moving mountains of water, the early night darkening fast down all round, the closing in upon the ghastly, weary, tumbling hull, lifting its bowsprit and splintered stumps of masts in postures of agony defined as existence itself could make them!

I had just sucked in my breath to send forth another scream, when I saw a figure in the little hatch called the forescuttle, which led into the forecastle.

'Who is that?' I cried.

'Is that you, Miss Marie?' called the voice of Mrs. Burke, and she rose through the hatch.

'I thought you were lost. I thought I was alone,' I cried, beginning to sob with a sudden passion of hysteric relief.

'My husband went down into the forepeak to get some coal,' said she, not perceiving that I cried. 'He asked me to help him by pulling up some buckets as he filled them. We are not quite done, but do not stay on deck, my dear. We shall be with you in a very few minutes now.'

On this I returned to the cabin, but much shaken, and so low-spirited, I had never before felt more miserable.

I entered the cabin with eyes a-search for the rat, and could not sit still beside the stove for thinking of the beast, for at every moment I was coining the lights of its eyes, the gaunt crouched shape of it, out of some shadow here or there; and if I saw it not in imagination, I figured it as under my chair. However, soon after I had returned, the captain and Mrs. Burke entered the cabin, the captain bearing two buckets and his wife one, full of coals.

'Now,' he exclaimed, 'for a little wash after that job!' and he took a kettle of water off the stove and carried it to his cabin. His wife followed him.

They came back soon and we sat down at the table. Whilst we ate Mrs. Burke explained how her husband had attached a block to a beam in the forecastle and rove a rope through it with a hook at one end, and how, standing in the forecastle, she had hauled up the buckets as he filled them deep down in the forepeak.

I told them of the horrible rat I had seen.

'Don't let it scare you, miss,' said the captain. 'Rats at sea haven't the viciousness of the beasts ashore. They'll drown themselves in a man's savings of molasses. They'll creep into his bunk and nibble his toe-nails. That's about the worst that I can recollect. They may be destructive to ships and cargo, but they've got their instincts, and know when on the ocean they're dependent on sailors.'

He doubtless said this to hearten me. Mrs. Burke changed the subject by speaking of the melancholy appearance of the forecastle. The hammocks swung, she said, as though every one held a man; the sailors' chests were scattered about, there was a smell of tobacco in the place as though the sailors had scarcely extinguished their pipes. The captain had put out the forecastle lamp. It was alight when they entered. Not that it would have set fire to the ship. It was sputtering and smelling, with a thick coil of slush rank smoke spreading in a little cloud under the deck out of a small greasy flame.

'The silence is shocking,' she said to her husband. 'I looked to see the heads of men peering at me over the edges of the hammocks.'

'There may be heads of men nearer than we think,' said he. 'I'll give ourselves a chance this night.' He looked up at the clock under the skylight and seemed to calculate, and then said, 'The boat went swiftly. She may have run into the ken of the ship—some box-ended waggon of a south seaman, no doubt, slow as a baulk of timber working to windward on a two-knot tide.'

'What will you do?' said his wife.

'I'll send up a rocket occasionally. If she picks up our people she might stand down to look for us—she might. I'll do more,' he added after a pause. 'I'll give them a flare or anything else that may be a bright light to see us by—a lantern on the stump of the foremast, or, better still, under the bowsprit where it'll dance.'

'Can a hull like this remain long afloat?' said I.

'Ay, miss.'

'I thought when a vessel was dismasted she became a wreck, and went quickly to pieces.'

'Over and over,' said he, 'you may have heard, you must have read, of derelicts, whose log-books showed they'd been washing about for months, sliding north and south, east and west through the summers and winters of the ocean. A well-built ship is so hard to knock to pieces that when she's abandoned she's as dangerous to navigation as an uncharted rock. Again and again they talk of sending gunboats to blow derelicts to pieces and clear the road. They're hard to extinguish, even with gunpowder, as hard to expel as a madman's fancies. This craft is safe, believe me, and will provide us with a secure sea-home until we're fallen in with, which may be tomorrow.'

This sort of talk did me a world of good, and I began to cheer up and feel something like my old self. I was now used to the motion of the hulk, at least in such a sea as then ran, though a landsman coming on board for the first time would have been instantly thrown, so swift, abrupt, and shooting were the rolls. This afternoon we did not notice any particular weight in the race and lift of the swell and sea; there had been a dumbness in the looks of the weather throughout the day, though a fresh wind blew with a flaying, razor-like edge of frost in it. Captain Burke said he expected a quiet night; that is, no more wind than had blown through the day. He built up a good fire for us, and got his wife to boil some coffee, whilst he fetched a number of rockets to carry on deck.

With the wish to amuse me he asked if I would like to see a rocket fired, and whilst Mrs. Burke made some coffee I followed him above. Night was upon the sea, and its shadow was as a wall for the ice spears along our rails to brandish their gleams upon. The captain fitted a candle-shaped thing into a rocket in the bulwarks near the wheel and fired it, and the rocket sprang high in a line of sparkles, leaving a red ball of flame floating close against the clouds, which reflected the radiance as though to a touch of sunset. I watched the red ball float down the wind and expire.

'We'll send up a second for luck,' said the captain.

This was a white light and the dazzle of the flash was lightning-like: a thin long wake of the brilliance dimly glanced, serpentine, off the peaks and slants of the heaving waters and the sky opened as to a star. But the night was the darker for that light when it went.

'Now, who's to tell,' said Captain Burke, 'what eye has seen those rockets? Never give up heart at sea, miss. We'll go below for a cup of hot coffee, and then the brightest burning lantern aboard shall be made fast in some place where it can be seen.'

I returned to the cabin with a little spirit of elation working in me, a strange possession in the presence of that reeling shadow of frosted hull and the blackness winding round about, pallid here and there with the wild dim light of froth. It was occasioned, no doubt, by the sending up of the rockets, by some faint hope or fancy of their being seen, with a half-formed vision of the ship the crew that day had pursued staggering down towards us then, a pale shaft aslant, gaunt with lean canvas breasting slowly, with many eyes on the look-out.

The three of us sat drinking coffee, and our talk ran in the way of our deliverance. The captain named our chances.

'Yes,' cried I, 'but if a ship should refuse to tow you, you will not surely remain on board this hull and keep us with you! Sooner——'

I broke off.

'Sooner what, miss?' said he, rounding his face upon me, crimson on one side of it with the fire.

'Sooner than that we should remain here in the hope of saving the property you possess in the hull, I would give you under my hand an undertaking that my father will make good the amount of your loss.'

'We'll see you safe; we'll see you safe,' he exclaimed with a slow smile. 'Anyhow, you're better here than in the long-boat where you'd be if Mr. Owen could have had his way.'

'Ay, if they're not aboard a ship they are cold now, I warrant, those poor men in that open boat,' exclaimed Mrs. Burke. 'And if the breeze should come on to freshen so as to fling spray over them, that must be the freezing part. Not to be able to get up and walk, and to feel the brine raining upon your back and hardening into a mask of ice about your neck!'

The captain got up, but as I did not watch him, I know not whether he went on deck or to a cabin. When he returned he held a large ship's lantern, a globe of white glass framed with metal. He fetched some oil from the pantry, carefully trimmed and then lighted the lantern.

'This will handsomely jewel the bowsprit,' said he. 'She'll make a starry dance of it there, toss it as proudly as though it were a gem on her brow, and she was still clothed in her last week's beauty of white wings. Heigh-ho! 'Tis no time for fine fancies. Sit ye here, miss; I'll not have you again expose yourself above; but, wife, you can rig yourself up so as to give me a ten minutes' hand on deck. I may want to seize a block to the bowsprit and run this light out.'

She clothed herself for the bitter cold, and bidding me not be afraid though a hundred rats should come and stare, she went up the steps after her husband in the almost noontide light of the lantern that swung in his hand.

The emotion of light-heartedness was ended; it had been but as the gleam of a star in black water on a cloudy night—the sky was folded up, my heart was dark again, I found no light nor life of hope in it. They say that hope springs eternal; I vow to God then I felt as hopeless as if my end was at hand whilst I sat alone when they had gone to show a light on the hull. I closed my eyes that I might not see the rat should it come, and so, sitting with the glow of the fire upon my face, I beheld a vision of my house: it rose upon my darkened gaze; I saw the wintry scene of Channel waters, the glance of foam through the flying clouds of snow; I saw myself walking with my sweetheart upon the stretch of sands, pausing to gaze at the beauty of the forming breaker and to hearken to the cries of the skyful of blown gulls. I saw my father; but what I chiefly remembered was the sensation of bitter cold which had sunk chill to heart and marrow, when I entered for the first time the cabin I was now occupying.

I shivered and buried my face and rocked myself, my eyes still sealed. I may have lost thought of time in musing; I started, looked round, and found by the hour that they had been on deck nigh twenty minutes. I thought this was a long time for Captain Burke to keep his wife exposed, and still I concluded that the job of securing a lantern to the bowsprit might run into time aboard a dancing, jumping, slippery hulk; so I continued to wait, all the while straining my ears, till hearing was made an anguish of by the constant cheats of sound.

I could bear it no longer. They had been absent half an hour and five minutes. I did not expect to hear their footfalls through the frozen snow on the planks; nor would their voices reach me if they remained forward; but why did not they come? I waited another ten minutes, then went on deck.

I looked, and was almost paralysed with terror; had I been an instant sooner, an instant later, it could not have been; but my eye went to it as I rose through the hatch at the breathless moment of its happening—and this was it: low over the sea in some quarter I could not name hung the moon, red as the sun in fog; she had just broken out through a mass of heavy black vapour; a ragged edge as of scud was floating off her upper limb like a last lingering shadow of eclipse, as I looked; and right athwart the orb, centering it, was the body of a bird, doubtless an albatross; and the instant picture was that of some wondrous, gigantic, glowing shield hanging over the sea, and approaching the hull on the back of a huge seafowl. But in a heart's beat the deception went: the bird whose distance created that marvellous illusive perspective curved in its flight and winged out of the illuminated circle and was gone, and in the next breath a lift of black stuff like the dingy smouldering of a candle-wick overspread the moon and hid her.

I looked along the deck, and as before, so now, I beheld nothing moving. I tried to reason with my terrors by supposing that the captain had again gone below to shovel up more coal, and that his wife waited in the forecastle to help him. But whilst I looked and strained my ears I heard a moan; again and yet again it came; I could not be mistaken. I went forward and heard the moaning whilst I advanced, and when I was close to the galley I saw a figure on the forecastle and heard the moaning again.

I stepped close, my heart almost stopped, my blood almost frozen. The white of the deck made a light of its own, as I have told you, and I saw Mrs. Burke lying on her side. She lay close to the fluke of an anchor that was stowed upon the forecastle on the starboard, or right-hand side. She moaned and continued to moan; I dropped on my knees, and grasping her hand cried, with my face close to hers to see if her eyes were open, for her moaning was that of a dying person: 'It is I. What has happened? Are you ill? Where's your husband?'

She answered feebly, moaning at every other word:

'He has fallen overboard. He went on to the bowsprit with a lantern and slipped. Oh, God, my heart breaks, my heart breaks! I ran and fell and I cannot rise. I have lost him—oh, my heart!'

I cried in a passion of horror and terror, 'Captain Burke drowned!' and then, figuring him battling for life alongside, I sprang to my feet and went to the rail and looked over. But there was nothing to be seen save an inky cloudiness of moving waters, shaping and dissolving, and a dim light of foam when the ship's bows pitched, and there was no other sound but that of the washing of brine pouring along the side, and a noise of wind overhead.

I went back to Mrs. Burke and knelt by her again, and cried:

'Cannot you rise that I may help you to get to the cabin?'

She moaned, but did not speak.

Then my heart gave way wholly, and as I knelt by her side I clasped my hands, and looked up into the darkness, and cried out of my loneliness: 'What shall I do? What shall I do?'

CHAPTER XII MR. SELBY TAKES UP THE STORY

Having been blown considerably to the southward of our course by a succession of hard northerly gales, the barque 'Planter,' from London to Adelaide, on a dark, bitter, raw morning of July 1860, was breaking the seas close hauled, looking up for as much northing as the seating of the wind would allow.

Our long topgallant masts were down on deck, and we showed nothing above the topmast cross-trees. Under single-reefed topsails and reefed foresail we rolled sluggishly onwards, making small way; the swell was wide and strong, but the wind blew without spite, save for its edge, and the seas ran small.

My name is Ralph Selby. I was chief mate of that barque, a vessel of four hundred and sixty tons, Walter Parry, master, John Newman, second mate. I had charge of the forenoon watch, and it was now about nine o'clock, but dark as at any hour of the night. All my sight had been going for ice whilst it remained black; throughout this had been so with the rest of us, since seven o'clock of the preceding evening we had nearly fallen foul of ice mountains three times. At midnight, indeed, the air being then like fog with snow, a loud and fearful cry from the forecastle had preserved us by the dark of our nails, we were in time by a few heart beats only; the whole mass looked aboard us as we surged past with our helm hard up, floating off on a heave of black fold that carried us clear, though it nearly thumped the channels off our sides with the lumps of loose ice it slided us into. The paleness of that mountain went up into the sky high above our mast-heads; the roar of the sea bursting at its base was louder than any surf I ever heard ashore; rock-blasting shocks in thunder echoes came out of the heap, which perhaps sank two leagues backwards into the blackness.

We drove clear and lost it, but for the rest of the night those who had the watch kept staring with all their eyes.

Whilst I leaned over the side searching the darkness off the bow, there broke over the starboard quarter the cold pale day of that desolate part of the world. The dim light seemed to sift to the zenith through the clouds like steam under the rolling sky. In twenty minutes it was daylight all round, the ocean a dirty freckled green, swollen in folds, and flashful with the short running seas of the then light breeze. The horizon opened into a hard green distance, working like a revolved corkscrew against the stooping soot past it, though overhead it was middling fine weather, streaks of dim green sky veining, into a look of marble, a surface of compacted yellow stuff; down which the brown scud was sailing south-west.

Crossing the deck to peer to leeward, I instantly caught sight of a sail, a white square of canvas which, coming and going this side the horizon, puzzled me during the moments I kept my naked eye upon it. I fetched the glass and on pointing it resolved the object into a ship's long-boat, full of people. She was heading to close us, but did not look as though she lay nearer than we; I observed no distress signal. I thought I could count eight or nine heads. The gleam of oilskins came off the men as the boat lifted. With the sheet flattened right aft the little fabric shredded through it nobly, flinging the water away in smoke, and rising with the dance and skill of the galley-punt of the Downs to the head of every hurdling sea.

The sight of her put a full spirit of civilisation into the desolate scene; and yet I guessed that exquisite distress lay dumb for distance only in that open leaping boat, gone now behind a hill of brine, now straining her square of cloths aslant on a rolling peak.

I sang out to the fellow at the wheel to let her go off by a point, and was going to make my report to the captain when he appeared. His eye caught the boat in a moment, and exclaiming, 'What have we here?' he levelled the glass and said:

'Pretty nigh a whole ship's company adrift.'

We closed her rapidly and were presently within hail.

'Take us aboard for God's sake, sir! Half of us are dead with the cold,' cried a lamentable voice, no man, whoever he was that spoke, rising nevertheless.

We manœuvred that she might sheer alongside; we then backed our topsail yard and her sail dropped with a run. But the men seemed scarcely to have life enough to catch hold of the coil of rope that was flung to them, and then when she lay hard by you saw by the rise of her to the height of our topgallant sail, then by the fall of her into a hollow twenty feet deep, that if those men were to be rescued they must be whipped aboard.

So a tackle was secured to the main yard-arm, and the rope slackened away to let the boat soar and sink fair under the whip; the captain then sang out for the strongest to send the weakest, themselves following. A huge, fine fellow with red whiskers answered with a paralytic flourish of his hand, and without delay the whip end was secured to one of the people and quickly as might be he was swayed aboard.

I was too busy with superintending these proceedings to do more than glance at the first of them as they hauled him over the side; and just took notice that he was a short man, cloaked and thickly wrapped, with bushy hair, not a sailor, and he looked frozen to death. He was carried into the cabin and another man was got aboard; he too seemed lifeless. There were nine or ten, I am not sure. One by one we swayed them over the rail, the last man to come being the big fellow with the red whiskers.

Those who seemed dead—of these there were four—were carried into the cabin; the others who were able to crawl were helped into the forecastle.

'What's to be done with the boat, sir?' said I to the captain.

'Oh, what can be done with her?' said he, with a shrug and an askant look of longing at the fine little craft. 'We should drown her if we towed her, and we can do nothing with her now. Let her go.'

I went forward by the captain's orders and saw to the men who had been sent into the forecastle. Hot grog and food were given to them; they were partially unclothed and chafed and wrapped in blankets. The only one who did not seem to need this care was the burly, red-whiskered seaman. He had stripped himself of his waterproofs, and after swallowing a couple of steaming glasses of grog, and eating pretty heartily of cold beef and biscuit, he asked for some warm water to wash the frost out of his face; which done, he fell to clapping his arms upon his breast, and shooting them out to right and left, kicking his legs about likewise; then turning upon me who stood watching, he said he was ready to step aft and spin his yarn to the captain.

We were a barque with a short poop; I took him into the cuddy, and there left him in order to look after the ship, so that I did not learn the story of this crew until a little while after he had related it to the captain. When I regained the poop the boat was showing and vanishing some distance astern. It made me shudder to think of exposure in her in these seas, and under the wild sky that was stormily sipping the sea-line with its black lips of vapour, though on high, over our staggering mast-heads, the heavens continued to lie a little open.

I saw them coming and going with steaming stuff from the galley, and guessed they were ministering to the poor frozen wretches in the cuddy. By-and-by the red-whiskered man went forward, and a little later up came Captain Parry. He approached me, and with a shocked look on his honest sailorly face said:

'I'm afraid three of the four are dead. We can't put any life into them. The fourth man stirred after some chafing, and when some hot grog had been spooned down his throat, and he's now got his mind. But I don't like to think how it's going to prove with him; his fingers and thumbs look to be mortified, and if his boots are pulled off his toes 'll come away.'

'Which man is that, sir?'

'The first man we got aboard, a man with bushy hair. He was doctor in the ship.'

'And the others are dead?'

'I never saw a frozen to death body. Newman says they're dead. He's been groping after any hint of life and finds none.'

John Newman, as I have said, was our second mate. He had been bred to medicine, changed his mind, and gone to sea at two-and-twenty, and was now, at the age of thirty, with a master's certificate of competency in his desk, earning five pounds a month as third in charge of a little barque. We all looked up to Newman as a medical authority; he had during the passage doctored some of us very skilfully; in pronouncing the man dead he knew what he was talking about.

'This is their yarn,' said the captain, and now I repeat in brief what he related.

Their ship was the 'Lady Emma.' She sailed from the Thames April 2. A few days before this time—namely, on July 2—she was thrown on to her beam ends by a terrific squall; they cut away to right the ship and all three masts went smack-smooth saving the foremast, of which there remained a jagged stump of some twelve foot. To this next day they secured an arrangement of boom and square-sail, which blew over the bows on the wind suddenly freshening.

The captain was a little broken in his spirits and weakened in his intellect by this calamity; also it was said forward that it weighed upon him to remember that a strange man wearing his face and aspect had walked on the forecastle one night. His hope was to blow north and fall in with something that would give him a tow to a port, he (it was understood) having a considerable uninsured venture in the vessel. The crew sickened of his notion, seeing no good nor hope in it; and on catching sight of the topmost canvas of a ship they launched a long-boat, hastily provisioned her, and went away in pursuit, leaving behind the master, his wife and a young lady passenger: but through no fault of the men, as the captain and the others declined to accompany them.

They lost the ship and wore for the hull afresh, missed her, and stood north-east by a compass which did not appear to have been very trustworthy. They were exposed for two nights and very nearly two days, and another night must have killed them all. The dead men were the steward, a Dutch seaman who had been ill for weeks with rheumatism, and another.

'How should the wreck bear now, do you think?' said Captain Parry.

I reflected, and after recalling the weather, and estimating the boat's sailing powers and the like, I answered if she was to be sought she might be found about one hundred and fifty miles distant west-south-west.

'I make her further than that,' said the captain.

'Perhaps so, sir.'

'But your bearings about tally with mine. I think it's our duty to give those people a chance for their lives. Three of them! and two of the three, women, Mr. Selby! And the passenger, I understand from Wall the bo'sun, is the daughter of an English baronet—the skipper's wife was her old nurse—she was sent out for her health.'

He looked thoughtfully round the sea, then told me to get the yards braced in, and going to the wheel, shifted the course, making a fair wind of the breeze, and the ship drove along.

The main difficulty lay in the shortness of the time of daylight. We were not going to hunt for a large becalmed craft, clothed like a pyramid to the trucks, and courting the eye like an iceberg, but for a low dismasted hull, which might slide past us within musket-shot in some hour of blackness, and no man dream it was near. But the captain was resolved to give the poor people a chance: there could be no question that the master of the ship, his wife, and a young lady were alive, locked up, helpless and hopeless, aboard a hull which at any hour might float away in staves from the side of an icehill; and it was right, it was our duty, it was a service that God would expect of us, that humanity required of us, to search, even at some peril to ourselves—loss of time counting for nothing when the errand is one of mercy—seeing that the hull lay, perhaps, within two hundred miles off, and her inmates in a situation to continue alive for a long while, the boatswain Wall having told Captain Parry that she was plentifully stocked with coal, provisions, and liquor.

All that day, till night blackened out the scene, we kept an eager watch upon the sea. It held fairly clear, a slender promise overhead in greenish streaks of an opening heaven, though the horizon scowled with snow-clouds. We sighted several icebergs, but saw nothing of the wreck. When it fell dark that afternoon, we shortened sail to two close-reefed topsails, furling the foresail, and rolled onwards slowly. The swell was high and ran strong from the westward, but the sea curled lightly. A few wan stars blinked in the rifts. The cold was intense. The rigging seemed to take a new thickness of ice when the night came, and the running gear was as stiff as bar-iron in the shears.

I guessed that Captain Burke (as I was told his name was) would show a light every night: he had lanterns and oil and an altitude that, with his freeboard, might give him twenty feet above the water in his stump of foremast. But we searched in vain for a sparkle. For my part, I took but a halfhearted view of the quest; yet it was a thing not to be omitted by an English seaman: no man of the slenderest mercy of heart would have foregone it.

I had charge of the middle watch, and being a man of some imagination, I cast my mind into the misery of the poor people who were somewhere out upon those black, swollen waters in a flat wallowing hull, and I shuddered and grieved when I thought of them. The life of a lofty superstructure of masts and spars, with canvas to spread or reduce at will, was in our ship; I felt the buoyant rise of her on hills of ink rolling invisible; I'd step aft to search the gloom astern and on either quarter, and mark the dim snow of the wake sheeting to the taffrail with the droop of her stern, and hear the grind of the wheel-chains, and see the illuminated disc of card trembling the course at the lubber's mark betwixt faithful oscillations, as though it were the spirit of the ship, naked and shining, and revealed in all its sublime guiding and informing motions; and then my mind would go again to that dismantled hull somewhere out in the freezing blackness here or there, a coffin of a ship with three live people locked up in it!

It came on to blow in hissing snow-squalls a little before daybreak. I got two hours' sleep after eight o'clock and turned out for a mouthful of breakfast: when that meal was ended, the dull day had whitened through the snow upon the skylight glass, and in a cabin window I saw the sea, lifting close with the ship's lurches, rolling astern and quickly out of sight into the blowing flakes.

The captain came below: he shook the snow off him by the stove and said:

'No signs of the hull. Nothing can be done if the weather don't clear. It's as thick as smoke all round, and if we go on making southing in this fashion we shall be running down the South Shetlands.'

'To pick up a wreck like this, sir,' said I, 'you may need to cross and re-cross your track a hundred times over.'

'I should never be able to sail away with a good conscience either,' said he. 'To leave three people to wash about down here, to perish certainly after a horrible time of it! Though it should cost a week of cruising to rescue them—'twould be like murder.'

He stepped into his cabin with unsettled looks and a face of agitation.

He was one of the humanest men I ever met whether at sea or ashore. He was not what would be called a gentleman by birth, but he was a man of God's best moulding, a simple, generous, just person, beloved of his crew, his officers' friend and companion, and their kindly counsellor as well as commander. I never heard a coarse word escape him nor a harsh one to even the most provoking of his people. He was an honour to the flag of his Service.

When I went on deck the weather had somewhat cleared round the ship, but the snow was whirling grayly against the soft dark thickness to leeward, whilst the windward sky was black with cloud of a true Horn pattern, low-flying, shredding off its edges, and swollen with burdens of hail and sleet.

I went to the starboard rail to take a long, careful look round, never knowing but that all on a sudden, in a flying way, the hull might leap into sight out of some green trough dim with salt breeze. Mr. Newman, heavily clad in sea boots and yellow oilskins, was standing for shelter under a square of canvas seized in the mizzen rigging. For my part I never wore an oilskin in my life. I was to-day clothed as I always went in bitter weather, north or south: in a thick pilot coat, thick pilot cloth trousers, a warm fur cap with ear-covers, thick mittens, and a shawl round my neck.

I was straining my sight into the whirling gray thickness over the bow, the ship then being under two close-reefed topsails and stern main trysail, and surging over the high swell and through the broken rugged seas at about five knots; when a man who was descending the starboard fore-shrouds with a coil of rigging round his neck missed a ratline with his foot and slapped at another with his hand: it parted at the seizing and he fell overboard backwards.

In the swift glance I had shot, my sight being already bent that way, I saw the ratline he had clapped hold of stand out from the shroud like a bar of steel.

I roared 'Man overboard!' and shouted to the fellow at the wheel to put the helm hard down. In the same breath I caught a lifebuoy off its pin and flung it at the body of the man who was then floating on the top of a swelling fold within a pistol-shot astern, fast sliding off. This buoy, like others in the ship—a device of the captain's—when it struck the water freed a red staff with a length of red bunting attached: the staff stood up on the buoy and the streamer like a tongue of fire blowing out made a beacon for a swimmer as well as for a boat in daylight.

Meanwhile the second mate was yelling for all hands and bawling 'Man overboard!' and shouting for seamen to lay aft and heave the vessel to. The captain came running up on deck. I called the tragic news to him, pointing aft, and then sprang for a jolly-boat as we termed the thing, which hung in davits upon the starboard quarter. A number of men came crowding around; the boat was swiftly cleared away, and I and three sailors jumped into her.

'Keep all fast till way is lost,' shouted the captain. 'Stand by to unhook handsomely or she'll drown ye.'

In a few minutes, which seemed as long as months, the boat sank to the water's edge and was waterborne: a sea lifted her half-way to her davits again; in that upward rush we unhooked, got oars over, and away we went for the red streamer which I could see faintly glimmering through a mist of spume.

She was a fat lubberly boat, better for this work than our longer whale-ended quarter-boats. She jumped like something alive and distracted, sometimes sped end on, made with headlong plunges into the valleys, sweeping up the acclivity with her nose to the sky, doing her work dryly but so wildly that the men could scarcely plunge their blades for a drag upon her. A couple of spare oars were lashed along her bottom under the thwarts. I had nearly cut them adrift, meaning to help the others, fisherman-fashion, with one, and I never cease to thank my God I did nothing of the sort.

I steered for the man, but he was not to be seen. I had never from the moment of marking him fall doubted that he had plumbed the bottom like a lead, weighted as he was with heavy sea boots, painted clothes, and a coil of rigging round his neck; but it was not to be admitted: the man was overboard, the ship was to be hove-to, and the poor fellow searched for and saved if so willed.

All in a breath, when we were within fifty strokes of the streaming red flag, the boat was capsized on an apex of pyramidal sea, that poled her sheerly bottom up at the instant that a blinding snow-squall came seething along, whitening the water into hissing salt, and thickening down the sea within a biscuit-toss. This I had been observing at the very instant the boat was flung keel up, and I recollect that I carried the memory of that scene of snow-squall under water, scarce realising but that I was in a dream, happening as it did too swiftly to give the mind time to catch a hold on reality.

When I came to the surface I was bubbling and spitting in a smother of froth hard against the side of the boat. There were two others. I got my senses quickly and sputtering the brine out of my mouth roared, 'We must right her. We can't hold on. We shall freeze off her dead men in five minutes. Together now.'

The three of us got a hold of the keel, and a sea helping us, we righted her, swaying down upon the little fabric with the strength of the madness that fights for life; but in righting she struck one of the men under, and he went down like a shot whilst I and the other got into the boat.

A large copper baler attached to a lanyard lay at the bottom. I plunged my hand down, groped for, and found it, and fell with fury to casting out the water, the other baling with his sou'-wester with all his might. The sea repeatedly broke over us, but we toiled with superhuman effort for our lives. I believe the filled boat would have sunk under our united weight but for a couple of empty breakers secured in the bows and aft. We laboured with rage, flashing the water out of the boat, and presently she was showing some little height of side. Then to slenderly provide against a second surprise of capsizal which would signify certain death to us, I lashed the two spare oars that were under the thwarts to the painter and chucked them overboard; this brought the boat head to sea, and we went on baling.

The spite of the squall had gone out of the wind, but it was snowing heavily, and strain my sight as I would I could see nothing of the ship. In a flaw in the thick feathery fall I caught sight of the red tongue of bunting; the buoy then was about a cable's length distant; it was closed out quickly and all became a tumbling, gyrating blackness; yet I had drawn some faint comfort from the sight of it. I guessed the ship could not be far off and that she must spy us the instant it cleared, which might happen at any minute. Meanwhile we baled for our lives.

My companion was an able seaman named Tom Friend. After he had been throwing out the water for some while, when the boat was perhaps still about a quarter full, I meanwhile baling with the same sort of fury that possesses a drowning man when he clutches and catches and beats in the air for life, he said to me:

'Mr. Selby, if we aren't rescued soon I'm a dead man.'

'No, no, keep up your spirits,' I shouted. 'They'll have us. Bale, man. We must keep afloat to be picked up.'

He went to work afresh with his sou'-wester, stooping and flinging; the wind smote the brine into smoke as we hove it over the side. We did not cease till but a little water was left in the bottom of the boat, and we sat and gasped and stared about us.

I know not how long this business had occupied. It seemed to me that the shadow of the night was already in the air. It may have been no more than the darkness of the thick black cloud out of which the snow was tumbling in immense flakes. All the time I was expecting to see the dye of the ship's fabric oozing out of the whiteness, plunging out of the smother into her clear shape within easy earshot of us; but that did not happen.

After we had been in this situation about two hours Friend put his two hands together, and began to waggle his body as he sat on the midship thwart fronting me; his face was blue. He made shocking grimaces of anguish and fell a-moaning most piteously, crying: 'Oh, the cold! Oh, the cold! Oh, Jesus, support me! I can't stand it!'

Though my own sufferings were inexpressible, I was still sensible of a good stock of vitality; but I cannot tell why I should have better resisted the cold than Friend, who was a lump of a man, broad-backed as a table, though a little stout. I was soaked to the skin, and coat and breeches were already frozen hard upon me; they cracked when I stirred as glass might. The thwarts were glazed and ice half an inch thick sheathed the timber.

Friend let his sodden and frozen sou'-wester lie; and he looked wild and dreadful with icicles pendent from his hair. In a sudden sharp leap of the boat to the summit of an ugly sea, that broke and curled white as milk on a line with our gunwales, he pitched towards me, slipped over the thwart he struck, and lay motionless at my feet. He groaned twice but spoke not.

What could I do? Chafe his hands? As well the thwart he had been flung over. I had not a drop of spirit for his throat, and myself felt dying. I could not but let him lie, and I believe he gave up the ghost very shortly after he had uttered his second groan.

CHAPTER XIII THE HULL

After Friend had lain at my feet for about an hour I stripped the oilskins off the body and put them on; they diminished the sense of deadly cold. I dragged the body into the bows, and after baling hard sat down, sure that my death was at hand, but seeking consolation in the thought that suffering ceases some while before you die of cold, and that death from this cause is as easy as drowning after the first agony.

It never ceased to snow until the night fell, and then when it was black the weather cleared—that is, I could see the flash of froth at a distance; but stare as I might I beheld nothing of the ship, no smudge nor deeper dye upon the darkness anywhere to indicate her presence. I stood up and looked and looked, waiting for the toss of the sea to strain my gaze; then, with an awful despair in my heart, and the full rushing weight of my doom upon my spirits, I threw myself down into the stern sheets to die.

That I should have lived through that night is the miracle of my life. There is no lack of suffering in the maritime records, but I vow that mine in those hours of darkness which I passed in that open boat is not to be topped, though it may be matched. Perhaps it was that all my organs were sound, whilst Friend perished from the shock of immersion, and from failure of some vital power—doubtless the heart.

Be this as it may, I lived through that night and through the icy darkness of the morning, till daylight came crawling in a sallow green over the sky, low, broken and flying. It might be that Friend's oilskins preserved my life by excluding the needle-like tide of frost-black wind from my flesh. When it was fairly daylight I stood up. My sight was clear; but I felt as though formed of stone. I could poise my figure to the wild leaping of the boat, but I could not lift my arms: each shoulder felt brittle as glass; it seemed to me that if either limb should be grasped and pulled, it must break short off.

The body of Friend lay ghastly in the bows. It was on its side, the cheek on the floor of the boat, and every time the little craft dived, the water in her boiled about the figure, which bristled with ice, and the head seemed nailed to the bottom boards by long spikes of crystal. I could not bear it, and made a step to cast it overboard, but, finding my arms helpless, stood still and looked round for the ship.

No wilder, drearier dawn ever broke over that cold, stormy, and desolate ocean. I guessed the wind about north; a strong wind, with a shriek as shrill as salt as it fled spray-charged past the ear, flaying as though it were a naked edge of sharp steel. A large squall was darkening the sea to leeward of the boat; when I was thrown up I saw the dim whiteness of ice in several places. I gazed slowly around in a broken way, for in every other breath there stood a wall of water betwixt me and the horizon.

All on a sudden when my eyes went astern I saw, not above a mile distant, a dark object: it reared and sank, came and went; sometimes froth leapt in a light of snow about it. I stared, scarcely daring to hope as yet that it was more than an illusion of the vision, a reappearing shape of green surge, a hard reforming moulding of brine, looking like—looking like——

And then with a short choking cry of transport I recognised it. It was the dismasted hull: that wreck of the 'Lady Emma' we had been in search of.

I watched her to make sure, dreading some cheat of delirious imagination—but it was the wreck; I marked her rise with the sea, a firm, defined, black shape against the root of the thick large squall that was blowing to leeward of her. A dim sheen of the gloomy day was in her wet side or sheathing as she soared, heeling not above a mile off and dead to leeward.

The sight gave life to my dead limbs, as it put spirit into my dying heart. I got the use of my arms and hands with a sudden frenzy of resolution, like to the effect of the panic terror that will compel a bedridden man to rise, though till thus started he has lain helpless as the mattress he springs from. I went into the bows, and getting hold of the body of Friend turned it over the gunwale. The corpse as I have said was that of a stout burly man, yet I found it light as a baby. How was that? Unless it was that the strength of half a dozen had come into me with the passion of life and hope the sight of the wreck had inspired.

I pulled in the pair of oars the boat had been riding to and took my chance of the broadside send of sea; the fierce sweep and sharp angle nearly flung me overboard, and thrice whilst I was clearing the oars which were heavy and difficult with ice, the boat was almost capsized. In a few minutes I got an oar over the stern and sculled the boat's head round for the wreck. She shot forward, and I sat square that my back might break any smaller sea which should foam tall and curl faster than the boat could rise. For the rest—for the peril of a great sea, for the swamping by seething waters uniting on either side the gunwale—I was in God's hands.

The wind and the sea swept me so swiftly onwards that the hull was close ahead all on a sudden, a large black mass, rolling heavily with violently quick recoveries; she lifted her channels foaming, and again and again a sea shot up her side in a height of white brine, which blew into the water on the other side of her in a cloud like steam. There was nothing for it but to drive for her stem on and take my chance. I tore off the oilskins for the freer use of my limbs, and when I was close to the wreck, having headed the boat fair for the main-chains, I sprang forward and seized the end of the painter; the boat's nose smote the hull as she was roaring from me. I got a turn with the painter round a chain plate; the boat swung in, but so swift were the motions of the hull that she was rolling down upon me even in that time, and, letting go the painter, I jumped in a single bound into the chains and was stumbling over the rail, spiked with ice, as the hulk swept her streaming side out again from the sea, with such a slant of deck that if I had not flung myself into a squatting posture and made the athwartship run of the hard frozen surface on my hams, I must have broken my neck or fled sheer overboard through the openings where the bulwarks had been smashed level.

I was crazy with hunger and thirst and cold, and could think of nothing but shelter and food and drink. I took a hurried look along the deck hoping to see smoke from the galley or cabin chimney, for I reckoned of course upon finding the three people the 'Planter' had searched for alive in this hull. I saw no signs of life. I cautiously crawled aft, and coming to the companion-way tried to open it; the doors were thickly glazed, whence I judged they had been kept closed for some time. I pulled out my clasp knife—all that I carried was in my pocket as it had been before the boat capsized—and after scraping and dislodging the ice in sheets like plate glass, I got one of the companion-doors open and descended, pulling the door to behind me.

After the long hours of exposure and the ceaseless crackling noises of warring waters, the shelter, the comparative warmth and stillness down here, were like the gift of a new life. It was dark, yet not so gloomy but that I could see. The daylight lay upon the snow on the skylight, and that large square of whiteness sifted a sort of dim illumination of its own into the dusk.

My first look was for those whom the boatswain Wall had told us the crew left behind them when they abandoned the hull. Nobody was here. An unlighted lamp swung violently over the table. I beheld a dull gleam of looking-glasses upon the ship's side, and thought in the glance I cast round that I could make out the equipment of a small, comfortable state cabin. I quickly spied a rack half circling the trunk of the mizzenmast; in it were some decanters; three were half full of red and yellow wine. I put the mouth of one to my lips and drank heartily of its contents, but whether it was claret or sherry I could not say; excessive thirst seemed to have robbed my palate of the power of tasting. I then went straight to the first cabin my eye rested upon, intending to go the rounds for the pantry; but this cabin proved to be the pantry, where, after a short hunt, I found cheese, biscuit, preserved meat, and jams. I fell to wolfishly, breaking off only to fetch another decanter of the wine from the cabin.

And now having eaten with a dangerous heartiness, and drank as much as would have brimmed two tumblers, I stepped into the cabin, refreshed and warm, a new man, almost my old self again, needing little more to perfectly comfort me than a shift of clothes, which might be obtained by seeking. But first I stood still, holding by the table to listen. I heard nothing but the sounds of the labouring of the hull. Had the captain and the two women been taken off the wreck? I should have believed so but for having found the companion-doors closed and glazed; ice could not have collected to the thickness I had found it had people been coming and going by the companion-way. And yet it is true they might have been taken off, and before going some one of the rescuing party had closed the companion-door with a kick or a thrust as he stepped on deck.

I saw no fire in the stove; the lamp was out; it did not seem as if there were human life in the hull. I went to a door on the starboard side, the next to or second door past the pantry, and entered a berth. I could scarcely see. The porthole was submerged every other moment and the sight blinded with a sudden plunge of foam-thick twilight. After gazing awhile I made out that this berth had been occupied by the captain and his wife. I observed a quantity of male and female apparel hanging from a row of pegs running along the bulk-head; also I made out two bunks, a table with certain navigating appliances upon it, a couple of chronometer cases on a shelf, and sundry other matters not worth cataloguing. I lifted a locker, and after groping came across some flannel garments and under-linen. If the captain were aboard I guessed that in any case he would give me leave to help myself, so, after feeling over the clothes upon the bulk-head, I shifted to the frozen flesh of me.

Scarcely was I warmly and dryly clothed, when so heavy a drowsiness came upon my eyelids that I could instantly have sunk upon the deck in a sound sleep. But first I was resolved to ascertain the condition of the hull; likewise whilst it was daylight to see if there were any signs of the 'Planter,' and if the weather gave me any promise of her. The idea of falling into a trance-like sleep which might run into hours, from which, for all I could tell as things stood, I should be awakened by finding myself strangling in a cabin full of water, and the hull already fathoms under, put such a fear and horror into my spirits as enabled me to thrust back into my brain the heavy, stupefying weight of slumber, that was making my eyes ache as though the balls of vision had been wrung and unseated. I shook my body as a dog does when fresh from the water, and beat my arms upon my breast with all my strength; then, with a wild yawn, strode into the stateroom and went up the steps.

The first thing I saw was the boat I had gained the wreck in: she was flinging and leaping upon the seas about a hundred fathoms off on the port quarter; being light and released she had blown away quickly. Every time a surge forked her on high the pouring blast smote and swirled her further yet to leeward. This would go on till she filled. I hardly took thought of her, abhorring her as I did as the theatre of that drama of anguish and hopelessness I had been forced to act in during the long black hours of the past night: and yet I very well understood that she had been bound to go adrift, as I had taken but a slippery turn with the painter round the chain plate at the instant when the hull brought her main chains crushing down upon me for that spring by which I had saved my life.

I crossed to the port bulwarks to hold on by: t'other side was full of ugly yawns and rents, a dangerous, ragged wreckage of bulwark through which down the ice-hard slant a man would shoot, with a sudden roll, to his death. The galley was standing: all the boats were gone: the wheel and binnacle remained, and the apparatus of the helm looked sound. The decks were littered with frozen gear. Nothing showed of the main and mizzen masts but a barbed block, scarce a foot high above the mast-coats. But the stump of the foremast rose to perhaps twelve feet. The pumps were frozen: the sounding rod lay close to, but I could do nothing with it. Yet, as an old hand, I could feel the life of a ship in my feet, and I was sure, by the hull's buoyant jumps, her cork-like recovery from the headlong dives, and the loneliness of her rolls that there was nothing in the water she had drained in so far to make me uneasy.

Cheered by this conviction, I pushed forwards, clawing along by the pins in the rail, by whatever else came to my hand, till I was abreast of the galley, whose port sliding-door lay half open, and going to it and looking in, there on the deck I saw lying on her back the body of a woman. I peered close, the light being weak. The body was warmly but plainly clothed; the colour of the face fresh as though she slept. I should not have guessed her dead by her looks: it was her lying there that made me know it. She seemed a woman of between forty and forty-five, flat of face, treble-chinned, and she showed as a person that had been fat and heavy in life.

The sight startled me: I had not thought to find anything dead. Had she been the wife of the captain? Where was he? And where the young lady that had sailed as passenger with them? Were they both lying frozen in other parts of the vessel? But there yet remained two or three cabins below to look into.

I came out of the galley shocked and low-spirited, and, still pushing forward, came to the forecastle and called down the hatch. I got no answer and descended. Here I found a number of hammocks, a few sea chests, and some odds and ends of seamen's apparel scattered about the deck. The forecastle lamp swung black under its grimy beam. I could scarcely see. Water—though no depth of it—seethed over the planks as the vessel pitched and rolled: this water I reckoned had tumbled down the forecastle hatch, and when I returned on deck I drew the slide of the scuttle over.

I went to the stump of foremast that was ringed with some pins, and holding on by one of them, looked round and round the sea, waiting for every lofty heave to dart my glances; but there was nothing in sight save ice, the peaks of bergs afar, coming and going past the rounds of the swell, and the rush of the surge flickering into foam. It was blowing half as strong again as it had been an hour before, and the seas were racing with a weight and spite of headlong yeast which must have drowned me out of hand in the jolly-boat. A low sky of thick black cloud coiling, revolving, like sooty pourings from countless factory chimneys, was sweeping southwards. I crawled aft for the shelter of the cabin—the wind was marrow-freezing; and scarce was I within the comparative warmth and stillness of the interior, when slumber again oppressed me; and nature now giving out I stretched myself upon a cushioned locker and was asleep in a minute.

When I awoke I started instantly into an upright posture, beholding a figure gazing at me; in some muddled fashion I seemed to realise my situation, whilst I imagined that the cabin was half full of people who had come to save me. Then, getting my wits fully, I made out that the person who stood close was a young woman. Her figure was inclined towards me, and so she stood despite the swaying of her with the motions of the deck: it was a posture of fear, incredulity, amazement, incommunicable in words.

It was too dim in that cabin to note more of her than that incomparable attitude of fright and astonishment.

It had been past noon when I lay down to sleep: the strong feeling of refreshment within me was assurance, true as the sun's evidence could have been, that I had slept through more than the two remaining hours of daylight. It was daylight now, consequently I understood that whatever might be the hour, I had been sleeping since noon on the previous day.

I stared at the girl, for a young girl I now perceived her to be, and exclaimed:

'Are you Miss Otway?'

'Oh!' she shrieked, 'have you come to save me?' and she dropped on her knees and grasped my hand. 'Save me!' she cried, 'I am alone here. I have been alone for days. I am in darkness. When did you come? Where are your companions? Why were you sleeping here? And take me on deck. Is your ship near? If the boat that brought you can live in this sea she can carry me on board your vessel.'

I cannot express the agony of heart in her voice. Her terror at seeing me had been changed into another passion by my naming her.

'Where's the captain?' said I, obliging her to rise, and seating her on the locker beside me.

'He is drowned,' she answered.

'When?'

'A long time ago. Seven or eight days ago. I have lost the day. I do not know how long I have been alone. Why don't we go on deck? Is the sea too rough for your boat to leave this wreck?'

'Why, poor young lady,' said I, trying to catch a fair view of her face; but it was too dim for that, and then again she was thickly furred about the neck, and her hat, that seemed of velvet without a brim, sat low. 'I would take you away from this rolling hulk at once if I could. Under God I may yet save you. I am as much shipwrecked as you are. But we needn't despair. This hull dances tightly; she has been washing about now for some days, and I should doubt by the feel of her jumps if there's two foot of water in her hold. Who's that dead woman in the galley?'

'The captain's wife,' she answered, staring at me.

'How came she to perish there?'

'She went with her husband to help him affix a lantern to the bowsprit. He slipped overboard with the light and was drowned. I waited for them here and went to find them, and saw Mrs. Burke lying on the deck. She had fallen and broken her leg. I was too weak to carry or drag her into this cabin and I pulled her into the galley for the shelter of it, and there she lay, and I could not help her,' she cried, clasping her hands with strange, piteous, involuntary motions of her head. 'I don't know whether she died of grief, or from the injury of her fall, or whether the cold killed her. It was black in the galley, and I could not see her. I often called her name, but she never answered me. Oh, what an awful time was that night! I stayed by her until long after I knew she was dead, and then came down here, and have remained in this place ever since—no, three times I have been on deck to look for a ship: it was always snowing—it has been enough to drive me mad,' said she, passing her hand with a wild gesture across her eyes.

'Mad indeed!' said I to myself, all thought of my own situation vanishing in the presence of the anguish of this poor gentle young woman: she had a sweet soft voice: I supposed she had been alone in this labouring hulk for hard upon a week. It was wonderful she should have kept her mind. Indeed it put a sort of craziness even into my seasoned head when I paused in contemplation of her, and realised how it might have been with me had I been alone in this straining, creaking, wallowing fabric with no one aboard beside myself but a dead woman, an atmosphere of stinging cold, nigh twenty hours of blackness every day.

'But you've not been starving all this while?' said I.

'When there was daylight,' she answered, 'I'd get some food and wine from yonder;' she pointed to the pantry. 'I took a little stock to my cabin. Where is your ship? Have you no companions? Take me on deck to see your boat and the vessel,' and she extended her hand.

I saw she had not understood me, and I told her how it had come to pass that I was on board the hulk with her. She listened in silence, saying nothing when I spoke of the men who had been lifted aboard the 'Planter' out of the 'Lady Emma's' long-boat, frozen to death, and nothing whilst I described what I myself had undergone in the jolly-boat. She seemed slow to understand; but at last, when I was done, after continuing to stare at me, for our faces were a sort of glimmer one to the other in that gloom, she gave a shriek, and crying 'There is no hope for me, then! there is no hope for me, then!' buried her face and shook and swayed in a passion of weeping.

CHAPTER XIV STILL ADRIFT

I could do nothing but let her cry; yet, knowing there is no better medicine for such misery and fear as hers than action and the sight of it, I got up and went to the pantry for materials to trim and light the lamp. I found oil and bundles of wick, but no matches. I returned and asked the poor weeping young lady to tell me if she knew where I might find a box of matches; she went to a cabin which I supposed was hers, one on the port side, almost aft. I was struck by her walk: not once did she stumble or pause, wild as the play of the plank was. In a few minutes she rejoined me with a box of wax lights, and, unhooking the lamp, I filled and trimmed it and hung it up, and it swung burning brightly.

Now I could see Miss Otway, and as much of her face as showed was remarkable for delicacy and refinement. She was very pale, her eyes light, whether blue or grey I could not then tell; her hair was of a soft, rather dark amber. She had perfectly even small white teeth, but her lips were pale and marked a want of red blood. She was of medium height, but of a shape not to be guessed at, heaped as her form was with clothes. What she wore was very rich and fine, and a little diamond sparkled in each ear. She seemed fragile, in delicate health, just the sort of girl to whom the doctors, despairing of their physic, would recommend the breezes of the world's oceans.

Her eyes were red with weeping, and when I glanced at her after hanging up the lamp I found her staring at me with looks of anxiety and expectation piteous with passion.