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By
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w"cLARK RUSSELL
AUTHOR of “THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR,” “THE LADY MAUD,”
“A SAILOR's SWEETHEART,” ETC., ETC.
WILLIAM. H. DAVIS, PUBLISHER,
28 ROSE STREET,
1891.
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Bessie White Kenyon
Fiſſiliili






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ſº • THE FROZEN PIRATE.
CHAPTER I.
THE STORM.
THE Laughing Mary was a light ship, as
sailors term a vessel that stands high upon the
water, having discharged her cargo at Callao,
from which port we were proceeding in ballast to
Cape Town, South Africa, there to call for orders.
Our run to within a few parallels of the latitude of
the Horn had been extremely pleasant; the pro-
verbial mildness of the Pacific Ocean was in the
mellow sweetness of the wind and in the gentle
undulations of the silver-laced swell; but scarce
had we passed the height of forty-nine degrees
when the weather grew sullen and dark, a heavy
bank of clouds of a livid hue rose in the north-
east, and the wind came and went in small guns,
the gusts venting themselves in dreary moans,
insomuch that our oldest hands confessed they
had never heard blasts more portentous.
The gale came on with some lightning and
several claps of thunder and heavy rain. Though
it was but two o'clock in the afternoon, the air
was so dusky that the men had to feel for the
ropes; and when the first of the tempest stormed
down upon us the appearance of the sea was
uncommonly terrible, being swept and mangled
into boiling froth in the north-east quarter, whilst
B



2 THE FROZEN PIRATE,
all about us and in the south-west it lay in a sort
of swollen huddle of shadows, glooming into the
darkness of the sky without offering the smallest
glimpse of the horizon.
In a few minutes the hurricane struck us. We
had bared the brig down to the close-reefed main-
topsail; yet, though we were dead before the
outfly, its first blow rent the fragment of sail as
if it were formed of smoke, and in an instant it
disappeared, flashing over the bows like a
scattering of torn paper, leaving nothing but the
bolt-ropes behind. The bursting of the topsail was
like the explosion of a large cannon. In a breath
the brig was smothered with froth torn up in huge
clouds, and hurled over and ahead of her in vast
quivering bodies that filled the wind with a dismal
twilight of their own, in which nothing was visi-
ble but their terrific speeding. Through these
slinging, soft, and singing masses of spume drove
the rain in horizontal steel-like lines, which
gleamed in the lightning stroke as though indeed
they were barbed weapons of bright metal, darted
by armies of invisible spirits raving out their war
cries as they chased us. -
The storm made a loud thunder in the sky, and
this tremendous utterance dominated without sub-
duing the many screaming, hissing, shrieking, and
... hooting noises raised in the rigging and about the
7 decks, and the wild, seething, weltering sound of
the sea, maddened by the gale and struggling in
its enormous passion under the first choking and
iron grip of the hurricane's hand.
I had used the ocean for above ten years, but

THE STORM. 3
*
never had I encountered anything suddener or
fiercer in the form of weather than this. Though
the wind blew from the tropics it was as cruel
in bitterness as frost. . Yet there was neither snow
nor hail, only rain that seemed to pass like a
knife through the head if you showed your face
to it for a second. It was necessary to bring the
brig to the wind before the sea rose. The helm
was put down, and without a rag of canvas on her
she came round; but when she brought the
hurricane fair abeam, I thought it was all over
with us. She lay down to it until her bulwarks
were under water, and the sheer-poles in the
rigging above the rail hidden. - -
In this posture she hung so long that Captain
Rosy, the master, bawled to me to tell the
carpenter to stand by to cut away the topmast
rigging. But the Laughing Mary, as the
brig was called, was a buoyant ship and lightly
sparred, and presently bringing the sea on the
bow, through our seizing a small tarpaulin in the
weather main shrouds, she erected her masts
afresh, like some sentient creature pricking
its ears for the affray, and with that showed
herself game and made indifferently good weather
of it. -
But though the first rage of the storm was
terrible enough, its fierceness did not come to its
height till about one o'clock in the middle watch.
Long before then the sea had grown mountainous,
and the dance of our eggshell of a brig upon it was
sickening and affrighting. The heads of the
Andean peaks of black water looked tall enough
B 2.
a A.” <-º-º:
.*
.
-
…nº
ſº
2-3%-65
| 543.2%-2%.
- THE FROZEN PIRAT
CHAPTER I.
THE STORM.
THE Laughing Mary was a light
sailors term a vessel that stands high
water, having discharged her cargo at
from which port we were proceeding in b
Cape Town, South Africa, there to call fo
Our run to within a few parallels of the la
the Horn had been extremely pleasant;
verbial mildness of the Pacific Ocean wa
mellow sweetness of the wind and in th
undulations of the silver-laced swell; bu
had we passed the height of forty-nine
when the weather grew sullen and dark, a
bank of clouds of a livid hue rose in the
east, and the wind came and went in smal
the gusts venting themselves in dreary
insomuch that our oldest hands confesse
had never heard blasts more portentous.
The gale came on with some lightnin
| several claps of thunder and heavy rain.
it was but two o'clock in the afternoon,
was so dusky that the men had to feel
ropes; and when the first of the tempest s
down upon us the appearance of the st
uncommonly terrible, being swept and m
into boiling froth in the north-east quarter,
B




























2 THE FROZEN PIRATE, º
all about us and in the south-west it lay in a sort
of swollen huddle of shadows, glooming into the
darkness of the sky without offering the smallest
glimpse of the horizon.
In a few minutes the hurricane struck us. We
had bared the brig down to the close-reefed main-
topsail; yet, though we were dead before the
outfly, its first blow rent the fragment of sail as
if it were formed of smoke, and in an instant it
disappeared, flashing over the bows like a
scattering of torn paper, leaving nothing but the
bolt-ropes behind. The bursting of the topsail was
like the explosion of a large cannon. In a breath
the brig was smothered with froth torn up in huge
clouds, and hurled over and ahead of her in vast
quivering bodies that filled the wind with a dismal
twilight of their own, in which nothing was visi-
ble but their terrific speeding. Through these
slinging, soft, and singing masses of spume drove
the rain in horizontal steel-like lines, which
gleamed in the lightning stroke as though indeed
they were barbed weapons of bright metal, darted
by armies of invisible spirits raving out their war
cries as they chased us.
The storm made a loud thunder in the sky, and
this tremendous utterance dominated without sub-
duing the many screaming, hissing, shrieking, and
... hooting noises raised in the rigging and about the
7 decks, and the wild, seething, weltering sound of
the sea, maddened by the gale and struggling in
its enormous passion under the first choking and
iron grip of the hurricane's hand.
I had used the ocean for above ten years, but
THE STORM.
-
never had I encountered anything su
fiercer in the form of weather than this.
the wind blew from the tropics it was
in bitterness as frost. . Yet there was nei
We nor hail, only rain that seemed to pa
struck us. ' knife through the head if you showed
ose-reeled º to it for a second. It was necessary toº
ºad before,” brig to the wind before the sea rose. T
ment of . º was put down, and without a rag of canv
insta
she came round; but when she bro
hurricane fair abeam, I thought it was
with us. She lay down to it until her
topsail wº were under water, and the sheer-poles
º In a * rigging above the rail hidden.
i torn up." hº In this posture she hung so long that
:ad of her in was Rosy, the master, bawled to me to
...ith a dº". carpenter to stand by to cut away the
Wiſ.) hing W* WIS! rigging. But the Laughing Mary,
noº... these bri lled buoyant ship and
Throug ſe rig was called, was a puoyant snip and
of spumº º: sparred, and presently bringing the sea
... ºnes, whic d bow, through our seizing a small tarpauli
º 1 º weather main shrouds, she erected he
as "...al, date afresh, like some sentient creature
igh their waſ its ears for the affray, and with that
W10 nd º game and made indifferently good
- sky,” 0. it.
\er 10 º sub- But though the first rage of the stor
*g and terrible enough, its fierceness did not com
ng, " a about the height till about one o'clock in the middle
Long before then the sea had grown mount.
and the dance of our eggshell of a brig upon
sickening and affrighting. The heads (
Andean peaks of black water looked tall e











B 2
4. THE FROzEN PIRATE,
to brush the lowering soot of the heavens with
the blue and yellow phosphoric fires which
sparkled ghastly amid the bursting froth. Bodies
of foam flew like the flashings of pale sheet-
lightning through our rigging and over us, and a
dreadful roaring of mighty surges in mad career,
and battling as they ran, rose out of the sea to
deepen yet the thunderous bellowing of the
hurricane on high.
No man could show himself on deck and
preserve his life. Between the rails it was waist
high, and this water, converted by the motions of
the brig into a wild torrent, had its volume
perpetually maintained by ton-loads of sea falling
in dull and pounding crashes over the bows on to
the forecastle. There was nothing to be done
but secure the helm and await the issue below, for,
if we were to be drowned, it would make a more
easy foundering to go down dry and warm in the
cabin, than to perish half-frozen and already
nearly strangled by the bitter cold and flooded
tempest on deck. -
There was Captain Rosy; there was myself, by
name Paul Rodney, mate of the brig; and there
were the remaining seven of a crew, including the
carpenter. We sat in the cabin, one of us from
time to time clawing his way up the ladder to peer
through the companion, and we looked at one
another with the melancholy of malefactors
waiting to be called from their cells for the last
jaunt to Tyburn.
“May God have mercy upon us !” cries the
carpenter. “There must be an earthquake inside


THE Storm.
"IRATE,
of the heavens wº -
sphoric fires whº
. froth. Bois
hings of pale sh:
ig and over tº and
surges in mad caſt:
seºut of the sº."
is bellowing ºf th:
imself qn. deck º
, the railsitwº W3.
- the motiº"
ted by its volſº
rent, ha
on-loads of sea m iſ
over tº:
s nothing below.ſº
at the issue Oſt
i. would ke a. ".
1 dry and aſº.
º nd ::
tter C0
by
, there was º
y brig; 4.
f *..." ãº
*... ºne of us ſ
º adder tº º
up e ooked at º
hd º mº
º cells for thé
is tº
|m crić
US #
upon h takeº
an ear! 14
this storm. Something more than wind
to the making of these seas. Hear th
maught less than a forty-foot chuck-up
ended in that souse, mates.”
“A man can die but once,” says Capta
“and he'll not perish the quicker for lo
his end with a stout heart; ” and with tha
his hand into the locker on which he h
sitting and pulled out a jar of whisky,
after putting his lips to it and keepin,
glued there whilst you could have counted
he handed to me, and so it went round,
back to him empty.
I often have the sight of that cabin
mind's eye; and it was not long afterwar
it would visit me as such a vision of comfort,
with a grateful heart have accepted it with
darker conditions of danger, had it been p
to exchange my situation for it. A lanter
from a beam, and swung violently to the rolli
pitching of the brig. The alternations of it
put twenty different meanings, one after a
into the settled dismal and rueful expressions
faces of my companions. We were clad in
clothes, and the steam rose from the damp
coats, and trousers like vapour from wet
The drink mottled some of our faces, bl
spirituous tincture only imparted a quality of
to the melancholy of our visages, as i
fallig
mournfulness were not wholly sincere, when
knows, our hearts were taken up with cou
the minutes when we should find ours
bursting for want of breath under water,





6 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
Thus it continued till daybreak, all which time
we strove to encourage one another as best we
could, sometimes with words, sometimes, with
putting the bottle about. It was impossible for
any of us at any moment to show more than 9"
noses above the companion; and even at that Yo"
needed the utmost caution, for the decks bein;
full of water, it was necessary to await the lurch
of the vessel before moving the slide or cover to
the companion, else you stood to drown the
cabin. -
Being exceedingly anxious, for the brig lay
unwatched, I looked forth on one occasion long”
than the others chose to venture, and beheld tº
most extravagant scene of raging commotiº"
could enter the brain of man to imagine. The night
was as black as the bottom of a well; but the Pº
digious swelling and flinging of white waters hº
faintness upon the air that was in its way, a dim
light, by which it was just possible to distinguish
the reeling masts to the height of the tops, and to
observe the figure of the brig springing black and
trembling out of the head of a surge that had
broken over and smothered her as in a caulº";
and to note the shapes of the nearer liq."
acclivities as they bore down upon our weal"
bow, catching the brig fair under the bluff, and sº
sloping her that she seemed to stand end on; *.
so heeling her that the sea would wash to the
height of the main hatch. Indeed, had she hº
loaded, and therefore deep, she could not have live
an hour in that hollow and frightful oceani. ut
baving nothing in her but ballast she was like a
i
IRATE,
The Storm. 7
reak, all which tº:
another as bestº
rds, sometimes wº
tºwas impossible".
show more that *
and even at that
for the decks b:
try to await the lº
the slide of tº
stood to drown
S
of ". in 3 tº
º afeſ º -
of upon llſ * -
º ſº
º stand º º #
wº d sht º |
". ſº
º º
allast
bladder, and swung up the surges and blew away
to leeward like an empty cask.
When the dawn broke something of its
midnight fury went out of the gale. The
carpenter made shift to sound the well, and to our
great satisfaction found but little water, only as
much as we had a right to suppose she would take
in above. But it was impossible to stand at the
pumps, so we returned to the cabin and brewed
some cold punch and did what we could to keep
our spirits hearty. By noon the wind had
weakened yet, but the sea still ran very heavily,
and the sky was uncommonly thick with piles of
dusky, yellowish, hurrying clouds; and though
we could fairly reckon upon our position, the
atmosphere was so nipping it was difficult to
persuade ourselves that Cape Horn was not close
aboard.
We could now work the pumps, and a short
spell freed the brig. We got up a new main-
topsail and bent it, and, setting the reefed foresail,
put the vessel before the wind, and away she ran,
chased by the swollen seas. Thus we continued
till by dead reckoning we calculated that we
were about thirty leagues south of the parallel of
the Horn, and in longitude eighty-seven degrees
west. We then boarded our larboard tacks and
brought the brig as close to the wind as it was
proper to lay her for a progress that should not
be wholly leeway; but four hours after we had
handled the braces the gale, that had not veered
two points since it first came on to blow, stormed
up again into its first fury; and the morning of
|
º


































8 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
the 1st of July, anno 1801, found the Laughing
Mary passionately labouring in the midst of an
enraged Cape Horn sea, her jibboom and ſº
top-gallant mast gone, her ballast shifted, $9 that
her posture even in a calm would have exhibited
her with her starboard channels under, and hº
decks swept by enormous surges, which, fetching
her larboard bilge dreadful blows, thundered "
mighty green masses over her.
* CHAPTER II.
THE ICEBERG.
THE loss of the spars I have named was no great
matter, nor were we to be intimidated by such
weather as was to be expected off Cape Ho".
For what sailor entering this icy and tempestuº
tract of waters but knows that here he mº"
expect to find Nature in her most violent moods,
crueller and more unreckonable than a ſº
woman, who one moment looks with a si"
sinister sullenness upon you, and the next 15
shrieking with devilish laughter as she makes *
if to spring upon you? • • L:
But there was an inveteracy in the gale which
had driven us down to this part that bore heavily
upon our spirits. It was impossible to trim the
ballast. We dared not veer so as to bring *
ship on the other tack. And the slope of the
decks, added to the fierce wild motions of the
fabric, made our situation as unendurable as that
of one who should be confined in a cask and *
rolling downhill. It was impossible to light ° fire,
--4--
| THE ICEBERG.
ozen Pirate,
1801, found the lº
ouring in the midstº
sea, her jibboom and
her ballast shifted º
calm would have exhiº
nder, and
d channels unſ h, ſº
ous surges, which
eadful blows, * |
5ver her.
PTER II.
ICEBERG.
I have
|
by S||
...timidated -
to be intimiº e Hiſ
n her mº |
reckonablº ! ;:
ment looks wif mºtº
O you, and º
ºfter as *
º
veteracy" º
this part that bo trim
ºpossible "...
º {0 briſ;
named was ºl
and we could not therefore dress our
obtain a warm drink. The cold was
language severe. The rigging was gla
ice, and great pendants of the silvery
of crystal hung from the yards, bows
catheads, whilst the sails were frozer
hardness of granite, and lay like sheets
rolled up in gaskets of steel. We had n
of drying our clothes, nor were we able so
as by exercise we might keep ourselve
Never once did the sun shine to give
encouragement of his glorious beam. Hº
hour found us amid the same distracting
the tall olive-coloured seas hurling out th
in foam as they roared towards us, in ra
dissolving cliffs; the wind screaming and w
through our grey and frozen rigging; th
washing in floods about our decks, with th
of the running gear snaking about in the
and the live stock lying drowned and stiff
coops and pen near the caboose.
With helm lashed and yards pointed
wind thus we lay, thus we drifted, s
trending with the send of each giant surge
and deeper into the icy regions of the sout
helpless, foreboding, disconsolate.
It was the night of the fourth day of the
The crew were forward in the forecastle,
knew not if any man was on deck saving
In truth, there was no place in which a
could be kept, if it were not in the com
hatch. Such was the violence with whi.
seas broke over the brig that it was at the



2 THE FROZEN PIRATE. **
all about us and in the south-west it lay in a sort
of swollen huddle of shadows, glooming into the
darkness of the sky without offering the smallest
glimpse of the horizon.
In a few minutes the hurricane struck us. We
had bared the brig down to the close-reefed main-
topsail; yet, though we were dead before the
outfly, its first blow rent the fragment of sail as
if it were formed of smoke, and in an instant it
disappeared, flashing over the bows like a
scattering of torn paper, leaving nothing but the
bolt-ropes behind. The bursting of the topsail was
like the explosion of a large cannon. In a breath
the brig was smothered with froth torn up in huge
clouds, and hurled over and ahead of her in vast
quivering bodies that filled the wind with a dismal
twilight of their own, in which nothing was visi-
ble but their terrific speeding. Through these
slinging, soft, and singing masses of spume drove
the rain in horizontal steel-like lines, which
gleamed in the lightning stroke as though indeed
they were barbed weapons of bright metal, darted
by armies of invisible spirits raving out their war
cries as they chased us.
The storm made a loud thunder in the sky, and
this tremendous utterance dominated without sub-
duing the many screaming, hissing, shrieking, and
... hooting noises raised in the rigging and about the
Tº decks, and the wild, seething, weltering sound of
the sea, maddened by the gale and struggling in
its enormous passion under the first choking and
iron grip of the hurricane's hand.
I had used the ocean for above ten years, but
THE Storm.
it lay in a sºrt
oming into the
g the smallest
struck us: We
se-reefed ma"
ead before. the
ment of sail as
ºn an instant \t
, bows like 3
nothing * ".
S
º º breath
AOIl-
S visi
*: these
T TOuš, drove
as of SP which
never had I encountered anything suc
fiercer in the form of weather than this.
the wind blew from the tropics it was
in bitterness as frost. . Yet there was neit
nor hail, only rain that seemed to pas
knife through the head if you showed y
to it for a second. It was necessary tomb
brig to the wind before the sea rose. T
was put down, and without a rag of canva
she came round; but when she brou
hurricane fair abeam, I thought it was
with us. She lay down to it until her b
were under water, and the sheer-poles
rigging above the rail hidden.
In this posture she hung so long that
Rosy, the master, bawled to me to t
carpenter to stand by to cut away the t
rigging. But the Zaughing Mary,
brig was called, was a buoyant ship and
sparred, and presently bringing the sea
bow, through our seizing a small tarpaulin
weather main shrouds, she erected her
afresh, like some sentient creature
its ears for the affray, and with that
herself game and made indifferently good w
of it.
But though the first rage of the stol
terrible enough, its fierceness did not com
height till about one o'clock in the middle
Long before then the sea had grown mount
and the dance of our eggshell of a brig upo
sickening and affrighting. The heads
Andean peaks of black water looked tall























B 2
4. THE FROzEN PIRATE,
to brush the lowering soot of the heavens with
the blue and yellow phosphoric fires which
sparkled ghastly amid the bursting froth. Bodies
of foam flew like the flashings of pale sheet-
lightning through our rigging and over us, and a
dreadful roaring of mighty surges in mad career,
and battling as they ran, rose out of the sea 19
deepen yet the thunderous bellowing of the
hurricane on high.
No man could show himself on deck and
preserve his life. Between the rails it was was
high, and this water, converted by the motions of
the brig into a wild torrent, had its volume
perpetually maintained by ton-loads of sea falling
in dull and pounding crashes over the bows on 9
the forecastle. There was nothing to be dºn”
but secure the helm and await the issue below, for
if we were to be drowned, it would make a moº
easy foundering to go down dry and warm in tº
cabin, than to perish half-frozen and already
nearly strangled by the bitter cold and flooded
tempest on deck. -
There was Captain Rosy; there was myself by
name Paul Rodney, mate of the brig; and thº
were the remaining seven of a crew, including the
carpenter. We sat in the cabin, one of us from
time to time clawing his way up the ladder to Peº
through the companion, and we looked at 90°
another with the melancholy of malefactº
waiting to be called from their cells for the las'
jaunt to Tyburn. -
“May God have mercy upon us!” cries the
carpenter. “There must be an earthquake inside
THE STORM.
N Pirate,
ot of the heavenswº
hosphoric fires will
bursting froth. Bojić
lashings of pale sº
ging and over. and
ty surges in mad Caſt:
rose out of the sº
rous bellowing of tº
himself on. deck :
en the rails it was *
erted by the motº
its you!';
orrent, had Î fill
sea fallſ;
ads of 0|| tſ
this storm. Something more than wit
to the making of these seas. Hear
naught less than a forty-foot chuck-u
ended in that souse, mates.”
“A man can die but once,” says Cap
“and he'll not perish the quicker for
his end with a stout heart; ” and with t
his hand into the locker on which he
sitting and pulled out a jar of whisk
after putting his lips to it and keep
glued there whilst you could have counte
he handed to me, and so it went round
back to him empty.
I often have the sight of that cab
mind's eye; and it was not long afterw
it would visit me as such a vision of comfor
with a grateful heart have accepted it wi
darker conditions of danger, had it been
to exchange my situation for it. A lant
from a beam, and swung violently to the ro
pitching of the brig. The alternations o
put twenty different meanings, one after
into the settled dismal and rueful expressiº
faces of my companions. We were clad
clothes, and the steam rose from the dar
coats and trousers like vapour from we
The drink mottled some of our faces,
spirituous tincture only imparted a quality
to the melancholy of our visages, a
mournfulness were not wholly sincere, wi
knows, our hearts were taken up with
the minutes when we should find
bursting for want of breath under water.



6 THE FROzEN PIRATE. |
Thus it continued till daybreak, all which time
we strove to encourage one another as best Wº
could, sometimes with words, sometimes, with
putting the bottle about. It was impossible for
any of us at any moment to show more than our
noses above the companion; and even at that Yoº
needed the utmost caution, for the decks being
full of water, it was necessary to await the lurch
of the vessel before moving the slide or cover to
the companion, else you stood to drown the
cabin. -
Being exceedingly anxious, for the brig lay
unwatched, I looked forth on one occasion long”
than the others chose to venture, and beheld tº
most extravagant scene of raging commotion."
could enter the brain of man to imagine. The night
was as black as the bottom of a well; but the Pr"
digious swelling and flinging of white waters hoº
faintness upon the air that was in its way a diº
light, by which it was just possible to distinguish
the reeling masts to the height of the tops, and *
observe the figure of the brig springing black and
trembling out of the head of a surge that had
broken over and smothered her as in a cauldron,
and to note the shapes of the nearer liq.”
acclivities as they bore down upon our weather
bow, catching the brig fair under the bluff, and *;
sloping her that she seemed to stand end on *.
so heeling her that the sea would wash to the
height of the main hatch. Indeed, had she been
loaded, and therefore deep, she could not have live
an hour in that hollow and frightful ocean. ut
having nothing in her but ballast she was like a
6 The Frozen PIRATE,
bladder, and swung up the surges and blew away
to ºward like an empty cask.
When the dawn broke something of its
midnight fury Yººt out of the gale. The
*Penter made shift to sound the well, and to our
Thus it continued till daybreak, all which tº
we strove to encourage one another as bºº.
could, sometimes with words, sometimes ºf
putting the bottle about. It was impossil
any of us at any moment to show more than 7
noses above the companion; and even at that.
needed the utmost caution, for the decks #|
full of water, it was necessary to await the lº
of the vessel before moving the slide or coº
the companion, else you stood to drown tº
cabin. - |g|
Being exceedingly anxious, for the big"
unwatched, I looked forth on one occasionſ;
than the others chose to venture, and belt:
most extravagant scene of raging º
could enter the brain of man to imagine. Tº º
was as black as the bottom of a well; but º
digious swelling and flinging of white *: ſº
faintness upon the air that was, in 1tS # §
light, by which it was just possible to º
the reeling masts to the height of the º Aſ
observe the figure of the brig spring"; that
trembling out of the head of a sº
- |||ſ||
- d her as in a Call."
broken over and smothere arer ||
and to note the º of .. Wºlff
acclivities as they bore down º bluff, and
ºn above. But it was impossible to stand at the
º * We returned to the cabin and brewed
.." °9'd punch and did what we could to keep
.." hearty. By noon the wind had
and i. º: but the sea still ran very heavily,
dusk e sky was uncommonly thick with piles of
Wé y, ºh, hurrying clouds; and though
... fairly reckon upon our position, the
º Čre Was So miPping it was difficult to
aboard. ° Ourselves that Cape Horn was not close
We could now Work the pumps, an
, and
º freed the brig. We º . al ºw º
Psail and bent it, and, setting the reefed foresail,
º . the swºllen seas. Thus wº continued
y dead .*ckoning we calculated that we
r ing the brig fair under t - b
º º º º to stand º: º .*.* brig as close to the wind as it was
º her that the sea would." he tº é wholl º her for a progress that should not
io. .*. main hatch. Indeed ha eſt ºniº, . but four hours after we had
height 0 she could noth" | * Praces the gale, that had not veered
oaded, and therefore deep, ul Océal, u - -
P*gain into its first fury; and the morning of
ightf -
in that hollow and fºg |:
º in her but ballast she wº".
* Horn, and in longitude eigh
ghty-seven degrees
West. We then boarded our larboard º
tw - - -
* Points since it first 9ame on to blow, stormed
---,
* :-----
The Storm. 7
|
|























---
my. ***Av I
Hºº:
miſſillulºlº RººzººlºſſIIITITIEE
º E. º - - | º M- -E
|
E
E
E
|-
H
fillmºtº ºiſm | IIII
----
l llllllll l li Illi - -- l Li. - º
ºr- -
EIIIllilullûllilillilillllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllluminiulumnuniulu


—~~~~ - 4
ſº
By
| a rºl
W." CLARK RUSSELL,
* WRECK of Tur º £g
THE
SAILOR's *WhatHEART,” L
*TC., ETC,
ADy MAUD,”
-
º
º






* * * * : *-*.*.*
:
:
:


- 2. º
28,
%a,
| A. - - -(25 -
- º,
| THE F
THE *aughine
Sailors term a Vess
.* having ji.
from which


2 THE FROZEN PIRATE. --
all about us and in the south-west it lay in a sort
of swollen huddle of shadows, glooming into the
darkness of the sky without offering the smallest
glimpse of the horizon.
In a few minutes the hurricane struck us. We
had bared the brig down to the close-reefed main-
topsail; yet, though we were dead before the
outfly, its first blow rent the fragment of sail as
if it were formed of smoke, and in an instant it
disappeared, flashing over the bows like a
scattering of torn paper, leaving nothing but the
bolt-ropes behind. The bursting of the topsail was
like the explosion of a large cannon. In a breath
the brig was smothered with froth torn up in huge
clouds, and hurled over and ahead of her in vast
quivering bodies that filled the wind with a dismal
twilight of their own, in which nothing was visi-
ble but their terrific speeding. Through these
slinging, soft, and singing masses of spume drove
the rain in horizontal steel-like lines, which
gleamed in the lightning stroke as though indeed
they were barbed weapons of bright metal, darted Y.
by armies of invisible spirits raving out their war
cries as they chased us.
The storm made a loud thunder in the sky, and
this tremendous utterance dominated without sub-
duing the many screaming, hissing, shrieking, and
... hooting noises raised in the rigging and about the
decks, and the wild, seething, weltering sound of
the sea, maddened by the gale and struggling in r
its enormous passion under the first choking and
iron grip of the hurricane's hand.
I had used the ocean for above ten years, but
ſ
/
- }
º - -

THE FROZEN PIRATE,
it us and in the south-west it lay in a sort
len huddle of shadows, glooming into the
s of the sky without offering the smallest
of the horizon.
few minutes the hurricane struck us. We
ed the brig down to the close-reefed main-
yet, though we were dead before the
ts first blow rent the fragment of sail as
re formed of smoke, and in an instant it
ared, flashing over the bows like a
ng of torn paper, leaving nothing but the
es behind. The bursting of the topsail was
explosion of a large cannon. In a breath
was smothered with froth torn up in huge
and hurled over and ahead of her in vast
g bodies that filled the wind with a dismal
of their own, in which nothing was visi.
their terrific speeding. Through these
, soft, and singing masses of spume drove
n in horizontal steel-like lines, which
d in the lightning stroke as though indeed
ºre barbed weapons of bright metal, darted
ies of invisible spirits raving out their war
they chased us.
storm made a loud thunder in the sky, and
mendous utterance dominated without sub-
he many screaming, hissing, shrieking, and
noises raised in the rigging and about the
and the wild, seething, weltering sound of
A, maddened by the gale and struggling in
ºrmous passion under the first choking and
ip of the hurricane's hand.
d used the ocean for above ten years, but
© cam
- € ro -
Hrrican und
- e fai 2.
With us, *ºr abear

4. THE FROZEN PIRATE,
to brush the lowering soot of the heavens with
the blue and yellow phosphoric fires which
sparkled ghastly amid the bursting froth. Bodies
of foam flew like the flashings of pale sheet-
lightning through our rigging and over us, and a
dreadful roaring of mighty surges in mad career,
and battling as they ran, rose out of the sea to
deepen yet the thunderous bellowing of the
hurricane on high.
No man could show himself on deck and
preserve his life. Between the rails it was waist
high, and this water, converted by the motions of
the brig into a wild torrent, had its volume
perpetually maintained by ton-loads of sea falling
in dull and pounding crashes over the bows on to
the forecastle. There was nothing to be done
but secure the helm and await the issue below, for,
if we were to be drowned, it would make a more
easy foundering to go down dry and warm in the
cabin, than to perish half-frozen and already
nearly strangled by the bitter cold and flooded
tempest on deck. -
There was Captain Rosy; there was myself, by
name Paul Rodney, mate of the brig; and there
were the remaining seven of a crew, including the
carpenter. We sat in the cabin, one of us from
time to time clawing his way up the ladder to peer
through the companion, and we looked at one
another with the , melancholy of malefactors
waiting to be called from their cells for the last
jaunt to Tyburn.
“May God have mercy upon us !” cries the
carpenter. “There must be an earthquake inside

Pirate,
t of the heavens ºft
osphoric fires whº
ursting froth, Bºis
shings of pale shº!
ng and over us, and
surges in mad cart:
2Se out of the sea ſ.
º- |
-||
"ce,” says Ca tain -
he quicker for º:Osy,
g at
j a
is bellowing of . sº put
Out a - €en º
imself on deck aſ Ja * Whisky, which, º
the rails it was was keeping them - º
ed by the motions iſ SO it we º º twent º
ent, had its volum: *Und, comin º
-loads of sea falli g -
"...º.º. *''', ºf that cabin *
nothing to be diſt || not long afterwards º :
t the issue below, iſ Vision of co ort, I at -
would make a moſt € acC pted it with º uld
dry and warm in tº | . d it been enfold
'frozen and º wung . t. A º º
er cold and flood: º the rºlling ...; º
I nati º an º
there was º S, *"... Its ligh -
the brig; and thºſt ful s anothe
crew, including tº C Wer isions in i. . :
bin, one of us iſ °se from e d in War º
p the ladder top: Vapou mp |
we looked at 01: of r f P In our -
\ly of maleſatº . -
ir cells for the hº |
on us!" cries tº
n earthquakeiº























**"...
6 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
Thus it continued till daybreak, all which time
we strove to encourage one another as best we
could, sometimes with words, sometimes with
putting the bottle about. It was impossible for
any of us at any moment to show more than our
noses above the companion; and even at that you
needed the utmost caution, for the decks being
full of water, it was necessary to await the lurch
of the vessel before moving the slide or cover to
the companion, else you stood to drown the
cabin.
Being exceedingly anxious, for the brig lay
unwatched, I looked forth on one occasion longer
than the others chose to venture, and beheld the
most extravagant scene of raging commotion it
could enter the brain of man to imagine. The night
was as black as the bottom of a well; but the pro-
digious swelling and flinging of white waters hove a
faintness upon the air that was in its way a dim
light, by which it was just possible to distinguish
the reeling masts to the height of the tops, and to
observe the figure of the brig springing black and
trembling out of the head of a surge that had
broken over and smothered her as in a cauldron,
and to note the shapes of the nearer liquid
acclivities as they bore down upon our weather
bow, catching the brig fair under the bluff, and so
sloping her that she seemed to stand end on; and
so heeling her that the sea would wash to the
height of the main hatch. Indeed, had she been
loaded, and therefore deep, she could not have lived
an hour in that hollow and frightful ocean;... but
having nothing in her but ballast she was like a
| F.
'IRATE, The Storm. 7
bladder, and swung up the surges and blew away
to leeward like an empty cask.
When the dawn broke something of its
midnight fury went out of the gale. The
carpenter made shift to sound the well, and to our
great satisfaction found but little water, only as
much as we had a right to suppose she would take
in above. But it was impossible to stand at the
pumps, so we returned to the cabin and brewed
some cold punch and did what we could to keep
our spirits hearty. By noon the wind had
weakened yet, but the sea still ran very heavily,
reak, all which tº:
another as hºtº
ds, sometime º
was impossik"
show more than"
and even at tº
or the decksº
to await the |
he slide of Cºº
ood to drowſ
in
for º and the sky was uncommonly thick with piles of
One º dusky, yellowish, hurrying clouds; and though
ure, and mº we could fairly reckon upon our position, the
atmosphere was so nipping it was difficult to
persuade ourselves that Cape Horn was not close
aboard.
We could now work the pumps, and a short
spell freed the brig. We got up a new main-
topsail and bent it, and, setting the reefed foresail,
put the vessel before the wind, and away she ran,
chased by the swollen seas. Thus we continued
spring g th | - -
["a sº till by dead reckoning we calculated that we
ºr as in * * º were about thirty leagues south of the parallel of
the meaſeſ tº the Horn, and in longitude eighty-seven degrees
upon " º, west. We then boarded our larboard tacks and
er the blº brought the brig as close to the wind as it was
, stand end º proper to lay her for a progress that should not
ould wash be wholly leeway; but four hours after we had
leed had sº º handled the braces the gale, that had not veered
ould mºtº two points since it first came on to blow, stormed
ghtſ º up again into its first fury; and the morning of
ast she W *.…
º
:
ºº
































8 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
the 1st of July, anno 1801, found the Laughing
Mary passionately labouring in the midst of an
enraged Cape Horn sea, her jibboom and fore
top-gallant mast gone, her ballast shifted, so that
her posture even in a calm would have exhibited
her with her starboard channels under, and her
decks swept by enormous surges, which, fetching
her larboard bilge dreadful blows, thundered in
mighty green masses over her. -
* CHAPTER II. t
THE ICEBERG.
THE loss of the spars I have named was no great
matter, nor were we to be intimidated by such
weather as was to be expected off Cape Horn.
For what sailor entering this icy and tempestuous
tract of waters but knows that here he must
expect to find Nature in her most violent moods,
crueller and more unreckonable than a mad
woman, who one moment looks with a silent
sinister sullenness upon you, and the next is
shrieking with devilish laughter as she makes as
if to spring upon you? . .
But there was an inveteracy in the gale which
had driven us down to this part that bore heavily
upon our spirits. It was impossible to trim the
ballast. We dared not veer so as to bring the
ship on the other tack. And the slope of the
decks, added to the fierce wild motions of the
fabric, made our situation as unendurable as that
of one who should be confined in a cask and sent
rolling downhill. It was impossible to light a fire,
| THE ICEBERG.
N PIRATE,
1, found the Lagº
ing in the midst º
her jibboom and *
ballast shifted sº
m would have ediº
annels under tº
surges, which ſet,
ul blows, thundeſtſ;
her,
R II.
BERG.
We named was!" º
e intimidated by:
lected off
is icy an
S * here he º
r most violent º
onable º º
ooks Wiſ" . .
º aſ] he nºt
y
hter as *
º
Cape Hſ! -
65||75||
demº.
he makö’
and we could not therefore dress our fo
obtain a warm drink. The cold was b
language severe. The rigging was glazed
ice, and great pendants of the silvery bril
of crystal hung from the yards, bowsprit
catheads, whilst the sails were frozen t
hardness of granite, and lay like sheets o
rolled up in gaskets of steel. We had no r
of drying our clothes, nor were we able so to
as by exercise we might keep ourselves v
Never once did the sun shine to give us
encouragement of his glorious beam. Hour
hour found us amid the same distracting sc
the tall olive-coloured seas hurling out their
in foam as they roared towards us, in rang
dissolving cliffs; the wind screaming and whis
through our grey and frozen rigging; the v
washing in floods about our decks, with the
of the running gear snaking about in the tor
and the live stock lying drowned and stiff in
coops and pen near the caboose.
With helm lashed and yards pointed to
wind thus we lay, thus we drifted, stea
trending with the send of each giant surge fur
and deeper into the icy regions of the south-w
helpless, foreboding, disconsolate.
It was the night of the fourth day of the mo
The crew were forward in the forecastle, ar
knew not if any man was on deck saving mys
In truth, there was no place in which a wa
could be kept, if it were not in the compar
hatch. Such was the violence with which
seas broke over the brig that it was at the risk
|



I O THE FROZEN PIRATE.
his life a man crawled the distance betwixt the
forecastle and the quarter-deck. It had been as
thick as mud all day, and now upon this flying
gloom of haze, sleet, and spray had descended
the blackness of the night.
I stood in the companion as in a sentry-box,
with my eyes just above the cover. Nothing was
to be seen but sheets of ghostly white water
Sweeping up the blackness on the vessel's lee, or
breaking and boiling to windward. It was sheer
blind chaos to the sight, and you might have
supposed that the brig was in the midst of some
enormous vaporous turmoil, so illusive and
indefinable were the shadows of the storm:
formented night—one block of blackness melting
into another, with sometimes an extraordinary
faintness of light speeding along the dark sky like
to the dim reflection of a lanthorn flinging its
radiance from afar, which no doubt must have
been the reflection of some particular bright and
extensive bed of foam upon a sooty belly on high,
hanging lower than the other clouds. I say, you
might have thought yourself in the midst of some
hellish conflict of vapour but for the substantial
thunder of the surges upon the vessel and the
shriek of the slung masses of water flying like
cannon balls between the masts.
After a long and eager look round into the
obscurity, semi-lucent with froth, I went below for
à mouthful of spirits and a bite of supper, the
hour being eight bells in the second dog watch
... We say, that is, eight o'clock in the evening:
The captain and carpenter were in the cab"
º - - - |
THE ICEBERG. II
Upon the swing-tray over the table were a piece
of corned beef, some biscuit, and a bottle of
hollands. --
“Nothing to be seen, I suppose, Rodney 2”
says the captain.
*Nothing,” I answered. "She looks well up,
and that's all that can be said."
ºve been hove to under bare poles more than
once in my time,” said the gapeºte: “but never
through so long a stretch. I doubt if you'll find
many vessels to look up to it as this here
Laughing Mary does." -
ºthioss of hamper forward will make her the
more weatherly,” says Captain Rosy. “But we're
When bad sailors
in an ugly part of the globe.
die they're sent here, I reckon. The worst
nºtical sinner can't be hoyº tº long off the Horn
without coming out of it with a purged soul. He
must start afresh to deserve further punishment.”
tº Well, here's a breeze that can't go on blowing
much longer,” cries the carpenter. “The place
it comes from must give out soon, unless a new
ade wind's got fixed into * whole gale for this
here ocean." • * : *
ou allow our drift will be
* What southing do y - -
#5 I asked, munching a piece
:|
-
giving us, captain
of beef.
* All four mile an hour,” he answered. º If
this goes on I shall look to make some discoveriºs.
'The Antarctic circle won't be far of presently,
holar, Rodney, I'll leave you
and since you're a $6 - - -
to . what's inside of it, though boil me f I
don't have the naming of the tallest land; for: d’ye
º




I2 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
º
see, I've a mind to be known after I'm dead, and
there's nothing like your signature on a mountain
to be remembered by.” |ttl
He grinned and put his hand out for the bottle,
and after a pull passed it to the carpenter.
guessed by his jocosity that he had already been
making somewhat free; for although I love a
boldface put upon a difficulty, ours was a ..
in which only a tipsy man could find food for
merriment. º d
At this instant we were startled by a wild an
fearful shout on deck. It sounded high above
the sweeping and seething of the wind and .
hissing of the lashed waters, and it penetrated º
Planks with a note that gave it an inexpressible
character of anguish.
"A man washed overboard 1” bawled the
*Penter, springing to his feet.
“No 1" gº #. my younger and sº
ear had caught a note in the cry that persuade
*it was nºt as the carpenter said, and in .
instant the three of us jumped up the ladder an
gained the deck.
he moment I was in the gale the same
affrighted cy rang down along the wind from
* man forward: “Aror God’s sake tumble up
*/?re we are upon # /" - e
“What do you see P” I roared, sending '.
voice, trumpet-fashion, through my hands; .
as to my own and the sight of Captain Rosy and
the carpenter, why, it was like being struck blin
º “ºne on a sudden out of the lighted cabin into
the black night. •

The Iceberg. 13
Any reply that might have been attempted was
choked out by the dive of the brig's head into a
sea, which furiously flooded her forecastle and came
washing aft like milk in the darkness till it was
up to our knees.
"See there !” suddenly roared the carpenter.
“Where, man, where?” bawled the captain.
But in this brief time my sight had grown used
to the night, and I saw the object before the
carpenter could answer. It lay on our lee beam,
but how far off no man could have told in that
black thickness. It stood against the darkness
and hung out a dim complexion of light, or rather
of . that was not light—not to be
described by the pen. It was like a small hill of
snow, and looked as snow does or the foam of the
sea in darkness, and it came and went with our
soaring and sinking.
"Ice " I shouted to the captain.
“I see it !” he answered, in a voice that
satisfied me the consternation he was under had
settled the fumes of the spirits out of his head.
“We must drive her clear at all risks.”
There was no need to call the men. To the
second cry that had been raised by one among
them who had come out of the forecastle and seen
the berg, they had tumbled up as sailors will when
they jump for their lives; and now they came
staggering, splashing, crawling aft to us, for the
lamp in the cabin made a sheen in the companion
hatch, and they could see us as we stood there.
“Men,” cried Captain Rosy, “yonder's a
gravestone for our carcases if we are not lively


4. THE FROZEN PIRATE,
a
to brush the lowering soot of the heavens with
the blue and yellow phosphoric fires which
sparkled ghastly amid the bursting froth. Bodies
of foam flew like the flashings of pale sheet-
lightning through our rigging and over us, and a
dreadful roaring of mighty surges in mad career,
and battling as they ran, rose out of the sea to
deepen yet the thunderous bellowing of the
hurricane on high.
No man could show himself on deck and
preserve his life. Between the rails it was waist
high, and this water, converted by the motions of
the brig into a wild torrent, had its volume
perpetually maintained by ton-loads of sea falling
in dull and pounding crashes over the bows on to
the forecastle. There was nothing to be done
but secure the helm and await the issue below, for,
if we were to be drowned, it would make a more
easy foundering to go down dry and warm in the
cabin, than to perish half-frozen and already
nearly strangled by the bitter cold and flooded
tempest on deck. -
There was Captain Rosy; there was myself, by
name Paul Rodney, mate of the brig; and there
were the remaining seven of a crew, including the
carpenter. We sat in the cabin, one of us from
time to time clawing his way up the ladder to peer
through the companion, and we looked at one
another with the melancholy of malefactors
waiting to be called from their cells for the last
jaunt to Tyburn.
“May God have mercy upon us!” cries the
carpenter. “There must be an earthquake inside
THE STORM. … --> 5
this storm. Something more than wind is going
to the making of these seas. Hear that, now !
naught less than a forty-foot chuck-up could ha’
ended in that souse, mates.”
“A man can die but once,” says Captain Rosy,
“and he'll not perish the quicker for looking at
his end with a stout heart; ” and with that he put
his hand into the locker on which he had been
sitting and pulled out a jar of whisky, which,
after putting his lips to it, and keeping them
glued there whilst you could have counted twenty,
he handed to me, and so it went round, coming
back to him empty. .
I often have the sight of that cabin in my
mind's eye; and it was not long afterwards that
it would visit me as such a vision of comfort, I would
with a grateful heart have accepted it with tenfold
darker conditions of danger, had it been possible
to exchange my situation for it. A lantern hung
from a beam, and swung violently to the rolling and
pitching of the brig. The alternations of its light
put twenty different meanings, one after another,
into the settled dismal and rueful expressions in the
faces of my companions. We were clad in warm
clothes, and the steam rose from the damp in our
coats and trousers like vapour from wet straw.
The drink mottled some of our faces, but the
spirituous tincture only imparted a quality of irony
to the melancholy of our visages, as if our
mournfulness were not wholly sincere, when, God
knows, our hearts were taken up with counting
the minutes when we should find ourselves
bursting for want of breath under water,


**"...
6 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
Thus it continued till daybreak, all which time
we strove to encourage one another as best we
could, sometimes with words, sometimes with
putting the bottle about. It was impossible for
any of us at any moment to show more than our
noses above the companion; and even at that you
needed the utmost caution, for the decks being
full of water, it was necessary to await the lurch
of the vessel before moving the slide or cover to
the companion, else you stood to drown the
cabin.
Being exceedingly anxious, for the brig lay
unwatched, I looked forth on one occasion longer
than the others chose to venture, and beheld the
most extravagant scene of raging commotion it
could enter the brain of man to imagine. The night
was as black as the bottom of a well; but the pro-
digious swelling and flinging of white waters hove a
faintness upon the air that was in its way a dim
light, by which it was just possible to distinguish
the reeling masts to the height of the tops, and to
observe the figure of the brig springing black and
trembling out of the head of a surge that had
broken over and smothered her as in a cauldron,
and to note the shapes of the nearer liquid
acclivities as they bore down upon our weather
bow, catching the brig fair under the bluff, and so
sloping her that she seemed to stand end on, and
so heeling her that the sea would wash to the
height of the main hatch. Indeed, had she been
loaded, and therefore deep, she could not have lived
an hour in that hollow and frightful ocean; but
having nothing in her but ballast she was like a
Tire Storm. 7
bladder, and swung up the surges and blew away
to leeward like an empty cask. |
When the dawn broke something of its -
midnight fury went out of the gale. The
carpenter made shift to sound the well, and to our
great satisfaction found but little water, only as
much as we had a right to suppose she would take
in above. But it was impossible to stand at the
pumps, so we returned to the cabin and brewed
Some cold punch and did what we could to keep
our spirits hearty. By noon the wind had
weakened yet, but the sea still ran very heavily,
and the sky was uncommonly thick with piles of
dusky, yellowish, hurrying clouds; and though
we could fairly reckon upon our position, the
atmosphere was so nipping it was difficult to
persuade ourselves that Cape Horn was not close
aboard.
We could now work the pumps, and a short
spell freed the brig. We got up a new main-
topsail and bent it, and, setting the reefed foresail,
put the vessel before the wind, and away she ran,
chased by the swollen seas. Thus we continued
till by dead reckoning we calculated that we
were about thirty leagues south of the parallel of
the Horn, and in longitude eighty-seven degrees
west. We then boarded our larboard tacks and
brought the brig as close to the wind as it was
proper to lay her for a progress that should not
be wholly leeway; but four hours after we had
handled the braces the gale, that had not veered
two points since it first came on to blow, stormed
up again into its first fury; and the morning of
-
-
*;---... . . .
ºf













8 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
the 1st of July, anno 1801, found the Laughing
Mary passionately labouring in the midst of an
enraged Cape Horn sea, her jibboom and fore
top-gallant mast gone, her ballast shifted, so that
her posture even in a calm would have exhibited
her with her starboard channels under, and her
decks swept by enormous surges, which, fetching
her larboard bilge dreadful blows, thundered in
mighty green masses over her. -
CHAPTER II.
THE ICEBERG.
THE loss of the spars I have named was no great
matter, nor were we to be intimidated by such
weather as was to be expected off Cape Horn.
For what sailor entering this icy and tempestuous
tract of waters but knows that here he must
expect to find Nature in her most violent moods,
crueller and more unreckonable than a mad
woman, who one moment looks with a silent
sinister sullenness upon you, and the next is
shrieking with devilish laughter as she makes as
if to spring upon you? . . -
But there was an inveteracy in the gale which
had driven us down to this part that bore heavily
upon our spirits. It was impossible to trim the
ballast. We dared not veer so as to bring the
ship on the other tack. And the slope of the
decks, added to the fierce wild motions of the
fabric, made our situation as unendurable as that
of one who should be confined in a cask and sent
rolling downhill. It was impossible to light a fire,
THE ICEBERG. 9
and we could not therefore dress our food or
obtain a warm drink. The cold was beyond
language severe. The rigging was glazed with
ice, and great pendants of the silvery brilliance
of crystal hung from the yards, bowsprit, and
catheads, whilst the sails were frozen to the
hardness of granite, and lay like sheets of iron
rolled up in gaskets of steel. We had no means
of drying our clothes, nor were we able so to move
as by exercise we might keep ourselves warm.
Never once did the sun shine to give us the
encouragement of his glorious beam. Hour after
hour found us amid the same distracting scene :
the tall olive-coloured seas hurling out their rage
in foam as they roared towards us, in ranges of
dissolving cliffs; the wind screaming and whistling
through our grey and frozen rigging; the water
washing in floods about our decks, with the ends
of the running gear snaking about in the torrent,
and the live stock lying drowned and stiff in their
coops and pen near the caboose.
With helm lashed and yards pointed to the
wind thus , we lay, thus we drifted, steadily
trending with the send of each giant surge further
and deeper into the icy regions of the south-west,
helpless, foreboding, disconsolate.
It was the night of the fourth day of the month,
The crew were forward in the forecastle, and l
knew not if any man was on deck saving myself.
In truth, there was no place in which a watch
could be kept, if it were not in the companion
hatch. Such was the violence with which the
seas broke over the brig that it was at the risk of
{\
I O THE FROZEN PIRATE.
his life a man crawled the distance betwixt the
forecastle and the quarter-deck. It had been as
thick as mud all day, and now upon this flying
gloom of haze, sleet, and spray had descended
the blackness of the night.
I stood in the companion as in a sentry-box,
with my eyes just above the cover. Nothing was
to be seen but sheets of ghostly white water
sweeping up the blackness on the vessel's lee, or
breaking and boiling to windward. It was sheer
blind chaos to the sight, and you might have
supposed that the brig was in the midst of some
enormous vaporous turmoil, so illusive and
indefinable were the shadows of the storm-
tormented night—one block of blackness melting
into another, with sometimes an extraordinary
faintness of light speeding along the dark sky like
to the dim reflection of a lanthorn flinging its
radiance from afar, which no doubt must have
been the reflection of some particular bright and
extensive bed of foam upon a sooty belly on high,
hanging lower than the other clouds. I say, you
might have thought yourself in the midst of some
hellish conflict of vapour but for the substantial
thunder of the surges upon the vessel and the
shriek of the slung masses of water flying like
cannon balls between the masts.
After a long and eager look round into the
obscurity, semi-lucent with froth, I went below for
a mouthful of spirits and a bite of supper, the
hour being eight bells in the second dog watch
as we say, that is, eight o'clock in the evening.
The captain and carpenter were in the cabin.
THE ICEBERG. II
Upon the swing-tray over the table were a piece
of corned beef, some biscuit, and a bottle of
hollands.
“Nothing to be seen, I suppose, Rodney P”
says the captain.
“Nothing,” I answered. “She looks well up,
and that’s all that can be said.”
“I’ve been hove to under bare poles more than
once in my time,” said the carpenter, “but never
through so long a stretch. I doubt if you'll find
many vessels to look up to it as this here
Laughing Mary does.”
“The loss of hamper forward will make her the
more weatherly,” says Captain Rosy. “But we're
in an ugly part of the globe. When bad sailors
die they're sent here, I reckon. The worst
nautical sinner can't be hove to long off the Horn
without coming out of it with a purged soul. He
must start afresh to deserve further punishment.”
“Well, here's a breeze that can't go on blowing
much longer,” cries the carpenter. “The place
it comes from must give out soon, unless a new
trade wind's got fixed into a whole gale for this
here ocean.”
“What southing do you allow our drift will be
giving us, captain?” I asked, munching a piece
of beef.
“All four mile an hour,” he answered. “If
this goes on I shall look to make some discoveries.
The Antarctic circle won't be far off presently,
and since you're a scholar, Rodney, I'll leave you
to describe what’s inside of it, though boil me if I
don't have the naming of the tallest land; for, d'ye































I2 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
see, I've a mind to be known after I'm dead, and
there's nothing like your signature on a mountain
to be remembered by.”
He grinned and put his hand out for the bottle,
and after a pull passed it to the carpenter. I
guessed by his jocosity that he had already been
making somewhat free; for although I love a
bold face put upon a difficulty, ours was a situation
in which only a tipsy man could find food for
merriment.
At this instant we were startled by a wild and
fearful shout on deck. It sounded high above
the sweeping and seething of the wind and the
hissing of the lashed waters, and it penetrated the
planks with a note that gave it an inexpressible
character of anguish.
“A man washed overboard 1' bawled the
carpenter, springing to his feet.
“No 1" cried I, for my younger and shrewder
ear had caught a note in the cry that persuaded
me it was not as the carpenter said; and in an
instant the three of us jumped up the ladder and
gained the deck.
The moment I was in the gale the same
affrighted cry rang down along the wind from
some man forward: “For God’s sake tumble up
before we are upon it /"
“What do you see?” I roared, sending my
voice, trumpet-fashion, through my hands; for
as to my own and the sight of Captain Rosy and
the carpenter, why, it was like being struck blind
to come on a sudden out of the lighted cabin into
the black night. º

The IceBERG. 13
Any reply that might have been attempted was
choked out by the dive of the brig's head into a
sea, which furiously flooded her forecastle and came
washing aft like milk in the darkness till it was
up to our knees.
“See there !” suddenly roared the carpenter.
“Where, man, where?” bawled the captain.
But in this brief time my sight had grown used
to the night, and I saw the object before the
carpenter could answer. It lay on our lee beam,
but how far off no man could have told in that
black thickness. It stood against the darkness
and hung out a dim complexion of light, or rather
of pallidness, that was not light—not to be
described by the pen. It was like a small hill of
snow, and looked as snow does or the foam of the
sea in darkness, and it came and went with our
soaring and sinking.
"Icel” I shouted to the captain.
“I see it !” he answered, in a voice that
satisfied me the consternation he was under had
settled the fumes of the spirits out of his head.
“We must drive her clear at all risks.”
There was no need to call the men. To the
second cry that had been raised by one among
them who had come out of the forecastle and seen
the berg, they had tumbled up as sailors will when
they jump for their lives; and now they came
staggering, splashing, crawling aft to us, for the
lamp in the cabin made a sheen in the companion
hatch, and they could see us as we stood there.
“Men,” cried Captain Rosy, “yonder's a
gravestone for our carcases if we are not lively I
-- ****** * *
e
j
-.


14 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
:
-
Cast the helm adrift l” (we steered by a tiller).
“Two hands stand by it. Forward, some of ye,
and loose the stay-foresail, and show the head of
it.” - -
The fellows hung in the wind. I could not
wonder. The bowsprit had been sprung when the
jibboom was wrenched from the cap by the fall of
the top-gallant-mast; it still had to bear the
weight of the heavy spritsail yard, and the drag
of the staysail might carry the spar overboard
with the men upon it. Yet it was our best chance;
the one sail most speedily released and hoisted,
the one that would pay the brig's head off
quickest, and the only fragment that promised to
stand.
“Jump!” roared the captain, in a passion of
hurry. “Great thunder 'tis close aboard I
You'll leave me no sea room for veering if you
delay an instant.”
“Follow me who will l’” I cried out; “and
others stand by ready to hoist away.”
Thus speaking—for there seemed to my mind
a surer promise of death in hesitation at this
supreme moment than in twenty such risks as
laying out on the bowsprit signified—I made for
the lee of the weather bulwarks, and blindly
hauled myself forward by such pins and gear as
came to my hands. A man might spend his
life on the ocean and never have to deal with such
a passage as this. It was not the bitter cold
only, though perhaps of its full fierceness the
wildness of my feelings did not suffer me to be
sensible; it was the pouring of volumes of water
. THE ICEBERG, 15
upon me from over the rail, often tumbling upon
my head with such weight as nearly to beat the
breath out of my body and sink me to the deck;
it was the frenzy excited in me by the tremendous
obligation of despatch and my retardment by the
washing seas, the violent motions of the brig, the
encumbrance of gear and deck furniture adrift
and sweeping here and there, and the sense that
the vessel might be grinding her bows against the
iceberg before I should be able to reach the
bowsprit. All this it was that filled me with a
kind of madness, by the sheer force of which
alone I was enabled to reach the forecastle, for
had I gone to my duty coldly, without agitation
of spirits, my heart must have failed me before
I had measured half the length of the brig.
I got on to the bowsprit nearly stifled by the
showering of the seas, holding an open knife
between my teeth, half dazed by the prodigious
motion of the light brig, which, at this extreme
end of her, was to be felt to the full height of its
extravagance. At every plunge I expected to be
buried, and every moment I was prepared to be
torn from my hold. It was a fearful time ; the
falling off of the brig into the trough—and never
was I in a hollower and more swelling sea—her
falling off, I say, in the act of veering might end
us out of hand by the rolling of a surge over us
big enough to crush the vessel down fathoms
out of sight; and then there was that horrible
heap of faint whiteness leaping out of the dense
blackness of the sky, gathering a more visible
sharpness of outline with every liquid heave that



16 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
forked us high into the flying night with shrieking
rigging and boiling decks.
Commending, myself to God, for I was now to
let go with my hands, I pulled the knife from my
teeth, and feeling for the gaskets or lines which
bound the sail to the spar, I cut and hacked as
fast as I could ply my arms. In a flash the gale,
whipping into a liberated fold of the canvas, blew
the whole sail out; the bowsprit reeled and qui-
vered under me; I danced off it with incredible
despatch, shouting to the men to hoist away.
The head of the staysail mounted in thunder,
and the slatting of its folds and the thrashing
of its sheet was like the rattling of heavy field-
pieces whisked at full gallop over a stony
road.
“High enough l’” I bawled, guessing enough
was shown, for I could not see. “Get a drag
upon the sheet, lads, and then aft with you for
your lives 1"
Scarce had I let forth my breath in this cry
when I heard the blast as of a gun, and knew by
that the sail was gone; an instant after wash
came a mountainous sea sheer over the weather
bulwarks fair betwixt the fore and main rigging;
but happily, standing near the fore shrouds, I was
holding on with both hands to the topsail
halliards whilst calling to the men, so that being
under the rail, which broke the blow of the sea,
and holding on too, no mischief befell me, only
that for about twenty seconds I stood in a
horrible fury and smother of frothing water,
hearing nothing, seeing nothing, with every
THE ICEBERG. 17
faculty in me so numbed and dulled by the
wet, cold, and horror of our situation, that I knew
not whether in that space of time I was in the
least degree sensible of what had happened or
what might befall.
The water leaving the deck, I rallied, though
half-drowned, and staggered aft, and found the
helm deserted, nor could I see any signs of my
companions. I rushed to the tiller, and putting
my whole weight and force to it, drove it up to
windward and secured it by a turn of its own
rope; for ice or no ice—and for the moment I
was so blinded by the wet that I could not see the
berg—my madness now was to get the brig
before the sea and out of the trough, advised by
every instinct in me that such another surge as
that which had rolled over her must send her to
the bottom in less time than it would take a man
to cry “O God!”
A figure came out of the blackness on the lee
side of the deck.
“Who is that P” said he. It was Captain
Rosy. -
I answered.
“What, Rodney ! alive?” cried he. “I think
I have been struck insensible.”
Two more figures came crawling aft. . Then
two more. They were the carpenter and three
Sea Iſle II.
I cried out, “Who was at the helm when that
sea was shipped P”
A man answered, “Me, Thomas Jobling.”
“Where's your mate 2 ” I asked ; and it
C
8 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
—-arº –
the 1st of July, anno 1801, found the Laughing
Mary passionately labouring in the midst of an
enraged Cape Horn sea, her jibboom and fore
top-gallant mast gone, her ballast shifted, so that
her posture even in a calm would have exhibited
her with her starboard channels under, and her
decks swept by enormous surges, which, fetching
her larboard bilge dreadful blows, thundered in
mighty green masses over her.
• CHAPTER II.
THE ICEBERG.
THE loss of the spars I have named was no great
matter, nor were we to be intimidated by such
weather as was to be expected off Cape Horn.
For what sailor entering this icy and tempestuous
tract of waters but knows that here he must
expect to find Nature in her most violent moods,
crueller and more unreckonable than a mad
woman, who one moment looks with a silent
sinister sullenness upon you, and the next is
shrieking with devilish laughter as she makes as
if to spring upon you? . .
But there was an inveteracy in the gale which
had driven us down to this part that bore heavily
upon our spirits. It was impossible to trim the
ballast. We dared not veer so as to bring the
ship on the other tack. And the slope of the
decks, added to the fierce wild motions of the
fabric, made our situation as unendurable as that
of one who should be confined in a cask and sent
rolling downhill. It was impossible to light a fire,
----- -—º


-
and we could not therefore dress our food or
obtain a warm drink. The cold was beyond
language severe. The rigging was glazed with
ice, and great pendants of the silvery brilliance
of crystal hung from the yards, bowsprit, and
catheads, whilst the sails were frozen to the
hardness of granite, and lay like sheets of iron
rolled up in gaskets of steel. We had no means
of drying our clothes, nor were we able so to move
as by exercise we might keep ourselves warm.
Never once did the sun shine to give us the
encouragement of his glorious beam. Hour after
hour found us amid the same distracting scene:
the tall olive-coloured seas hurling out their rage
in foam as they roared towards us, in ranges of
dissolving cliffs; the wind screaming and whistling
through our grey and frozen rigging; the water
washing in floods about our decks, with the ends
of the running gear snaking about in the torrent,
and the live stock lying drowned and stiff in their
coops and pen near the caboose.
With helm lashed and yards pointed to the
wind, thus, we lay, thus we drifted, steadily
trending with the send of each giant surge further
and deeper into the icy regions of the south-west,
helpless, foreboding, disconsolate.
It was the night of the fourth day of the month, |
The crew were forward in the forecastle, and 1 i |
knew not if any man was on deck saving myself. s
In truth, there was no place in which a watch r
could be kept, if it were not in the companion
hatch. Such was the violence with which the
seas broke over the brig that it was at the risk of
*
THE ICEBERG. 9
;


|s
I O THE FROZEN PIRATE.
º
his life a man crawled the distance betwixt the
forecastle and the quarter-deck. It had been as
thick as mud all day, and now upon this flying
gloom of haze, sleet, and spray had descended
the blackness of the night.
I stood in the companion as in a sentry-box,
with my eyes just above the cover. Nothing was
to be seen but sheets of ghostly white water
sweeping up the blackness on the vessel's lee, or
breaking and boiling to windward. It was sheer
blind chaos to the sight, and you might have
supposed that the brig was in the midst of some
enormous vaporous turmoil, so illusive and
indefinable were the shadows of the storm-
tormented night—one block of blackness melting
into another, with sometimes an extraordinary
faintness of light speeding along the dark sky like
- to the dim reflection of a lanthorn flinging its
t radiance from afar, which no doubt must have
; been the reflection of some particular bright and
extensive bed of foam upon a sooty belly on high,
hanging lower than the other clouds. I say, you
might have thought yourself in the midst of some
hellish conflict of vapour but for the substantial
thunder of the surges upon the vessel and the
shriek of the slung masses of water flying like
cannon balls between the masts.
After a long and eager look round into the
obscurity, semi-lucent with froth, I went below for
a mouthful of spirits and a bite of supper, the
hour being eight. bells in the second dog watch
as we say, that is, eight o'clock in the evening.
The captain and carpenter were in the cabin.
-T_* º

THE ICEBERG.
II
Upon the swing-tray over the table were a piece
of corned beef, some biscuit, and a bottle of
hollands.
"Nothing to be seen, I suppose, Rodney 2”
says the captain.
º
| | | “Nothing,” I answered. “She looks well up, º
and that's all that can be said.” :
“I’ve been hove to under bare poles more than | :
once in my time,” said the carpenter, “but never º
through so long a stretch. I doubt if you'll find º
| many vessels to look up to it as this here 2.
4
Zaughing Mary does.”
"The loss of hamper forward will make her the
more weatherly,” says Captain Rosy. “But we're
in an ugly part of the globe. When bad sailors
die they're sent here, I reckon. The worst
nautical sinner can't be hove to long off the Horn
without coming out of it with a purged soul. He
must start afresh to deserve further punishment.”
“Well, here's a breeze that can't go on blowing
much longer,” cries the carpenter. “The place
it comes from must give out soon, unless a new
trade wind's got fixed into a whole gale for this
here ocean.”
“What southing do you allow our drift will be
giving us, captain?” I asked, munching a piece
of beef.
“All four mile an hour,” he answered. “If
this goes on I shall look to make some discoveries.
The Antarctic circle won't be far off presently,
and since you're a scholar, Rodney, I'll leave you
to describe what’s inside of it, though boil me if I
don't have the naming of the tallest land; for, d'ye
-
|
-
º

















I2 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
see, I've a mind to be known after I'm dead, and
there's nothing like your signature on a mountain
to be remembered by.”
He grinned and put his hand out for the bottle,
and after a pull passed it to the carpenter. I
guessed by his jocosity that he had already been
making somewhat free; for although I love a
bold face put upon a difficulty, ours was a situation
in which only a tipsy man could find food for
merriment.
At this instant we were startled by a wild and
fearful shout on deck. It sounded high above
the sweeping and seething of the wind and the
hissing of the lashed waters, and it penetrated the
planks with a note that gave it an inexpressible
character of anguish.
“A man washed overboard l’ bawled the
carpenter, springing to his feet.
“No 1" cried I, for my younger and shrewder
ear had caught a note in the cry that persuaded
me it was not as the carpenter said; and in an
instant the three of us jumped up the ladder and
gained the deck.
The moment I was in the gale the same
affrighted cry rang down along the wind from
some man forward: “For God’s sake tumble up
before we are upon it /"
“What do you see P” I roared, sending my
voice, trumpet-fashion, through my hands; for
as to my own and the sight of Captain Rosy and
the carpenter, why, it was like being struck blind
to come on a sudden out of the lighted cabin into
the black night. -
-T --- sº -- º

º ºs-
THE ICEBERG. 13
Any reply that might have been attempted was
choked out by the dive of the brig's head into a
sea, which furiously flooded her forecastle and came
washing aft like milk in the darkness till it was
up to our knees.
“See there !” suddenly roared the carpenter.
“Where, man, where?” bawled the captain.
But in this brief time my sight had grown used
to the night, and I saw the object before the
carpenter could answer. It lay on our lee beam,
but how far off no man could have told in that
black thickness. It stood against the darkness
and hung out a dim complexion of light, or rather
of pallidness, that was not light—not to be
described by the pen. It was like a small hill of
snow, and looked as snow does or the foam of the
sea in darkness, and it came and went with our
soaring and sinking.
“Icel” I shouted to the captain.
“I see it !” he answered, in a voice that
satisfied me the consternation he was under had
settled the fumes of the spirits out of his head,
“We must drive her clear at all risks.”
There was no need to call the men. To the
second cry that had been raised by one among
them who had come out of the forecastle and seen
the berg, they had tumbled up as sailors will when
they jump for their lives; and now they came
staggering, splashing, crawling aft to us, for the
lamp in the cabin made a sheen in the companion
hatch, and they could see us as we stood there.
“Men,” cried Captain Rosy, “yonder's a
gravestone for our carcases if we are not lively 1
--~~~~~ * *
5|

14 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
Cast the helm adrift l” (we steered by a tiller).
“Two hands stand by it. Forward, some of ye.
and loose the stay-foresail, and show the head of
it.” t
The fellows hung in the wind. I could not
wonder. The bowsprit had been sprung when the
jibboom was wrenched from the cap by the fall of
the top-gallant-mast; it still had to bear the
weight of the heavy spritsail yard, and the drag
of the staysail might carry the spar overboard
with the men upon it. Yet it was our best chance;
the one sail most speedily released and hoisted,
the one that would pay the brig's head off
quickest, and the only fragment that promised to
stand.
“Jump!” roared the captain, in a passion of
hurry. “Great thunder 'tis close aboard I
You'll leave me no sea room for veering if you
delay an instant.”
“Follow me who will l’” I cried out;
others stand by ready to hoist away.”
Thus speaking—for there seemed to my mind
a surer promise of death in hesitation at this
supreme moment than in twenty such risks as
ſaying out on the bowsprit signified—I made for
the lee of the weather bulwarks, and blindly
hauled myself forward by such pins and gear as
came to my hands. A man might spend his
life on the ocean and never have to deal with such
a passage as this. It was not the bitter cold
only, though perhaps of its full fierceness the
wildness of my feelings did not suffer me to be
sensible; it was the pouring of volumes of water
“and
-*-* -- ar” º
—-sºº. TT


THE ICEBERG. 15
upon me from over the rail, often tumbling upon
my head with such weight as nearly to beat the
it was the frenzy excited in me by the tremendous
obligation of despatch and my retardment by the
washing seas, the violent motions of the brig, the
encumbrance of gear and deck furniture adrift
and sweeping here and there, and the sense that
the vessel might be grinding her bows against the
iceberg before I should be able to reach the
bowsprit. All this it was that filled me with a
kind of madness, by the sheer force of which
alone I was enabled to reach the forecastle, for
had I gone to my duty coldly, without agitation
of spirits, my heart must have failed me before
I had measured half the length of the brig. -
I got on to the bowsprit nearly stifled by the
showering of the seas, holding an open knife
between my teeth, half dazed by the prodigious
motion of the light brig, which, at this extreme
end of her, was to be felt to the full height of its
extravagance. At every plunge I expected to be
buried, and every moment I was prepared to be
torn from my hold. It was a fearful time; the
falling off of the brig into the trough—and never
was I in a hollower and more swelling sea—her
falling off, I say, in the act of veering might end
us out of hand by the rolling of a surge over us
big enough to crush the vessel down fathoms
out of sight; and then there was that horrible
heap of faint whiteness leaping out of the dense
blackness of the sky, gathering a more visible
sharpness of outline with every liquid heave that
breath out of my body and sink me to the deck;
|-
-



16 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
º
forked us high into the flying night with shrieking
rigging and boiling decks.
Commending myself to God, for I was now to
let go with my hands, I pulled the knife from my
teeth, and feeling for the gaskets or lines which
bound the sail to the spar, I cut and hacked as
fast as I could ply my arms. In a flash the gale,
whipping into a liberated fold of the canvas, blew
the whole sail out; the bowsprit reeled and qui-
wered under me; I danced off it with incredible
despatch, shouting to the men to hoist away.
The head of the staysail mounted in thunder,
and the slatting of its folds and the thrashing
of its sheet was like the rattling of heavy field-
pieces whisked at full gallop over a stony
road.
“High enough l’” I, bawled, guessing enough
was shown, for I could not see. “Get a drag
upon the sheet, lads, and then aft with you for
your lives |"
Scarce had I let forth my breath in this cry
when I heard the blast as of a gun, and knew by
that the sail was gone; an instant after wash
came a mountainous sea sheer over the weather
bulwarks fair betwixt the fore and main rigging;
but happily, standing near the fore shrouds, I was
holding on with both hands to the topsail
halliards whilst calling to the men, so that being
under the rail, which broke the blow of the sea,
and holding on too, no mischief befell me, only
that for about twenty seconds I stood in a
horrible fury and smother of frothing water,
hearing nothing, seeing nothing, with every

º THE ICEBERG. 17
º
A.
faculty in me so numbed and dulled by the
not whether in that space of time I was in the
least degree sensible of what had happened or
what might befall.
half-drowned, and staggered aft, and found the
helm deserted, nor could I see any signs of my
companions. I rushed to the tiller, and putting
my whole weight and force to it, drove it up to
windward and secured it by a turn of its own
rope; for ice or no ice—and for the moment I
was so blinded by the wet that I could not see the
berg—my madness now was to get the brig
before the sea and out of the trough, advised by
every instinct in me that such another surge as
that which had rolled over her must send her to
the bottom in less time than it would take a man
to cry “O God!”
A figure came out of the blackness on the lee
side of the deck.
“Who is that 2" said he. It was Captain
Rosy.
I answered.
“What, Rodney! alive?” cried he. “I think
I have been struck insensible.”
Two more figures came crawling aft. Then
two more. They were the carpenter and three
Sea Inéſ].
I cried out, “Who was at the helm when that
sea was shipped P’’
A man answered, “Me, Thomas Jobling.”
“Where's your mate 2 " I asked ; and it
wet, cold, and horror of our situation, that I knew
The water leaving the deck, I rallied, though -
-
:
º
:
º
:
º
º
º
º
3
º
º
º
º






18 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
seemed to me that I was the only man who had
his senses full just then.
“He was washed forward along with me,” he
replied. -
Now a fifth man joined us, but before I could
question him as to the others, the captain, with a
scream like an epileptic's cry, shrieked, “It’s all
over with us! We are upon it!”
I looked and perceived the iceberg to be within
a musket-shot, whence it was clear that it had
been closer to us when first sighted than the
blackness of the night would suffer us to dis-
tinguish. In a time like this at sea events throng
so fast they come in a heap, and even if the
intelligence were not confounded by the uproar
and peril, if indeed it were as placid as in any time
of perfect security, it could not possibly take note
of one-tenth that happens.
I confess that, for my part, I was very nearly
paralyzed by the nearness of the iceberg, and
by the cry of the captain, and by the per-
ception that there was nothing to be done.
That which I best recollect is the appearance of
the mass of ice lying solidly, like a little island,
upon the seas which roared in creaming waters
about it. Every blow of the black and arching
surge was reverberated in a dull hollow tremble
back to the ear through the hissing flight of the
gale. The frozen body was not taller than our
mastheads, yet it showed like a mountain hanging
over us as the brig was flung swirling into the
deep Pacific hollow, leaving us staring upwards
out of the instant's stagnation of the trough with
, --
THE ICEBERG. 19
lips set breathlessly and with dying eyes. It put
a kind of film of faint light outside the lines of its
own shape, and this served to magnify it, and it
showed spectrally in the darkness as though it
reflected some visionary light that came neither
from the sea nor the sky. These points I re-
collect; likewise the maddening and maddened
motion of our vessel, sliding towards it down one
midnight declivity to another.
All other features were swallowed up in the
agony of the time. One monstrous swing the
brig gave, like to some doomed creature's last
delirious struggle; the bowsprit caught the ice
and snapped with the noise of a great tree
crackling in fire. I could hear the masts breaking
overhead—the crash and blows of spars and
yards torn down and striking the hull; above all
the grating of the vessel, that was now head on
to the sea and swept by the billows, broadside on,
along the sharp and murderous projections. Two
monster seas tumbled over the bows, floated me
off my legs, and dashed me against the tiller,
to which I clung. I heard no cries. I regained
my feet, clinging with a death-grip to the tiller,
and, seeing no one near me, tried to holloa, to
know if any man were living, but could not make
my voice sound.
The fearful grating noise ceased on a sudden,
and the faintness of the berg loomed upon the
starboard bow. We had been hurled clear of it
and were to leeward ; but what was our condi-
tion ? I tried to shout again, but to no purpose;
and was in the act of quitting the tiller to go


C 2
2O THE FROzEN PIRATE.
forward when I was struck over the brows by
something from aloft—a block, as I believe—and
fell senseless upon the deck.
CHAPTER III.
I LOSE MY COMPANIONS.
I LAY for a long while insensible; and that I
should have recovered my mind instead of dying
in that swoon I must ever account as the greatest
wonder of a life that has not been wanting in the
marvellous. I had no sooner sat up than all that
had happened and my present situation instantly
came to me. My hair was stiff with ice; there
was no more feeling, in my hands than had they
been of stone; my clothes weighed upon me like
a suit of armour, so inflexibly hard were they
frozen. Yet I got upon my legs, and found that
I could stand and walk, and that life flowed warm
in my veins, for all that I had been lying motion-
less for an hour or more, laved by water that
would have become ice had it been still.
It was intensely dark; the binnacle lamp was
extinguished, and the light in the cabin burned
too dimly to throw the faintest colour upon the
hatchway. One thing I quickly noticed, that the
gale had broken and blew no more than a fresh
breeze. The sea still ran very high, but though
every surge continued to hurl its head of snow,
and the heavens to resemble ink from contrast with
the passage, as it seemed, close under them of
these pallid bodies, there was less spite in its


***-
, I Lose My CoMPANIONs. 21
wash, less fury in its blow. The multitudinous
roaring of the heaving blackness had sobered
into a hard and sullen growling, a sound as of
thunder among mountains heard in a valley.
The brig pitched and rolled heavily. Much of
the buoyancy of her earlier dance was gone out
of her. Nevertheless, I could not persuade
myself that this sluggishness was altogether due
to the water she had taken in. It was wonderful,
however, that she should still be afloat. No man
could have heard the rending and grating of her
side against the ice without supposing that every
plank in it was being torn out.
Finding that I had the use of my voice, I
holloaed as loudly as I could, but no human note
responded. Three or four times I shouted, giving
some of the people their names, but in vain.
Father of mercy I thought, what has come to
pass 2 Is it possible that all my companions
have been washed overboard 2 Certainly, five
men at least were living before we fouled the ice.
And again I cried out, “Is there any one alive?”
looking wildly along the black decks, and putting
so much force into my voice with the con-
sternation that the thought of my being alone
raised in me, that I had like to have burst a
blood-vessel. -
My loneliness was more terrible to me than any
other condition of my situation. It was dreadful
to be standing, nearly dead with cold, in utter
darkness, upon the flooded decks of a hull wallow-
ing miserably amid the black hollows and eager
foaming peaks of the labouring sea, convinced

22 THE FROzEN PIRATE,
that she was slowly filling, and that at any
moment she might go down with me; it was
dreadful, I say, to be thus placed, and to feel that
I was in the heart of the rudest, most desolate
space of sea in the world, into which the commerce
of the earth dispatched but few ships all the year
round. But no feature of my lamentable situation
so affrighted me, so worked upon the passions of
my mind, as my loneliness. Oh, for one com-
panion, even one only, to make me an echo for
mine own speech Nay, God Himself, the merciful
Father of all, even He seemed not The black-
ness lay like a pall upon the deep, and upon my
soul, Misery and horror were within that shadow,
and beyond it nothing that my spirit could look
up to
P stood for some moments as one stunned, and
then my manhood—trained to some purpose by
the usage of the sea—reasserted itself; and may-
be I also got some slender comfort from observ-
ing that, dull and heavy as was the motion of the
brig, there was yet the buoyancy of vitality in her
manner of mounting the seas, and that, after all,
her case might not be so desperate as was
threatened by the way in which she had been torn
and precipitated past the iceberg. At moments
when she plunged the whiteness of the water
creaming upon the surges on either hand threw
out a phantom light of sufficient power to enable
me to see that the forward part of the brig was
littered with wreckage, which served to a certain
extent as a breakwater by preventing the seas,
which washed on to the forecastle, from cascading



I LoSE My CoMPANIONs. 23
with their former violence aft; also that the whole
length of the main and top masts lay upon the
larboard rail and over the side, held in that
position by the gear attached to them. This was
aſ that I could distinguish, and of this only the
most elusive glimpse was to be had.
Feeling as though the very marrow in my bones
were frozen, I crawled to the companion and, pull-
ing open the door, descended. The lamp in the
companion burnt faintly. There was a clock
fixed to a beam over the table; my eyes directly
sought it, and found the time twenty minutes
after ten. This signified that I had ten or eleven
hours of darkness before me !
I took down the lamp, trimmed it, and went to
the lazarette hatch at the after end of the
cabin. Here were kept the stores for the crew.
I lifted the hatch and listened, and could hear the
water in the hold gurgling and rushing with every
lift of the brig's bows; and I could not question
from the volume of water which the sound
indicated that the vessel was steadily taking it in,
but not rapidly. I swallowed half a pannikin of
the hollands for the sake of the warmth and life of
the draught, and entering my cabin, put on thick
dry stockings, first chafing my feet till I felt the
blood in them ; and I then, with a seaman’s
dispatch, shifted the rest of my apparel, and can-
not express how greatly I was comforted by the
change, though the jacket and trousers I put on
were still damp with the soaking of previous days.
To render myself as waterproof as possible—for
it was the wet clothes against the skin that made







24 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
the cold so cruel—I took from the captain's cabin
a stout cloak and threw it over me, enveloping my
head, which I had cased in a warm fur cap, with
the hood of it; and thus equipped I lighted a
small hand-lantern that was used on dark nights
for heaving the log, that is, for showing how
the sand runs in the glass, and carried it on
deck.
The lantern made the scene a dead, grave-like
black outside its little circle of illumination;
nevertheless its rays suffered me to guess at the
picture of ruin the decks offered. The main mast
was snapped three or four feet above the deck,
and the stump of it showed as jagged and barbed
as a wild beast's teeth. But I now noticed that
the weight of the hamper being on the lar-
board side, balanced the list the vessel took
from her shifted ballast, and that she floated on a
level keel with her bows fair at the sea, whence I
concluded that a sort of sea-anchor had been
formed ahead of her by the wreckage, and that it
held her in that posture, otherwise she must
certainly have fallen into the trough.
I moved with extreme caution, casting the
lantern light before me, sometimes starting at a
sound that resembled a groan, then stopping to
steady myself during some particular wild leap
of the hull; until, coming abreast of the main
hatch, the rays of the lantern struck upon a
man's body, which, on my bringing the flame to
his face, proved to be Captain Rosy. There was
a wound over his right brow; and as if that had
not sufficed to slay him, the fall of the masts had
–
.
I gº
aſkſ:
wig
ned
-
ſº
gº
mini
S$ 3.
elºng
I Capſ
I lose My Companions. 25
in some wonderful manner whipped a rope
several times round his body, binding his arms
and encircling his throat so tightly, that no
executioner could have gone more artistically to
work to pinion and choke a man.
Under a mass of rigging in the larboard
scuppers lay two bodies, as I could just faintly
discern; it was impossible to put the lantern
close enough to either one of them to distinguish
his face, nor had I the strength even if I had pos.
sessed the weapons to extricate them, for they lay
under a whole body of shrouds, complicated by a
mass of other gear, against which leaned a portion
of the caboose. I viewed them long enough to
satisfy my mind that they were dead, and then
with a heart of lead turned away.
I crossed to the starboard side, where the deck
was comparatively clear, and found the body of a
seaman named Abraham Wise near the fore-hatch.
This man had probably been stunned and drowned
by the sea that filled the deck after I loosed the
staysail. These were all of our people that I could
find; the others I supposed had been washed by
the water or knocked by the falling sparsoverboard.
I returned to the quarter-deck, and sat down
in the companion way for the shelter of it and to
think. No language that I have command of
could put before you the horror that possessed
me as I sat meditating upon my situation and
recalling the faces of the dead. The wind was
rapidly falling, and with it the sea, but the motion
of the brig continued very heavy, a large swell
having been set running by the long, fierce gale
-
-
|
|











26 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
that was gone; and there being no uproar of
tempest in the sky to confound the senses, I
could hear a hundred harsh and melancholy
groaning and straining sounds rising from the
hull, with now and again a mighty blow as from
some spar or lump of ice iº weighty
enough, you would have supposed, to stave the
ship. But though the º Mary was not
a new vessel, she was one of the stoutest of her
kind ever launched, built mainly of oak and put
together by an honest artificer. Nevertheless her
continuing to float in her miserably torn and
mangled condition was so great a miracle, that,
spite of my poor shipmates having perished and
my own state being as hopeless as the sky was
starless, I could not but consider that God's
hand was very visible in this business.
I will not pretend to remember how I passed
the hours till the dawn came. I recollect of
frequently stepping below to lift the hatch of the
lazarette, to judge by the sound of the quantity
of water in the vessel. That she was filling I
knew well, yet not leaking so rapidly, but that,
had our crew been preserved, we might easily
have kept her free, and made shift to rig up jury
masts and haul us as best we could out of these
desolate parallels. There was, however, nothing
to be done till the day broke. I had noticed the
jolly-boat bottom up near the starboard gangway,
and so far as I could make out by throwing the
dull lantern light upon her she was sound; but
I could not have launched her without seeing
what I was doing, and even had I managed this,


I QUIt the WRECK. 27
.
|
she stood to be swamped and I to be drowned.
And, in sober truth, so horrible was the prospect
of going adrift in her without preparing for the
adventure with oars, sail, mast, provisions, and
water—most of which, by the lamplight only,
were not to be come at amid the hideous muddle
of wreckage—that sooner than face it I was
perfectly satisfied to take my chance of the hulk
sinking with me in her before the sun rose.
CHAPTER IV.
I QUIT THE WRECK.
THE east grew pale and grey at last. The sea
rolled black as the night from it, with a rounded
Smooth-backed swell; the wind was spent; only
a small air, still from the north-east, stirred.
There were a few stars dying out in the dark
west; the atmosphere was clear, and when the
sun rose f knew he would turn the sable pall over-
head into blueness.
The hull lay very deep. I had at one time,
during the black hours, struck into a mournful
calculation, and reckoned that the brig would
float some two or three hours after sunrise; but
when the glorious beam flashed out at last, and
transformed the ashen hue of dawn into a cerulean
brilliance and a deep of rolling sapphire, I
started with sudden terror to observe, how close
the covering-board sat upon the water, and how
the head of every swell ran past as high as the
bulwark rail.
Yet for a few moments I stood contemplating
-
-
*
º
:
.


28 THE FRozen PIRATE.
the scene of ruin. It was visible now to its most
trifling detail. The foremast was gone smooth
off at the deck; it lay over the starboard bow;
and the topmast floated ahead of the hull, held by
the gear. Many feet of bulwarks were crushed
level; the pumps had vanished; the caboose
was gone! A completer nautical ruin I had
never viewed.
One extraordinary, stroke I quickly detected.
The jolly-boat had lain stowed in the long-boat;
it was thus we carried those boats, the little one
lying snugly enough in the other. The sea that
had flooded our decks had floated the jolly-boat
out of the long-boat, and swept it bottom up to
the gangway where it lay, as though God's mercy
designed it should be preserved for my use; for,
not long after it had been floated out, the brig
struck the berg, the masts fell—and there lay the
long-boat crushed into staves |
This signal and surprising intervention filled my
heart with thankfulness, though my spirits sank
again at the sight of my poor drowned shipmates.
But, unless I had a mind to join them, it was
necessary I should speedily bestir myself. So
after a minute's reflection I whipped out my
knife, and cutting a couple of blocks away from
the raffle on deck, I rove a line through them, and
so made a tackle, by the help of which I turned
the jolly-boat over: I then with a handspike
prised her nose to the gangway, secured a bunch
of rope on either side her to act as fenders or
buffers when she should be launched and lying
alongside, ran her midway out by the tackle, and,


ſ QUIT THE WRECK. 29,
attaching a line to a ring-bolt in her bow, shoved
her over the side, and she fell with a splash,
shipping scarce a hatful of water.
I found her mast and sail—the sail furled to the
mast, as it was used to lie in her—close against
the stump of the mainmast; but though I sought
with all the diligence that hurry would permit for
her rudder, I nowhere saw it, but I met with an
oar that had belonged to the other boat, and this
with the mast and sail I dropped into her, the
swell lifting her up to my hand when the blue
fold swung past. -
My next business was to victual her. I ran to
the cabin, but the lazarette was full of water,
and none of the provisions in it to be come at.
I thereupon ransacked the cabin, and found a
whole Dutch cheese, a piece of raw pork, half a
ham, eight or ten biscuits, some candles, a tinder-
box, several lemons, a little bag of flower,
and thirteen bottles of beer. These things I
rolled up in a cloth and placed them in the
boat, then took from the captain's locker four
jars of spirits, two of which I emptied that I
might fill them with fresh water. I also took
with me from the captain's cabin a small boat
compass. -
The heavy, sluggish, sodden movement of the
hull advised me to make haste. She was now
barely lifting to the swell that came brimming in
broad liquid blue brows to her stem. It seemed
as though another ton of water would sink her;
and if the swell fell over her bows and filled the
decks, down she would go, I had a small parcel
|§
*
-

& *so THE FROZEN PIRATE. • **
º
of guineas in my chest, and was about to fetch
this money, when a sort of staggering sensation
in the upward slide of the hull gave me a fright,
and, watching my chance, I jumped into the boat
and cast the line that held her adrift.
The sun was an hour above the horizon, The
sea was a deep blue, heaving very slowly, though
ou felt the weight of the mighty ocean in every
fold; and eastwards, the shoulders of the swell,
catching the glorious reflection of the sun, hurled
! the splendour along, till all that quarter of the sea
looked to be a mass of leaping dazzle. Upon the
eastern sea-line lay a range of white clouds,
compact as the chalk cliffs of Dover; threads,
crescents, feather-shapes of vapour of the daintiest
sort, shot with pearly lustre, floated overhead very
high. It was in truth a fair and pleasant morning
—of an icy coldness indeed, but the air being dry,
its shrewdness was endurable. Yet was it a
brightness to fill me with anguish by obliging
me to reflect how it would have been with us had
it dawned yesterday instead of to-day. My
companions would have been alive, and yonder
sinking ruined fabric a trim ship capable of bearing
us stoutly into warm seas and to our homes at last.
I threw the oar over the stern of the boat to
keep her near to the brig, not so much because I
desired to see the last of her, as because of
the shrinking of my soul within me from the
thought of heading in my loneliness into those
prodigious leagues of ocean which lay stretched
under the sky. Whilst the hull floated she was
something to hold on to, so to Say, something




I QUIT THE WRECK.
for the eye amid the vastness of water to rest upon,
something to take out of the insufferable feeling
of solitude the poisonous sting of conviction.
But her end was at hand, I had risen to step
the boat's mast, and was standing and grasping
it whilst I directed a slow look round the horizon
in God knows what vain hope of beholding a sail,
when my eye coming to the brig, I observed that
she was sinking. She went down very slowly;
there was a horrible gurgling sound of water
rushing into her, and her main deck blew up with
a loud clap or blast of noise. I could follow the
line of her bulwarks fluctuating and waving in
the clear dark blue when she was some feet
under. A number of whirlpools spun round over
her, but the slowness of her foundering was
of masts and yards which were attached to the hull
by their rigging, and which she dragged down
* mast had disappeared, and when the hollows of the
º sº whirlpools were flattening to the level surface of
a) | the sea, up rose a body, with a sort of leap. It
- ſº was the sailor that had lain drowned on the
starboard side of the forward deck. Being frozen
* Stiff he rose in the posture in which he had
bº expired, that is, with his arms extended; so that,
tº when he jumped to the surface, he came with his
tº hands lifted up to heaven, and thus he stayed a min-
m* ute, sustained by the eddies which also revolved him.
§§ The shock occasioned by this melancholy object
tº was so great, it came near to causing me to swoon.
** He sank when the water ceased to twist him,
solemnly marked by the gradual descent of the ruins
with her. On a sudden, when the last fragment of
-
































º: , , . . . .”
24 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
the cold so cruel—I took from the captain's cabin
a stout cloak and threw it over me, enveloping my
head, which I had cased in a warm fur cap, with
the hood of it; and thus equipped I lighted a
small hand-lantern that was used on dark nights
for heaving the log, that is, for showing how
the sand runs in the glass, and carried it on
deck. -
The lantern made the scene a dead, grave-like
black outside its little circle of illumination ;
nevertheless its rays suffered me to guess at the
picture of ruin the decks offered. The main mast
was snapped three or four feet above the deck,
and the stump of it showed as jagged and barbed
as a wild beast's teeth. But I now noticed that
the weight of the hamper being on the lar-
board side, balanced the list the vessel took
from her shifted ballast, and that she floated on a
level keel with her bows fair at the sea, whence I
concluded that a sort of sea-anchor had been
formed ahead of her by the wreckage, and that it
held her in that posture, otherwise she must
certainly have fallen into the trough.
I moved with extreme caution, casting the
lantern light before me, sometimes starting at a
sound that resembled a groan, then, stopping to
steady myself during some particular wild leap
of the hull; until, coming abreast of the main
hatch, the rays of the lantern struck upon a
man's body, which, on my bringing the flame to
his face, proved to be Captain Rosy. There was
a wound over his right brow; and as if that had
not sufficed to slay him, the fall of the masts had

I LOSE MY COMPANIONs. 25
in some wonderful manner whipped a rope
several times round his body, binding his arms
and encircling his throat so tightly, that no
executioner could have gone more artistically to
work to pinion and choke a man.
Under a mass of rigging in the larboard
scuppers lay two bodies, as I could just faintly
discern; it was impossible to put the lantern
close enough to either one of them to distinguish
his face, nor had I the strength even if I had pos.
sessed the weapons to extricate them, for they lay
under a whole body of shrouds, complicated by a
mass of other gear, against which leaned a portion
of the caboose. I viewed them long enough to
satisfy my mind that they were dead, and then
with a heart of lead turned away.
I crossed to the starboard side, where the deck
was comparatively clear, and found the body of a
seaman named Abraham Wise near the fore-hatch.
This man had probably been stunned and drowned
by the sea that filled the deck after I loosed the
staysail. These were all of our people that I could
find; the others I supposed had been washed by
the water or knocked by the falling sparsoverboard.
I returned to the quarter-deck, and sat down
in the companion way for the shelter of it and to
think. No language that I have command of
could put before you the horror that possessed
me as I sat meditating upon my situation and
recalling the faces of the dead. The wind was
rapidly falling, and with it the sea, but the motion
of the brig continued very heavy, a large swell
having been set running by tº. fierce gale
---
%
-*





26 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
, a.
that was gone; and there being no uproar of
tempest in the sky to confound the senses, I
could hear a hundred harsh and melancholy
groaning and straining sounds rising from the
hull, with now and again a mighty blow as from
some spar or lump of ice i. weighty
enough, you would have supposed, to stave the
ship. But though the º Mary was not
a new vessel, she was one of the stoutest of her
kind ever launched, built mainly of oak and put
together by an honest artificer. Nevertheless her
continuing to float in her miserably torn and
mangled condition was so great a miracle, that,
spite of my poor shipmates having perished and
my own state being as hopeless as the sky was
starless, I could not but consider that God's
hand was very visible in this business.
I will not pretend to remember how I passed
the hours till the dawn came. I recollect of
frequently stepping below to lift the hatch of the
lazarette, to judge by the sound of the quantity
of water in the vessel. That she was filling I
knew well, yet not leaking so rapidly, but that,
had our crew been preserved, we might easily
have kept her free, and made shift to rig up jury
masts and haul us as best we could out of these
desolate parallels. There was, however, nothing
to be done till the day broke. I had noticed the
jolly-boat bottom up near the starboard gangway,
and so far as I could make out by throwing the
dull lantern light upon her she was sound; but
I could not have launched her without seeing
what I was doing, and even had I managed this,
I QUIT THE WRECK.
she stood to be swamped and I to be drowned.
And, in sober truth, so horrible was the prospect
of going adrift in her without preparing for the
adventure with oars, sail, mast, provisions, and
water—most of which, by the lamplight only,
were not to be come at amid the hideous muddle
of wreckage—that sooner than face it I was
perfectly satisfied to take my chance of the hulk
sinking with me in her before the sun rose.
º
CHAPTER IV.
I QUIT THE WRECK.
THE east grew pale and grey at last. The sea
rolled black as the night from it, with a rounded
smooth-backed swell; the wind was spent; only
a small air, still from the north-east, stirred.
There were a few stars dying out in the dark
west; the atmosphere was clear, and when the
sun rose I knew he would turn the sable pall over-
head into blueness.
The hull lay very deep. I had at one time,
during the black hours, struck into a mournful
calculation, and reckoned that the brig would
float some two or three hours after sunrise; but
when the glorious beam flashed out at last, and
transformed the ashen hue of dawn into a cerulean
brilliance and a deep of rolling sapphire, I
started with sudden terror to observe how close
the covering-board sat upon the water, and how
the head of every swell ran past as high as the
bulwark rail.
Yet for a few moments I stood contemplating




28 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
the scene of ruin. It was visible now to its most
trifling detail. The foremast was gone smooth
off at the deck; it lay over the starboard bow;
and the topmast floated ahead of the hull, held by
the gear. Many feet of bulwarks were crushed
level; the pumps had vanished; the caboose
was gone! A completer nautical ruin I had
never viewed.
One extraordinary, stroke I quickly detected.
The jolly-boat had lain stowed in the long-boat;
it was thus we carried those boats, the little one
lying snugly enough in the other. . The sea that
had flooded our decks had floated the jolly-boat
out of the long-boat, and swept it bottom up to
the gangway where it lay, as though God's mercy
designed it should be preserved for my use; for,
not long after it had been floated out, the brig
struck the berg, the masts fell—and there lay the
long-boat crushed into staves |
This signal and surprising intervention filled .
heart with thankfulness, though my spirits san
again at the sight of my poor drowned shipmates.
But, unless I had a mind to join them, it was
necessary I should speedily bestir myself. So
after a minute's reflection I whipped out my
knife, and cutting a couple of blocks away from .
the raffle on deck, I rove a line through them, and
so made a tackle, by the help of which I turned
the jolly-boat over: I then with a handspike
prised her nose to the gangway, secured a bunch
of rope on either side her to act as fenders or
buffers when she should be launched and lying
alongside, ran her midway out by the tackle, and,


1 QUIT THE WRECK.
attaching a line to a ring-bolt in her bow, shoved
her over the side, and she fell with a splash,
shipping scarce a hatful of water.
I found her mast and sail—the sail furled to the
mast, as it was used to lie in her—close against
the stump of the mainmast; but though I sought
with all the diligence that hurry would permit for
her rudder, I nowhere saw it, but I met with an
oar that had belonged to the other boat, and this
with the mast and sail I dropped into her, the
swell lifting her up to my hand when the blue
fold swung past.
My next business was to victual her. I ran to
the cabin, but the lazarette was full of water,
and none of the provisions in it to be come at.
I thereupon ransacked the cabin, and found a
whole Dutch cheese, a piece of raw pork, half a
ham, eight or ten biscuits, some candles, a tinder-
box, several lemons, a little bag of flower,
and thirteen bottles of beer. These things I
rolled up in a cloth and placed them in the
boat, then took from the captain's locker four
jars of spirits, two of which I emptied that I
might fill them with fresh water. I also took
with me from the captain's cabin a small boat
compass.
The heavy, sluggish, sodden movement of the
hull advised me to make haste. She was now
barely lifting to the swell that came brimming in
broad liquid blue brows to her stem. It seemed
as though another ton of water would sink her;
and if the swell fell over her bows and filled the
decks, down she would go. I had a small parcel





r—--- –
N3O THE FROZEN PIRATE.
** ****
. º
of guineas in my chest, and was about to fetch
this money, when a sort of staggering sensation
in the upward slide of the hull gave me a fright,
and, watching my chance, I jumped into the boat
and cast the line that held her adrift.
The sun was an hour above the horizon. The
sea was a deep blue, heaving very slowly, though
you felt the weight of the mighty ocean in every
fold; and eastwards, the shoulders of the swell,
catching the glorious reflection of the sun, hurled
the splendour along, till all that quarter of the sea
looked to be a mass of leaping dazzle. Upon the
eastern sea-line lay a range of white clouds,
compact as the chalk cliffs of Dover; threads,
crescents, feather-shapes of vapour of the daintiest
sort, shot with pearly lustre, floated overhead very
high. It was in truth a fair and pleasant morning
—of an icy coldness indeed, but the air being dry,
its shrewdness was endurable. Yet was it a
brightness to fill me with anguish by obliging
me to reflect how it would have been with us had
it dawned yesterday instead of to-day. My
companions would have been alive, and yonder
sinking ruined fabric a trim ship capable of bearing
us stoutly into warm seas and to our homes at last.
I threw the oar over the stern of the boat to
keep her near to the brig, not so much because I
desired to see the last of her, as because of
the shrinking of my soul within me from the
thought of heading in my loneliness into those
prodigious leagues of ocean which lay stretched
under the sky. Whilst the hull floated she was
something to hold on to, so to say, something
I QUIT THE WRECK. 31
for the eye amid the vastness of water to rest upon,
something to take out of the insufferable feeling
of solitude the poisonous sting of conviction.
But her end was at hand. I had risen to step
the boat's mast, and was standing and grasping
it whilst I directed a slow look round the horizon
in God knows what vain hope of beholding a sail,
when my eye coming to the brig, I observed that
she was sinking. She went down very slowly;
there was a horrible gurgling sound of water
rushing into her, and her main deck blew up with
a loud clap or blast of noise. I could follow the
line of her bulwarks fluctuating and waving in
the clear dark blue when she was some feet
under. A number of whirlpools spun round over
her, but the slowness of her foundering was
solemnly marked by the gradual descent of the ruins'
of masts and yards which were attached to the hull
by their rigging, and which she dragged down
with her. On a sudden, when the last fragment of
mast had disappeared, and when the hollows of the
whirlpools were flattening to the level surface of
the sea, up rose a body, with a sort of leap. It
was the sailor that had lain drowned on the
starboard side of the forward deck. Being frozen
stiff he rose in the posture in which he had
expired, that is, with his arms extended; so that,
when he jumped to the surface, he came with his
hands lifted up to heaven, and thus he stayed a min-
ute, sustained by the eddies which also revolved him.
The shock occasioned by this melancholy object
was so great, it came near to causing me to swoon.
He sank when the water ceased to twist him,




- ,
*::::
32 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
and I was unspeakingly thankful to see him
vanish, for his posture had all the horror of a
spectral appeal, and such was the state of my
mind that imagination might quickly have worked
the apparition, had it lingered, into an instrument
for the unsettling of my reason.
I rose from the seat on to which I had sunk and
loosed the sail, and hauling the sheet aft, put the
oar over the stern, and brought the little craft's
head to an easterly course. The draught of air
was extremely weak, and scarce furnished impulse
enough to the sail to raise a bubble alongside.
The boat was about fifteen feet long; she would be
but a small boat for summer pleasuring in English
July lake-waters, yet here was I in her in the heart
of a vast ocean, many leagues south and west
of the stormiest, most inhospitable point of land
in the world, with distances before me almost
infinite for such a boat as this to measure ere I
could heave a civilized coast or a habitable island
into view
At the start I had a mind to steer north-west
and blow, as the wind would suffer, into the South
Sea, where perchance I might meet a whaler or a
Southseaman from New Holland; but my heart
sank at the prospect of the leagues of water which
rolled between me and the islands and the western
American seaboard. Indeed I understood that
my only hope of deliverance lay in being picked
up; and that, though by heading east I should be
clinging to the stormy parts, I was more likely to
meet with a ship hereabouts than by sailing into
the great desolation of the north-west. The
I QUIT THE WRECK. 33
burden of my loneliness weighed down upon me
so crushingly that I cannot but consider my
senses must have been somewhat dulled by
suffering, for had they been active to their old
accustomed height, I am persuaded my heart
must have broken and that I should have died of
grief.
Faintly as the wind blew, it speedily wafted me
out of sight of the floating relics of the wreck,
and then all was bare, bald, swelling sea and
empearled sky, darkening in lagoons of azure
down to the soft mountainous masses of white
vapour lying like the coast of a continent on the
larboard horizon. But one living thing there was
besides myself: a grey-breasted albatross, of a
princely width of pinion. I had not observed it
till the hull went down, and then, lifting my eyes
with involuntary sympathy in the direction pointed
to by the upraised arms of the sailor, I observed
the great royal bird hanging like a shape of
marble directly over the frothing eddies. It was
as though the spirit of the deep had taken form
in the substance of the noblest of all the fowls of
its dominions, and, poised on tremorless wings,
was surveying with the cold curiosity of an
intelligence empty of human emotion the
destruction of one of those fabrics whose unequal
contests and repeated triumphs had provoked its
haughty surprise. The bird quitted the spot of
the wreck after a while and followed me. Its eyes
had the sparkling blood-red gleam of rubies. It
was as silent as a phantom, and with arched neck
and motionless plumes seemed to watch me with
D
|
|
-


34 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
an earnestness that presently grew insufferable.
So far from finding any comfort of companion-
ship in the creature, methought if it did not
speedily break from the motionless posture in
which it rested on its seat of air, and remove its
piercing gaze, it would end in crazing me. I felt
a sudden rage, and, jumping up, shouted and
shook my fist at it. This frightened the thing.
It uttered a strange salt cry—the very note of a
gust of wind splitting upon a rope—flapped its
wings, and after a turn or two sailed away into the
north.
I watched it till its figure melted into the blue
atmosphere, and then sank trembling into the
sternsheets of the boat.
CHAPTER V.
I SIGHT A WHITE COAST.
FOUR days did I pass in that little open boat.
The first day was fine till sunset; it then blew
fresh from the north-west, and I was obliged to
keep the boat before the wind. The next day was
dark and turbulent, with heavy falls of snow and a
high swell from the north, and the wind a small
gale. On the third day the sun shone, and it was
a fair day, but horribly cold, and I saw two
icebergs like clouds upon the far western Sea:
line. There followed a cruel night of clouded
skies, sleet, and snow, and a very troubled sea ;
and then broke the fourth day, as softly brilliant
as an English May day, but cold—great God,
how cold I

I SIGHT A WHITE CoAST. 35
Thus might I epitomize this passage; and I do
so to spare you the weariness of a relation of
uneventful suffering.
In those four days I mainly ran before the
wind, and in this way drove many leagues south,
though whenever a chance offered I hauled my
sheet for the east. I know not, I am sure, how
the boat lived. I might pretend it was due to my
clever management—I do not say I had no share
in my own preservation, but to God belongs all
the praise.
In the blackness of the first night the sea
boiled all about me. The boat leapt into
hollows in which the sail slapped the mast. One
look behind me at the high dark curl of the
oncoming surge had so affrighted me that I
never durst turn my head again lest the sight
should deprive me of the nerve to hold the oar
with which I steered. I sat as squarely as the
task of steering would suffer, trusting that if a sea
should tumble over the stern my back would serve
as a breakwater, and save the boat from being
swamped. The whole sail was on her, and I could
not help myself; for it would have been certain
death to quit the steering oar for an instant. It
was this that saved me, perhaps; for the
boat blew along with such prodigious speed,
running to the height of a sea as though she
meant to dart from that eminence into the air,
that the slope of each following surge swung like
a pendulum under her, and though her sail was
becalmed in the trough, her momentum was so
great that she was speeding up the acclivity and

D 2
36 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
catching the whole weight of the wind afresh
before there was time for her to lose way. -
I was nearly dead with cold and misery when
the morning came, but the sparkling sun and the
blue sky cheered me, and as wind and sea fell
with the soaring of the orb, I was enabled to
flatten aft the sheet and let the boat steer herself
whilst I beat my arms about for warmth and broke
my fast. When I look back I wonder that I
should have taken any pains to live. That it is
possible for the human mind at any period of its
existence to be absolutely hopeless I do not
believe; but I can very honestly say that when I
gazed round upon the enormous sea I was in, and
considered the size of my boat, the quantity of
my provisions, and my distance (even if I was
heading that way) from the nearest point of land,
I was not sensible of the faintest stirring of hope,
and viewed myself as a dead man.
No bird came near me. Once I spied the back
of a great black fish about a quarter of a mile off.
The wetness of it caught the sunshine and re-
flected it like a mirror of polished steel, and the
flash was so brilliant it might have passed for a
bed of white fire floating on the blue heavings.
But nothing more that was living did I meet, and
such was the vastness of the sea over which my
little keel glided, in the midst of which I sat
abandoned by the angels, that for utter loneliness
I might have been the very last of the human race.
When the third night came down with sullen
blasts sweeping into a steady storming of wind,
that swung a strong melancholy howl through
- __*
I sight A WHITE Coast. 37
the gloom, it found me so weak with cold, watch-
ing, and anxiety, and the want of space wherein
to rid my limbs of the painful cramp which
weighted them with an insupportable leaden sen-
sation, that I had barely power to control the boat
with the oar. I pined for sleep; one hour of
slumber would, I felt, give me new life, but I
durst not close my eyes. The boat was sweep-
ing through the dark and seething seas, and her
course had to be that of an arrow, or she would
capsize and be smothered in a breath.
Maybe I fell something delirious, for I had
many strange and frightful fancies. Indeed I
doubt not it was the spirit of madness—that is
certainly tonical when small—which furnished
strength enough to my arm to steer with. It was
like the action of a powerful cordial in my blood,
and the very horrors it fed my brain with were an
animation to my physical qualities. The gale
became a voice; it cried out my name, and every
shout of it past my ear had the sound of the word
‘Despairl' I witnessed the forms of huge
phantoms flying over the boat; I watched the
beating of their giant wings of shadow and heard
the thunder of their laughter as they fled ahead,
leaving scores of like monstrous shapes to follow.
There was a faint lightning of phosphor in the
creaming heads of the ebon surges, and my sick
imagination twisted that pallid complexion into
the dim reflection of the lamps of illuminated
pavilions at the bottom of the sea; mystic palaces
of green marble, radiant cities in the measureless
kingdoms of the ocean gods. I had a fancy of roofs




38 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
* :
of pearl below, turrets of milk-white coral, pave-
ments of rainbow lustre like to the shootings and
dartings of the hues of shells inclined and trembled
to the sun. I thought I could behold the move-
ments of shapes as indeterminable as the forms
which swarm in dreams, human brows crowned
with gold, the cold round emerald eyes of fish,
the creamy breasts of women, large outlines
slowly floating upwards, making a deeper black-
ness upon the blackness like the dye of the
electric storm upon the velvet bosom of midnight.
Often would I shrink from side to side, starting
from a fancied apparition leaping into terrible
being out of some hurling block of liquid ob-
scurity.
Once a light shone upon the masthead. At
any other time I should have known this to be a
St. Elmo's fire, a corposant, the ignis fatuus of
the deep, and hailed it with a seaman's faith in
its promise of gentle weather. But to my dis-
tempered fancy it was a lanthorn hung up by a
spirit hand; I traced the dusky curve of an arm
and observed the busy twitching of visionary
fingers by the rays of the ghostly light; the out-
line of a large face of a bland and sorrowful
expression, pallid as any foam-flake whirling past,
came into the sphere of those graveyard rays. I
shrieked and shut my eyes, and when I looked
again the light was gone.
Long before daybreak I was exhausted. Mer-
cifully, the wind was scant; the stars shone very
gloriously; on high sparkled the Cross of the
southern world. A benign influence seemed to
I sigHt A WHITE CoAST. 39
steal into me out of its silver shining; the craze
fell from me, and I wept. -
Shortly afterwards, worn out by three days and
nights of suffering, I fell into a deep sleep, and
when I awoke my eyes opened right upon the
blinding sun.
This was the morning of the fourth day. I
was without a watch. By the height of the sun I
reckoned the hour to be ten. I threw a languid
glance at the compass and found the boat's head
pointing north-west; she fell off and came to,
being without governance, and was scarcely sail-
ing therefore. The wind was west, a very light
breeze, just enough to put a bright twinkling into
the long, smooth folds of the wide and weighty
swell that was rolling up from the north-east. I
tried to stand, but was so benumbed that many
minutes passed before I had the use of my legs.
Brightly as the sun shone there was no more
warmth in his light than you find in a moon-
beam on a frosty night, and the bite in the air
was like the pang of ice itself pressed against the
cheek. My right hand suffered most; I had
fallen asleep clasping the loom of the steering
oar, and when I awoke my fingers still gripped it,
so that, on withdrawing them, they remained
curved like talons, and I believed I had lost their
use, and even reckoned they would snap off and
so set up a mortification, till by much diligent
rubbing I grew sensible of a small glow which,
increasing, ended in rendering the joints supple.
I stood up to take a view of the horizon, and
the first sight that met my eye forced a cry from


-
f
>
/
46 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
me. Extending the whole length of the south-
west seaboard lay what I took to be a line of
white coast melting at either extremity into the
blue airy distance. Even at the low elevation of
the boat my eye seemed to measure thirty miles
of it. It was not white as chalk is; there was
something of a crystalline complexion upon the
face of its solidity. It was too far off to enable
me to remark its outline; yet on straining my
sight—the atmosphere being very exquisitely
clear—I thought I could distinguish the projec-
tions of peaks, of rounded slopes, and aerial
angularities in places which, in the refractive lens
of the air, looked, with their hue of glassy azure,
like the loom of high land behind the coastal
line.
The notion that it was ice came into my head
after the first prospect of it; and then I returned
to my earlier belief that it was land. Methought
if it were ice, it must be the borderland of the
Antarctic circle, the limits of the unfrozen ocean,
for it was incredible that so mighty a body could
signify less than the capes and terraces of a con-
tinent of ice glazing the circumference of the pole
for leagues and leagues; but then I also knew
that, though first the brig and then my boat had
been for days steadily blown south, I was still to
the north of the South Shetland parallels, and
many degrees therefore removed from the polar
barrier. Hence I concluded that what I saw was
land, and that the peculiar crystal shining of it was
caused by the snow that covered it.
But what land? Some large island that had
I sight A WHITE Coast. 4. I
I put a picture of the map of this part of the
world before my mind's eye, and fell to an earnest
consideration of it, but could recollect of no land
hereabouts, unless indeed we had been wildly
wrong in our reckoning aboard the brig, and I in
the boat had been driven four or five times the
distance I had calculated—things not to be enter-
tained.
Yet even as a mere break in the frightful and
enduring continuity of the sea-line—even as some-
thing that was not sea nor sky nor the cold silent
and mocking illusion of clouds—it took a cha-
racter of blessedness in my eyes; my gaze hung
upon it joyously, and my heart swelled with a new
impulse of life in my breast. It would be strange,
I thought, if on approaching it something to
promise me deliverance from this dreadful situa-
tion did not offer itself—-some whaler or trader at
anchor, signs of habitation and of the presence of
men, nay, even a single hut to serve as a refuge
from the pitiless cold, the stormy waters, the
black, lonely, delirious watches of the night, till
help should heave into view with the white canvas
of a ship.
I put the boat's head before the wind, and
steered with one hand whilst I got some breakfast
with the other. I thanked God for the brightness
of the day and for the sight of that strange white
line of land, that went in glimmering blobs of
faintness to the trembling horizon where the
southern end of it died out. The swell rose full
and brimming ahead, rolling in sapphire hills out
t
been missed by the explorers and left uncharted 2














42 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
of the north-east, as I have said, whence I inferred
that that extremity of the land did not extend very
much further than I could see it, otherwise there -
could not have been so much weight of water as I
found in the heaving.
The breeze blew lightly and was the weaker for
my running before it; but the little line of froth
that slipped past either side the boat gave me to
know that the speed would not be less than four
miles in the hour; and as I reckoned the land to
be but a few leagues distant, I calculated upon
being ashore some little while before sundown.
In this way two hours passed. By this time
the features of the coast were tolerably distinct.
Yet I was puzzled. There was a peculiar sheen
all about the irregular sky-line; a j of pearly
whitening, as it were, of the heavens beyond, like
to the effect produced by the rising of a very
delicate soft mist melting from a mountain's brow
into the air. This dismayed me. Still I cried to
myself, ‘It must be land All that whiteness is
snow, and the luminous tinge above it is the re-
flection of the glaring sunshine thrown upwards
from the dazzle. It cannot be ice I 'tis too mighty
a barrier. Surely no single iceberg ever reached
to the prodigious proportions of that coast. And
it cannot be an assemblage of bergs, for there is
no break—it is leagues of solid conformation.
Oh yes, it is land, sure enough some island whose
tops and seaboard are covered with snow. But
what of that? It may be populated all the same.
Are the northern kingdoms of Europe bare of life
because of the winter rigours ?’ And then
—
AN ISLAND OF Ice. 43
thought to myself, if that island have natives, I
would rather encounter them as the savages of
an icebound country than as the inhabitants of a
land of sunshine and spices and radiant vegeta-
tion; for it is the denizens of the most gloriously
fair ocean seats in the world who are man-eaters;
not the Patagonian, giant though he be, nor the
blubber-fed anatomies of the ice-climes.
Thus I sought to reassure and comfort myself.
Meanwhile my boat sailed quietly along, running
up and down the smooth and foamless hills of
water very buoyantly, and the sun slided into the
north-west sky and darted a reddening beam upon
the coast towards which I steered.
* CHAPTER VI.
AN ISLAND OF I.C.E.
I HAD to approach the coast within two miles
before I could satisfy my mind of its nature, and
then all doubt left me.
It was ice / a mighty crescent of it—as was now
in a measure gatherable, floating upon the dark
blue waters like the new moon upon the field of
the sky.
For a great while I had struggled with my
misgivings, so tyrannically will hope lord it even
over conviction itself, until it was impossible for
me to any longer mistake. And then, when I
knew it to be ice, I asked myself what other thing
I expected it should prove, seeing that this ocean
had been plentifully navigated since Cook's time
and no land discovered where I was ; and I called
--



THE FROzEN PIRATE. .
an earnestness that presently grew insufferable.
So far from finding any comfort of companion-
ship in the creature, methought if it did not
speedily break from the motionless posture in
which it rested on its seat of air, and remove its
piercing gaze, it would end in crazing me. I felt
a sudden rage, and, jumping up, shouted and
shook my fist at it. This frightened the thing.
It uttered a strange salt cry—the very note of a
gust of wind splitting upon a rope—flapped its
wings, and after a turn or two sailed away into the
north.
I watched it till its figure melted into the blue
atmosphere, and then sank trembling into the
sternsheets of the boat. º
CHAPTER V. -
I SIGHT A WHITE COAST.
Four days did I pass in that little open boat.
The first day was fine till sunset; it then blew
fresh from the north-west, and I was obliged to
keep the boat before the wind. The next day was
dark and turbulent, with heavy falls of snow and a
high swell from the north, and the wind a small
gale. On the third day the sun shone, and it was
a fair day, but horribly cold, and I saw two
icebergs like clouds upon the far western sea-
line. There followed a cruel night of clouded
skies, sleet, and snow, and a very troubled sea;
and then broke the fourth day, as softly brilliant
as an English May day, but cold—great God,
how cold 1




s might I epitomize this passage; and I do
so to spare you the weariness of a relation of
uneventful suffering. . --- :
*...* , ºf those f our days I mainly ran before the
** wind, and in this way drove many leagues, south,
ºthough whenever a chance offered I hauled my
...sheet for the east. I know not, I am sure, how
the boat lived. I might pretend it was due to my
*...*. do not say I had no share
in my own preservation, but to God belongs all
the praise.
In the blackness of the first night the sea
boiled all about me. The boat leapt into
look behind me at the high dark curl of the
oncoming surge had so affrighted me that I
never durst turn my head again lest the sight
should deprive me of the nerve to hold the oar
with which I steered. I sat as squarely as the
task of steering would suffer, trusting that if a sea
should tumble over the stern my back would serve
as a breakwater, and save the boat from being
swamped. The whole sail was on her, and I could
. . not help myself; for it would have been certain
death to quit the steering oar for an instant. It
was this that saved me, perhaps; for the
boat blew along with such prodigious speed,
i running to the height of a sea as though she
meant to dart from that eminence into the air,
that the slope of each following surge swung like
a pendulum under her, and though her sail was
ecalmed in the trough, her momentum was so
at that she was speeding up the acclivity and
* - - - D 2
hollows in which the sail slapped the mast. One






















36 The Frozen Pirate.
catching the whole weight of the wind afresh
before there was time for her to lose way.
I was nearly dead with cold and misery when
the morning came, but the sparkling sun and the
blue sky cheered me, and as wind and sea fell
with the soaring of the orb, I was enabled to
flatten aft the sheet and let the boat steer hersell
whilst I beat my arms about for warmth and broke
my fast. When I look back I wonder that I
should have taken any pains to live. That it is
possible for the human mind at any period of its
existence to be absolutely hopeless I do not
believe; but I can very honestly say that when I
gazed round upon the enormous sea I was in, and
considered the size of my boat, the quantity of
my provisions, and my distance (even if I was
heading that way) from the nearest point of land,
I was not sensible of the faintest stirring of hope,
and viewed myself as a dead man.
No bird came near me. Once I spied the back
of a great black fish about a quarter of a mile off.
The wetness of it caught the sunshine and re-
flected it like a mirror of polished steel, and the
flash was so brilliant it might have passed for a
bed of white fire floating on the blue heavings.
But nothing more that was living did I meet, and
such was the vastness of the sea over which my
little keel glided, in the midst of which I sat
abandoned by the angels, that for utter loneliness
I might have been the very last of the human race.
When the third night came down with sullen
blasts sweeping into a steady storming of wind,
that swung a strong melancholy howl through



I sight A WHITE CoAST.
the gloom, it found me so weak with cold, watch-
ing, and anxiety, and the want of space wherein
to rid my limbs of the painful cramp which
weighted them with an insupportable leaden sen-
sation, that I had barely power to control the boat
with the oar. I pined for sleep; one hour of
slumber would, I felt, give me new life, but I
durst not close my eyes. The boat was sweep-
ing through the dark and seething seas, and her
course had to be that of an arrow, or she would
capsize and be smothered in a breath.
Maybe I fell something delirious, for I had
many strange and frightful fancies. Indeed I
doubt not it was the spirit of madness—that is
certainly tonical when small—which furnished
strength enough to my arm to steer with. It was
like the action of a powerful cordial in my blood,
and the very horrors it fed my brain with were an
animation to my physical qualities. The gale
became a voice; it cried out my name, and ever
shout of it past my ear had the sound of the word
Despair!' I witnessed the forms of huge
phantoms flying over the boat; I watched the
beating of their giant wings of shadow and heard
the thunder of their laughter as they fled ahead,
leaving scores of like monstrous shapes to follow.
There was a faint lightning of phosphor in the
creaming heads of the ebon surges, and my sick
imagination twisted that pallid complexion into
the dim reflection of the lamps of illuminated
pavilions at the bottom of the sea; mystic palaces
of green marble, radiant cities in the measureless
kingdoms of the ocean gods. I had a fancy of roofs













38 THE FRozEN PIRATE.
of pearl below, turrets of milk-white coral, pave.
ments of rainbow lustre like to the shootings and
dartings of the hues of shells inclined and trembled
to the sun. I thought I could behold the move.
ments of shapes as indeterminable as the forms
which swarm in dreams, human brows crowned
with gold, the cold round emerald eyes of fish,
the creamy breasts of women, large outlines
slowly floating upwards, making a deeper black-
ness upon the blackness like the dye of the
electric storm upon the velvet bosom of midnight.
Often would I shrink from side to side, starting
from a fancied apparition leaping into terrible
being out of some hurling block of liquid ob-
scurity.
Once a light shone upon the masthead. At
any other time I should have known this to be a
St. Elmo's fire, a corposant, the ignis fatuus of
the deep, and hailed it with a seaman's faith in
its promise of gentle weather. But to my dis-
tempered fancy it was a lanthorn hung up by a
spirit hand; I traced the dusky curve of an arm
and observed the busy twitching of visionary
fingers by the rays of the ghostly light; the out-
line of a large face of a bland and sorrowful
expression, pallid as any foam-flake whirling past,
came into the sphere of those graveyard rays.
shrieked and shut my eyes, and when I looked
again the light was gone.
Long before daybreak I was exhausted. Mer-
cifully, the wind was scant; the stars shone very
gloriously; on high sparkled the Cross of the
southern world. A benign influence seemed to


I sight a WHITE Coast. 39
steal into me out of its silver shining; the craze
fell from me, and I wept.
Shortly afterwards, worn out by three days and
nights of suffering, I fell into a deep sleep, and
when I awoke my eyes opened right upon the
blinding sun.
This was the morning of the fourth day. I
was without a watch. By the height of the sun I
reckoned the hour to be ten. I threw a languid
glance at the compass and found the boat's head
pointing north-west; she fell off and came to,
being without governance, and was scarcely sail-
ing therefore. The wind was west, a very light
breeze, just enough to put a bright twinkling into
the long, smooth folds of the wide and weighty
swell that was rolling up from the north-east. I
tried to stand, but was so benumbed that many
minutes passed before I had the use of my legs.
Brightly as the sun shone there was no more
warmth in his light than you find in a moon-
beam on a frosty night, and the bite in the air
was like the pang of ice itself pressed against the
cheek. My right hand suffered most; I had
fallen asleep clasping the loom of the steering
oar, and when I awoke my fingers still gripped it,
so that, on withdrawing them, they remained
curved like talons, and I believed I had lost their
use, and even reckoned they would snap off and
so set up a mortification, till by much diligent
rubbing I grew sensible of a small glow which,
increasing, ended in rendering the joints supple.
I stood up to take a view of the horizon, and
the first sight that met my eye forced a cry from
|
.
:
º
º
-



46 THE FRozen PIRATE,
me. Extending the whole length of the south.
west seaboard lay what I took to be a line of
white coast melting at either extremity into the
blue airy distance. Even at the low elevation of
the boat my eye seemed to measure thirty miles
of it. It was not white as chalk is; there was
something of a crystalline complexion upon the
face of its solidity. It was too far off to enable
me to remark its outline; yet on straining my
sight—the atmosphere being very exquisitely
clear—I thought I could distinguish the projec-
tions of peaks, of rounded slopes, and aerial
angularities in places which, in the refractive lens
of the air, looked, with their hue of glassy azure,
like the loom of high land behind the coastal
line.
The notion that it was ice came into my head
after the first prospect of it; and then I returned
to my earlier belief that it was land. Methought
if it were ice, it must be the borderland of the
Antarctic circle, the limits of the unfrozen ocean,
for it was incredible that so mighty a body could
signify less than the capes and terraces of a con-
tinent of ice glazing the circumference of the pole
for leagues and leagues; but then I also knew
that, though first the brig and then my boat had
been for days steadily blown south, I was still to
the north of the South Shetland parallels, and
many degrees therefore removed from the polar
barrier. Hence I concluded that what I saw was
land, and that the peculiar crystal shining of it was
caused by the snow that covered it.
But what land? Some large island that had





I SIGHT A WHITE Coast. 41
been missed by the explorers and left uncharted 2
I put a picture of the map of this part of the
world before my mind's eye, and fell to an earnest
consideration of it, but could recollect of no land
hereabouts, unless indeed we had been wildly
wrong in our reckoning aboard the brig, and I in
the boat had been driven four or five times the
distance I had calculated—things not to be enter-
tained.
Yet even as a mere break in the frightful and
enduring continuity of the sea-line—even as some-
thing that was not sea nor sky nor the cold silent
and mocking illusion of clouds—it took a cha-
racter of blessedness in my eyes; my gaze hung
upon it joyously, and my heart swelled with a new
impulse of life in my breast. It would be strange,
I thought, if on approaching it something to
promise me deliverance from this dreadful situa-
tion did not offer itself—some whaler or trader at
anchor, signs of habitation and of the presence of
men, nay, even a single hut to serve as a refuge
from the pitiless cold, the stormy waters, the
black, lonely, delirious watches of the night, till
help should heave into view with the white canvas
of a ship.
I put the boat's head before the wind, and
steered with one hand whilst I got some breakfast
with the other. I thanked God for the brightness
of the day and for the sight of that strange white
line of land, that went in glimmering blobs of
faintness to the trembling horizon where the
southern end of it died out. The swell rose full
and brimming ahead, rolling in sapphire hills out
t
-
º
-































42 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
of the north-east, as I have said, whence I inferred
that that extremity of the land did not extend very
much further than I could see it, otherwise there
could not have been so much weight of water as I
found in the heaving.
The breeze blew lightly and was the weaker for
my running before it; but the little line of froth
that slipped past either side the boat gave me to
know that the speed would not be less than four
miles in the hour; and as I reckoned the land to
be but a few leagues distant, I calculated upon
being ashore some little while before sundown.
In this way two hours passed. By this time
the features of the coast were tolerably distinct.
Yet I was puzzled. There was a peculiar sheen
all about the irregular sky-line; a kind of pearly
whitening, as it were, of the heavens beyond, like
to the effect produced by the rising of a very
delicate soft mist melting from a mountain's brow
into the air. This dismayed me. Still I cried to
myself, ‘It must be land 1 All that whiteness is
snow, and the luminous tinge above it is the re-
flection of the glaring sunshine thrown upwards
from the dazzle. It cannot be ice 'tis too mighty
a barrier. Surely no single iceberg ever reached
to the prodigious proportions of that coast. And
it cannot be an assemblage of bergs, for there is
no break—it is leagues of solid conformation.
Oh yes, it is land, sure enough some island whose
tops and seaboard are covered with snow. But
what of that P It may be populated all the same.
Are the northern kingdoms of Europe bare of life
because of the winter rigours ?’ And then



! AN ISLAND OF ICE. 43
thought to myself, if that island have natives, I
would rather encounter them as the savages of
an icebound country than as the inhabitants of a
land of sunshine and spices and radiant vegeta-
tion; for it is the denizens of the most gloriously
fair ocean seats in the world who are man-eaters;
not the Patagonian, giant though he be, nor the
blubber-fed anatomies of the ice-climes.
Thus I sought to reassure and comfort myself.
Meanwhile my boat sailed quietly along, running
up and down the smooth and foamless hills of
water very buoyantly, and the sun slided into the
north-west sky and darted a reddening beam upon
the coast towards which I steered.
CHAPTER VI.
AN ISLAND OF I.C.E.
I HAD to approach the coast within two miles
before I could satisfy my mind of its nature, and
then all doubt left me.
It was ice / a mighty crescent of it—as was now
in a measure gatherable, floating upon the dark
blue waters like the new moon upon the field of
the sky.
For a great while I had struggled with my
misgivings, so tyrannically will hope lord it even
over conviction itself, until it was impossible for
me to any longer mistake. And then, when I
knew it to be ice, I asked myself what other thing
| expected it should prove, seeing that this ocean
had been plentifully navigated since Cook's time
and no land discovered where I was ; and I called
ſ
|
;
3
J.
*
- *
>
3.
º
3.
ºf
º:
sº
ta'
º
2.
*
..]
-




ºrm-
*
44 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
myself a fool and cursed the hope that had cheated
me, and, in short, gave way to a violent outburst
of passion, and was indeed so wild with grief and
rage that, had my ecstasy been but a very little
greater, I must have jumped overboard, so great
was my loathing of life then, and the horror the
sight of the ice filled me with. -
Indeed, you cannot conceive how shocking to
me was the appearance of that great gleaming
length of white desolation. On the deck of a
stout ship sailing safely past it I should have
found the scene magnificent, I doubt not; for the
sun, being low with westering, shone redly, and the
range of ice stood in a kind of gold atmosphere
which gave an extraordinary richness to the
shadowings of its rocks and peaks, and a
particular fullness of mellow whiteness to its
lustrous parts, softening the dazzle into an
airy tenderness of brightness, so that the whole
mass shone out with the blandness visible in a
glorious star. But its main beauty lay in those
features by which I knew it to be ice—I mean in a
vast surprising variety of forms, such as steeples,
towers, columns, pyramids, ruins as it might be of
temples, grotesque shapes as of mighty statues,
left unfinished by the hands of Titans, domes as
of cathedrals, castellated heights, fragments of
ramparts, and the like. These features lay in
groups, as if veritably the line of coast were
dotted with gatherings of royal mansions and
remains of imperial magnificence, all of white
marble, yet with a glassy tincture as though the
material owned something of a Parian quality.
An ISLAND of Ice. 45
I had to come within two miles, as I have said,
before these elegancies broke upon me, so
deceptively did their delicacy of outlines mingle
with the dark blue softness beyond. In places the
coast ran up to a height of two or three hundred
feet, in others it sloped down to twenty feet. For
some miles it was like the face of a cliff, a sheer
abrupt, with scarce a scar upon its front, staring
with a wild bald look over the frosty beautiful blue
of that afternoon sea. Here and there it projected
a forefoot, some white and massive rock, upon which
the swell of the ocean burst in thunder, and flew to
almost the height of the cliff in a very great and
glorious fury of foam. In other parts, where I sus-
pected a sort of beach, there was the silver tremble
of surf; but in the main, the heave coming out of
the north-east, the folds swept the base of the ice
without froth.
I say again, beheld in the red sunshine, that
line of ice, resembling a coast of marble defining
the liquid junction of the swelling folds of sapphire
below and the moist violet of the eastern sky
beyond and over it, crowned at points with delicate
imitations of princely habitations, would have
offered a noble and magnificent spectacle to a
mind at ease; but to my eyes its enchantments
were killed by the horror I felt. It was a lonely,
hideous waste, rendered the more shocking by the
consideration that the whole vast range was
formed of blocks of frozen water which warmth
would dissolve ; that it was a country as solid as
rock and as unsubstantial as a cloud, to be
shunned by the mariner as though it was Death's
|
|




Fºr T-
d
*
46 THE FROZEN PIRATE,
own pavilion, the estate and mansion of the grisly
spectre, and creating round about it as supreme a
desolation and loneliness of ocean as that which
reigned in its own white stillness. -
Though I held the boat's head for it I was at a
loss—in so much confusion of mind that I knew
not what to do. I did not doubt by the character
of the swell that its limits in the north-east
extended only to the sensible horizon; in other
words, that its extremity there would not be above
five miles distant, though to what latitude its
southern arm did curve was not to be conjectured.
Should I steer north and seek to go clear of it?
Somehow, the presence of this similitude of land
made the sea appear as enormous as space itself.
Whilst it was all clear horizon the immensity of
the deep was in a measure limited to the vision by
its cincture. But this ice-line gave the eye
something to measure with, and when I looked at
those leagues of frozen shore my spirits sank into
deepest dejection at the thought of the vastness
of the waters in whose heart I floated in my little
boat. -
However, I resolved at last to land if landing
was possible. I could stretch my limbs, recruit
myself by exercise, and might even make shift to
obtain a night's rest. I stood in desperate need
of sleep, but there was no repose to be had in the
boat. I durst not lie down in her; if nature
overcame me and I fell asleep in a sitting posture,
I might wake to find the boat capsized and myself
drowning. This consideration resolved me, and
by this time being within half a mile of the coast,
AN ISLAND OF ICE. 47
I ran my eye carefully along it to observe a
safe nook for my boat to enter and myself to
land in. -
Though for a great distance, as I have said, the
front of the cliff, and where it was highest too,
was a sheer fall, coming like the side of a house
to the water, that part of the island towards which
my boat's head was pointed sloped down and
continued in a low shore, with hummocks of ice
upon it at irregular intervals, to where it died out
in the north-east. I now saw that this part had
a broken appearance as if it had been violently
rent from a mainland of ice; also, to my approach,
many ledges projecting into the sea stole into
view. There were ravines and gorges, and almost
on a line with the boat's head was an assemblage
of those delicate glass-like counterfeits of spires,
towers, and the like, of which I have spoken,
standing just beyond a brow whose declivity fell
very easily to the water.
To make you see the picture as I have it in
my mind would be beyond my art; it is not in the
pen—not in the brush either, I should think—to
convey even a tolerable portraiture of the rugged-
ness, the fairy grouping, the shelves, hollows,
crags, terraces, precipices, and beach of this
kingdom of ice, where its frontal line broke away
from the smooth face of the tall reaches, and ran
with a ploughed, scarred, and serrated countenance
northwards. - -
Very happily I had insensibly steered for
perhaps the safest spot that I could have lighted
on ; this was formed of a large projection of rock,
Secſ
Sh
389
48 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
standing aslant, so that the swell rolled past it
without breaking. The rock made a sort of cove,
towards which I sailed in full confidence that
the water there would be smooth. Nor was I
deceived, for I saw that the rock acted as a
breakwater, whose stilling influence was felt a
good way beyond it. I thereupon steered for the
starboard of this rock, and when I was within it
found the heave of the sea dwindled to a scarce
perceptible undulation, whereupon I lowered my
sail, and, standing to the oar, sculled the boat to
a low lump of ice, on to which I stepped.
My first business was to secure the boat; this
I did by inserting the mast into a deep, thin
crevice in the ice and making the painter fast to
it as to a pole. The sun was now very low, and
would soon be gone. The cold was extreme, yet
I did not suffer from it as in the boat. There is a
quality in snow which it would be ridiculous to
speak of as warmth ; yet, as you may observe
after a heavy fall ashore on top of a black frost,
it seems to have a power of blunting the sharp
edge of the cold, and the snow on this shore of
ice being very abundant, though frozen as hard as
the ice itself, appeared to mitigate the intolerable
rigour I had languished under upon the water, in
the brig and afterwards. This might also be owing
to the dryness of the cold.
Having secured the boat I beat my hands heartily
upon my breast, and fell to pacing a little level of
ice whilst I considered what I should do. The coast
—I cannot but speak of this frozen territory as
land—went in a gentle slope behind me to the
An Island of ICE. 49
height of about thirty feet; the ground was
greatly broken with rocks and boulders and sharp
points, whence I suspected many fissures in which
the snow might not be so hard but that I might sink
deep enough to be smothered. I saw no cave
nor hollow that I could make a bedroom of, and
the improved circulation of my blood giving me
spirits enough to resolve quickly, I made up my
mind to use my boat as a bed. -
So I went to work. I took the oar and jammed
it into such another crevice as the mast stood in,
and to it I secured the boat by another line.
This moored her very safely. There was as
good promise of a fair quiet night as I might
count upon in these treacherous latitudes; the
haven in which the boat lay was sheltered and the
water almost still, and this I reckoned would hold
whilst the breeze hung northerly and the swell
rolled from the north-east. I spread the sail over
the seats, which served as beams for the support
of this little ceiling of canvas, and enough of it
remained to supply me with a pillow and to cover
my legs. I fell to this work whilst there was
light, and when I had prepared my habitation, I
took a bottle of ale and a handful of victuals
ashore and made my supper, walking briskly
whilst I ate and drank.
I caught myself sometimes looking yearningly
towards the brow of the slope, as though from
that eminence I should gain an extensive prospect
of the sea and perhaps behold a ship ; but I
wanted the courage to climb, chiefly because I
was afraid of tumbling into a hole and miserably
R
* “…sº



5o THE FROZEN PIRATE.
**-
perishing, and likewise because I shrank from the
idea of being overtaken up there by the darkness.
There was a kind of companionship in the boat,
the support of which I should lose if I left her.
The going of the sun was attended by so much
glory that the whole weight of my situation and
the pressure of my solitude did not come upon me
until his light was gone. The swell ran athwart
his mirroring in lines of molten gold; the sky
was a sheet of scarlet fire where he was, paling
zenithwards into an ardent orange. The splen-
dour tipped the frozen coast with points of ruby
flame which sparkled and throbbed like sentinel
beacons along the white and silent range. The
low thunder of far-off hills of water bursting
against the projections rolled sulkily down upon
the weak wind. Just beyond the edge of the
slope, about a third of a mile to the north of my
little haven, stood an assemblage of exquisitely
airy outlines—configurations such as I have
described; their crystalline nature stole out to
the lustrous colouring of the glowing west, and
they had the appearance of tinted glass of several
dyes of red, the delicate fibres being deep of hue,
the stouter ones pale; and never did the highest
moon of human invention reach to anything more
glorious and dainty, more sweetly simulative of
the arts of a fairy-like imagination than yonder
cluster of icy fabrics, fashioned, as it entered my
head to conceive, as pavilions by the hands of the
spirits of the frozen world, and gilt and painted by
the beams of the setting sun.
But all this wild and unreal beauty melted away
º
AN ISLAND OF Ice. - 51
to the oncoming of the dusk; and when the sun
was gone and the twilight had put a new quality
of bleakness into the air, when the sea rolled in a
welter of dark shadows, one sombre fold shoulder-
ing another—a very swarming of restless giant
phantoms—when the shining of the stars low
down in the unfathomable obscurity of the north
and south quarters gave to the ocean in those
directions a frightful immensity of surface, making
you feel as though you viewed the scene from the
centre of the firmament, and were gazing down
the spangled slopes of infinity—oh, then it was
that the full spirit of the solitude of this pale and
silent seat of ice took possession of me. I found
a meaning I had not before caught in the com-
plaining murmur of the night breeze blowing in
small gusts along the rocky shore, and in the deep
organ-like tremulous hum of the swell thundering
miles distant on the northward-pointing cliffs.
This was a note I had missed whilst the sun shone.
Perhaps my senses were sharpened by the dark-
ness. It mingled with the booming of the bursts
of water on this side the range, and gave me to
know that the northward extremity of the island
did not extend so far as I had supposed from my
view of it in the boat. Yet I could also suppose
that the beat of the swell formed a mighty
cannonading capable of making itself heard afar,
and the ice, being resonant, with many smooth if
not polished tracts upon it, readily transmitted the
sound, yes, though the cause of it lay as far off as
the horizon. -
I will not say that my loneliness frightened me,
E 2 … . .




52 - Tile FROZEN PIRATE.
but it subdued my heart with a weight as if it
were something sensible, and filled me with a sort
of consternation that was full of awe. The moon
was up, but the rocks hid the side of the sea she
rode over, and her face was not to be viewed from
where I was until she had marched two-thirds of
her path to the meridian. The coast ran away
on either hand in cold motionless blocks of pallor,
which further on fell (by deception of the sheen
of the stars) into a kind of twisting and snaking
glimmer, and you followed it into an extraordin-
arily elusive faintness that was neither light nor
colour in the liquid gloom, long after the sight
had outrun the visibility of the range. At
intervals I was startled by sounds, sometimes
sullen, like a muffled subterranean explosion,
sometimes sharp, like a quick splintering of an
iron-hard substance. These noises, I presently
gathered, were made by the ice stretching and
cracking in fifty different directions. The mass
was so vast and substantial you could not but
think of it as a country with its foot resting upon
the bed of the sea. . 'Twas a folly of my nerves
no doubt, yet it added to my consternation to
reflect that this solid territory, reverberating the
repelled blows of the ocean swell, was as much
afloat as my boat, and so much less actual than
my boat that, could it be towed a few degrees
further north, it would melt into pouring waters
and vanish as utterly with its little cities of
columns, steeples, and minarets as a wreath of
steam upon the air. -
This gave a spirit-like character to it in my dis-
AN ISLAND of ICE. 53
mayed inquiring eyes which was greatly increased
by the vagueness it took from the dusk. It was
such a scene, methought, as the souls of seamen
drowned in these seas might flock to and haunt.
The white and icy spell upon it wrought in familiar
things. The stars looking down upon me over the
edge of the cliffs were like the eyes of shapes
(easy to fashion out of the darkness) kneeling up
there and peering at the human intruder who was
pacing his narrow floor of ice for warmth. The
deceit of the shadows proportioned the blanched
ruggedness of the cliff's face on the north side into
heads and bodies of monsters. I beheld a giant,
from his waist up, leaning his cheek upon his arm;
a great cross with a burlesque figure, as of a friar,
kneeling near it; a mighty helmet with a white
plume curled; the shadowy conformation of a
huge couchant beast, with a hundred other such
unsubstantial prodigies. Had the moon shone in
the west I dare say I should have witnessed a
score more such things, for the snow was like
white paper, on which the clear black shadows of
the ice-rocks could not but have cast the likeness
of many startling phantasies.
I sought to calm my mind by considering my
position, and to divert my thoughts from the star-
wrought apparitions of the broken slopes I asked
myself what should be my plans, what my chance
for delivering myself from this unparalleled situ-
ation. At this distance of time I cannot precisely
tell how long the provisions I had brought from
the foundered brig were calculated to last me,
but I am sure I had not a week's supply. This,
• *-*.




|
-º
--
---º
º-
54
then, made it plain that my business was not to
linger here, but to push into the ocean afresh is
§Peedily as possible, for to my mind nothing ".
life was clearer than that my only chance lay in
my falling in with a ship. Yet how did my heaſ:
sink when I reflected upon the mighty breast of
Sea in which I was forlornly to seek for succeſ
X,*Yes went to the squab black outline of the
** and the littleness of her sent a shudde:
through me. It is true she had nobly carried me
through some fierce weather, yet at the expense
of many leagues of southing, of a deeper pene:
tration into the solitary wilds of the polar waters
However, I was sensible that I was depressed
"elancholy, and under a continued consternatiºn,
Something of which the morning sun might dis’
*P*.so that I should be able to take a heartier
view of my woful plight. So after a good look
*awards and at the heavens to satisfy myself on
the subject of the weather, and after a careful in:
Spection of the moorings of the boat, I entered
her, feeling very sure that, if a sea set in from the
West, ºr south and tumbled her, the motion woul
quickly *** me; and getting under the roof
of sail, with my legs along the bottom and my
back *ś"st the stem, which I had bolstered
With the slack of the canvas, I commended
myself to God, folded my arms, and went to sleep.
CHAPTER VII.
I AM STARTLED BY A DISCOVERY.
IN this *Y Posture, despite the intense cold, I






I AM starTLED BY A Discovery. 55
continued to sleep soundly during the greater
part of the night. I was awakened by a horrid
dream of some giant shape stalking down the
slope of ice to seize and devour me, and sat up
trembling with horror that was not a little
increased by my inability to recollect myself, and
by my therefore conceiving the canvas that
covered me to be the groping of the ogre's hand
over my face.
I pushed the sail away and stood up, but had
instantly to sit again, my legs being terribly
cramped. A drink of spirits helped me; my
blood presently flowed with briskness.
The moon was in the west; she hung large,
red, and distorted, and shed no light save her
reflection that waved in the sea under her like
several lengths of undulating red-hot wire. My
haven was still very tranquil—the boat lay calm;
but there was a deeper tone in the booming sound
of the distant surf, and a more menacing note in
the echoing of the blows of the swell along this
side of the coast, whence I concluded that, despite
the fairness of the weather, the heave of the deep
had, whilst I slept, gathered a greater weight,
which might signify stormy winds not very many
leagues away. -
The pale stare of the heights of ice at that red
and shapeless disc was shocking. “Oh,” I cried
aloud, as I had once cried before, “but for one,
even but for one, companion to speak to l’’
I had no mind to lie down again. The cold
indeed was cruelly sharp, and the smoke sped
from my mouth with every breath as though I held
|
*
º
|


























































56 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
-
a tobacco pipe betwixt my teeth. I got upon the
ice and stepped about it quickly, darting searching
glances into the gloom to left and right of the
setting moon; but all lay bare, bleak, and black.
I pulled off my stout gloves with the hope of
getting my fingers to tingle by handling the snow;
but it was frozen so hard I could not scrape up
with my nails as much as a half-dozen of flakes
would make. What I got I dissolved in my
mouth and found it brackish; however, I suspected
it would be sweeter and perhaps not so stonily
frozen higher up, where there was less chance of
the salt spray mingling with it, and I resolved
when the light came to fill my empty beer-bottles
as with salt or pounded sugar for use hereafter—
that is, if it should prove sweet; as to melting it,
I had indeed a tinder-box and the means of
obtaining fire, but no fuel. -
It seemed as if the night had only just descended,
so tardy was the dawn. Outside the slanting wall
of ice that made my haven the swell swept past
in a gurgling, bubbling, drowning sound, dismals
and ghastly, as though in truth some such ogre
as the monster I had dreamt of lay suffocating
there. I welcomed the cold colouring of the east
as if it had been a ship, and watched the stars
dying and the frozen shore darkening to the dim
and sifting dawn behind it, against which the
outline of the cliffs ran in a broken streak of ink.
The rising of the sun gave me fresh life. The ice
flashed out of its slatish hue into a radiant white,
the ocean changed into a rich blue that seemed
as violet under the paler azure of the heavens;

| AM starried by a Discovery. 57
but I could now see that the swell was heavier
than I had suspected from the echo of its remote
roaring in the north. It ran steadily out of the
Horth-east. This was miserable to see, for the
line of its running was directly my course, and if
committed myself to it in that it. boat, the
impulse of the long and swinging folds could not
but set me steadily southwards, unless a breeze
Pang up in that quarter to blow me towards
the sun. There was a small Current of air
sitting, a mere trickle of wind from the north.
West.
| made up my mind to climb as high as I could
taking the oar with me to Serve as a pole, that I
might view the ice and the ocean round about
y the aspect
and form a judgment of the weather b
y the western
ºf the sky, of which on
visible from my low strand. But first
I must
break my fast. I remember bitterl
y lamenting
had i. flºº, repulsive
ad Suſſe -
that would burn. y foun something
|
- its creat -
leisurely and Curiousl - - º
me that the north Part of it, from much about º
I
f
I















48 The Frozen PIRAte.
the water there would be smooth. Nor was I
breakwater, whose stilling influence was felt a
good way beyond it. I thereupon steered for the
starboard of this rock, and when I was within it
found the heave of the sea dwindled to a scarce
perceptible undulation, whereupon I lowered my
sail, and, standing to the oar, sculled the boat to
a low lump of ice, on to which I stepped.
My first business was to secure the boat; this
I did by inserting the mast into a deep, thin
crevice in the ice and making the painter fast to
it as to a pole. The sun was now very low, and
would soon be gone. The cold was extreme, yet
I did not suffer from it as in the boat. There is a
quality in snow which it would be ridiculous to
speak of as warmth : yet, as you may observe
after a heavy fall ashore on top of a black frost,
it seems to have a power of blunting the sharp
edge of the cold, and the snow on this shore of
ice being very abundant, though frozen as hard as
the ice itself, appeared to mitigate the intolerable
rigour I had languished under upon the water, in
the brig and afterwards. This might also be owing
to the dryness of the cold.
Having secured the boat I beat my hands heartily
upon my breast, and fell to pacing a little level of
ice whilst I considered what I should do. The coast
—I cannot but speak of this frozen territory as
land—went in a gentle slope behind me to the
standing aslant, so that the swell rolled past it
without breaking. The rock made a sort of cove,
towards which I sailed in full confidence that
deceived, for I saw that the rock acted as a - -



An Island of Ice. 49
height of about thirty feet; the ground was
greatly broken with rocks and boulders and sharp
points, whence I suspected many fissures in which
the snow might not be so hard but that I might sink
deep enough to be smothered. I saw no cave
nor hollow that I could make a bedroom of, and
the improved circulation of my blood giving me
spirits enough to resolve quickly, I made up my
mind to use my boat as a bed.
So I went to work. I took the oar and jammed
it into such another crevice as the mast stood in,
and to it I secured the boat by another line.
This moored her very safely. There was as
good promise of a fair quiet night as I might
count upon in these treacherous latitudes; the
haven in which the boat lay was sheltered and the
water almost still, and this I reckoned would hold
whilst the breeze hung northerly and the swell
rolled from the north-east. I spread the sail over
the seats, which served as beams for the support
of this little ceiling of canvas, and enough of it
remained to supply me with a pillow and to cover
my legs. I fell to this work whilst there was
light, and when I had prepared my habitation, I
took a bottle of ale and a handful of victuals
ashore and made my supper, walking briskly
whilst I ate and drank.
I caught myself sometimes looking yearningly
towards the brow of the slope, as though from
that eminence I should gain an extensive prospect
of the sea and perhaps behold a ship ; but I
wanted the courage to climb, chiefly because I
was afraid of tumbling into a hole and miserably
*...*&#3 E.
:
-
































50 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
perishing, and likewise because I shrank from the
idea of being overtaken up there by the darkness.
There was a kind of companionship in the boat,
the support of which I should lose if I left her.
The going of the sun was attended by so much
glory that the whole weight of my situation and
the pressure of my solitude did not come upon me
until his light was gone. The swell ran athwart
his mirroring in lines of molten gold; the sky
was a sheet of scarlet fire where he was, paling
zenithwards into an ardent orange. The splen-
dour tipped the frozen coast with points of ruby
flame which sparkled and throbbed like sentine
beacons along the white and silent range. The
low thunder of far-off hills of water bursting
against the projections rolled sulkily down upon
the weak wind. . Just beyond the edge of the
slope, about a third of a mile to the north of my
little haven, stood an assemblage of exquisitely
airy outlines—configurations such as I have
described; their crystalline nature stole out to
the lustrous colouring of the glowing west, and
they had the appearance of tinted glass of several
dyes of red, the delicate fibres being deep of hue,
the stouter ones pale; and never did the highest
moon of human invention reach to anything more
glorious and dainty, more sweetly simulative of
the arts of a fairy-like imagination than yonder
cluster of icy fabrics, fashioned, as it entered my
head to conceive, as pavilions by the hands of the
spirits of the frozen world, and gilt and painted by
the beams of the setting sun.
But all this wild and unreal beauty melted away






























AN ISLAND OF Ice. - 51
to the oncoming of the dusk; and when the sun
was gone and the twilight had put a new quality
of bleakness into the air, when the sea rolled in a
welter of dark shadows, one sombre fold shoulder-
ing another—a very swarming of restless giant
phantoms—when the shining of the stars low
down in the unfathomable obscurity of the north
and south quarters gave to the ocean in those
directions a frightful immensity of surface, making
you feel as though you viewed the scene from the
centre of the firmament, and were gazing down
the spangled slopes of infinity—oh, then it was
that the full spirit of the solitude of this pale and
silent seat of ice took possession of me. I found
a meaning I had not before caught in the com-
plaining murmur of the night breeze blowing in
small gusts along the rocky shore, and in the deap
organ-like tremulous hum of the swell thundering
miles distant on the northward-pointing cliffs.
This was a note I had missed whilst the sunshone.
Perhaps my senses were sharpened by the dark-
ness. It mingled with the booming of the bursts
of water on this side the range, and gave me to
know that the northward extremity of the island
did not extend so far as I had supposed from my
view of it in the boat. Yet I could also suppose
that the beat of the swell formed a mighty
cannonading capable of making itself heard afar,
and the ice, being resonant, with many smooth if
not polished tracts upon it, readily transmitted the
sound, yes, though the cause of it lay as far off as
the horizon. -
I will not say that my loneliness frightened me,
-------




E 2
52 - THE FROZEN PIRATE.
but it subdued my heart with a weight as if it
were something sensible, and filled me with a sort
of consternation that was full of awe. The moon
was up, but the rocks hid the side of the sea she
rode over, and her face was not to be viewed from
where I was until she had marched two-thirds of
her path to the meridian. The coast ran away
on either hand in cold motionless blocks of palloſ,
which further on fell (by deception of the sheen
of the stars) into a kind of twisting and snaking
glimmer, and you followed it into an extraordinº
arily elusive faintness that was neither light nºr
colour in the liquid gloom, long after the sight
had outrun the visibility of the range. At
intervals I was startled by sounds, sometimes
sullen, like a muffled subterranean explosion,
sometimes sharp, like a quick splintering of an
iron-hard substance. These noises, I presently
gathered, were made by the ice stretching and
cracking in fifty different directions. The mass
was so vast and substantial you could not but
think of it as a country with its foot resting upon
the bed of the sea. . 'Twas a folly of my nerves
no doubt, yet it added to my consternation to
reflect that this solid territory, reverberating the
repelled blows of the ocean swell, was as much
afloat as my boat, and so much less actual than
my boat that, could it be towed a few degrees
further north, it would melt into pouring waters
and vanish as utterly with its little cities of
columns, steeples, and minarets as a wreath of
steam upon the air.
This gave a spirit-like character to it in my dis-


























An Island of Ice. 53
mayed inquiring eyes which was greatly increased
by the vagueness it took from the dusk. It was
such a scene, methought, as the souls of seamen
drowned in these seas might flock to and haunt.
The white and icy spell upon it wrought in familiar
things. The stars looking down upon me over the
edge of the cliffs were like the eyes of shapes
(easy to fashion out of the darkness) kneeling up
there and peering at the human intruder who was
pacing his narrow floor of ice for warmth. The
deceit of the shadows proportioned the blanched
ruggedness of the cliff's face on the north side into
heads and bodies of monsters. I beheld a giant,
from his waist up, leaning his cheek upon his arm;
a great cross with a burlesque figure, as of a friar,
kneeling near it; a mighty helmet with a white
plume curled; the shadowy conformation of a
huge couchant beast, with a hundred other such
unsubstantial prodigies. Had the moon shone in
the west I dare say I should have witnessed a
score more such things, for the snow was like
white paper, on which the clear black shadows of
the ice-rocks could not but have cast the likeness
of many startling phantasies.
I sought to calm my mind by considering my
position, and to divert my thoughts from the star-
wrought apparitions of the broken slopes I asked
myself what should be my plans, what my chance
for delivering myself from this unparalleled situ-
ation. At this distance of time I cannot precisely
tell how long the provisions I had brought from
the foundered brig were calculated to last me,
but I am sure I had not a week's supply. This,
|
-




























54 The Frozen Pirate.
then, made it plain that my business was not to
linger here, but to push into the ocean afresh as
speedily as possible, for to my mind nothing in
life was clearer than that my only chance lay in
my falling in with a ship. Yet how did my heart
sink when I reflected upon the mighty breast of
sea in which I was forlornly to seek for succour!
My eyes went to the squab black outline of the
boat, and the littleness of her sent a shudder
through me. It is true she had nobly carried me
through some fierce weather, yet at the expense
of many leagues of southing, of a deeper pene-
tration into the solitary wilds of the polar waters.
However, I was sensible that I was depressed,
melancholy, and under a continued consternation,
something of which the morning sun might dis-
sipate, so that I should be able to take a heartier
view of my woful plight. So after a good look
seawards and at the heavens to satisfy myself on
the subject of the weather, and after a careful in-
spection of the moorings of the boat, I entered
her, feeling very sure that, if a sea set in from the
west or south and tumbled her, the motion would
quickly arouse me; and getting under the roof
of sail, with my legs along the bottom and my
back against the stem, which I had bolstered
with the slack of the canvas, I commended
myself to God, folded my arms, and went to sleep.
CHAPTER VII.
I AM START LED BY A DISCOVERY.
IN this uneasy posture, despite the intense cold, I



-
I AM STARTLED BY A Discº- -:
continued to sleep soundly during the gº-
---
part ºf the night. I was awakened tº a
dream of some giant shape stalking ºr -
slope of ice to seize and devour nea--- --
rembling with horror that was nºt a tº
increased by my inability to recollect ºs-a-
by my therefore conceiving the cº-sº
covered me to be the groping of the ºgres-
Over my face.
| pushed the sail away and stºod -º-º-º:
instantly to sit again, my legs being º
camped. A drink of spirits helped re---
blood presently flowed with brisknes:
The moºn was in the west, sº hung a
-
red, and distorted, and shed nº gº. --
reflection that waved in the sea under her tº:
| several lengths of undulating red-hot- º
haven was still very tranquil—the boat a cº-
but there was a deeper tone in the boºg sº-
ºf the distant surf, and amo. menacing ºre-
he echoing of the blows of the sº alºng º
side of the coast, whence concluded tº
the fairness of the Weather, the heare: *ed
had, whilst I slept gathered a º
which might signify *my winds not very -
leagues away. - -
The pale stare of the *ights ºf ice at that is
and shapeless disc was shº - “Oh,” I cried
aloud, as I had once cºi befºre, “but fºr
ºn but for one, companion. speakº one,
I had no mind to he down again. The cold
indeed was ºlely sharp, and he smoke sped
from my mouth with every breath as though I held
-
-
º
-










56 THE Frozen PIRATE
- the
* tobacco pipe betwixt my teeth. I got upon
ice and .. about it quickly, darting º
glances into the gloom to left and ". º
jetting moon; but aſ lay bare, bleak, an
- hope of
I pulled off ºy stout gloves with the -
getting my fingers to tingle by handling the snow;
but it was fr
Ozen so hard I could not jº
ils as much as a half-dozen of flake
would make. Twº. I got I dissolved in º
"outh and found it brackish; however, I ".
it would be *eter and perhaps not so sto |
frozen higher "P, where there was less ". ed
the salt Spray mingling with it, and I resolv
that is, if it should Prove sweet; as to melting it,
3d indeed a tinder-box and the means of
obtaining fire, but no fuel. ded
It seemed as if the night had only just descen e f
*2 tardy was the dawn. Outside tº slanting .
of ice that "ade my haven the swell swept .
1I] a gurgling, bubbling, drowning sound, dismal:
and ghastly, as thºugh in truth ºn. such ogre
as the monster I haj dreamt of lay suffocating
there. I wº %9med the cold colouring of the east
*S. if it had be
and watched the stars
Yºg and the
and sift;
!e sun $ºve me fresh life. The ice
* into a radiant .
- ged into a rich blue that seeme
as violet under the
azure of the heavens; .






















I AM startled by a Discovery. 57
but I could now see that the swell was heavier
than I had suspected from the echo of its remote
roating in the north. It ran steadily out of the
north-east. This was miserable to see, for the
line of its running was directly my course, and if
I committed myself to it in that little boat, the |
impulse of the long and swinging folds could not -
but set me steadily southwards, unless a breeze
sprang up in that quarter to blow me towards
the sun. There was a small current of air
stirring, a mere trickle of wind from the north-
West.
I made up my mind to climb as high as I could,
taking the oar with me to serve as a pole, that I
might view the ice and the ocean round about
and form a judgment of the weather by the aspect
of the sky, of which only the western part was
visible from my low strand. But first I must
break my fast. I remember bitterly lamenting
the lack of means to make a fire, that I might
obtain a warm meal and a hot drink and dry my
gloves, coat, and breeches, to which the damp
of the salt clung tenaciously. Had this ice been
land, though the most desolate, gloomy, repulsive
spot in the world, I had surely found something
that would burn. -
I sat in the boat to eat, and whilst thus
occupied pondered over this great field of ice,
and wondered how so mighty a berg should travel
in such compacted bulk so far north—that is, so
far north from the seat of its creation. Now
leisurely and curiously observing it, it seemed to
me that the north part of it, from much about the
-
|
-
-





















58 THE FRozen PIRATE.
spot where my boat lay, was formed of a chain ºf
icebergs knitted one tº another in a consolidated
range of irregular low steeps. The beautiful
*PPºances of spires, towers, and the like seemed
as if they had been formed by an upheaval, as of
* earthquake, of splinters and jies ºf the
frozen stuff; for, so far as it was possible for me
to see from the low shore, wherever these radiant
and lovely figures were assembled I noticed great
º “Pacious chasms, narrow and torious
ravines. Certain appearances, however, caused
''': '9 suspect that this island "was steadily
decaying, and that, large as it still was, it had
*" "ºny times vaster when it brºke away from
the continent about the Pole. Naturally, as it
Pºgressed northwards it would dissolve, and the
cracking and thunderous noises I had heard in
the night, sounds Very audible now when I gave
them tº attention—sometimes a hollow distant
rumbling as of some great body dislodged and
set rolling far 9ff, sometimes an inwards roaring
of the crevice, j found it
good pole to probe my Way with and support
myself by up the slope. The boat was now held
* the mast. which I shook and found very firm.
Put an empty beer-bottle in my pocket, meaning






















I AM STARTLED by a Discovery. 59
tº see if I could fill it, if the snow above was
* enough to be well-tasted, and then with.
final look at the boat Islam.
The slope was extremely craggy. Blocks of
ice lay about, some on top of the others, like the
stones of which the Pyramids are built; the white
| gate of the snow caused these stones at a little
distance to appear flat-that is, by merging them
"", and blending them with the soft brilliance
ºf the bººkground; and I had sometimes to
Warily walk fifty or sixty Paces round these
locks to come at a Part of the slope that was
Smooth.
º
º
awl
n
g
t
a
k
e
n
n
o
t
º
-
-*
º
- Sture, his back agai -
rock that had Sºncealed him. His ..".
- his knees drawn u
Shin, and his naked hand
§ His attitude Was that of a
* Very easy and calm
stopped as if I had
* Had it been a be
p
e
r
s
O
n
lo
s
t
1.
In




6o
The Frozen Pirate.
Creature which my mind could instantly have
*ssºciated with this white and iris. desolation,
! might have been said indeed; but no such
*azement could have possessed me as I now
felt. It never entered into my head to doubt that
*Was alive, so natural was his attitude, as of one
lost in a mood of tender melancholy. -
! stood staring at him, myself motionless,
ºne, minutes, too greatly astonished an
thunderstruck to hote more than that he was
"an. Then I looked about me to see if he had
$9"Panions or for some signs of a habitation, but
the ice was “verywhere naked. I fixed my eyes
9m him again. His hair was above a foot long
black as ink, and the blacker maybe for the
ºast of the snow. His beard and mustachiºs,
Which were also of this raven hue, fell to his girdle.
..". Wºe a great yellow flapping hat, such as was
in fashion *"g the Spaniards and buccaneers
of the South Sea; but over his ears, for the
Warmth of the Protection, were squares of flannel,
secured by a Yºy, fine red silk handkerchief
knºtted under his beard, and this, with his hair
and Pale cheeks and black shaggy eyebrows.
gave him a terrible and ghastly appearance. From
his shoulders hung a rich thick cloak lined with
... and the leg: . . height of the knees
were encased in large boots. ... "
*ºned surveying him with my heart beating
Every instant I *Peeted to see him turn
to behold me. My emotion;
- *...to analyze, yet ſ believe I
*** more frighten. than gladdened by the sight

















I am startled by A Discovery. 61
of a fellow-creature, though not long before I had
sighed bitterly for some one to speak to. I
looked around again, prepared to find another one
like him taking stock of me from behind a rock,
and then ventured to approach him by a few steps
º
the better to see him. He had certainly a º
frightful face. It was not only the length of his |
coal-black hair and beard; it was the hue of his - º
skin, a greenish ashen colour, an unspeakably
hideous complexion, sharpened on the one hand |
by the red handkerchief over his ears and on º
the other by the dazzle of the snow. Then,
again, there was the extreme strangeness of his
C0Stume. ºs
I coughed loudly, holding my pole in readiness 3
for whatever might befall, but he did not stir; I |
- then holloaed, and was answered by the echoes of º
") own voice among the rocks. His stillness 2.
Persuaded me he was in one of those deep slum- º
bers which fall upon a man in frozen places, for I º
could not persuade myself he was dead, so living
Was his pºsture. *
This will not do, thought I; so I went close to :
in and peered into his face.
ºs, eyes were fixed; they resembled glass º
. as eyes, the colours faded. He had a -
road belt round his waist, and the hilt of a kind
of cutlass peeped from under his cloak. Other-
Wise he was unarmed. I thought he breathed,
* *ºned to see a movement in his breast, and
* him by the shoulder; but in the hurry of
*y ſeelings I exerted more strength than I was
Sensible of, I pushed him with the violence of

























62 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
sudden trepidation; my hand slipped of his
shoulder, and he fell on his side, exactly as a
statue would, preserving his posture as though
like a statue, he had been chiselled out of marble
or stone. -
I started back frightened by his fall, in which
my fears found a sort of life; but it was soon
clear to me his rigidity was that of a man frozen
to death. His very hair and beard stood stiff, as
before, as though they were some exquisite coun:
terfeit in ebony. Perfectly satisfied that he was
dead, I stepped round to the other side of him.
and set him up as I had found him. He was as
heavy as if he had been alive, and when I put his
back to the rock his posture was exactly as it had
been, thºt of one deeply meditating.
Who i.ad this man been in life? How had he
fallen into this pass? How long had he been dead
there, seated as I saw him 2
These were speculations not to be resolved by
conjecture. On looking at the rock against which
he leaned and observing its curvature, it seeme
to me that it had formed part of a cave, or of
some large, deep hole of ice; and this I was sure
must have been the case, for it is certain that
had this body remained long unsheltered, it must
have been hidden by the snow. º
I concluded then that the unhappy man had
been cast away upon this ice whilst it was under
bleaker heights than these parallels, and that he
had crawled into a hollow, and perished in that
melancholic sitting posture. But in what year
had his fate come upon him? I had made several



I AM startled By A Discovery. 63
voyages into distant places in my time and seen
a great variety of people; but I had never met
any man habited as that body. He had the
appearance of a Spanish or French cut-throat of
the middle of last century, and of earlier times
yet; for it may be known to you that the
buccaneers of the Spanish Main and the South
|
dark green cloth. He also wore a handsome red
waistcoat, laced, and a stout coat of a kind of
frieze. In his coat pocket I found a silver
tobacco-box, a small glass flask fitted with a
silver band and half full of an amber-coloured
liquor, hard froze; and in his waistcoat pocket a
gold watch, shaped like an apple, the back
curiously chased and inlaid with jewels of several
Sea were great lovers of finery; they had a |
strange theatric taste in their choice of costumes, º
which, as you will suppose, they had abundant º
opportunities for gratifying out of the many rich 4.
and glittering wardrobes that fell into their hands; &
and this man, I say, with his large fine hat, hand-
some cloak and boots, coupled with the villainous º
cast of his countenance and the frightful appear- | º
ance his long hair gave him, rendered hºto my: |
notions the completest figure that could b. ima-
gined of one of those rogues who earned their º
living as pirates. - -
Thinking I might find something on his person | º
to acquaint me with his story or that would furnish º | |
me with some idea of the date of his being cast | : |
away, I pulled his cloak aside and searched his
pockets. His legs were thickly cased 1n tWO Or | -
three pairs of breeches, the outer pair being of a |:
| | ||







THE Frozen PIRATE.
then, made it plain that my business was not to
linger here, but to push into the ocean afresh as
speedily as possible, for to my mind nothing in
life was clearer than that my only chance layin'
my falling in with a ship. Yet how did my heart
sink when I reflected upon the mighty breast of
sea in which I was forlornly to seek for succourſ
My eyes went to the squab black outline of the
boat, and the littleness of her sent a shudder
through me. It is true she had nobly carried me
through some fierce weather, yet at the expense
of many leagues of southing, of a deeper pene-
tration into the solitary wilds of the polar waters.
However, I was sensible that I was depressed,
melancholy, and under a continued consternation,
something of which the morning sun might dis-
sipate, so that I should be able to take a heartier
view of my woful plight. So after a good look
seawards and at the heavens to satisfy myself on
the subject of the weather, and after a careful in:
spection of the moorings of the boat, I entered
her, feeling very sure that, if a sea set in from the
west or south and tumbled her, the motion would
quickly arouse me; and getting under the roof
of sail, with my legs along the bottom and my
back against the stem, which I had bolstered
with the slack of the canvas, I commended
myself to God, folded my arms, and went to sleep.
CHAPTER VII.
I AM STARTLED BY A DISCOVERY.
In this uneasy posture, despite the intense cold, I



I AM STARTLED BY A Discovery. 55
continued to sleep soundly during the greater
part of the night. I was awakened by a horrid
dream of some giant shape stalking down the
slope of ice to seize and devour me, and sat up
trembling with horror that was not a little
increased by my inability to recollect myself, and
by my therefore conceiving the canvas that
covered me to be the groping of the ogre's hand
over my face.
I pushed the sail away and stood up, but had
instantly to sit again, my legs being terribly
cramped. A drink of spirits helped me; my
blood presently flowed with briskness.
The moon was in the west; she hung large,
red, and distorted, and shed no light save her
reflection that waved in the sea under her like
several lengths of undulating red-hot wire. My
haven was still very tranquil—the boat lay calm;
but there was a deeper tone in the booming sound
of the distant surf, and a more menacing note in
the echoing of the blows of the swell along this
side of the coast, whence I concluded that, despite
the fairness of the weather, the heave of the deep
had, whilst I slept, gathered a greater weight,
which might signify stormy winds not very many
leagues away. -
The pale stare of the heights of ice at that red
and shapeless disc was shocking. “Oh,” I cried
aloud, as I had once cried before, “but for one,
even but for one, companion to speak to 1"
I had no mind to lie down again. The cold
indeed was cruelly sharp, and the smoke sped
from my mouth with every breath as though I held













-r
º
-
56 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
a tobacco pipe betwixt my teeth. I got upon the
... ice and stepped about it quickly, darting searching
glances into the gloom to left and right of the
setting moon; but all lay bare, bleak, and black.
I pulled off my stout gloves with the hope of
getting my fingers to tingle by handling the snow; .
but it was frozen so hard I could not scrape up
with my nails as much as a half-dozen of flakes
would make. What I got I dissolved in my
mouth and found it brackish; however, I suspected
it would be sweeter and perhaps not so stonily
frozen higher up, where there was less chance of
the salt spray mingling with it, and I resolved
when the light came to fill my empty beer-bottles
as with Salt or pounded sugar for use hereafter—
that is, if it should prove sweet; as to melting it,
I had indeed a tinder-box and the means of
obtaining fire, but no fuel.
It seemed as if the night had only just descended,
so tardy was the dawn. Outside the slanting wall
of ice that made my haven the swell swept past
in a gurgling, bubbling, drowning sound, dismal-
and ghastly, as though in truth some such ogre
as the monster I had dreamt of lay suffocating
there. I welcomed the cold colouring of the east
as if it had been a ship, and watched the stars
dying and the frozen shore darkening to the dim
and sifting dawn behind it, against which the
- outline of the cliffs ran in a broken streak of ink.
The rising of the sun gave me fresh life. The ice
flashed out of its slatish hue into a radiant white,
the ocean changed into a rich blue that seemed
as violet under the paler azure of the heavens; ,
.
|
|
the lack of means to make a fire, that I might
I AM startled by a Discovery. 57
but I could now see that the swell was heavier
than I had suspected from the echo of its remote
roaring in the north. It ran steadily out of the
north-east. This was miserable to see, for the
line of its running was directly my course, and if
I committed myself to it in that little boat, the
impulse of the long and swinging folds could not
but set me steadily southwards, unless a breeze
sprang up in that quarter to blow me towards
the sun. There was a small current of air
stirring, a mere trickle of wind from the north-
West.
I made up my mind to climb as high as I could,
taking the oar with me to serve as a pole, that I
might view the ice and the ocean round about
and form a judgment of the weather by the aspect
of the sky, of which only the western part was
visible from my low strand. But first I must
break my fast. I remember bitterly lamenting
--
-
º
obtain a warm meal and a hot drink and dry my
gloves, coat, and breeches, to which the damp
of the salt clung tenaciously. Had this ice been
land, though the most desolate, gloomy, repulsive
spot in the world, I had surely found something
that would burn. -
I sat in the boat to eat, and whilst thus |
occupied pondered over this great field of his |
and wondered how so mighty a berg should tra ;
in such compacted bulk so far north—that is,
far north from the seat of its creation. None
leisurely and curiously observing it, it seemed to
me that the north part of it, from much about the


58 THE FROZEN PIRATE
spot where my boat lay, was formed of a chain
icebergs knitted one to another in a consolida:
range of irregular low steeps. The beautſ
appearances of spires, towers, and the like see:
as if they had been formed by an upheaval, as ºf
an earthquake, of splinters and bodies of the
frozen stuff; for, so far as it was possible for me.
to see from the low shore, wherever these radiant
and lovely figures were assembled I noticed great
rents, spacious chasms, narrow and tortuous
ravines. Certain appearances, however, caus:
me to suspect that this island was steadily
decaying, and that, large as it still was, it had
been many times vaster when it broke away from
the continent about the Pole. Naturally, as it
Progressed northwards it would dissolve, and the
Cracking and thunderous noises I had heard in
the night, sounds very audible now when I gave
them, my attention—sometimes a hollow distant
rumbling as of some great body dislodged and
set Folling far off, sometimes an inwards roaring
grack or blast of noise like the report of a cannon
fired, deep down—advised me jº the work of
dissolution. * Perpetually progressing, and that
º Prodigious island which appeared to barricade
t . lº might in a few months be dwindled
11] M ºlead.”. of rapidly dissolving bergs.
out.” *Past ended, I pulled the oar out
th..."... found it jº
flas jë. O º my way with and support
º § the i. ºp !. ºp; The boat was now held
I Which I shook and found very firm.
2’
- "Put an empty beer-bottle in my pocket, meaning
































I AM STARTLED By A DISCOVERy. 59
| to see if I could fill it, if the snow above was
sweet enough to be well-tasted, and then with a
final look at the boat I started.
The slope was extremely craggy. Blocks of
ice lay about, some on top of the others, like the
stones of which the pyramids are built; the white
glare of the snow caused these stones at a little
distance to appear flat—that is, by merging them
into and blending them with the soft brilliance
of the background; and I had sometimes to
warily walk fifty or sixty paces round these
blocks to come at a part of the slope that was
smooth. -
I speedily found, however, that there was no
danger of my being buried by stepping into a
hollow full of snow; for the same hardness was
everywhere, the snow, whether one or twenty feet
deep, offering as solid a surface as the bare ice.
This encouraged me to step out, and I began to
move with some spirit; the exercise was as good
as a fire, and before I was half-way up I was as
warm as ever I had been in my life.
I had come to a stand to fetch a breath, and
was moving on afresh, when, having taken not
half a dozen steps, I spied the figure of a man.
He was in a sitting posture, his back against a
rock that had concealed him. His head was
bowed, and his knees drawn up to a level with his
chin, and his naked hands were clasped upon his
legs. His attitude was that of a person lost in
thought, very easy and calm.
I stopped as if I had been shot through the
heart. Had it been a bear, or a sea-lion, or any
- - --
|

60 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
creature which my mind could instantly have
associated with this white and stirless desolation,
I might have been startled indeed; but no such
amazement could have possessed me as I now
felt. It never entered into my head to doubt that
he was alive, so natural was his attitude, as of one
lost in a mood of tender melancholy.
I stood staring at him, myself motionless, for
some minutes, too greatly astonished and
thunderstruck to note more than that he was a
man. Then I looked about me to see if he had
companions or for some signs of a habitation, but
the ice was everywhere naked. I fixed my eyes
on him again. His hair was above a foot long,
black as ink, and the blacker maybe for the
contrast of the snow. His beard and mustachios,
which were also of this raven hue, fell to his girdle,
He wore a great yellow flapping hat, such as was
in fashion among the Spaniards and buccaneers
of the South Sea; but over his ears, for the
warmth of the protection, were squares of flannel,
secured by a very fine red silk handkerchief
knotted under his beard, and this, with his hair
and pale cheeks and black shaggy eyebrows,
gave him a terrible and ghastly appearance. From
his shoulders hung a rich thick cloak lined with
red, and the legs to the height of the knees
were encased in large boots. -
I continued surveying him with my heart beating
fast. . Every instant I expected to see him turn
his head and start to behold me. My emotions
were too tumultuous to analyze, yet I believe I
was more frightened than gladdened by the sight
––

I AM startled by A Discovery. 61
of a fellow-creature, though not long before I had
sighed bitterly for some one to speak to. I
looked around again, prepared to find another one
like him taking stock of me from behind a rock,
and then ventured to approach him by a few steps
the better to see him. He had certainly a
frightful face. It was not only the length of his
coal-black hair and beard; it was the hue of his
skin, a greenish ashen colour, an unspeakably
hideous complexion, sharpened on the one hand
by the red handkerchief over his ears and on
the other by the dazzle of the snow. Then,
again, there was the extreme strangeness of his
Costume.
I coughed loudly, holding my pole in readiness
for whatever might befall, but he did not stir; I
then holloaed, and was answered by the echoes of
my own voice among the rocks. His stillness
persuaded me he was in one of those deep slum-
bers which fall upon a man in frozen places, for I
could not persuade myself he was dead, so living
was his posture.
This will not do, thought I; so I went close to
him and peered into his face.
His eyes were fixed; they resembled glass
painted as eyes, the colours faded. He had a
broad belt round his waist, and the hilt of a kind
of cutlass peeped from under his cloak. Other-
wise he was unarmed. I thought he breathed,
and seemed to see a movement in his breast, and
I took him by the shoulder; but in the hurry of
my feelings I exerted more strength than I was
sensible of. I pushed him with the violence of
º
.
|
º
º




- - ---
62 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
sudden trepidation; my hand slipped off his
shoulder, and he fell on his side, exactly as a
statue would, preserving his posture as though,
like a statue, he had been chiselled out of marble
or stone.
I started back frightened by his fall, in which
my fears found a sort of life; but it was soon
clear to me his rigidity was that of a man frozen
to death. His very hair and beard stood stiff, as
before, as though they were some exquisite coun-
terfeit in ebony. Perfectly satisfied that he was
dead, I stepped round to the other side of him,
and set him up as I had found him. He was as
heavy as if he had been alive, and when I put his
back to the rock his posture was exactly as it had
been, thºt of one deeply meditating.
Who inad this man been in life P. How had he
fallen into this pass? How long had he been dead
there, seated as I saw him P
These were speculations not to be resolved by
conjecture. On looking at the rock against which
he leaned and observing its curvature, it seemed
to me that it had formed part of a cave, or of
some large, deep hole of ice; and this I was sure
must have been the case, for it is certain that,
had this body remained long unsheltered, it must
have been hidden by the snow. ---
I concluded then that the unhappy man had
been cast away upon this ice whilst it was under
bleaker heights than these parallels, and that he
had crawled into a hollow, and perished in that
melancholic sitting posture. But in what year
had his fate come upon him? I had made several


















I AM startled by A Discovery. 63
voyages into distant places in my time and seen
a great variety of people; but I had never met
any man habited as that body. He had the
appearance of a Spanish or French cut-throat of
the middle of last century, and of earlier times
yet; for it may be known to you that the
buccaneers of the Spanish Main and the South
Sea were great lovers of finery; they had a
strange theatric taste in their choice of costumes,
which, as you will suppose, they had abundant
opportunities for gratifying out of the many rich
and glittering wardrobes that fell into their hands;
and this man, I say, with his large fine hat, hand-
some cloak and boots, coupled with the villainous
cast of his countenance and the frightful appear-
ance his long hair gave him, rendered hiº; to my
notions the completest figure that could b: ima-
gined of one of those rogues who earned their
living as pirates.
Thinking I might find something on his person
to acquaint me with his story or that would furnish
me with some idea of the date of his being cast
away, I pulled his cloak aside and searched his
pockets. His legs were thickly cased in two or
three pairs of breeches, the outer pair being of a
dark green cloth. He also wore a handsome red
waistcoat, laced, and a stout coat of a kind of
frieze. In his coat pocket I found a silver
tobacco-box, a small glass flask fitted with a
silver band and half full of an amber-coloured
liquor, hard froze; and in his waistcoat pocket a
gold watch, shaped like an apple, the back
curiously chased and inlaid with jewels of several







64 THE Frozen Pirate.
kinds, forming a small letter M. The hands
Pointed to twenty minºs. three. A key of
* ºngº, shape and a number ºf seals, trinkets,
and the like, were attached to the watch.
These things, together with a knife, a key, a
thick plain silver ring, and some Spanish pieces
in gold and silver wº what I found on this man.
here was Pºthing to tell me who he was nor how
long he had been on the island.
The *arching him was the most disagreeable
jºb I ever undertook in my life. His iron-like
rigidity made him seem to resist me, and the
swaying of his back against, the rock to the
*ºns,of my hand was so fill of life that twice
'liſed him frighteji, " "), touching his
ºaked hand by accident." discovered that the
flesh of it movéd "Pon the bones as you pull a
glove off and on. I had had enough of him, and
walked *Way feeling sick. If ... had companions,
° him, I did not want to See
















The Frozen Schooner. 65
about me, for after such a sight as that dead man
I was never to know what new wonder I might
stumble upon. About a quarter of a mile on my
left—that is, on my left whilst I kept my face to
the slope—there was the appearance of a ravine
not discernible from where the boat lay. When
I was within twenty feet of the summit of the cliff,
the acclivity continuing gentle to the very brow,
but much broken, as I have said, I noticed this
hollow, and more particularly a small collection of
ice-forms, not nearly so large as the other groups
of this kind, but most dainty and lovely neverthe-
less. They showed as the heads of trees might
to my ascent, and when I had got a little higher I
observed that they were formed upon the hither
side of the hollow, as though the convulsion which
had wrought that chasm had tossed up those
exquisite caprices of ice. However, I was too
eager to view the prospect from the top of the
cliff to suffer my admiration to detain me; in a
- few minutes I had gained the brow, and, clamber-
ing on to a mass of rock, Psent my gaze around.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FROZEN SCHOONER.
I found myself on the summit of a kind of table-
land; vast bodies of ice, every block weighing
hundreds and perhaps thousands of tons lay
scattered over it; yet for the space of a mile or
so the character was that of flatness. Southwards
the range went upwards to a coastal front of some
hundred feet, with a huddle of peaks and strange
F











THE FRozen PIRATE.
configurations behind soaring to an elevation from
the sea-line of two or three hundred feet. North.
wards the range sloped gradually, with such a
shelving of its hinder part that I could catch a
glimpse of a little space of the blue sea that way.
From this I perceived that whatever thickness
and surface of ice lay southwards, in the north it
was attenuated to the shape of a wedge, so that
its extreme breadth where it projected its cape of
extremity would not exceed a musket shot.
A companion might have qualified in my mind
something of the sense of prodigious loneliness and
desolation inspired by that huge picture of dazzling
uneven whiteness, blotting out the whole of
the south-east ocean, rolling in hills of blinding
brilliance into the blue heavens, and curving and
dying out into an airy film of silvery-azure radiº
ance leagues away down in the south-west. But
to my solitary eye the spectacle was an amazing
and confounding one.
If I had not seen the tract of dark blue water
in the north-east, I might have imagined that this
island stretched as far into the east and north as
it did in the south and west. And one thing I
quickly enough understood; that if I wanted to
behold the ocean on the east side of the ice I
should have to journey the breadth of the range,
which here, where I was, might mean one or five.
miles, for the blocks and lumps hid the view, and
how far off the edge of the cliffs on the other side
might be I could not therefore gather. This was
not to be dreamt of, and therefore to this extent
my climb had been useless.


The Frozen Schooner. 67
Being on the top of the range now, I could
plainly hear the noises of the splitting and internal
convulsions of this vast formation. The sounds
are not describable. Sometimes they seemed
like the explosions of guns, sometimes like the
growlings and mutterings of huge fierce beasts,
sometimes like smart single echoless blasts of
thunder; and sometimes you heard a singular sort
of hissing or snarling, such as iron makes when
speeding over ice, only when this noise happened
the volume of it was so great that the atmosphere
trembled upon the ear with it. It was impossible
to fix the direction of these sounds, the island was
full of them; and always sullenly booming upon the
breeze was the voice of the ocean swell bursting
in foam against the ice-coast that confronted it.
You may talk of the solitude of a Selkirk, but
surely the spirit of loneliness in him could not
rival the unutterable emotion of solitariness that
filled my mind as I sent my gaze over those miles
of frozen stirless whiteness. He had the sight of
fair pastures, of trees making a twinklſhg twilighton
the sward, of grassy savannahs and pleasant slopes
of hills; the air was illuminated by the glorious
plumage of flying birds; the bleat of goats broke
the stillness in the valleys; there was a golden
regale for his eye, and his other senses were
gratified with the perfumes of rich flowers and
engaging concerts among the trembling leaves.
Above all, there was the soothing warmth of a
delicious climate. But out upon those heaped
and spreading plains of snow nothing stirred, if it
were not once that I was startled by a loud report,
F o
-
º
|
º
º
º
º




68 THE FRozen PIRATE.
-
and spied a rock about half a mile away slide
down the edge of the flat cliff and tumble into the
sea. Nothing stirred, I say; there was an
affrighting solemnity of motionlessness every:
where. The countenance of this plain glared like
a great dead face at the sky; neither sympathy,
nor fancy, no, not the utmost forces of the image
nation, could witness expression in it. Its un:
meaningness was ghastly, and the ghastlier to:
the greatness of its bald and lifeless stare.
I turned my eyes seawards; haply it was the
whiteness that gave the ocean the extraordinarily
rich dye I found in it. The expanse went in
flowing folds of violet into the nethermost heavens
and though God knows what extent of horizon |
surveyed, the line of it, as clear as glass, ran
without the faintest flaw to amuse my heart with
even an instant's hope.
There was more weight, however, in the wind
than I had supposed. It blew from the west
of north, and was an exquisitely frosty wind.
despite the quarter whence it came. It swept in
moans among the rocks, and there were tones in
it that recalled the stormy mutterings we had
heard in the blasts which came upon the brig
before the storm boiled down upon her. But my
imagination was now so tight-strung as to be
unwholesomely and unnaturally responsive tº
impulses and influences which at another time
had not noticed. There were a few heavy clouds
in the north-east, so steam-like that méthought
they borrowed their complexion from the snow
on the island's cape there. I was pretty sure,




























ºr
THE FROzEN SCHOONER. 69
however, that there was wind behind them, for if
the roll of the ocean did not signify heavy weather
near to, then what else it betokened I could not
imagine. -
I cannot express to you how the very soul
within me shrank from putting to sea in the
little boat. There was no longer the support of
the excitement and terror of escaping from a
sinking vessel. I stood upon an island as solid
as land, and the very sense of security it imparted
rendered the boat an object of terror, and the
obligation upon me to launch into yonder mighty
space as frightful as a sentence of death. Yet I
could not but consider that it would be equally
shocking to me to be locked up in this slowly
crumbling body of ice—nay, tenfold more shocking,
and that, if I had to choose between the boat and
this hideous solitude and sure starvation, I would
cheerfully accept fifty times over again the perils
º
º
º
º
|
of a navigation in my tiny ark.
This reflection comforted me somewhat, and
whilst I thus mused I remained standing with my
eyes upon the little group of fanciful fanes and
spires of ice on the edge of the abrupt hollow. I
had been too preoccupied to take close notice;
on a sudden I started, amazed by an appearance
too exquisitely perfect to be credible. The sun
shone with a fine white frosty brilliance in the
north-east; some of these spikes and figures of
ice reflected the radiance in several colours. In
places where they were wind-swept of their snow
and showed the naked ice, the hues were won-
drously splendid, and, mingling upon the sight,
º
º
º
º
º
º
º
º








7O The Frozen Pirate.
formed a kind of airy, rainbow-like veil that com.
plicated the whole congregation of white shaft
and mani-tinctured spire, the marble column, the
alabaster steeple into a confused but most sur.
prisingly dainty and shining scene.
It was whilst looking at this that my eye
traced, a little distance beyond, the form of a
ship's spars and rigging. Through the labyrinth
of the ice outlines I clearly made out two masts,
with two square yards on the foremast, the
rigging perfect so far as it went, for the figuration
showed no more than half the height of the masts,
the lower parts being apparently hidden behind
the edge of the hollow. I have said that this
coast to the north abounded in many groups of
beautiful fantastic shapes, suggesting a great
variety of objects, as the forms of clouds do, but
nothing perfect; but here now was something in
ice that could not have been completer, more
symmetrical, more faultlessly proportioned had it
been the work of an artist. I walked close to it
and a little way around so as to obtain a clearer
view, and then getting a fair sight of the
appearance I halted again, transfixed with amaze-
ment.
The fabric appeared as if formed of frosted
glass. The masts had a good rake, and with a
seaman's eye I took notice of the furniture,
observing the shrouds, stays, backstays, braces to
be perfect. Nay, as though the spirit artist of
this fragile glittering pageant had resolved to
omit no detail to complete the illusion, there stood
a vane at the masthead, shining like a tongue of

THE FROZEN SCHOONER. 7 t
ice against the soft blue of the sky. Come,
thought I, recovering from my wonder, there is
more in this than it is possible for me to guess by
staring from a distance; so, striking my pole into
the snow, I made carefully towards the edge of the
hollow. -
The gradual unfolding of the picture prepared
my mind for what I could not see till the brink
was reached; then, looking down, I beheld a
schooner-rigged vessel lying in a sort of cradle of
ice, stern-on to the sea. A man bulked out with
frozen snow, so as to make his shape as great as
a bear, leaned upon the rail with a slight upwards
inclination of his head, as though he were in the
act of looking fully up to hail me. His posture
was even more lifelike than that of the man under
the rock, but his garment of snow robbed him of
that reality of vitality which had startled me in
the other, and the instant I saw him I knew him
to be dead. He was the only figure visible.
The whole body of the vessel was frosted by the
Snow into the glassy aspect of the spars and
rigging, and the sunshine striking down made a
beautiful prismatic picture of the silent ship.
She was a very old craft. The snow had
moulded itself upon her and enlarged without
Spoiling her form. I found her age in the structure
of her bows, the headboards of which curved
very low round to the top of the stem, forming a
kind of well there, the afterpart of which was
framed by the forecastle bulkhead, after the
fashion of shipbuilding in vogue in the reign of
Anne and the first two Georges. Her topmasts
*::..
º,
nº
º
º



72 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
|
were standing, but her jibboom was rigged in. I
could find no other evidence of her people having
snugged her for these winter quarters, in which
she had been manifestly lying for years and years.
I traced the outlines of six small cannons covered
with snow, but resting with clean-sculptured forms
in their white coats; a considerable piece of
ordnance aft, and several petararoes or swivel.
pieces upon the after-bulwark rails. Gaffs and
booms were in their places, and the sails furled
upon them. The figuration of the main hatch
showed a small square, and there was a com-
panion or hatch-cover abaft the mainmast.
There was no trace of a boat. She had a flush
or level deck from the well in the bows to a
fathom or so past the main-shrouds; it was then
broken by a short poop-deck, which went in a
great spring or rise to the stern, that was after
the pink style, very narrow and tall.
Though I write, this description coldly, let it
not be supposed that I was not violently agitated
and astonished almost into the belief that what I
beheld was a mere vision, a phenomenon. The
sight of the body I examined did not nearly so
greatly astound me as the spectacle of this ice-
locked schooner. It was easy to account for the
presence of , a dead man. My own situation,
indeed, sufficiently solved the riddle of that corpse.
But the ship, perfect in all respects, was like a
stroke of magic. She lay with a slight list or
inclination to larboard, but on the whole tolerably
upright, owing to the corpulence of her bilge.
The hollow or ravine that formed her bed went
1
I Los E My BoAT. 73
with a sharp incline under her stern to the sea,
which was visible from the top of the cliffs here
through the split in the rocks. The shelving of
the ice put the wash of the ocean at a distance
of a few hundred feet from the schooner; but
I calculated that the vessel's actual elevation
above the water-line, supposing you to measure
it with a plummet up and down, did not exceed
twenty feet, if so much, the hollow in which she
rested being above twenty feet deep.
It was very evident that the schooner had in
years gone by got embayed in this ice when it
was far to the southward, and had in course of
time been built up in it by floating masses. For
how old the ice about the poles may be who can
tell ? In those sunless worlds the frozen con-
tinents may well possess the antiquity of the land.
And who shall name the monarch who filled the
throne of Britain when this vast field broke away
from the main and started on its stealthy naviga-
tion sunwards?
CHAPTER IX.
I LOSE MY BOAT.
I LINGERED, I daresay, above twenty minutes
contemplating this singular crystal fossil of a ship,
and considering whether I should go down to her
and ransack her for whatever might answer my
turn. But she looked so darkly secret under her
white garb, and there was something so terrible in
the aspect of the motionless snow-clad sentinel
who leaned upon the rail, that my heart failed me,
\ -
º
º




I 74 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
and I very easily persuaded myself to believe that,
first, it would take me longer to penetrate and
search her than it was proper I should be away
from the boat; that, second, it was scarce to be
supposed her crew had left any provisions in her,
or that, if stores there were, they would be fit to
eat; and that, finally, my boat was so small it
would be rash to put into her any the most trifling
matter that was not essential to the preservation
of my life.
So, concluding to have nothing to do with the
ghostly sparkling fabric, I started for the body
under the rock, and with some pain and staggering,
the ice being very jagged, lumpish, and deceitful
to the tread, arrived at it.
Nothing but the desire to possess the fine warm
cloak could have tempted me to handle or even
to cast my eye upon the dead man again. I
found myself more Scared by him now than at
first. His attitude was so lifelike that, though I
knew him to be a corpse, had he risen on a sudden
the surprise of it could hardly have shocked me
more than the astonishment his posture raised.
As a skeleton he could not have so chilled and
awed me; but so well preserved was his flesh by
the cold, that it was hard to persuade myself he
was not breathing, and that, though he feigned to
be gazing downwards, he was not secretly
observing me.
His beard was frozen as hard as a bush, and it
crackled unpleasantly to the movement of my
hands, which I was obliged to force under it to
unhook the silver chain that confined the cloak

I LOSE My BoAt. 75
about his neck. I felt like a thief, and stole a
glance over either shoulder as though, forsooth,
some strangely clad companion of his should be
creeping upon me unawares. Then, thought I,
since I have the cloak I may as well take the
watch, flask, and tobacco-box, as I had before
resolved; and so I dipped my hand into his
pockets, and without another glance at his fierce
still face made for the boat.
I now noticed for the first time, so over-
whelmingly had my discoveries occupied my
attention, that the wind had freshened and was
blowing briskly and piercingly. When I had
first started upon the ascent of the slope, the
wind had merely wrinkled the swell as the large
bodies ran; but those wrinkles had become little
seas, which flashed into foam after a short race,
and the whole surface of the ocean was a
brilliant blue tremble. I came to a halt to view
the north-east sky before the brow of the rocks
hid it, and saw that clouds were congregating
there, and some of them blowing up to where the
sun hung, these resembling in shape and colour
the compact puff of the first discharge of a cannon
before the smoke spreads on the air. What
should I do? I sank into a miserable perplexity.
If it was going to blow what good could attend
my departure from this island 2 It was an
adverse wind, and when it freshened I could not
choose but run before it, and that would drive me
clean away from the direction I required to steer
in. Yet if I was to wait upon the weather, for
how long should I be kept a prisoner in this




76 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
- - - º
horrid place? True, a southerly wind might
spring up to-morrow, but it might be otherwise, or
come in a hard gale; and if I faltered now I might
go on hesitating, and then my provisions would
give out, and God alone knows how it would end
with me. Besides, the presence of the two bodies
nature clamoured in me to be gone, a summons my
judgment could not resist, for reason often
misleads, but instincts never.
I fell again to my downward march and looked
towards my boat—that is to say, I looked towards
the part of the ice where the little haven in which she
lay had been, and I found both boat and haven gone!
I rubbed my eyes and stared again, Tush,
thought I, I am deceived by the ice. I glanced
at the slope behind to keep me to my bearings,
and once more sought the haven; but the rock
that had formed it was gone, the blue swell rolled
brimming past the line of shore there, and my eye
following the swing of a fold, I saw the boat about
three cables length distant out upon the water,
swinging steadily away into the south, and
showing and disappearing with the heave. -
The dead man's cloak fell from my arm; I
uttered a cry of anguish ; I clasped my hands and
lifted them to God, and looked up to Him. I was
for kicking off my boots and plunging into the
water, but, mad as I was, I was not so mad as that;
and mad I should have been to attempt it, for I
could not swim twenty strokes, and had I been the
stoutest swimmer that ever breasted the salt spray
the cold must speedily put an end to my misery.
made the island fearful to my imagination, and


I Lose My BoAT. 77
What was to be done? Nothing I could
only look idly at the receding boat with reeling
brain. The full blast of the wind was upon her,
and helping the driving action of the billows. I
perceived that she was irrecoverable, and yet I
stood watching, watching, watching! my head
burning with the surgings of twenty impracticable
schemes. I cast myself down and wept, stood up
afresh and looked at the boat, then cried to God
for help and mercy, bringing my hands to my
throbbing temples, and in that posture straining
my eyes at the fast vanishing structure. She was
the only hope I had—my sole chance. My little
stock of provisions was in her—oh, what was Ito do 2
Though I was at some distance from the place
where what I have called my haven had been,
there was no need for me to approach it to
understand how my misfortune had come about.
It was likely enough that the very crevice in which
I had jammed the mast to secure the boat by was
a deep crack that the increased swell had wholly
split, so that the mast had tumbled when the rock
floated away and liberated the boat.
The horror that this white and frightful scene of
desolation had at the beginning filled me with was
renewed with such violence when I saw that my
boat was lost, and I was to be a prisoner on the
death-haunted waste, that I fell down in a sort of
swoon, like one partly stunned, and had any
person come along and seen me he would have
thought me as dead as the body on the hill or the
corpse that kept its dismal look-out from the deck
of the schooner.
--




78 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
My senses presently returning, I got up, and the
rock upon which I stood being level, I fell tº
pacing it with my hands locked behind me, my
head sunk, lost in thought. The wind was
steadily freshening; it split with a howling noise
upon the ice-crags and unequal surfaces, and spun
with a hollow note past my ear; and the thunder
of the breakers on the other side of the island was
deepening its tone. The sea was lifting and
whitening; something of mistiness had grown up
over the horizon that made a blue dulness of the
junction of the elements there; but though a few
clouds out of the collection of vapour in the north-
east had floated to the zenith and were sailing
down the south-west heaven, the azure remained
pure and the sun very frostily white and
sparkling.
I am writing a strange story with the utmost
candour, and trust that the reader will not judge
me severely for my confession of weakness, or
consider me as wanting in the stuff out of which
the hardy seaman is made for owning to having
shed tears and been stunned by the loss of my
little boat and slender stock of food. You will
say, “It is not in the power of the dead to hurt
a man; what more pitiful and harmless than a
poor unburied corpse 2 " I answer, “True,” and
declare that of the two bodies, as dead men, I was
not afraid; but this mass of frozen solitude was
about them, and they took a frightful character
from it; they communicated an element of death
to the desolation of the snow-clad island; their
presence made a principality of it for the souls of
-


I Lose My BoA.T. 79
dead sailors, and into their lifelike stillness it put
its own supernatural spirit of loneliness; so that
to my imagination, disordered by suffering and
exposure, this melancholy region appeared a scene
without parallel on the face of the globe, a place
of doom and madness, as dreadful and wild
as the highest mood of the poet could reach up
to.
By this time the boat was out of sight. I
looked and looked, but she was gone. Then came
my good angel to my help and put some courage
into me. “After all,” thought I, “what do I
dread P Death it can but come to that. It is
not long ago that Captain Rosy cried to me, “A
man can die but once. He'll not perish the quicker
for contemplating his end with a stout heart.”
He that so spoke is dead. The worst is over for
him. Were he a babe resting upon his mother's
breast he could not sleep more soundly, be more
tenderly lulled, nor be freer from such anguish as
now afflicts me who cling to life, as if this—this,”
I cried, looking around me, “were a paradise of
warmth and beauty. I must be a man, ask God
for courage to meet whatever may betide, and
stoutly endure what cannot be evaded.”
Do not smile at the simple thoughts of a poor º
-
-º
castaway sailor. I hold them still to be good |
reasoning, and had my flesh been as strong as my
spirit they had availed, I don't doubt. But I was -
chilled to the marrow ; the mere knowing that
there was nothing to eat sharpened my appetite,
and I felt as if I had not tasted food for a week;
and here then were physical conditions which
*... ---
sº
- -
- -
–




7O THE Frozen PIRATE.
formed a kind of airy, rainbow-like veil that com:
plicated the whole congregation of white shaft
and mani-tinctured spire, the marble column, the
alabaster steeple into a confused but most sur.
prisingly dainty and shining scene.
It was whilst looking at this that my eye
traced, a little distance beyond, the form of a
ship's spars and rigging . Through the labyrinth
of the ice outlines I clearly made out two masts,
with two square yards on the foremast, the
rigging perfect so far as it went, for the figuration
showed no more than half the height of the masts,
the lower parts being apparently hidden behind
the edge of the hollow. I have said that this
coast to the north abounded in many groups of
beautiful fantastic shapes, suggesting a great
variety of objects, as the forms of clouds do, but
nothing perfect; but here now was something in
ice that could not have been completer, more
symmetrical, more faultlessly proportioned had it
been the work of an artist. I walked close to it
and a little way around so as to obtain a clearer
view, and then getting a fair sight of the
appearance I halted again, transfixed with amaze-
ment.
The fabric appeared as if formed of frosted
glass. The masts had a good rake, and with a
seaman's eye I took notice of the furniture,
observing the shrouds, stays, backstays, braces tº
be perfect. Nay, as though the spirit artist of
this fragile glittering pageant, had resolved tº
omit no detail to complete the illusion, there stood |
a vane at the masthead, shining like a tongue of





THE FROzEN Schooner. 71
ice against the soft blue of the sky. Come,
thought I, recovering from my wonder, there is
more in this than it is possible for me to guess by
staring from a distance; so, striking my pole into
the snow, I made carefully towards the edge of the
hollow,
The gradual unfolding of the picture prepared
my mind for what I could not see till the brink
was reached; then, looking down, I beheld a
schooner-rigged vessel lying in a sort of cradle of
ice, stern-on to the sea. A man bulked out with
frozen snow, so as to make his shape as great as
a bear, leaned upon the rail with a slight upwards
inclination of his head, as though he were in the
act of looking fully up to hail me. His posture
was even more lifelike than that of the man under
the rock, but his garment of snow robbed him of
that reality of vitality which had startled me in
the other, and the instant I saw him I knew him
to be dead. He was the only figure visible.
The whole body of the vessel was frosted by the
Snow into the glassy aspect of the spars and
ſigging, and the sunshine striking down made a
beautiful prismatic picture of the silent ship.
She was a very old craft. The snow had
moulded itself upon her and enlarged without
Spoiling her form. I found her age in the structure
of her bows, the headboards of which curved
Very low round to the top of the stem, forming a
kind of well there, the afterpart of which was
framed by the forecastle bulkhead, after the
ſashion of shipbuilding in vogue in the reign of
Anne and the first two Georges. Her topmasts
wºr-.
- ~





72 THE FRozen PIRAtt.
were standing, but her jibboom was rigged in
could find no other evidence of her people having
snugged her for these winter quarters, in which
she had been manifestly lying for years and years.
I traced the outlines of six small cannons covered
with snow, but resting with clean-sculptured forms
in their white coats; a considerable piece of
ordnance aft, and several petararoes or swivel:
pieces upon the after-bulwark rails. Gaffs and
booms were in their places, and the sails furled
upon them. The figuration of the main hatch
showed a small square, and there was a com:
panion or hatch-cover abaft the mainmask
There was no trace of a boat. She had a flush
or level deck from the well in the bows to a
fathom or so past the main-shrouds; it was them
broken by a short poop-deck, which went in a
great spring or rise to the stern, that was after
the pink style, very narrow and tall.
Though I write this description coldly, let it
not be supposed that I was not violently agitated
and astonished almost into the belief that what I
beheld was a mere vision, a phenomenon. The
sight of the body I examined did not nearly, so
greatly astound me as the spectacle of this ice-
jocked schooner. It was easy to account for the
presence of a dead man. My own situation,
indeed, sufficiently solved the riddle of that corpse.
But the ship, perfect in all respects, was like a
stroke of magic. She lay with a slight list or
inclination to larboard, but on the whole tolerably |
upright, owing to the corpulence of her bilge.
The hollow or ravine that formed her bed went





I Lose MY BOAT. 73
with a sharp incline under her stern to the sea,
which was visible from the top of the cliffs here
through the split in the rocks. The shelving of
the ice put the wash of the ocean at a distance
of a few hundred feet from the schooner; but
I calculated that the vessel's actual elevation
above the water-line, supposing you to measure
it with a plummet up and down, did not exceed
twenty feet, if so much, the hollow in which she
rested being above twenty feet deep.
It was very evident that the schooner had in
years gone by got embayed in this ice when it
was far to the southward, and had in course of
time been built up in it by floating masses. For
how old the ice about the poles may be who can
tell ? In those sunless worlds the frozen con-
tinents may well possess the antiquity of the land.
And who shall name the monarch who filled the
throne of Britain when this vast field broke away
from the main and started on its stealthy naviga-
tion sunwards?
CHAPTER IX.
I LOSE MY BOAT.
I LINGERED, I daresay, above twenty minutes
contemplating this singular crystal fossil of a ship,
and considering whether I should go down to her
and ransack her for whatever might answer my
turn. But she looked so darkly secret under her
white garb, and there was something so terrible in
the aspect of the motionless snow-clad sentinel
who leaned upon the rail, that my heart failed me,
i
74 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
and I very easily persuaded myself to believe that
first, it would take me longer to penetrate and
search her than it was proper I should be away
from the boat; that, second, it was scarce to be
supposed her crew had left any provisions in her
or that, if stores there were, they would be fit tº
eat; and that, finally, my boat was so small it
would be rash to put into her any the most trifling
matter that was not essential to the preservation
of my life.
So, concluding to have nothing to do with the
ghostly sparkling fabric, I started for the body
under the rock, and with some pain and staggering
the ice being very jagged, lumpish, and deceitful
to the tread, arrived at it.
Nothing but the desire to possess the fine warm
cloak could have tempted me to handle or even
to cast my eye upon the dead man again. I
found myself more scared by him now than at
first. His attitude was so lifelike that, though I
knew him to be a corpse, had he risen on a sudden
the surprise of it could hardly have shocked me
more than the astonishment his posture raised.
As a skeleton he could not have so chilled and
awed me; but so well preserved was his flesh by
the cold, that it was hard to persuade myself he
was not breathing, and that, though he feigned to
be gazing downwards, he was not secretly
observing me.
His beard was frozen as hard as a bush, and it
crackled unpleasantly to the movement of my
hands, which I was obliged to force under it to
unhook the silver chain that confined the cloak
-





I LOSE MY BOAT. 75
about his neck. I felt like a thief, and stole a
glance over either shoulder as though, forsooth,
Some strangely clad companion of his should be
creeping upon me unawares. Then, thought I,
since I have the cloak I may as well take the
Watch, flask, and tobacco-box, as I had before
resolved; and so I dipped my hand into his
pockets, and without another glance at his fierce
still face made for the boat.
I now noticed for the first time, so over-
whelmingly had my discoveries occupied my
attention, that the wind had freshened and was
blowing briskly and piercingly. When I had
first started upon the ascent of the slope, the
wind had merely wrinkled the swell as the large
bodies ran; but those wrinkles had become little
Seas, which flashed into foam after a short race,
and the whole surface of the ocean was a
brilliant blue tremble. I came to a halt to view
the north-east sky before the brow of the rocks
hid it, and saw that clouds were congregating
there, and some of them blowing up to where the
Sun hung, these resembling in shape and colour
the compact puff of the first discharge of a cannon
before the smoke spreads on the air. What
should I do? I sank into a miserable perplexity.
If it was going to blow what good could attend
my departure from this island 2 . It was an
adverse wind, and when it freshened I could not
choose but run before it, and that would drive me
clean away from the direction I required to steer
in. Yet if I was to wait upon the weather, for
how long should I be kept a prisoner in this
76 THE FROZEN PIRATE,
*
horrid place? True, a southerly wind might
spring up to morrow, but it might be otherwise, or
come in a hard gale; and if I faltered now I might
go on hesitating, and then my provisions would
give out, and God alone knows how it would end
with me. Besides, the presence of the two bodies
made the island fearful to my imagination, and
nature clamoured in me to be gone, a summons my
judgment could not resist, for reason often
misleads, but instincts never.
l fell again to my downward march and looked
towards my boat—that is to say, I looked towards
the part of the ice where the little haven in which she
lay had been, and I found both boat and haven gone!
I rubbed my eyes and stared again. Tush,
thought I, I am deceived by the ice. I glanced
at the slope behind to keep me to my bearings,
and once more sought the haven; but the rock
that had formed it was gone, the blue swell rolled
brimming past the line of shore there, and my eye
following the swing of a fold, I saw the boat about
three cables length distant out upon the water,
swinging steadily away into the south, and
showing and disappearing with the heave.
The dead man's cloak fell from my arm; I
uttered a cry of anguish ; I clasped my hands and
lifted them to God, and looked up to Him. I was
for kicking off my boots and plunging into the
water, but, mad as I was, I was not so mad as that;
and mad I should have been to attempt it, for I
could not swim twenty strokes, and had I been the
stoutest swimmer that ever breasted the salt spray
the cold must speedily put an end to my misery.


7 I Lose My BoAT. 77
What was to be done? Nothing ! I could
only look idly at the receding boat with reeling
brain. The full blast of the wind was upon her,
and helping the driving action of the billows. I
perceived that she was irrecoverable, and yet I
stood watching, watching, watching ! my head
burning with the surgings of twenty impracticable
schemes. I cast myself down and wept, stood up
afresh and looked at the boat, then cried to God
for help and mercy, bringing my hands to my
throbbing temples, and in that posture straining
my eyes at the fast vanishing structure. She was
the only hope I had—my sole chance. My little
stock of provisions was in her—oh, what was I to do 2
Though I was at some distance from the place
where what I have called my haven had been,
there was no need for me to approach it to
understand how my misfortune had come about.
It was likely enough that the very crevice in which
I had jammed the mast to secure the boat by was
a deep crack that the increased swell had wholly
split, so that the mast had tumbled when the rock
floated away and liberated the boat.
The horror that this white and frightful scene of
desolation had at the beginning filled me with was
renewed with such violence when I saw that my
boat was lost, and I was to be a prisoner on the
death-haunted waste, that I fell down in a sort of
swoon, like one partly stunned, and had any
person come along and seen me he would have
thought me as dead as the body on the hill or the
corpse that kept its dismal look-out from the deck
of the schooner.
78 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
My senses presently returning, I got up, and the
rock upon which I stood being level, I fell to
pacing it with my hands locked behind me, my
head sunk, lost in thought. The wind was
steadily freshening; it split with a howling noise
upon the ice-crags and unequal surfaces, and spun
with a hollow note past my ear; and the thunder
of the breakers on the other side of the island was
deepening its tone. The sea was lifting and
whitening; something of mistiness had grown up
over the horizon that made a blue dulness of the
junction of the elements there; but though a few
º clouds out of the collection of vapour in the north-
east had floated to the zenith and were sailing
down the south-west heaven, the azure remained
- pure and the sun very frostily white and
sparkling.
º º I am writing a strange story with the utmost
º candour, and trust that the reader will not judge
me severely for my confession of weakness, or
consider me as wanting in the stuff out of which
the hardy seaman is made for owning to having
shed tears and been stunned by the loss of my
little boat and slender stock of food. You will
say, “It is not in the power of the dead to hurt
a man; what more pitiful and harmless than a
poor unburied corpse 2 ” I answer, “True,” and
declare that of the two bodies, as dead men, I was
not afraid; but this mass of frozen solitude was
about them, and they took a frightful character
from it; they communicated an element of death
to the desolation of the snow-clad island; their
presence made a principality of it for the souls of
-
*
*-*.



*
dead sailors, and into their lifelike stillness it put
its own supernatural spirit of loneliness; so that
to my imagination, disordered by suffering and
exposure, this melancholy region appeared a scene
without parallel on the face of the globe, a place
of doom and madness, as dreadful and wild
as the highest mood of the poet could reach up
to.
By this time the boat was out of sight. I
looked and looked, but she was gone. Then came
my good angel to my help and put some courage
into me. “After all,” thought I, “what do I
dread? Death it can but come to that. It is
not long ago that Captain Rosy cried to me, “A
man can die but once. He'll not perish the quicker
(ºr contemplating his end with a stout heart.”
He that so spoke is dead. The worst is over for
him. Were he a babe resting upon his mother's
breast he could not sleep more soundly, be more
tenderly lulled, nor be freer from such anguish as
how afflicts me who cling to life, as if this—this,”
| cried, looking around me, “were a paradise of
Warmth and beauty. I must be a man, ask God
for courage to meet whatever may betide, and
Stoutly endure what cannot be evaded.”
Do not smile at the simple thoughts of a poor
tastaway sailor. I hold them still to be good
reasoning, and had my flesh been as strong as my
Spirit they had availed, I don't doubt. But I was
chilled to the marrow; the mere knowing that
there was nothing to eat sharpened my appetite,
and I felt as if I had not tasted food for a week;
and here then were physical conditions which
I LoSE MY BOAT. 79
**:
*º-º:
80 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
broke ruinously into philosophy and staggered
religious trust.
My mind went to the schooner, yet, I felt a
extraordinary recoil within me when I thought ºf
seeking an asylum in her. I had the figure of her
before my fancy, viewed the form of the man, 0.
her deck, and the idea of penetrating her dark
interior and seeking shelter in a fabric that time
and frost and death had wrought into a black
mystery was dreadful to me. Nor was, this all.
it seemed like the very last expression of despair
to board that stirless frame ; to make a dwelling:
place, without prospect of deliverance, in that
ñollow of ice; to become in one sense as dead.*
her lonely mariner, yet preserve all the sensibility
of the living to a condition he was as unconscious
of as the ice that enclosed him.
it must be done nevertheless, thought I;
shall certainly perish from exposure if I ling”
here; besides, how do I know but that I may
discover in that ship some means of escaping from
the island P Assuredly there was plenty of material
in her for the building of a boat, if I could meet
with tools. Or possibly I might find a boat under
hatches, for it was common for vessels of her class
and in her time to stow their pinnaces in the hold,
and, when the necessity for using them arose, tº
hoist them out and tow them astern.
These reflections somewhat heartened me, and
also let me add that the steady mounting of the
wind into a small gale served to reconcile me, not
indeed to the loss of my boat, but to my detentiºn;
for though there might be a miserable languishing




- -
I Los E. My BoAT, 81
end for me here, I could not but believe that there
was certain death, too, out there in that high swell
and in those sharpening peaks of water off whose
foaming heads the wind was blowing the spray.
By which I mean the boat could not have plyed
in such a wind; she must have run, and by running
have carried me into the stormier regions of the
south, where, even if she had lived, I must
speedily have starved for victuals and perished of
cold.
Hope lives like a spark amid the very blackest
embers of despondency. Twenty minutes before I
had awakened from a sort of swoon and was
overwhelmed with misery; and now here was I
taking a collected view of my situation, even to
the extent of being willing to believe that on the
whole it was perhaps as well that I should have
been hindered from putting to sea in my little
eggshell. So at every step we rebel at the
shadowy conducting of the hand of God; yet from
every stage we arrive at we look back and know
the road we have travelled to be the right one
though we start afresh mutinously. Lord, what
patience hast Thou!
I turned my back upon the clamorous ocean
and started to ascend the slope once more. When
I reached the brow of the cliffs I observed
that the clouds had lost their fleeciness and
taken a slatish tinge, were moving fast and
crowding up the sky, insomuch that the sun was
leaping from one edge to another and darting a
keen and frosty light upon the scene. The wind
was bitterly cold, and screamed shrilly in my ears
G
|
º
tº º :*
- - -º




82 THE FROZEN PIRATE,
when I met the full tide of it. The change was
sudden, but it did not surprise me. I knew these
seas, and that our English April is not more
capricious than the weather in them, only that
here the sunny smile, though sparkling, is
frostier than the kiss of death, and brief as the
flight of a musket-ball, whilst the frowns are
'black, savage, and lasting.
I bore the dead man's cloak on my arm and
helped myself along with the oar, and presently
arrived at the brink of the slope in whose hollow
lay the ship as in a cup. The wind made a noisy
howling in her rigging, but the tackling was frozen
so iron hard that not a rope stirred, and the vane
at the masthead was as motionless as any of the
adjacent steeples or pillars of ice. My heart was
dismayed again by the figure of the man. He
was more dreadful than the other because of the
size to which the frozen snow upon his head,
trunk, and limbs had swelled him ; and the half-
rise of his face was particularly startling, as if he
were in the very act of running his gaze softly
upwards. That he should have died in that easy
leaning posture was strange; however, I supposed,
and no doubt rightly, that he had been seized
with a sudden faintness, and had leaned upon the
rail and so expired. ... The cold would quickly
make him rigid and likewise preserve him, and
thus he might have been leaning, contemplating
the ice of the cliffs, for years and years
A wild and dreadful thing for one in my condition
to light on and be forced to think of.
My heart, as I have said, sank in me again at
| I LoSE My BoAT. 83
the sight of him, and fear and awe and super-
stition so worked upon my spirits that I stood
irresolute, and would have gone back had there
been any place to return to. I plucked up after
a little, and, rolling up the cloak into a compact
bundle, flung it with all my strength to the vessel,
and it fell cleverly just within the rail. Then
gripping the oar I started on the descent.
The depth was not great nor the declivity sharp;
but the surface was formed of blocks of ice, like
the collections of big stones you, sometimes en-
counter on the sides of mountains near the base;
and I had again and again to fetch a compass so
as to gain a smaller block down which to drop,
till I was close to the vessel, and here the snow
had piled and frozen into a smooth face. -
The ship lay with a list or inclination to lar-
board. I had come down to her on her starboard
side. She had small channels with long plates,
but her list, on my side, hove them somewhat
high, beyond my reach, and I perceived that to
get aboard I must seek an entrance on the lar-
board hand. This was not hard to arrive at;
indeed, I had but to walk round her, under her
bows. She was so coated with hard snow I could
see nothing of her timbers, and was therefore un-
able to guess at the condition of the hull. She
had a most absurd swelling bilge, and her
buttocks, viewed on a line with her rudder, doubt.
less presented the exact appearance of an apple.
She was sunk in snow to some planks above the
garboard-streak, but her lines forward were fine,
making her almost wedge-shaped, though the flair
-—

G 2
84 The FROzEN PIRATE.
of her bows was great, so that she swelled up like
a balloon to the catheads. She had something
of the look of the barca-longas of half a century
ago—that is, half a century ago from the date of
my adventure; but that which, in sober truth, a |
man would have taken her to be was a vessel
formed of snow, sparred and rigged with glass-
like frosted ice, the artistic caprice of the genius
or spirit of this white and melancholy scene, who,
to complete the mocking illusion, had fashioned
the figure of a man to stand on deck with a
human face toughened into an idle eternal con-
templation.
On the larboard hand the ice pressed close
against the vessel's side, some pieces rising to
the height of her wash-streak. The face of the
hollow was precipitous here, full of cracks and
flaws and sharp, projections. Indeed, had the
breadth of the island been as it was at the
extremity I might have counted upon the first
violent commotion of the sea snapping this part
of the ice, and converting the northern part of the
body into a separate berg.
I climbed without difficulty into the forechains,
the snow being so hard that my feet and hands
made not the least impression on it, and some-
what warily—feeling the government of a peculiar
awe, mounting into a sort of terror indeed—stood
awhile peering over the rail of the bulwarks; then
entered the ship. I ran my eyes swiftly here and
there, for indeed I did not know what might steal
or leap into view. Let it be remembered that I :
was a sailor, with the superstitious feelings of my
ANOTHER STARTLING DISCOVERY. 85
calling in me, and though I do not know that I
actually believed in ghosts and apparitions and
spectrums, yet I felt as if I did; particularly upon
the deck of this silent ship, rendered spirit-like by
the grave of ice in which she lay and by the long
years (as I could not doubt) during which she had
thus rested. Hence, when I slipped off the bul-
wark on to the deck and viewed the ghastly,
white, lonely scene, I felt for the moment as if
this strange discovery of mine was not to be
exhausted of its wonders and terrors by the mere
existence of the ship—in other words, that I must
expect something of the supernatural to enter
into this icy sepulchre, and be prepared for sights
more marvellous and terrifying than frozen corpses.
So I stood looking forward and aft, very swiftly,
and in a way I dare say that a spectator would
have thought laughable enough ; nor was my
imagination soothed by the clear, harping, ring-
ing sounds of the wind seething through the
frozen rigging where the masts rose above the
shelter of the sides of the hollow.
Presently, getting the better of my perturbation,
I walked aft, and, stepping on to the poop-deck,
fell to an examination of the companion or cover-
ing of the after-hatch, which, as I have elsewhere
said, was covered with snow,
CHAPTER X.
ANOTHER STARTI, ING DISCOVERY.
THIS hatch formed the entrance to the cabin, and
there was no other road to it that I could see. I
86 The Frozen PIRATE.
|
I wanted to use it I must first scrape away the
snow; but unhappily I had left my knife in the
boat, and was without any instrument that would
serve me to scrape with. I thought of breaking
the beer-bottle that was in my pocket and scratch-
ing with a piece of the glass; but before doing
this it occurred to me to search the body on the
starboard side.
I approached him as if he were alive and
murderously fierce, and I own I did not like to
touch him. He resembled the figure of a giant
moulded in snow. In life he must have been six
feet and a half tall. The snow had bloated him,
and though he leaned he stood as high as I, who
was of a tolerable stature. The snow was on his
beard and mustaches and on his hair; but these
features were merged and compacted into the
snow on his coat, and as his cap came low and
was covered with snow too, he, with the little
fragment of countenance that remained, the flesh
whereof had the colour and toughness of the skin
of a drum that has been well beaten, submitted as
terrible an object as mortal sight ever rested on.
I say I did not like to touch him, and one reason
was I feared he would tumble; and though I
know not why I should have dreaded this, yet the
apprehension of it so worked in me that for some
time it held me idly staring at him.
But I could not enter the cabin without first
scraping the snow from the companion door; and
the cold, after I had stood a few moments inactive,
was so bitter as to set me craving for shelter.
So I put my hand upon the body, and discovered
ANOTHER STARTLING Discovery, 87
it, as I might have foreseen, frozen to the hard-
ness of steel. His coat—if I may call that a coat
which resembled a robe of snow—fell to within a
few inches of the deck. Steadying the body with
one hand, I heartily tweaked the coat with the
other, hoping thus to rupture the ice upon it; in
doing which I slipped and fell on my back, and in
falling gave a convulsive kick which, striking the
feet of the figure, dislodged them from their frozen
hold of the deck, and down it fell with a mighty
bang alongside of me, and with a loud crackling
noise, like the rending of a sheet of silk.
I was not hurt, and sprang to my feet with the
alacrity of fright, and looking at the body saw
that it had managed by its fall much better than
my hands could have compassed ; for the snow
shroud was cracked and crumpled, slabs of it had
broken away leaving the cloth of the coat visible,
and what best pleased me was the sight of the
end of a hanger forking out from the skirt of the
COat.
Yet to come at it so as to draw the blade from
its scabbard required an intolerable exertion of
strength. The clothes on this body were indeed
like a suit of mail. I never could have believed
that frost served cloth so. At last I managed
to pull the coat clear of the hilt of the hanger;
the blade was stuck, but after I had tugged a bit it
slipped out, and I found it a good piece of
Steel. -
The corpse was habited in jack-boots, a coat of
coarse thick cloth lined with flannel, under this a
kind of blouse or doublet of red cloth, confined
88 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
by a belt with leathern loops for pistols. His
apparel gave me no clue to the age he belonged
to ; it was no better, indeed, than a sort of mas-
querading attire, as though the fashions of more
than one country, and perhaps of more than one
age, had gone to the habiting of him. He looked
a burly, immense creature, as he lay upon the deck
in the same bent attitude in which he had stood
at the rail, and so dreadful was his face, with a
singular diabolical expression of leering malice,
caused by the lids of his eyes being half closed,
that having taken one peep I had no mind to
repeat it, though I was above ten minutes wrest-
ling with his cloak and hanger before I had the
weapon fairly in my hand. -
I walked to the companion and fell to scraping
the snow away from it. ‘’Twas like scratching at
mortar between bricks. But I worked hard, and
presently, with the point of the hanger, felt the
crevice 'twixt the door and its jamb, after which
it was not long before I had carved the door out
of its plate of ice and snow.
The wind was now blowing a fresh gale, and
the howling aloft was extremely melancholy and
dismal. I could not see the ocean, but I heard
it thundering with a hollow roaring note; and
the sharp reports and distant sullen crashing
noises, with nearer convulsions within the ice,
were very frequent.
My labour warmed me, but it also increased my
hunger. While I, hacked and scraped at the
snow I was considering whether I should come
across anything fit to eat in the ship, and if not


Another StARTLING Discovery, 89
what I was to do. Here was a vessel assuredly
not less than fifty or sixty years old, and even
supposing she was almost new when she fell in
with the ice, the date of her disaster would still
carry her back half a century; so that—and
certainly there was much in the appearance of the
body on the rocks to warrant the conjecture—she
would have been thus sepulchred and fossilized
for fifty years -
What, then, in the form of provisions proper
for human food, such as even a famine-driven
stomach could deal with, was I likely to find in
her? Would not her crew have eaten her bare,
devoured the very heart out of her, before they
perished 2
These thoughts weighed heavily in me, but I
toiled on nevertheless, and having cleared the
door of the snow that bound it, I prized it apart with
the hanger and then dragged at it; but the snow
on the deck would not let it open far, and as there
was room for me to squeeze through, I did not
stop to scrape the obstruction away.
A flight of steps sank into the darkness of the
interior, and a cold strange smell floated up, with
something of a dry earthiness of flavour and a
mingling of leather and timber. I fell back a
pace to let something of this smell exhale
before I ventured into an atmosphere that had
been hermetically bottled by the ice in that cabin
since the hour when this little door was last closed.
Superstition was active in me again, and when I
peered into the blackness at the bottom of the
hatch I felt as might a schoolboy on the threshold

























9C THE FROZEN PIRATE.
:
of a haunted room in which he is to be locked up
as a punishment.
I put my foot on the ladder and descended
very slowly indeed, my inclination being strong
the other way, and I kept on looking downwards
in a state of ridiculous fright as though at any
moment I should be seized by the leg; being in too
much confusion of mind to consider that it was
impossible anything living could be below, whilst
a ghostly shadow could not catch hold of me so
as to cause me to feel its grasp. But then if fear
could reason, it would cease to be fear.
On reaching the bottom I remained standing
close against the ladder, striving to see into what
manner of place I was arrived. The glare of the
whiteness of the decks and rocks hung upon my
eyes like a kind of blindness charged with fires
of several colours, and I could not obtain the
faintest glimpse of any part of this interior outside
the sphere of the little square of hazy light which
lay upon the deck at the foot of the steps. The
darkness, indeed, was so deep that I concluded
this was no more than a narrow well formed of
bulkheads, and that the cabin was beyond, and led
to by a door in the bulkhead.
To test this conjecture I extended my arms in a
groping posture and stepped a pace forward,
feeling to right and left, till, having gone five or
six paces from the ladder, my fingers touched
something cold, and feeling it, I passed my hand
down what I instantly knew by the projection of
the nose and the roughness of hair on the upper
lip to be a human face -

Another STARTLING Discovery. 9I
A little reflection might have prepared me for
this, but I had not reflected, at least in this
direction, and was therefore not prepared; and the
horrible thrill of that black chill contact went in
an agony through my nerves, and I burst into a
violent perspiration.
I backed away with all my hair astir, and then
shot up the ladder as if the devil had been behind
me; and when I reached the deck I was
trembling so violently that I had to lean against
the companion lest my knees should give way.
Never in all my time had I received such a fright
as this; but then I had gone to it in a fright, and
was exactly in the state of mind to be terrified out
of my senses. My soul had been rendered sick
and weak within me by mental and corporeal
suffering; my loneliness, too, was dreadful, and
the wilder and more scaring too for this my
unhappy association with the dead; the shrieking
in the rigging was like the tongue given by endless
packs of hunting phantom wolves, and the
growling and cracking noises of the ice in all
directions would have made one coming new to
this desolate scene suppose that the island of ice
was full of fierce beasts.
But needs must when Old Nick drives; I had
either to find courage to enter the schooner and
search her, and so stand to come across the
means to prolong my life, and perhaps procure
my deliverance, or perish of famine and frost on
deck.
The companion door was small, and being
scarce more than ajar I was not surprised that


92 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
only a very faint light entered by it. If the top
were removed I doubted not I should be able to
get a view of the cabin, enough to show me where
the windows or port-holes were. So I went to
work with the hanger again, insensibly obtaining
a little stock of courage from the mere brandish-
ing of it. In half an hour I had chipped and cut
away the ice round the companion, and then
found it to be one of those old-fashioned clumsy
hatch-covers formerly used in certain kinds of
Dutch ships—namely, a box with a shoulder-
shaped lid. This lid, though heavy, and fitting
with a tongue, I managed to unship, on which
the full square of the hatch lay open to the
sky.
#he light gave me heart. Once more I
descended. After a few moments the bewildering
dazzle of the snow faded off my sight, and I could
see very distinctly.
The cabin was a small room. The forward part
lay in shadow, but I could distinguish the outline
of the mainmast amidships of the bulkhead there.
In the centre of this cabin was a small square
table supported by iron pins, that pierced through
stanchions in such a manner that the table could
at will be raised to the ceiling, and there left for
the conveniency of space.
At this table, seated upon short quaintly-wrought
benches, and immediately facing each other, were
two men. They were incomparably more lifelike
than the frozen figures. The one whose back
was upon the hatchway ladder, being the man
whose face I had stroked, sat upright, in the

Another STARTLING DISCOVERY. 93
posture of a person about to start up, both hands
upon the rim of the table, and his countenance
raised as if, in a sudden terror and agony of death,
he had darted a look to God. So inimitably
expressive of life was his attitude, that though I
knew him to be a frozen body as perished as if
he had died with Adam or Noah, I was sensible of a
breathless wonder in me that the affrighted start
with which he seemed to be rising from the table
was not continued—that, in short, he did not
Spring to his feet with the cry that you seemed to
hear in his posture.
The other figure lay over the table with his
face buried in his arms. He wore no covering to
his head, which was bald, yet his hair on either
side was plentiful and lay upon his arms, and his
beard fluffing up about his buried face gave him
an uncommon shaggy appearance. The other
had on a round fur cap with lappets for the ears.
His body was muffled in a thick ash-coloured
coat; his hair was also abundant, curling long
and black down his back; his cheeks were smooth
manifestly through nature rather than the razor,
and the ends of a small black mustache were
twisted up to his eyes. These were the only
occupants of the cabin, which their presence
rendered terribly ghastly and strange.
There was perhaps something in keeping with
the icy spell of death upon this vessel in the
figure of the man who was bowed over the table,
for he looked as though he slept; but the other
mocked the view with a spectrum of the fever and
passion of life. You would have sworn he had
- *
---r
º
.
º beheld the skeleton hand of the Shadow reaching
- out of the dimness for him; that he had
started back with a curse and cry of horror, and
expired in the very agony of his affrighted
recoil.
The interior was extremely plain: the bulk
heads of a mahogany colour, the decks bare, and
nothing in the form of an ornament saving a silve
crucifix hanging by a nail to the trunk of the
mainmast, and a cage with a frozen bird 0.
gorgeous plumage suspended to the bulkheat
near the hatch. A small lanthorn of an old
pattern dangled over the table, and I noticed tha
it contained two or three inches of candle. Abaſ
the hatchway was a door on the stal board side
which I opened, and found a narrow dark passage.
I could not pierce it with my eye beyond a few
feet; but perceiving within this range the outline
of a little door, I concluded that here were the
berths in which the master and his mates slept.
There was nothing to be done in the dark, and |
bitterly lamented that I had left my tinder-box
and flint in the boat, for then I could have lighted
the candle in the lanthorn.
“Perhaps,” thought I, “one of those figures
may have a tinder-box upon him.”
Custom was now somewhat hardening mº
moreover I was spurred on by mortal anxiety tº
discover if there was any kind of food to be mº
with in the vessel. So I stepped up to the fig"
whose face I had touched, and felt in his pockets;
but neither on him nor on the other did I, ſº
what I wanted, though I was not a little astonish"
94 º THE FROZEN PIRATE,


ANOTHER STARTLING Discovery. 95
to discover in the pockets of the occupants of so
small and humble a ship as this schooner a fine
gold watch as rich as the one I had brought away
from the man on the rocks, and more elegant in
shape, a gold snuffbox set with diamonds, several
rings of "beauty and value lying loose in the
breeches pocket of the man whose face was
hidden, a handful of Spanish pieces in gold,
handkerchiefs of fine silk, and other articles, as
if indeed these fellows had been overhauling
a parcel of booty, and then carelessly returned the
contents to their pockets.
But what I needed was the means of obtaining
a light, so, after casting about, I thought I would
search, the body on deck, and went to it, and to
my great satisfaction discovered what I wanted in
the first pocket I dipped my hand into, though I
had to rip open the mouth of it away from the
Snow with the hanger. -
...I returned to the cabin and lighted the candle,
and carried the lanthorn into the black passage or
corridor. There were four small doors, belonging
to as many berths; I opened the first, and entered
a compartment that smelt so intolerably stale and
fusty that I had to come into the passage again
and fetch a few breaths to humour my nose to the
odour. As in the cabin, however, so here I found
this noxiousness of air was not caused by
putrefaction or any tainting qualities of a vege-
table or animal kind, but by the deadness of the
pent-up air itself, as the foulness of bilge-water is
owing to its being imprisoned from air in the
bottom of the hold.



The Frozen Pirate.
I held up the lanthorn and looked about me.
A glance or two satisfied me that I was in a room
that had been appropriated to the steward and his
mates. A number of dark objects, which on
inspection I found to be hams, were stowed snugly
away in battens under the ceiling or upper-
deck; a cask half full of flour stood in a corner;
near it lay a large coarsesackin which was a quantity
of biscuit, a piece of which I bit and found it as
hard as flint and tasteless, but not in the least
degree mouldy. There were four shelves running
athwartships full of glass, knives and forks, dishes,
and so forth, some of the glass very ehoice and
elegant, and many of the dishes and plates also
very fine, fit for the greatest nobleman's fable,
Under the lower shelf, on the deck, lay a sack of
what I believed to be black stones until, after
turningøne or two of them about, it came upon me
that they were, or had been, I should say, potatoes.
Not to tease you with too many particulars
under this head, let me briefly say that in this
•larder or steward's room I found among other
things several cheeses, a quantity of candles, a
great earthenware pot full of pease, several pounds
of tobacco, about thirty lemons, along with two
small casks and three or four jars, manifestly of
spirits, but of what kind I could not tell. I took
a stout sharp knife from one of the shelves, and
pulling down one of the hams tried to cut it, but
I might as well have striven to slice a piece of
marble. I attempted next to cut a cheese, but
this was frozen as hard as the ham. The lemons,
candles, and tobacco had the same astonishing




I make Further Discoveries. 97
-
quality of stoniness, and nothing yielded to the
touch but the flour. I laid hold of one of the jars,
and thought to pull the stopper out, but it was
frozen hard in the hole it fitted, and I was five
minutes hammering it loose. When it was out I
inserted a steel—used for the sharpening of knives
—and found the contents solid ice, nor was there
the faintest smell to tell me what the spirit or wine
Was.
Never before did plenty offer itself in so mock-
ing a shape. It was the very irony of abundance
-substantial ghostliness and a Barmecide's feast
to my aching stomach.
But there was biscuit not unconquerable by
teeth used to the fare of the sea life, and picking
up a whole one, I sat me down on the edge of a
cask and fell a-munching. One reflection, how-
ever, comforted me, namely, that this petrifaction
by freezing had kept the victuals sweet. I was
sure there was little here that might not be thawed
into relishable and nourishing food and drink by a
good fire. The sight of these stores took such a
weight off my mind that no felon reprieved from
death could feel more elated than I. My fore-
bodings had come to nought in this regard, and
here for the moment my grateful spirits were
content to stop.
CHAPTER XI.
* I MAKE FURTHER DISCOVERIES. |
So long as I moved about and worked I did not
feel the cold; but if I stood or sat for a couple of
H
-









98 THE FROzEN Prºare.
minutes I felt the nip of it in my Very marº
Yet, fierce as the colò was here, it was impossible
it could be Ҽparable with the rigours of the
parts in which this schooner had originally got
locked up in the ice. No doubt if I died on deck
my body would be frozen as stiff as the figure ºn
the rocks; but, though it was very conceivable
that I might Perish of cold in the cabin by sitting
still, I was sure the temperature below had not
the severity to stonify me to the granite of the
men at the table.
Still, though a greater degree of cold-cold As
killing as if the "woºd j, sunless—did
ºnquestionably exist in those latitudes whence
this ice with the schooner in its hug had floated,
it was so bitterly bleak in this interior that 'twas
scarce imaginable it could be colder elsewhere;
and as I rose from the cask shuddering to the
heart with the frosty motionless atmosphere, my
mind naturally went to the consideration of a fire
by which I might sit and toast myself.
Put a bunch of candles in my pocket—they
took the lanthorn into the
the next '90m. Here was a cot hung up by
hooks, and a large black chest stood in cleats
"Pon the deck; som. clothes dangled from pins
.." upon a kind of ray fixed
three-corner hats, a couple of swords, three or
* Pistols, and other objects not ver readily
"Stinguishable by the °andlelight. There was a


I MAKE FURTHER Discoveries. 99
port which I tried to open, but found it so hard
frozen I should need a handspike to start it.
There were three cabins besides this; the last
cabin, that is the one in the stern, being the
biggest of the lot. Each had its cot, and each
also had its own special muddle and litter of
boxes, clothes, firearms, swords, and the like.
how it was. The suspicion that the watches and
jewellery I had discovered on the bodies of the
men had excited was now confirmed, and I was
satisfied that this schooner had been a pirate or
buccaneer, of what nationality I could not yet
divine—methought Spanish from the costume of
the first figure I had encountered; and I was also
convinced by the brief glance I directed at the
things in the cabin, particularly the wearing
apparel, and the make and appearance of the fire-
arms, that she must have been in this position
for upwards of fifty years.
The thought awed me greatly: twenty years
before I was born those two men were sitting dead
in the cabin —he on deck was keeping his blind
and silent look-out; he on the rocks with his
hands locked upon his knees sat sunk in blank
and frozen contemplation | 4. -
Every cabin had its port, and there were ports
in the vessel's side opposite; but on reflection I
considered that the cabin would be the warmer for
their remaining closed, and so I came away and
entered the great cabin afresh, bent on exploring
the forward part.
I must tell wou that the mainmast, piercing the
--
-
Indeed, by this time I was beginning to see
*%





H 2
9C THE FROZEN PIRATE.
of a haunted room in which he is to be locked up
as a punishment.
I put my foot on the ladder and descended
very slowly indeed, my inclination being strong
the other way, and I kept on looking downwards
in a state of ridiculous fright as though at any
moment I should be seized by the leg; being in too
much confusion of mind to consider that it was
impossible anything living could be below, whilst
a ghostly shadow could not catch hold of me, so
as to cause me to feel its grasp. But then if fear
could reason, it would cease to be fear.
On reaching the bottom I remained standing
close against the ladder, striving to see into what
manner of place I was arrived. The glare of the
whiteness of the decks, and rocks hung upon my
eyes like a kind of blindness charged with fires
of several colours, and I could not obtain the
faintest glimpse of any part of this interior outside
the sphere of the little square of hazy light which
lay upon the deck at the foot of the steps. The
darkness, indeed, was so deep that I concluded
this was no more than a narrow well formed of
bulkheads, and that the cabin was beyond, and led
to by a door in the bulkhead.
To test this conjecture I extended my arms in a
groping posture and stepped a pace forward,
feeling to right and left, till, having gone five or
six paces from the ladder, my fingers touched
something cold, and feeling it, I passed my hand
down what I instantly knew by the projection of
the nose and the roughness of hair on the upper
lip to be a human face | -
T-
ANOTHER STARTLING Discovery. 9 I
A little reflection might have prepared me for
this, but I had not reflected, at least in this
direction, and was therefore not prepared ; and the
horrible thrill of that black chill contact went in
an agony through my nerves, and I burst into a
violent perspiration.
I backed away with all my hair astir, and then
shot up the ladder as if the devil had been behind
me; and when I reached the deck I was
trembling so violently that I had to lean against
the companion lest my knees should give way,
Never in all my time had I received such a fright
as this; but then I had gone to it in a fright, and
was exactly in the state of mind to be terrified out
of my senses. My soul had been rendered sick
and weak within me by mental and corporeal
suffering; my loneliness, too, was dreadful, and
the wilder and more scaring too for this my
unhappy association with the dead; the shrieking
in the rigging was like the tongue given by endless
packs of hunting phantom wolves, and the
growling and cracking noises of the ice in all
directions would have made one coming new to
this desolate scene suppose that the island of ice
was full of fierce beasts.
. But needs must when Old Nick drives; I had
either to find courage to enter the schooner and
Search her, and so stand to come across the
means to prolong my life, and perhaps procure
. ºverince or perish of famine and frost on
€CK.
The companion door was small, and being
Scarce more than ajar I was not surprised that
92 THE FRozen PIRATE.
sky.
The light gave me heart.
descended. After a few moments the bewildering.
dazzle of the snow faded off my sight, and I could
see very distinctly.
The cabin was a small room.
only a very faint light entered by it. If the tº
were removed I doubted not I should be able tº
get a view of the cabin, enough to show me whº
the windows or port-holes were. So I went."
work with the hanger again, insensibly obtainº
a little stock of courage from the mere brandish-
ing of it. In half an hour I had chipped and cut
away the ice round the companion, and then
found it to be one of those old-fashioned clums.
hatch-covers formerly used in certain kinds 0
Dutch ships—namely, a box with a shoulder
shaped lid. This lid, though heavy, and fit";
with a tongue, I managed to unship, on which
the full square of the hatch lay open to the
Once more I
The forward part
lay in shadow, but I could distinguish the outline
of the mainmast amidships of the bulkhead there:
In the centre of this cabin was a small squº
table supported by iron pins, that pierced through
stanchions in such a manner that the table coº
at will be raised to the ceiling, and there left for
the conveniency of space.
At this table, seated upon short quaintly-wrough
benches, and immediately facing each other.W.
two men. They were incomparably more lifelike
than the frozen figures. The one whose back
was upon the hatchway ladder, being the maſ]
whose face I had stroked, sat upright, in the

























T-
Another STARTLING Discovery. 93
posture of a person about to start up, both hands
upon the rim of the table, and his countenance
raised as if, in a sudden terror and agony of death,
he had darted a look to God. So inimitably
expressive of life was his attitude, that though I
knew him to be a frozen body as perished as if
he had died with Adam or Noah, I was sensible of a
breathless wonder in me that the affrighted start
with which he seemed to be rising from the table
was not continued—that, in short, he did not
Spring to his feet with the cry that you seemed to
hear in his posture.
The other figure lay over the table with his
face buried in his arms. He wore no covering to
his head, which was bald, yet his hair on either
side was plentiful and lay upon his arms, and his
beard fluffing up about his buried face gave him
an uncommon shaggy appearance. The other
had on a round fur cap with lappets for the ears.
His body was muffled in a thick ash-coloured
coat; his hair was also abundant, curling long
and black down his back; his cheeks were smooth
manifestly through nature rather than the razor,
and the ends of a small black mustache were
twisted up to his eyes. These were the only
occupants of the cabin, which their presence
rendered terribly ghastly and strange.
There was perhaps something in keeping with
the icy spell of death upon this vessel in the
figure of the man who was bowed over the table,
for he looked as though he slept; but the other
mocked the view with a spectrum of the fever and
passion of life. You would have sworn he had
94 - THE FROzEN PIRATE, -
beheld the skeleton hand of the Shadow reaching
out of the dimness for him; that he had
started back with a curse and cry of horroſ, and
expired in the very agony of his affrighted
recoil.
The interior was extremely plain: the bulk
heads of a mahogany colour, the decks bare, and
nothing in the form of an ornament saving a silve
crucifix hanging by a naji to the j of th:
mainmast, and a cage with a frºm bid
gorgeous plumage Suspended to the bulkhead
near the hatch. A small lanthorn of an old
Pattern dangled over the table, and iſ noticed tha
it contained two or three inches of candle. Abaſ
the hatchway was a door on the starboard side
Which, opened, and found a majow. passage
| could not pierce it with my eye beyond a few
feet; but Perceiving within this range the outline
ºf a little door, I concluded that here were the
hºrths in which the master and his mates slept.
There was nothing to be don in the dark, and I
bitterly lamented that I had left my tinder-box
and flint in the boat, for then I could have lighted
the candle in the lanthorn. -
“Perhaps,” thought I, “one of those figures
may have a tinder-bºx upon him.”
Custom was now sºmewhat hardening me;
ºoreover I was spurred on by mortal anxiety to
discover if there was any kind of food to be met
with in the vessel. So I stepped up to the figure
whose face I had touched, anº. his pockets;
but neither on him nor on the other did I find
* I wanted, though i was nº je.o.º.



ANOTHER STARTLING Discovery. 95
to discover in the pockets of the occupants of so
small and humble a ship as this schooner a fine
gold watch as rich as the one I had brought away
from the man on the rocks, and more elegant in
shape, a gold snuffbox set with diamonds, several
rings of beauty and value lying loose in the
breeches pocket of the man whose face was
hidden, a handful of Spanish pieces in gold,
handkerchiefs of fine silk, and other articles, as
if indeed these fellows had been overhauling
a parcel of booty, and then carelessly returned the
contents to their pockets.
But what I needed was the means of obtaining
a light, so, after casting about, I thought I would
search the body on deck, and went to it, and to
my great satisfaction discovered what I wanted in
the first pocket I dipped my hand into, though ſ
had to rip open the mouth of it away from the
Snow with the hanger.
..I returned to the cabin and lighted the candle,
and carried the lanthorn into the black passage or
corridor. There were four small doors, belonging
to as many berths; I opened the first, and entered
a compartment that smelt so intolerably stale and
firsty that I had to come into the passage again
and fetch a few breaths to humour my nose to the
odour. As in the cabin, however, so here I found
this noxiousness of air was not caused by
putrefaction or any tainting qualities of a vege-
table or animal kind, but by the deadness of the
pent-up air itself, as the foulness of bilge-water is
owing to its being imprisoned from air in the
bottom of the hold. -
… -º
96. THE Frozen Pirate.
| held up the lanthorn and looked about me
glance or two satisfied mºha." Was in a rººm
that had been appropriated to the steward and his
*ates. A number of dark objects, which on
inspection I found to be hams, were stowed snugly
*y in battens under the ceiling or upper
deck; a cask half full of flour stood in a Corner;
*it lay a large coarse sackinwhich was a quantity
ºf biscuit, a piece of which I bit and found it as
hard as flint' and tasteless, but not in the least
degree "ºuldy. There were four shelves running
athwartships full of glass, knives and forks, dishes
and so forth, some ºf the glass very ehoice and
elegant, and many of the dishes and plates also
Very fine, fit for the greatest nobleman's fable,
Under the lower shelf, on the deck, lay a sack of
What I believed tº be black stones until, after
!"gone or two of the about, it came upon me
that they "*, or had been, I should say, potatoes
*.* tease you with too many particulars
under this head, let me briefly say that in this
° striven to slice a piece of
"ext to cut a cheese, but
this was frozen as hard as the ham. The lemons,
Candles, and tobacco
had the same astonishing



1 MAKE FURTHER Discoveries. 97
quality of stoniness, and nothing yielded to the
touch but the flour. I laid hold of one of the jars,
and thought to pull the stopper out, but it was
frozen hard in the hole it fitted, and I was five
minutes hammering it loose. When it was out I
inserted a steel—used for the sharpening of knives
—and found the contents solid ice, nor was there
the faintest smell to tell me what the spirit or wine
WaS. -
Never, before did plenty offer itself in so mock-
ing a shape. It was the very irony of abundance
—substantial ghostliness and a Barmecide's feast
to my aching stomach.
But there was biscuit not unconquerable by
teeth used to the fare of the sea life, and picking
up a whole one, I sat me down on the edge of a
cask and fell a-munching. One reflection, how-
ever, comforted me, namely, that this petrifaction
by freezing had kept the victuals sweet. I was
sure there was little here that might not be thawed
into relishable and nourishing food and drink by a
good fire. The sight of these stores took such a
weight off my mind that no felon reprieved from
death could feel more elated than I. My fore-
bodings had come to nought in this regard, and
here for the moment my grateful spirits were
content to stop. +
CHAPTER XI. #
1 MAKE FURTHER Discoveries. |
So long as I moved about and worked I did not
feel the cold; but if I stood or sat for a couple of
IHI
-a-
98 THE FROzEN Prºare.
minutes I felt the nip of it in my very marº
et, fierce as the cold was here, it was impossible
it could be ºn Parable with the rigours of the
Parts in which this schooner had originally got
locked up in the i.e. No doubt if I died on deck
ºy body would be frozen as stiff as the figure ºf
the rocks; but, though it was very conceivable
that I might Perish of cold in the cabin by sitting
still, I was sure the temperature below had not
the severity to stonify me to the granite of the
men at the table.
ºt", though a greater degree of cold–cold as
illing as if **. .# fallen sunless—did
ºquestionably exist in those latitudes whence
this ice with the Schooner in its hug had floated,
It was so bitterly bleak in this interior that 'twas
*ce imaginable it could be colder elsewhere;
and as I rose from the cask shuddering to the
heart with the frosty motionless atmosphere, my
"ş" black chest stood in cleats
º,” clothes dangled from pins
in the bulkhead, and upon a º: tray fixed
Serving as a shelf were a
of boots, laced waistcoats,
- '..."?"Ple of swords, three or
* Pººls, and oth. ºjects not very readily
"guishable by th: *ndlelight. There was a




I MAKE FURTHER DISCOVERIES. 99
port which I tried to open, but found it so hard
frozen I should need a handspike to start it.
There were three cabins besides this; the last
cabin, that is the one in the stern, being the
biggest of the lot. Each had its cot, and each
also had its own special muddle and litter of
boxes, clothes, firearms, swords, and the like.
Indeed, by this time I was beginning to see
how it was. The suspicion that the watches and
jewellery I had discovered on the bodies of the
men had excited was now confirmed, and I was
Satisfied that this schooner had been a pirate or
buccaneer, of what nationality I could not yet
divine—methought Spanish from the costume of
the first figure I had encountered; and I was also
convinced by the brief glance I directed at the
things in the cabin, particularly the wearing
apparel, and the make and appearance of the fire-
arms, that she must have been in this position
for upwards of fifty years.
The thought awed me greatly: twenty years
before I was born those two men were sitting dead
in the cabin —he on deck was keeping his blind
and silent look-out; he on the rocks with his
hands locked upon his knees sat sunk in blank
and frozen contemplation | - - -
Every cabin had its port, and there were ports
in the vessel's side opposite; but on reflection I
considered that the cabin would be the warmer for
their remaining closed, and so I came away and
entered the great cabin afresh, bent on exploring
the forward part.
I must tell vou that the mainmast, piercing the
.*
H 2
foo THE FRozen PIRATE,
- -
upper deck, came down close against the bulk
head that formed the forward will of the cabin
and on approaching this partition, the daylight
being broad enough now that the hatch lay ope
on top, I remarked a sliding door on the aboar:
side of the mast. I put my shoulder to it and
Yery, easily ran it along its grooves, and the
found myself in the way of a direct communica
tion with all the fore portion of the schooner
The arrangement indeed was so odd that I sus.
Pęcted a piratical device in this uncommon methº
ºf opening out at will the whole range of deck.
The air here was as vile as in the cabins, and
had to wait a bit.
.9n entering I discovered a little compartment
With racks on either hand filled with small-arms
| afterwards counted a hundred and thirteen
muskets, blunderbusses, and fusils, all of an
*que kind, whilst the sides of the vessel were
hung with Pistols great and little, boarding-pike;
§§lasses, hangers, and other sorts of sword
his armoury was a sight to set me walking Wº
ºautiously, for it was nºt likely that powder should -
be wanting in a ship thus equipped; and whº
Was it stowed P
here was another sliding door in the forward
partition; it stood Open, and I passed through t
into what I immediately saw was the cook-house.
I turned the lanthorn about, and discovered every
Convenience for dressing food. The furnaces
Wºre of brick and the oven was a great 9."
$ºat, I mean, for the size of the vessel. There
"** Pots, pans, and kettles in plenty, a dress”


*** * ****
I MAke FURTHER Discoveries. IOI
with drawers, dishes of tin and earthenware, a
Dutch clock—in short, such an equipment of
kitchen furniture as you would not expect to find
in the galley of an Indiaman built to carry two or
three hundred passengers: About half a chaldron
of small coal lay heaped in a wooden angular
fence fitted to the ship's side, for the sight of
which I thanked God. I held the lanthorn to
the furnace, and observed a crooked chimney
rising to the deck and passing through it. The
mouth or head of it was no doubt covered by the
snow, for I had not noticed any such object in the
survey I had taken of the vessel above. Strange,
I thought, that these men should have frozen to
death with the material in the ship for keeping a
fire going. But then my whole discovery I re-
garded as one of those secrets of the deep which
defy the utmost imagination and experience of
man to explain them. Enough that here was a
schooner which had been interred in a sepulchre
of ice, as I might rationally conclude, for near
half a century, that there were dead men in her
who looked to have been frozen to death, that she
was apparently stored with miscellaneous booty,
that she was powerfully armed for a craft of her
size, and had manifestly gone crowded with men.
All this was plain, and I say it was enough for me.
If she had papers they were to be met with pre-
sently; otherwise, conjecture would be mere
imbecility in the face of those white and frost-
bound countenances and iron silent lips.
I thrust back another sliding door and entered
the ship's forecastle, The ceiling, as I choose -


IO2 THE FRozen PIRATE.
"A-
to call the upper deck, was lined with hammocks
and the floor was covered with chests, bedding
clothes, and I know not what else. The ºg":
ºf the wind on high jiàº., tº stillness
and I cannot Convey the impression produced on
my mind by this extraordinary scene of confusion
beheld amid the silence of that tomblike interior
I stood in the doorway, not having the courage tº
Venture further. For aii i knew many of thºs:
hammocks might be tenanted; for as this kind of
bed expresses by its curvature the rounded shape
ºf a seaman, whether; be empty or not, so it is
Impossible by merely looking to know whether it
is occupied or Vacant. The dismalness of the
Prospect was of course vastly exaggerated by the
feeble light of the candle, which, swaying in my
hand, flung a *Warming of shadows upon the
*ene, through which the hammocks glimmered
Wan and melancholy. -
came away in a fright, sliding the door to in
my hurry with a bang that fetched a groaning
echo out of the hold. If this ship were haunted
the forecastle Wºuld be the abode of the spirits!
efore I could make a fire the chimney must
e cleared. Among the furnie "hº arms
room were a number of Spade-headed spears; the
SPade as wide as the length of a man's thumb, and
about a foot long, mounted on light thin wood.
ºned. with one of these weapons, the like of
W ich is to be met with among certain South
merican tribes, I Passed into the cabin to pro-
Ceed on deck; but though I knew the two figures
Were there, the *ing upon them afresh struck


†-
º
I MAKE FURTHER Discoveries. ið3
me with as much astonishment and alarm as if
I had not before seen them. The man starting
from the table confronted me on this entrance, and
! stopped dead to that astounding living posture
of terror, even recoiling, as though he were alive
indeed, and was jumping up from the table in his
amazement at my apparition.
The brilliance of the snow was very striking after
the dusk of the interiors I had been penetrating.
The glare seemed like a blaze of white sunshine;
yet it was the dazzle of the ice and nothing more
for the sun was hidden; the fairness of the
morning was passed; the sky was lead-coloured
down to the ocean line, with a quantity of smoke-
brown scud flying along it. The change had
been rapid, as it always is hereabouts. The wind
screamed with a piercing whistling sound through
the frozen rigging, splitting in wails and bounding
in a roar upon the adamantine peaks and rocks;
the cracking of the ice was loud, continuous, and
mighty startling; and these sounds, combined
with the thundering of the sea and the fierce
hissing of its rushing yeast, gave the weather the
character of a storm, though as yet it was no
more than a fresh gale.
However, though it was frightful to be alone
in this frozen vault, with no other society than
that of the dead, not even a seafowl to put life
into the scene, I could not but feel that, be my
prospects what they might, for the moment I was
safe—that is to say, I was immeasurably securer
than ever I could have been in the boat, which,
when I had emerged into this stormy sound and
t -
- vºtz.
... .
-
- - -
-
º
foa THE Frozen pirate.
realized the sea that was running outside,
instantly thought of with a shudder. Had the
rock, I mused, not fallen and fiberated the boat
where should I be now? Perhaps floating
$9. Pse, fathoms deep under water, or, if alive, the
flying before this gale into the south, ever widening
the distance betwixt me and ii.h. ºf nº
deliverance, and every hour gauging more deeply
the horrible cold of the pole. Indeed I bega
to understand that I had been mercifully diverted
*9th Courting a hideous fate, and my spirits roº
With the emotion of gratitude and hope that attend
"Pon preservation
ºily spied, the chimney, which showed:
ead of two feet above the deck, and made short
Work of the snow that was frozen in it, as nothing
could have been fitter to cut ice with than the
Spade-shaped Weapon I carried. This done,
returned to the cook-room, and with a butcher's
axe that hung against the bulk-head I knocked
*Wºy.one of the boards that confined the coal
$plit it into small pieces, and in a short time had
kindled * 899d fire. One does not need the
experience of being cast away upon an iceberg"
understand the comfort of a fire. I had a mind
tº be, prodigal, and threw a good deal of coal
Into the furnace, and presently had a noble blazº
e heat was exquisite. I pulled a little bench,
after the P*tern of those on which the men sat
. the cabin, to the fire, and, with outstretche
. and *š, thawed out of me the frost that
ad lain *" in my fleshever since the wreckº
the Zaughing Mary. When I was thoroughly
ºf
- -
-



















I Make FURTHER Discoveries. IO5
make disgusting whatever I mixed it with or
warm and comforted I took the lanthorn and went
aft to the steward's room, and brought thence a
cheese, a ham, some biscuit, and one of the jars
of spirits, all which I carried to the cook-room, and
placed the whole of them in the oven. I was
extremely hungry and thirsty, and the warmth
and cheerfulness of the fire set me yearning for a
hot meal. But how was I to make a bowl without
fresh water? I went on deck and scratched up
some snow, but the salt in it gave it a sickly taste,
and I was not only certain it would spoil and
cooked in it, but it stood as a drink to disorder
my stomach and bring on an illness. So, thought
I to myself, there must be fresh water about—
casks enough in the hold, I dare say; but the
hold was not to be entered and explored without
labour and difficulty, and I was weary and famished,
and in no temper for hard work.
In all ships it is the custom to carry one or
more casks called scuttlebutts on deck, into which
fresh water is pumped for the use of the crew. I
stepped along looking earnestly at the several
shapes of guns, coils of rigging, hatchways, and
the like, upon which the snow lay thick and solid,
sometimes preserving the mould of the object it
covered, sometimes distorting and exaggerating it
into an unrecognizable outline, but perceived
nothing that answered to the shape of a cask.
At last I came to the well in the head, passed the
forecastle deck, and on looking down spied among
other shapes three bulged and bulky forms. I
seemed by instinct to know that these were the








is
IO6 THE FROZEN PIRATE,
scuttlebutts and went for the chopper, with which
I returned and got into this hollow, that was four
or five feet deep. The snow had the hardness of
iron; it took me a quarter of an hour of severe
labour to make sure of the character of the bulky
thing I wrought at, and then it proved to be a
cask. Whatever might be its contents it was not
empty, but I was pretty nigh spent by the time I
had knocked off the iron bands and beaten out
staves enough to enable me to get at the frozen
body within. There were three-quarters of a cask
full. It was sparkling clear ice, and chipping off
a piece and sucking it, I found it to be very sweet
fresh water. Thus was my labour rewarded.
I cut off as much as, when dissolved, would
make a couple of gallons, but stayed a minute to
regain my breath and take a view of this well or
hollow before going aft. It was farmed of the
great open head-timbers of the schooner curving
up to the stem, and by the forecastle deck ending
like a cuddy front. I scraped at this front and
removed enough snow to exhibit a portion of a
window. It was by this window I supposed that
the forecastle was lighted. Out of this well forked
the bowsprit, with the spritsail yard braced fore
and aft. The whole fabric close to looked more
like glass than at a distance, owing to the million
crystalline sparkles of the ice-like snow that
coated the structure from the vane at the masthead
to the keel. * , .
Well, I clambered on to the forecastle deck and
returned to the cook-room with my piece of ice,
struck as I went along by the sudden comfortable
I MAKE FURTHER DISCOVERIES. IO7
.
a - * -
quality of life the gushing of the black smoke out
of the chimney put into the ship, and how, indeed,
wildness and haggard austerity and gale-swept
loneliness of the white rocks and peaks. It was
extremely disagreeable and disconcerting to me
to have to pass the ghastly occupants of the cabin
every time I went in and out; and I made up my
mind to get them on deck when I felt equal to
the work, and cover them up there. The slanting
posture of the one was a sort of fierce rebuke;
the sleeping attitude of the other was a dark and
sullen enjoinment of silence. I never passed them
without a quick beat of the heart and shortened
breathing; and the more I looked at them the
keener became the superstitious alarm they excited.
The fire burned brightly, and its ruddy glow
was sweet as human companionship. I put the
ice into a saucepan and set it upon the fire, and
then pulling the cheese and ham out of the oven
found them warm and thawed. On smelling to
the mouth of the jar I discovered its contents to
be brandy." Only about an inch deep of it was
melted. I poured this into a pannikin and took a
Sup, and a finer drop of spirits I never swallowed
in all my life; its elegant perfume proved it
amazingly choice and old. I fetched a lemon and
some sugar and speedily prepared a small smoking
* I can give the reader no better idea of the cold of the
latitudes in which this schooner had lain, than by speaking
of the brandy as being frozen. This may have happe sed
through its having lost twenty or thirty per cent, o' ts
strength.-P. R.
it seemed to soften as if by magic the savage
s
|





























Io8 THE FROZEN PIRATE. • ,
º
bowl of punch. The ham cut readily; I fried a
couple of stout rashers, and fell to the heartiest
and most delicious repast I ever sat down to. At
any time there is something fragrant and appe-
tizing in the smell of fried ham; conceive then the
relish that the appetite of a starved, half-frozen,
- shipwrecked man would find in it! The cheese
was extremely good, and was as sound as if it had
been made a week ago. Indeed, the preservative
virtues of the cold struck me with astonishment.
Here was I making a fine meal off stores which
in all probability had lain in this ship fifty years,
and they ate as choicely as like food of a similar
quality ashore. Possibly some of these *:
science may devise a means for keeping the
stores of a ship frozen, which would be as great a
blessing as could befall the mariner, and a sure
remedy for the scurvy, for then as much fresh
meat might be carried as salt, besides other
articles of a perishable kind. - |
i
CHAPTER XII.
A LONELY NIGHT
I HAD a pipe of my own in my pocket; I fetched
a small block of the black tobacco that was in
the pantry, and, with some trouble, for it was as
hard and dry as glass, chipped off a bowlful and
fell a-puffing with all the satisfaction of a hardened
lover of tobacco who has long been denied his
favourite relish. The punch diffused a pleasing
glow through my frame, the tobacco was lulling,
• - - - —-

A LoNEly NIGHT. 169
the heat of the fire very soothing, the hearty meal
I had eaten had also marvellously invigorated me,
so that I found my mind in a posture to justly and
rationally consider my condition, and to reason
out such probabilities as seemed to be attached
to it.
First of all I reflected that by the usual opera-
tion of natural laws this vast seat of “thrilling and
thick-ribbed ice” in which the schooner lay bound
was steadily travelling to the northward, where in
due course it would dissolve, though that would
not happen yet. But as it advanced so would it
carry me nearer to the pathways of ships using
these seas, and any day might disclose a sail near
enough to observe such signals of smoke or flag
as I might best contrive. But supposing no
opportunity of this kind to offer, then I ought to
be able to find in the vessel materials fit for the
construction of a boat, if, indeed, I met not with
a pinnace of her own stowed under the main-hatch,
for there was certainly no boat on deck. Nay,
my meditations even carried me further: this was
the winter season of the southern hemisphere,
but presently the sun would be coming my way,
whilst the ice, on the other hand, floated towards
him; if by the wreck and dissolution of the island
the schooner was not crushed, she must be
released, in which case, providing she was tight—
and my brief inspection of her bottom showed
nothing wrong with her that was visible through
the shroud of snow—I should have a stout ship
under me in which I would be able to lie hove
to, or even make shift to sail her if the breeze
1 Io THE Frozen PIRATE,
came from the south, and thus take my chanceſ
being sighted and discovered.
Much, I had almost said everything, dependº
on the quantity of provisions I should find in he
ºnd particularly on the j. coal, for I feaſt
I must perish fi had not a fire. But theſe wº
the hold to be explored yet; the navigation o
these waters must'i. been anticipated by th:
men of the schooner, who were sure to maki
handsome Provision for the cold and the Suſº.
if, as I fancied, they were Spaniards. Certainly
they might have exhausted their stock of coal
ut I could not Persuade myself of this, since
the heap in the Corner of the cook-room somehow
* *her was suggestive of . store behind. . .
knew not yºt whether more of the crew lay in
the forecastle, but so far I had encountered ſo
!'" ºnly. If these were all, then I had a righ
to believe, grounding my fancy on the absenced
boats, that most of the company had quitted the
ship, and this they would have done º
Supposition that Promised me a fair discovery of
stores. Herein lay my hope; if I could prolong
my life for three. four months, then, if the ice
"as not all gone, it Would have advanced far north
jºying me as a ship and putting me in the way of
delivering myself, either by the sight of a sail, of
y the schooner floating free, or by my construc.
tion of a boat g y y my
us I sat musing, as I venture to think, in a
- clearheaded *Y". Yet all the same I could not
glance *round without feeling as if I was bewitched.
e red shining of the furnace ruddily gilded the


A LONELY NIGHT. I I I
cook-house; through the after-sliding door went
the passage to the cabin in blackness; the
storming of the wind was subdued into a strange
moaning and complaining; often through the
body of the ship came the thrill of a sudden
explosion; and haunting all was the sense of the
dead men just without, the frozen desolation of
the island, the mighty world of waters in which
it lay. No l you can think of no isolation
comparable to this ; and I tremble as I review
it, for under the thought of the enormous loneli-
ness of that time my spirit must ever sink and
break down. -
It was melancholy to be without time, so I
pulled out the gold watch I had taken from
the man on the rocks and wound it up, and
guessing at the hour, set the hands at half-past
four. The watch ticked bravely. It was indeed
a noble piece of mechanism, very costly and
glorious with its jewels, and more than a hint as
to the character of this schooner; and had there
been nothing else to judge by I should still have
sworn to her by this watch.
My pipe being emptied, I threw some more
coals into the furnace, and putting a candle in the
lanthorn went aft to take another view of the little
Cabins, in one of which I resolved to sleep, for
though the cook-room would have served me best
Whilst the fire burned, I reckoned upon it making a
colder habitation when the furnace was black than
those small compartments in the stern. The cold
on deck gushed down so bitingly through the
9pen companion-hatch that I was fain to close it.
*

1 tº The Frozen Pirate.
º -
I mounted the steps, and with much ado shippº
the cover and shut the door, by which .."
the great cabin, as I call the room in which
two men were, was plunged in darkness; º
cold was not tolerable, and the parcels of can
in the larder rendered me indifferent to the
gloom. - tº
On entering the passage in which ... .
doors of the berths, I noticed an object that
efore escaped my observation—I mean a sº
trap-hatch, no bigger than a manhole, with a º
for lifting it, midway down the lane. "I *
this to be the entrance to the lazarette, º
Putting both hands to the ring pulled the * ſ
up. I sniffed cautiously, fearing foul air, andt
sinking the lanthºn by the length of my .
Pºred down, and observed the outlines of cas
bales, cases of White wood, chests, and so º -
dropped through the holeonto a cask, which º
.."), head and shoulders above the deck, .
then with the utmost caution stooped and º
the lanthorn light around me. But the º
Were not Powder-barrels, which perhaps *
reflection might have led me to suspect, Since W
Was not to be supposed that any man would sº
his powder in the lazarette. . . .
§ 1 was in the way of settling my misg.wing:
touching the stock of food in the schooner t
esolved to push through with this business
º, and fetching the chopper went to work upº
these barrels and chests; and very briefly I wº .
jºfond"; "... *...
that proved full of salt beef. There was a whole
-- --
- -
-





















A LoNEly NIGHT. II.3
the nature of the rest; there were upwards of
thirty barrels of pork; one canvas bale I ripped
open was full of hams, and of these bales I
counted half a score. The white cases held
biscuit. There were several sacks of pease, a
number of barrels of flour, cases of candles,
cheeses, a quantity of tobacco, not to mention a
variety of jars of several shapes, some of which
I afterwards found to contain marmalade and
succadoes of different kinds. On knocking the
head off one cask I found it held a frozen
body, that by the light of the lanthorn looked as
black as ink; I chipped off a bit, sucked it, and
found it wine. -
I was so transported by the sight of this wonder-
ful plenty that I fell upon my knees in an outburst
of gratitude and gave hearty thanks to God for
His mercy. There was no further need for me to
dismally wonder whether I was to starve or no ;
supposing the provisions sweet, here was food
enough to last me three or four years. I was so
overjoyed and withal curious that I forgot all
about the time, and flourishing the chopper made
the round of the lazarette, sampling its freight by
individual instances, so that by the time I was
tired I had enlarged the list I have given, by
discoveries of brandy, beer, oatmeal, oil, lemons,
tongues, vinegar, rum, and eight or ten other
matters, all stowed very bunglingly, and in so
many different kinds of casks, cases, jars, and
other vessels as disposed me to believe that
several piratical rummagings must have gone to
• * ~ *
- º
| row of these tierces, and one sufficed to express' .















II.4 º THE FRozen Pirate.
the creation of this handsome and plentifulsº
of good things.
... Well, thought I, even if there be no more tº
in the ship than what lies in the cook.house
enough fuel is here in the shape of casks, boxes
and the like to thaw me provisions for six montº
besides what I may come across in the ho
along with the hammocks, bedding, boxes and
so forth in the forecastle, all which would tº
good to feed my fire with. This was a mos
Comforting refléction, and I recollect spring
"g out through the lazarette hatch with º
*Pirited a caper as ever I had cut at any time."
my life. -
I replaced the hatch-cover, and having resolved
"Pon the aftmost of the four cabins as my bed.
"99", entered it to see what kind of accommoda
tion it would yield me. I hung up the lanthorn?"
looked into the cot, that was slung athwartships, aſ
spied a couple of rugs or blankets, which I pulle
out, having no fancy to lie under them. Theded
Was like an old clothes shop, or the wardrobe of
***Yelling troop of actors. "From the confusion
in this and the adjoining cabins, I concluded tº
there had been a rush at the last, a wild ºf
hauling and flinging about of clothes for artidº
of more value hidāen amongst them. But jus:
as likely as not the disorder merely indicated the
Slovenly indifference of plunderers to the fruits"
a pillage that had Overstocked them.
The first garment I picked up was a cloak ºf
...sº ºf silk material, richly furrºd and lined; a
the buttons but One had been cut off, and that
º



A LoNELY NIGHT. I I5
which remained was silver. I spread it in the
cot, as it was a soft thing to lie upon. Then I
picked up a coat of the fashion you will see in
Hogarth's engravings; the coat collar a broad
fold, and the cuffs to the elbow. This was as
good as a rug, and I put it into the cot with the
other. I inspected others of the articles on the
deck, and among them recollect a gold-laced
waistcoat of green velvet, two or three pairs of
high-heeled shoes, a woman's yellow sacque,
Several frizzled wigs, silk stockings, pumps—in
fine, the contents of the trunks of some dandy
passengers, long since gathered to their forefathers
no doubt, even if the gentlemen of this schooner
had not then and there walked them overboard or
split their windpipes. But, to be honest, I cannot
remember a third of what lay tumbled upon the
deck or hung against the bulkhead. So far as
my knowledge of costume went, every article
pointed to the date which I had fixed upon for
this vessel. - - -
I swept the huddle of things with my foot into
a corner, and lifting the lids of the boxes saw
more clothes, some books, a collection of small-
arms, a couple of quadrants, and sundry rolls of
Paper which proved to be charts of the islands of
the Antilles and the western South American coast,
Very ill-digested. There were no papers of any
kind to determine the vessel's character, nor
19urnal to acquaint me with her story.
I was tired in my limbs rather than sleepy, and
Went to the cook-room to warm myself at the fire
*nd get me some supper, meaning to sit there till
.* -
I 2
t 16 THE Frozen PIRATE.
the fire died out and then go to rest; but when
Put my knife to the ham I found it as hard frozen
as when I had first met with it; so with the
cheese; and this though there had been a fire
burning for hours! I put the things into the oven
to thaw as before, and sitting down fell very pen:
sive over this severity of cold, which had power to
freeze within a yard ºr two of the furnace. To be
sº the fire by my absence had shrunk, and the
sliding door being open admitted the cold of the
cabin; but the consideration was, how was I to
resist the killing enfoldment of this atmosphere?
I had slept in the boat, it is true, and was none the
W9tse: and now I was under shelter, with the heat
of a plentiful bellyful of meat and liquor to warm
me; but if wine and ham and cheese froze in an
air in which a fire had been burning, why not I in
my sleep, when there was no fire, and life beat
Weakly, as it does in slumber? Those figures in
the cabin were dismal warnings and assurances;
they had been men perhaps stouter and heartieſ
in their day than ever i was, but they had been
ºen, into stony images nevertheſess, under
...”...with the materials to make a fire, and
***uch strong waters in their lazarette as would
serve their schooner to float in.
Well, thought I aſſº. a spell of melancholy
thinking, if I ºn to Perish of cold, there's an end;
* . Preordained, and it is as easy as drowning
Anyhow, and better than hanging; and with that
pulled 9tt the ham and found it soft enough
to cut, finding philosophy (which, as the French
cynic says, triumphs over past and future ills)


A Lonely NIGHT.
117
tot so hard because somehow I did not myself
then particularly feel the cold—I mean, I was not
certainly suffering here from that pain of frost
which I had felt in the open boat. -
Having heartily supped, I brewed a pint of
punch, and, charging my pipe, sat smoking with
my feet against the furnace. It was after eight
o'clock by the watch I was wearing. I knew
by the humming noise that it was blowing a gale
of wind outside, and from time to time the decks
rattled to a heavy discharge of hail. All sounds
were naturally much subdued to my ear by the
ship lying in a hollow, and I being in her with the
hatches closed; but this very faintness of uproar
formed of itself a quality of mystery very pat to
the ghastliness of my surroundings. It was like
the notes of an elfin storm of necromantic
imagination; it was hollow, weak, and terrifying;
and it and the thunder of the seas commingling,
together with the rumbling blasts and shocks of
splitting ice, disjointed as by an earthquake, loaded
the inward silence with unearthly tones, which
my lonely and quickened imagination readily
furnished with syllables. The lanthorn diffused
but a small light, and the flickering of the fire
made a movement of shadows about me. I was
separated from the great cabin where the figures
were by the little arms-room only, and the passage
to it ran there in blackness.
It strangely and importunately entered my head
to conceive, that though those men were frozen
and stirless they were not dead as corpses are,
but as a stream whose current, checked by ice,
*
º
|







I 18 THE Frozen PIRATE,
|
º
º
º
s
-
-
will flow when the ice is melted. Might not it
in them be suspended by the cold, not ended
There is vitality in the seed though it lie; a dea
thing in the haſ d. Those men are corpses to my
eye; but said I to myself, they may have the
Pºinciples of life in them, which heat might a
*9 being. Putrefaction is a natural law, but
is balked by frost, and just as decay is hindered
by cold, might not the property of life be left uſ"
affected in a body, though it should be numbeding
marble form for fifty years?
...This was a terribie fancy to possess a mº"
**ted as I was, and it so wºrked in me that again
and again I Caught myself looking first forward.
then aft, as though, Heaven help me! my secret
!";"nºts foreboded that at any moment I should
ºhold some form from the forecastle, or On:
of those figures in the cabin, stalking in and
Sºng, to my side and silently seating himself
pshaw'd and pish'd, and querulously asked of my
self what manner of English sailor was I to suff:
Such Womanly terrors to visit me; but it woul
hot do; I could not smoke; a coldness of the
heart fell "Pºº me, and set me trembling above
... ºt,of shivers which the frost of the air ha
chased through ºne; and presently a hollow creak
sounding out of the hold, caused by some mo"
"" ºf the bed of icº". the vessel lay
Was seized with a Panic terror and sprang to m)
º º lanthorn in hand, made for the .
Ill On- - - -
º .." adder, with a prayer in me for the sight"
durst not look at the figures, but, setting th.




























A LONELY NIGHT. º
light down at the foot of the ladder, squeezed
through the companion-door on to the deck. My
fear was a fever in its way, and I did Hot feel the
cold. There was no star to be seen, but the
whiteness of the ice was flung out in a wild
strange glare by the blackness of the sky, and
made a light of its own. It was the most savage
and terrible picture of solitude the invention of
man could reach to, yet I blessed it for the relief
it gave to my ghost-enkindled imagination. No
squall was then passing; the rocks rose up on
either hand in a ghastly glimmer to the ebony of
the heavens; the gale swept overhead in a wild,
mad blending of whistlings, roarings, and cryings
in many keys, falling on a sudden into a doleful
wailing, then rising in a breath to the full fury of
its concert; the sea thundered like the cannonad-
ing of an electric storm, and you would have said
that the rending and crackling noises of the ice
were responses to the crashing blows of the balls
of shadow-hidden ordnance. But the scene, the
uproar, the voices of the wind were real—a better
cordial to my spirits than a gallon of the mellowest
vintage below; and presently, when the cold was
beginning to pierce me, my courage was so much
the better for this excursion into the hoarse and .
'eart beat at its usual measure as I passed
º: and gleaming realities of the night, that my
through the hatch and went again to the cook-
TOOm.
I was, however, sure that if I sat here long,
listening and thinking, fear would return. A small
fire still burned; I put a saucepan on it, and
º
|







-
------ º
I2O. THE FRozen PIRATE.
popped in a piece of the fresh-water ice, but on
handling the brandy I found it hard set. The
heat of the oven was not sufficiently great to thaw
me a dram; so to save further trouble in this way
I took the chopper and at one blow split open the
jar, and then there lay before me the solid body of
the brandy, from which I chipped off as much as
I needed, and thus procured a hot and animating
draught. - .”
Raking out the fire, I picked up the lanthorn
and was about to go, then halted, considering
whether I should not stow the frozen provisions
away. It was a natural thought, seeing how
precious food was to me. But, alas ! it mattered
not where they lay; they were as secure here as
if they were snugly hidden in the bottom of the
hold. It was the white realm of death; if ever a
rat had crawled in this ship, it was, in its hiding:
place, as stiff and idle as the frozen vessel. So I
let the lump of brandy, the ice, ham, and so forth,
rest where they were, and went to the cabin I had
chosen, involuntarily peeping at the figures as I
passed, and hurrying the faster because of the
grim and terrifying liveliness put into the man who
sat starting from the table by the swing of the
lanthorn in my hand.
I shut the door and hung the lanthorn near the
cot, having the flint and box in my pocket.
There was indeed an abundance of candles in the
vessel; nevertheless, it was my business to hus:
band them with the utmost niggardliness. How
long I was to be imprisoned here, if indeed I was
ever to be delivered, Providence alone knew; and




A LoNELy NIGHT. 2 f
to run short of candles would add to the terrors of
my existence, by forcing me either to open the .
hatches and ports for light, and so filling the ship
with the deadly air outside, or living in darkness.
There were a cloak and a coat in the cot, but they
would not suffice. The fine cloak I had taken
from the man on the rocks was on deck, and till
now I had forgotten it; there was, however,
plenty of apparel in the corner to serve as wraps,
and having chosen enough to smother me I
vaulted into the cot, and so covered myself that
the clothes were above the level of the sides of
the cot.
I left the lanthorn burning whilst I made sure
my bed was all right, and lay musing, feeling
extremely melancholy; the hardest part was the
thought of those two men watching in the cabin.
The most fantastic alarms possessed me. Sup-
pose their ghosts came to the ship at midnight,
and, entering their bodies, quickened them into
walking? Suppose they were in the condition of
cataleptics, sensible of what passed around them,
but paralyzed to the motionlessness and seeming
insensibility of death? Then the very garments
under which I lay were of a proper kind to keep a
man in my situation quaking. My imagination
went to work to tell me to whom they had be-
longed, the bloody ends their owners had met at
the hands of the miscreants who despoiled them.
I caught myself listening—and there was enough
to hear, too, what with the subdued roaring of the
wind, the splintering of ice, the occasional creak-
ing--not unlike a heavy booted tread—of the
|
-
-
.
y
º
º
º
º







\ - -
which she reposed.
breath to freeze upon my mouth in such a manne
I22 THE FRozen PIRATE.
fabric of the schooner—to the blasts of the gale
against her masts, or to a movement in the bed on
But plain sense came to my rescue at last. I
resolved to have no more of these night fears, sº
blowing out the candle, I put my head on the coat
that formed my pillow, resolutely kept my eyes
shut, and after awhile fell asleep.
CHAPTER XIII. -
1 ExPLORE THE HOLD AND FORECASTLE,
It was pitch dark when I awoke, and I conceived
it must be the middle of the night, but to my
astonishment, on lighting the lanthorn and loºking
at the watch, which I had taken the precaution tº
.wind up overnight, I saw it wanted but twenty
minutes of nine o'clock, so that I had passed
through twelve hours of solid sleep. However, it
was only needful to recollect where I was, and tº
cast a glance at the closed door and port, 9
understand why it was dark. I had slept fairly
warm, and awoke with no sensation of cramp;
but the keen air had caused the steam of my
that, when feeling the sticky inconvenience I put
my finger to it, it fell like a little mask; and I
likewise felt the pain of cold in my face to such
an extent that had I been blistered there my
cheeks, nose, and brow could not have smarted
more. This resolved me henceforward to Wra
up my head and face before going to rest. . .
I opened the door and passed out, and obse















































-- -
I ExplorF THE Hold AND ForecastLE. 123
an amazing difference between the temperature
of the air in which I had been sleeping and that
of the atmosphere in the passage—a happy
discovery, for it served to assure me that, if I was
careful to lie under plenty of coverings and to
keep the outer air excluded, the heat of my body
would raise the temperature of the little cabin;
nor, providing the compartment was ventilated
throughout the day, was there anything to be
feared from the vitiation of the air by my own
breathing.
My first business was to light the fire and set
my breakfast to thaw, and boil me a kettle of
water; and some time after I went on deck to
view the weather and to revolve in my mind
the routine of the day. On opening the door
of the companion-hatch I was nearly blinded
by the glorious brilliance of the sunshine on the
snow; after the blackness of the cabin it was like
looking at the sun himself, and I had to stand a
full three minutes with my hand upon my eyes
before I could accustom my sight to the dazzling
glare. It was fine weather again; the sky over
the glass-like masts of the schooner was a clear
dark blue, with a few light clouds blowing over it
from the southward. The wind had shifted at
last; but, pure as the heavens were, the breeze
was piping briskly with the weight and song of a
small gale, and its fangs of frost, even in the
comparative quiet of the sheltered deck, bit
with a fierceness that had not been observable
yesterday.
* moment I had the body of the vessel in
-
|
| ||






124 The Frozen Pirate.
my sight I perceived that she had changed he
position since my last view of her. Her bows
were more raised, and she lay over further by the
depth of a plank. I stared earnestly at the rock
slopes on either hand, but could not have swom
their figuration was changed. An eager hope
shot into my mind, but it quickly faded into an
emotion of apprehension. It was conceivablº
indeed that on a sudden some early day I might
find the schooner liberated and afloat, and this
was the first inspiriting flush; but then came tº
fear that the disruption and volcanic throes of the
ice might crush her, a fear rational enough when
I saw the height she lay above the sea, and hºw
by pressure those slopes which formed her cradle
might be jammed and welded together. The
change of her posture then fell upon me with
kind of shock, and determined me, when I had
broken my fast, to search her hold for a boat."
for materials for constructing some ark by which
I might float out to sea, should the ice gro"
menacing and force me from the schooner.
I made a plentiful meal, feeling the need of
abundance of food in such a temperature as this
and heartily grateful that there was no need why
I should stint myself. The having to pass the
two figures every time I went on deck and returned
was extremely disagreeable and unnerving, and
considered that, after searching the hold, the next
duty I owed myself was to remove them on deck
and even over the side, if possible, for one
place
below was as sure to keep them haunting º As
e in
another, and they would be as much with




I Explore THE Hold AND For ECASTLE. 125
--
the forecastle as if I stowed them away in the
cabin adjoining mine.
Whilst I ate, my mind was so busy with con-
during the night that it ended in determining me
to take a survey of her from the outside, and then
climb the cliffs and look around before I fell to
any other work. I fetched the cloak I had stripped
the body on the rocks of and thawed and warmed
it and put it on, and a noble covering it was,
thick, soft, and clinging. Then, arming, myself
with a boarding-pike to serve as a pole, I dropped
into the fore-chains and thence stepped on to the
ice, and very slowly and carefully walked round
the schooner, examining her closely, and boring
into the snow upon her side with my pike wherever
I suspected a hole or indent. I could find nothing
wrong with her in this way, though what a thaw
might reveal I could not know. Her rudder hung
frozen upon its pintles, and looked as it should.
Some little distance abaft her rudder, where the
hollow or chasm sloped to the sea, was a great
split three or four feet wide; this had certainly
happened in the night, and I must have slept as
Sound as the dead not to hear the noise of it.
| Such a rent as this sufficed to account for the
subsidence of the after-part of the schooner and
her further inclination to larboard. Indeed, the
hollow was now coming to resemble the “ways”
on which ships are launched; and you would have
conceived by the appearance of it that if it should
slope a little more yet, off would slide the schooner
for the sea, and in the right posture too—that is,
siderations of the change in the ship's posture
-
:
º
º
º
*
º
º,
º
º
-
|





















THE FROzEN PIRATE.
stern on. But I prayed with all my might and
main for anything but this. It would have been
very well had the hollow gone in a gentle declivity
to the wash of the sea, to the water itself, in
short; but it terminated at the edge of a cliff, not
very high indeed, but high enough to warrant the
prompt foundering of any vessel that should
launch herself off it. Happily the keel was too
solidly frozen into the ice to render a passage of
this description possible; and the conclusion I
arrived at after careful inspection was that the
sole chance that could offer for the delivery of
the vessel to her proper element was in the
cracking up and disruption of the bed on which
she lay.
Having ended my survey of the schooner, I
addressed myself to the ascent of the starboard
slope, and scaled it much more easily than I had
yesterday managed to make my way over the
rocks. I climbed to the highest block that was
nearest me on the summit, and here I had a very
large view of the scene. Much to my astonish-
ment, the first objects which encountered my eye
were four icebergs, floating detached but close
together at a distance of about three miles on my
side of the north-east trend of the island. I
counted them and made them four. They swam
low, and it was very easily seen they had formed
part of the coast there, though, as the for
of the
ice that way was not familiar to me, º aS,
moreover, the glare rendered the prospect very
deceptive, I could not distinguish where the
ruptures were. But one change in the face of

I Explore THE HOLD AND For ECASTLE. 127
--
this white country I did note, and that was the
entire disappearance of two of the most beautiful
of the little crystal cities that adorned the north-
ward range. The gale of the night had wrought
havoc, and the unsubstantiality of this dazzling
kingdom of ice was made startlingly apparent by
the evanishment of the delicate glassy architecture,
and by those four white hills floating like ships
under their courses and topsails out upon the
flashing hurry and leaping blue and yeast of the
Water.
It was blowing harder than I had imagined.
The wind was extraordinarily sharp, and the full
current of it not long to be endured on m
unsheltered eminence. The sea, swelling up from
the south, ran high, and was full of seething and
tumbling noises, and of the roaring of the breakers,
dashing themselves against the ice in prodigious
bodies of foam, which so boiled along the foot of
the cliffs that their fronts, rising out of it, might
have passed for the spume itself freezing as it
leapt into a solid mass of glorious brilliance. The
eye never explored a scene more full of the
splendour of light and of vivid colour. Here and
there the rocks shone prismatically as though
some flying rainbow had shivered itself upon them
and lay broken. The blue of the sea and sky
was deepened into an exquisite perfection of
liquid tint by the blinding whiteness of the ice,
which in exchange was sharpened into a wonderful
effulgente by the hues above and around it.
Again and again, along the whole range, far as
the sig } could explore, the spray rose in stately
|
º



- -- ºn
128 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
clouds of silver, which were scattered by the win
in meteoric scintillations of surpassing bº
flashing through the fires of the sunlike millions
of little blazing stars. There were twenty different
d yes of light in the collection of spires, fanes, aſ
pillars near the schooner, whose masts, yards,”
gear mingled their own particular radianº Wit
that of these dainty figures; and wherever I beſt
my gaze I found so much of sun-tinº"
loveliness, and the wild white graces of ice-forms
and the dazzle of snow-surfaces softening intº
azure gleaming in the far blue distances tº but ºf
for the piercing wind I could have spel the
whole morning in taking into my mind the
marvellous spirit of this ocean picture, forgºň
of my melancholy condition in the intoxication"
this draught of free and spacious beauty. | ||
Satisfied as to the state of the ice and the
posture of the schooner, viewed from without,
Šent a slow and piercing gaze along the ocea'.
line, and then returned to the ship. The strong
wind, the dance of the sea, the grandeur ºf the º
great tract of whiteness, vitalized by the flyº ºf
violet cloud-shadows along it, had fortified tº
spirits, and being free (for a while) of all supº.
Stitious dread, I determined to begin by exploſiº
the forecastle and ascertaining if more bodies wº
in the schooner than those two in the cabin aſ
the giant form on deck. I threw some gºal 0||
º fire, and placed an ox-tongue along with º
*śe and a lump of the frozen wine in a panniº
" the oven (for I had a mind to taste |
vessel's stores, and thought the tonguº would


































| EXPLORE the Hoºp asp For ECASTLE. 129
make an ageeable change), and then putting a
andle into the lanthorº walked very bravely to
the forecastle and entered it.
I was Prepared for the scene of confusion, but
I must say it staggered me afresh with something
ºf the force of the first impression. Sailors'
thests lay open in all directions, and their
ºntents covered the decks. There was the
dearest evidence here that the majority of the
crew had quitted the vessel in a violent hurry,
turning out their boxes to cram their money and
lºwellery into their Pockets, and heedlessly flinging
ºwn their own and the clothes which had fallen
9 their share. This I had every right to suppose
from the character of the muddle on the floor;
* Passing the light over a part of it, I witnessed
**; variety of attire of a kind which certainly
to Sailor in any age ever went to sea with ; not
$0 fine Perhaps as that which lay in the cabins,
"t very good nevertheless, particularly the linen.
! saw several wigs, beavers of the kind that was
*erly carried under the arm, women's silk
*S, petticoats, pieces of lace, silk, and so
forth; all directly assuring me that what I viewed
"... the contents of Passengers' luggage, together
With $onsignments and such freight as the pirates
Wºuld seize and divide, every man filling his
Chest, Perhaps there was less on the whole than
*PPosed, the litter looking great by reason of
. "É having been torn open and flung down
Se,
!"d upon these heaps with little concern;
*y appealed to". only as a provision for my
K
THE FROzEN PIRATE.
popped in a piece of the fresh-water ice, but,”
handling the brandy I found it hard set. The
heat of the oven was not sufficiently great to thaw
me a dram; so to save further trouble in this way
I took the chopper and at one blow split open the
jar, and then there lay before me the solid body of
the brandy, from which I chipped off as much as
I needed, and thus procured a hot and animating
draught. .."
Raking out the fire, I picked up the lanthon
and was about to go, then halted, considering
whether I should not stow the frozen provisions
away. It was a natural thought, seeing how
precious food was to me. But, alas! it mattered
not where they lay; they were as secure here as
if they were snugly hidden in the bottom of the
hold. It was the white realm of death; if ever *
rat had crawled in this ship, it was, in its hiding:
place, as stiff and idle as the frozen vessel. So I
let the lump of brandy, the ice, ham, and so forth,
rest where they were, and went to the cabin I had
chosen, involuntarily peeping at the figures as I
passed, and hurrying the faster because of the
grim and terrifying liveliness put into the man whº
sat starting from the table by the swing of the
lanthorn in my hand.
I shut the door and hung the lanthorn near the
cot, having the flint and box in my pocket.
There was indeed an abundance of candles in the
vessel; nevertheless, it was my business to hus:
band them with the utmost niggardliness. How
long I was to be imprisoned here, if indeed I was
ever to be delivered, Providence alone knew; an

































A Lonely NIGHT. t 2 f
to run short of candles would add to the terrors of
ºy existence, by forcing me either to open the .
latches and ports for light, and so filling the ship
With the deadly air outside, or living in darkness.
There were a cloak and a coat in the cot, but they
Would not suffice. The fine cloak I had taken
hom the man on the rocks was on deck, and till
"ºw I had forgotten it; there was, however,
plenty of apparel in the corner to serve as wraps,
and having chosen enough to smother me I
'aulted into the cot, and so covered myself that
* clothes were above the level of the sides of
the cot.
''et the lanthorn burning whilst I made sure
my bed was all right, and lay musing, feeling
*emely melancholy; the hardest part was the
hºught of those twº men watching in the cabin.
* lost fantastic alarms possessed me. Sup-
p0Se their ghosts came to the ship at midnight,
and entering their bodies, quickened them into
walking? Suppose they were in the condition of
*aleptics, sensible of what passed around them,
"Pºſalyzed to the motionlessness and seeming
"...sibility of death? Then the very garments
under which I lay were of a proper kind to keep a
"" in my situation quaking. "My imagination
* to work to tell me to whom they had be-
º the bloody ends their owners had met at
**ds, of the miscreams who despoiled them.
ºt myself listening—and there was enough
winjº, too, what with the subdued roaring of the
Wil, the Splintering of ice, the occasional creak-
"ºnot unlike a heavy booted tread—of the
I22 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
fabric of the schooner to the blasts of the gale
against her masts, or to a movement in the bed on
which she reposed.
But plain sense came to my rescue at last. I
resolved to have no more of these night fears, sº
blowing out the candle, I put my head on the coat .
that formed my pillow, resolutely kept my º
shut, and after awhile fell asleep.
CHAPTER XIII. . .
I ExPLORE THE HOLD AND FORECASTLE:
It was pitch dark when I awoke, and I conceived
it must be the middle of the night, but to, ſº
astonishment, on lighting the lanthorn and looking
at the watch, which I had taken the precaution to.
wind up overnight, I saw it wanted but twº
minutes of nine o'clock, so that I had Pasº
through twelve hours of solid sleep. Howevº it
was only needful to recollect where I was, and “
cast a glance at the closed door and Poºh. to
understand why it was dark. I had slept fairly
warm, and awoke with no sensation of crº"P;
but the keen air had caused the steam of ") is
breath to freeze upon my mouth in such a manner
that, when feeling the sticky inconvenience I put
my finger to it, it fell like a little mask; an
likewise felt the pain of cold in my face to *
an extent that had I been blistered there *
cheeks, nose, and brow could not have sma"
more. This resolved me henceforward towº
up my head and face before going to rest. d
I opened the door and passed out, and obse"


























| explore the Hold and Forecastle. 123
**mazing difference between the temperature
ºf the air in which I had been sleeping and that
of the atmosphere in the Passage—a happy
scovery, for it served to assureme that, if I was
fateful to lie under Plenty of coverings and to
keep the outer air excluded, the heat of my body
* Would raise the temperature of the little cabin;
* Providing the compartment was ventilated
throughout the day, was there anything to be
eared from the vitiation of the air by my own
Feathing.
Fºy first business was to light the fire and set
") breakfast to thaw, and boil me a kettle of
"*ter; and some time after I went on deck. to
View the Weather and to revolve in my mind
* Toutine of the day. On opening the door
Of the $ompanion-hatch I was nearly blinded
by the glorious brilliance of the sunshine on the
tº after the blackness ºf the cabin it was like
*ing at the sun himself, and I had to stand a
fill three minutes with my hand upon my eyes
fore I could *Gustom my sight to the dazzling
* It was fine Weather again; the sky over
the glass-like "asts of the schooner was a clear
* blue, with a few light clouds blowing over it
" the southward. The wind had shifted at
last; but, pure as the heavens were, the breeze
*piping briskly with the weight and song of a
Small #ale, and its fangs of frost, even in the
"mpantive quiet of the sheltered deck, bit
With".) 'fierceness that had not been observable
Jºeſlay. e
º moment I had the body of the vessel in


| Explore the Hoºp AND Forecastle. 125
the forecastle as if I stowed them away in the
cabin Adjoining mine. -
* I ate, my mind was so busy with con-
siderations of the change in the ship's posture
during the night that it ended in determining me
to take a Survey of her from the outside, and then
timb the cliffs and look around before I fell to
ºther work. I fetched the cloak I had stripped
"body on the rocks of and thawed and warmed
ºld put it on, and a noble covering it was,
thick, soft, and clinging. Then, arming myself
with a bºarding-pike tººerve as a pole, I dropped
"the fore-chains and thence stepped on to the
º, and very slowly and carefully walked round
he schooner, examining her closely, and boring
to the snow Pºn her side with my pike wherever
*Pected a hole or indent." I could find nothing
*g with her in this Way, though what a thaw
"ght reveal I could not know. Her rudder hung
%en upon its Pintles, and looked as it should.
Some little distance abaft her rudder, where the
ºw or chasm slºped to the sea, was a great
‘pit three or four feet wide; this had certainly
*PPened in the night, and I must have slept as
"d as the dead not to hear the noise of it.
** a rent as this sufficed to account for the
ºbsidence of the after-part of the schooner and
ºf further inclination to larboard. Indeed, the
"W as now coming to resemble the tº ways'
ºlyhigh ships are launched ; and you would have
*d by the *PPearance of it that if it should
slºpe "little * yet, off would slide the schooner
Or "...sea. and in the right posture too—that is,



126, THE FRozen PIRATE.
stern on. But I prayed with all my might and
main for anything but this. It would have been
very well had the hollow gone in a gentle decliviº
to the wash of the sea, to the water itself III
short; but it terminated at the edge of a cliff, nº
very high indeed, but high enough to warrant th:
prompt foundering of any vessel that should
launch herself off it. Happily the keel was tº
solidly frozen into the ice to render a passage of
this description possible; and the conclusion
arrived at after careful inspection was that th:
sole chance that could offer for the delivery of
the Vessel to her proper element was in the
cracking up and disruption of the bed on which
she lay. |
Having ended my survey of the schooner, |
addressed myself to the ascent of the starboard ||
slope, and scaled it much more easily than I hº
yesterday managed to make my way over the
rocks. I climbed to the highest block that was
hearest me on the summit, and here I had a very
large view of the scene. Much to my astonish- ſº
ment, the first objects which encountered my eye
were four icebergs, floating detached but close
tºgether at a distance of about three miles on my
side of the north-east trend of the island.
Counted them and made them four. They swam
low, and it was very easily seen they had form:
Part ºf the coast there, though, as the form of the
ice that way was not familiar to me, and as
"oreover, the glare rendered the prospect very
deceptive, I could not distinguish wherd the
"Ptures were. But one change in the fate a

























| Explore the Hold AND Forecastle. I27
this white *ntry I did note, and that was the
ºtre disappearance of two of the most beautiful
of the littlé *ystal cities that adorned the north-
Ward range. The gale of the night had wrought
*VOC, and the unsubstantiality of this dazzling
"gdom of ice was maj. startlingly apparent by
º the *Yanishment of the delicate glassy architecture,
ºld by those four white hills floating like ships
"º their courses and tº sails out upon the
fashing hurry and leaping blue and yeast of the
| Water.
It was blowing harder than I had imagined.
& Wind was extraordinarily sharp, and the full
"ent of it not long to be endured on my
insheltered eminence. The Sea, swelling up from
the Sºuth, ran high, and was full of Seething and
"mbling noises, and of the roaring of the breakers,
it, might
* passed for the SPIme itself freezing as it
*into a solid mass of glorious brilliancé. The
* never explored a scene more full of the
Mendour of light and of vivid colour. Here and
here the rocks shone Prismatically as though
Sºme flying rainbow had shivered itself upon them
º ºn. The blue of the . and sky
s depened into an exquisite perfection of
º int by the blinding whiteness of the ice,
º "exchange was Sharpened into a wonderful
"gene by the hues above and around it.
ºnd again, along the whole range, far as
could explore, the spray rose in stately



THE FROZEN PIRATE.
clouds of silver, which were scattered by the wind
in meteoric scintilations of surpassing bº
flashing through the fires of the sunlike millions
of little blazing stars. There were twenty different
dyes of light in the collection of spires, fans "
pillars near the schooner, whose masts, yards, a
gear mingled their own particular radianº Wit
that of these dainty figures; and where". I ben
my gaze I found so much of sun-tincture
loveliness, and the wild white graces of ice-forms
and the dazzle of snow-surfaces softening"
azure gleaming in the far blue distances that but
for the piercing wind I could have spº tilt
whole morning in taking into my mind the
marvellous spirit of this ocean picture, forge
of my melancholy condition in the intoxication"
this draught of free and spacious beauty.
Satisfied as to the state of the ice and the
posture of the schooner, viewed from without
sent a slow and piercing gaze along the oceal
line, and then returned to the ship. The strº º
wind, the dance of the sea, the grandeu. of the
great tract of whiteness, vitalized by the flying º
violet cloud-shadows along it, had fortified "
spirits, and being free (for a while) of all supº."
stitious dread, I determined to begin by exploſiº
the forecastle and ascertaining if more Éodies wº
in the schooner than those two in the cabºº"
the giant form on deck. I threw som coal of
the fire, and placed an ox-tongue along th tº
cheese and a lump of the frozen wine in a nkſ
in the oven (for I had a mind to tas" ht
vessel's stores, and thought the tongue would


































I Explore the Hold AND For ECASTLE. 29
make an ageeable change), and then putting a
candle into the lanthorn walked very bravely to
the forecastle and entered it.
I was prepared for the scene of confusion, but
I must say it staggered me afresh with something
of the force of the first impression. Sailors'
chests lay open in all directions, and their
contents covered the decks. There was the
clearest evidence here that the majority of the
crew had quitted the vessel in a violent hurry,
turning out their boxes to cram their money and
jewellery into their pockets, and heedlessly flinging
down their own and the clothes which had fallen
to their share. This I had every right to suppose
from the character of the muddle on the floor;
for, passing the light over a part of it, I witnessed
a great variety of attire of a kind which certainly
no sailor in any age ever went to sea with ; not
so fine perhaps as that which lay in the cabins,
but very good nevertheless, particularly the linen.
I saw several wigs, beavers of the kind that was
formerly carried under the arm, women's silk
shoes, petticoats, pieces of lace, silk, and so
forth; all directly assuring me that what I viewed
was the contents of passengers' luggage, together
with consignments and such freight as the pirates
would seize and divide, every man filling his
chest. Perhaps there was less on the whole than
I supposed, the litter looking great by reason of
everything having been torn open and flung down
loose.
I trod upon these heaps with little concern;
they appealed to me only as a provision for my
K


I30 THE FRozen PIRATE.
fire, should I be disappointed in my search ſo
coal. The hammocks obliged me to move with:
stopped head; it was only necessary to feel the
with my hand—that is, to test their weight º'
pushing them in the middle—to know if they wºº
tenanted. Some were heavier than the othes
but all of them much lighter than they would
have been had they contained human bodies: 300
by this rapid method I satisfied my mind that
- there Were no dead men here as fully as if I had
looked into each separate hammock, -
This discovery was exceedingly comforting for
though I do not know that I should have meddle"
With any frozen man had I found him in this paº
his being in the forecastle would have rendeº
me constantly uneasy, and it must have come."
my, either, closing this part of the ship an
e
light—the candle making the darkness but little
In Ore than visible—I fetched from the arms-ſº
a handspike that lay in a corner, and, mountinº
chest, struck at the hatch so heartly that the ſº
cracked ..all around it and the cover rose
Pushed it off, and down rolled the sunshine"
splendour.
Everything was plain now. In many plº
glittering among the clothes wer. gold and silveſ
coins, a few silver ornaments such as buckles, *
watches—things not missed by the pirates in tº
transport of their flight. In kicking a coat aside



















I ExPLORE THE Hold AND ForecastLE. 131
I discovered a couple of silver crucifixes bound
together, and close by were a silver goblet and
the hilt of a sword broken short off for the sake
of the metal it was of. Nothing ruder than this
interior is imaginable. The men must have been
mighty put to it for room. There was a window.
in the head, but the snow veiled it. Maybe the
rogues messed together aft, and only used this
forecastle to lie in. Right under the hatch, where
the light was strongest, was a dead rat. I
stooped to pick it up, meaning to fling it on to
the deck, but its tail broke off at the rump, like a
pipe-stem. • -
Close against the after bulkhead that separated
the forecastle from the cook-room was a little
hatch. There was a quantity of wearing-apparel
upon it, and I should have missed it but for
catching sight of some three inches of the dark
line the cover made in the deck. On clearing
away the clothes I perceived a ring similar to that
in the lazarette hatch, and it rose to my first drag
and left me the hold yawning black below. I
peered down and observed a stout stanchion
traversed by iron pins for the hands and feet.
The atmosphere was nasty, and to give it time to
clear I went to the cook-house and warmed myself
before the fire.
The fresh air blowing down the forecastle hatch
speedily sweetened the hold. I lowered the
lanthorn and followed, and found myself on top
of some rum or spirit casks, which on m
hitting them returned to me a solid note. There
was a forepeak forward in the bows, and the casks
|
|






K 2
132 THE FRozen PIRATE.
went stowed to the bulkhead of it; the top of this
bulkhead was open four feet from the upper deck,
and on holding the lanthorn over and putting my
head through I saw a quantity of coals. If th:
forepeak went as low as the vessel's floor, then!
calculated there would not be less than fifteen
tons of coal in it. This was a noble discovery tº
fall upon, and it made me feel so happy that
I do not know that the assurance of my being
immediately rescued from this island could have
given a lighter pulse to my heart. -
The candle yielded a very small light, and
was difficult to see above a yard or so ahead ºf
around. I turned my face aft, and crawled ovº
the casks and came to under the main-hatch
where lay coils of hawser, buckets, blocks, and .
the like, but there was no pinnace, though here
she had been stowed, as a sailor would have
promptly seen. A little way beyond, under tº:
great cabin, was the powder-magazine, a smal
bulkheaded compartment with a little door, ato!
of which was a small bull's-eye lamp. I peer-
warily enough, you will suppose, into this place
and made out twelve barrels of powder. I heartly
wished them overboard; and yet, after all, they
Were not very much more dangerous than the
Wine and spirits in the lazarette and fore-hold.
The run remained to be explored—the after
Part, I mean, under the lazarette deck to the
rudder-post—but I had seen enough ; crawling
about that black interior was cold, lonesømlº.
melancholy work, and it was rendered peculiaº -
arduous by the obligation of caution imposed by


















































---
An Extraordinary Occurrence.
my having to bear a light amid a freight mainly
formed of explosives and combustible matter. I
had found plenty of coal, and that sufficed. So
I returned by the same road I had entered, and
sliding to the bulkhead door to keep the cold of
the forecastle out of the cook-room, I stirred the
. º a blaze and sat down before it to rest and
think.
CHAPTER XIV.
AN Extraordin ARY OCCURRENCE.
AFTER the many great mercies which had been
vouchsafed me, such as my being the only one
saved of all the crew of the Zaughing Mary, my
deliverance from the dangers of an open boat, my
meeting with this schooner and discovering within
her, everything needful for the support of
life, I should have been guilty of the basest
ingratitude had I repined because there was no
boat in the ship. Yet for all that I could not but
see it was a matter that concerned me very
closely. Should the vessel be crushed, what was
to become of me? It was easy to propose to
myself the making of a raft or the like of such a
fabric; but everything was so hard frozen that,
being single-handed, it was next to impossible
I should be able to put together such a con-
trivance as would be fit to live in the smallest
sea-way.
However, I was resolved not to make myself
melancholy with these considerations. The good
fortune that had attended me so far might







134 THE FRozen PIRATE.
accompany me to the end, and maybe I was the
fitter just then to take a hopeful view of my
condition because of the cheerfulness awakened
in me by the noble show of coal in the forepeak
At twelve o'clock by the watch in my pocket Igº
my dinner. I had a mind for a lighter drink that
brandy, and went to the lazarette and cut out
block of the wine in the cask I had opened;
also knocked out the head of a tierce of be:
designing a hearty regale for supper. You Smilº
perhaps, that I should talk so much of my eating
but if on shore, amid the security of existenº
there, it is the one great business of life, that
to say, the one great business of life after lºſe
what must it be to a poor shipwrecked wretch lik:
me...who had nothing else to think of but his food?
Yet I could not help smiling when I considered
how I was carrying my drink about in my fingº
What the wine was I do not know; it looked like
claret but was somewhat sweet, and was the mºs
genºus wine I ever tasted, spite of my haviº
to drink it warm, for if I let the cup out of
my hand to cool, lo! when I looked it was ice!
Whilst I sat smoking my pipe it entered my
head to Presently turn those two silent gentlemº
in the cabin out of it. It was a task from whic
I shrank, but it must be done. To be candid,
dreaded the effects of their dismal companionship
* my Spirits. I had been in the schooner twº
*ays only; I had been heartened by the plent) I
ad met with, a sound night's rest, the fire, *
*y escape from the fate that had certainly
overtaken me had I gone away in the boat. Bº
























































An Extraordinary Occurrence. 135
being of a superstitious nature and never a lover
of solitude, I easily guessed that in a few days
the weight of my loneliness would, come to press
very heavily upon me, and that if I suffered those
figures to keep the cabin I should find myself
lying under a kind of horror which might end in
breaking down my manhood and perhaps in
unsettling my reason.
this matter whilst I smoked. First I thought I
would drag them to the fissure or rent in the ice
just beyond the stern of the schooner and tumble
them into it. But even then they would still be
with me, so to speak—I mean, they would be
neighbours thoughout of sight; and my eagerness
was to get them away from this island altogether,
which was only to be done by casting them into
the sea. Why, though I did not mention the
matter in its place, I was as much haunted last
night by the man on deck and the meditating
figure on the rocks as by the fellows in the cabin;
and, laugh as you may at my weakness, I do
candidly own my feeling was, if I did not contrive
that the sea should carry those bodies away, I
should come before long to think of them as alive,
no matter in what part of the island I might bear
them to, and at night-time start at every sound,
hear their voices in the wind, see their shapes in
the darkness, and even by day dread to step
upon the cliffs.
m"hat such fancies should possess me already
arthi how necessary it was I should lose no time
**H** against their growth; so I settled my
U 1. Unaueſ.
- Unaugu : Uda
But how was I to dispose of them? I meditated
-































136 THE FRozen PIRATE.
I foresaw it would occupy me, that I cannot
scheme thus: first I was to haul the figures as
best I could on to the deck; then, there being
three, to get them over the side, and afterwards
by degrees to transport the four of them to sºme
steep whence they would slide of themselves into
the ocean. Yet so much did I dread the under
taking, and abhor the thought of the tedious time
imagine any other sort of painful and distressing
work that would not have seemed actually agree-
able as compared with this. - -
My pipe being smoked out, I stepped into the
cabin, and ascending the ladder threw off the
companion-cover and opened the doors, and then in
went to the man that had his back to the steps, 1%
but my courage failed me; he was so lifelike
there was so wild and fierce an earnestness in the
I
expression of his face, so inimitable a picture."
horror in his starting posture, that my hands fell
to my side and I could not lay hold of him; |
will not stop to analyse my fear or ask why, since
I knew that this man was dead, he should have 1.
terrified me as surely no living man could; I can
only repeat that the prospect of touching him, and :
|
|
|
|
laying him upon the deck and then dragging him
up the ladder, was indescribably fearful to me, an
I turned away, shaking as if I had the ague.
But it had to be done, nevertheless; and after
great deal of reasoning and self-reproach I seized
him on a sudden, and, kicking away the bench, let
him fall to the deck. He was frozen as hard as
stone and fell like stone, and I looked to see him
break, as a statue might that falls lumpishly
































- . -
AN ExtraorDINARY OCCURRENCE. 137
His arms remaining raised put him into an
attitude of entreaty to me to leave him in peace;
but I had somewhat mastered myself, and the
hurry and tumult of my spirits were a kind of hot
temper; so catching him by the collar, I dragged
him to the foot of the companion-steps, and then
with infinite labour and a number of sickening
pauses hauled him up the ladder to the deck.
I let him lie and returned, weary and out of
breath. He had been a very fine man in life, of
beauty too, as was to be seen in the shape of his
features and the particular elegance of his chin,
despite the distortion of his last unspeakable dis-
may; and with his clothes I guessed his weight
came hard upon two hundred pounds, no mean
burden to haul up a ladder.
I went to the cook-house for a dram and to rest
myself, and then came back to the cabin and
looked at the other man. His posture has been
already described. He made a very burly figure
in his coat, and if his weight did not exceed the
other's it was not likely to be less. Nothing of
his head was visible but the baldness on the top
and the growth of hair that ringed it, and the
fluffing up of his beard about his arms in which
his face was sunk. I touched his beard with a
shuddering finger, and noted that the frost had
made every hair of it as stiff as wire. It would
not do to stand idly contemplating him, for al-
ready there was slowly creeping into me a dread
of seeing his face; so I took hold of him and
swayed him from the table, and he fell upon the
deck sideways, preserving his posture, so that
}


THE FROZEN PIRATE.
º
his face remained hidden. I dragged him a little
way, but he was so heavy and his attitude rendered
him as a burthen so surprisingly cumbrous that I
... sure I could never of my own strength haul
him up the ladder. Yet neither was it tolerable
that he should be there. I thought of contriving
a tackle called a whip, and making one end fast tº
in and taking the other end to the little capº
... the main deck; but on inspecting the cº"
I found that the frost had rendered it immovable
added to which there was nothing whateve'." be
i.e. with the iron-hard gear, and therefore I had
to give that plan up:
fhen, thought I, if I was to put him before the
fire, he might, presently thaw into some sort 0
suppleness, and so prové not harder than the other
to get on deck. I liked the idea, and without
more ado dragged him laboriously into the cook
room and laid him close to the fürnace, throwing
in a little pile of coal to make the fire roar.
I then went on deck, and easily enough, the
deck being slippery, got my first man tº where the
huge fellow was that had sentinelled the Wessº
when I first looked down upon her; but when
Jiewed the slopes, broken into rocks, which
though unburdened, had found hard enough tº
ascend, I was perfectly certain should never be
je to transport the bodies, to the top of the cliffs
I must either let them fall into the great split
astern of the ship, or lower them over the side
and leave the hollow in which the schooner lay"
be their tomb. -
ſpaced about, not greatly noticing the cold"


An ExtRAoRDINARY Occurrence. 139
the little valley, and relishing the brisk exercise,
scheming to convey the bodies to the sea, for
was passionately in earnest in wishing the four of
them away; but to no purpose. I had but my
arms, and scheme as I would, I could not make
them stronger than they were. It was still blow-
ing a fresh bright gale from the south; the sea,
as might be known by the noise of it, beat very
heavily against the cliffs of ice; and the extremity
of the hollow, where it opened to the ocean but
without showing it, was again and again veiled by
a vast cloud of spray, the rain of which I could
hear ringing like volleys of shot as the wind smote
it and drove it with incredible force against the
rocks past the brow of the north slope. I thought
to myself there should be power in this wind to
quicken the sliding of even so mighty a berg as
this island northwards. Every day should steal
it by something, however inconsiderable, nearer to
warmer regions, and no gale, nay, no gentle swell
even, but must help to crack and loosen it into
pieces. “Oh,” cried I, “for the power to rupture
this bed, that the schooner might slip into the
Seal Think of her running north before such a
gale as this, steadily bearing me towards a more
temperate clime, and into the road of ships ' " I
Glenched my hands with a wild yearning in my
heart. Should ever behold my country again?
should I ever jaeet a living man 2 The white and
frozen steeps glared a bald reply; and I heard
nothing but menace in the shrill noises of the
wind and the deep and thunderous roaring of the
0Cean,






140 THE Frozen PIRATE.
It was mighty comforting, however, on return
ing to the cabin to find it vacant, to be freed from
the scare of the sight of the two silent figures,
drew my breath more easily and stopped to glanc:
around. It was the barest cabin I was ever in-
uncarpeted, with no other seats than the little
benches. I looked at the crucifix, and guessed
from the sight of it that, whatever might be the
vessel's nation, she had not been sailed by
Englishmen. I peeped into poor Polly's cage—iſ
a parrot it was—and the sight of the rich plumage
carried my imagination to skies of brass, to the
mysterious green solitude of tropic forests, to
islands fringed with silver surf, in whose sunny
flashing sported nude girls of faultless forms
showing their teeth of pearl in merry laughter
winding amorously with the blue billow, and filling
the aromatic breeze with the melody of their
language of the sun. Ha! thought I, sailors see
some changes in their time; and with a hearly
sigh I stepped into the cook-room.
I started, stopped, and fell back a pace with a
cry. When I had put the figure before the fire
he was in the same posture in which he had sat
at the table, that is, leaning forward with his face
hid in his arms; I had laid him on his side, with
his face to the furnace, and in that attitude you
would have supposed him a man sound asleep
with his arms over his face to shield it from the
heat. But now, to my unspeakable astonishment,
he lay on his back, with his arms sunk to his side
and resting on the deck, and his face upturned.
I stared at him from the door as if he was the

































-
An ExtraordinaRy OccuRRENCE. 141
* -
Fiend himself. I could scarce credit my senses,
and my consternation was so great that I cannot
conceive of any man ever having laboured under
a greater fright. I faintly ejaculated ‘Good
God!’ several times, and could hardly prevent
my legs from running away with me. You see, it
was certain he must have moved of his own accord
to get upon his back. I was prepared for the fire
to thaw him into limberness, and had I found him
straightened somewhat I should not have been
surprised. But there was no power in fire to
stretch him to his full length and turn him over on
his back. What living or ghostly hand had done
this thing? Did spirits walk this schooner after
all? Had I missed of something more terrible
than any number of dead men in searching th
vessel ?
I had made a great fire and its light was strong,
and there was also the light of the lanthorn; but
the furnace flames played very lively, completely
overmastering the steady illumination of the
candle, and the man's figure was all a-twitch with
moving shadows, and a hundred fantastic shades
seemed to steal out of the side and bulkheads
and disappear upon my terrified gaze. Then,
thought I, suppose after all that the man should be
alive, the vitality in him set flowing by the heat 2
I minded myself of my own simile of the current
checked by frost, yet retaining unimpaired the
principle of motion; and getting my agitation
under some small control, I approached the body
on tiptoe and held the lanthorn to its face.
He looked a man of sixty years of age ; his
-
: -|
º
º





THE FROZEN PIRATE,
-
beard was grey and very long, and lay upºn tº
£reast like a cloud of smoke. His eyes wº
josed; the brows shaggy, and the dark sea o
a sword-wound ran across his forehead from the
joiner of the left eye to the top of the rightbº
His nose was long and hooked, but the repose in
his countenance, backed by the vague characte
ºf the light in which I inspected him, left his face
almost expressionless. I was toº much alarmed
to put my ear to his mouth to mark if he breathed
# indeed the noise of the burning fire, wº
me to distinguish his respiratiºn
m him, and put down the lar
Thought I, it will not dº
here.
have permitted
I drew back fro
thorn and watched him.
to believe there is anything supernatural
can swear there is naught living in this ship, an
am I to suppose, assuming she is haunted, that a
host, which I have always read and heard of as
in essence, has in its shadowy being such quality
of muscle as would enable it to turn that heavy
an over from his side on to his back? No, no
upon it, either he is alive
mself, or else in
hawing him has
him to
In
thought I depend
and may presently come to hi
some wonderful way the fire in t
... wrought in his frozen fibres as to cause
tuſſl. -
presently his left leg, that was slightly bent tº
wards the furnace, stretched itself out to its ſº
length, and my ear caught a faint sound, as of *
Gracious heaven.
weak and melancholy sigh.
he is alive! and with less of terror
thought I,
than of profound awe, now that I saw therº".
nothing of a ghostly or preternatural character"
-


An Extraordinary OccuRRENCE. 143
this business, I approached and bent over him.
His eyes were still shut, and I could not hear that
he breathed; there was not the faintest motion of
respiration in his breast nor stir in the hair, that
was now soft, about his mouth. Yet, so far as the
light would suffer me to judge, there was a
complexion in his face such as could only come
With flowing blood, however languid its circulation,
and putting this and the sigh and the movement
of the leg together, I felt convinced that the man
was alive, and forthwith fell to work, very full of
*We and amazement to be sure, to help nature
that was struggling in him.
My first step was to heat some brandy, and
Whilst this was doing I pulled open his coat and
freed his neck, fetching a coat from the cabin to
§§rve as a pillow for his head. I next removed
his boots and laid bare his feet (which were
ºncased in no less than four pairs of thick woollen
ºckings, so that I thought when I came to the
third pair I should find his legs made of stockings),
*d after bathing his feet in hot water, of which
there was a kettleful, I rubbed them with hot
brandy as hard as I could chafe. I then dealt
With his hands in the like manner, having once
*n shipmate with a seaman who told me he had
.* a sailor brought to by severe rubbing of
* extremities after he had been carried below
PPosed to be frozen to death, and continued
this exercise, till I could rub no longer. Next I
*d his lips and, finding he wanted some of
lS front teeth, I very easily poured a dram of
*y into his mouth. Though I preserved my


f44 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
- - - -
- -
astonishment all this while, I soon discovered
myself working with enthusiasm, with a most
passionate longing indeed to recover the man, no
bnly because it pleased me to think of my being
an instrument under God of calling a human being
so to speak, out of his grave, but because !
yearned for a companion, some one to address
to lighten the hideous solitude of my condition
and to assist me in planning our deliverance.
I built up a great fire, and with much trouble
for he was very heavy, disposed him in such a
manner before it that the heat was reflected all
over the front of him from his head to his feet. I
likewise continued to chafe his extremities
remitting this work only to rest, and finding that
the brandy had stolen down his throat, I poured
another dram in and then another, till I think he
had swallowed a pint. This went on for an hour,
during which time he never exhibited the least
signs of life; but on a sudden he sighed deep,
tremor ran through him, he sighed again and
partly raised his right hand, which fell to the deck
with a blow; his lips twitched, and a small con-
vulsion of his face compelled the features into the
similitude of a grin that instantly faded; then he
fetched a succession of sighs and opened his eyes
full upon me.
I was warm enough with my work, but when I
observed him looking at me I turned of a death-
i.e. cold, and felt the dew of an intolerable
emotion wet in the palms of my hands... Theº
was no speculation in his stare at first; his eye.
lay as coldly upon me as those of a fish; but as


--
- º ººº ºn
-- º º º º º º
º s
---
AN ExTRAORDINARY OccuRRENCE. 145
life quickened in him so his understanding awoke;
he slightly knitted his brows, and very slowly
rolled his gaze off me to the furnace and so
over as much of the cook-room as was before
him. He then started as if to sit up, but fell
back with a slight groan and looked at me
again. -
“What is this?” said he in French, in a very
hollow feeble voice. -
I knew enough of his language to enable me
to know he spoke in French, but that was all. I
could not speak a syllable of that tongue.
"You'll be feeling better presently; you must
not expect your strength to come in a minute,”
said I, taking my chance of his understanding
me, and speaking that he might not think me a
ghost, for I doubt not. I was as white as one;
Since, to be plain, the mere talking to a figure
that I had got to consider as sheerly dead as
anybody in a graveyard was alarming enough, and
then again there was the sound of my own voice,
which I had not exerted in speech for ages, as it
Seemed to me.
He faintly nodded his head, by which I per-
Լlved, he understood me, and said very faintly in
"glish, but with a true French accent, “This is a
ard bed, sir.”
"I'll speedily mend that,” said I, and at once
*hed a mattress from the cabin next mine;
* I placed beside him, and dragged him on to
it, he very weakly assisting. I then brought
Clothes and rugs to cover him with, and made
him a high pillow, and as he lay close to the
* * *, *… “…
-----, -g

146 The Frozen Pirate.
\
furnace he could not have been snugger had he
had a wife to tuck him up in his own bed.
! was very much excited ; my former terroº
had vanished, but my awe continued great, for
felt as if I had wrought a miracle, and I tremble:
*** man would who surveys some prodigy of his
* Creation. It was yet to be learnt how long
he had been in this condition; but I was perfectly
sure he had formed one of the schooner's people
and as I had guessed her to have been here of
*PWards, of fifty years, the notion of that man
having lain torpid for half a century held me
under a perpetual spell of astonishment; but
"Gre was no more horror in mºnor fright. He
followed me about with his eyes but did not offe
tº SPeak; perhaps he could not i put a lump ºf
Qe into the kettlé, and when the water boiled made
him a pint of steaming brandy punch, which I held
to his lips in a pannikin whilst I supported his back
with my knee; he Supped it slowly and painfully
but with unmistakabi. relish, and fetched a sig
of contentment as he lay back. But he would
need something more sustaining than brandy and
". . and as I guessed his stomach, after sº
prodigious * fast, would be too weak to support
such solids as beef of pork or bacon, I mused a
little, turning over in my mind the contents of the
|alier,(as I call it), aſ "... .". eyed mº
With bewilderment growing in his face; and
then thought I cºuld not do better than
i...º him a broth of atmº, in bris:
biscuit, and a piece of tongue minced very small
This did not take me long in doing, the tog".
…”.



THE PIRATE's STORY. I47
ing near the furnace and soft enough for the
ife, and there was nothing to melt but the wine.
'hen the broth was ready I kneeled as before
d fed him. He ate greedily, and when the broth
as gone looked as if he would have been glad
T more.
"Now, sir,” says I, “sleep if you can ;" with
hich he turned his head and in a few minutes
as , sound asleep, breathing regularly and
eeply. * .
- CHAPTER XV.
THE PIRATE's story.
IT was now time to think of myself. The watch
showed the hour to be after six. Whilst my
Supper was preparing I went on deck to close the
hatches to keep the cold out of the ship, and
ſºund the weather changed, the wind having
shifted directly into the west, whence it was
blowing with a good deal of violence upon the ice,
"ging over the peaks and among the rocks with
*śngular clanking noise in its crying, as though
"brought with it the echo of thousands of bells
Pealing in some great city behind the sea. It also
*"ºpt up the gorge that went from our hollow to
the edge of the diffin a noisy fierce hooting, and
this blast was very freely charged with the spray
ºf the breakers which boiled along the island.
° sky was overcast with flying clouds of the
" Cape Horn colour and appearance.
| closed the fore-scuttle, but on stepping aft
"ame to the two bodies, the sight of which
-








L. 2
THE FRozen PIRATE.
It was mighty comforting, however, on return:
ing to the cabin to find it vacant, to be freed from
the scare of the sight of the two silent figures.
drew my breath more easily and stopped to glance
around. It was the barest cabin I was ever in-
uncarpeted, with no other seats than the little
benches. I looked at the crucifix, and guessed
from the sight of it that, whatever might be the
vessel's nation, she had not been sailed by
Englishmen. I peeped into poor Polly's cage—iſ
a parrot it was—and the sight of the rich plumage
carried my imagination to skies of brass, to the
mysterious green solitude of tropic forests, to
islands fringed with silver surf, in whose sunny
flashing sported nude girls of faultless forms
showing their teeth of pearl in merry laughter,
winding amorously with the blue billow, and filling
the aromatic breeze with the melody of their
language of the sun. Ha! thought I, sailors see
some changes in their time; and with a hearty
sigh I stepped into the cook-room. -
I started, stopped, and fell back a pace with a
cry. When I had put the figure before the fire
he was in the same posture in which he had sat
at the table, that is, leaning forward with his face
hid in his arms; I had laid him on his side, with
his face to the furnace, and in that attitude you
would have supposed him a man sound asleep
with his arms over his face to shield it from the
heat. But now, to my unspeakable astonishment,
he lay on his back, with his arms sunk to his side
and resting on the deck, and his face upturned.
I stared at him from the door as if he was the
























- - -
An ExtraordinaRy Occurrence... *TA
º
Fiend himself. I could scarce credit my senses,
and my consternation was so great that I cannot
conceive of any man ever having laboured under
a greater fright. I faintly ejaculated ‘Good
God!' several times, and could hardly prevent
my legs from running away with me. You see, it
was certain he must have moved of his own accord
to get upon his back. I was prepared for the fire
to thaw him into limberness, and had I found him
straightened somewhat I should not have been
surprised. But there was no power in fire to
stretch him to his full length and turn him over on
| his back. What living or ghostly hand had done
this thing? Did spirits walk this schooner after
* Had I missed of something more terrible
than any number of dead men in searching th
Wessel ?
had made a great fire and its light was strong,
ºld there was also the light of the lanthorn; but
the urnace flames played very lively, completely
ºnastering the steady illumination of the
candle, and the man's figure was all a-twitch with
"ing shadows, and a hundred fantastic shades
*d to steal out of the side and bulkheads
* disappear upon my terrified gaze. Then,
lºgº I, Suppose after all that the man should be
* the vitality in him set flowing by the heat 2
lº myself of my own simile of the current
checked by frost, yet retaining unimpaired the
º: of motion; and getting my agitation
On ...some small control, I approached the body
*Pºe and held the lanthon to its face.
*"oked a man of sixty years of age; his

| Tºp- - THE FRozen PIRATE,
beard was grey and very long, and lay upon his
breast like a cloud of smo. His eyes Weſt
closed; the brows shaggy, and the dark scar of
a sword-wound ran across his forehead from the
corner of the left eye to the top of the right brow.
His nose was long and hooked, but the repose in
his countenance, backed by the vague character
of the light in which I inspected him, left his face
almost expressionless. I was too much alarmed
9 Put my ear to his mouth to mark if hebreathed
if indeed the noise of the burning fire would
have permitted me to distinguish his respiration.
I drew back from him, and put down the lan:
thorn and watched him. Thought I, it will not do
to believe there is anything supernatural here.
can swear there is naught living in this ship, and
am I to suppose, assuming she is haunted, that a
ghost, which I have always read and heard of as
... esseſſee, has in its shadowy being such quality
of muscle as would enable it to turn that heavy
*" ºver from his side on to his back? No, no
thought I depend upon it, either he is alive
and may Presently come to himself, or else in
$9me wonderful way the fire in thawing him has
So Wrought in his frozen fibres as to cause him to
turn.
Presently his left leg, that was slightly bent tº
wards the furnace, stretched itself ºut to its full
length, and "Year caught a faint sound, as of a
weak and melancholy sigh. Gracious heaven,
thought I, he is alive! and with less of terror
than of Poſound awe, now that iſ saw there Was
nothing of a ghostly or preternatural character tº
-


An Extraordinary OccuRRENCE. 143
-
-
this business, I approached and bent over him.
His eyes were still shut, and I could not hear that
he breathed; there was not the faintest motion of
respiration in his breast nor stir in the hair, that
was now soft, about his mouth. Yet, so far as the
light would suffer me to judge, there was a
complexion in his face such as could only come
with flowing blood, however languid its circulation,
and putting this and the sigh and the movement
of the leg together, I felt convinced that the man
was alive, and forthwith fell to work, very full of
awe and amazement to be sure, to help nature
that was struggling in him.
My first step was to heat some brandy, and
whilst this was doing I pulled open his coat and
freed his neck, fetching a coat from the cabin to
serve as a pillow for his head. I next removed
his boots and laid bare his feet (which were
encased in no less than four pairs of thick woollen
stockings, so that I thought when I came to the
third pair I should find his legs made of stockings),
and after bathing his feet in hot water, of which
there was a kettleful, I rubbed them with hot
brandy as hard as I could chafe. I then dealt
with his hands in the like manner, having once
been shipmate with a seaman who told me he had
seen a sailor brought to by severe rubbing of
his extremities after he had been carried below
supposed to be frozen to death, and continued
this exercise till I could rub no longer. Next I
opened his lips and, finding he wanted some of
his front teeth, I very easily poured a dram of
brandy into his mouth. Though I preserved my
| s.
|
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of
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º - -
º ic
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º
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f44 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
* * *
astonishment all this while, I soon discovered
myself working with enthusiasm, with a *.
passionate longing indeed to recover the man. not
only because it pleased me to think of my being
an instrument under God of calling a human be";
so to speak, out of his grave, but becaº
yearned for a companion, some one to address,
to lighten the hideous solitude of my condition
and to assist me in planning our deliverance.
I built up a great fire, and with much trouble,
for he was very heavy, disposed him in such a
manner before it that the heat was reflected all
over the front of him from his head to his feet.
likewise continued to chafe his extremit”
remitting this work only to rest, and finding that
the brandy had stolen down his throat, I Pº
another dram in and then another, till I think he
had swallowed a pint. This went on for an hour,
during which time he never exhibited the lea"
signs of life; but on a sudden he sighed deep, 3
tremor ran through him, he sighed again an
partly raised his right hand, which fell to the deck
with a blow; his lips twitched, and a small con-
vulsion of his face compelled the features into the
similitude of a grin that instantly faded; then he
fetched a succession of sighs and opened his eyes
full upon me.
I was warm enough with my work, but when I
observed him looking at me I turned of a death-
like cold, and felt the dew of an intolerable
emotion wet in the palms of my hands. There
was no speculation in his stare at first; his º
lay as coldly upon me as those of a fish; but *
- -
tº ºr
An Extraordinary Occurrence. 145
life quickened in him so his understanding awoke;
he slightly knitted his brows, and very slowly
rolled his gaze off me to the furnace and so
over as much of the cook-room as was before
him. He then started as if to sit up, but fell
back with a slight groan and looked at me
again.
“What is this?” said he in French, in a very
hollow feeble voice. -
I knew enough of his language to enable me º
to know he spoke in French, but that was all. I
could not speak a syllable of that tongue.
“You’ll be feeling better presently; you must
not expect your strength to come in a minute,”
said I, taking my chance of his understanding
me, and speaking that he might not think me a
ghost, for I doubt not. I was as white as one;
since, to be plain, the mere talking to a figure
that I had got to consider as sheerly dead as
anybody in a graveyard was alarming enough, and
then again there was the sound of my own voice,
which I had not exerted in speech for ages, as it
seemed to me.
He faintly nodded his head, by which I per-
ceived he understood me, and said very faintly in
English, but with a true French accent, “This is a
hard bed, sir.”
“I’ll speedily mend that,” said I, and at once
fetched a mattress from the cabin next mine ;
this I placed beside him, and dragged him on to
it, he very weakly assisting. I then brought
clothes and rugs to cover him with, and made
a high pillow, and as he lay close to the
yy





THE FROzEN PIRATE.
furnace he could not have been snugger had he
had a wife to tuck him up in his own bed.
I was very much excited ; my former terrors
had vanished, but my awe continued great, for I
felt as if I had wrought a miracle, and I trembled
as a man would who surveys some prodigy of his
own creation. It was yet to be learnt how long
he had been in this condition; but I was perfectly
sure he had formed one of the schooner's people,
and as I had guessed her to have been here for
upwards of fifty years, the notion of that man
having lain torpid for half a century held me
under a perpetual spell of astonishment; but
there was no more horror in me nor fright. He
followed me about with his eyes but did not offer
to speak; perhaps he could not. I put a lump of
ice into the kettle, and when the water boiled made
him a pint of steaming brandy punch, which I held
to his lips in a pannikin whilst I supported his back
with my knee; he supped it slowly and painfully
but with unmistakable relish, and fetched a sigh
of contentment as he lay back. But he would
need something more sustaining than brandy and
water; and as I guessed his stomach, after so
prodigious a fast, would be too weak to support
such solids as beef or pork or bacon, I mused a
little, turning over in my mind the contents of the
larder (as I call it), all which time he eyed me
with bewilderment growing in his face; and I
then thought I could not do better than
manufacture him a broth of oatmeal, wine, bruised
biscuit, and a piece of tongue minced very small.
This did not take me long in doing, the tongue

THE PIRATE's STORY. I47
being near the furnace and soft enough for the
knife, and there was nothing to melt but the wine.
When the broth was ready I kneeled as before
and fed him. He ate greedily, and when the broth
was gone looked as if he would have been glad
for more. - ; : " .
“Now, sir,” says I, “sleep if you can ;" with
which he turned his head and in a few minutes
was , sound asleep, breathing regularly and
deeply. * . -
:
3.:º
CHAPTER xv.
the PIRATE's story.
It was now time to think of myself. The watch
showed the hour to be after six. Whilst my º
supper was preparing I went on deck to close the º
hatches to keep the cold out of the ship, and wº:
found the weather changed, the wind having
shifted directly into the west, whence it was
blowing with a good deal of violence upon the ice,
ringing over the peaks and among the rocks with
a singular clanking noise in its crying, as though %
it brought with it the echo of thousands of bells |
pealing in some great city behind the sea. It also *
swept up the gorge that went from our hollow to º
the edge of the cliff in a noisy fierce hooting, and
this blast was very freely charged with the spray
of the breakers which boiled along the island.
The sky was overcast with flying clouds of the
true Cape Horn colour and appearance.
I closed the fore-scuttle, but on stepping aft
came to the two bodies, the sight of which
L 2
* f




148 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
brought me to a stand. Since there was life in
one, thought I, life may be in these, and I felt as
if it would be like murdering them to leave the
here for the night. But, said I to myself, after all,
these men are certainly insensible if they be nº
dead; the cold that freezes on deck cannot tº
different from the cold that froze them below:
they'll not be better off in the cabin than herº,
It will be all the same to them, and to-morrow I
shall perhaps have the Frenchman's help to Carºl
them to the furnace and discover if the vital spark
is still in them.
To be candid, I was the more easily persuaded
to leave them to their deck lodging by the Vº
grim, malignant, and savage appearance of the
great figure that had leaned against the rail.
Indeed, I did not at all like the notion of such
company in the cabin through the long night.
Added to this, his bulk was such that, without
assistance, I could only have moved him as yº"
move a cask, by rolling it; and though this might
have answered to convey him to the hatch,
stood to break his arms and legs off, , an
perhaps his head, so brittle was he with fro;',
by letting his own weight trundle him down the
ladder.
So I left them to lie and came away, flinging"
last look round, and then closing the compan".
door upon me. The Frenchman, as I may cal
him, was sleeping very heavily and snor";
loudly. '*
I got my supper, and whilst I ate surveyed the
mound of clothes he made on the deck—a motº
| THE PIRATE's Story. #49
-
heap indeed, with the colours and the finery of
the lace and buttons of the coats I had piled upon
him—and fell into some startling considerations
of him. Was it possible, I asked myself, that
he could have lain in his frozen stupor for fifty
years? But why not ? for suppose he had been
on this ice but a year only, nay, six months—an
absurdity in the face of the manifest age of the
ship and her furniture—would not six months of
lifelessness followed by a resurrection be as
marvellous as fifty years 2 Had he the same
aspect when the swoon of the ice seized him as
he has now 2 I answered yes, for the current of
life having been frozen, his appearance would
remain as it was. -
I lighted my pipe and sat smoking, thinking
he would presently awake; but his slumber was
as deep as the stillness I had thawed him out
of had been, and he lay so motionless that, but
for his snoring and harsh breathing, I should have
believed him lapsed into his former state.
At eight o'clock the fire was very low. Nature
was working out her own way with this Frenchman,
and I determined to let him sleep where he was,
and take my chance of the night. At all events
he could not alarm me by stirring, for if I heard
a movement I should know what it was. So, loiter-
ing to see the last gleam of the fire extinguished,
I took my lanthorn and went to bed, but not to
sleep.
The full meaning of the man awakening into
life out of a condition into which he had been
plunged, for all I knew, before I was born, came
|-|
|
º



150 THE Frozen Pirate.
upon me Very violently in the darkness. There
being nothing to divºt my thoughts, I gave my
mind wholly to it, and I tell you I found it aſ
*ing terrifying thing to happen. Indeed,
do not know th: the like of such an adventure
Wºs, ever before heard of, and I well recollect
thinking to myself, “I would give my left hand to
know of other cases of the kind—to be assured
that this *9Wey was strictly within the bounds
of nature,” that I might feel I was not alone, so
Strongly did the thoughts of a satanic influence
9Perating in this business crowd upon me—that is
tº say, as if I was involuntarily working out some
Plan of the devil. - -
he gale made a great roaring. The ship's Stern
lay open to the 80rge, and but for her steadiness
I might have *PPosed myself at sea. There was
indeed an incessant thunder about my ears often
**ompanied by the sho. of a mass of spray
flung thirty feet high, and falling like sacks of
ºupon the dºck."on...","..." ii.
roºk; I cannot tell the hour, but it was long past
midnight, and by the noise of the wind I guessed
* Was blowing a whole gale. The movement was
*traordinary—whether sideways or downwards
I could not distinguish; but, seasoned as my
stomach was to th: motion of ships, this move:
** set up a nausea that lasted some while,
acting "Pon me as I have since learned the
9 onvulsion of an earthquake does upon people:
filled me with a different sort of alarm altogether,
for it was Very evident the gale was making the


THE PIRATE's STORY. I5 I
ice break; and, thought I to myself, if we do not
mind our eye we shall be crushed and buried.
But what was to be done? To quit the ship for
that piercing flying gale, charged with sleet and
hail and foam, was merely to languish for a
little and then miserably expire of frost. No,
thought I, if the end is to come let it find
me here; and with that I snugged me down
amid the coats and cloaks in my cot, and,
obstinately holding my eyes closed, ultimately fell
asleep.”
It was late when I awoke. I lighted the
lanthorn, but upon entering the passage that
led to the cabin I observed by my own posture
that the schooner had not only heeled more
to larboard, but was further “down by the stern"
to the extent of several feet. Indeed, the angle
of inclination was now considerable enough
to bring my shoulder (in the passage) close
against the starboard side when I stood erect.
The noise of the gale was still in the air, and the
booming and boiling of the sea was uncommonly
loud. I walked straight to the cook-room, and,
putting the lanthorn to the Frenchman, perceived
that he was still in a heavy sleep, and that he had
lain through the night precisely in the attitude in
which I had left him. His face was so muffled
that little more than his long hawk's-bill nose was
discernible. It was freezingly cold, and I made
haste to light the fire. There was still coal enough
in the corner to last for the day, and before long
the furnace was blazing cheerfully. I went to work
to make some broth and fry some ham, and melt
_


152 THE FRozen PIRATE.
a little block of the ruby-coloured wine; and
whilst thus occupied, turning my head a momen:
to look at the Frenchman, I found him half
started up, staring intently at me. -
This sudden confrontment threw me into such
confusion that I could not speak. He moved his
head from side to side, taking a view of the scene,
with an expression of the most inimitable astonish-
ment painted upon his countenance. He then
brought the flat of his hand with a dramatic blow
to his forehead, the scar on which showed black
as ink to the fire-glow, and sat erect.
“Where have I been P’’ he exclaimed in
French.
“Sir,” said I, speaking with the utmost difficulty,
“I do not understand your language. I am
English. You speak my tongue. Will you
address me in it 2" -
“English ' " he exclaimed in English, dropping
his head on one side, and peering at me with an
incredible air of amazement. “How came you
here? You are not of our company? Let me
see . . .” Here he struggled with recollec-
tion, continuing to stare at me from under his
shaggy eyebrows as if I was some frightful
V1S1On.
“I am a shipwrecked British mariner,” said I,
“ and have been cast away upon this ice, where I
found your schooner.” -
“Hal” he interrupted with prodigious
vehemence, “certainly; we are frozen up-l
remember. That sleep should serve my memory
so l’’ He made as if to rise, but sat again.
ſé!
de
|
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b:
S0
W.
$:



-
The PIRATE's Story. 153
“The cold is numbing; it would weaken a lion.
Give me a hot drink, sir.”
I filled a pannikin with the melted wine, which
he swallowed thirstily. -
“Morel" cried he. “I seem to want life.”
Again I filled the pannikin.
“Good!" said he, fetching a sigh as he
returned the vessel; “you are very obliging, sir.
If you have food there, we will eat together.”
I give the substance of his speech, but not his
delivery of it, nor is it necessary that I should
interpolate my rendering with the French words he
used.
The broth being boiled, I gave him a good
bowl of it along with a plate of bacon and tongue,
some biscuit and a pannikin of hot brandy and
water, all which things I put upon his knees as he
sat up on the mattress, and to it he fell, making a
rare meal. Yet all the while he ate he acted like
a man bewitched, as well he might, staring at me
and looking round and round him, and then
dropping his knife to strike his brow, as if by that
kind of blow he would quicken the activity of
memory there. -
"There is something wrong,” said he presently.
“What is it, sir? This is the cook-room. How
does it happen that I am lying here 2°
I told him exactly how it was, adding that if it
had not been for his posture, which obliged me to
thaw in order to carry him, he would now be on
deck with the others, awaiting the best funeral I
could give him.
“Who are the others?” asked he.
º




154 . THE FROzEN PIRATE.
“I know not,” said I. “There were four in all,
counting yourself; one sits frozen to death on the
rocks. I met him first, and took this watch from
his pocket that I might tell the time.”
He took the watch in his hands, and asked me
to bring the lanthorn close. -
“Hal” cried he, “this was Mendoza's—the
captain's. I remember; he took it for the sake of
this letter upon it. He lies dead on the rocks?
We missed him, but did not know where he had
gone.” -
Then, raising his hand and impulsively starting
upon the mattress, he cried, whilst he tapped his
forehead, “It has come back I have it!
Guiseppe Trentanove and I were in the cabin; he
had fallen blind with the glare of the ice—if that
was it. We confronted each other. On a sudden
he screamed out. I had put my face into my
arms, and felt myself dying. His cry aroused me.
I looked up, and saw him leaning back from the
table with his eyes fixed and horror in his
countenance. I was too feeble to speak—too
languid to rise. I watched him awhile, and then
the drowsiness stole over me again, and my head
sank, and I remember no more.” -
He shuddered, and extended the pannikin for
more liquor, I filled it with two-thirds of brandy
and the rest water, and he supped it down as if it
had been a thimbleful of wine.
“By the holy cross,” cried he, “but this is very
wonderful, though. How long have you been here,
sir?”
“Three days.”
-
---
-



THE PIRATE's Story. I55
“Three days land. I have been in a stupor all
that time—never moving, never breathing?”
“You will have been in a stupor longer than
that, I expect,” said I. .
“What is this month P” he cried.
“July,” I replied.
“July–July 1” he muttered. “Impossible !
Let me see "—he began to count on his fingers—
“we fell in with the ice and got locked in
November. We had six months of it; I recollect
no more. Six months of it, sir; and suppose the
stupor came upon me then, the month at which
my memory stops would be April. Yet you call
this July; that is to say, four months of oblivion;
impossible !” -
“What was the year in which you fell in with
the ice P’’ said I.
“The year?” he exclaimed in a voice deep with
the wonder this question raised in him; “the year?
Why, man, what year but seventeen hundred and
fifty-three /* -
“Good God!” cried I, jumping to my feet with
terror at a statement I had anticipated, though it.
shocked me as a new and frightful revelation.
“Do you know what year this is P’’
He looked at me without answering.
“It is eighteen hundred and one,” I cried, and
as I said this I recoiled a step, fully expecting
him to leap up and exhibit a hundred demon-
strations of horror and consternation; for this
I am persuaded would have been my posture had
any man roused me from a slumber and told me I
had been in that condition for eight-and-forty years.
*




156 The Frozen PIRATE,
He continued to view me with a very straige
and cunning expression in his eyes, the coolness
of which was inexpressibly surprising and be:
wildering and even mortifying; then presently
grasping his beard, looked at it; then put his
hands to his face and looked at them; then drew
out his feet and looked at them; then very slowly,
but without visible effort, stood up, swaying a
little with an air of weakness, and proceeded to
feel and strike himself all over, swinging his arms
and using his legs; after which he sat down and
pulled the clothes over his naked feet, and fixing
his eyes on me afresh, said, “What do you say
this year is, sir?”
“Eighteen hundred and one,” I replied.
“Bah!” said he, and shook his head very
knowingly. “No matter; you have been ship-
wrecked too ! Sir, shipwreck shuffles dates as a
player does cards, and the best of us will go wrong
in famine, loneliness, cold, and peril. Be of goºd
cheer, my friend; all will return to you. Sit, sir,
that I may hear your adventures, and I will relate
mine.”
I saw how it was—he supposed me deranged,
a mortifying construction to place upon the
language of a man who had restored him to life;
yet a few moments' reflection taught me to see
the reasonableness of it, for unless he thought me
crazy he must conclude I spoke the truth, and it
was inconceivable he should believe that he had
lain in a frozen condition for eight-and-forty years.
I stirred the fire to make more light and sat
down near the furnace. His appearance was very

























THE PIRATE's Story. I57
striking. The scar upon his forehead gave a very
dark sullen look to his brows; his eyes were small
and were half lost in the dusky hollows in which
they were set, and I observed an indescribably
leering, cunning expression in them, something of
which I attributed to the large quantity of liquor
he had swallowed. This contrasted oddly with
the respectable aspect he took from his baldness
—that is, from the nakedness of his poll, for, as I
have before said, his hair fell long and plentifully,
in a ring a little above the ears, so that you would
have supposed at some late period of his life he
had been scalped. -
I know not how it was, but I felt no joy in thi
man's company. For some companion, for some
one to speak with, I had yearned again and again
with heart-breaking passion; and now a living
man sat before me, yet I was sensible of no glad-
ness. In truth, I was overawed by him; he
frightened me as one risen from the dead. Here
was a creature that had entered, as it seemed to
me, those black portals from which no man ever
returns, and had come back, through my
instrumentality, after hard upon fifty years of the
grave. Reason as I might that it was all perfectly
in nature, that there was nothing necromantic
or diabolic in it, that it could not have happened
had it not been natural, my spirits were as much
oppressed and confounded by his sitting there
alive, talking, and watching me, as if, being truly
dead, life had entered him on a sudden, and he
had risen and walked.
I have no doubt the disorder my mind was in
-
º




158 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
helped to persuade him that I had not the ful
possession of my senses. He ran his eye ovº
figure and then round the cook-room, and said,"
am impatient to learn your story, sir." -
“Why, sir,” said I," my story is summed up in
what I have already told you.” But that he migh
not be at a loss—for to be sure he had only Yºº
newly collected his intellects—I related º
adventures at large. He drew nearer tº the
furnace whilst I talked, bringing his covering "
clothes along with him, and held out his great
hands to toast at the fire, all the time obseſ":
me with scarce a wink of the eye. Arrived at the
end of my tale, I told him how only last night
had dragged his companion on deck, and hºw "
was to have followed but for his posture.
“Hal” cried he, “you might have caused my
flesh to mortify by laying me close to th:
fire. It would have been better to rub me with
snow.” -
He poked up one foot after the other to: count
his toes, fearing some had come away with his
stockings, and then said, “Well, and how long
should I have slept had you not come 2 Another
week! By St. Paul, I might have died. Have
you my stockings, sir?”
I gave them to him, and he pulled them over
his legs and then drew on his boots and stood up
the coats and wraps tumbling off him as e
TOSe.
“I can stand,” says he. “That is good."
But in attempting to take a step he reeled and
would have fallen had I not grasped his arm.
-































THE PIRATE’s STORy. I59
“Patience, my friend, patience 1" he muttered
as if to himself. “I must lie a little longer,” and
with that he kneeled and then lay along the
mattress. He breathed heavily and pointed to
the pannikin. I asked him whether he would
have wine or brandy; he answered, “Wine,” so I
melted a draught, which dose, I thought, on top
of what he had already taken, would send him to
sleep; but instead it quickened his spirits, and
with no lack of life in his voice he said, “What is
the condition of the vessel ?” -
I told him that she was still high and dry, add-
ing that during the night some sort of change had
happened which I should presently go on deck to
remark. / -
“Think you,” says he, “that there is any chance
of her ever being liberated P”
I answered, “’Yes, but not yet; that is, if the
ice in breaking doesn't destroy her. The summer
season has yet to come, and we are progressing
north; but now that you are with me it will be a
question for us to settle, whether we are to wait
for the ice to release the schooner or endeavour
to effect our escape by other means.”
A curious gleam of cunning satisfaction shone
in his eyes as he looked at me; he then kept
silence for some moments, lost in thought.
“Pray,” said I, breaking in upon him, “what
ship is this?”
He started, deliberated an instant, and an-
Swered, “The Boca del Dragon.”
* * So in Mr. Rodney's MS.


16o THE FRozen Pirate.
“A Spaniard 2" º
He nodded.
“She was a pirate?” said I.
“How do you know that?” he cried with a
sudden fierceness. . -
“Sir,” said I, “I am a British sailor who has.
used the sea for some years, and know the
difference between a handspike and a poop-
lanthorn. But what matters? She is a pirate no
longer.” |
He let his eyes fall from my face and gazed
round him with the air of one who cannot yet
persuade his understanding of the realities of the
scene he moves in. -
“Tut!” cried he presently, addressing him-
self, “what matters the truth, as you say? Yes,
the Boca del Dragon is a pirate. You have
of course rummaged her, and guessed her
character by what you found P”
“I met with enough to excite my suspicion,"
said I. “The ship's company of such a craft as
this do not usually go clothed in lace and
rich cloaks, and carry watches of this kind."
tapping my breast, “in their fobs and hand.
fuls of gold in their pockets.”
“ Unless ” said he.
“Unless,” I answered, “their flag is as black
as our prospects.”
“You think them black?” cried he, the look of
resentment that was darkening his face dying out
of it. “The vessel is sound, is not she 7"
I replied that she appeared so, but it would be
impossible to be sure until she floated. .












“The stores THE |
2"
PIRATE's Story.
“They are plentiful.”
“They should be l’’ he cried; “we have the
liquor and stores of a galleon and two carracks in
our hold, apart from what we originally laid in for
the cruise. Everything will have been kept sweet
by the cold.”
“All the stores seem sound,” said I ; “we shall
not starve—no, not if we were to be imprisoned
here for three years. But all the same our
prospects are black, for here is the ship high and
fixed; the ice in parting may crush her, and we
have no boat.”
“May, may !” he cried with a Frenchman's
vehemence. “You have may and you also have
may not in your language. Let me feel my
strength improving; we shall then find means of
throwing a light upon these black prospects of
yours.” -
He smiled, or rather grinned, his fangs making
the latter term fitter for the mirthless grimace
he made.
“May I ask your name?” said I.
“Jules Tassard, at your service,” said he,
“third in command of the Boca del Dragon, but
good as Mate Trentanove, and good as Captain
Mendoza, and good as the cabin boy Fernando
Prado; for we pirates are republicans, sir, we
know no social distinctions save those we order
for the convenience of working ship. Now let me
tell you the story of our disaster. We had come
out of the Spanish Main into the South Seas,
partly to escape some British and French cruisers
- M
-
-

162 THE Frozen PIRATE.
which were after us and others of our kind, and
partly because ill-luck was against us, and we
could not find our account in those waters. We . .
sailed in December two years ago 21
“Making the year 2” I interrupted. - 0
He started, and then grinned again. | W.
“Ah, to be sure | " cried he, “this is eighteen Sl
hundred and one; but to keep my tale iſ a
countenance,” he went on in a satirical apologetic - i.
way, “let me call the year in which we sailed for . .
the South Sea seventeen hundred and fifty-one. It
What matters forty or fifty years to the ship at
wrecked 2 Is not one day of an open boat, with 4;
no society but the devils of memory and no hope -
but the silence at the bottom of the sea, an to
eternity? Fill me that pannikin, my friend. I 4;
thank you. To proceed : we cruised, some tº
months in the South Sea and took a number of 1.
ships. One was a privateer that had plundered a 1:
British Indiaman in the Southern Ocean, and had 1.
entered the South Sea by New Holland. This W
fellow was full of fine clothes and had some silver 1 a
in her. We took what we wanted, and let her go
with her people under hatches, her yards square, 1s
her helm amidships, and her cabin on fire. Our lºt
maxim is, “No witnesses ' ' That is the pirate's
philosophy. Who gives us quarter unless it be to R
hang us? But to continue: we did handsomely,
but were a long time about it, and after careening
and filling up with water 'twixt San Carlos and
Chiloe we set sail for the Antilles. Like your brig,
we were blown south. . The weather was ferocious.
Gale after gale thundered down upon us, forcing


The Pirate's Story. 163
us to fly before it. We lost all reckoning of our
position; for days, for weeks, sea and sky were
enveloped in clouds of snow, in the heart of which
drove our frozen schooner. We were none of us
of a nationality fit to encounter these regions;
we carried most of us the curly hair of the
sun, the chocolate cheek of the burning zone,
º and the ice chained the crew, crouching like
Lascars, below. We swept past many vast
icebergs, which would leap on a sudden out of
the white whirl of thickness, often so close
aboard that the recoil of the surge striking
against the mass would flood our decks. At all
moments of the day and night we were prepared
to feel the shock of the vessel crushing her bows
against one of these stupendous hills. The cabin
resounded with Salves and Aves, with invocations
to the saints, promises, curses, and litanies. The
cold does not make men of the Spaniards, who
are but indifferent seamen in temperate climes, and
we were chiefly Spanish with consciences as red
as #" English flag.”
e grinned, emptied the pannikin, and
stretched his hands to the fire to warm
them.
“One morning, the weather having cleared
somewhat, we found ourselves surrounded by ice.
A great chain floated ahead of us, extending far
into the south. The gale blew dead on to this
coast; we durst not haul the schooner to the
wind, and our only chance lay in discovering
some bay where we might find shelter. Such a
bay it was my good luck to spy, lying directly in
--





M 2
164 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
- - - - |
a line with the ship's head. It was formed of:
great steep of ice jutting a long way slanting,
into the sea, the width between the point and the
main being about a third of a mile, I seized the
helm, and shouted to the men to hoist the head
of the mainsail that she might round to when
put the helm down. But the fellows were in a
Panic, terror and stood gaping at what the
regarded as their doom, calling upon the Virgin
and all the saints for help and mercy. Into this
bay did we rush on top of a huge sea, Trentanoº.
and the captain and I swinging with set teeth a .
the tiller, that was hard a jee; she came round
but with such way upon her that she took a long
shelving beach of ice and ran up it to the distanº
of half her own length, and there she lay, with
her rudder within touch of the wash of the water.
The men, regarding the schooner as lost, an
concluding that if she went to pieces her boats
would be destroyed, and with them their only
chance to escape from the ice, fell frantic and
lost their wits altogether. They roared, ‘To the
boats to the boats | The captain endea:
voured to bring them to their senses; he an -
and the mate, and Joam Barros, the boatswain
a Portuguese—went among them pistols in haº"
ºtreating, cursing, threatening. ‘Think of the
plunder in this hold I will you abandon it with:
out an effort to save it 2 What think you aſ:
your chances for life in open boats in this sea
The schooner lies protected here; the weath:
will moderate presently, and we may then be able
to slide her off.' But reason as we would the


The Pirates story. 165
cowardly dogs refused to listen. They had
broached a spirit-cask aft, and passed the liquor
along the decks whilst they hoisted the pinnace
out of the hold and got the other boats over.
The drink maddened, yet left them wild with fear
too. They would not wait to come at the treasure
in the run—the fools believed the ship would tumble
to pieces as she stood—but entered the forecastle
and the officers' cabins, and routed about for
whatever money and trinkets they might stuff
into their pockets without loss of time; and then
provisioning the boats, they called to us to join
them, but we said, No, on which they ran the
boats down to the water, tumbled into them, and
pulled away round the point of ice. We lost
sight of them then, and I have little doubt that
they all perished shortly afterwards.”
He ceased. I was anxious to hear more.
“You had been six months on the ice when
the stupor fell upon you ?”
“Ay, about six months. The ice gathered
about us and built us in. I recollect it was three
days after we stranded that, going on deck, I saw
the bay (as I term it) filled with ice. We drew
up several plans to escape, but none satisfied us.
Besides, sir, we had a treasure on board which
we had risked our necks to get, and we were pre-
pared to go on imperilling our lives to save it.
'Twas natural. We had a great store of coal
forwards and amidships, for we had faced the
Horn in coming and knew what we had to expect in
returning. We were also richly stocked with
provisions and drink of all sorts. There were but





- ºl.
166 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
four of us, and we dealt with what we had as if we
designed it should last us fifty years. But the
cold was frightful; it was not in flesh and blood
to stand it. One day—we had been locked up
about five months–Mendoza said he would get
upon the rocks and take a view of the sea. He
did not return. The others were too weak to
seek him, and they were half blind besides; I
went, but the ice was full of caves and hollows,
and the like, and I could not find him, nor could I
look for him long, the cold being the hand of
death itself up there. The time went by ; Tren:
tanove went stone-blind, and I had to put food
and drink into his hands that he might live. A
week before the stupor came upon me I went on
deck and saw Joam Barros leaning at the rail. I
called to him, but he made no reply. I
approached and looked at him, and found him
frozen. Then happened what I have told you.
We were in the cabin, the mate seated at the
table, waiting for me to lead and support him to
the cook-room, for he was so weak he could
scarce carry his weight. A sudden faintness
seized me, and I sank down upon the bench
opposite him, letting my head fall upon my
arms. His cry startled me—I looked up—saw
him as I have said; but the cabin then turned
black, my head sank again, and I remember no
In Ore.
He paused and then cried in French, “That is
all ! They are dead—Jules Tassard lives! The
devil is loyal to his own!” and with that he lay
back and burst into laughter.























I HEAR OF A GREAT TREASURE. 167
“And this,” said I, “was in seventeen hundred
and fifty-three ?”
“Yes,” he answered; “and this is eighteen
hundred and one—eight-and-forty years after-
wards, hey 2” and he laughed out again, “I’ve
talked so much,” said he, “that, d'ye know, I
think another nap will do me good. What coals
have you found in the ship 2"
I told him. -
“Good,” he cried; “we can keep ourselves
warm for some time to come, anyhow.”
And so saying, he pulled a rug up to his nose
and shut his eyes,
CHAPTER XVI.
I HEAR OF A GREAT TREASURE.
I LIGHTED a pipe and sat pondering his story a
little while. There was no doubt he had given
me the exact truth so far as his relation of it
went. As it was certain then that the Boca del
Dragon (as she was called) had been fixed in the
ice for hard upon fifty years, the conclusion I
formed was that she had been blown by some
hundreds of leagues further south than the point
to which the Laughing Mary had been driven;
that this ice in which she was entangled was not
then drifting northwards, but was in the grasp of .
some polar current that trended it south-easterly;
that in due course it was carried to the Antarctic
main of ice, where it lay compacted; after which,
through stress of weather or by the agency of a
particular temperature, a great mass of it broke
- ºn
; :
:



f68 THE FRozen PIRATE.
away and started on that northward course which
bergs of all magnitude take when they are ruptured
from the frozen continent.
This theory may be disputed, but it matters
not. My business is te relate what befell me; if
I do my share honestly the candid reader will not
I believe, quarrel with me for not being able to
explain everything as I go along.
The Frenchman snored, and I sat considering
him. The impression he had made upon me was
not agreeable. To be sure he had suffered
heavily, and there was something not displeasing
in the spirit he discovered in telling the story-4
spirit I am unable to communicate, as it owed
everything to French vivacity largely spiced with
devilment, and to sudden turns and ejaculations
beyond the capacity of my pen to imitate. But a
professional fierceness ran through it too; it was
as if he had licked his chops when he talked of
dismissing the captured ship with her people
confined below and her cabin on fire. He had
been as good as dead for nearly fifty years, yet he
brought with him into life exactly the same
qualities he had carried with him in his exit.
Hence I never now hear that expression taken
from the Latin, “Of the dead speak nothing unless
good,” without despising it as an unworthy con:
cession to sentiment; for I have not the least
doubt in my mind that, spite of deathbed re-
pentances and all the horrors which crowd upon
the imagination of a bad man in his last moments
—I say I have not the least doubt that of every
hundred persons who die, ninety-nine of them,
:

























I HEAR of A GREAT TREASURE. 169
could they be raised from the dead, no matter
how many years or even centuries they might
have lain in their graves, would exhibit their
original natures, and pursue exactly the same
courses which made them loved or scorned or
feared or neglected before, which brought them to
the gallows or which qualified them to die in
peace with faces brightening to the opening
heavens. If Nero did not again fire Rome he
would be equal to crimes as great, and desire
nothing better than the opportunity for them.
Caesar would again be the tyrant, and the sword
of Brutus would once more fulfil its mission.
Richard III. would emerge in his winding-sheet
with the same humpbacked character in which he
had expired, the Queen of Scots return warm
to her gallantries, and the Stuarts repeat those .
blunders and crimes which terminated in th
headsman or in banishment.
But these are my thoughts of to-day; I was of
another temper whilst I sat smoking and listening
to the snoring of Monsieur Jules Tassard. Now
that I had a companion should I be able to escape
from this horrid situation ? He had spoken of
chests of silver—where was the treasure P in the
run ? There might be booty enough in the hold
to make a great man, a fine gentleman of me
ashore. It would be a noble ending to an amazing
adventure to come off with as much money as
would render me independent for life, and enable
nue to turn my back for ever upon the hardest
calling to which the destiny of man can wed him.
Of such were the fancies which hurried through
; :
º
:
º





17o
THE FROZEN PIRATE.
my mind, coupled with visitations of awe an
wonder when I cast my eyes upon the sleeping
Frenchman. After all it was ridiculous that
should feel mortified because he supposed me
crazy in the matter of dates. How was it con.
ceivable he should believe he had lain lifeless for
eight-and-forty years? I knew a man who afte:
a terrible adventure had slept three days and
nights without stirring; the 'assurances of the
people about him failed to persuade him that he
had slumbered so long, and it was not until he
walked abroad and met a hundred evidences as to
the passage of the time during which he had
slept that he allowed himself to become con.
vinced. - -
I wished to see how the schooner lay and what
change had befallen the ice in the night, and
went on deck. It was blowing a whole gale of
wind from the north-west. Inside the ship, with
the hatches on, and protected moreover by the
sides of the hollow in which she lay, it would have
been impossible to guess at the weight of the
gale, though all along I had supposed it to
be storming pretty fiercely by the thunderous
humming noise which resóunded in the cabin.
But I had no notion that so great a wind raged
fill. I gained the deck and heard the prodigious
bellowing of it above the rocks, "The sky was
ºne great cloud of slate, and there was no flying
darkness or yellow scud' to give the least move.
ment of life to it. The sea was swelling very
furiously, and I could divine its tempestuous
character by clouds of spray which sped like









I HEAR OF A GREAT TREASURE. I7 I
volumes of steam under the sullen dusky heavens
high over the mastheads. The schooner lay with
a list of about fifteen degrees and her bows high
cocked. I looked over the stern and saw that
the ice had sunk there, and that there were twenty
great rents and yawning seams where I had before
noticed but one. A vast block of ice had fallen
on the starboard side, and lay so close on the
quarter that I could have sprung on to it. No
other marked changes were observable, but there
were a hundreds sounds to assure me that neither
the sea nor the gale was wholly wasting its
strength upon this crystal territory, and that if I
thought proper to climb the slope and expose
myself to the wind, I should behold a face of ice
somewhat different from what I had before gazed
tioO11.
". the bitter cold held me in dread, and there
was no need besides for me to take a survey. All
that concerned me lay in the hollow in which the
schooner was frozen; but so far as the slopes were
concerned I could see nothing to render me
uneasy. The declivities were gradual, and there
was little fear of even a violent convulsion throwing
the ice upon us. The danger lay below, under
the keel; if the ice split, then down would drop
the ship and stave herself, or if she escaped that
peril she must be so wedged as to render the
least further pressure of the ice against her sides
destructive.
I was about to go below again, when my eye
was taken by the two figures lying upon the
deck. No dead bodies ever looked more dead,
º
º
-
|







- - - - -
-
172 The Frozen Pirate.
but after the wondrous restoration of the French.
man I could not view their forms without fancying
that they were but as he had been, and that:
they were carried to the furnace and treated with
brandy and rubbing and the like they might be
brought to. Full of thoughts concerning them
stepped into the cabin, and, going to the cook
room, found Tassard still heavily sleeping. The
coal in the corner was low, and as it wanted an
hour of dinner-time I took the lanthorn and a
bucket and went into the forepeak, and after
several journeys stocked up a good provision of
coal in the corner. I made noise enough, but
Tassard slept on. When this was ended 1 boiled
some water to cleanse myself, and then set about
getting the dinner ready. -
The going into the forepeak had put my mind
upon the treasure, which, as I had gathered from
the Frenchman's narrative, was somewhere hidden
in the schooner—in the run, as I doubted not; I
mean in the hold, under the lazarette, for you will
recollect that, being weary and half-perished with
the cold, I had turned my back on that dark part
after having looked into the powder-room, All
the time I was fetching the coal and dressing the
dinner my imagination was on fire with fancies of
the treasure in this ship. The Frenchman had
told me that they had been well enough pleased
with their hauls in the South Sea to resolve them
upon heading round the Horn for their haunt,
wherever it might be, in the Spanish main; and I
had too good an understanding of the character
of pirates to believe that they would have quitted





I HEAR of A GREAT TREASURE. 173
in the run, if indeed it were there? I recalled a
we might bury the pirate's booty if we could not
fetch it !
a rich hunting-field before they had handsomely
lined their pockets. What, then, was the treasure
dozen stories of the doings of the buccaneers,
not to speak of the famous Acapulco ship
taken by Anson a little before the year in which
the Boca del Dragon was fishing in those
waters; and I feasted my fancy with all sorts of
sparkling dreams of gold and silver and precious
stones, of the costly ecclesiastical furniture of
New Spain, of which methought I found a hint
in that silver crucifix in the cabin, of rings,
sword-hilts, watches, buckles, snuff-boxes, and the
like. Lord ' thought I, that this island were of
good honest mother earth instead of ice, that
save the ship, and make a princely mine of its
grave, ready for the mattock should we survive to
I was mechanically stirring the saucepan full
of broth I had prepared, lost in these golden
thoughts, when the Frenchman suddenly sat up on
his mattress.
“Hal” cried he, sniffing vigorously, “I smell
something good—something I am ready for.
There is no physic like sleep,” and with that he
stretched out his arms with a great yawn, then rose
very agilely, kicking the clothes and mattress on
one side and bringing a bench close to the
furnace. “What time is it, sir?”
“Something after twelve by the captain's
watch,” said I, pulling it out and looking at it.
“But 'tis guesswork time.” -
---, ****
:







THE FROZEN PIRATE.
“The captain's watch?” cried he, with a shº
º
loud laugh, “You are modest, Mr. —"
“Paul Rodney,” said I, seeing he stopped to:
my name.
“Yes, modest, Mr. Paul Rodney. Tha
watch is yours, sir; and you mean it shall be
yours.” -
“Well, Mr. Tassard,” said I, colouring in Split
of myself, though he could not witness tº
change in such a light as that, “I felt this
that if I left the watch in the captain's pockº
it was bound to go to the bottom ultimately
and 1) -
“Bah!” he interrupted, with a violent flourish
of the hand. “Let us save the schooner, t
possible; there will be more than one watch for
your pocket, more than one doubloon for yºu!
purse. Meanwhile, to dinner! My stupor hº
converted me into an empty hogshead, and it will
take me a fortnight of hard eating to feel that
have broken my fast.”
With a blow of the chopper he struck off a
lump of the frozen wine, and then fell to, eating
perhaps as a man might be expected to eat whº
had not had a meal for eight-and-forty years, , ,
“There are two of your companions on deck"
said I.
He started. |
" Frozen,” I continued; “they'll be the bodies
of Trentanove and Joam Barros ?”
He nodded. --
“There is no reason why they should be deader
than you were. It is true that Barros has been









º
I HEAR OF A GREAT TRE,...,0R*. 175
on deck whilst you have been below; but after
you pass a certain degree of cold fiercer rigours
cannot signify.” - -
“What do you propose P” said he, looking at
me oddly. , *
“Why, that we should carry them to the fire
and rub them, and bring them to if we can.”
( ( Why P jj
I was staggered by his indifference, for I had
believed he would have shown himself very eager
to restore his old companions and shipmates to
life. I was searching for an answer to his strange
inquiry, “Why?” when he proceeded,—
“First of all, my friend Trentanove was stone-
blind, and Barros nearly blind. Unless you
could return them their sight with their life
they would curse you for disturbing them. Better
the blackness of death than the blackness of life.”
“There is the body of the captain,” said I.
He grinned. #
“Let them sleep,” said he. “Do you know
that they are cutthroats, who would reward your
kindness with the poniard that you might not
tell tales against them or claim a share of the
treasure in this vessel ? Of all desperate villains
I never met the like of Barros. He loved blood
even better than money. He’d quench his thirst
before an engagement with gunpowder mixed in
brandy. I once saw him choke a man—tut I he
is very well—leave him to his repose.”
In the glow of the fire he looked uncommonly
Sardonic and wild, with his long beard, bald head,
flowing hair, shaggy brows, and little cunning eyes,
3: " . --~~~
y
3.

176 THE FRozen Pirate.
which seemed in their smallness to share in
grin, and yet did not; and though to be suit *
was some one to talk to and to make plans W.
for our escape, yet I felt that if he were to a
into a stupor again it would not be my handstºl
should chafe him into being.
“You knew those men in life,” said I. "If º
others are of the same pattern as the Portuguº
by all means let them lie frozen.”
“But, my friend,” said he, calling me monº ||
which I translate, “that's not it, either.
you know the value of the booty in tº º
schooner?” !.
I answered, No; how was I to know it?, I had
met with nothing but wearing apparel, and sº
pieces of money, and a few watches in the ſº
castle. He knit his brows with a fierce suspicio
gleam in his eyes. º
“But you have searched the vessel?" **
cried. -
“I have searched, as you call it—that is,
have crawled through the hold as far as the
powder-room.”
“And further aft?”
“No, not further aft.”
His countenance cleared. |
“You Scared me !” said he, fetching a deep
breath. “I was afraid that some one had been
beforehand with us. But it is not conceivable
No! we shall look for it presently, and we shall
find it.”
“Find what, Mr. Tassard 7" said I.
He held up the fingers of his right hand; " One,
|
- |- -














I HEAR of A GREAT TREASURE. 177
two, three, four, five—five chests of plate and
money; one, two, three—three cases of virgin
silver in ingots; one chest of gold ingots; one
case of jewellery. . In all—" he paused to enter
into a calculation, moving his lips briskly as he
whispered to himself—“between ninety and one
hundred thousand pounds of your English
money.”
I stifled the amazement his words excited, and
said coldly, “You must have met with some rich
ships.”
*we did well,” he answered. “My memory is
good"—he counted afresh on his fingers—“ten
cases in all. Fortune is a strange wench, Mr.
Rodney. Who would think of finding her lodged
on an iceberg 2 Now bring those others up
there to life, and you make us five. What would
follow, think you? what but this?”
He raised his beard and stroked his throat
with the sharp of his hand. Then, swallowing a
É. draught of brandy, he rose and stopped to
1Sten. - - º
“It is blowing hard,” said he “the harder
the better. I want to see this island knocked-
into bergs. Every sea is as good as a pickaxe.
Hark! there are those crackling noises I used
to hear before I fell into a stupor. Where do you
sleep?”
I told him.
“My berth is the third,” said he. “I wish to
smoke, and will fetch my pipe.” .
He took the lanthorn and went aft, acting as if
he had left that berth an hour ago, and I under-
N
* \tºrs.”

178 | THE FROZEN PIRATE.
stood in the face of this ready recurrence of his
memory how impossible it would be ever to make
him believe he had been practically lifeless since
the year 1753. When he returned he had on a
hairy cap, with large covers for the ears, and a
big flap behind that fell to below his collar, and
was almost as long as his hair. He wanted but a
couple of muskets and an umbrella to closely
resemble Robinson Crusoe, as he is made to
figure in most of the cuts I have seen. He pro-
duced a pipe of the Dutch pattern, with a bowl
carved into a death's head, and great enough to
hold a cake of tobacco. The skull might have
been a child's for size, and though it was dyed
with tobacco juice and the top blackened, with
the live coals which had been held to it, it was
so finely carved that it looked very ghastly and
terribly real in his hand as he sat puffing at it. ...
He eyed me steadfastly whilst he smoked, as if
critically taking stock of me, and presently said,
“The devil hath an odd way of ordering matters.
What particular merit have / that I should have
been the one hit upon by you to thaw P Had
you brought any one of the others to, he would
have advised you against reviving us, and so I
should have passed out of my frosty sleep into
death as quietly, ay, and as painlessly, as that
puff of smoke melts into clear air.”
“Then perhaps you do not think you are
obliged by my awakening you to life?” said I.
“Yes, my friend, I am much obliged,” said he
with vivacity. “Any fool can die. To live is the
true business of life. Mark what you do you






























I HEAR OF A GREAT TREASURE. I 79
make me know tobacco again, you enable me to
eat and drink, and these things are pleasures
which were denied me in that cabin there. You
recall me to the enjoyment of my gains, nay, of
more—of my own and the gains of our company.
You make me, as you make yourself, a rich man;
the world opens before me anew, and very
brilliantly—to be sure, I am obliged.”
“The world is certainly before you, as it is
before me,” said I, “but that's all; we have got
to get there.” - º
He flourished his pipe, and 'twas like the flight
of Death through the gloomy fire-tinctured air.
“That must come. We are two. Yesterday
you were one, and I can understand your despair.
But these arms—stupor has not wasted so much
as the dark line of a finger-nail of muscle. You
too are no girl. Courage 1 between us we shall
manage. How long is it since you sailed from
England P’’
“We sailed last month a year from the Thames
for Callao.” - -
“And what is the news?” said he, taking a
pannikin of wine from the oven and sipping it.
“Last year! 'Tis twelve years since I was in Paris
and three years since we had news from Europe.”
News I thought I; to tell this man the news, as
he calls it, would oblige me to travel over fifty
years of history. - -
“Why, Mr. Tassard,” said I, “there's plenty of
things happening, you know, for Europe's full of
kings and queens, and two or more of them are
nearly always at loggerheads; but sailors—mer-
º
**
º

N 2 -
18C The Frozen Pirate.
chantmen like myself—hear little of what goes
on. We know the name of our own sovereign
and what wages sailors are getting; that's aboutit,
sir. In fact, at this moment I could tell you more
about Chili and Peru than England and France."
“Is there war between our nations 2" he asked.
“Yes,” said I.
“Hal” he cried, “I doubt if this time you will
come off so easily. You have good men in
Hawke and Anson; but Jonquière and St. George,
hey? and Maçon, Cellie, Letenduerl’’
He shook his head knowingly, and an air of
complacency, that would be indescribable but for
the word French, overspread his face. I knew
the name of Jonquière as an admiral who had
fought us in 1748 or thereabouts; of the others I
had never heard. But I held my peace, which I
suppose he put down to good manners, for he
changed the subject by asking if I was married.
I answered, No, and inquired if he had a wife.
“A wife " cried he “what should a man of
my calling do with a wife? No, no! we gather
such flowers as we want off the high seas, and
wear them till the perfume palls. They prove
stubborn though; our graces are not always
relished. Trentanove reckoned himself the most
killing among us, and by St. Barnabas he proved
sº, for three ladies—passengers of beauty and
...tº, action—slew themselves for his sake. ... Do
you unèderstand me? They preferred the knife to
his addiresses. Z," said he, tapping his breast
and grinning, “was always fortunate.” .
He looked a complete satyr as he thus spoke,
-

































THE TREASURE. t81
with his hairy cap, grey beard, long nose, little
cunning shining eyes, and broken fangs; and a
chill of disgust came upon me. But I had already
seen enough of him to understand that he was
a man of a very formidable character, and that
he had awakened after eight-and-forty years of .
insensibility as real a pirate at heart as ever he
had been, and that it therefore behoved me to
deal very warily with him, and above all not to let
him suspect my thoughts. Yet he seemed a
person superior to the calling he had adopted.
His English was good, and his articulation in-
dicated a quality of breeding. Whilst he smoked
his pipe out he told me a story of an action be-,
tween this schooner and a French Indiaman. I
will not repeat it; it was mere butchery, with
features of diabolic cruelty; but what affected me
more violently than the horrors of the narrative
was his cool and easy recital of his own and the
deeds of his companions. You saw that he had
no more conscience in him than the death's head
he puffed at, and that his idea was there was no
true greatness to be met with out of enormity.
Well, thought I, as I stepped to the corner for
some coal, if I was afraid of this creature when he
was dead, to what condition of mind shall I be
reduced by his being alive?
CHAPTER XVI.
THE TREASURE.
WHEN his, pipe was out he rose and made
several strides about the cook-room, then took
;
i
º
º
2.
:
:
º
-:*
:
!
:
:
172 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
man I could not view their forms without fancyin
that they were but as he had been, and that flºº
they were carried to the furnace and treated withºg
brandy and rubbing and the like they might beº
brought to. Full of thoughts concerning them, ſº
stepped into the cabin, and, going to the coºk-lº
room, found Tassard still heavily sleeping. Theº
coal in the corner was low, and as it wanted ank, g
hour of dinner-time I took the lanthorn and a #
bucket and went into the forepeak, and afte: ;
several journeys stocked up a good provision of .
coal in the corner. I made noise enough, but it
Tassard slept on. When this was ended I boiled
some water to cleanse myself, and then set about |
getting the dinner ready. - • * *
The going into the forepeak had put my mind i.
upon the treasure, which, as I had gathered from
the Frenchman's narrative, was somewhere hidden
in the schooner—in the run, as I doubted not;. tº
mean in the hold, under the lazarette, for you will
recollect that, being weary and half-perished with a
the cold, I had turned my back on that dark part º
after having looked into the powder-room. A"
the time I was fetching the coal and dressing the
dinner my imagination was on fire with fancies of
the treasure in this ship. The Frenchman had
told me that they had been well enough pleased
with their hauls in the South Sea to resolve them
upon heading round the Horn for their haunt,
wherever it might be, in the Spanish main; and
had too good an understanding of the characte
of pirates to believe that they would have quitted
—- ||


| HEAR OF A GREAT TREASURE. 173
ºhming field before they had handsomely
ºther pºckets. What, then, was the treasure
them, if indeed it were there? I recalled a
ºn stºries of the doings of the buccanº
m tº speak of the famous Acapulco ship
tº by Anson a little before the year in which
-
* Bºa del Dragon was fishing in those | tº
º, and I feasted my fancy with all sº of º
ºffing dreams of gold and silver and precious 3
tº of the costly ecclesiastical furniture of
New Spain, of which methought I found, a hint
that silver crucifix in the cabin, of rings,
sword-hilts, watches, buckles, snuff-bºxes, and the
like, Lorál thought I, that this island were of
gººd honest mother earth instead of ice, that
we might bury the pirate's booty if we could not
ave the ship, and make a princely mine of its ºl
gave, ready for the mattock should we survive to
fetchitl
I was mechanically stirring the sº. full
ºf broth I had prepared, lost in these golden
thoughts, when the Frenchman suddenly sat up 9"
his mattress.
“Hal” cried he, sniffing vigorously, * I smel)
something good—something , º ready tor.
There is no physic like sleep,” and with that he
stretched out his arms with a great Yº". then º
Very agilely, kicking the clothes and *..." t\ne
. side and bringing a wº close
maj ºwn ºne's it, sir?" aim's
"Something after twº by º it.
watch," said 7, pulling it,” and 10 -
"But 'tis guesswork time.” "
º
-
-
























f74 THE FROZEN PIRATE,
“The captain's watch 2" cried he, with a short
loud laugh. “You are modest, Mr. ——
“Paul Rodney,” said I, seeing he stopped for
my name. -
“Yes, modest, Mr. Paul Rodney. . That
watch, is yours, sir; and you mean it shall be
yours.” e - -
“Well, Mr. Tassard,” said I, colouring in spite
of myself, though he could not witness the
change in such a light as that, “I felt this,
that if I left the watch in the captain's pocket
it was bound to go to the bottom ultimately,
and—” . - - . " -
“Bah!" he interrupted, with a violent flourish
of the hand. “Let us save the schooner, if
Possible; there will be more than one watch for
your Pocket, more than one doubloon for your
purse. Meanwhile, to dinner My stupor has
Cºnverted me into an empty hogshead, and it will
take me a fortnight of hard eating to feel that I ,
have broken my fast.”
With a blow of the chopper he struck off a
lump of the frozen wine, and then fell to, eating
Perhaps as a man might be expected to eat who
had not had a meal for eight-and-forty years.
- Jy
"There are two of your companions on deck,
said I.
He started. - -
... Frozen,” I continued; “ they'll be the bodies
of Trentanove and Joam Barros; "
He nodded.
“There is no reason why they should be deader
than you were. It is true that Barros has been

I HEAR OF A GREAT TRE,...,0RE. 175
ºn deck whilst you have been below; but after
Yºu Pass a certain degree of cold fiercer rigours
| Cannot signify.”
"What do you propose?” said he, looking at
| me oddly.
"Why, that we should carry them to the fire
º them, and bring them to if we can.”
t y ?”
I was Staggered by his indifference, for I had
*ieved he would have shown himself very eager
| restore his old companions and shipmates to
ſº I was searching for an answer to his strange
"lily, “Why?” when he proceeded—
"First of all, my friend Trentanove was stone-
d, and Barrós nearly blind. . Unless you
ºld return them their sight with their life
|tity would curse you for disturbing them. Better
|*blackness of death than the blackness of life.”
"There is the body of the captain,” said I.
He grinned. #
|ºt them sleep,” said he, “Do you know
*they are cutthroats, who would reward your
"dness with the poniard that you might not
"tales against them or claim a share of the
*Sure in this vessel? Of all desperate villains
ºr met the like of Barros. He loved blood
ºn better than money. He’d quench his thirst
efore an engagement with gunpowder mixed in
andy. I ºnce saw him choke a man—tut! he
*Very well—leave him to his repose.' l
the glow of the fire he looked nº.
idonic and wild, with his long beard, bald head,
Owing hair, shaggy brows, and little cunning eyes,
* , , ","..
*... . -






176 THE FRozen PIRATE.
which seemed in their smallness to share in tº
grin, and yet did not; and though to be sure * .
was some one to talk to and to make plans with
for our escape, yet I felt that if he were tº fall º
into a stupor again it would not be my hands *
should chafe him into being. º
*You knew those men in life,” said I. "If º
others are of the same pattern as the Portug"
by all means let them lie frozen.”
“But, my friend,” said he, calling me.”
which I translate, “that's not it, either.
you know the value of the booty in th;
schooner P” .
I answered, No ; how was I to know it?, Ih.
met with nothing but wearing apparel, and S
pieces of money, and a few watches in the.º
castle. He knit his brows with a fierce susp"|
gleam in his eyes. - tº
“But you have searched the vessel?
cried. -
“I have searched, as you call it—that.”
have crawled through the hold as far as "
powder-room.”
“And further aft 2 ''
“No, not further aft.”
His countenance cleared.
“You scared me !” said he, fetching * º º
breath. “I was afraid that some one had ºf
beforehand with us. But it is not conceivab
No! we shall look for it presently, and wº sha º
find it.” * *
“Find what, Mr. Tassard P’’ said I. …
He held up the fingers of his right hand;
---ºr











y I HEAR OF A GREAT TREASURE. 177
wo, three, four, five—five chests of plate and
**); one, two, three—three cases of virgin
*r in ingots; one chest of gold ingots; one
lºse of jewellery. In all—" he paused to enter
#Tº a calculation, moving his lips briskly as he
"pered to himself-ºbetween ninety and one
ſhired thousand pounds of your English
. money."
sited the amazement his words excited, and
- : %dly, “You must have met with some rich
§ ps.”
"We did well," he answered. “My memory is
|*"The counted afresh on his fingers—“ten
* in all. Fortune is a strange wench, Mr.
º: Who would think offining hººd;
º an iceberg 2 Now bring those others up
ºre to life, and you make us five. What would
low, think you ? what but this P’’
*Iaised his beard and stroked his throat
* the sharp of his hand. Then, swallowing a
º draught of brandy, he rose and stopped to
Sten, * *
! is blowing hard," said he, “the harder
* better. I want to see this island knocked
|0 bergs. Every, sea is as good as a Piº.
º there are those crackling noises I use
"hear before I fell into a stupor. Where do you
ſtep?”
I told him. * I →..
| "My berth is the third,” said he. “I wish to
Smok ill fetch my pipe.” . . . . .
#. º %. went aft, acting as if
I under-
| had left that berth an hour ago, and N
:* \tº
-
=sº



178 THE FRozEN PIRATE.
- - -
º -
stood in the face of this ready recurrence of his
memory, how impossible it would be ever to make.
him believe he had been practically lifeless since #
the year 1753. When he returned he had on
hairy cap, with large covers for the ears, and a
big flap behind that fell to below his collar, and
was almost as long as his hair. He wanted but
couple of muskets and an umbrella to closely
resemble Robinson Crusoe, as he is made tº
figure in most of the cuts I have seen. He prº- º
duced, a pipe of the Dutch pattern, with a bowl.
carved into a death's head, and great enough tº .
hold a cake of tobacco. The skull might ha
been a child's for size, and though it was dyed
with tobacco juice and the top blackened, with
the live coals which had been held to it, it was .
so finely carved that it looked very ghastly and
terribly real in his hand as he sat puffing at it. .
He eyed me steadfastly whilst he smoked, as:
ºritically taking stock of me, and presently said
The devil hath an odd way of ordering matters
What particular merit have / that I should have
been the one hit upon by you to thaw 2 Had
you brought any one of the others to, he would
have advised you against reviving us, and sº
should have passed out of my frosty sleep in".
death as quietly, ay, and as painlessly, as tha'
Puff of smoke melts into clear air.”
... Then perhaps you do not think you, *
obliged by my awakening you to life?” said I.
." Yes, my friend, I am much obliged." said he
With vivacity. “Any fool can die. To live is the
true business of life. Mark what you do y”
*_

















| HEAR of A GREAT TREASURE. I79
make me know tobacco again, you enable me to
º! and drink, and these things are pleasures
which were denied me in that cabin there. You
ºal me to the enjoyment of my gains, nay, of
ºt-of my own and the gains of our company.
You make me, as you make yourself, a rich man;
| it world opens before me anew, and very
hilliantly—tº be sure, I am obliged.” - - -
"The world is certainly before you, as it is
- ºfore me,” said I, “but that's all; we have got
to get there.”
He flourished his pipe, and 'twas like the flight
ºf Death through the gloomy fire-tinctured air.
"That must come. We are two. Yesterday
ºu Were one, and I can understand your despair.
But these arms—stupor has not wasted so much
ºsthe dark line of a finger-nail of muscle. You
00 are no girl. Courage 1 between us we shall
|anage. How long is it since you sailed from
º England?”
"We sailed last month a year from the Thames
for Callao.” -
"And what is the news?” said he, taking a
Pannikin of wine from the oven and sipping 'º'
"Last yearl 'Tis twelve years since I was in Paris
and three years since we had news from Europe.
News! thought I; to tell this man the .*.
he calls it, would oblige me to travel over ty
years of history. y
“Why, Mr. *asara ” said I, “there's º º
- y - y e's tull O
things happening, you know, for Europ hem are
kings and queens, and two or mºº *...".
nearly always at logº*. but Sal
2





















13c THE FRozen PIRATE.
chantmen like myself—hear little of what gºes
on. We know the name of our own sovereign
and what wages sailors are getting; that's aboutit
sir. In fact, at this moment I could tell you moſt
about Chili and Peru than England and France."
“Is there war between our nations?” he asked
“Yes,” said I. -
“Hal” he cried, “I doubt if this time you will
come off so easily. You have good men in
Hawke and Anson; but Jonquière and St. George
hey? and Maçon, Cellie, Letenduerl’’ -
He shook his head knowingly, and an air of
complacency, that would be indescribable but ſº
the word French, overspread his face. I knew
the name of Jonquière as an admiral whº haſ
fought us in 1748 or thereabouts; of the others
had never heard. But I held my peace, which
suppose he put down to good manners, for he
changed the subject by asking if I was married
I answered, No, and inquired if he had a wife.
“A wife l’ cried he “what should a man."
my calling do with a wife? No, no! we gath"
such flowers as we want off the high seas, *
wear them till the perfume palls. They prº
stubborn though; our graces are not alwº
relished. Trentanove reckoned himself the mº
killing among us, and by St. Barnabas he prº
so, for three ladies—passengers of beauty
distinction—slew themselves for his sake. Do
you understand me? They preferred the knife to
his addresses. Z,” said he tapping his brº
and grinning, “was always fortunate.” . .
He looked a complete satyr as he thus spoke












































THE TREASURE. 181
with his hairy cap, grey beard, long nose, little
º eyes, and broken fangs; and a
ºf disgust came upon me. But I had already
º ºnºgh of him to understand that he was
"..." a very formidable character, and that
inse º after eight-and-forty years of
ºpiº.hº...º.º.
deal ten, and that it therefore behoved me to
- i very warily with him, and above all not to let
* Suspect my thoughts. Yet he seemed a
º superior to the calling, he had adopted.
º was good, and his articulation in-
...ºf breeding Whilst he smoked
"..." he told me a story of an action be:
º 1S schooner and a French Indiaman. I
" not repeat it; it was mere butchery, with
- º of diabolic cruelty; but what affected me
.." violently than the horrors of the narrative
. his cool and easy recital of his own and the
beds of his companions. You saw that he had
. more conscience in him than the death's head
he puffed at, and that his idea was there was no
W. greatness to be met with out of enormity.
ell, thought I, as I stepped to the corner for
some coal, if I was afraid of this creature when he
was dead, to what condition of mind shall I be
reduced by his being alive?
CHAPTER XVI.
THE TREASURE.
WHEN his pipe was out he rose and made
then took
several strides about the cook-roo",































182 THE Frozen PIRATE,
the lanthorn, and entering the cabin stood awhile
surveying the place.
“So this would have been my coffin but for
you, Mr. Rodney?” said he. “I was in good
company, though,” pointing over his shoulder
at the crucifix with his thumb. “Lord, how the
rogues prayed and cursed in this same cabin!
In fine weather, and when all was well, the sharks
in our wake had more religion than they ; but the
instant they were in danger, down they tumbled
upon their quivering knees, and if heaven was
twice as big as it is, it could not have held saints
enough for those varlets to petition.” ºn
“You were nearly all Spaniards 2" --
“Ay; the worst class of men a ship could enter
these seas with. But for our calling they are the
fittest of all the nations in the world; better even
than the Portuguese, and with truer trade instincts
than the trained mulatto—nimbler artists in
roguery than ever a one of them, I despise their
superstition, but they are the better pirates for it.
They carry it as a man might a feather bed; it
enables them to fall soft. D'ye take me?” He
gave one of his short loud laughs, and said, “I
hope this slope won't increase. The angle's stiff
enough as it is. 'Twill be like living on the roof
of a house. I have a mind to see how she lies.
What d'ye say, Mr. Rodney P shall I venture into
the open?” *
“Why not 2" said I. “You can move
briskly. You have as much life as ever you
had.”
“Let's go, then,” he exclaimed, and climbing























***a*...*.*, *, * v-
THE TREASURE. 183
the ladder he pushed open the companion-door
and stepped on to the deck. I followed with but
little solicitude, as you may suppose, as to what
might attend his exposure. The blast of the gale
though it was broken into downwards eddying º
dartings by the rocks, made him bawl out with ;
the sting of it, and for some moments he could É
think of nothing but the cold, stamping the #
deck, and beating his hands. º:
“Hal” cried he, grinning to the smart of his -
cheeks, “this is not the cook-room, eh? Great 3.
thunder, you will not have it that this ice has :
been drifting north P Why, man, 'tis icier by :
twenty degrees than when we were first locked º
ll ." º º:
P. hope not,” said I; “and I think not. s
Your blood doesn't course strong yet, and you º:
are fresh from the furnace. Besides, it is blow- >
ing a bitter cold gale. Look at that sky and |-
listen to the thunder of the sea!” º
The commotion was indeed terribly uproarious. :
The spume as before was blowing in clouds of
snow over the ice, and fled in very startling
flashes of whiteness under the livid drapery of the
sky. The wind itself sounded like the prolonged
echo of a discharge of monster ordnance, and it
screeched and whistled hideously where it struck
the peaks and edges of the cliffs and swept
through the schooner's masts. The rending
noises of the ice in all directions were distinct and
fearful. The Frenchman looked about him with
* and to my surprise crossed him-
Self,
!
º
.
º
**
º
184 The Frozen PIRATE.
º º
“May the blessed Virgin preserve us!” he
said. “Do you say we have drifted north 2 If
this is not the very heart of the south pole you
shall persuade me we are on the equator.”
“It cannot storm too terribly for us, as you
just now said,” I replied. “I want this island to
go to pieces.” -
As I said this a solid pillar of ice just beyond
the brow of the hill on the starboard side was
dislodged or blown down; it fell with a mighty
crash, and filled the air with , crystal splinters.
Tassard started back with a faint cry of “Bon
Dieu !” *
“Judge for yourself how the ship lies,” said I;
“this is freezing work.”
He went aft and looked over the stern, then
walked to the larboard rail and peered over the
side. -
“Is there ice beyond that opening P” he asked,
pointing over the taffrail.
“No,” I answered; “that goes to the sea.
There is a low cliff beyond. Mark that cloud of
white; it is the spray hurled athwart the mouth
of this hollow.”
“Good,” he mumbled with his teeth chatter-
ing. “The change is marvellous. There was
ice for a quarter of a mile where that slope ends.
'Tis too cold to converse here.”
“There are your companions,” said I, pointing
to the two bodies lying a little distance before the
mainmast. -
He marched up to them, and exclaimed, “Yes,
this is Trentanove and that is Barros. Both were
*


THE TREASURE. 185
-
blind, but they are blinder now. Would they
thank you to arouse them out of their comfortable
sleep and force them to feel as I do, this cold to
which they are now as insensible as I was 2. By
heaven, for my part, I can stand it no longer;”
and with that he ran briskiy to the hatch.
I followed him to the cook-room and he crept so
close to the furnace that I thought he had a
mind to roast himself. No doubt, newly come to
life as he was, the cold hurt him more than
me, and maybe the tide of those animal spirits
which had in his former existence furnished him
with a brute courage had not yet flowed full to
his mind; still I questioned even in his heydey if
there had ever been much more than the swash-
buckler in him, which opinion, however, could
only increase the anxiety his companionship was
like to cause me by obliging me to understand
that I must prepare myself for treachery, and on
no account whatever to suppose for a moment
that he was capable of the least degree of grati-
tude or was to be swerved from any design he
might form by considerations of my claim upon
him as his preserver. º
It is among the wonders of human nature that
antagonisms should be found to flourish under
such conditions of hopelessness, misery, and
anguish as make those who languish under them
the most pitiful wretches under God's eye. But
so it has been, so it is, so it will ever be. Two
men in an open boat at sea, their lips frothing
with thirst, their eyes burning with famine, shall
fall upon each other and fight to the death. Two
-




186 THE Frozen PIRATE.
men on an island, two miserable castaways whose
dismal end can only be a matter of a week or twº
eye each other morosely, give each other in
*jurious words, break away and sullenly live
each man by himself, on opposite sides of their
desert prison. Beasts do not act thus, nor birds
nor reptiles—only man. What was in the
Frenchman Tassard’s mind I do not know
in mine was fear, dislike, profound distrust, a
great uneasiness, albeit we were alone, we were
brothers in affliction and distress, as complete
sundered from the world to which we belonge
as if we lay stranded in the icy moon, speaking
in the same tongue and believing in the same
God | t
The heat comforted him presently, and he º º
a lump of wine into the oven to melt, and this
comforted him also.
“I can converse now,” said he. "Perhaps
after all the danger lies more in the imaginatio
than in the fact. But it is a hideous naked scen f
and, needs no such colouring as the .
wind, the rushing of seas, and the crashing alº
of masses of ice to render it frightful.” fell
"Yoº tell me,” said I, “that when you ſº
asleep"—I would sometimes express his frº
state thus—“there was a quarter of a mile of ice
beyond the schooner's stern.” d.
"At least a quarter of a mile,” hiº.
"Pay after day it would be built up till it came
a face of that extent.” ight
thought to myself if it has taken fº.
years of the wear and tear of storm and surge”



















THE TREASURE. 187
extinguish a quarter of a mile, how long a time
must elapse before this island splits up? But
then I reflected that during the greater part of
those years this seat of ice had been stuck very
low south where the cold was so extreme as to
make it defy dissolution; that since then, it was
come away from the main and stealing north, so
that what might have taken thirty years to accom-
plish in seventy degrees of south latitude, might
be performed in a day on the parallel of sixty
degrees in the summer season in these seas.
Tassard continued speaking with the pannikin
in his hand, and his eyes shut as if to get the
picture of the schooner's position fair before his
mind's vision: “There was a quarter of a mile of
ice beyond the ship : I have it very plain in my
sight: it was a great muddle of hillocks, for the
ice pressed thick and hard, and raised us and
vomited up peaks and rocks to the squeeze.
| Suppose I have been asleep a week?” Here he
opened his eyes and gazed at me.
“Well ?” said I.
“I say,” he continued in the tone of one easily
excited into passion, “a week. It will not have
been more. It is impossible. Never mind about
your eighteen hundred and one,” showing his
fangs in a sarcastic grin: “a week is long enough
y s gh,
friend. Then this is what I mean to say: that
the breaking away of a quarter of a mile of ice in
a week is fine work, full of grand promise: the
next wrench—which might come now as I speak,
or to-morrow, or in a week—the next wrench may
bring away the rock on which we are lodged, and





188 Tire Frozen Pirate.
- - -
the rest is a matter of patience—which we can
afford, hey P. for, we are but two—there is plenty
of meat and liquor and the reward afterwards is a
princely independence, Mr. Paul Rodney.”
I was struck with the notion of the bed of ice
on which the schooner lay going afloat, and said,
“Are sea and wind to be helped, think you? If
the block on which we lie could be detached, it
might beat a bit against its parent stock, but
would not unite again. The schooner's canvas
might be made to help it along—though suppose
it capsized ' "
“We must consider,” said he ; “there is no
need to hurry. When the wind falls we will survey
the ice.”
He warmed himself afresh, and after remaining
silent with the air of one turning many thoughts
over in his mind, he suddenly cried, “D'ye know
I have a mind to view the plate and money below.
What say you ?” -
His little eyes seemed to sparkle with suspicion
as he directed them at me. I was confident he
suspected I had lied in saying I knew nothing of
this treasure and that he wanted to see if I had
meddled with those chests. One of the penalties
attached to a man being forced to keep the com-
pany of liars is, he himself is never believed by
them. I answered instantly, “Certainly; I should
like to see this wonderful booty. It is right that
we should find out at once if it is there; for Sup-
posing it vanished we should be no better than
madmen to sit talking here of the fine lives we
shall live if ever we get home.” -




THE TREASURE. 189
He picked up the lanthorn and said, “I must
go to your cabin: it was the captain's. The keys
of the chests should be in one of his boxes.”-
He marched off, and was so long gone that I
was almost of belief he had tumbled down in a fit.
However, I had made up my mind to act a very
wary part; and particularly never to let him think
I distrusted him, and so I would not go to see
what he was about. But what I did was this:
the arms-room was next door: I, lighted a candle,
entered it, and swiftly armed myself with a sort of
dagger, a kind of boarding-knife, a very murderous
little two-edged sword, the blade about seven
inches long, and the haft of brass. There were
some fifty of these weapons, and I took the first
that came to my hand and dropped it into the deep
side pocket of my coat and returned to the cook-
room. It was not that I was afraid of going
unarmed with this man into the hold: there was
no more danger to me there than here: should he
ever design to despatch me, one place was the
same as another, for the dead above could not
testify : there were no witnesses in this white and
desolate kingdom. What resolved me to go
armed was the fear that should the treasure be
missing—and who was to swear that the schooner
had never been visited once in eight-and-forty
years 2—the Frenchman, who was persuaded his
stupor had not lasted above a week, and who was
doubtless satisfied the chests were in the hold
down to the period when he lost recollection,
would suspect me of foul play, and in the barbarous
rage of a pirate fall upon and endeavour to kill me,
|
-




THE FROzEN PIRATE.
Thus you will see that I had no very high opinionoſ
the morals and character of the man I had given life
to ; and indeed, after I had armed myself and was
seated again before the furnace, I felt extremely
melancholy, and underwent the severest dejection
of spirits that had yet visited me, fearing that my
humanity had achieved nothing more than to
bring me into the society of a devil, who would
prove a fixed source of anxiety and misery to me.
Was it conceivable that the others should be
worse than, or even as bad as, this creature? His
hair showed him hoary in vice. The Italian was
a handsome man, and let him have been as pro-
fligate as he would, as cruel and fierce a pirate as
Tassard had painted him, he would at all events
have proved a sightly companion, and harmless
as being blind, though to be sure for that reason
of no use to me. Yet though his blindness would
have made him a burden, I had rather have thawed
him into life than the Frenchman.
The mere thought of feeling under an obligation
to arm myself filled me with such vindictive passions
that I protest as I sat alone waiting for him I felt
as if it were a duty I owed myself to return him to
the condition in which I found him, which was to
be easily contrived by my binding him in his
sleep and dragging him to the deck and leaving
him to stupefy alongside the body of the giant
Joam Barros. “Peace 1" cried I to myself with
a shiver; “villain that thou art to harbour such
thoughts! Thou art a hundred-fold worse than
the wretch against whom Satan is setting thee
plotting to think thus vilely.” I gulped down




THE TREASURE. 191
this bolus of conscience with the help of a
draught of wine, and it did me good. Lord, how
dangerous is loneliness to a man Depend upon
it, your seeker after solitude is only hunting for
the road that leads to Bedlam.
It might be that he was long because of having
to seek for the keys; but my own conviction was
that he found the keys easily and stayed to rum-
mage the boxes for such jewels and articles of
value as he might there find. I think he was
gone near half an hour; he then returned to the
cook-house, saying briefly, “I have the keys,” and
jingling them, and after warming himself, said,
“Let us go.” . .
I was moving towards the forecastle.
“Not that way for the run,” cried he.
“Is there a hatch aft P” I asked.
“Certainly ; in the lazarette.”
“I wish ſhad known that,” said I; “I should
have been spared a stifling scramble over the
casks and raffle forwards.”
He led the way, and coming to the trap hatch
that conducted to the lazarette, he pulled it open
and we descended. He held the lanthorn and threw
the light around him and said, “Ay, there are plenty
of stores here. We reckoned upon provisions for
twelve months, and we were seventy of a crew.”
A strange figure he looked, just touched by the
yellow candle-light, and standing out upon the
blackness like some vision of a distempered
fancy, in his hair-cap and flaps, and with his long
nose and beard and little eyes shining as he rolled
them here and there. We made our way over the
º

192 | THE FROZEN PIRATE.
casks, bales, and the like, till we were right aft,
and here there was a small clear space of deck
in which lay a hatch. This he lifted by its ring,
and down through the aperture did he drop, I
following. The lazarette deck came so low that
we had to squat when still or move upon our
knees. At the foremost end of this division of
the ship, so far as it was possible for my eyes
to pierce the darkness—for it seems that this run
went clear to the forehold bulkhead, that is to
say, under the powder-room, to where the forehold
began—were stowed the spare sails, ropes for
gear, and a great variety of furniture for the
equipment of a ship's yards and masts. . But im:
mediately under the hatch stood several small
chests and cases, painted black, stowed side by
side so that they could not shift.
Tassard ran his eye over them, counting.
“Right !” cried he; “hold the lanthorn, Mr.
Rodney.”
I took the light from him, and, pulling the keys
from his pocket, he fell to trying them at the lock
of the first chest. One fitted; the bolt shot with
a hard click, like cocking a trigger, and he raised.
the lid. The chest was full of silver money. I
picked up a couple of the coins, and, bringing
them to the candle, perceived them to be Spanish
pieces of eight. The money was tarnished, yet
it reflected a sort of dull metallic light. The
Frenchman grasped a handful and dropped them,
as though, like a child, he loved to hear the chink
the pieces made as they fell.
“There's a brave pocketful there,” said I.

THE TREASURE. I93
“Tut l” cried he, scornfully. “”Tis a mere
show of money; resolve it into gold and it becomes
a lean bit of plunder. This we got from the
Conquistador; it was all she had in this way;
destined for some monastery, I recollect; but
disappointment is good for holy fathers; it makes
them more earnest in their devotions and keeps
their paunches from swelling.”
He let fall the lid of the chest, which locked
itself, and then, after a short trial of the keys,
opened the one beside it. This was stored to the
top with what I took to be pigs of lead, and when
he pulled out one and bade me feel the weight of
it I still thought it was lead, until he told me it
was virgin silver.
“This was good booty 1" cried he, taking the
lanthorn and swinging it over the blocks of metal.
“It would have been missed but for me. Our
men had found it in the hold of the buccaneer in a
chest half as deep again as this, and thought it
to be a case of marmalade, for there were two
layers of boxes of marmalade stowed on top. I
routed them out and found those pretty bricks of
ore snug beneath. I believe Mendoza made the
value of the two chests—silver though it be—to be
equal to six thousand pounds of your money.”
The next chest he opened was filled with
jewellery of various kinds, the fruits, I daresay, of
a dozen pillages, for not only had this pirate
robbed honest traders but a picaroon as well
that had also plundered in her turn another of
her own kidney; so that, as I say, this chest
of jewellery might represent the property of the
a

I94 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
- -
passengers of as many as a dozen vessels. It
was as if the contents of the shop of a jeweller
who was at once a goldsmith and a silversmith
had been emptied into this chest; you could
scarce name an ornament that was not here—
watches, snuff-boxes, buckles, bracelets, pounce-
boxes, vinaigrettes, earrings, crucifixes, stars for
the hair, necklaces—but the list grows tiresome;
in silver and gold, but chiefly in gold; all shot
together and lying scramble fashion, as if they had
been potatoes.
“This is a fine sight,” said Tassard, poring
upon the sparkling mass with falcon nose and
ravenous eyes. “Here is a dainty little watch.
Fifty guineas would not purchase it in London or
Paris. Where is the white breast upon which that
cross there once glittered 2 Ha! the perfume has
faded,” bringing a vinaigrette to his hawk's bill;
“the soul is gone; the body is the immortal part
in this case. Now, my friend, talk to me of the
patient drudgery of honourable life after this,” col-
lecting the chests, so to say, to my view with a
sweep of the hand; “men will break their hearts
for a hundred livres ashore and be hanged for
the price of a pinchbeck dial. When I was in
London I saw five men carted to the gallows;
one had forged, one was a highwayman–I
forget the others' businesses; but I recollect
on inquiring the value of their baggings—that
for which they were hanged—it did not amount to
four guineas a man. Look at this I " He swept
his great hand again over the chests. “Is not
here something worth going to the scaffold for 2"
The Treasure. 195
His bosom swelled, his eyes sparkled, and he
made as if to strike a heroic posture, but this he
could not contrive on his hams. -
I was thunder-struck, as you will suppose, by
the sight of all this treasure, and looked and stared
like a fool, as if I was in a dream. I had never
seen so many fine things before, and indulged in
the most extravagant fancies of their worth.
Here and there in the glittering huddle my eye
lighted on an object that was a hundred, perhaps
two hundred, years old : a cup very choicely
wrought, that may have been in a family for
several generations; a watch of a curious figure,
and the like. There might have been the pickings
of the cabins, trunks, and portmanteaux of a
hundred opulent men and women in this chest,
and, so far as I could judge from what lay atop,
the people plundered represented several nation-
alities. " .
But there were other chests and cases to explore
—ten in all: two of these were filled with silver
money, a third with plate, a fourth with English,
French, Spanish, and Portugal coins in gold; but
the one over which Tassard hung longest in a
transport that held him dumb, was the smallest of
all, and this was packed with gold in bars. The
stuff had the appearance of mouldy yellow soap,
and having no sparkle nor variety did not affect
me as the jewellery had, though in value this chest
came near to being worth as much as all the
others put together. The fixed transported pos-
ture of the pirate, his little shining eyes intent
upon the bars, his form in the candle-light looking
O o

196 The Frozen Pirate.
like a sketch of a strange, wildly-apparelled man
done in phosphorus, coupled with the loom of the
black chests, the sense of our desolation, the folly
of our enjoyment of the sight of the treasure in
the face of our pitiable and dismal plight, the
melancholy storming of the wind, moaning like
the rumble of thunder heard in a vault, and above
all the feeling of unreality inspired by the thought
of my companion having lain for eight-and-forty
years as good as dead, combined to render the
scene so startlingly impressive that it remains at
this hour painted as vividly upon the eye of
memory as if I had come from it five minutes
a2O.
gº Sol” cried the Frenchman suddenly, slamming
the lid of the chest. “'Tis all here ! Now then
to the business of considering how to come of
with it.” -
He thrust the keys in his pocket, and we
returned to the cook-room.
CHAPTER XVIII.
WE TALK OVER OUR SITUATION.
THAT night, as afterwards, Tassard occupied the
berth that he was used to sleep in before he was
frozen. Although I had not then the least fear
that he would attempt any malignant tricks with
me whilst we remained in this posture, the feeling
that he lay in the berth next but one to mine made
me uneasy in spite of my reasoning; and I was
so nervous as to silently shoot a great iron bolt,


WE TALK over our SITUATION. I97
so that it would have been impossible to enter
without beating the door in.
In sober truth, the sight of the treasure had put
a sort of fever into my imagination, of the heat
and effects of which I was not completely sensible
until I was alone in my cabin and swinging in the
darkness. That the value of what I had seen
came to ninety or a hundred thousand pounds of
our money I could not doubt; and I will not deny
that my fancy was greatly excited by thinking of
it. But there was something else. Suppose we
should have the happiness to escape with this
"treasure, then I was perfectly certain the French-
man would come between me and my share of it.
This apprehension threading my heated thoughts
of the gold and silver kept me restless during the
greater part of the night, and I also held my
brains on the stretch with devices for saving our-
selves and the treasure; yet I could not satisfy
my mind that anything was to be done unless
Nature herself assisted us in freeing the schooner.
However, as it happened, the gale roared for a
whole week, and the cold was so frightful and the
air so charged with spray and hail that we were
forced to lie close below with the hatches on for
our lives. It was true Cape Horn weather, with
seas as high as cliffs, and a westering tendency in
the wind that flung sheets of water through the
'avine, which must have quickly filled the hollow
&nd built us up in ice to the height of the rails but
for the strong slope down which the water rushed
as fast as it was hurled. -
I never needed to peep an inch beyond the
:

198 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
º
companion-way to view the sky; nor for the
matter of that was there ever any occasion tº
leave the cabin to guess at the weather, for the
perpetual thunder of it echoed strong in every
part of the vessel below, and the whole fabrig was
constantly shivering to the blows of the falls ºf
water on her decks. -
At first the Frenchman and I would sit in the
greatest fear imaginable, constantly expecting
some mighty disaster, such as the rending of the
ice under our keel and our being swallowed up,"
the coming together of the slopes in such a
manner as to crush the ship, or the fall upon hº
of ice weighty enough to beat her flat; though
perhaps this we least feared, for unless the stor”
changed the whole face of the cliffs, there was nº
ice in our neighbourhood to serve us in that Wºº
But as the time slipped by and nothing wº
happened than one sharp movement only in the
vessel, following the heels of a great noise like a
cannon discharged just outside; though this
movement scared us nearly out of our sensº
and held us in a manner dumbfounded for the
rest of the day; I say, the time passing,”
nothing more terrifying than what I have relate
happening, we took heart and waited with so"
courage and patience for the gale to break, nº
doubting that we should find a wonderful changº
when we surveyed the scene from the heights
We lived well, sparing ourselves in nothing the
the vessel contained, the abundance rendering
§tint idle; the Frenchman cooked, for he was
better hand than I at that work, and provide





























WE TALK over our Situation. 199
several relishable sea-pies, cakes, and broths. As
ºr liquor, there was enough on board to drown
the pair of us twenty times over: wines of France,
Spain, Portugal, very choice fine brandy, rum in
plenty, such variety indeed as enabled us to brew
4 different kind of punch every day in the seven.
"We were much more careful with the coal, and
*d it to the utmost by burning the hammocks,
*ing, and chests that lay in the forecastle;
*isto say, we burnt these things by degrees,
the stock #
- eing excessive, and by judiciously
"g them with coal and wood, they made
: Warming fires, and as tinder lasted long
00,
h W. °ºupied one morning in thoroughly over-
allll
"g the forecastle for such articles of value as
the sailors had dropped or forgotten in their
fight; but found in
uch less than I had expected
ºn the sight of the money and other things on
*deck. There was ºijis way to be found
"the cabins: I mean in the captain's cabin which
*d, and the one next it that had been the
late's, for of course I did not search Mr.
assard's berth. tº though it was quite likely
*t the seamen had plundered these cabins before
they left the ship, I was also sure that the º
"*", had made a clean sweep of what they *
!"erlooked when he pretended to search for t i
*}s of the treasure-chests; and this suspicion f
§emed to find confirmed by the *PP. -
he captain's boxes. One of these boxes º:
*90ks, papers, a telescope, some nautiº
ments, and the like iſooked at the books and
$ºrº------...-a
tº ---
* ==º.

pmething º
º: º
Hebrew
º
the papers, in the hope of fir
read; but they were written and pri
Spanish tongue, and might have been
all the good they were to me. . . . .';.
Our life was extraordinarily dismal and imélan.
choly, how much so I am unable to expres: It
was just the same as living in ă dungeon.”
was no crevice for the daylight to shine tº
and had there been we must have closed it?
the cold out. Nothing could be imagined º
gloomy to the spirits than the perpetual night
the schooner's interior. The furnace, it #"
would, when it flamed heartily, throw a brightnes:
about it; but often it sank into redness that,
but empurple the gloom. We burned º:
candle at a time, and its light was very *:
that our time was spent chiefly in a sullentwilig
Added to all this was my dislike of my compº
He would half fuddle himself with liquº.
that condition hiccup out twenty kinds of -
arns of piracy, murder, and §loodshed, boasing
of the number of persons he had despatched ºf
his system of torturing prisoners to makº He
onfess what they had concealed and where...”
would drivel about his amours, of the style."
which he lived when ashore, and the like;
whether reticence had grown into a habit.”
strong even for drink to break down, he º
once gave me so much as a hint touchin 4
Youth, and early life. He was completely
Frenchman in his vanity, and you wº
thought him entirely odious and detestablº
this excessive quality in him alone. Me! º

























WE TALK over our SITUATION. 2OI
see him now, sitting before me, with one half of
him reflecting the light of the furnace, his little
tº twinkling with a cruel merriment of wine,
tling mealying story of the adoration of a noble,
ºnly looking captive for his person—some
ºvely Spanish court lady whom, with others, they
ad taken out of a small frigate bound to old
Pain. To test her sincerity he offered to procure
her liberty at the first opportunity that offered ;
ut she Wept, raved, tore her hair, No; without
her Jules life would be unendurable ; her husband,
"º country, her king, nay, even the allurements .
and sparkle of the court, had grown disgusting;
and so on, and so on." And I think a monkey
Would have burst into laughter to see the bald-
*ded old satyr beat his bosom, flourish his
* 99e, languish, and simper, all with a cut-
throat expression, too, soften his voice, and act in
** if he was not telling me as big alie as was
**, related on shipboard.
ſt naturally rendered me very melancholy to
*lect that I had restored this old villain to life,
* I protest it was a continuous shock to such
*gious feelings as I had managed to preserve to
*fect that what had been as good as nearly half
century, of death had done nothing for this
elderly rogue's morals. It entered my head once
ºbelieve that if I could succeed in getting him to
elieve he had lain frozen for eight-and-forty years,
# might be seized with a fright (for he was a
White-livered creature), and in some ..".
mend, and so come to a sense of the service I ha
done him, of which he appeared wholly insensible,






















2O2 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
-
and qualify me to rid my mind of the fears which
I entertained concerning our association, shº!
we manage to escape with the treasure. I said tº
him bluntly—not ºropos (to use his own ling)
anything we were talking about, -
“'Tis odd, Mr. Tassard, you should doubt " .
assurance that this is the year eighteen hundre
and one.” ink
He stared, grinned, and said, “Do you thin .
So P ''
“Well,” said I, “perhaps it is not so odd after -
all; but you should suffer me to have as good an
idea of the passage of time as yourself. " |
cannot tell me how long your stupor lasted.
“Two days if you like | " he interrupted vehº
mently. “Why more ? Why longer than day
How do you know that I had sunk into the COſlº
dition in which you found me longer than * º
or two when you landed ? How do you knº hey.
How do you know 2° and he snapped his ſº
“I know by the date you name and by the
year that this is,” said I defiantly. -
He uttered a coarse French expression
added, “You want to prove that I have been Iſl:
sensible for forty-eight years.”
“It is the fact,” said I. |
He looked so 'wild and fierce that I drew"
self erect ready for him if he should fall pºº".
Then, slowly wagging his head whilst the angº
in his face softened out, he said, “Who reg" III
rance now * * be-
hea dº." “There is no king; he wº
and







WE TALK over our SITUATION.
"What was his name?” said he.
"Lºuis the Sixteenth,” I answered.
"Hal" cried he, with an arch sneer; "|Louis
ºtenth, hey? Areyou sure it wasn't Louis
the Seventeenth in
He is dead too." - -
" is news, Mr. Rodney," said he scorn-
"Whilst you have been here,” said I, “many
mighly changes have happened. France has
ºted as great a general and as dangerous a
lim as the world ever beheld; his name is
ºnapatte.”
º his shoulders with an air of mock-
Who is your king?” he asked.
"Gºoge the Third,” said i ; “God bless
him!”
"...iend, never set up as a schoolmaster.
into a loud laugh.
ºf What do you think happened
settled in him here;’ he patted his
went about bragging to everyboº
him; whe - s presente
y in the bill was pr
º and exclaimed, . Y \eft ºn \ner
ome, No matter; there *
lºgº and Louis–Louis and George.
see how it is, Stick to your dates, sir. But,
This sally seemed to delight him, and he burst
"Eighteen hundred and one!” he clied. “A
man I knew once lost ten thousand Wres at a
They
belly : “We
that \ne \º
\\\
made of money, and was nicknameº º º -
bourse. One day he asked a tº we felt in \º


















































2O4. THE FROZEN PIRATE,
which he seized a table-knife and ripped h º
open. Eighteen hundred and one, dye **
Soić, Butlet it be your secret, my friend. Th:
world will not love you for making it fifty year;
older than it is.” -
It was ridiculous to attempt to combat .
obstinacy as this, and as the subject º
nothing but excitement and irritation, I drºpp
it and meddled with it no more, leaving him tº
his conviction that I was cracked in this one
particular. In fact, it was a matter of no .
quence at all; what came very much closer º
was the business of our deliverance, and overt
we talked long and very earnestly, for he º
to be mean and fierce and boastful, and I to dº
like and fear him, when we spoke, of #"
away with our treasure, and returning to 9
native home. -
For hour after hour would we go on º
and planning and scheming, stepping . m-
cook-house in our earnestness, and ..".
grossed with the topic. His contention was ust
if we were to save the money and plate, we m
Save the schooner. -
“Unless we build a vessel,” said I.
“Out of what P*
“Out of this schooner.”
“Are you a carpenter P” said he.
“No,” I replied. -
." Neither am I,” said he. “It's possible wº
*ght contrive such a structure as would enableus
to save our lives; but we have not the skill to Pſ".
*e a vessel big enough to contain those chests *


















º
tº
*
º
WE TALK over our SITUATION. 2O5
will. Juſselves, and the stores we should require to
take. Besides, do you know there is no labout
more fatiguing than knocking such a craft as
this to pieces #"
This I very well believed, and it was true:
of such a vessel as the Boca del Dragon that
Was a perfect bed of timber, and, like the
**king Mary, built as if she was to keep the
Seas for three hundred years.
"And supposing,” said he, “after infinite toil we
succeeded in breaking up as much of her as we
Wanted, what appliances have we for reshaping
he curved timbers ? and where are we to lay the
keel? Labour as we might, the cold would prove
too much for us. No, Mr. Rodney, to save the
ſeasure, ay, and to save ourselves, we must save
the ship. Let us put our minds to that.”
In this way we would reason, and I confess he
talked very sensibly, taking very practical. views,
and indicating difficulties which my more ardent
and imaginative nature might have been blind
tº till they immovably confronted me, and ren-
dered days of labour useless. But how was
the ship to be saved 2 Was it possible to force
Nature's hand; in other words, to anticipate our
Release by the dissolution of the ice We were
both agreed that this was the winter season. In
these seas, though he instantly grew sulky if |
mentioned the month, for he was as certain . I
was as mad in this, as in the year, and he would
eye me very malignantly if I persisted in calling
it July. But, as I have said, we were both agreed
that the summer was to come, and though we
• - *- :-.
----->
198 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
companion-way to view the sky; nor for the
matter of that was there ever any occasion to
leave the cabin to guess at the weather, for the
perpetual thunder of it echoed strong in every
part of the vessel below, and the whole fabric was
constantly shivering to the blows of the falls of
water on her decks. -
At first the Frenchman and I would sit in the
greatest fear imaginable, constantly expecting
some mighty disaster, such as the rending of the
ice under our keel and our being swallowed up, or
the coming together of the slopes in such a
manner as to crush the ship, or the fall upon her."
of ice weighty enough to beat her flat; though
perhaps this we least feared, for unless the storm
changed the whole face of the cliffs, there was no
ice in our neighbourhood to serve us in that way.
But as the time slipped by and nothing worse
happened than one sharp movement only in the
vessel, following the heels of a great noise like a
cannon discharged just outside; though this
movement scared us nearly out of our senses,
and held us in a manner dumbfounded for the
rest of the day; I say, the time passing and
nothing more terrifying than what I have related
happening, we took heart and waited with some
courage and patience for the gale to break, never
doubting that we should find a wonderful change
when we surveyed the scene from the heights.
We lived well, sparing ourselves in nothing that
the vessel contained, the abundance rendering
stint idle; the Frenchman cooked, for he was a
better hand than I at that work, and provided
WE TALK over our SITUATION. 199
several relishable sea-pies, cakes, and broths. As
for liquor, there was enough on board to drown
the pair of us twenty times over: wines of France,
Spain, Portugal, very choice fine brandy, rum in
plenty, such variety indeed as enabled us to brew
a different kind of punch every day in the seven,
But we were much more careful with the coal, and
spared it to the utmost by burning the hammocks,
bedding, and chests that lay in the forecastle;
that is to say, we burnt these things by degrees,
the stock being excessive, and by judiciously
mixing them with coal and wood, they made
good warming fires, and as tinder lasted long
too. -
We occupied one morning in thoroughly over-
hauling the forecastle for such articles of value as
the sailors had dropped or forgotten in their
flight; but found much less than I had expected
from the sight of the money and other things on
the deck. There was little in this way to be found
in the cabins: I mean in the captain's cabin which
I used, and the one next it that had been the
mate's, for of course I did not search Mr.
Tassard's berth. But though it was quite likely
that the seamen had plundered these cabins before
they left the ship, I was also sure that the French-
man had made a clean sweep of what they had
overlooked when he pretended to search for the
keys of the treasure-chests; and this suspicion I
seemed to find confirmed by the appearance of
the captain's boxes. One of these boxes contained .
books, papers, a telescope, some nautical instru-
ments, and the like. I looked at the books and
jºr-----, a
§ -->

2OO THE FRozen PIRATB.
the papers, in the hope of finding something to
read; but they were written and printed in the
Spanish tongue, and might have been Hebrew for
all the good they were to me.
Our life was extraordinarily dismal and melan-
choly, how much so I am unable to express. It
was just the same as living in a dungeon. There
was no crevice for the daylight to shine through,
and had there been we must have closed it to keep
the cold out. Nothing could be imagined more
gloomy to the spirits than the perpetual night of
the schooner's interior. The furnace, it is true,
would, when it flamed heartily, throw a brightness
about it; but often it sank into redness that did
but empurple the gloom. We burned but one
candle at a time, and its light was very small, so
that our time was spent chiefly in a sullen twilight.
Added to all this was my dislike of my companion,
He would half fuddle himself with liquor, and in
that condition hiccup out twenty kinds of villainous
arns of piracy, murder, and bloodshed, boasting
»f the number of persons he had despatched, of
*is system of torturing prisoners to make them
onfess what they had concealed and where. He
would drivel about his amours, of the style in
which he lived when ashore, and the like; but
whether reticence had grown into a habit too
strong even for drink to break down, he never
once gave me so much as a hint touching his
youth and early life. He was completely a
Frenchman in his vanity, and you would have
thought him entirely odious and detestable for
this excessive quality in him alone. Methinks 4
~
º
WE TALK over our SITUATION. 2OI
see him now, sitting before me, with one half of
him reflecting the light of the furnace, his little
eyes twinkling with a cruel merriment of wine,
telling me a lying story of the adoration of a noble,
queenly-looking captive for his person—some
lovely Spanish court lady whom, with others, they
had taken out of a small frigate bound to old
Spain. To test her sincerity he offered to procure
her liberty at the first opportunity that offered;
but she wept, raved, tore her hair. No; without
her Jules life would be unendurable; her husband,
her country, her king, nay, even the allurements
and sparkle of the court, had grown disgusting;
and so on, and so on. And I think a monkey
would have burst into laughter to see the bald-
headed old satyr beat his bosom, flourish his
arms, ogle, languish, and simper, all with a cut-
throat expression, too, soften his voice, and act in
short as if he was not telling me as big a lie as was
ever related on shipboard. -
It naturally rendered me very melancholy to
reflect that I had restored this old villain to life,
and I protest it was a continuous shock to such
religious feelings as I had managed to preserve to
reflect that what had been as good as nearly half
a century of death had done nothing for this
elderly rogue's morals. It entered my head once
to believe that if I could succeed in getting him to
believe he had lain frozen for eight-and-forty years,
he might be seized with a fright (for he was a
white-livered creature), and in some directions
mend, and so come to a sense of the service I had
done him, of which he appeared wholly insensible,
- w
*
ſ

2O2 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
and qualify me to rid my mind of the fears which
I entertained concerning our association, should
we manage to escape with the treasure. I said to
him bluntly—not apropos (to use his own lingo) of
anything we were talking about, --
“'Tis odd, Mr. Tassard, you should doubt my
assurance that this is the year eighteen hundred
and one.” - -
He stared, grinned, and said, “Do you think
so P”
“Well,” said I, “perhaps it is not so odd after
all; but you should suffer me to have as good an
idea of the passage of time as yourself. You
cannot tell me how long your stupor lasted.”
“Two days if you like l’ he interrupted vehe.
mently. “Why more ? Why longer than a day 2
How do you know that I had sunk into the con-
dition in which you found me longer than an hour
or two when you landed ?. How do you know, hey?
How do you know P” and he snapped his fingers.
“I know by the date you name and by the
year that this is,” said I defiantly. -
He uttered a coarse French expression and
added, “You want to prove that I have been in-
sensible for forty-eight years.” -
“It is the fact,” said I.
He looked so wild and fierce that I drew my-
self erect ready for him if he should fall upon me.
Then, slowly wagging his head whilst the anger
in his face softened out, he said, “Who reigns in
France now 2 ”
I said, “There is no king; he was be-
headed.”
" ***
We TALK over our Situation.
“What was his name?” said he.
“Louis the Sixteenth,” I answered,
“Ha!” cried he, with an arch sneer; “Louis
the Sixteenth, hey 2 Are you sure it wasn't Louis
the Seventeenth **
“He is dead too.” " -
"This is news, Mr. Rodney,” said he scorn-
fully. -
"Whilst you have been here,” said I, “many
mighty changes have happened. France has
Prºduced as great a general and as dangerous a
villain as the world ever beheld; his name is
Buonaparte.”
. He shrugged his shoulders with an air of mock-
ing pity. -
“Who is your king P” he asked.
m George the Third,” said I; “God bless
him ''
“So-George and Louis—Louis and George.
I see how it is. Stick to your dates, sir. But,
my friend, never set up as a schoolmaster.”
This sally seemed to delight him, and he burst
into a loud laugh.
“Eighteen hundred and one!” he cried. “A
man I knew once lost ten thousand livres at a
coup. What do you think happened 2 They
settled in him here;” he patted his belly : “he
went about bragging to everybody that he was
made of money, and was nicknamed the walking
bourse. One day he asked a friend to dine with
him ; when the bill was presented he felt in his
º and exclaimed, ‘I left my purse at
ome. No matter; there is plenty here;’ with
ſ- |




2O4 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
which he seized a table-knife and ripped his sell .
open. Eighteen hundred and one, dye call it?
Soit. But let it be your secret, my friend. The
world will not love you for making it fifty years
older than it is.” º
It was ridiculous to attempt to combat such
obstinacy as this, and as the subject produced
nothing but excitement and irritation, I dropped
it and meddled with it no more, leaving him to
his conviction that I was cracked in this one
particular. In fact, it was a matter of no conse.
quence at all ; what came very much closer home
was the business of our deliverance, and over this
we talked long and very earnestly, for he forgot
to be mean and fierce and boastful, and I to dis-
like and fear him, when we spoke of getting
away with our treasure, and returning to our
native home.
For hour after hour would we go on plotting
and planning and scheming, stepping about the |
cook-house in our earnestness, and entirely en-
grossed with the topic. His contention was that
if we were to save the money and plate, we must
save the schooner. .
“Unless we build a vessel,” said I.
“Out of what P”
“Out of this schooner.”
“Are you a carpenter P’’ said he.
“No," I replied.
“Neither am I,’” said he. “It's possible we
might contrive such a structure as would enable us
to save our lives; but we have not the skill to pro-
duce a vessel big enough to contain those chests as





WE TALK over our SITUATION. 205
w il. Jurselves, and the stores we should require to
take. Besides, do you know there is no labour
more fatiguing than knocking such a craft as
this to pieces Pº"
This I very well believed, and it was truer
of such a vessel as the Boca del Dragon that
was a perfect bed of timber, and, like the
Laughing Mary, built as if she was to keep the
seas for three hundred years.
“And supposing,” said he, “after infinite toil we
succeeded in breaking up as much of her as we
wanted, what appliances have we for reshaping
the curved timbers ? and where are we to lay the
keel? Labour as we might, the cold would prove
too much for us. No, Mr. Rodney, to save the
treasure, ay, and to save ourselves, we must save
the ship. Let us put our minds to that.”
In this way we would reason, and I confess he
talked very sensibly, taking very practical. views,
and indicating difficulties which my more ardent
and imaginative nature might have been blind
to till they immovably confronted me, and ren-
dered days of labour useless. But how was
the ship to be saved 2 Was it possible to force
Nature's hand; in other words, to anticipate our
release by the dissolution of the ice 2 We were
both agreed that this was the winter season in
these seas, though he instantly grew sulky if I
mentioned the month, for he was as certain l
was as mad in this, as in the year, and he would
eye me very malignantly if I persisted in calling
it July. But, as I have said, we were both agreed
that the summer was to come, and though we
-: ****
º


2O6 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
-
could not swear that the ice was floating north.
wards, we had a right to believe so, in spite of
the fierceness of the cold, this being the trick
of all these frozen estates when they fetch to
the heights under which we lay; and we would
ask each other whether we should let our hands and
minds rest idle and wait to see what the summer
would do for us, or essay to launch the schooner.
“If,” said he, “we wait for the ice to break
up it may break us up too.”
“Yes,” said I; “but how are we to cut the
vessel out of the ice in which she is seated to
above the garboard streak P Waiting is odious
and intolerable work; but my own conviction is,
nothing is to be done till the sun comes this way,
and the ice crumbles into bergs. The island is
leagues long, and vanishes in the south; but it is
wasting fast in the north, and when this gale is
done I shall expect to see twenty bergs where it
was before all compact.” -
As you may guess, our long conversations left
us without plans, bitter as was our need, and
vigorous as were our efforts to strike upon some
likely scheme. However, if they achieved no
more, they served to beguile the time, and what
was better yet, they took my companion's mind
off his nauseous and revolting recollections, so
that it was only now and again when he had
drained a full bowl, and his little eyes danced in
their thick-shagged, caves, that he regaled me
with his memories of murder, rapine, plank-walk-
ing, hanging, treacheries of all kinds, and cruelties
too barbarous for belief. - -
*

of THE ICE.
CHAPTER XIX.
we TAKE A view of THE ICE.
For seven days the gale raged with uncommon
violence: it then broke, and this brought us into
the first week of August. The wind fell in the
night, and I was awakened by the silence, which
you will not think strange if you consider how
used were my ears to the fierce seething and
strong bellowing of the blast. I lay listening,
believing that it had only veered, and that it would
come on again in gusts and guns; but the still-
ness continued, and there was no sound what-
ever, saving the noises of the ice, which broke
upon the air like slow answers from batteries
near and distant, half whose cannons have been
silenced.
I slept again, and when I awoke it was half-
past nine o'clock in the morning. The French-
man was snoring lustily. I went on deck before
entering the cook-house, and had like to have
been blinded by the astonishing brilliance of the
sunshine upon the ice and snow. All the wind
was gone. The air was exquisitely frosty and
sharp. But there was a heavy sound coming
from the sea which gave me to expect the sight
of a strong swell. The sky was a clear blue, and
there was no cloud on as much of its face as
showed betwixt the brows of the slopes. -
The schooner was a most wonderful picture of
drooping icicles. A more beautiful and radiant
sight you could not figure. From every rope,
* - - - - - -

208 The Frozen PIRATE.
from the yards forward, from the rails, from
whatever water could run in a stream, hung
glorious ice-pendants of prismatic splendour.
No snow had fallen to frost the surfaces, and
every pendant was as pure and polished as
cut-glass and reflected a hundred brilliant
colours. The water hurled over and on the
schooner had frozen upon the masts, rigging,
and decks, and as this ice, like the pendants, was
very sparklingly bright, it gave back all the hues
of the sunbeam, so that, stepping from the dark-
ness of the cabin into this effulgent scene, you
might easily have persuaded yourself that before
you stood the fabric of a ship fashioned out of a
rainbow.
My attention, however, was quickly withdrawn
from this shining spectacle by the appearance of
the starboard cliff over against our quarter. The
whole shoulder of it had broken away and I could
just catch a view of the horizon of the sea from
the deck by stretching my figure. The sight of
the ocean showed me that the breakage had been
prodigious, for to have come to that prospect
before, I should have had to climb to the height
of the main lower masthead. No other marked
or noteworthy change did I detect from the
deck; but on stepping to the larboard side to
peer over I spied a split in the ice that reached
from the very margin of the ravine, I mean to
that end of it where it terminated in a cliff, to
past the bows of the schooner by at least four
times her own length.
I returned to the cook-room and went about the
... g.º.
* ::,
*...*. --... --
WE TAKE A VIEW OF THE ICE. 209
old business of lighting the fire and preparing
the breakfast—this job by an understanding be-
tween the Frenchman and me, falling to him who
was first out of bed—and in about twenty minutes
Tassard arrived. -
“The wind is gone,” said he.
“Yes,” I replied, “it is a bright still morning.
I have been on deck. There has been a great fall
of ice close to.”
“Does it block us P’’
“No, on the contrary, it clears the way to the
sea; the ocean is now visible from the deck.
Not that it mends our case,” I added. “But
there is a great rent in the ice that puts a
fancy into my head; I'll speak of it later after a
closer look.”
The breakfast was ready, and we fell to in a
hurry, the Frenchman gobbling like a hog in his
eagerness to make an end. When we were finished
he wrapped himself up in three or four coats and
cloaks, warming the under ones before folding them
about him, and completing his preparations for
the excursion by swallowing half a pint of raw
brandy. I bade him arm himself with a short-
headed spear to save his neck; and thus equipped
we went on deck.
He stood stock-still with his eyes shut on
emerging through the hatch, crying out with a
number of French oaths that he had been struck
blind. This I did not believe, though I readily sup-
posed that the glare made his eyeballs smart so as
to cause him a good deal of agony. Indeed, all along
I had been surprised that he should have found his
P
:º
--




- HE FROzEN PIRATE. -
21 O t º
sight so easily after having sat in blindness for
forty-eight years, and it was not wonderful that
the amazing brilliance on deck, smiting his sight
on a sudden, should have caused him to cry
out as if he had lost the use of his eyes for
ever.
I waited patiently, and in about ten minutes he
was able to look about him, and then it was not
long before he could see without pain. He stood
a minute gazing at the glories upon the rigging,
and in that piercing light I noticed the unwhole-
some colour of his face. His cap hid the scar,
and nothing of his countenance was to be seen
but the cheeks, eyes, and nose; he was much
more wrinkled than I had supposed, and methought
the spirit of cruelty lay visible in every line. I
had never seen eyes so full of cunning and
- treachery—so expressive, I should say, of these
qualities; yet they were no bigger than mere punc.
tures. I was sensible of a momentary fear of the
man—not, let me say, an emotion of cowardice
—but a sort of mixture of alarm and awe, such as
a ghost might inspire. This I put down to the
searching light in which I watched him for a
moment or two, an irradiation subtle enough to
give the sharpest form to expression, to exquisitely
define every meaning that was distinguishable in
his graveyard physiognomy. I left him to stare
and judge for himself of the posture in which the
- long hard gale had put the schooner and stepped
over to the two bodies. They were shrouded in ice
from head to foot, as though they had each man
been packed in a glass case cunningly wrought to
*
º
ſ
`-
--
º
º
º


WE Take A View of THE Ice. 2II
their shapes. Their faces were hid by the crystal
masks, Tassard joined me. -
"Small chance for your friends now,” said I,
"even if you were agreeable to my proposal to
attempt to revive them.” -
"So!" cried he, touching the body of the mate
with his foot; “and this is the end of the irresis-
tible Trentanovel for what conquests has Death
ºbed him so bravely? See, the colours shine in
him like fifty different kinds of ribbands. Poor
fellowſ he could not curl his moustachios now,
though the loveliest eyes in Europe were fixed in
passionate admiration on him. He'll never slit
another throat, nor hiccup Petrarch over a gºble:
nor remonstrate with me on my humanity. Shall
We toss the bodies over the side 2"
“They are your friends,” said I; “do as you
please.” º -
“But we must empty their pockets first. Bus-
ness before sentiment, Mr. Rodney.”
He stirred the figure again with his foot. -
“Well, presently,” said he, “ this armour will
want the hatchet. Now, my friend, to view the
work of the gale.”
The increased heel of the ship brought the,'".
board fore-channel low, and we stepped without
difficulty from it on to the ice. The rººt * fissure
that I have before spoken of went very deep ; it .
nearly two feet wide in places, but though the light
poured brilliantly upon it, I could see no bottom.
tºother side,” said the Frenchman, “I believe this
block would go adrift.”
“If only such another split as this would happen


































P 2
2I 2 - THIE FROZEN PIRATE.
“Well,” said I, after musing a little whilst Iran
my eye over the hollows, “I’ll tell you what was in
my mind just now. There is a great quantity of
gunpowder in the hold; ten or a dozen barrels.
By dropping large parcels of it into the crevices on
the right there, and firing it with slow-matches—"
He interrupted me with a cry: “By St. Paul,
you have it ! ... What crevices have you ?” ..
We walked briskly round the vessel, and all
about her beam and starboard quarter I found
addition to the seams I had before noticed, many
great cracks and fissures, caused no doubt by the
fall of the shoulder of the slope. I pushed on
further, yet, going down the ravine, as I have
called it, until I came to the edge; and here ſº
looked down from a height of some twelve or
fourteen feet—so greatly had the ice sunk or been .
changed by the weather—upon the ocean. I
called to Tassard. He approached warily. I.
believe he feared I might be tempted to give.
him a friendly shove over the edge. - -
“Observe this hollow,” said I; “the split there
goes down to the water, and you may take it that
the block is wholly disconnected on that side.
Now look at the face of the ice,” said I, point-
ing to the starboard or right-hand side; “that
crack goes as far as the vessel's quarter, and
the weakness is carried on to past the bows by
the other rents. Mr. Tassard, if we could burst
this body of ice by an explosion from its moorings
ahead of the bowsprit, where it is all too compact,
this cradle with the schooner in it will go free of
the parent body.” - - -
*
º
























We take a View of the ICE. 2 i3
He answered promptly, “Yes; it is the ºne
and only plan. That crack to starboard is like
telling us what to do. It is well you came here.
We should not have seen it from the top. This
Valley runs steep. You must expect no more thé.
the surface to be liberated, for the foot of the cliff
will go deep.”
"I desire no more.” -
"Will the ship stand such a launch, supposing
We bring it about?” said he.
I responded with one of his own shrugs, and
said, “Nothing is certain. We have one of two
courses to choose: to venture this launch, or stay
till the ice breaks up, and take our chance of float-
ing or of being smashed.” -
"You are right,” he exclaimed. “Here is an
opportunity, if we wait, bergs may gather about
this point and build us in. As to this island
dissolving, we are yet to know which way 'tis head-
ing. Suppose it should be travelling south, hey..!”
He struck the ice with his spear, and we toiled
up the slippery rocks with difficulty to the ship.
e walked past the bows to the distance of the
vessel's length. Here were many deep holes and
cracks, and as if we were to be taught how these
came about, even whilst we were viewing them an
ear-splitting crash of noise happened within twenty
fathoms of us, a rock many tons in weight rolled
over, and left a black gulf behind it.
the Frenchman started, muttered, and crossed
himself. “Holy Virgin l'. he cried, rolling his
eyes. “Let us return to the schooner. We shall
be swallowed up here.”
rissºszººnºs º-tº-


214 The Frozen PIRATE,
I own I was not a little terrified myself by the
sudden loud blast and the thunder of the uprooted
rock, and the sight of the huge black rent; but I
meant to view the scene from the top, and to con-
sider how best to dispose of the powder in the
cracks, and said, “There is nothing to be done on
board; skulking below will not deliverſus or pre-
serve the treasure. Here are several fissures big
enough to receive barrels of gunpowder. See,
Mr. Tassard, as they stand they cover the whole
width of the hollow.”
And I proceeded to give him my ideas as to
lowering, fixing the barrels, and the like. He
nodded his head, and said, “Yes, very good;
yes, it will do,” and so on; but was too scared in
his heart, I believe, to see my full meaning. He
was perpetually moving, as if he feared the ice
would split under his feet, and his eyes travelled
over the face of the rocks with every manifestation
of alarm in their expression. I wondered how
so poor a creature should ever have had stomach
enough to serve as a pirate; no doubt his spirit
had been enfeebled by his long sleep; but then
it is also true that the greatest bullies and most
bloodthirsty rogues prove themselves despicable
curs under conditions which make no demand
upon their temper or their lust for plunder.
He would have returned to the ship, had I en-
Couraged him, but on seeing me start to climb to
the brow he followed. The prospect disappointed
me... I had expected to witness a variety of sur-
P"sing changes; but southward the scene was
Scarce altered. It was a wonderfully fair morn-


WE T
AK
E A View of THE ICE. 215
Ing. the sky clea f -
ºf a ver r from sea-line to sea-li
gh º of a º |
10ſ eye that was a majesti -
e º the height at which º. .la-
the dazzle ke over the ice in the ... it.
the º ſº weeping, so . , and
that had enrich º of the delicate . .
Way was swe ". the slopes and .*.
to an i. fwn, and ice lay piled in pl at
been flator . many feet, where befor *.
tion but that . However, there was e it had
north extremit egale had played ...'. *.
ºn twenty y of the island; I ...”. .
º º ...'.
- aS -
º* ... d beyond, though
recollect when I came to loo -
When I . º of the *...*º: y º .
lear at hand ". I found some ...'...
º given way and .." º had been º:
- a. - a -
º!". dº feet ...” º: *... º
and the ice º quarter was very heav
Parts was so . split in all directions; and }.
the sea rock º a point of cliff hard upon
Came to a . with the swell. When Tassarº
South, shadin * looked about him north and
wº. in his hand, and ".
nglish !. savagely in French, he cried out in
ºù.” h y employing oaths as he spoke T.
I fell . ** as much ice as there was before
South * '. See yonder !" pointin; to the
- tºdies-out in the dista” if it does

2 16 THE FROZEN PIRATE. Tº
sº
not join the pole there, may the devil rise before
me as I speak. Thunder and fury! I had hoped
to see it shrivelled to an ordinary berg 1"
“What! in a week P” cried I, as if I believed
his stupor had not lasted longer.
He returned no answer and gaped about him
full of consternation and passion.
“And are we to wait for our deliverance till this
continent breaks up P” he bawled. “The day of
judgment will be a thing of the past by that time.
Travelling north 'sqeath !” he roared, his mouth
full of the expletives of his day, French and
English. “Who but a madman could suppose
that this ice is not as fixed as the antarctic circle
to which it is moored 2 Why, six months ago it
was no bigger than it is now !” And he sent a
furious terrified gate into the white solitudes
vanishing in azure faintness in the south-
West.
It was not a thing to reason upon. I was as
much disappointed as he by the trifling changes
the gale had made, and my heart felt very heavy at
the sight of the great field disappearing in the
south. The bergs in the north signified little.
It is true they indicated demolition, but demolition
so slow as to be worthless to us. It was not to
be questioned that the island was proceeding north,
but at what rate 2 Here, perhaps, might be a
frozen crescent of forty or fifty ſeagues; and at
what speed, appreciable enough to be of the
least consequence to our calculations, should such
a body travel ?
I looked at the Frenchman. *



-
A MERRy Evening. 217
"This must decide us!” said I. “We must
fix on one of two courses: endeavour to launch
the ship by blowing up the ice, or turn to and rig
up the best arrangement we can contrive and put
to Sea.
"Yes," he answered, scowling as he darted his
enraged eyes over the ice. “Better set a slow-
match in the magazine and drink ourselves
senseless, and so blow ourselves to hell, than
linger here in the hope that this continent will
dissolve and release us. Where's Mendoza's
body?"
I stared about me, and then pointing to the
huge gap the ice had made, answered, “It was
there. Where it is now I know not.”
He shrugged his shoulders, took another view
ºf the ice and the ocean, and then cried
impatiently, “Let us return l the powder-barrels
must have the first chance.” And he made for
the schooner, savagely striking the ice with his
Spear, and growling curses to himself as he
ploughed and climbed and jumped his way along.
CHAPTER XX.
A MERRY EVENING.
By the time we had reached the bottom of the
hollow Tassard was blowing like a bellows with
the uncommon exertion; and swearing that he
felt the cold penetrating his bones, and tº he
should be stupefied again if he did nºt mind, he
climbed into the ship and disappeared. I loved
him so little that secretly I very heartily wished
218 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
that nature would make away with him: I mean
that Something it would be impossible In me to
lay to my conscience should befall him, as hº
ing comatose again, and so lying like one º
Assuredly in such a case it was not this hand tha
would have wasted a drop of brandy in tº:
an evil, white-livered, hectoring old rascal to a .
that smelled foully with him and the like o
him. e
It was so still a day that the cold did not .
ºne sorely : there was vitality if not warmth, in the
light of the sun, and I was heated with ...;
So I stayed a full half-hour after my companion : -
vanished examining the ice about the º:
which careful inspection repaid me to the ex i.
ºf giving me to see that if by blasts of gº.
I could succeed in rupturing the ice ahead o
schooner's bows there was a very good chance º
th; mass on which she lay going adrift. º:
will not deny that though I recognized this i
ness of dislocation as our only chance—for I º:
§ee, little or nothing to be done in the * e-
building a boat proper to swim and ply—I .d
boded a dismal issue to our adventure, even shou
We succeed in separating this block from the º
In fine, what I feared was that the weight of the
schooner would overset the ice and drown her
and us. - -
* entered the ship and found Tassard roasting
himself in the cook-house, * … I tº
"How melancholy is this gloom,” said I," after
the glorious white sunshineſſ
“Ye py
**," said he, “but it is warm. That is
--masº


A MERRY EVENING. 219
enough for me. Curse the cold, say I. It robs a
man of all spirit. To grapple with this rigour one
should have fed all one's life on blubber. I defy a
man to be brave when he is half-frozen. I feel a
match for any three men now; but on the heights
a flea would have made me run.”
He pulled a pot from the bricks and filled his
pannikin.
"I have been surveying the ice,” said I, drawing
to the furnace, “and have very little doubt that if
we wisely bestow the powder in great quantities
we shall succeed in dislocating the bed on which
We are lying.”
"Good!” he cried.
“But after P’’ said I.
“What?”
"As much of this bed as may be dislodged
will not be deep: icebergs, as of course you know,
capsize in consequence of their becoming top-
heavy by the wasting of the bulk that is sub-
merged. This block will make but a small berg
should we liberate it, and I very much fear that
the weight of the schooner will overset it the
instant we are launched.” • . . -
"Body of Moses!” he cried angrily, knitting
his brows, whereby he stretched the scar, P half
its usual width, “what's to be done, then 2 ”
“She is a full ship,” said I, “and weighty. If
the liberated ice be thin she may sit "P 9” it
and keep it under. We have a right to hope, in
that direction, perhaps. . Yet, theº. another
consideration." She may leak like a sieve 1 -
“why?” he exclaimed. “She took the ice

2 I O - THE FROzEN PIRATE.
sight so easily after having sat in blindness for
forty-eight years, and it was not wonderful that
the amazing brilliance on deck, smiting his sight
on a sudden, should have caused him to cry
out as if he had lost the use of his eyes for
ever, -
I waited patiently, and in about ten minutes he
was able to look about him, and then it was not
long before he could see without pain. He stood
a minute gazing at the glories upon the rigging,
and in that piercing light I noticed the unwhole-
some colour of his face. His cap hid the scar,
and nothing of his countenance was to be seen
but the cheeks, eyes, and nose; he was much
more wrinkled than I had supposed, and methought
the spirit of cruelty lay visible in every line.
had never seen eyes so full of cunning and
treachery—so expressive, I should say, of these
qualities; yet they were no bigger than mere punc-
tures. I was sensible of a momentary fear of the
man—not, let me say, an emotion of cowardice
—but a sort of mixture of alarm and awe, such as
a ghost might inspire. This I put down to the
searching light in which I watched him for a
moment or two, an irradiation subtle enough to
give the sharpest form to expression, to exquisitely
define every meaning that was distinguishable in
his graveyard physiognomy. I left him to stare
and judge for himself of the posture in which the
long hard gale had put the schooner and stepped
over to the two bodies. They were shrouded in ice
from head to foot, as though they had each man
been packed in a glass case cunningly wrought to



WE take a VIEw of THE ICE. 2II
their shapes. Their faces were hid by the crystal
masks. Tassard joined me.
"Small chance for your friends now,” said I,
"even if you were agreeable to my proposal to
attempt to revive them.” -
"So!" cried he, touching the body of the mate
with his foot; “and this is the end of the irresis-
tible Trentanovel for what conquests has Death
robed him so bravely 2 See, the colours shine in
him like fifty different kinds of ribbands. Poor
fellow he could not curl his moustachios now,
though the loveliest eyes in Europe were fixed in
passionate admiration on him. He'll never slit
another throat, nor hiccup Petrarch over a goblet
nor remonstrate with me on my humanity. Shall
we toss the bodies over the side P’’
“They are your friends,” said I; “do as you
please.”
“But we must empty their pockets first. Busi-
ness before sentiment, Mr. Rodney.”
He stirred the figure again with his foot.
“Well, presently,” said he, “this armour will
want the hatchet. Now, my friend, to view the
work of the gale.”
The increased heel of the ship brought the lar-
board fore-channel low, and we stepped without
difficulty from it on to the ice. The rent or fissure
that I have before spoken of went very deep; it was
nearly two feet wide in places, but, though the light
poured brilliantly upon it, I could see no bottom.
“If only such another split as this would happen
ºt'other side,” said the Frenchman, “I believe this
block would go adrift.”
IP 2
-
- º
- -
21.2 : THE FROzEN PIRATE.
*" Well,” said I, after musing a little whilst I ran
my eye over the hollows, “I’ll tell you what was in
my mind just now. There is a great quantity of
gunpowder in the hold; ten or a dozen barrels.
By dropping large parcels of it into the crevices on
the right there, and firing it with slow-matches—"
He interrupted me with a cry: “By St. Paul,
you have it ! . What crevices have you ?”
We walked briskly round the vessel, and all
º about her beam and starboard quarter I found, in
º: addition to the seams I had before noticed, many
great cracks and fissures, caused no doubt by the
fall of the shoulder of the slope. I pushed on
further yet, going down the ravine, as I have
called it, until I came to the edge; and here I
looked down from a height of some twelve or
fourteen feet—so greatly had the ice sunk or been
changed by the weather—upon the ocean. I
called to Tassard. He approached warily. I
believe he feared I might be tempted to give
him a friendly shove over the edge.
“Observe this hollow," said I; “the split there
goes down to the water, and you may take it that
the block is wholly disconnected on that side.
Now look at the face of the ice,” said I, point-
ing to the starboard or right-hand side; “that
crack goes as far as the vessel's quarter, and
the weakness is carried on to past the bows by
the other rents. Mr. Tassard, if we could burst
this body of ice by an explosion from its moorings
ahead of the bowsprit, where it is all too compact,
this cradle with the schooner in it will go free of
the parent body.” -






º
We take a View of the Ice. 213
He answered promptly, “Yes; it is the ºe
and only plan that 'crack to starboard is like
tellingus what to do. It is well you came here.
We hould not have seen it from the top. This
valley runs steep. You must expect no more than
the face to beliberated, for the foot of the cliff
will go deep.”
"I desire no more." -
"Will the ship stand such a launch, supposing
we bring it about?” said he.
I responded with one of his own shrugs, and
said, "Nothing is certain. We have one of two
courses to choose: to venture this launch, or stay
till the ice breaks up, and take our chance of float-
ing or of being smashed.” -
"You are fight,” he exclaimed. “Here is an
opportunity, if we wait, bergs may gather about
this point and build us in. As to this island
dissolving, we are yet to know which way 'tis head-
ing, Suppose it should be travelling south, hey !”
He struck the ice with his spear, and we toiled
up the slippery rocks, with difficulty to the ship.
We walked past the bows to the distance of the
vessel's length. Here were many deep holes and
cracks, and as if we were to be taught how these
came about, even whilst we, Were viewing them an
ear-splitting crash of noise happened within twenty
iathoms of us, a rock many tons in weight rolled
over, and left a black gulf behind it.
The Frenchman started; muttered, and crossed
himself. “Holy Virgin', he cried, rolling his
eyes. “Let, us return to the schooner. We shall
be swallowed up here.”

214 THE FROZEN PIRATE,
º
I own I was not a little terrified myself by the
sudden loud blast and the thunder of the uprooted
rock, and the sight of the huge black rent; but I
meant to view the scene from the top, and to con-
sider how best to dispose of the powder in the
cracks, and said, “There is nothing to be done on
board; skulking below will not deliver us or pre-
serve the treasure. Here are several fissures big
enough to receive barrels of gunpowder. See,
Mr. Tassard, as they stand they cover the whole
width of the hollow.”
And I proceeded to give him my ideas as to
lowering, fixing the barrels, and the like. . He
nodded his head, and said, “Yes, very good;
yes, it will do,” and so on; but was too scared in
his heart, I believe, to see my full meaning. He
was perpetually moving, as if he feared the ice
would split under his feet, and his eyes travelled
over the face of the rocks with every manifestation
of alarm in their expression. I wondered how
so poor a creature should ever have had stomach
enough to serve as a pirate; no doubt his spirit
had been enfeebled by his long sleep; but then
it is also true that the greatest bullies and most
bloodthirsty rogues prove themselves despicable
curs under conditions which make no demand
upon their temper or their lust for plunder.
He would have returned to the ship, had I en-
couraged him, but on seeing me start to climb to
the brow he followed. The prospect disappointed
me. I had expected to witness a variety of sur-
prising changes; but southward the scene was
scarce altered. It was a wonderfully fair morn-



WE TAKE A VIEw of THE ICE. 2 I 5
ing, the sky clear from sea-line to sea-line, and
of a very soft blue, the ocean of a like hue, with
a high swell running, that was a majestic undula-
tion even from the height at which I surveyed it.
The sun stood over the ice in the north-east, and
the dazzle kept me weeping, so intolerable was
the effulgence. Half of the delicate architecture
that had enriched the slopes and surfaces that
way was swept down, and ice lay piled in places
to an elevation of many feet, where before it had
been flat or hollow. However, there was no ques-
tion but that the gale had played havoc with the
north extremity of the island : I counted no less
than twenty bergs floating off the main, and it was
quite likely the sea was crowded beyond, though
my sight could not travel so far. -
However, when I came to look close, and to
recollect the features of the shore as they showed
when I first landed, I found some vital changes
near at hand. Where my haven had been the ice
had given way and left a gap half a mile broad
and a hundred feet deep. The fall on the
schooner's starboard quarter was very heavy,
and the ice was split in all directions; and in
parts was so loose that a point of cliff hard upon
the sea rocked with the swell. When Tassard
came to a stand he looked about him north and
South, shading his eyes with his hand, and then
swearing very savagely in French, he cried out in
English, freely employing oaths as he spoke, -
“Why, here's as much ice as there was before
I fell asleep ! See yonder l’ pointing to the
south. “It dies-out in the distance, fi, wiáRes
^ -
º
º




2 16 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
not join the pole there, may the devil rise before
me as I speak. Thunder and fury! I had hoped
to see it shrivelled to an ordinary berg 1"
“What! in a week P” cried I, as if I believed
his stupor had not lasted longer.
He returned no answer and gaped about him
full of consternation and passion.
“And are we to wait for our deliverance till this
continent breaks up 2" he bawled. “The day of
judgment will be a thing of the past by that time.
Travelling north ! 'sqeath !” he roared, his mouth
full of the expletives of his day, French and
English. “Who but a madman could supposé
that this ice is not as fixed as the antarctic circle
to which it is moored 2 Why, six months ago it
was no bigger than it is now !” And he sent a
furious terrified gaºke into the white solitudes
vanishing in azure faintness in the south-
West.
It was not a thing to reason upon. I was as
much disappointed as he by the trifling changes
the gale had made, and my heart felt very heavy at
the sight of the great field disappearing in the
south. The bergs in the north signified little.
It is true they indicated demolition, but demolition
so slow as to be worthless to us. It was not to
be questioned that the island was proceeding north,
but at what rate 2 . Here, perhaps, might be a
frozen crescent of forty or fifty leagues; and at
what speed, appreciable enough to be of the
least consequence to our calculations, should such
a body travel 2
L! alted at the Frenchman. *
A MERRY EVENING. 217
“This must decide us!” said I. “We must
fix on one of two courses: endeavour to launch
the ship by blowing up the ice, or turn to and rig
up the best arrangement we can contrive and put
to sea.”
“Yes,” he answered, scowling as he darted his
enraged eyes over the ice. “Better set a slow-
match in the magazine and drink ourselves
senseless, and so blow ourselves to hell, than
linger here in the hope that this continent will
dissolve and release us. Where's Mendoza's
body ?”
I stared about me, and then pointing to the
huge gap the ice had made, answered, “It was
there. Where it is now I know not.”
He shrugged his shoulders, took another view
of the ice and the ocean, and then cried
impatiently, “Let us return l the powder-barrels
must have the first chance.” And he made for
the schooner, savagely striking the ice with his
spear and growling curses to himself as he
ploughed and climbed and jumped his way along.
CHAPTER XX.
A MERRY EVENING.
By the time we had reached the bottom of the
hollow Tassard was blowing like a bellows with
the uncommon exertion; and swearing that he
felt the cold penetrating his bones, and that he
should be stupefied again if he did not mind, he
climbed into the ship and disappeared. I loved
him so little that secretly I very heartily wished
--

218 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
º ºgºn
that nature would make away with him : I mean
that something it would be impossible in me to
lay to my conscience should befall him, as becom.
ing comatose again, and so lying like one dead.
Assuredly in such a case it was not this hand that
would have wasted a drop of brandy in returning
an evil, white-livered, hectoring old rascal to a life
that smelled foully with him and the like of
him.
It was so still a day that the cold did not try
me sorely : there was vitality if not warmth in the
light of the sun, and I was heated with clambering.
So I stayed a full half-hour after my companion had
vanished examining the ice about the schooner;
which careful inspection repaid me to the extent
of giving me to see that if by blasts of gunpowder
I could succeed in rupturing the ice ahead of the
schooner's bows there was a very good chance of
the mass on which she lay going adrift. Yet I
will not deny that though I recognized this busi-
ness of dislocation as our only chance—for I could
see little or nothing to be done in the way of
building a boat proper to swim and ply—I fore-
boded a dismal issue to our adventure, even should
we succeed in separating this block from the main.
In fine, what I feared was that the weight of the
schooner would overset the ice and drown her
and us. - -
I entered the ship and found Tassard roasting
himself in the cook-house.
“How melancholy is this gloom,” said I, “after
the glorious white sunshine !” .
“Yes,” said he, “but it is warm. That is
A MERRY EVENING. 219
enough for me. Curse the cold, say I. It robs a
man of all spirit. ...To grapple with this rigour one
should have fed all one's life on blubber. I defy a
man to be brave when he is half-frozen. I feel a
match for any three men now ; but on the heights
a flea would have made me run.”
He pulled a pot from the bricks and filled his
pannikin.
“I have been surveying the ice,” said I, drawing
to the furnace, “and have very little doubt that if
we wisely bestow the powder in great quantities
we shall succeed in dislocating the bed on which
we are lying.”
“Good l’’ he cried.
“But after P” said I.
“What P’’
“As much of this bed as may be dislodged
will not be deep : icebergs, as of course you know,
capsize in consequence of their becoming top-
heavy by the wasting of the bulk that is sub-
merged. This block will make but a small berg
should we liberate it, and I very much fear that
the weight of the schooner will overset it the
instant we are launched.”
“Body of Moses!” he cried angrily, knitting
his brows, whereby he stretched the scar to half
its usual width, “what's to be done, then P”
“She is a full ship,” said I, “and weighty. If
the liberated ice be thin she may sit up on it
and keep it under. . We have a right to hope in
that direction, perhaps. Yet there is another
consideration. She may leak like a sieve l’”
“Why?” he exclaimed. “She took the ice
-

22d The Frozen Pirate.
smoothly; she has not been strained; she was as
tight as a bottle before she stranded; the coating
of ice will have cherished her; and a stout ship
like this does not suffer from six months of lying
11 ! 11
"six months, thought I
“Well, it may be as you say; but if she leaks
it will not be in our four arms to keep her free."
He exclaimed hotly, “Mr. Rodney, if we are to
escape, we must venture something. To stay
here means death in the end. I am persuaded
that this ice is joined with some vast main body
far south and that it does not move. What is
there, then, to wait for 2 There is promise in
your gunpowder proposal. If she capsizes then
the devil will get his own.” And with a savage
flourish of the pannikin he put it to his lips and
drained it. -
His sullen determination that we should stand
or fall by my scheme was not very useful to me,
I had looked for some shrewdness in him, some
capacity of originating and weighing ideas; but I
found he could do little more than curse and
swagger and ply his can, in which he found most
of his anecdotes and recollections and not a little
of his courage. I pulled out my watch, as I must
call it, and observed that it was hard upon one
o'clock.
“'Tis lucky," said he, eying the watch greedily
and coming to it away from the great subject of
our deliverance, as though the sight of the fine
gold thing with its jewelled letter extinguished
every other thought in him, “that you removed that



A MERRY Evening. 22 I
watch from Mendoza. But he will have carried
other good things to the bottom with him, I fear.”
“His flask and tobacco-box I took away,” said
I. “He had nothing of consequence besides.”
“They must go into the common-chest,” cried
he, “’tis share and share, you know.”
“Ay,” said I, “but what I found on Mendoza
is mine by the highest right under heaven. If I
had not taken the things, they would now be at the
bottom of the sea.”
“What of that?” cried he savagely. “If we
had not plundered the galleon, she might have been
wrecked and taken all she had down with her.
Yet should such a consideration hinder a fair divi-
sion as between us—between you who had nothing
to do with the pillage and me who risked my life
in it 2 ''
I said, “Very well ; be it as you say,” appear-
ing to consent, for there was something truly
absurd in an altercation about a few guineas'
worth of booty in the face of our melancholy and
most perilous situation; though it not only enabled
me to send a deeper glance into the mind of this
man than I had yet been able to manage, but
made me understand a reason for the bloody and
furious quarrels which have again and again arisen
among persons.standing on the brink of eternity,
to whom a cup of drink or the sight of a ship had
been more precious than the contents of the Bank
of England.
I set about getting the dinner.
“Whilst you are at that work,” cried he, start-
ing up, “I’ll overhaul the pockets of the bodies on
*
222 THE FROzEN PIRA.
deck;” and, picking up a chopper, away he went
and I heard him cursing in his native tongue as
he stumbled to the companion-ladder through the
darkness in the cabin.
His rapacity was beyond credence. There was
an immense treasure in the hold, yet he could not
leave the pockets of the two poor wretches on
deck alone. I did not envy him his task. The
'frozen figures would bear a deal of hammering;
and besides he had to work in the 'cold. Ah,
thought I with a groan, I should have left him to
make one of them
I had finished my dinner by the time he arrived
He produced the watch I had taken from and re.
turned to the mate's pocket when I had searched
him for a tinder-box ; also a gold snuff-box set
with diamonds, and a few Spanish pieces in gold.
On seeing these things I remembered that I had
found some rings and money in his pockets whilst
overhauling him for means to obtain fire; but I
held my peace.
“Should not we have been imbeciles to sacrifice
these beauties P’’ he cried, viewing the watch and
snuff-box with a rapturous grin.
“They were hard to come at, I expect?”
“No,” he answered, pocketing them and turning
to a piece of beef in the oven. “I knocked away
the ice and after a little wrenching got at the
pockets. But poor Trentanovel dye know, his
nose came away with the mask of ice He is no
longer lovely to the sight !” He broke into a
guffaw, then stuffed his mouth full and talked in
the intervals of chewing. “There was nothing



A MERRY EVENING.
worth taking on Barros. They are both over-
board."
“Overboardſ "I cried.
“Why, yes,” said he. “They are no good on
deck. I stood them against the rail, then tipped
them over.”
This was an illustration of his strength I did not
much relish.
"I doubt if I could have lifted Barros,” said I.
"Not you!” he exclaimed, running his eye over
le, "A dead Dutchman would have the weight
ºf a fairy alongside Barros.”
"Well, Mr. Tassard,” said I, “since you are so
irong, you will be very useful to our scheme.
here is much to be done.”
"Give me a sketch of your plans, that I may
iderstand you,” he exclaimed, continuing to eat
Very heartily.
"First of all,” said I, “we shall have to break
the powder-barrels out of the magazine and hoist
them on deck. There are tackles, I suppose?”
"You should be able to find what you want
º the boatswain's stores in the run,” he re-
plied.
"There are some splits wide enough to receive
# whole barrel of powder," said I. “I counted
ºur such yawns all happily lying in a line athwart
the ice past the bows. I propose to sink these
barrels twenty feet deep, where they must hang
from a piece of spar across the aperture.”
He nodded.
“Have you any slow-matches aboard P”
"Plenty among the gunner's stores,” he replied,

-**** º
224 The Frozen PIRate.
“There are but you and me,” said I; “these
operations will take time. . We must mind not to
be blown up by one barrel whilst we are suspend.
ing another. We shall have to lower the barrels
with their matches on fire and they must be timed
to burn an hour.
“Ay, certainly, at least an hour,” he exclaimed.
“Two hours would be better.” -
“Well, that must depend upon the number of
parcels of matches we meet with. There will be
a good many mines to spring, and one must not
explode before another. "'Tis the united force of
the several blasts which we must reckon on. The
contents of at least four more barrels of powder
we must distribute amongst the other chinks and
splits in such parcels as they will be able to re-
ceive.”
“And then 2"
“And then,” said I, “we must await the explo:
sion and trust to the mercy of Heaven to help us."
He made a hideous face, as if this was a sort of
talk to nauseate him, and said, “Do you propose
that we should remain on board or watch the effects
from a distance P”
“Why, remain on board of course,” I answered.
“Suppose the mines liberated the ice on which
the schooner lies and it floated away, what should
we, watching at a distance, do P”
“True,” cried he, “but it is cursed perilous.
The explosion might blow the ship up.”
“No, it will not do that. We shall be bad
engineers if we bring, such a thing about. The
danger will be—providing the schooner is released
[]]
h
(Al
|
th




A MERRY EVENING. 225
-—in her capsizing, as I have before pointet
out.”
"Enough 1” cried he, charging his pannikin for
the third time. “We must chance her capsizing.”
“If I had a crew at my back,” said I, “I would
carry an anchor and cable to the shoulder of the
cliff at the end of the slope to hold the ship if she
swam. I would also put a quantity of provisions
on the ice along with materials for making us
shelter and the whole of the stock of coal, so that
we could go on supporting life here if the schooner
capsized.”
“Then,” said he, “you would remain ashore
during the explosion ?”
“Most certainly. But as all these preparations
would mean a degree of labour impracticable by
us two men, I am for the bold venture—prepare
and fire the mines, return to the ship, and leave
the rest to Providence.”
He made another ugly face and indulged him-
self in a piece of profanity that was inexpressibly
disgusting and mean in the mouth of a man who
was used to cross himself when alarmed and
swear by the saints. But perhaps he knew, even
better than I, how little he had to expect from
Providence. He filled his pipe, exclaiming that
when he had smoked it out we should fall to
work.
Now that I had settled a plan I was eager to
put it into practice—hot and wild indeed with the
impatience and hope of the castaway animated
with the dream of recovering his liberty and pre-
serving his life; and I was the more anxious to
MT)
226 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
~ *
set about the business at once on account ºf the
weather being fair and still, for if it came on "
blow a stormy wind again we should be ſolº
before under hatches. But I had to wait for *
Frenchman to empty his pipe. He was $9 °.
plete a sensualist that I believe nothing shot."
terror could have forced him to shorten the Peº
of a pleasure by a second of time. He Wem."
puffing so deliberately, with such leisurely enº,
ment of the flavour of the smoke, that I expected
to see him fall asleep; and my patience º
exhausted I jumped up; but by this time his"
held nothing but black ashes.
“Now,” cried he, “to work.” -
And he rose with a prodigious yawn and seized
the lanthorn. Our first business was to h"
among the boatswain's stores in the run fortacº
to hoist the powder-barrels up with. There W*
good collection, as might have been expected
a pirate whose commerce lay in slinging goods
from other ships' holds into her own; but the 9Pº
were frozen as hard as iron, to remedy which "
carried an armful to the cook-house, and left the
tackles to lie and soften. We also conveyed.”
the cook-house a quantity of ratline stuff—a tº
rope used for making of the steps in the shroud
ladders; this being a line that would exactly Serve
to suspend the smaller parcels of powder in tº
splits. Before touching the powder-barrels wº
put a lighted candle into the bull's-eye lamp over
the door and removed the lanthorn to a safe dis’
tance. Tassard was perfectly well acquainted
with the contents of this storeroom, and on my
f

A MERRY EVENING. 227
asking for the matches put his hand on one of
several bags of them. They varied in length,
Some being six inches and some making a big
coil. There was nothing for it but to sample and
test them, and this I told Tassard could be done
that evening. The main hatch was just forward
of the gun-room bulkhead; we seized a handspike
apiece and went to work to prize the cover open.
It was desperate tough labour; as bad as trying
to open an oyster with a soft blade. The French-
man broke out into many strange old-fashioned
oaths in his own tongue, imagining the hatch to
be frozen ; but though I don't doubt the frost had
something to do with it, its obstinacy was mainly
owing to time, that had soldered it, so to speak,
with the stubbornness that eight-and-forty years
will communicate to a fixture which ice has
cherished and kept sound.
We got the hatch open at last—be pleased to
know that I am speaking of the hatch in the
lower deck, for there was another immediately
over it on the upper or main deck—and returning
to the powder-room rolled the barrels forward
ready for slinging and hoisting away when we
should have rigged a tackle aloft. We had not
done much, but what we had done had eaten far
into the afternoon. - -
“I am tired and hungry and thirsty,” said the
Frenchman. “Let us knock off. We have made
good progress. No use opening the main-deck
hatch to-night: the vessel is cold enough even
when hermetically corked.”
“Very well,” said I, bringing my watch to the
O 2 -
THE * Rozen PIRATE,
º
lanthorn and observing the time tº be sunº
so, carefully extinguishing the candle in the bull's
eye lamp, we took each of us a bag of matchº
and went to the cook-room. * º | ||
There was neither tea nor coffee in the *... .
so pined for these soothing drinks tº Twº
have given all the wine in the vessel for a few
pounds of either one of them. A seniº."
gracious yearning, indeed, in the face ºf the le:
that was aboard'ſ but it was the plenty, Pº
that provoked it. There was chocolate, whic
Frenchman frothed and drank with heart)
ment; he also devoured handfuls of suſ,
which he would wash down with wine.
things made me sick, and for drink I wº. fort
upon the spirits and wine, the latter ºf whichº
so generous that it promised to combine with tº
enforced laziness of my life under hatchest”
me fat; so that I am of opinion had We Wait
for the ice to release us, I should have become 80
corpulent as to prove a burden to myself.
. I mention this here that you may find an excº
in it for the only act of folly in the way of drink
ing that I can ſay to my account whilst I wº
this pirate; for I must tell you that, on returning
to the furnace, we, to refresh us after our labout
made a bowl of punch, of which I drank sople";
fully that I began to feel myself very merry.
forgot all about the matches and my resolution toº.
test them that night. The Frenchman, enjoying |
my condition, continued to pledge me till his little
eyes danced in his head. Luckily for me, being
at bottom of a very jolly disposition, drink never




































ºr nºn-
A MERRy Evening. 229
ºved me worse than to develop that quality in
me. No man could ever say that I was quarrel-
ºne in my cups. My progress was marked by
ºpi smiles, terminating in unmeaning laughter;
The Frenchman sang a ballad about love and
ºrdy, and the like, and I gave him “Hearts
| Oak," the sentiments of which song kept him
igging his shoulders and drunkenly looking
ºntempt.
We continued singing alternately, for some
º, until he fell to setting up his throat when
was at work, and this confused and stopped
* He then favoured me with what he called
* Pirate's Dance, a very wild, grotesque move-
* with no elegance whatever to be hurt, by
being in liquor; and I think I see him.
"...whipping of his coat, and sprawling and
ºping about in high boots and a red, waist-
* flourishing his arms, snapping his fingers,
ind now and again bursting into a stave, to keep
ºpto. When he was done, I took the floor with
the hornpipe, whistling the air, and double-
shuffling, toe-and-heeling, and quivering from one
lºg to another very briskly. He lay back against
the bulkhead grasping a can half full of Fº
ºating loudly at my antics; and when I san
down, breathless, would º, º "...."
|ccuping that though he had know"
º º, he ºa never seen that dan”
ºtter performed. -
y ". time I was extremely º:
extraordinarily merry, and losing º ...
mºnt, began to indulge in sundry P


cºncerning his nation and countryme
with many explosions of laughter, hºw tº
they continued at the trouble of building º
us to use against them, and if he did not ſº
the “flower de louse”, a ºn ater º re.
peºple who put snuff into heir soup ºn th:
stricted their ablutions to their faces th. he
tricolour, being too muddled to conside that
was ignorant of that flag; and in short.
offensive, in spite of my ridiculous metrime ed the
his savage nature broke out. He assal ken
English with every injurious term his dº
condition suffered him to jº i. .
up with his little eves wildly rolling, h …
#. hand to his jº as if feeling for a sword
calling me by a very ugly French word, hideº
Come on, and he would show me the º
between a Frenchman and a beast of an º'
II1a11. - "....
I laughed at him with all my iglº
*ged him that, swaying to fight and left
advanced as if to fall upon me ºf started. º
feet and tumbled over the bench I had jumpt
from, and lay sprawling; and the bench ºf
setting close to him, he kicked against it and fe
too, fetching the deck a very hard blow. He
groaned heavily and muttered that he was killed.
I tried to rise, but my legs gave way, and the
the fumes of the punch overpowered me, for:
recollect no more. * *
When I awoke it was pitch dark. My hand
legs, and feet seemed formed of ice, my head of º
burning brass. I thought I was in my cot, and




















A MERRy. Evening. 23i
felt with my hands till I touched Tassard's cold
bald head, which so terrified me that I uttered a
oud cry and sprang erect. Then, recollection
eturned, and I heartly cursed myself for my folly
andwickedness. Good God I thought I, that I
should be so mad as to drown my senses when
ºver was any wretch in such need of all his
eason as Il
The boatswain's tinder-box was in my pocket;
groped, found a candle, and lighted it. It was
wenty minutes after three in the morning. Tas-
*idlay on his back, snoring hideously, his legs
ºverhanging the capsized bench, I pulled and
hauled at him, but he was too drunk to awake,
and that he might not freeze to death I fetched
#ple of clothes out of his cabin and covered
"...up, and put his head on a coat.
My head ached horribly, but not worse than
ºy heart. When I considered how our orgy
*ght have ended in bloodshed and murder, how !
had insulted God's providence by drinking and
*ghing and roaring out songs and dancing at a
ºne when I most needed His protection, with
ºath standing close beside me, as I may say,
cºuld have beaten my head against the deck
the anguish of my contrition and shame.
Y Passion of sorrow was so extravagant, indeed,
at I remember looking at the Frenchman as
!, he was the devil incarnate, who had Put
mself in my way to thaw and recover, that he
might tempt me on to the loss of my soul. For-
tunately these fancies did not last. I was parched
With thirst, but the water was ice, and there was
* … :, ... "
*** - " ... ."



232 The Frozen PIRATE.
no fire to melt it with ; so I broke off some
chips and sucked them, and held a lump to my
forehead. I went to my cabin and got into my
hammock, but my head was so hot, and ached
so furiously, and I was so vexed with myself be.
sides, that I could not sleep. The schooner was
deathly still ; there was not apparently the faintest
murmur of air to awaken an echo in her; nothing
spoke but the near and distant cracking of the
ice. It was miserable work lying in the cabin
sleepless and reproaching myself, and as my
burning head robbed the cold of its formidable-
ness, I resolved to go on deck and take a brisk
turn Or two.
The night was wonderfully fine; the velvet
dusk so crowded with stars that in parts it resem:
bled great spaces of cloth of silver hovering. I
turned my eyes northwards to the stars low down
there and thought of England and the home where
I was brought up until the tears gathered, and
with them went something of the dreadful burn-
ing aching out of my head. Those distant, silent,
shining bodies amazingly intensified the sense of
my loneliness and remoteness, and yonder South-
ern Cross and the luminous dust of the Magel.
lanic clouds seemed not farther off than my native
country. It is not in language to express the
savage naked beauty, the wild mystery of the
white still scene of ice, shining back to the stars
with a light that owed nothing to their glory; nor
convey how the whole was heightened to every
sense by the element of fear, put into the picture
by the . sounds of the splitting ice, and the




ſº
º
A MERRY Evening. 233
ºftened regular roaring of the breakers along the
| coast.
started with fresh shame and horror when I
|ºntasted this ghastly calmness of pale ice and
the brightness of the holy stars looking down
ºf "Pon it, with our swinish revelry in the cabin, and
ºf thought with loathing of the drunken ribaldry of
º the pirate and my own tipsy songs piercing the
| * of the mighty spirit. of this solitude. The
ººls: improved my spirits; I stepped the length
ºf the little raised déck briskly, my thoughts very
busy. On a sudden the ice split on the starboard
and with a noise louder than the explosion of a
"lº-four pounder. The schooner swayed to a
ºvel keel with so sharp a rise that I lost my
alance and staggered. I recovered myself,
embling and greatly agitated by the noise and
the movement coming together, without the least
it having been given me, and grasping a back-
* Waited, not knowing what was to happen
*: Unless it be the heave of an earthquake, I
*Imagine no motion capable of giving one such
*ºoning, nauseating, terrifying sensation as the
ºding of ice under a fixed ship. In a few
"ments there were several sharp cracks, all on
the starboard side, like a snapping of musketry,
"d I felt the schooner very faintly heave, but this
"ght have been a deception of the senses, for
"ough I set a star against the masthead and
*tched it, there was no movement. I looked
ºf the side and observed that the split I had
"ticed on the face of the cliff had by this new
"Pture been extended transversely right across the
\\
234 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
schooner's starboard bow, the thither side being
several feet higher than on this. It was plain that
the bed on which the vessel rested had dropped
so as to bring her upright, and I was convinced
by this circumstance alone, that if I used good
judgment in disposing of the powder the weight
of the mass would complete its own disloca.
tion. -
I stepped a little way forward to obtain a
clearer sight of the splits about the schooner,
and on putting my head over, I was inexpressibly
dismayed and confounded by the apparition of
a man with his arms stretched out before him,
his face upturned, and his posture that of starting
back as though terrified at beholding me. I
had met with several frights whilst I had been
on this island, but none worse than this, none
that so completely paralyzed me as to very
nearly deprive me of the power of breathing. I
stared at him, and he seemed to stare at me,
and I know not which of the two was the more
motionless. The whiteness made a light of its
own, and he was perfectly plain. I blinked and
puffed, conceiving it might be some illusion of
the wine I had drunk, and finding him still there,
and acting as though he warded me off in terror,
as if my showing myself unawares had led him to
think me the devil—I say finding him perfectly
real, I was seized with an agony of fear, and should
have rushed to my cabin had my legs been equal
to the task of transporting me there. Then,
thought I, idiot that you are, what think you, you
fool, is it but the body of Trentanove? Sure



A MERRY EVENING. - 235
enough it was, and putting my head a little farther
over the rail, I saw the figure of the Portuguese
Barros lying close under the bends. No doubt it
was the movement of the ice that had shot the
Italian into the life-like posture, it being incredible
he should have fallen so on being tumbled over-
board by the Frenchman. But there he was, resting
against a lump of ice, looking as living in his
º posture as ever he had showed in the
C3b1m.
The shock did my head good; I went, below
and got into my cot, and after tossing for half an
hour or so fell asleep. I awoke and went to the
took-house, where I found Tassard preparing
the breakfast, and a great fire burning. I
hardly knew what reception he would give me;
and was therefore not a little agreeably surprised
by his thanking me for covering him up.
“You have a stronger head than mine,” said
he, “The punch used you well. You made me
laugh, though. You was very diverting.”
"Ay, much too diverting to please myself,”
said I, and I sounded him cautiously to remark
what his memory carried of my insults, but found
that he recollected nothing more than that I danced
º vigour, and sang well. -
- I said nothing about my contrition; my gº.
deck, and the like, contenting myself with asking
if he had heard the explosion in the night.
“No,” cried he, staring and looking eagerly:
"Well, then,” said I," there, has happened a
mighty crack in the ice, and I do soberly believe
that with the blessing of God we shall be able by

236 THE FROzEN PIRATE,
blasts of powder to free the block on which i.
schooner rests.” th
"Good!" cried he: “come ſet us hum wi
this meal. How is the weather?"
"Quiet, I believe. I have not been 9m de:
since the explosion aroused me early this moſt
ing.”. - tº the
Whilst we ate he said, “ Suppose Wº gº
schooner afloat, what do you propose?". d
“Why,” I answered, “if she Prº tight an
se:Wºrthy, what but carry her home?
“What, you and I alone?” k
“No,” said I, “certainly not; we must make
shift to sail her to the nearest port, and ship 4
crew.”
He looked at me attentively, and said, “What
do you mean by home?”
“England,” said I. - -
He shrugged his shoulders and exclaimed in
French, “’Tis naturalſ, Then proceeding, Iſl
English, “Pray,” said he, showing his fangs, "dº
*9t you know that the Aoza ºy Z}ragon is a
Pirate P Do you want to be hanged that, you
PrºPose to carry her to a port to ship men?
"I have no fear of that, 'saidi ; “after all these
years she'll be as clean forgotten as if she had
never had existence.” -
"Look ye here, Mr. Rodney,” cried he in a
Passion, “let’s have no more of this snivelling
nonsense about J'éazº. You may be as mad as
you please on that Point, but it shan't hang me,
It needs more than", few months to make men
forget a craft that has carried on such traffic as


| A MERRy Evening. • 237
iſ our hold represents. You'll not find me venturing
myself nor the schooner into any of your ports for
men. No, no, my friend. I am in no stupor nºw,
you know; and ſve slept the punch of also, d'yº
see. What, betray our treasure and be hanged
for our generosity ?”
He made me an ironical bow, grinning with
wrath. . -
"Met's get the schooner afloat first,” said J.
“Ay, that's all very well,” he cried; “but
better stop here than dangle in chains. No, my
friend; our plan must be a very different one from
your proposal. I suppose you want your share
of the booty 2” said he, snapping his fingers.
"I deserve it,” said I, smiling, that I might
soften his passion.
“And yet you would conve the most noted
pirate of the age, with plunder in her to the value
of thousands of doubloons, to a port in which we
should doubtless find ships of war, a garrison,
magistrates, governors, prisons, and the whole of
the machinery it is our business to give our stern
tol Ma foi, Mr. Rodney I sure you are out...in
something more than your reckoning of time?"
“What do you propose P’’ said I.
“Hal” he exclaimed, whilst his little eyes
twinkled with cunning, “now you speak sensibly:
What do I propose?” This, my friend. . We mºst
navigate the schooner to an island and buſy the
treasure; then head for the shipping highways.
and obtain help from any friendly merchantmen
we may fall in with. Home with us means the
Tortugas. There we shall find the company We
*

238 . THE FROZEN PIRATE.
need to recover for us what we shall have hidden.
We shall come by our own then. But to sail with
this treasure on board—without a crew to defend
the vessel—by this hand the first cruiser that
sighted us would make a clean sweep, and then,
ho, for the hangman, Mr. Rodney !” Sl
How much I relished this scheme you will ht
imagine; but to reason with him would have
been mere madness. I knitted my brows and
seemed to reflect, and then said, “Well, there is
a great deal of plain, good sense in what you say.
I certainly see the wisdom of your advice in re- I
commending that we should bury the treasure.
Wę
º
0||
Nor must we leave anything on board to convict ſt
the ship of her true character.” Oſ
His greedy eyes sparkled with self-complacency. im
He tapped his forehead and cried, “Trust to this. d;
There is mind behind this surface. Your plan th
for releasing the schooner is great; mine for h
preserving the treasure is great too. You are the h
sailor, I the strategist; by combining our genius, 3.
we shall oppose an invulnerable front to adver- t
sity, and must end our days as Princes. Your º
hand, Paul ’’ \
I laughed and gave him my hand, which he
squeezed with many contortions of face and figure;
but though I laughed I don't know that I ever so
much disliked and distrusted and feared the old
leering rogue as at that moment.
“Come!" cried 1, jumping up, “let’s get about
our work.” And with that I pulled open a bag of
matches, and fell to testing them. They burnt
well. The fire ate into them as smoothly as if




WE ExPLODE THE MINEs. 239
they had been prepared the day before. They
were all of one thickness. I cut them to equal
lengths, and fired them and waited watch in hand;
one was burnt out two minutes before the other,
and each length took about ten minutes to con-
Sume. This was good enough to base my calcu-
lations upon.
CHAPTER XXI.
WE EXPLODE THE MINES.
I DON'T design to weary you with a close account
of our proceedings. How we opened the main-
deck hatch, rigged up tackles, clapping purchases
on to the falls, as the capstan was hard frozen and
immovable; how we hoisted the powder-barrels on
deck and then, by tackles on the foreyard, lowered
them over the side; how we filled a number of
bags which we found in the forecastle with powder;
how we measured the cracks in the ice and sawed
a couple of spare studding-sail booms into lengths
to serve as beams whereby to poise the barrels
and bags; would make but sailor's talk, half of
which would be unintelligible and the rest weari-
SOme. -
The Frenchman worked hard, and we snatched
only half an hour for our dinner. The split that
had happened in the ice during the night showed
by daylight as a gulf betwixt eight and ten feet
wide at the seawards end, thinning to a width of
three feet, never less, to where it ended, ahead of
the ship, in a hundred cracks in the ice that
howed as if a thunderbolt had fallen just there.
*
240 The Frozen Pirate.
I looked into this rent, but it was as black as a
well past a certain depth, and there was no gleam
of water. When we went over the side to roll our
first barrel of powder to the spot where we meant
to lower it, the Frenchman marched up to the
figure of Trentanove, and with no more reverence
than a boy would show in throwing a stone at a
jackass, tumbled him into the chasm. He then
stepped up to the body of the Portuguese boat-
swain, dragged him to the same fissure, and rolled
him into it. -
“There !” cried he; “now they are properly
buried.”
And with this he went coolly on with his
work.
I said nothing, but was secretly heartily disgusted
with this brutal disposal of his miserable shipmates'
remains. However, it was his doing, not mine;
and I confess the removal of those silent witnesses
was a very great relief to me, albeit when I con-
sidered how Tassard had been awakened, and how
both the mate and the boatswain might have been
brought to by treatment, I felt as though, after a
manner, the Frenchman had committed a murder
by burying them so.
It blew a small breeze all day from the south-
west, the weather keeping fine. It was ten
o'clock in the morning when we started on our
labour, and the sun had been sunk a few minutes
by the time we had rigged the last whip for the
lowering and poising of the powder. This left us
nothing to do in the morning but light the
matches, lower the powder into position, and then

We Explode THE Mines. 241
withdraw to the schooner and await the issue.
Our arrangements comprised, first, four barrels of
powder in deep yawns ahead of the vessel
- , directly
athwart the line of her head; second, two barrels,
a wide space between them, in the great chasm
ºn the starboard side; third, about fifty very
heavy charges in bags and the like for the further
upturing of many splits and crevices on the
arboard bow of the ship, where the ice was most
Compact. What should follow the mighty blast
no mortal being could have foretold. I had no
lear of the charges injuring the vessel—that is to
say, I did not fear that the actual explosion would
damage her: but as the effect of the º; of
such a mass of powder as we designed to explode
upon so brittle a substance as ice was not calcu-
lable, it was quite likely that the vast discharge,
instead of loosening and freeing the bed of ice,
might rend it into blocks, and leave the schooner
still stranded and lying in some wild posture amid
the ruins. -
But the powder was our only trumps; we had
but to play it and leave the rest to fortune.
We got our supper and sat smoking and dis-
cussing our situation and chances. Tassard was
tired, and this and our contemplation of the pro-
babilities of the morrow sobered his mind, and he
talked with a certain gravity. He drank sparely
and forbore the hideous recollections or inventions
* Was used to bestow on me, and indeed could
ind nothing to talk about but the explosion and
what it was to do for us. I was very glad he did
* again refer to his project to bury the treasure


242 ->
THE FRozen PIRATE
and carry the schooner to the Tortugas. Tº
subject fired his blood, and it was such nº
that the mere naming of it was nauseous"
Eight-and-forty years had passed since is:
fell in with this ice, and not tenfold the tº
tº the hold might have purchased for him º
of so much as a single bone of the youngº"
those associates whom he idly dreamt of seeking
and shipping and sailing in command of Yº
imbecile as was his scheme, having regard tº º
half-century that had elapsed, I clearly witness
the menace to me that it implied. His views."
to be read as plainly as if he had delivered tº
First and forêmost he meant that I should hº
him to sail the schooner to an island and buyº
plate and money; which done he would take tº
first *PPºrtunity to murder me. His chance"
'''“"g with a ship that wouljend him assisſal.
to navigate the schooner would be as good iſ tº
"ere alone in her as if I were on board too. Theº
would be "9thing, then, in this consideration tº
hinder him from cutting my throat after we had
buried the treasur. and were got north. Twº
notives would imperatively urge him to make
!e; first, that I should not be able to
.* as a witness to his being a pirate, and next
that he alone sh
ould f the
treasure. POSsess the secreto

























WE Explode THE MINEs. 243
tions that had I shot him in self-defence, as he
sat there, I am certain my conscience would have
acquitted me of his blood.
passed two most uneasy, hours, in my cot
before closing my eyes. I could think of nothing
but how to secure myself against the Frenchman's
treachery. You would suppose that my mind must
have been engrossed with considerations of the
several possibilities of the morrow ; but that was
not so. My reflections ran wholly to the bald-
headed evil-eyed pirate whom in an evil hour I had
thawed into being, and who was like to discharge
the debt of his own life by taking mine. The
truth is, I had been too hard at work all day, too
full of the business of planning, cutting, testing,
and contriving, to find leisure to dwell upon what
he had said at breakfast, and now that I lay
alone in darkness it was the only subject I could
Settle my thoughts to.
However, next morning I found myself less
gloomy, thanks to several hours of solid sleep,
I thought, what is the good of anticipating 2
Suppose the schooner is crushed by the ice or
jammed by the explosion ? Until we are under
way, nay, until the treasure is buried, I have
nothing to fear, for the rogue cannot do with-
out me. And, reassuring myself in this fashion,
I went to the cook-room and lighted the fire;
my companion presently arrived, and we sat down
to our morning meal.
“I dreamt last night,” said he, “that the devil
Şat on my breast and told me that we should
break clear of the ice and come off safe with the

R 2
,
º
!
sº
*
t
t
º
244 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
treasure—there is loyalty in the Fiend. He sel.
dom betrays his friends.”
“You have a better opinion of him than I,"
said I ; “and I do not know that you have
much claim upon his loyalty either, seeing that
you will cross yourself and call upon the Madonna
and saints when the occasion arises.”
“Pooh, mere habit,” cried he, sarcastically.
“I have seen Barros praying to a little wooden
saint in a gale of wind and then knock its head
off and throw it overboard because the storm
increased.” . And here he fell to talking very im-
piously, professing such an outrageous contempt
for every form of religion, and affirming so ardent
a belief in the goodwill of Satan and the like, that
I quitted my bench at last in a passion, and told
him that he must be the devil himself to talk so,
and that for my part his sentiments awoke in me
nothing but the utmost scorn, loathing, and horror
of him. -
His face fell, and he looked at me with the eye
of one who takes measure of another and does not
feel sure.
“Tut !” cried he, with a feigned peevishness;
“what are my sentiments to you, or yours to me?
you may be a Quaker for all I care. Come, fill
your pannikin and let us drink a health to our own
souls | "
But though he said this grinning, he shot a
savage look of malice at me, and when he put his
pannikin down his face was very clouded and
sulky. -
W. finished our meal in silence, and then I
r
+--------~~~
-

We Explode THE MINEs.
rose, saying, “Let us now see what the gun-
powder is going to do for us.” -
My sing and saying this worked a change in
him. He exclaimed briskly, “Ay, now for the
great experiment,” and made for the companion-
steps with an air of bustle.
The wind as before was in the south-west,
blowing without much weight; but the sky was
ºvercast with great masses of white clouds with a
tint of rainbows in their shoulders and skirts, amid
which the sky showed in a clear liquid blue.
Those clouds seemed to promise wind and per-
haps snow anon; but there was nothing to hinder
our operations. We got upon the ice, and went
to work to fix matches to the barrels and bags,
and to sling them by the beams we had contrived
ready for lowering when the matches were fired,
and this occupied us the best part of two hours.
When all was ready I fired the first match, and we
lowered the . smartly to the scope of line
we had settled upon; so with the others. You
may reckon we worked with all imaginable wari-
ness, for the stuff we handled was mighty deadly,
and if a barrel should fall and burst with the match
alight, we might be blown in an instant into rags,
it being impossible to tell how deep the rents went.
The bags being lighter there was less to fear,
and presently all the barrels and bags with the
matches burning were poised in the places and
hanging at the depth we had fixed upon, and we
then returned to the schooner, the Frenchman
breaking into a run and tumbling over the rail in
his alarm with the dexterity of a monkey.
-------
*


- -
-
246 THE FRozen PIRATE,
Each match was supposed to burn an hours
that when the sever: explosions happened the
might all occur as nearly as possible at once, an
We had therefore a long time to wait. The mat
gin may look unreasonable in the face of 0.
despatch, but you will not him, i. unnecessayi
Yººnsider that our machinery might not haſ
worked very Smooth, and that meanwhile all that
was lowered was in the way of exploding.Sº
interminable a period as now followed I do believe
never before entered into the experiences of
man. The cold was intense, and we had tº
"ove about; but also were we repeatedly
°oming to a halt to look aſ our watches and
**t our eyes over the ice. It was like standing
"der a gallows with the moose around thened
Waiting for the cart to move "off. My own
}*Pºnsº became torture; but I commanded my
face. The Frenchman, on the other hand, could
ºot control the torments of his expectation and
fear. -
"Holy Virgin I" he would cry, “suppose. We
* Plown up too? suppose we aſ: engulphed in
the ice P suppose it shºuld be vomited up in vast
blocks which in falling upon us must crush us to
Pulp and smash the ſick. in P’’
At one moment he would call himself an idiot
for not "ſnaining on the rocks at a distance and
Watching the explosion, and even make as if to
Jºmp off the vessel, then immediately recoil from
the idea of Setting his foot upon a floor that
before he could tâke ºn strides might split into
“hasms, with hideous UProar under him. At





















WE Explode THE MINEs. 247
another moment he would run to the companion.
and descend out of my sight, but reappear after a
minute or two wildly shaking his head and swear.
ing that if waiting was insupportable in the day-
light, it was ten thousand times worse in the gloom
and solitude of the interior. .
I was too nervous and expectant myself to be
affected by his behaviour; but his dread of the
explosion upheaving lumps of ice was sensible
enough to determine me to post myself under the
cover of the hatch and there await the blast, for
it was a stout cover and would certainly screen
me from the lighter flying pieces. . .
It was three or four minutes past the hour and
I was looking breathlessly at my watch when the
first of the explosions took place. Before the ear
could well receive the shock of the blast the
whole of the barrels exploded along with some
twelve or fourteen parcels. Tassard, who stood
beside me, fell on his face, and I believed he had
been killed. It was so hellish a thunder that l
suppose the blowing up of a first-rate could not
make a more frightful roar of noise. A kind of
twilight was caused by the rise of the volumes of
white smoke out of the ice. The schooner shook
with such a convulsion that I was persuaded she
had been split. Vast showers of splinters of ice
fell as if from the sky, and rained like arrows
through the smoke, but if there were any great
blocks uphove they did not touch the ship.
Meanwhile, the other parcels were exploding in
their places sometimes two and three at a time,
sending a sort of sickening spasms and throes
…ts ºf
248 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
through the fabric of the vessel, and you
heard the most extraordinary grinding noises
rising out of the ice all about, as though the
mighty rupture of the powder crackled through
leagues of the island. I durst not look forth till
all the pówder had burst, lest I should be struck
by some flying piece of ice, but unless the schooner
was injured below she was as sound as before,
and in the exact same posture, as if afloat in har-
bour, only that of course her stern lay low with
the slope of her bed.
I called to Tassard and he lifted his head.
“Are you hurt 2" said I.
“No, no,” he answered. “'Tis a Spaniard's
trick to fling down to a broadside. Body of St.
Joseph, what a furious explosion l’’ and so saying
he crawled into the companion and squatted
beside me. “What has it done for us?”
“I don't know yet,” said I; “but I believe the
schooner is uninjured. That was a powerful shock!"
I cried, as a half-dozen of bags blew up together
in the crevices deep down. s
The thunder and tumult of the rending ice
accompanied by the heavy explosions of the gun-
powder so dulled the hearing that it was difficult
to speak. That the mines had accomplished our
end was not yet to be known; but there could not
be the least doubt that they had not only occa-
sioned tremendous ruptures low down in the ice,
but that the volcanic influence was extending far
beyond its first effects by making one split pro-
duce another, one weak part give way and create
other weaknesses, and so on, all round about us
– -













We Explode the MINEs. 249
and under our keel, as was clearly to be gathered
by the shivering and spasms of the schoon.
and by the growls, roars, blasts, and huddle ºf
terrifying sounds which arose from the frozen
loor.
It was twenty minutes after the hour at which
the mines had been framed to explode when the
last parcel burst; but we waited another quarter
ºf an hour to make sure that it was the last,
during all which time the growling and roaring
noises deep down continued, as if there was a
battle of a thousand lions raging in the vaults
and hollows underneath. The smoke had been
settled away by the wind, and the prospect was
clear. We ran below to see to the fire and receive
five minutes of heat into our chilled bodies, and
then returned to view the scene.
I looked first over the starboard side and saw
the great split that had happened in the night
torn in places into immense yawns and gulfs by
the fall of vast masses of rock out of its sides;
but what most delighted me was the hollow sound
of washing water. I lifted my hand and listened.
"'Tis the swell of the sea flowing into the open-
ing!” I exclaimed.
“That means,” said Tassard, “that this side
of the block is dislocated from the main.”
“Yes,” cried I. “And if the powder ahead of
the bows has done its work, the heave of the ocean
will do the rest.”
We made our way on to the forecastle over a
deep bed of splinters of ice, lying like wood.
shavings upon the deck, and I took notice as I
-

250 THE Frozen PIRATE,
walked that every glorious crystal pendant that
had before adorned the yards, rigging, and spars
had been shaken off. I had expected to see a º
wonderful spectacle of havoc in the ice where the
barrels of gunpowder had been poised, but saving r
many scores of cracks where none was before, º
and vast ragged gashes in the mouths of the |
crevices down which the barrels had been lowered, |
the scene was much as heretofore. ſt
The Frenchman stared and exclaimed, “What M
has the powder done? I see only a few k
cracks.” |
“What it may have done, I don't know,” I |
answered; “but depend on't such heavy charges º
of powder must have burst to some purpose. . .
The dislocation will be below; and so much the \
better, for 'tis there the ice must come asunder if
this block is to go free.”
He gazed about him, and then rapping out a
string of oaths, English, Italian, and French, for
he swore in all the languages he spoke, which, he
once told me, were five, he declared that for his
part he considered the powder wasted, that we'd
have done as well to fling a hand-grenade into a
fissure, that a thousand barrels of powder would
be but as a popgun for rending the schooner's bed
from the main, and in short, with several insulting
looks and a face black with rage and disappoint-
ment, gave me very plainly to i. that I had not
only played the fool myself, but had made a fool of
him, and that he was heartily sorry he had ever given
himself any trouble to contrive the cursed mines or
-----



WE ExPLODE THE MINEs. 25 I
!
to assist me in a ridiculous project that might have
resulted in blowing the schooner to pieces and our-
selves with it. -
I glanced at him with a sneer, but took no
further notice of his insolence. It was not only
that he was so contemptible in all respects, a liar,
a rogue, a thief, a poltroon, hoary in twenty walks
of vice, there was something so unearthly about a
creature that had been as good as dead for eight-
and-forty years, that it was impossible anything
he said could affect me as the rancorous
tongue of another man would. I feared and hated
him because I knew that in intent he was already
my assassin; but the mere insolences of so
incredible a creature could not but find me imper-
turbable. . . -
... And perhaps in the present instance my own
disappointment put me into some small posture of
sympathy with his passion. Had I been asked
before the explosions happened what I expected,
I don't know that I should have found any answer
to make; and yet, though I could not have ex-
pressed my expectations, which after all were but
hopes, I was bitterly vexed when I looked over
the bows and found in the scene nothing that
appeared answerable to the uncommon forces we
had employed. Nevertheless, I felt sure that my
remark to the Frenchman was sound. A great
show of uphove rocks and fragments of ice might
have satisfied the eye; but the real work of the
mines was wanted below; and since the force of
the mighty explosion must needs expend itself
The Frozen PIRATE.
somewhere, it was absurd to wish to see its effects
in a part where its volcanic agency would be of
little or no use. º
“There is nothing to be seen by staring!”
exclaimed the Frenchman presently, speaking
very sullenly. “I am hungry and freezing, and
shall go below !” And with that he turned
his back and made off, growling in his throat as he
Went.
I got upon the ice and stepped very carefully
to the starboard side and looked down the vast
split there. The sea in consequence of the slope
did not come so far, but I could hear the wash of
the water very plain. It was certain that the
valley in which we lay was wholly disconnected
from the main ice on this side. I passed to the
larboard quarter, and here too were cracks wide
and deep enough to satisfy me that its hold was
weak. It was forward of the bows where the
barrels had been exploded that the ice was thickest
and had the firmest grasp ; but its surface was
violently and heavily cracked by the explosions,
and I thought to myself if the fissures below are
as numerous, then certainly the swell of the sea
ought to fetch the whole mass away. But I was
now half frozen myself and pining for warmth.
It was after one o'clock. The wind was piping
freshly, and the great heavy clouds in swarms
drove stately across the sky.
“It may blow to-night,” thought I ; “and if
the wind hangs as it is, just such a sea as may
do our business will be set running.” And thus
musing I entered the ship and went below.
:


º
* CHANGE comes over THE FRENCHMAN. 253
CHAPTER XXII.
A CHANGE COMES OVER THE FRENCHMAN.
TASSARD was dogged and scowling. Such was
his temper that had I been a small or weak man,
ºr a person likely to prove submissive, he would
have given a loose to his foul tongue and maybe
handled me very roughly. But my demeanour
was cold and resolved, and not of a kind to im-
Prove his courage. I levelled a deliberate semi-
contemptuous gaze at his own fiery stare, and
Puzzled him, too, I believe, a good deal by my
Cool reserve. He muttered whilst we ate, drink.
"g plentifully of wine, and garnishing his draughts
with oaths and to spare; and then, after falling
silent and remaining so for the space of twenty
minutes, during which I lighted my pipe and sat
With my feet close to the furnace, listening with
eager ears to the sounds of the ice and the dull
crying of the wind, he exclaimed sulkily, “Your
scheme is a failure. The schooner is fixed.
hat's to be done now 2"
"I don't know that my scheme is a failure,”
said I... “What did you suppose? that the blast
would blow the ice with the schooner on it into
the ocean clear of the island? If the ice is so
shaken as to enable the swell to detach it, my
scheme will have accomplished all I proposed.”
"Af/” he cried scornfully and passionately.
"If will not deliver us nor save the treasure. I
tell you the schooner is fixed—as fixed as the
damned in everlasting fire. Be it sol” he cried,
254 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
clenching his fist. “But you must meddle no
more | The Boca del Dragon is mine–mine,
d'ye see, now that they're all dead and gone but
me”—smiting his bosom—“and if ever she is to
float, let-nature or the devil launch her; no more
explosions with the risks your failure has made
her and me run (":
His voice sank; he looked at me in silence, and
then with a wild grin of anger he exclaimed, “What
made you awake me? I was at peace—neither
cold, hungry, nor hopeless | What demon forced
you to bring me to this—to bring me back to
f tºy fº -
“Mr. Tassard,” said I coldly, “I don't ask your
pardon for my experiment; I meant well, and to
my mind it is no failure yet. But, for disturbing
your repose I do sincerely beg your forgiveness,
and solemnly promise you, if you will return to the
state in which I found you, that I will not repeat
the offence.”
He eyed me from top to toe in silence, filled and
lighted his hideous pipe, and smoked with his back
turned upon me.
Had there been another warm place in the
schooner I should have retired to it, and left this
surly and scandalous savage to the enjoyment of
his own company. His temper rendered me ex-
tremely uneasy. The arms-room was full of
weapons; he might draw a pistol upon me and
shoot me dead before I should have time to clench
my hand, Nor did I conceive him to have his
right mind. His panic terrors and outbursts
of rage were such extremes of behaviour as
*
-




A CHANGE comes over THE FRENCHMAN. 255
suggested some sort of organic decay within,
He had been for eight-and-forty years insensible;
in all that time the current of life had been frozen
In him, not dried up and extinguished; therefore,
taking his age to be fifty-five when the frost
seized him, he would now be one hundred and
three years old, having subsisted into this great
span of time in fact, though confronting me with
the aspect of an elderly man merely. Death ends
ſºme, but this man never had been dead, or surely
"Wºuld not have been in the power of brandy and
haſing and fire to arouse him; and though all
the processes of nature had been checked in him
for near half a century, yet he must have been
throughout as much alive as a sleeping man, and
°onsequently when he awoke he arose with the
Weight of a hundred and three years upon his
ſain, which may suffice to account for the pre-
"natural peculiárities of his character. -
After sitting a long while sullenly smoking in
silence, he fetched his mattress and some covers,
hy,down upon it, and fell fast asleep. I admired
and envied this display of confidence, and
eartily wished myself as safe in his hands as he
Was in mine. The afternoon passed. I was on
eck a half-dozen times, but never witnessed the
east alteration in the ice. My spirits sank very
OW. There was bitter remorseless defiance in the
White, fierce rigid stare of the ice, and I could not
but believe with the Frenchman that all our labour
and expenditure of powder was in vain. There
Was no more noticeable weight in the wind, but
the sea was beginning to beat with some strength


256 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
-
upon the coast, and the schooner sometimes
trembled to the vibrations of the blows. There
was also a continuous crackling noise coming up
out of the ice, and just as I came on deck on my
third visit, a block of ice, weighing I dare say a
couple of hundred tons, fell from the broken
shoulder on the starboard quarter, and plunged
with a roar like a thunderclap into the chasm that
had opened in the night. -
I sat before the furnace extremely dejected,
whilst the Frenchman snored on his mattress. I
could no longer flatter myself that the explosions
had made the impression I had expected on the
ice, and my mind was utterly at a loss. How to
deliver myself from this horrible situation I could
not imagine. ... As to the treasure, why, if the
chests had all been filled with gold, they might
have gone to the bottom there and then for me,
so utterly insignificant did their value seem as
against the pricelessness of liberty and the joy of
deliverance. Had I been alone I should have had
a stouter heart, I dare say, for then I should have
been able to do as I pleased; but now I was asso-
ciated with a bloody-minded rogue whose soul was
in the treasure, and who was certain to oppose
any plan I might propose for the construction of
a boat or raft out of the material that formed the
schooner. The sole ray of hope that gleamed
upon me broke out of the belief that this island
was going north, and that when we had come to
the height of the summer in these seas, the wast-
ing of the coast or the dislocation of the northern
mass would release us,
A CHANGE comes over the FRENCHMAN. 257
Yet this was but poor comfort too; it threatened
a terrible long spell of waiting, with perhaps dis-
appointment in the end, and months of enforced
association with a wretch with whom I should
have to live in fear of my life.
When I was getting supper Tassard awoke,
quitted his mattress, and came to his bench.
“Has anything happened whilst I slept?" saidhe.
“Nothing,” I answered. -
“The ice shows no signs of giving 2*
“I see none,” said I.
“Well,” cried he, with a sarcastic sneer, “have
you any more fine schemes 2"
“'Tis your turn now,” I replied. “Try your
hand. If you fail, I promise you I shall not be
disappointed.”
“But you English sailors,” said he, wagging his
head and regarding me with a great deal of wild-
ness in his eye, “speak of yourselves as the finest
seamen in the world. Justify the maritime reputa-
tion of your nation by showing me how we are to
escape with the schooner from the ice.”
“Mr. Tassard,” said I, approaching him and
looking him full in the face, “I would advise you
to sweeten your temper and change your tone. I
have borne myself very moderately towards you,
submitted to your insults with patience, and have
done you some kindness. I am not afraid of you.
On the contrary, I look upon you as a swaggering
bully and a hoary villain. Do you understand
me? I am a desperate man in a desperate situa-
tion. But if I don't fear death, depend upon it, I
don't fear you—and I take God to witness that if
*
258 THE FROZEN PIRATE,
–-º
you do not use me with the civility I have a right
to expect, I will kill you.”
My temper had given way; I meant every word
I spoke, and my air and sincerity rendered my
speech very formidable. I approached him by
another stride; he started up, as I thought, to
seize me, but in reality to recoil, and this he did
so effectually as to tumble over his bench, and
down he fell, striking his bald head so hard that
he lay for several minutes motionless.
I stood over him till he chose to sit erect,
which he presently did, rubbing his poll and look.
ing at me with an air of mingled bewilderment and
fear.
“This is scurvy usage to give a shipmate in
distress,” said he. "'Od's life, man! I had
thought there was some sense of humour in you.
Your hand, Mr. Rodney; I feel dazed.”
I helped him to rise, and he then sat down in a
somewhat rickety manner, rubbing his eyes. It
might have been fancy, it might have been the
illusion of the furnace light combined with the
venerable appearance his long hair and naked pate
gave him, but methought in those few minutes
he had grown to look twenty years older.
“Never concern yourself about my humour,
Mr. Tassard,” said I, preserving my determined
air and coming close to him again. “How is it
to stand between us? I leave the choice to you.
If you will treat me civilly you'll not find me want-
ing in every disposition to render our miserable
state tolerable; but if you insult me, use me in-
uriously, and act the pirate over me, who am an


A CHANGE comes over THE FRENCHMAN. 259
honest man, by God, Mr. Tassard, I will kill
you.”
He stooped away from me, and raised his hand
in a posture as if to fend me off, and cried in a
whining manner, “I lost my head—this gunpowder
business hath been a hellish disappointment, look
you, Mr. Rodney. Come! We will drink a can
to our future amity l’”
I answered coldly that I wanted no more wine
and bade him beware of me, that he had gone far
enough, that our hideous condition had filled my
soul with desperation and misery, and that I would
not have my life on this frozen schooner made
more abominable than it was by his Swagger, lies,
and insults, and I added in a loud voice and in a
menacing manner that death had no terrors for me,
and that I would dispatch him with as little fear
as I should meet my doom, whatever shape it took.
I marched on deck, not a little astounded by
the cowardice of the old rascal, and very well
pleased with the marked impression my bearing
and language had produced on him. Not that I
supposed for a moment that my bold comport-
ment would save me from his knife or his pistol
when he should think proper to make away with
me. No. All I reckoned upon was cowing him
into a civiller posture of mind, and checking his
aggressions and insolence. As to his murdering
me, I was very sure he would not attempt such an
act whilst we remained imprisoned. Loneliness
would have more horrors for him than for me ,
and though my machinery of mines had apparently
failed, he was shrewd enough, despite his rage of
S 2 -
26o THE FROzEN PIRATE.
-
disappointment, to understand that more was to
be done by two men than by one, and that between
us something might be attempted which would be
impracticable by a simple pair of hands, and
particularly old fami, such as his.
I stayed but a minute or two on deck. Such
was the cold that I do not know, I had ever felt it
more biting and bitter. The sound of foaming
waters filled the wind, and the wind itself was --
blowing fairly strong, in gusts that screamed in
the frozen rigging or in blasts that had the deep
echo of the thunder-claps of the splitting ice.
The clouds were numerous and dark with the
shadow of the night; and the swiftness of their
motion as they sailed up out of the south-west
quarter was illustrated by the leaping of the few
bright stars from one dusky edge to another. |
I returned below and sat down. The French-
man asked me no questions. He had his can in
the oven and his death's head in his great hand,
and puffed out clouds of smoke of the colour of
his beard, and indeed in the candle and fire light
looked like a figure of old Time with his long nose
and bald head. I addressed one or two civil re-
marks to him, which he answered in a subdued
manner, discovering no resentment whatever that
I could trace in his eyes or the expression of his
countenance; and being wishful to show that I
bore no malice I talked of pirates and their
usages, and asked him if the Boca del Dragon
fought under the red or black flag.
“Why, the black flag, certainly,” said he “but
if we met with resistance, it was our custom to
****-cº-ºs-
A CHANGE comes over THE FRENCHMAN. 261
haul it down and hoist the red flag, to let our
opponents know we should give no quarter.”
“Where is your flag locker P” said I.
“In my berth,” he answered.
“I should like to see the black flag,” I ex-
claimed: “’tis the one piece of bunting, I believe,
I have never viewed.”
“I’ll fetch it,” said he, and taking the lanthorn
went aft very quietly, but with a certain stagger
in his walk, which I should have put down to the
wine if it was not that his behaviour was free from
all symptoms of ebriation. The change in him
surprised me, but not so greatly as you might
suppose; indeed, it excited my suspicions rather
than my wonder. Fear worked in him unques-
tionably, but what I seemed to see best was some
malignant design which he hoped to conceal by
an air of conciliation and a quality of respectful
bonhomie.
He came back with a flag in his hand, and we
spread it between us; it was black, with a yellow
skull grinning in the middle, over this an hourglass,
and beneath a cross-bones.
“What consternation has this signal caused and
does still cause !” said I, surveying it, whilst a
hundred fancies of the barbarous scenes it had
flown over, the miserable cries for mercy that had
-swept up past it to the ear of God, crowded into
my mind. “I think, Mr. Tassard,” said I, “that
our first step, should we ever find ourselves afloat
in this ship, must be to commit this and all other
flags of a like kind on board to the deep. There is
evidence in this piece of draperv to hang an angel.”
**,
262 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
m-tº
--
He let fall his ends of the flag and sat down
suddenly.
“Yes,” he answered, sending a curious rolling
glance around the cook-room and at the same
time bringing his hand to the back of his head,
“this is evidence to dangle even an honester man
than you, sir. All flags but the ensign we resolve
to sail under must go—all flags, and all the wear-
ing apparel, and—and—but"—here he muttered a
curse—“we are fixed—there is to be no sailing.”
He shook his head and covered his eyes. His
manner was strange, and the stranger for his
quietude. -
I said to him, “Are you ill 2"
He looked up sharply and cried vehemently,
“No, no!” then stretched his lips in a very
ghastly grin and turned to take the can from
the oven, but his hand missed it, and he appeared
to grope as if he were blind, though he looked at
the can all the time. Then he catched it and
brought it to his mouth, but trembled so much
that he spilt as much as he drank, and after
putting the can back sat shaking his beard and
stroking the wet off it, methought, in a very
Huechanical lunatic way.
I thought to myself, “Is this behaviour some
Stratagem of his 2 What device can such a bear-
º hide 2 If he is acting, he plays his part
well.” -
I rolled the black flag into a bundle and flung
it into a corner, and, resuming my seat and my
pipe, continued, more for civility's sake than
because of any particular interest I took in the

A CHANGE comes over the FRENCHMAN. 263
subject, to ask him questions about the customs
and habits of pirates.
"I believe,” said I, “the buccaneers are so
resºlute, in having clear ships that they have
neither beds nor seats on board.” -
"The English,” he answered, speaking slowly
and letting his pipe droop whilst he spoke with
his eyes fixed on deck, “not the Spanish. 'Tis
the custom of most Énglish pirates to eat and
sleep upon the decks for the sake of a clear ship,
* You say. The Spaniard loves comfort—you
may observe his fancy in this ship.”
'How is the plunder partitioned 2" I asked.
"Everything is put into the common chest, as
We call it, and brought to the mast and sold by
auction- Strangel” he cried, breaking off and
Plºting his hand to his brow. “I find my speech
ºfficult. Do you notice I halt and utter
thickly 2 ”
I replied, No; his voice seemed to be the
Same as hitherto. -
"Yet I feel ill. Holy Mother of God, what is
this feeling coming upon me? O Jesus, how faint
and dark Tº -
He half rose from his bench, but sat º
trembling as if the palsy had seized him, *
noticed his head dotted with beads of sweat. e
had drunk so much wine and spirits hº.
the day that a dram would have been of no use to
lm. • - - he
I said, “I expect it will be the blow on
back of yout . when you fell.just nº.
has produced this feeling of giddiness. - * *
*-- --.
t :--
254 THE FROZEN PIRATE,
clenching his fist. “But you must meddle no
more | The Boca del Dragon is mine–mine
d'ye see, now that they're all dead and gone but
me”—smiting his bosom—“and if ever she is to
float, let-nature or the devil launch her: no more
explosions with the risks your failure has made
her and me run l’’’
His voice sank; he looked at me in silence, and
then with a wild grin of anger he exclaimed, “What
made you awake me? I was at peace—neither
cold, hungry, nor hopeless! What demon forced
you to bring me to this—to bring me back to
# 'tis 2° º
“Mr. Tassard,” said I coldly, “I don't ask your
pardon for my experiment; I meant well, and to
my mind it is no failure yet. But, for disturbing
your repose I do sincerely beg your forgiveness,
and solemnly promise you, if you will return to the
state in which I found you, that I will not repeat
the offence.”
He eyed me from top to toe in silence, filled and
lighted his hideous pipe, and smoked with his back
turned upon me.
Had there been another warm place in the
schooner I should have retired to it, and left this
surly and scandalous savage to the enjoyment of
his own company. His temper rendered me ex:
tremely uneasy. The arms-room was full of
weapons; he might draw a pistol upon me and
shoot me dead before I should have time to clench
my hand. Nor did I conceive him to have his
right mind. His panic terrors and ſoutbursts
of rage were such extremes of behaviour as

















A Change comes over THE FRENCHMAN. 255
suggested some sort of organic decay within,
He had been for eight-and-forty years insensible;
in all that time the current of life had been frozen
in him, not dried up and extinguished; therefore,
taking his age to be fifty-five when the frost
seized him, he would now be one hundred and
three years old, having subsisted into this great
span of time in fact, though confronting me with
the aspect of an elderly man merely. Death ends
time, but this man never had been dead, or surely
"Would not have been in the power of brandy and
Chafing and fire to arouse him; and though all
the processes of nature had been checked in him
for near half a century, yet he must have been
throughout as much alive as a sleeping man, and
Consequently when he awoke he arose with the
Weight of a hundred and three years upon his
brain, which may suffice to account for the pre-
ternatural peculiarities of his character. • *
After sitting a long while sullenly smoking in
silence, he fetched his mattress and some covers,
*y down upon it, and fell fast asleep. I admired
and envied this display of confidence, and
heartily wished myself as safe in his hands as he
Was in mine. The afternoon passed. I was on
deck a half-dozen times, but never witnessed the
east alteration in the ice. My spirits sank very
OW. There was bitter remorseless defiance in the
White, fierce rigid stare of the ice, and I could not
but believe with the Frenchman that all our labour
and expenditure of powder was in vain. Thº.
Was no more noticeable weight in the wind, º
the sea was beginning to beat with some strengt
the coast, and ther schooner someº
trembled to the vibrations of the blows. Tº
was also a continuous crackling noise comingº
out of the ice, and just as I came on deck on tº
third visit, a block of ice, weighing. I dare º
couple of hundred tons, fell from the broke
shoulder on the starboard quarter, and plunged
with a roar like a thunderclap into the chasm that
had opened in the night. º
I sat before the furnace extremely deject:
whilst the Frenchman snored on his mattress, 1.
could no longer flatter myself that the explosiº
had made the impression I had expected on the
ice, and my mind was utterly at a loss. How:
deliver myself from this horrible situation ſº
not imagine. As to the treasure, why, if th:
chests had all been filled with gold, they might
have gone to the bottom there and then for me.
so utterly insignificant did their value seem *
against the pricelessness of liberty and the joy of
deliverance. Had I been alone I should have had
a stouter heart, I dare say, for then I should ha
been able to do as I pleased; but now I was a
ciated with a bloody-minded rogue whose soul
in the treasure, and who was certain to opp
any plan I might propose for the construction
a boat or raft out of the material that formed tº
schooner. The sole ray of hope that gleame
upon me broke out of the belief that this islan
was going north, and that when we had comeºt
the height of the summer in these seas, the was
ing of the coast or the dislocation of the no
mass would release us, -

































A Change comes over THE FRENCHMAN. 257
Yet this was but poor comfort too; it threatened
a terrible long spell of waiting, with perhaps dis-
appointment in the end, and months of enforced
association with a wretch with whom I should
have to live in fear of my life.
When I was getting supper Tassard awoke,
quitted his mattress, and came to his bench.
“Has anything happened whilst I slept?” saidhe.
"Nothing,” I answered.
"The ice shows no signs of giving P”
“I see none,” said I.
"Well,” cried he, with a sarcastic sneer, “have
you any more fine schemes?”
"'Tis your turn now,” I replied. “Try your
hand. If you fail, I promise you I shall not be
disappointed.”
“But you English sailors,” said he, wagging his
head and regarding me with a great deal of wild-
ness in his eye, “speak of yourselves as the finest
seamen in the world. Justify the maritime reputa-
tion of your nation by showing me how we are to
escape with the schooner from the ice.”
"Mr. Tassard,” said I, approaching him and
looking him full in the face, “I would advise you
to Sweeten your temper and change your tone. I
have borne myself very moderately towards you,
submitted to your insults with patience, and have
done you some kindness. I am not afraid of you.
On the contrary, I look upon you as a swaggering
bully and a hoary villain. Do you understand
me? I am a desperate man in a desperate situa:
tion. But if I don't fear death, depend upon it, I
don't fear you—and I take God to wu.e., that if
258 THE FROZEN PIRATE,
you do not use me with the civility I laves;
to expect, I will kill you."
nt everywſ:
My temper had given way; I Tº
I spoke, and my air and sincerity rendered J
speech very formidable. I approached him by
another stride; he started up, as I thought."
nd this he di
seize me, but in reality to recoil, a
ble over his bench, an
so effectually as to tum
down he fell, striking his bald head so hard tº
he lay for several minutes motionless
I stood over him till he chose
which he presently did, rubbing his poll andlºº.
ing at me with an air of mingled bewildermenta"
:
to sit eled
-
º
º
º
:
!.
*
**
º
-
pmate in
fear.
ha
“This is scurvy usage to give * shi
distress,” said º #o. "life, man! º
thought there was some sense of humº." " you.
! Your hand, Mr. Rodney; I feel dazed." .
i I helped him to rise, and he then sº down iſ 4
somewhat rickety manner, rubbing his eyes.
#. have been fancy, it might have bº. the
I | illusion of the furnace light Combined with thé
ſ º; appearance his long hair and naked pal.
he had !. but methought in those few minutes
( ſ. º to look twenty years older.
Mr. Tassard ºncern yourself about my humouſ
- ,” said I, preserving m àetermined
in.” “How is it
all I a -
to ...: close to him again.
If you will º us 2 ... I leave the choice to yo"
ing in every dis me civilly you'll not find me want-
State tolerable: #. osition to render our miserable
uriously, and a ut if you insult me, use me in:
, all Cl act the pirate OVer me, who am aſl
-
- º




º A CHANGE comes over THE FRENCHMAN. 259
ºnest man, by God, Mr. Tassard, I will kill
He stooped away from me, and raised his hand
na posture as if to fend me off, and cried in a
whining manner, “I lost my head—this gunpowder
business hath been a hellish disappointment, look
you, Mr. Rodney. Come ! We will drink a can
to our future amity l’”
I answered coldly that I wanted no more wine
and bade him beware of me, that he had gone far
enough, that our hideous condition had filled my
Soul with desperation and misery, and that I would
not have my life on this frozen schooner made
more abominable than it was by his Swagger, lies,
and insults, and I added in a loud voice and in a
menacing manner that death had no terrors for me,
and that I would dispatch him with as little fear
as I should meet my doom, whatever shape it took.
I marched on deck, not a little astounded by
the cowardice of the old rascal, and very well
pleased with the marked impression my bearing
and language had produced on him. Not that I
Supposed for a moment that my bold comport-
ment would save me from his knife or his pistol
when he should think proper to make away with
me. No. All I reckoned upon was cowing him
into a civiller posture of mind, and checking his
aggressions and insolence. As to his murdering
me, I was very sure he would not attempt such an
act whilst we remained imprisoned. Loneliness
would have more horrors for him than for me;
and though my machinery of mines had apparently
failed, he was shrewd enough, despite his rage of





S 2
26o THE FROzEN PIRATE.
disappointment, to understand that more was tº
be done by two men than by one, and that between
us something might be attempted which would b:
impracticable by a simple pair of hands, and
particularly old hands, such as his.
I stayed but a minute or two on deck. Such
was the cold that I do not know, I had ever felt it
more biting and bitter. The sound of foaming
waters filled the wind, and the wind itself Was
blowing fairly strong, in gusts that screamed "
the frozen rigging or in blasts that had the deep
echo of the thunder-claps of the splitting iº
The clouds were numerous and dark with tº
shadow of the night; and the swiftness of their
motion as they sailed up out of the south-west
quarter was illustrated by the leaping of the few
bright stars from one dusky edge to another.
I returned below and sat down. The French.
man asked me no questions. He had his can in
the oven and his death's head in his great hand,
and puffed out clouds of smoke of the colour ºf
his beard, and indeed in the candle and fire light
looked like a figure of old Time with his long nose
and bald head. I addressed one or two civil re.
marks to him, which he answered in a subdued
manner, discovering no resentment whatever that
I could trace in his eyes or the expression of his
Countenance; and being wishful to show that I
bore no malice I talked of pirates and their
|sages, and asked him if the Boca del Dragon
fought under the red or black flag.
... “Why, the black flag, certainly,” said he ; “but
if we met with resistance, it was our custom to


Tºº-º-º-
A Change comes over THE FRENCHMAn. 261
haul it down and hoist the red flag, to let our
opponents know we should give no quarter.”
“Where is your flag locker P” said I.
“In my berth,” he answered.
“I should like to see the black flag,” I ex-
claimed: “’tis the one piece of bunting, I believe,
I have never viewed.”
“I’ll fetch it,” said he, and taking the lanthorn
went aft very quietly, but with a certain stagger
in his walk, which I should have put down to the
wine if it was not that his behaviour was free from
all symptoms of ebriation. The change in him
Surprised me, but not so greatly as you might
suppose; indeed, it excited my suspicions rather
than my wonder. Fear worked in him unques-
tionably, but what I seemed to see best was some
malignant design which he hoped to conceal by
an air of conciliation and a quality of respectful
bonhomie.
He came back with a flag in his hand, and we
spread it between us; it was black, with a yellow
skull grinning in the middle, over this an hourglass,
and beneath a cross-bones.
"What consternation has this signal caused and
does still cause !” said I, surveying it, whilst a
hundred fancies of the barbarous scenes it had
flown over, the miserable cries for mercy that had
swept up past it to the ear of God, crowded into
my mind. “I think, Mr. Tassard,” said I, “that
Qur first step, should we ever find ourselves afloat
in this ship, must be to commit this and all other
flags of a like kind on board to the deep. There is
evidence in this piece of draperv to hang an angel.”
**.
262 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
He let fall his ends of the flag and sat down
suddenly. - - |
“Yes,” he answered, sending a curious rolling
glance around the cook-room and at the i.
time bringing his hand to the back of his .
"this is evidence to dangle even an honester º
than you, sir. All flags but the ensign we reso .
to sail under must go—all flags, and all the .
ing apparel, and—and—but”—here he muttere 11
cuse—"we are fixed—there is to be no *
He shook his head and covered his eyes. #.
manner was strange, and the stranger for
quietude. -
I said to him, “Are you ill?” - ent
He looked up sharply and cried vehement'ſ
"No, no l’’ then stretched his lips in a very
ghastly grin and turned to take the can .
the oven, but his hand missed it, and *.
tº grope as if he were blind, though he looke .
the can all the time. Then he catched it .
brought it to his mouth, but trembled so ".
that he spilt as much as he drank, and a º
Putting the can back sat shaking his beard an
strºking the wet off it, methought, in a very
itlechanical lunatic way. -
I thought to myself, “Is this behaviour some
Stratagem of his P What device can such a bear-
ing hide 2 If he is acting, he plays his part
well.” -
I rolled the black flag into a bundle and flung
it into a corner, and, resuming my seat and my
Pipe, continued, more for civility's sake than
because of any particular interest I took in the


A CHANGE comes over THE FRENCHMAN. 263
subject, to ask him questions about the customs
and habits of pirates.
“I believe,” said I, “the buccaneers are so
resolute in having clear ships that they have
neither beds nor seats on board.”
“The English,” he answered, speaking slowly
and letting his pipe droop whilst he spoke with
his eyes fixed on deck, “not the Spanish. 'Tis
the custom of most English pirates to eat and
sleep upon the decks for the sake of a clear ship,
as you say. The Spaniard loves comfort—you
may observe his fancy in this ship.”
“How is the plunder partitioned P” I asked.
“Everything is put into the common chest, as
we call it, and brought to the mast and sold by
auction— Strangel” he cried, breaking off and
putting his hand to his brow. “I find my speech
difficult. Do you notice I halt and utter
thickly P"
I replied, No ; his voice seemed to be the
same as hitherto.
“Yet I feel ill. Holy Mother of God, what is
this feeling coming upon me? O Jesus, how faint
and dark 1" -
He half rose from his bench, but sat again,
trembling as if the palsy had seized him, and I
noticed his head dotted with beads of sweat. He
had drunk so much wine and spirits throughout
. day that a dram would have been of no use to
1In.
I said, “I expect it will be the blow on the
back of your head, when you fell just now, that
has produced this feeling of giddiness. * me
f ...:
264 THE FROzEN PIRATE,
help you to lie down” (for his mattress was on
deck); “the sensation will pass, I don't doubt.”
If he heard he did not heed me, but fell a.
muttering and crying to himself. And now I did
certainly remark a quality in his voice that was
new to my ear; it was not, as he had said, a
labour or thickness of utterance, but a dryness
and parchedness of old age, with many breaks
from high to low notes, and a lean noise of
dribbling threading every word. He sweated
and talked and muttered, but this was from sheer
terror; he did not swoon, but sat with a stoop,
often pressing his brows and gazing about him
like one whose senses are all abroad.
“Gracious Mother of all angels " he ex-
claimed, crossing himself several times, but with
a feeble, most agitated hand, and speaking in
French and English, and sometimes interjecting
an invocation in Italian or Spanish, though I give
you what he said in my own tongue; “surely I
am dying. O Lord, how frightful to die! 0
holy Virgin, be merciful to me. I shall go to hell
—O Jesu, I am past forgiveness—for the love of
heaven, Mr. Rodney, some brandy Oh that
some saint would interpose for me! Only a few
years longer-grant me a few years longer—I
beseech for time that I may repent l” and he
extended one quivering hand for the brandy (of
which a draught stood melted in the oven) and
made the sign of the cross upon his breast with the
other, whilst he continued to whine out in his
cracked pipes the wildest appeals for mercy, say-
ing a vast deal that I durst not venture to set
A CHANGE COMEs over THE FRENCHMAN. 265
down, so plentiful and awful were his clamours for
time that he might repent, though he never lapsed
into blasphemy, but on the contrary discovered
an agony of religious horror.
I was much astonished and puzzled by this ill-
ness that had come upon him, for, though he
talked of darkness and faintness and of dying, he
continued to sit up on his bench and to take pulls
at the can of brandy I had handed to him. It
might be, indeed, that a sudden faintness had
terrified him nearly out of his senses with a pro-
spect of approaching death; but that would not
account for the peculiar note and appearance of
age that had entered his figure, face, and voice.
Then an extraordinary fancy occurred to me:
Had the whole weight of the unhappy wretch's
years suddenly descended upon him 2 Or, if not
wholly arrived, might not these indications in him
mark the first stages of a gradually increasing
pressure ? The heat, the vivacity, the fierceness,
spirits, and temper of the life I had been instru-
mental in restoring to him probably illustrated
his character as it was eight-and-forty years since;
that had flourished artificially from the moment
of his awakening down to the present hour; but
now the hand of Time was upon this man, whose
age was above an hundred. He might be decay-
ing and wasting, even as he sat there, into such
an intellectual condition and physical aspect as he
would possess and submit had he come without a
break into his present age.
I was fascinated by the mystery of his vitality,
arºd breathlessly watched him as if I expected to
kº- ----------
266 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
witness some harlequin change in his face and
mark the transformation of his polished brow into
the lean austerity of wrinkles. His voice sank
into a mere whisper at last, and then, ceasing to
speak altogether, he dropped his chin on to his
bosom and began to sway from side to side,
catching himself from falling with several para-
lytic starts, but without lifting his head or opening
his eyes that I could see, and manifesting every
symptom of extreme drowsiness.
I got up and laid my hand on his shoulder, on
which he turned his face and viewed me with one
eye closed, the other scarce open.
“How are you feeling now 2 ” said I.
“Sleepy, very sleepy,” he answered.
“I’ll put your mattress into your hammock,”
said I, “and the best thing you can do is to go
and turn in properly and get a long night's rest,
and to-morrow morning you'll feel yourself as
hearty as ever.” - -
He mumbled some answer which I interpreted
to signify “Very well!” so I shouldered his mat-
tress and slung a lanthorn in his cabin, and then
returned to help him to bed. He sat reeling on
the bench, his chin on his breast, catching him-
self up as before with little sharp terrified
recoveries, and I was forced to put my hand on
him again to make him understand I had come
back. He then made as if to rise, but trembled
so violently that he sank down again with a groan,
and I was obliged to put my whole strength to the
lifting of him to get him on to his legs. He
leaned heavily upon me, breathing hard, stooping



THE ICE BREAKs AWAY, 267
very much and trembling. When we got to his
cabin I perceived that he would never be able to
climb into his hammock, nor had I the power to
hoist a man of his bulk so high. To end the
perplexity I cut the hammock down and laid it on
the deck, and covering him with a heap of clothes,
unslung the lanthorn, wished him good-night,
closed the door, and returned to the furnace.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE ICE BREAKS AWAY.
It was not yet eight o'clock. I was restless in
my mind, under a great surprise, and was not
sleepy. I filled a pipe, made me a little pannikin
of punch, and sat down before the fire to think.
If ever I had suspected the accuracy of my con-
jecture that the Frenchman's sudden astonishing
indisposition was the effect of his extreme age
coming upon him and breaking down the artificial
vitality with which he had bristled into life under
my hands, I must have found fifty signs to set my
misgivings at rest in his drowsiness, nodding,
bowed form, weakness, his tottering and trembling,
and other features of his latest behaviour. If I
was right, then I had reason to be thankful to
Almighty God for this unparalleled and most
happy dispensation, for now I should have nothing
to fear from the old rogue's vindictiveness and
horrid greed. Supposing him to be no more than
a hundred, the infirmities of five score years would
stand between him and me, and protect me as
effectually as his death. I had nothing to dread
268 THE frozen pºsals
from a man who could scarce stand, whose pº
hand could scarce clasp a knife, whose evil tongueº,
*could scarce articulate the terrors of his soul or
the horrors of his recollection.
The wonder of it all was so great it filled me
with admiration and astonishment. Had he been
dead and come to life again, as Lazarus, or one of
those bodies which arose during the time our Lord
hung upon the cross, then, questionless, he must
have picked up the chain of his life at the link
which death had broken, and continued his
natural walk into age and decay (though inter-
rupted by a thousand years of the sepulchre) as
if his life had been without this black hiatus, and
he was proceeding steadily and humanly from the
cradle. But collecting that the vital spark could
never have been extinguished in him, I understood
that time, which has absolute control over life,
still knew him as its prey during all those forty-
eight years in which he had lain frozen; that it
had seized him now and suddenly, and pinned
upon his back the full burden of his lustres. This
I say, I believed; but the morrow, of course,
would give me further proof.
Well, 'twas a happy and gracious deliverance |
for me. He could do me no hurt; the scythe had
sheared his talons, and all without occasioning
my conscience the least uneasiness whatever:
whereas, but for this interposition, I did truly and
solemnly believe that it must have come to my
having had to slay him that I might preserve my
own life. -
Thus I sat for an hour smoking and wetting my



THE ICE BREAKs Away. 269
lips with the punch, whilst the fire burned low, so
exulting in the thought of my escape from the
treacherous villain I had recovered from the grave,
and in the feeling that I might now be able to go
to rest, to move here and there, to act as I pleased
without being haunted and terrified by the shadow
of his foul intent, that I hardly gave my mind for
a moment to the situation of the schooner nor to
the barren consequences of my fine scheme of
mines.
The wind blew strong. I could hear the hum-
ming of it in every fibre of the vessel. The bed
on which she rested trembled to the blows of the
seas upon the rocks. From time to time, in the
midst of my musing, I started to the sharp claps
of parted ice. Still feeling sleepless, I threw a
few coals on the fire, and catching sight of the
pirate flag opened it on the deck as wide as the
space would permit, and sat down to contemplate
the hideous insignia embroidered on it. My mind
filled with a hundred fancies as my gaze went
from the skull on the black field to the death's-
head pipe that had fallen from the grasp of
Tassard and lay on the deck, and I was sitting
lost in a deep dreamlike contemplation, when I
was startled and shocked into instantaneous
activity by a blast of noise, louder than any
thunder-clap that ever I heard, ringing and boom-
ing through the schooner. This was followed by
a second and then a third, at intervals during
which you might have counted ten, and I became
sensible of a strange sickening motion, which
lasted about twenty or thirty moments, such as
270 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
might be experienced by one swiftly descending
in a balloon, or in falling from a height whilst pent
up in a coach.
For a little while the schooner heeled over so
violently that the benches and all things movable
in the cook-room slided as far as they could go,
and I heard a great clatter and commotion among
the freight in the hold. She then came upright
again, and simultaneously with this a vast mass
of water tumbled on to the deck and washed over
my head, and then fell another and then another,
all in such a way as to make me know that the
ice had broken and slipped the schooner close to
the ocean, where she lay exposed to its surges,
but not free of the ice, for she did not toss or roll.
I seized the lanthorn and sprang to the cabin,
where I hung it up, and mounted the companion-
steps. But as I put my hand to the door to
thrust it open a sea broke over the side and filled
the decks, bubbling and thundering past the com-
panion-hatch in such a way as to advise me that
I need but open the door to drown the cabin. I
waited, my heart beating very hard, mad to see
what had happened, but not daring to trust my-
self on deck lest I should be immediately swept
into the sea. 'Twas the most terrible time I had
yet lived through in this experience. To every
blow of the billows the schooner trembled fear-
fully; the crackling noises of the ice was as
though I was in the thick of a heavy action. The
full weight of the wind seemed to be upon the
ship, and the screeching of it in the iron-like
shrouds pierced to my ear through the hissing and
THE ICE BREAKs Away. 271
tearing sounds of the water washing along the
decks, and the volcanic notes of the surges break-
ing over the vessel. I say, to hear all this and
not to be able to see, to be ignorant of the situa-
tion of the schooner, not to know from one second
to another whether she would not be crushed up
and crumbled into staves, or be hurled off her bed
and be pounded to fragments upon the ice-rocks
by the seas, or be dashed by the cannonading of
the surge into the water and turned bottom up,
made this time out and away"more terrible than
the collision between the Laughing Mary and the
iceberg. - -
I drew my breath with difficulty, and stood
upon the companion-ladder hearkening with
straining ears, my hand upon the door. I was
now sensible of a long-drawn, stately, solemn kind
of heaving motion in the schooner, which I put
down to the rolling of the ice on which she rested;
and this convinced me that the mass in whose
hollow she had been fixed had broken away and
was afloat and riding upon the swell that under-
ran the billows. But I was far too much alarmed
to feel any of those transports in which I must
have indulged had this issue to my scheme hap-
pened in daylight and in smooth water. I was
terrified by the apprehensions which had cecurred
to me even whilst I was at work on the mines; I
mean, that if the bed broke away the schooner
would make it top-heavy and that it would cap-
size; and thus I stood in a very agony of
expectancy, caged like a rat, and as helpless as
the dead.
> . . . . . * *
. . . … .
THE FROZEN PIRATE,
help you to lie down” (for his mattress was ºn
jeºkj; “the sensation will pass, I don't doubt."
if he heard he did not heed me, but fell a-
muttering and crying to himself. And now I did
ºrtainly remark a quality in his voice that was
new to my ear; it was not, as he had said, a
iabour or thickness of utterance, but a dryness
and parchedness of old age, with many breaks
from high to low notes, and a lean noise 0
dribbling threading every word. He sweated
and talked and muttered, but this was from sheet
ºrror; he did not swoon, but sat with a stoop,
often pressing his brows and gazing about him
like one whose senses are all abroad.
* ...icious Mother of all angels!" he º
claimed, crossing himself several times, but with
... feeblé, most agitated hand, and speaking in
French and English, and sometimes interjecting
an invocation in Italian or Spanish, though I give
... what he said in my own tongue; " surely
am dying. O Lord, how frightful to die! O
holy Virgin, be mºuſ to me.” I shall go to he
–0 Jesu, I am past forgiveness—for the love 0
heaven, Mr. Rodney, some brandy Oh that
some saint would interpose for me! Only a few
years longer-grant mº a few years longeſ.
fleseech for time that I may repent!" and he
...tended one quivering hand for the brandy (of
...h a draught stood melted, in, the oven) an
... the sign of the cross upon his breas: with the
other, whilst he continued to whine out in his
cracked pipes the wildest appeals for mercy, º,
ing a vast deal that I dist not venture to *




























































A CHANGE comes over THE FRENCHMAN. 265
down, so plentiful and awful were his clamours for
time that he might repent, though he never lapsed
into blasphemy, but on the contrary discovered
an agony of religious horror.
I was much astonished and puzzled by this ill-
ness that had come upon him, for, though he
talked of darkness and faintness and of dying, he
continued to sit up on his bench and to take pulls
at the can of brandy I had handed to him. It
might be, indeed, that a sudden faintness had
terrified him nearly out of his senses with a pro-
spect of approaching death; but that would not
account for the peculiar note and appearance of
age that had entered his figure, face, and voice.
Then an extraordinary fancy occurred to me:
Had the whole weight of the unhappy wretch's
years suddenly descended upon him 2 Or, if not
wholly arrived, might not these indications in him
mark the first stages of a gradually increasing
pressure ? The heat, the vivacity, the fierceness,
spirits, and temper of the life I had been instru-
mental in restoring to him probably illustrated
his character as it was eight-and-forty years since;
that had flourished artificially from the moment
of his awakening down to the present hour; but
now the hand of Time was upon this man, whose
age was above an hundred. He might be decay-
ing and wasting, even as he sat there, into such
an intellectual condition and physical aspect as he
would possess and submit had he come without a
break into his present age.
I was fascinated by the mystery of his vitality,
and breathlessly watched him as if I expected to
lº. -,
266 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
witness some harlequin change in his face and
mark the transformation of his polished brow intº
jean austerity of wrinkles. His voice sank
into a mere whisper at last, and then, ceasing to
speak altogether, he dropped his chin on to his
jm and began to sway from side tº side,
catching himself from falling with several para.
lytic starts, but without lifting his head or opening
His eyes that I could see, and manifesting every
symptom of extreme drowsiness.
I got up and laid my hand on his shoulder, on
which he turned his face and viewed me with one
eye closed, the other scarce OPºn:
i. How are you feeling now?” said I.
“Sleepy, very sleepy,” he answered.
“I’ll pát your mattress into your hammock,”
said I, “and the best thing you can do is to go
and turn in properly and get à long night's rest,
and to-morrow morning you'll feel yourself as
hearty as ever." - -
He mumbled some answer which I interpreted
to signify " Very well !” so I shouldered his mat-
tress and slung a lanthorn in his cabin, and then
ºurned to help him to bed. He sat reeling on
the bench, his chin on his breast, catching him:
self up as before with little sharp terrifie
..overies, and I was forced to Put.” hand on
him again to make him understand I had cºm;
.k. He then made as if to rise, but trembled
so violently that he sank down again with a gro."
and I was obliged to Pit my whole strength to the
lifting of him to get him on to his legs. He
jeaned heavily upon me, breathing hard, stooping

























THE ICE BREAKs Away, 267
very much and trembling. When we got to his
cabin I perceived that he would never be able to
climb into his hammock, nor had I the power to
hoist a man of his bulk so high. To end the
perplexity I cut the hammock down and laid it on
the deck, and covering him with aheap of clothes,
unslung the lanthorn, wished him good-night,
closed the door, and returned to the furnace.
CHAPTER XXIII.
THE ICE BREAKS AWAY.
It was not yet eight o'clock. . I was restless in
my mind, under a great surprise, and was not
sleepy. I filled a pipe, made me a little pannikin
of punch, and sat down before the fire to think.
If ever I had suspected the accuracy of my con-
jecture that the Frenchman's sudden astonishing
indisposition was the effect of his extreme age
coming upon him and breaking down the artificial
vitality with which he had bristled into life under
my hands, I must have found fifty signs to set my
misgivings at rest in his drowsiness, nodding,
bowed form, weakness, histottering and trembling,
and other features of his latest behaviour. If I
was right, then I had reason tº be thankful to
Almighty God for this unparalleled and most
happy dispensation, for now I should have nothing
to "fear from the old rogue's vindictiveness and
horrid greed. Supposing him to be no more than
a hundred, the infirmities of five score years would
stand between him and me, and protect me as
effectually as his death. I had nothing to dread


268 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
- -
-
from a man who could scarce stand, whose pasſed
hand could scarce clasp a knife, whose eviltongue
could scarce articulate the terrors of his soul of
the horrors of his recollection.
The wonder of it all was so great it filled me
with admiration and astonishment. Had he been
dead and come to life again, as Lazarus, or one of
those bodies which arose during the time our Lord
hung upon the cross, then, questionless, he must
have picked up the chain of his life at the link
which death had broken, and continued his
natural walk into age and decay (though inter.
rupted by a thousand years of the sepulchre) as
if his life had been without this black hiatus, and
he was proceeding steadily and humanly from the
cradle. But collecting that the vital spark could
never have been extinguished in him, I understood
that time, which has absolute control over life,
still knew him as its prey during all those forty-
eight years in which he had lain frozen; that it
had seized him now and suddenly, and pinned
upon his back the full burden of his lustres. This
I say, I believed; but the morrow, of course,
would give me further proof.
Well, 'twas a happy and gracious deliverance
for me. He could do me no hurt; the scythe had
sheared his talons, and all without occasioning
my conscience the least uneasiness whatever;
whereas, but for this interposition, I did truly and
solemnly believe that it must have come to my
having had to slay him that I might preserve my
own life. -
Thus I sat for an hour smoking and wetting my



























The Ice breaks away. 269
lips with the punch, whilst the fire burned low, so
exulting in the thought of my escape from the
treacherous villain I had recovered from the grave,
and in the feeling that I might now be able to go
to rest, to move here and there, to act as I pleased
without being haunted and terrified by the shadow
of his foul intent, that I hardly gave my mind for
a moment to the situation of the schooner nor to
the barren consequences of my fine scheme of
Inlines.
The wind blew strong. I could hear the hum-
ming of it in every fibre of the vessel. The bed
on which she rested trembled to the blows of the
Seas upon the rocks. From time to time, in the
midst of my musing, I started to the sharp claps
of parted ice. Still feeling sleepless, I threw a
few coals on the fire, and catching sight of the
pirate flag opened it on the deck as wide as the
space would permit, and sat down to contemplate
the hideous insignia embroidered on it. My mind
filled with a hundred fancies as my gaze went
from the skull on the black field to the death's-
head pipe that had fallen from the grasp of
Tassard and lay on the deck, and I was sitting
lost in a deep dreamlike contemplation, when I
was startled and shocked into instantaneous
activity by a blast of noise, louder than any
thunder-clap that ever I heard, ringing and boom-
ing through the schooner. This was followed by
a second and then a third, at intervals during
which you might have counted ten, and I became
sensible of a strange sickening motion, which
lasted about twenty or thirty moments, such as
ºrs:--

270 THE FROZEN PIRATE,
might be experienced by one swiftly descending
in a balloon, or in falling from a height whilst pent
up in a coach.
For a little while the schooner heeled over so
violently that the benches and all things movable
in the cook-room slided as far as they could go
and I heard a great clatter and commotion among
the freight in the hold. She then came upright
again, and simultaneously with this a vast mass
of water tumbled on to the deck and washed over
my head, and then fell another and then another,
all in such a way as to make me know that the
ice had broken and slipped the schooner close to
the ocean, where she lay exposed to its surges,
but not free of the ice, for she did not toss or roll.
I seized the lanthorn and sprang to the cabin,
where I hung it up; and mounted the companion.
steps. But as I put my hand to the door to
thrust it open a sea broke over the side and filled
the decks, bubbling and thundering past the com:
anion-hatch in such a way as to advise me that
I need but open the door to drown the cabin. I
waited, my heart beating very hard, mad to see
what had happened, but not daring to trust my:
self on deck lest I should be immediately swept
into the sea. 'Twas the most terrible time I had
yet lived through in this experience. To every
blow of the billows the schooner trembled fear-
fully; the crackling noises of the ice was as
though I was in the thick of a heavy action. The
full weight of the wind seemed to be upon the
ship, and the screeching of it in the iron-like
shrouds pierced to my ear through the hissing and





















THE ICE BREAKs AWAY. 271
tearing sounds of the water washing along the
decks, and the volcanic notes of the surges break-
ing over the vessel. I say, to hear all this and
not to be able to see, to be ignorant of the situa-
ºtion of the schooner, not to know from one second
to another whether she would not be crushed up
and crumbled into staves, or be hurled off her bed
and be pounded to fragments upon the ice-rocks
by the seas, or be dashed by the cannonading of
the surge into the water and turned bottom up,
made this time out and away"more terrible than
the collision between the Laughing Mary and the
iceberg. -
I drew my breath with difficulty, and stood
upon the companion-ladder hearkening with
straining ears, my hand upon the door. I was
now sensible of a long-drawn, stately, solemn kind
of heaving motion in the schooner, which I put
down to the rolling of the ice on which she rested ;
and this convinced me that the mass in whose
hollow she had been fixed had broken away and
was afloat and riding upon the swell that under-
ran the billows. But I was far too much alarmed
to feel any of those transports in which I must
have indulged had this issue to my scheme hap-
pened in daylight and in smooth water, I was
terrified by the apprehensions which had cecurred
to me even whilst I was at work on the mines; I
mean, that if the bed broke away the schooner
would make it top-heavy and that it would cap-
size; and thus I stood in a very agony of
expectancy, caged like a rat, and as helpless as
the dead.
2 ºr .

. Half an hour must have passed *
time the decks were incessantly swept
seas, insomuch that I never once duº.
oor even to ſº. out. But nothingh*:
happened to increase my consternation in this
half-hour, though the movement in the schº
was that of a very ponderous and majestical
rolling and heaving, showing her bed to be aflº
I began to find my spirits and to listen and waii
with some buddings of hope and confidence. A
the expiration of this time the seas began tºtal
less heavily and regularly on to the deck, and pre:
sently I could only hear them breaking forwardº
but without a quarter their former weight,'
nothing worse came aft than large brisk showers
of spray. º
I armed myself with additional clothing for the
encounter of the wet, cold, and wind, and the
pushed open the door and stepped forth. The
sky was dark with rolling clouds, but the ice º
its own light into the air, and I could see as plain
as if the first of the dawn had broken. It was as
I had supposed : the mass of the valley in which
the schooner had been sepulchred for eight-and-
forty years had come away from the main, and
lay floating within a cable's length of the
coast. A stranger, wonderfuller, picture human
eye never beheld. . The island shore ran a ram: .
art of faintness along the darkness to where it
died out in liquid dusk to right and left. The
schooner sat upon a bed of ice that showed a
surface of about half an acre; her stern was clºse
to the sea, and about six feet above it. On












THE ICE BREAKs Away. 273
|
larboard quarter the slope or shoulder of the ac-
clivity had been broken by the rupture, and you
looked over the side into the clear sea beyond the
limit of the ice there; but abreast of the fore-
shrouds the ice rose in a kind of wall, a great
splinter it looked of what was before a small
broad-browed hill, and the wind or the sea having
caused the body on which the schooner lay to
veer, this wall stood as a shield betwixt the vessel
and the surges, and was now receiving those
blows which had heretofore struck her starboard
side amidships and filled her decks. ,
Oh for a wizard's inkhorn, that I might make
you see the picture as I view it now, even with
the eye of memory ! The posture of the little
berg pointed the schooner's head seawards, about
west; the ice-terraces of the island lay with the
wild strange gleam of their own snow radiance
upon them upon the larboard quarter; around
the schooner was the whiteness of her frozen seat,
and her outline was an inky, exquisitely defined
configuration upon it; above the crystal wall on the
larboard bow rose the spume of the breaking surge
in pallid bodies, glancing for an instant, and some-
times shaking a thunder into the ship when a
portion of the seething water was flung by the
wind upon the forecastle deck; at moments a
larger sea than usual overran the ice on the lar-
board beam and quarter, and boiled up round
about the buttocks of the schooner. To leeward
the smooth backs of the billows rolled away in
jet, but the fitful throbbings and feeble flashings
of froth commingled with the dim shine of the ice
T
• rºº < ..."
º
274 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
were over all, tincturing the darkness with a
spectral sheen, giving to everything a quality of
unearthliness that was sharpened yet by the
sounds of the wind in the gloom on high and
the hissing and foaming of waters sending their
leagues-distant voices to the ear upon the wings
of the icy blast. - - - :
The wind, as I have said, blew from the south-
west, but the trend of the island-coast was north-
east, and as the mass of ice I was upon in parting
from the main had floated to a cable's length from
the uliffs, there was not much danger, whilst the
wind and sea held, of the berg (if I may so term
it) being thrown upon the island. That the ice
under the schooner was moving, and if so, at
what rate, it was too dark to enable me to know
by observing the marks on the coast. There
was to be no sleep for me that night, and
knowing this, I stepped below and built up a
good file, and then went with the lanthorn to
see how Tassard did and to give him the news;
but he was in so deep a sleep, that after pulling
him a little without awakening him I let him
lie, nothing but the sound of his breathing per-
suading me that he had not lapsed into his old
frozen state again.
Of all long nights this was the longest I ever
passed through. I did truly believe that the
day was never to break again over the ocean.
I must have gone from the fire to the deck
thirty or forty times. The schooner continued
upright. I had no fear of her oversetting; she
sat very low, and the ice also showed but a
The ICE BREAKs Away. 275
small head above the water, and as the body
of it lay pretty flat, then, even supposing its
submerged bulk was small, there was little
chance of its capsizing. I also noticed that
we were setting seawards—that is to say, to
the westward—by a noticeable shrinking of the
pallid coast. But I never could stay long
enough above to observe with any kind of
narrowness, the wind being full of the wet that
was flung over the ice-wall and the cold un-
endurable. -
All night I kept the fire going, and on several
occasions visited the Frenchman, but found him
motionless in sleep. I kept too good a look-
out to apprehend any sudden calamity short of
capsizal, which I no longer feared, and during
the watches of that long night I dreamt a
hundred waking dreams of my deliverance, of
my share of the treasure, of my arriving in
England, quitting the sea for ever, and setting
up as a great squire, marrying a nobleman's
daughter, driving in a fine coach, and ending
with a seat in Parliament and a stout well-
sounding handle to my name.
At last the day broke; I went on deck and
found the dawn brightening into morning. The
wind had fallen and with it the sea; but there
still ran a middling strong surge, and the breeze
Was such as, in sailors' language, you would have
shown your top-gallant sails to. I could now
take measure of our situation, and was not a little
astonished and delighted to observe the island to
be at least a mile distant from us, and the north-
"... -- *** * :


276 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
east end lying very plain, the ocean showing be.
yond it, though in the south-west the ice died out
upon the sea-line. That we had been set away
from the main by some current was very certain.
There was a westerly tendency in all the bergs
which broke from the island, the small ones
moving more quickly than the large, for the
sea in the north and west was dotted with at least
fifty of these white masses, great and little. On
the other hand, the wind and seas were answer-
able for the progress we had made to the north.
The wall of ice (as I call it) that had stood over
against the larboard bow was gone, and the seas
tumbled with some heaviness of froth and much
noise over the ice, past the bows, and washed
past the bends on either side in froth rising as high
as the channels. I noticed a great quantity of
broken ice sinking and rising in the dark green
curls of the billows, and big blocks would be
hurled on to the schooner's bed and then be swept
off, sometimes fetching the bilge such a thump as
seemed to swing a bellow through her frame. It
was only at intervals, however, that water fell upon
the decks, for the ice broke the beat of the .
moderating surge and forced it to expend its
weight in spume, which there was not strength of
wind enough to raise and heave. Since the vessel
continued to lie head to sea, my passionate hope
was that these repeated washings of the waves
would in time loosen the ice about her keel, in
which case it would not need much of a billow,
smiting her full bows fair, to slide her clean down
and off her bed and so launch her. There were
THE Ice BREAKs Away. 277
many clouds in the heavens, but the blue was very
pure between. The morning brightening with the
rising of the sun, I directed an earnest gaze along
the horizon, but there was nothing to see but ice.
Some of the bergs, however, and more particularly
the distant ones, stole out of the blue atmo-
sphere to the sunshine with so complete a resem-
blance to the lifting canvas of ships that I would
catch myself staring fixedly, my heart beating
fast. But there was no dejection in these dis-
appointments; the ecstasy that filled me on
beholding the terrible island, the hideous frozen
prison whose crystal bars I had again and again
believed were never to be broken, now lying at a
distance with its northern cape imperceptibly
opening to our subtle movement, was so violent
that I could not have found my voice for the tears
in my heart.
This, then, was the result of my scheme; it was
no failure, as Tassard had said; as he owed his
life to me, so now did he owe me his liberty.
Nay, my transports were so great that I would not
suffer myself to feel an instant's anxiety touching
the condition of the schooner—I mean whether
she would leak or prove sound when she floated
—and how we two men were to manage to navi-
gate so large a craft, that was still as much
spellbound aloft in her frozen canvas and tackle
as ever she had been in the sepulchre in which I
discovered her. -
I went below, and put the provisions we needed
for breakfast into the oven, and entered Tassard's
cabin. On bringing the lanthorn to his face as he


278 THE FROZEN PIRATE,
lay under half a score of coats upon the deck ſ
perceived that he was awake, and, my heart º
full, I cried out cheerily, “Good news! º
the gunpowder did its work | The ice is rupture
and we are afloat, Mr. Tassard, afloat—and Prº
gressing north !” • * 1 *
"Heisoked at me vacantly, and giving his º:
a shake exclaimed, “How can I crawl from thi
mound 2 My strength is gone.” . . . .
If I was º that the joyful intelligenº I
had delivered produced no other º
r more astoniSht
this querulous inquiry, I was fa
by i. sound .# his voice. It wº ..";
cracked and venerable pipe that ever # ttOS
throat of old age, a mingling of wailing º eſ
and of hollow gasping growls, the *:::::
weak. I threw the clothes off him, and Sai there
you wish to rise 2 I will bring your breakfast
if you wish.” I
He looked at me, but made nº. rn
bawled again, and observed (by the dim lantho f
light) that he watched my lips, with an *:
attention ; and whilst I waited for his reply
said, “I don't hear you.” -
Anxious to ascertain to what extent his hº
ing was impaired, I kneeled on the deck, .
Pºg my lips to his ear said, not very loud,
"Will you come to the cook-house?” which he did
not hear; and then louder, “Will you come to the
Cook-house P” which he did not hear either.
Helieved him stone-deaf till, on roaring with
the power of my lungs, he answered “Yes.”
I took him by the hands and hauled him gently
=
THE Ice BREAKs Away. 279
-
on to his feet, and had to continue holding him or
he must have fallen. Time was beginning with
him when he had gone to bed, and the remorseless
old soldier had completely finished his work whilst
his victim slept. I viewed the Frenchman whilst
I grasped his hands, and there stood before me a
shrunk, tottering, deaf, bowed, feeble old man.
What was yesterday a polished head was now a
shrivelled pate, as though the very skull had
shrunk and left the skin to ripple into wrinkles
*and sit loose and puckered. His hands trembled
excessively. But his lower jaw was held in its
place by his teeth, and this perpetuated in the
aged dwindled countenace something of the like-
ness of the fierce and sinister visage that had
confronted me yesterday. I was thunderstruck
by the alteration, and stood overwhelmed with
awe, confusion, and alarm. Then, re-collecting
my spirits, I supported the miserable relic to the
fire, putting his bench to the dresser that he might
have a back to lean against.
He could scarce feed himself—indeed, he could
hardly hold his chin off his breast. He had gone
to bed a man, as I might take it, of fifty-six, and
during the night the angel of Time had visited
him, and there he sat, a hundred and three
years of age /
He looked it. Ha, thought I, I was dreading
your treachery yesterday; there is nothing mor.
to fear. Besides that he was nearly stone deaf,
he could hardly see; and I was suré, if he should
be able to move at all, he could not stir a leg with
out the help of sticks. I was going to roar out to


Frozen Piratº,
- *. sº - -
him that we were adrift, but he looked:gim
that I thought, to what purpose? If the
aught of memory in him, let him sit and chººl
cud thereof... He cannot last long; the colimº
soon stop his heart. And with that I wº
eating my breakfast in silence, b -
by this astonishing mark of the
dence, and under a very heavy an -
of awe, for the like of such a transformatio
sure had never before encountered mºrtal eyes.
and it was terrifying to be alone with
CHAPTER xxiv. º
THE FRENCHMAN'D *…
les.”
, , ; ; *... .
However, if I expected my Frenchman. #
very long silent, he soon undeceived me º
ning to complain in his tremulous aged wº"
his weakness and aching limbs. . . , ,
“'Tis the terrible cold that has affected me
said he, whilst his head nodded nervously. “Iſº
the rheumatism in every bone. There is nowe.
ness like the rheumatic, I have heard and
!!!e.'tis true. It may lay me along-yeº, by the
Virgin, 'tis rheumatism—what else?” Here h;
Wils interrupted by a long fit of coughing a
When it was ended he turned to addressme
but looked at the buildhead on my right, asith
Vision could not fix me. “ But my capers are no
Over ! ” he cri e --
throat; “no .# §s, up his rickety
The sun isºm; ive l'amour ! vive la jø
- $9 ming-the sun is the fountain of
Tay, mon brave, there are some shakes in



























THE FRENCHMAN DfES. 281
stout legs yet !” He shook his head with a fine
air of cunning and knowingness, grinning very
oddly; and then, falling grave with a startling
suddenness, he began to dribble out a piratical
love-story he had once before favoured me with,
describing the charms of the woman with a
horrid leer, his head nodding with the nervous
affection of age all the time, whilst he looked
*blindly in my direction—a hideous and yet pitiful
objectſ
I could not say that his mind was gone, but he
talked with many breaks for breath, and not very
coherently, as though the office of his tongue was
performed by habit rather than memory, so that
..he often went far astray and babbled into sen-
tences that had no reference to what had gone
before, though on the whole I managed to collect
what he meant. I was sure he had not power
enough of vision to observe me in the dim reddish
light of the cook-room, and this being so, he
could not know I was present, more particularly
as he could not hear me, yet he persisted in his
poor babble, which was a behaviour in him that,
more than even the matter of his speech, per-
suaded me of his imbecility.
He made no reference to our situation, and in
solemn truth I believe his memory retained no more
than a few odds and ends of the evil story of his
life, like bits of tarnished lace and a rusty button
or two lying in the bottom of a dark chest that
lºng been emptied of the clothes it once
€1Cl.
But my condition made such heavy demands







282
upon my thoughts that I had very muchº º -
tion to give to this surprising. º
senility than its uncommon merits deserve i
has puzzled every member of the faculty t i t
have mentioned it to, the supposition being that
given the case of suspended animation, there :
no waste, and the person would quit his º:
with the same powers and aspect as he possess d
when he entered it, though it lasted a tº:
years. But granting there is no waste, º
always present waiting to settle accounts *
the sleeper lifts his head. There may be ** ht
ficial interval, during which the victim º
show as my pirate did, but the poised ſº
years is severed on a sudden by the scythe."
he weight
becomes superincumbent, and with t S
comes the transformation; and this º
the only eye-witness of the marvellous thing, ""
hold and maintain whilst I have breath in "
body to support it. - in-
I left him gabbling to himself, sometime; gºº
ning as if greatly diverted, sometimes lifting
trembling hand to help his ghostly recital .
equally ghostly dumb-show, and went on deck,
satisfied that he was too weak to get to the
and , meddle with it, but sufficiently invigorº
by his long night's rest to sit up without tumbling
off the bench.
. This time I carried with me an old perspeſ.
*Vº glass I had noticed in the chest in my cabin
-the chest in which were the nautical instru:
*ts, charts, and papers—and levelled it along
the coast of the island, but it was a poor glass,


THE FRENCHMAN DIES. 283
and I found I could manage nearly as well with
the naked eye. There was no change of any
kind, only that there was a sensible diminution in
the blowing of the wind and a corresponding
decrease in the height of the seas. The ice
stretched in a considerable bed on either hand
the ship and ahead of her; the water frothed
freely over it, and there was a great jangling and
flashing of broken pieces, but the hull was no
"longer heavily hit by them. -
I got into the main chains to view the body of
the vessel, and noticed with satisfaction that the
Constant pouring of the sea had thinned down the
frozen snow to the depth of at least a foot. This
encouraged me to hope that the restless tides
Would sap to her keel at least, and put her into a
Posture to be easily launched by the blow of a
Surge, upon her bows—that is if fortune con-
tinued to keep her head on. But by this time,
my transports having moderated, I was grown
fully sensible of the extreme peril of our position.
Should the sea rise and the ice bring her broad-
side to it, it was inevitable, it seemed to me, that
she must go to pieces. Or if the ice on which
she floated, fouled some other berg it might, cost
us all our spars. Then again occurred the dismal
question, Suppose she should launch herself,
Would she float? For eight-and-forty years she
had been high and dry; never a caulker's hammer
had rung upon her in all that time. Tassard had
spoken of her as a stout ship, and so she was, I
did not doubt; but the old rogue talked as if
she had been stranded six months only I had

º º no irº -
treated her timbers as it had treated the bºdies
her people, an expectation not unreasonable º
I considered the state of her stores and the man
fest substantiality of her inward fabric.
I regained the deck and steppe
pumps. There were two of them, buº
snow. My business was to save
could, and the schooner too, for thesa
tidisconteſt
great treasure in her. Nothing mus
me I said to myself. I must spare no labºº
act a hearty sailor's part and ask for Gods"
tenance. So I trotted below, and selecting *
weapons from the arms-room, such as **
hawk, a spade-headed spear, a pike and a
chopper, I returned to the pumps and fell."
them with a will the ice flew about me, hiſ
continued to smite, the exercise making º 0
and renewing my spirits, and in an hour-ſº d
took me an hour—I had chopped, hº an
beaten one of the pumps pretty clear of its tº
pumps pretty º:
crystal coat. They were what is called bº
Pººps—that is to say, pumps which are wo
by handles. The ice, of course, held them."
movable, but they looked to be perfectly sound
.#92d working order, though there would be
*ither chance nor need to test them until the
schooner went afloat. º
wi cleared the 9ther one and was well satisfied . .
Hºn", morning's work. But I did bitterly
Frenchm ° lack of a little crew. Even thi
Served an as he was yesterday would
*Y turn, for between us ºe might h









THE FRENCHMAN DIES, 285
made shift to clamber aloft, and with hatchets
º break the sails free of their ice bonds, and so
* expose canvas enough to hold the wind, which
Tº could not have failed to impart a swifter motion
to the berg. But with my single pair of hands I
could only look up idly at the yards and gaffs
| Standing hard as granite. Still, even such sur-
face as the spars and rigging offered to the
breeze helped our progress. We were but a very
little berg, nay, not a berg, but rather a sheet of
| ice lying indifferently flat upon the sea, and, as I
believe, without much depth. Our spars and
gear were as if the ice itself were rigged as a ship,
and then there was the height of the hull besides
to offer to the breeze a tolerable resistance for its
offices of propulsion. In this way I explain our
progress; but whatever the cause, certain it was
that our bed of ice was fairly under weigh, and at
noon the island of ice bore at least half a league
distant from us, and we had opened the sea
broadly past its northern cape.
I have often diverted myself with wondering
what sort of impression the posture of our
Schooner would have made on the minds of
Sailors sighting us from their deck. We looked
to be floating out of water, and mariners who
regard the devil as a conjuror must have accepted
us as one of his pet inventions.
The many icebergs which encumbered the sea
filled me with anxiety. We were travelling faster
than they, and it seemed impossible that we could
miss striking one or another of them. Yet
perilous as they were, I could not but admire

º
arance as they floated
upºn
running waters, flashing:
a sparking
res of tw
the dark blue o - -
very gloriously to the sun with
tints upon their whiteness as .
different colours had been kindled upon † º
enºading into a slº.
craggy steeps, and ſt º
watchet to the dull violet shadowing of the º
clouds. I particularly marked a very bilº
scene on the opening of five or six of them".
the sunshine. They lay in such wi that the
shadow of the cloud covered them all as "º
veil, the skirts of which, trailing, left them.” *
one after the other into the noontide dazºle and
as each one shot from the shadow. the flas -
like a volcanic spouting of white flar enrich:
with the prismatic dyes of emeralds, rubiº
phires, and gems of ſovely hue. ** ...
- To determine the hour and our position |
fetched a quadrant from my cabin, and ſº
| happily just in time to catch the sun crossing the
meridian. My watch was half an hour fast, sº
had been out of my reckoning to the exten of
thirty minutes ever since I had been cast awº).
I made our latitude to be sixty-four degrº
twenty-eight minutes south, and the compu
was perhaps near enough. *** -"
This business ended. I went to the c
#. Prepare dinner, and the first object I saw
**sard flat upon his face near the doors
9Pèned , into the cabin. He groaned whe
picked him up, which I managed without m
*ertion, of strength, for s. much hadih
shrunk that I dare say more than half his weigh























THE FRENCHMAN Dies. 287
lay in his clothes; and set him upon his bench
with his back to the dresser. I put my mouth to
his ear and roared, “Are you hurt?” His head
nodded as if he understood me, but I question if
he did. He was the completest picture of old
age that you could imagine. I fetched a couple
of Spears from the arms-room, and, cutting them
to his height, put one in each hand that he might
keep himself propped; and whilst my own dinner
was broiling I made him a mess of broth with
which I fed him, for now that he had the sticks
he would not let go of them. But in any case I
doubt if his trembling hand could have lifted the
spoon to his lips without capsizing the contents
down his beard.
With some small idea of rallying the old villain,
I mixed him a very stiff bumper of brandy, which
he supped down out of my hand with the utmost
avidity. The draught soon worked in him, and
he began to move his head about, seeking me
in his blind way, and then cried in his broken
notes, “I have lost the use of my legs and cannot
walk. Mother of God, what shall I do I O holy
St. Antonio, what is to become of me?”
I guessed from this that, impelled by habit or
Some small spur of reason, he had risen to go on
deck and fallen. He went on vapouring pitifully,
gazing with sufficient steadfastness to let me
understand that his vision received something of
my outline, though he would fix his eyes either
to left or right of me, as though he was not able
to see if he looked straight; and this and his "
mournful cackle and his nodding head, bowed

278 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
-
lay under half a score of coats upon the deck, I
perceived that he was awake, and, my heart being
full, I cried out cheerily, “Good news | goodnews
the gunpowder did its work The ice is ruptured -
and we are afloat, Mr. Tassard, afloat—and pro-
gressing north !” e e - -
He looked at me vacantly, and giving his head
a shake exclaimed, “How can I crawl from this
mound 2 My strength is gone.” . . . .
If I was amazed that the joyful intelligence I
had delivered produced no other response tha'
this querulous inquiry, I was far more astonished
by the sound of his voice. It was the mºst
cracked and venerable pipe that ever tickled the
throat of old age, a mingling of wailing falsettº
and of hollow gasping growls, the wholºyº
weak. I threw the clothes off him, and said, "Dº
you wish to rise 2 I will bring your breakfasthere
if you wish.” I
He looked at me, but made no answer:
bawled again, and observed (by the dim anº
light), that he watched my lips with an air 9
attention ; and whilst I waited for his reply he
said, “I don't hear you.” -
Anxious to ascertain to what extent his heaſ.
ing was impaired, I kneeled on the deck, and
putting my lips to his ear said, not very loud,
“Willyou come to the cook-house?” which he did
not hear; and then louder, “Will you come to the
cook-house P” which he did not hear either.
believed him stone-deaf till, on roaring with a
the power of my lungs, he answered “Yes."
I took him by the hands and hauled him gently
ºf THE ICE BREAKs AWAY. 279
on to his feet, and had to continue holding him or
he must have fallen. Time was beginning with
him when he had gone to bed, and the remorseless
old soldier had completely finished his work whilst
his victim slept. I viewed the Frenchman whilst
I grasped his hands, and there stood before me a
shrunk, tottering, deaf, bowed, feeble old man.
What was yesterday a polished head was now a
shrivelled pate, as though the very skull had
shrunk and left the skin to ripple into wrinkles
and sit loose and puckered. His hands trembled
excessively. But his lower jaw was held in its
place by his teeth, and this perpetuated in the
aged dwindled countenace something of the like-
ness of the fierce and sinister visage that had
confronted me yesterday. I was thunderstruck
by the alteration, and stood overwhelmed with
awe, confusion, and alarm. Then, re-collecting
my spirits, I supported the miserable relic to the
fire, putting his bench to the dresser that he might
have a back to lean against. -
He could scarce feed himself—indeed, he could
hardly hold his chin off his breast. He had gone
to bed a man, as I might take it, of fifty-six, and
during the night the angel of Time had visited
him, and there he sat, a hundred and three
Vears of age /
He looked it. Ha, thought I, I was dreading
Your treachery yesterday; there is nothing mor:
to fear. Besides that he was nearly stone deaf,
he could hardly see; and I was suré, if he should
be able to move at all, he could not stir a leg with
out the help of sticks. I was going to roar out to
28o THE FROzEN PIRATE.
-
him that we were adrift, but he looked soimbecile.
that I thought, to what purpose? If there be
aught of memory in him, let him sit and chew the
Cui thereof. He cannot last long; the cold must
soon stop his heart. And with that I went º
eating my breakfast in silence, but greatly affected
by this astonishing mark of the hand of Provi.
dence, and under a very heavy and constant sense
of awe, for the like of such a transformation I am
sure had never before encountered mortal eyes
and it was terrifying to be alone with it.
CHAPTER XXIV.
THE FRENCH MAN DIES.
However, if I expected my Frenchman to st
very long silent, he soon undeceived me by begin:
ning to complain in his tremulous aged voice of
his weakness and aching limbs.
“'Tis the terrible cold that has affected me."
said he, whilst his head nodded nervously. “I feel
the rheumatism in every bone. There is no weak
ness like the rheumatic, I have heard, and is
true, 'tis true. It may lay me along-yes, by the
Virgin, 'tis rheumatism—what else?” Here he
was interrupted by a long fit of coughing, and
when it was ended he turned to address me again,
but looked at the bulkhead on my right, as if his
vision could not fix me. “But my capers are not
over !” he cried, setting up his rickety shrill
throat; “no, no! Vive l'amour ! vive la joie!
The sun is coming—the sun is the fountain of life
—ay, mon brave, there are some shakes in these
º
ºr
|

THE FREnchman pies. 281
outlegs yet!" He shook his head with a fine
ºf cunning and knowingness, grinning very
ºddly, and then falling grave with a startling
suddenness, he began to dribble out a piratical
ºve-story he had
-- - once before favoured me with,
ºstribing the charms of the woman with a
ºnid leer, his head nodding with the nervous
Fººtion of age all the time, whilst he looked
indly in my direction—a hideous and yet pitiful
ºbject
| ºuld not say that his mind was gone, but he
talked with many breaks for breath, and not very
coherently, as thºugh the office of his tongue was
ºned by habit rather in memory, so that
he often we
nt far astray and babbled into sen-
ºnces that had no reference to what had gone
efore, though on the whole i managed to collect
What he meant. I was sure he had not power
* of vision to observe me in the di rédish
light of the cook-room, and this being so, he
ºuld not knowf was present, more particularly
as he could not hear me, yet he persisted in his
* babble, which was a behaviºur in him that,
* than even the matter of his speech, per-
suaded me of his imbecility. -
* made no reference to our situation, and in
*mn truth I believe his memory retained no º
lºan a few odds and ends of the evil story º
* like bits of tanished ace and º º that
* two lying in the bottom of a *... º Once
tiºns been emptied of the clothº -
€ld.
demands
But my condition made such heavy 0°
-






















282 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
upon my thoughts that I had very much lºtten:
tion to give to this surprising phenomenon of
senility than its uncommon merits deserved. It
has puzzled every member of the faculty that
have mentioned it to, the supposition being that
given the case of suspended animation, there is
no waste, and the person would quit his stupor
with the same powers and aspect as he possessed
when he entered it, though it lasted a thousand
years. But granting there is no waste, Time is
always present waiting to settle accounts when
the sleeper lifts his head. There may be an arti-
ficial interval, during which the victim might
show as my pirate did, but the poised load of
years is severed on a sudden by the scythe and
becomes superincumbent, and with the weight
comes the transformation; and this theory, as
the only eye-witness of the marvellous thing, I will
hold and maintain whilst I have breath in my
body to support it.
I left him gabbling to himself, sometimes grin-
ning as if greatly diverted, sometimes lifting a
trembling hand to help his ghostly recital by an
equally ghostly dumb-show, and went on deck,
satisfied that he was too weak to get to the fire
and meddle with it, but sufficiently invigorated
by his long night's rest to sit up without tumbling
off the bench.
This time I carried with me an old perspec-
tive glass I had noticed in the chest in my cabin
—the chest in which were the nautical instru-
ments, charts, and papers—and levelled it along
the coast of the island, but it was a poor glass,
The FRENCHMAN Dies. 283
*
and I found I could manage nearly as well with
the naked eye. There was no change of any
kind, only that there was a sensible diminution in
the blowing of the wind and a corresponding
decrease in the height of the seas. The ice
stretched in a considerable bed on either hand
the ship and ahead of her; the water frothed
*} over it, and there was a great jangling and
flashing of broken pieces, but the huli was no
longer heavily hit by them.
got into the main chains to view the body of
the vessel, and noticed with satisfaction that the
$9"stant pouring of the sea had thinned down the
frozen snow to the depth of at least a foot. This
*Quraged me to hope that the restless tides
Wºuld sap to her keel at least, and put her into a
Pºsture to be easily launched by the blow of a
*ge upon her bows—that is if fortune con-
tinued to keep her head on. But by this time,
º, transports having moderated, I was grown
!!!y sensible of the extreme peril of our position.
hould the sea rise and the ice bring her broad-
side to it, it was inevitable, it seemed to me, that
she must go to pieces. Or if the ice on which
she floated, fouled some other berg it might cost
us all our spars. Then again occurred the dismal
question, Suppose she should launch herself,
Would she float? For eight-and-forty years she
had been high and dry; never a caulker's hammer
ad rung upon her in all that time. Tassard had
Spoken of her as a stout ship, and so she was, I
did not doubt; but the old rogue talked as if
she had been stranded six months only I had

284 - THE FRozen PIRATE.
no other hope than that the intense cold had
treated her timbers as it had treated the bodies of
her people, an expectation not unreasonable when
I considered the state of her stores and the mani.
fest substantiality of her inward fabric.
I regained the deck and stepped over to the
pumps. There were two of them, but built up in
snow. My business was to save my life if I
could, and the schooner too, for the sake of the
great treasure in her. Nothing must disconcert
me I said to myself—I must spare no labour, but
act a hearty sailor's part and ask for God's coun-
tenance. So I trotted below, and selecting some
weapons from the arms-room, such as a toma.
hawk, a spade-headed spear, a pike and a
chopper, I returned to the pumps and fell upon
them with a will. The ice flew about me, but I
continued to smite, the exercise making me hot
and renewing my spirits, and in an hour—but it
took me an hour—I had chopped, hacked, and
beaten one of the pumps pretty clear of its thick
crystal coat. . They were what is called brake.
pumps—that is to say, pumps which are worked
by handles. The ice, of course, held them im:
movable, but they looked to be perfectly sound,
in good working order, though there would be
neither chance nor need to test them until the
schooner went afloat.
I cleared the other one and was well satisfied
with my morning's work. But I did bitterly
lament the lack of a little crew. Even the
Frenchman as he was yesterday would have
served my turn, for between us we might have

The Frenchman dies, 285
made shift to clamber aloft, and with hatchets
break the sails free of their ice bonds, and so
*Pºe canvas enough to hold the wind, which
ºuld not have failed to impart a swifter motion
tº the berg. But with my single pair of hands I
ºuld only look up idly at the yards and gaffs
landing hard as granite. Still, even such sur-
face as the spars and rigging offered to the
breeze helped our progress. We were but a very
little berg, nay, not a berg, but rather a sheet of
ice lying indifferently flat upon the sea, and, as I
elieve, without much depth. Our spars and
§º Were as if the ice itself were rigged as a ship,
and then there was the height of the hull besides
* offer to the breeze a tolerable resistance for its
offices of propulsion. In this way I explain our
Pºgress; but whatever the cause, certain it was
that our bed of ice was fairly under weigh, and at
ºn the island of ice bore at least half a league
istant from us, and we had opened the sea
brºadly past its northern cape. -
have often diverted myself with wondering
what sort of impression the posture of our
schooner would have made on the minds of
sailors sighting us from their deck. We looked
to be floating out of water, and mariners who
regard the devil as a conjuror must have accepted
us as one of his pet inventions.
The many icebergs which encumbered the sea
led me with anxiety. We were travelling faster
than they, and it seemed impossible that we could
miss striking one or another of them. Yet
perilous as they were, I could not but admire



286 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
their beautiful appearance as they floated upon
the dark blue of the running waters, flashing out
very gloriously to the sun with a sparkling of
tints upon their whiteness as if fires of twenty
different colours had been kindled upon their
craggy steeps, and then fading into a sulky
watchet to the dull violet shadowing of the passing
clouds. I particularly marked a very brilliant
scene on the opening of five or six of them to
the sunshine. They lay in such wise that the
shadow of the cloud covered them all as with a
veil, the skirts of which, trailing, left them to leap
one after the other into the noontide dazzle; and
as each one shot from the shadow the flash was
like a volcanic spouting of white flame enriched
with the prismatic dyes of emeralds, rubies, Sap-
phires, and gems of lovely hue.
To determine the hour and our position I
fetched a quadrant from my cabin, and was
happily just in time to catch the sun crossing the
meridian. My watch was half an hour fast, so I
had been out of my reckoning to the extent of
thirty minutes ever since I had been cast away.
I made our latitude to be sixty-four degrees
twenty-eight minutes south, and the computation
was perhaps near enough.
This business ended, I went to the cook-house
to prepare dinner, and the first object I saw was
Tassard flat upon his face near the door that
opened , into the cabin. He groaned when I
picked him up, which I managed without much
exertion of strength, for so much had he
shrunk that I dare say more than half his weight

THE FRENCHMAN dies. 287
lay in his clothes; and set him upon his bench
with his back to the dresser. I put my mouth to
his ear and roared, “Are you hurt?" His head
nodded as if he understood me, but I question if
tº dia. He was the completest picture of old
age that you could imagine. I fetched a couple
of spears from the arms-room; and, cutting them
to his height, put one in each hand that he might
keep himself propped; and whilst my own dinner
was broiling I made him a mess of broth with
which i fed him, for now that he had the sticks
he would not let go of them. But, in any case I
doubt if his trembling hand could have lifted the
spoon to his lips without capsizing the contents
down his beard.
with some small idea of rallying the old villain,
I mixed him a very stiff bumper of brandy, which
he supped down out of my hand with the utmost
avidity. The draught soon worked in him, and
he began to move his head about seeking me
in his blind way, and then cried in his broken
notes, “I have lost the use of my legs and cannot
walk." Mother of God, what shall I do! O holy
St. Antonio, what is to become of me?”
I guessed from this that, impelled by habit or
some small spur of reason, he had risen to go on
deck and fallen. He went on vapouring pitifully,
gazing with sufficient steadfastness to let me
understand that his vision received something of
my outline, though he would fix his eyes either
to left or right of me, as though he was not able
to see if he looked straight; and this and his "
mournful cackle and his nodding head, bowed
278 THE Frozes PIRATE,
lay under half a score of coats upon the deck, I
perceived that he was awake, and, my heart being
full, I cried out cheerily, “Good news! good news!
the gunpowder did its work | The ice is ruptured
and we are afloat, Mr. Tassard, afloat—and pro-
gressing north !”
He looked at me vacantly, and giving his head l
a shake exclaimed, “How can I crawl from this
mound 2 My strength is gone.” -"
If I was amazed that the joyful intelligence I
had delivered produced no other response than t
this querulous inquiry, I was far more astonished t
by the sound of his voice. It was the most
|
|
cracked and venerable pipe that ever tickled the
throat of old age, a mingling of wailing falsettos
and of hollow gasping growls, the whole. very
weak. I threw the clothes off him, and said, “Do
you wish to rise 2 I will bring your breakfast here
if you wish.”
He looked at me, but made no answer. I
bawled again, and observed (by the dim lanthorn |
light) that he watched my lips with an air of
attention; and whilst I waited for his reply he
said, “I don't hear you.”
Anxious to ascertain to what extent his hear-
ing was impaired, I kneeled on the deck, and
putting my lips to his ear said, not very loud,
“Will you come to the cook-house 2" which he did
not hear; and then louder, “Will you come to the
cook-house P” which he did not hear either. I
believed him stone-deaf till, on roaring with all
the power of my lungs, he answered “Yes.”
I took him by the hands and hauled him gently
- - - - - - - – - –-
| - THE ICE BREAKs AWAY. 279
on to his feet, and had to continue holding him or
he must have fallen. Time was beginning with
him when he had gone to bed, and the remorseless
old soldier had completely finished his work whilst
his victim slept. I viewed the Frenchman whilst
I grasped his hands, and there stood before me a
shrunk, tottering, deaf, bowed, feeble old man.
What was yesterday a polished head was now a
shrivelled pate, as though the very skull had
shrunk and left the skin to ripple into wrinkles
and sit loose and puckered. His hands trembled
excessively. But his lower jaw was held in its
place by his teeth, and this perpetuated in the
aged dwindled countenace something of the like-
ness of the fierce and sinister visage that had
confronted me yesterday. I was thunderstruck
by the alteration, and stood overwhelmed with
awe, confusion, and alarm. Then, re-collecting
my spirits, I supported the miserable relic to the
fire, putting his bench to the dresser that he might
have a back to lean against. -
He could scarce feed himself—indeed, he could
hardly hold his chin off his breast. He had gone
to bed a man, as I might take it, of fifty-six, and
during the night the angel of Time had visited
him, and there he sat, a hundred and three
years of age /
He looked it. Ha, thought I, I was dreading
your treachery yesterday; there is nothing mor,
to fear. Besides that he was nearly stone deaf,
he could hardly see; and I was sure, if he should
be able to move at all, he could not stir a leg with
out the help of sticks, I was going to roar out to
28O THE FROzEN PIRATE,
º
him that we were adrift, but he looked so imbecile, . -
that I thought, to what purpose 2 If there be
aught of memory in him, let him sit and chew the
cud thereof. He cannot last long; the cold must
soon stop his heart. And with that I went on
eating my breakfast in silence, but greatly affected
by this astonishing mark of the hand of Provi-
dence, and under a very heavy and constant sense
of awe, for the like of such a transformation I am
sure had never before encountered mortal eyes,
and it was terrifying to be alone with it.
CHAPTER xxiv.
the FRENCHMAN dies.
However, if I expected my Frenchman to sit
very long silent, he soon undeceived me by begin-
ning to complain in his tremulous aged voice of
his weakness and aching limbs.
“'Tis the terrible cold that has affected me,”
said he, whilst his head nodded nervously. “I feel
the rheumatism in every bone. There is no weak-
ness like the rheumatic, I have heard, and 'tis
true, ’tis true. It may lay me along—yes, by the
Virgin, 'tis rheumatism—what else P” Here he
was interrupted by a long fit of coughing, and
when it was ended he turned to address me again,
but looked at the bulkhead on my right, as if his
vision could not fix me. “But my capers are not
over !” he cried, setting up his rickety shrill
throat; “no, no! Vive l'amour ! vive la joie
The sun is coming—the sun is the fountain of life
—ay, mon brave, there are some shakes in these
–
THE FRENCHMAN DIES. 281
stout legs yet l” He shook his head with a fine
air of cunning and knowingness, grinning very
oddly; and then, falling grave with a startling
suddenness, he began to dribble out a piratical
love-story he had once before favoured me with,
describing the charms of the woman with a
horrid leer, his head nodding with the nervous
affection of age all the time, whilst he looked
blindly in my direction—a hideous and yet pitiful
object
I could not say that his mind was gone, but he
talked with many breaks for breath, and not very
coherently, as though the office of his tongue was
performed by habit rather than memory, so that
..he often went far astray and babbled into sen-
tences that had no reference to what had gone
before, though on the whole I managed to collect
what he meant. I was sure he had not power
enough of vision to observe me in the dim reddish
light of the cook-room, and this being so, he
could not know I was present, more particularly
as he could not hear me, yet, he persisted in his
poor babble, which was a behaviour in him that,
more than even the matter of his speech, per-
suaded me of his imbecility.
He made no reference to our situation, and in
Solemn truth I believe his memory retained no more
than a few odds and ends of the evil story of his
life, like bits of tarnished lace and a rusty button
or two lying in the bottom of a dark chest that
i. long been emptied of the clothes it once
€iOl.
But my condition made such heavy demands
282 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
upon my thoughts that I had very much les, Atten:
tion to give to this surprising phenomenon of
senility than its uncommon merits deserved. It
has puzzled every member of the faculty that I
have mentioned it to, the supposition being that,
given the case of suspended animation, there is
no waste, and the person would quit his stupor
with the same powers and aspect as he possessed
when he entered it, though it lasted a thousand
years. But granting there is no waste, Time is
always present waiting to settle accounts when
the sleeper lifts his head. There may be an arti-
ficial interval, during which the victim might
show as my pirate did, but the poised load of
years is severed on a sudden by the scythe and
becomes superincumbent, and with the weight
comes the transformation; and this theory, as
the only eye-witness of the marvellous thing, I will
hold and maintain whilst I have breath in my
body to support it.
I left him gabbling to himself, sometimes grin-
ning as if greatly diverted, sometimes lifting a
trembling, hand to help his ghostly recital by an
equally ghostly dumb-show, and went on deck,
satisfied that he was too weak to get to the fire
and meddle with it, but sufficiently invigorated
by his long night's rest to sit up without tumbling
off the bench.
This time I carried with me an old perspec-
tive glass I had noticed in the chest in my cabin
—the chest in which were the nautical instru-
ments, charts, and papers—and levelled it along
the coast of the island, but it was a poor glass,
-
–.
THE FRENCHMAN DIES. 283
and I found I could manage nearly as well with
the naked eye. There was no change of any
kind, only that there was a sensible diminution in
the blowing of the wind and a corresponding
decrease in the height of the seas. The ice
stretched in a considerable bed on either hand
the ship and ahead of her; the water frothed
freely over it, and there was a great jangling and
flashing of broken pieces, but the hull was no
longer heavily hit by them. -
I got into the main chains to view the body of
the vessel, and noticed with satisfaction that the
constant pouring of the sea had thinned down the
frozen snow to the depth of at least a foot. This
encouraged me to hope that the restless tides
would sap to her keel at least, and put her into a
posture to be easily launched by the blow of a
surge upon her bows—that is if fortune con-
tinued to keep her head on. But by this time,
my transports having moderated, I was grown
fully sensible of the extreme peril of our position.
Should the sea rise and the ice bring her broad-
side to it, it was inevitable, it seemed to me, that
she must go to pieces. Or if the ice on which
she floated, fouled some other berg it might cost
us all our spars. Then again occurred the dismal
question, Suppose she should launch herself,
would she float P For eight-and-forty years she
had been high and dry; never a caulker's hammer
had rung upon her in all that time. Tassard had
spoken of her as a stout ship, and so she was, I
did not doubt; but the old rogue talked as if
she had been stranded six months only 1 I had
284 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
ºr *
no other hope than that the intense cold had
treated her timbers as it had treated the bodies of
her people, an expectation not unreasonable when
I considered the state of her stores and the mani.
fest substantiality of her inward fabric.
I regained the deck and stepped over to the
pumps. There were two of them, but built up in
snow. My business was to save my life if I
could, and the schooner too, for the sake of the
great treasure in her. Nothing must disconcert
me I said to myself—I must spare no labour, but
act a hearty sailor's part and ask for God's coun-
tenance. So I trotted below, and selecting some
weapons from the arms-room, such as a toma.
hawk, a spade-headed spear, a pike and a
chopper, I returned to the pumps and fell upon
them with a will. The ice flew about me, but I
continued to smite, the exercise making me hot
and renewing my spirits, and in an hour—but it
took me an hour—I had chopped, hacked; and
beaten one of the pumps pretty clear of its thick
crystal coat. They were what is called brake-
pumps—that is to say, pumps which are worked
by handles. The ice, of course, held them im-
movable, but they looked to be perfectly sound,
in good working order, though there would be
neither chance nor need to test them until the
schooner went afloat.
I cleared the other one and was well satisfied
with my morning's work. But I did bitterly
lament the lack of a little crew. Even the
Frenchman as he was yesterday would have
served my turn, for between us we might have
THE FRENCHMAN DIES, 285
made shift to clamber aloft, and with hatchets
break the sails free of their ice bonds, and so
expose canvas enough to hold the wind, which
could not have failed to impart a swifter motion
to the berg. But with my single pair of hands I
could only look up idly at the yards and gaffs
standing hard as granite. Still, even such sur-
face as the spars and rigging offered to the
breeze helped our progress. We were but a very
little berg, nay, not a berg, but rather a sheet of
ice lying indifferently flat upon the sea, and, as I
believe, without much depth. Our spars and
gear were as if the ice itself were rigged as a ship,
and then there was the height of the hull besides
to offer to the breeze a tolerable resistance for its
offices of propulsion. In this way I explain our
progress; but whatever the cause, certain it was
that our bed of ice was fairly under weigh, and at
noon the island of ice bore at least half a league
distant from us, and we had opened the sea
broadly past its northern cape.
I have often diverted myself with wondering
what sort of impression the posture of our
schooner would have made on the minds of
sailors sighting us from their deck. We looked
to be floating out of water, and mariners who
regard the devil as a conjuror must have accepted
us as one of his pet inventions.
The many icebergs which encumbered the sea
filled me with anxiety. We were travelling faster
than they, and it seemed impossible that we could
miss striking one or another of them. Yet
perilous as they were, I could not but admire
286 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
their beautiful appearance as they floated upon
the dark blue of the running waters, flashing out
very gloriously to the sun with a sparkling of
tints upon their whiteness as if fires of twenty
different colours had been kindled upon their
craggy steeps, and , then fading into a sulky
watchet to the dull violet shadowing of the passing
clouds. I particularly marked a very brilliant
scene on the opening of five or six of them to
the sunshine. They lay in such wise that the
shadow of the cloud covered them all as with a
veil, the skirts of which, trailing, left them to leap
one after the other into the noontide dazzle; and
as each one shot from the shadow the flash was
like a volcanic spouting of white flame enriched
with the prismatic dyes of emeralds, rubies, sap-
phires, and gems of lovely hue.
To determine the hour and our position I
fetched a quadrant from my cabin, and was
happily just in time to catch the sun crossing the
meridian. My watch was half an hour fast, so I
had been out of my reckoning to the extent of
thirty minutes ever since I had been cast away.
I made our latitude to be sixty-four degrees
twenty-eight minutes south, and the computation
was perhaps near enough.
This business ended, I went to the cook-house
to prepare dinner, and the first object I saw was
Tassard flat upon his face near the door that
opened into the cabin. He groaned when I
picked him up, which I managed without much
exertion of strength, for so much had he
shrunk that I dare say more than half his weight
*
;
–
º
º
THE FRENCHMAN Dies. 287
lay in his clothes; and set him upon his bench
with his back to the dresser. I put my mouth to
his ear and roared, “Are you hurt?” His head
nodded as if he understood me, but I question if
he did. He was the completest picture of old
age that you could imagine. I fetched a couple
of spears from the arms-room, and, cutting them
to his height, put one in each hand that he might
keep himself propped; and whilst my own dinner
was broiling I made him a mess of broth with
which I fed him, for now that he had the sticks
he would not let go of them. But in any case I
doubt if his trembling hand could have lifted the
spoon to his lips without capsizing the contents
down his beard.
With some small idea of rallying the old villain,
I mixed him a very stiff bumper of brandy, which
he supped down out of my hand with the utmost
avidity. The draught soon worked in him, and
he began to move his head about, seeking me
in his blind way, and then cried in his broken
notes, “I have lost the use of my legs and cannot
walk. Mother of God, what shall I do | O holy
St. Antonio, what is to become of me?”
I guessed from this that, impelled by habit or
some small spur of reason, he had risen to go on
deck and fallen. He went on vapouring pitifully,
gazing with sufficient steadfastness to let me
understand that his vision received something of
my outline, though he would fix his eyes either
to left or right of me, as though he was not able
to see if he looked straight; and this and his "
mournful cackle and his nodding head, bowed
288 The Frozen Pirate.
form, propped hands, and diminished face made
him as distressful and melancholy a picture of Time
as ever mortal man viewed. He broke off in his
rambling to ask for more brandy, taking it for
granted that I was still in the cook-room, for
never spoke, and I filled a can for him and as
before held it to his mouth, which he opened wide,
a piece of behaviour which went to show that
some of his wits still hung loose upon him. This
was a strong dose, and co-operating with the
other, soon seized hold on his head, and presently
he began to laugh to himself and talk, and even "
broke into a stave or two—some French song
which he delivered in a voice like the squeaking
of a rat alternating with the growling of a terrier.
I guess his stumbling upon this old French
catch (which I took it to be from seeing him
feebly flourish one of his sticks as if inviting a
chorus) put him upon speaking his own tongue
altogether, for though he continued to chatter
with all the volubility his breath would permit
during the whole time I sat eating, not one
word of English did he speak, and not one word
therefore did I understand. Seeing how it must
be with him presently, I brought his mattress
and rugs from his cabin, and had scarce laid
them down when he let fall one of his sticks and
drooped over. I grasped him, and partly lifting,
partly hauling, got him on his back and covered
him up. In a few minutes he was asleep.
I trust I shall not be deemed inhuman if I con-
* fess that I heartily wished his end would come,
If he went on living he promised to be an intoler.


THE FRENCHMAN Dies 289
able burden to me, being quite helpless. Besides,
he was much too old for this world, in which a
man who reaches the age of ninety is pointed to
as a sort of wonder.
As there was nothing to be done on deck, I
filled my pipe and made myself comfortable before
the furnace, and was speedily sunk in meditation.
I reviewed all the circumstances of my case and
considered my chances, and the nimble heels of
imagination carrying me home with this schooner,
I asked myself, suppose I should have the good
fortune to convey the treasure in safety to
England, how was I to secure it? Let me imagine
myself arrived in the Thames. The whole world
stares at the strange antique craft sailing up the
river; she would be boarded and rummaged by
the customs people, who of course would light
upon the treasure. What then 2 I knew nothing
of the law; but I reckoned, since I should have
to tell the truth, that the money, ore, and jewellery
would be claimed as stolen property, and I dis-
missed with a small reward for bringing it home.
There was folly in such contemplation at such a
time, when perhaps at this hour to-morrow the
chests might be at the bottom of the sea, and
myself a drowned sailor floating three hundred
fathoms deep. But man is a froward child, who
builds mansions out of dreams, and, jockeyed
by hope, sets out at a gallop along the visionary
road to his desires; and my mind was so much
taken up with considering how I should manage
when I brought the treasure home, that I spent
a couple of hours in a conflict of schemes,
U
29C THE FROzEN PIRATE.
during which time it never once occurred to me
to reflect that I was a good way from home still,
and that much must happen before I need give
myself the least concern as to the securing of the
treaSure. -
Nothing worth recording happened that day,
The wind slackened, and the ice travelled so slow
that at sundown I could not discover that we had
made more than a quarter of a mile of progress to
the north since noon, though we had settled by
half as much again that distance westwards,
Whilst I was below I could hear the ice crackling
pretty briskly round about the ship, which gave
me some comfort; but I could never see any
change of consequence when I looked over the
side or bows, only that at about four o'clock,
whilst I was taking a view from the forecastle
a large block broke away from beyond the star
board bow with the report of a swivel gun.
I had not closed my eyes on the previous
night, and was tired out when the evening
arrived, and, as no good could come of my keep:
ing a watch, for the simple reason that it was not
in my power to avert anything that might happen,
I tumbled some further covering over the French-
man, who had lain on the deck all the afternoon,
sometimes dozing, sometimes waking and talking
to himself, and appearing on the whole very easy
and comfortable, and went to my cabin.
I slept sound the whole night through, and ºn
waking went on deck before going to the cook-
house and lighting the furnace (as was my cus,
tom), so impatient was I to observe our state and

THE FRENCHMAN DIES, 291
to hear such news as the ocean had for me. It
was a very curious day, somewhat darksome,
and a dead calm, with a large long swell out
of the south-east. The sky was full of clouds,
with a stooping appearance in the hang of
them that reminded you of the belly of a ham-
mock; they were of a sallow brown, very un-
common; some of them round about sipped the
sea-line, and their shadows, obliterating those
parts of the cincture which they overhung, broke
the continuity of the horizon as though there were
valleys in the ocean there. A good part of our
bed of ice was gone, at least a fourth of it; but
the schooner still lay as strongly fixed as before. I
had come to the deck half expecting to find her
afloat from the regular manner of her heaving, and
was bitterly disappointed to discover her rooted
as strongly as ever in the ice, though the irritation
softened when I noticed how the bed had
diminished. The mass with the ship upon it rose
and sank with the sluggish squatting motion of a
water-logged vessel. It was an odd sensation to
my legs after their long rest from such exercise.
The heaving satisfied me that the base of the bed
did not go deep, but at the same time it was all
too solid for me, I could not doubt, for had the
sheet been as thin as I had hoped it, it must have
given under the weight.of the schooner and re-
leased her.
The island lay a league distant on the larboard
beam, and looked a wondrous vast field of ice
going into the south, and it stared very ghastly
upon the dark green sea out of the clouds whose

U 2
292 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
gloom sank behind it. I could not observe that
we had drifted anything to the north, whilst our
set to the westwards had been steady though
snail-like. The sea in the north and north-west
swarmed with bergs, like great snowdrops on the
green undulating fields of the deep. Now and
again the swell, in which fragments of ice floated
with the gleam of crystal in liquid glass, would be
too quick for our dull rise and overflow the bed,
brimming to the channels with much noise of
foam and pouring waters, but the interposition of
the ice took half its weight out of it, and it never
did more than send a tremble through the
vessel. - - -
What to make of the weather I knew not,
Certainly, of all the caprices of this huge cold sea,
its calms are the shortest lived, but this knowledge
helped me to no other. The clouds did, not stir.
In the north-east a beam of sunshine stood like a
golden waterspout, its foot in a little flood of glory.
It stayed all the while I was on deck, showing
that the clouds had scarce any motion, and made
the picture of the sea that way beyond nature to
my sight, by the contrast of the defined shaft of
gold, burning purely, with the dusk of the clouds
all about, and of the pool of dazzle at its foot
with the ugly green of the water that melted
into it. a
I went below and got about lighting the fire.
The Frenchman lay very quiet, under as many
clothes as would fill a half-dozen of sacks. It
was bitterly cold, sharper in the cook-house than
I had ever remembered it, and I could not con-
" * * * *
The FRENCHMAN DIES. 293
ceive why this should be, until I recollected that
I had forgotten to close the companion-hatch
before going to bed. I prepared some broth for
my companion, and dressed some ham for myself,
and ate my breakfast, supposing he would mean-
while awake. But after sitting some time and
observing that he did not stir, a suspicion flashed
into my mind; I kneeled down, and clearing his
face, listened. He did not breathe. I brought
the lanthorn to him, but his countenance had
been so changed by his unparalleled emergence
from a state of middle life into extreme old age,
he was so puckered, hollowed, gaunt, his features
so distorted by the great weight of his years that I
was not to know him dead by merely viewing him.
I threw the clothes off him, listened at his mouth
breathlessly, felt his hands, which were ice-cold.
Dead indeed! thought I, Great Father, 'tis Thy
will! And I rose very slowly and stood surveying
the silent figure with an emotion that owed its
inspiration partly to the several miracles of vitality
I had beheld in him during our association, and
to a bitter feeling of loneliness that swelled up
1ſt me.
Yes! I had feared and detested this man, but
his quick transformation and silent dark exit
affected me, and I looked down upon him sadly.
Yet, to be perfectly candid with you, I recollect
that, though it occurred to me to test if life was
out of him by bringing him close to the fire and
chafing him and giving him brandy, I would not
stir. No, I would not have moved a finger to
recover him, even though I should have been


294 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
able to do so by merely putting him to the furnace.
He was dead, and there was an end; and without
further ado I carried him into the forecastle and
threw a hammock over him, and left him to lie
there till there should come clear water to the ship
to serve him for a grave.
CHAPTER XXV.
THE SCHOONER FREES HERself. - |
ALL day long the weather remained sullen and
still, and the swell powerful. I was on deck at
noon, looking at an iceberg half a league distant
when it overset. . It was a small berg, though
large compared with most of the others; yet such
a mighty volume of foam boiled up as gave me a
startling idea of the prodigious weight of the mass.
The sight made me very anxious about my own
state, and to satisfy my mind I got upon the ice
and walked round the vessel, and to get a true
view of her posture went to the extreme end of the
rocks beyond her bows, and finally came to the
conclusion that, supposing the ice should crumble
away from her sides so as to cause the weight of
the schooner to render it top-heavy, her buoyancy
on touching the water would certainly tear her
keel out of its frosty setting and leave her floating,
Indeed, so sure was I of this that I saw, next to
the ice splitting and freeing her in that way, the
best thing that could happen would be its capsizal. .
I regained the ship, and had paused an instant
to look over the side, when I perceived the very
}*ack of ice on which I had come to a halt break
~ **Cº- º
THE SCHOONER FREES HERSELF. 295
from the bed with a smart clap of noise, and
completely roll over. Only a minute before had I
been standing on it, and thus had sixty seconds
stood between me and death, for most certainly
must I have been drowned or killed by being
beaten against the ice by the swell ! I fell upon
my knees and lifted up my hands in gratitude to
God, feeling extraordinarily comforted by this
further mark of His care of me, and very strongly
persuaded that He designed I should come off
with my life after all, since His providence would
not work so many miracles for my preservation if
I was to perish by this adventure.
These thoughts did more for my spirits than I
can well express; and the intolerable sense of
loneliness was mitigated by the knowledge that I
was watched, and therefore not alone. -
The day passed I know not how. The shado
as of tempest hung in the air, but never a cats-
paw did I see to blurr the rolling mirror of the
ocean. The hidden sun sank out of the breathless
sky, tingeing the atmosphere with a faint hectic,
which quickly yielded to the deepest shade of
blackness. The mysterious desperate silence,
however, that on deck weighed oppressively on
every sense, as something false, menacing, and
malignant in these seas, was qualified below by the
peculiar straining noises in the schooner's hold
caused by the swinging of the ice upon the
swell. I was very uneasy; I dreaded a gale. It
was impossible but that the vessel must quickly
go to pieces in a heavy sea upon the ice if she
did not liberate herself. But though this excited
*
296 The FROzEN PIRATE.
a depression melancholy enough, nothing else
that I can recollect contributed to it. When I
reviewed the apprehension the Frenchman had
raised, and reflected how unsupportable a burden
he must have become, I was very well satisfied
to be alone. Time had fortified me; I had
passed through experiences so surprising, en-
countered wonders so preternatural, that super-
stition lay asleep in my soul, and I found nothing
to occasion in me the least uneasiness in thinking
of the lifeless shrivelled figure of what was just
now a fierce, cowardly, untamed villain, lying in the
forecastle. . . . . . . . . º
I made a good supper, built up a large fire, and
mixed myself a hearty bowl of punch, not with
the view of drowning my anxieties—God forbid!
I was too grateful for the past, too expectant of
the future, to be capable of so brutish a folly—
but that I might keep myself in a cheerful pos-
ture of mind; and being sick of my own company
took the lanthorn to the cabin lately used by the
Frenchman, and found in a chest there, among
sundry articles of attire, a little parcel of books,
some in Dutch and Portuguese, and one in English.
It was a little old volume, the author's name
not given, and proved to be a relation of the
writer's being taken by pirates, and the many
dangers he underwent. There was nothing in it,
to be sure, that answered to my own case, yet it
interested me mightily as an honest unvarnished
narrative of sea perils; and I see myself now in
fancy reading it, the lanthorn hanging by a laniard
close beside my head,the book in one hand, my pipe
–- - - _r=
——- *

THE Schoon ER FREES HERSELF. 297
in the other, the furnace roaring pleasantly, my
feet close to it, and the atmosphere of the oven
fragrant with the punch that I put there to prevent
it from freezing. I had come to a certain page and
was reading this passage: “Soon after we were on
ôoard we all went into the great cabin, where we
found nothing but destruction. Two scrutores /
had there were broke to pieces, and all the fine goods
and necessaries in them were all gone. Moreover,
two large chests that had books in them were empty,
and I was afterwards informed they had been all
thrown overboard; for one of the pirates on opening
them swore there was ſaw-work enough (as he
called it) to serve a nation, and proposed that they
might be cast into the sea, for he feared there might
ðe some books amongst them that might breed mis-
chief enough, and prevent some of their comrades
from going on in their voyage to hell, whither they
were all bound”—I say, I was reading this
passage, not a little affected by the impiety of the
rascal, for whose portrait my dead Frenchman
might very well have sat, when I was terrified by
an extraordinary loud explosion, that burst so near
and rang with such a prodigious clear note of
thunder through the schooner that I vow to God
I believed the gunpowder below had blown up.
And in this suspicion I honestly supposed myself
right for a moment, for on running into the cabin
I was dazzled by a crimson flame that clothed the
whole interior with a wondrous gush of fire; but
this being instantly followed by such another clap
as the former, I understood a thunderstorm had
broken over the schooner.
298 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
It was exactly overhead, and that accoun
for the violence of the crashes, which were ind
so extreme that they sounded rather like the split.
ting of enormous bodies of ice close to, than the
flight of electric bolts. The hatch lay open; I
ran on deck, but scarce had passed my head
through the companion when down came a storm
of hail, every stone as big as a pigeon's egg, and
in all my time I never heard a more hellish
clamour. There was not a breath of air. The
hail fell in straight lines, which the fierce near
lightning flashed up into the appearance of giant
harp strings, on which the black hand of the night
was playing those heavy notes of thunder. I sat
in the shelter of the companion, very anxious and
alarmed, for there was powder enough in the hold
to blow the ship into atoms; and the lightning
played so continuously and piercingly that it was
like a hundred darts of fire, violet, crimson, and
sun-coloured, in the grasp of spirits who thrust at
the sea, all over its face, with swift movement of
the arms, as though searching for the schooner
to spear her.
he hailstorm ceased as suddenly as it had
burst. I stepped on to the deck, and 'twas like
treading on shingle. There was not the least
motion in the air, and the stagnation gave aſ
almost supernatural character to the thunder and
lightning. The ocean was lighted up to its
furthest visible confines by the flames in the sky,
and the repeated explosions of thunder exceeded
the roaring of the ordnance of a dozen squadroſs
in hot fight. The ice-coast in the east, and the


THE Schoon ER FREES HERSELF. 299
two score bergs in the north and west leapt out of
one hue into another; and were my days in this
world to exceed those of old Abraham, I should
to my last breath remember the solemn and
terrible magnificence of that picture of lightning-
coloured ice, the sulphur-tinctured shapes of the
swollen bodies of clouds bringing their dark
electric mines together in a huddle, the answering
flash of the face of the deep to the lancing of each
spiral dazzling bolt, with the air as still as the
atmosphere of a cathedral for the thunder to roll
its echoes through. - -
There was a second furious shower of hail, and
when that was over I looked forth, and observed
that the storm was settling into the north-east,
whence I concluded that what draught there might
be up there sat in the south-west. Nor was I
mistaken; for half an hour after the first of the
outburst, by which time the lightning played weak
and at long intervals low down, and the thunder
had ceased, I felt a crawling of air coming out of
the south-west, which presently briskened into a
Small steady blowing. But not for long. It
freshened yet and yet; the wrinkles crisped into
whiteness on the black heavings; they grew into
small surges with sharp cubbish snarlings pre-
ludious of the lion's voice; and by ten o'clock it
was blowing in strong squalls, the seas rising,
and the clouds sailing swiftly in smoke-coloured
rags under the stars. -
The posture of the ice inclined the schooner's
starboard bow to the billows; and in a very short
time she was trembling in every bone to the blows
3OO THE Frozen PIRATE.
of the surges which rolled boiling over the ice
there and struck her, flinging dim clouds of spume
in the air, which soon set the scuppers gushing
My case was that of a stranded ship, with this
difference only, that a vessel ashore lies solid to
the beating of the waves, whereas the ice was
buoyant, it rose and fell, sluggishly it is true, and
so somewhat mitigated the severity of the shocks
of water. But, spite of this, I was perfectly sure
that unless the bed broke under her or she slipt
off it, she would be in pieces before the morning
It was not in any hull put together by human
hands to resist the pounding of those seas. The
weight of the mighty ocean along whose breast
they raced was in them, and though the wind was
no more than a brisk gale, each billow by its
stature showed itself the child of a giantess. The
ice-bed was like a whirlpool with the leap and
flash and play of the froth upon it. The black
air of the night was whitened by the storms of
foam-flakes which flew over the vessel. The
roaring of the broken waters increased the horrors
of the scene. I firmly believed my time was
come. God had been merciful, but I was to die
now. As to making any shift to keep myself
alive after the ship should be broken up, the
thought never entered my head. What could
do? There was no boat. I might have contrived
some arrangement of booms and casks to serve
as a raft, but to what purpose 2 How long would
it take the wind and sea to freeze me?
I crouched in the companion-way hearkening
to the uproar around, feeling the convulsions of

THE Schoon ER FREES HERSELF. 3Ot
the schooner, fully prepared for death, dogged
and hopeless. No, I was not afraid. Suffering
and expectation had brought me to that pass that
I did not care. “'Tis such an end as hundreds
and thousands of sailors have met,” I remember
thinking; “it is the fittest exit for a mariner. I
have sinned in my time, but the Almighty God
knows my heart.” To this tune ran my thoughts.
I held my arms tightly folded upon my breast,
and with set lips waited for the first of those
crashing and rending sounds which would betoken
the ruin and destruction of the schooner.
So passed half an hour; then, being half
perished with the cold, I went to the furnace, for
when the vessel went to pieces it would matter
little in what part of her I was, and warmed my-
self and took a dram as a felon swallows a draught
on his way to the scaffold. Were I to attempt to
describe the character of the thunderous noises
in the ship I should not be believed. The seas
raised a most deafening roaring as they boiled
over the ice and rolled their volumes against the
vessel's sides. Every curl swung a load of broken
frozen pieces against the bows and bends, and the
shocks resounded through her like blows from
cyclopean hammers. It was as if I had been
seated in the central stagnant heart of a small
revolving hurricane, feeling no faintest sigh of air
upon my cheek, whilst close around whirled the
hellish tormenting conflict of white waters and
yelling blasts,
On a sudden—in a breath—I felt the vessel
rise. She was swung up with the giddy velocity
* . .
302 THE FROzEN PIRATE,
of a hunter clearing a tall gate; she sank again,
and there was a mighty concussion forward, then
a pause of steadiness whilst you might have
counted five, then a wild upward heave, a sort of
sharp floating fall, a harsh grating along her keel
and sides, as though she was being smartly waſped
over rocks, followed by an unmistakable free pitch-
ing and rolling motion. -
I had sprung to my feet and stood waiting
But the instant I gathered by the movements of
her that she was released I sprang like a madman
up the companion-steps. The sea, breaking 9.
her bow, flew in heavy showers along the deck
and half blinded me. But I was semi-delirious
and having sat so long with Death's hand in mine
was in a passionately defiant mood, with a perfect
rage of scorn of peril in me, and I walked right on
to the forecastle, giving the flying sheets of water
there no heed. in a minute a block of sº
tumbled upon me and left me breathless; tı.
iciness of it cooled my mind's heat, but nºt ".
resolution. I was detérmined to judge as be:
could by the light of the foam of what hº
happened, and holding on tenaciously to whatever
came to my hand and progressing step by stºP
got to the forecastle and looked ahead. -
... Where the ice was the water tumbled in milk;
twas four or five ship's lengths distant, an
could distinguish no more than that. I pe.
over the lee bow, but could see no ice. he
Vessel had gone clear; how, I knew not *.
Sº, never know, but my own fancy is that she
*Plit the bed with her own weight when the *

THE SCHOONER FREES HERSELF. 3O3
rose and threw the ice up, for she had floated on
a sudden, and the noises which attended her re-
lease indicated that she had been forced through
a channel.
I returned aft, barely escaping a second deluge,
and looked over the quarter; no ice was there
visible to me. The vessel rolled horribly, and I
perceived that she had a decided list to starboard,
the result of the shifting of what was in her when
the ice came away from the main with her, and it
was this heel that brought the sea washing over
the bow. I took hold of the tiller to try it, but
either the helm was frozen immovable or the
rudder was jammed in its gudgeons or in some
other fashion fixed. -
Had she been damaged below 2 was she taking
in water? I knew her to be so thickly sheathed
with ice that, unless it had been scaled off in
places by the breaking of her bed, I had little fear
(until this covering melted or dropped off by the
working of the frame) of the hull not proving
tight. I should have been coated with ice myself
had I stayed but a little longer in my wet clothes
in that piercing wind, so I ran below, and bring-
ing an armful of clothes from my cabin to the
cook-room, was very soon in dry attire, and making
an extraordinary figure, I don't question, in the
buttons, lace, and fripperies of the old-fashioned
garments.
The incident of the schooner's release from the
ice had come upon me so suddenly, and at a time
too when my mind was terribly disordered, that
I scarce realized the full meaning of it until I had
--, **-** * * *
3O4 THE FRozen PIRATE,
shifted myself and fortified my heart with a dram
and got warm in the glow of the furnace. By
this time she had fallen into the trough and was
labouring like a cask; that she would prove a
heavy roller in a seaway a single glance at her a
buttocks and swelling bilge might have persuaded
me, but I never could have dreamt, she would
wallow so monstrously. The oscillation was
rendered more formidable by her list, and theſe
were moments when I could not keep my feet
She was shipping water very freely over her stºº
board rail, but this did not much concern me, ſº
the break of the poop-deck kept the after part of
the vessel indifferently dry, and the forecastle and
main hatches were well secured. But there wº
one great peril I knew not how to provide agains,
—I mean the flotilla of icebergs in the north anº
west. They lay in a long chain upon the sea, aſ
though to be sure there was no doubt a wide
channel between each, through which it might
have been easy to carry a ship under control yet
there was every probability of a vessel in the de-
fenceless condition of the schooner, without *
stitch of sail on her and under no other gover"
ment of helm than a fixed rudder, being swep'
against one of those frozen floating hills when
indeed it would be good-night to her and to ".
too, for after such a catastrophe the sun woul
never rise for me or her again. - -
Meanwhile I was crazy to ascertain if the
schooner was taking in water. If there was.”
sounding-rod in the ship I did not know whereº
lay my hands upon it. But he is a poor sailor who
,-º:
-* , …
—a-º-


THE Schoon ER FREES HERSELF. 305
is slow at substitutes. There were several spears
in the arms-room (piratical plunder, no doubt)
with mere spikes for heads, like those weapons
used by the Caffres and other tribes in that coun-
try; they were formed of a hard heavy wood. I
took a length of ratline line and secured it to one
of these spears, and carried it on deck with the
powder-room bull's-eye lamp; but when I probed
the sounding-pipe I found it full of ice, and as it
was impossible to draw the pumps, I flung my in-
genious sounding-rod down in a passion of grief
and mortification. ,
Yet was I not to be beaten. Such was my temper,
had the devil himself confronted me, I should
have defied him to do his worst, for I had made
up my mind to weather him out. I entered the
forecastle, lanthorn in hand, prized open the hatch
and dropped into the hold. It needed an experi-
enced ear to detect the sobbing of internal waters
amid the yearning gushes, the long gurgling
washings, the thunderous blows, and shrewd rain-
like hissings of the seas outside. I listened with
strained hearing for some minutes, but distin-
guished no sounds to alarm me with assurance of
water in the hold. I could not mistake. I
hearkened with all my might, but the noise was
outside. I thanked God very heartily, and got
out of the hold and put the hatch on. There was
no need to go aft and listen. The schooner was
by the head, and there could be no water in the
run that would not be forward too.
Being reassured in respect of the staunchness
of the hull, I returned to the fire and proceeded
v.
** * * *

306 THE FROzEN PIRATE,
to equip myself for a prolonged watch on deck.
Whilst'I was drawing on a great pair of boots!
heard a knocking in the after part of the vessel.
I supposed she had drifted into a little field o
broken ice, and that she would go clear present)
and I finished arming myself for the weather; but
the knocking continuing, I went into the cabim
where I heard it very plain, and walked as far as
the lazarette hatch, where I stood listening The
noises were a kind of irregular thumping acº".
panied by a peculiar grinding sound. . In a moment
I guessed the truth, rushed on deck, and by the
dim light in the air saw the long tiller mowing to
and irol the beat of the beam seas had."
locked the frozen bonds of the rudder, and theſe
swung the tiller, as though like a dog the ship was
wagging her tail for joy -
The vessel lay along, rolling so as to bring her
starboard rail to a level with the sea; her "
deck was full of water, and the froth of it ".
bined with the ice that glazed her made her look
like a fabric of marble as she swung on the black
fold ere it broke into snow about her. seized
the tiller and ran it over hard a-starboard *"
had not held it in that posture half a minute Whell
to my inexpressible delight I observed that she
was paying off. Her head fell slowly from the
sea; she ſurched drunkenly, and some *.
black water rolled over the bulwarks; she reele
consumedly to larboard, and rose squarely aſl
ponderously to the height of the surge that W45
how abaft the beam in a few moments sº
dead before it, the helm amidships, the wind blow"
THE Schoon ER FREES HERSELF. 3O7
ing sheer over the stern with half its weight
seemingly gone through the vessel running, the
tall seas chasing her high stern and floating it up-
wards, till looking forward was like gazing down
the slope of a hill.
My heart was never fuller than then. I was
half crazy with the passion of joy that possessed
me. Consider the alternations of hope and bitter
despair which had been crowded into that night !
We may wonder in times of security that life
should be sweet, and admit the justice of the
arguments which several sorts of writers, and the
poets even more than the parsons, use in defence
of death. But when it comes to the pinch human
nature breaks through. When the old man in
Æsop calls upon Death to relieve him, and the
skeleton suddenly rises, the old man changes his
mind, and thinks he will go on trying for him-
self a little longer. I liked to live, and had no
mind for a wet shroud, and this getting the
schooner before the wind, along with the old
familiar feeling of the decks reeling and soaring
and sinking under my feet, was so cordial an
assurance of life that, I tell you, my heart was
full to breaking with transport. -
However, I was still in a situation that made
prodigious demands upon my coolness and wits.
The wind was south-west, the "schooner was
running north-east; the bulk of the icebergs lay
on the larboard bow, but there were others right
ahead, and to starboard, where also lay the ex-
tremity of the island, though I did not fear that if I
could escape the rest. It was a dark night;
.**** * *


X 2

308 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
methinks there should have been a young moo"
curled somewhere among the stars, but she wº
not to be seen. The clouds flew dark and
hurriedly, and the frosty orbs between were tº
few to throw a light. The ocean ahead and arº
was the duskier for the spectral illumination of the
near foam and the glimmer of the iceº
ship. I tested the vessel with the tiller and foºd ſ
she responded but dully; she would be nimbler"
under canvas no doubt, but it was enough that
she should answer her helm at all. Oh, I say.
was mighty thankful, most humbly grateful My
heart was never more honest to its Maker tha"
then. .
She crushed along, pitching pitifully, the dark
seas on either hand foaming to her quarters,”
her rigging querulous with the wind, Had the
Frenchman been alive to steer the ship, I mig"
have found strength enough for my hands in the
vigour of my spirit to get the spritsa yard
square and chop its canvas loose-nay, ! might
have achieved more than that even; but I could
not quit the tiller now. I reckoned our speed at
about four miles an hour, as fast as a hearly"
could walk. The high stern, narrow as it W35,
helped us; it was like a mizzen in its way; *.
all aloft being stout to start with and greatly
thickened yet by ice, the surface up theſe 8.
plenty for the gale to catch hold on; and **
drove along. f
I could just make out the dim pallid loom 0
the coast of ice upon the starboard beam, * d
blob or two of faintness—most elusive and ""
THE Schooner FREES HERSELF. 309
be fixed by the eye staring straight at them—on
the larboard bow. But it was not long before
these blobs, as I term them, grew plainer, and
half a score swam into the dusk over the bowsprit
end, and resembled dull small visionary openings
in the dark sky there, or like stars magnified and
dimmed into the merest spectral-light by mist. I
passed the first at a distance of a quarter of a mile;
it slided by phantasmally, and another stole out
right ahead. This I could have gone widely clear
of by a little shift of the helm, but whilst I was in
the act of starboarding three or four bergs sud-
denly showed on the larboard bow, and I saw .
that unless I had a mind to bring the ship into
the trough again I must keep straight on. So I
steered to bring the berg that was right ahead a
little on the bow, with a prayer in my soul that
there might be no low-lying block in the road for
the schooner to split upon. It went by within a
pistol-shot. I was very much accustomed to the
sight of ice by this time, yet I found myself
glancing at this mass with pretty near as much
wonder and awe as if I had never seen such a
thing before. It was not above thirty feet high,
but its shape was exactly that of a horse's head,
the lips sipping the sea, the ears cocked, the neck
arching to the water. You would have said it was
some vast courser rising out of the deep. The
ſº radiance of ice trembled off it like a
uminous mist into the dusk. The water boiled
about its nose, and suggested a frothing caused
by the monster steed's expelled breath. Let a fire
have been kindled to glow red where you looked for
e ~~< 2 - …”
31 O THE FROZEN PIRATE.
* :
the eye, and the illusion would have been fright-
fully grand.
The poet speaks of the spirits of the vasty
deep; if you want to know what exquisite artists
they are, enter the frozen silences of the south.
Thus threading my way I drove before the
seas and wind, striking a piece of ice but once
only, and that a small lump which hit the vessel
on the bow and went scraping past, doing the
fabric no hurt; but often forced to slide perilously
close by the bergs. I needed twenty instead of
one pair of eyes. With ice already on either
bow, on a sudden it would glimmer out right
ahead, and I had to form my resolution on the
instant. If ever you have been amid a pack of
icebergs on a dark night in a high sea you will
understand my case; if not, the pen of a Fielding
or a Defoe could not put it before you. For what
magic has ink to express the roaring of swollen
waters bursting into tall pale clouds against the
motionless crystal heights, the mystery of the con-
figuration of the faintness under the swarming
shadows of the flying night, the sudden glares of
breaking liquid peaks, the palpitating darkness
beyond, the plunging and rolling of the ship,
making her rigging ring upon the air with the
reeling of her masts, the gradual absorption of
the solid mass of dim lustre by the gloom astern,
the swift spectral dawn of such another light over
the bows, with many phantasmal outlines slipping
by on either hand, like a procession of giant ocean-
spectres, travelling white and secretly towards the
silent dominions of the Pole 2
TROUBLED BY THoughts of THE TREASURE. 31 I
- w
Half this ice came from the island, the rest of
it was formed of bergs too tall to have ever be-
longed to the north end of that great stretch. It
took three hours to pass clear of them, and then
I had to go on clinging to the tiller and steering
in a most melancholy famished condition for
another long half-hour before I could satisfy my-
self that the sea was free. -
But now I was nearly dead with the cold. I
had stood for five hours at the helm, during all
which time my mind had been wound up to the
fiercest tension of anxiety, and my eyes felt as if
they were strained out of their sockets by their
searching of the gloom ahead, and nature having
done her best gave out suddenly, and not to have
saved my life could I have stood at the tiller
for another ten minutes.
The gear along the rail was so iron-hard that I
could not secure the helm with it, so I softened'
some lashings by holding them before the fire, and
finding the schooner on my return to be coming
round to starboard, I helped her by putting the
tiller hard a port and securing it. I then went
below, built up the fire, lighted my pipe, and sat
down for warmth and rest.
CHAPTER XXVI.
1 AM TROUBLED BY THOUGHTs of THE
TREASURE. -
THE weight of the wind in the rigging steadied
the schooner somewhat, and prevented her from
rolling too heavily to starboard, whilst her list
312. THE FROzEN PIRATE.
|
-
º
-
corrected her larboard rolls. So as I sat below
she seemed to me to be making tolerably gº
weather of it. Not much water came aboard.
now and again I would hear the clatter of a fall
forwards, but at comfortably long intervals.
I sat against the dresser with my back upo
it, and being dead tired must have droppe;
asleep on a sudden—indeed, before I had haſ
smoked my pipe out, and I do not believe
gave a thought to my situation before I slum
bered, so wearied was I. The cold awoke me
The fire was out and so was the candle in tº
lanthorn, and I was in coffin darkness. This tº
tinder-box speedily remedied. I looked at ſº
watch—seven o'clock, as I was a sinner! So that
my sleep had lasted between three and four hours.
I went on deck and found the night still black
upon the sea, the wind the same brisk gale that
was blowing when I quitted the helm, the sea.”
heavier, and the schooner tumbling in true Duº
fashion upon it. I looked very earnestly arouſ
but could see no signs of ice. There would be
daylight presently, so I went below, lighted th:
fire, and got my breakfast, and when I retuſ"
the sun was up and the sea visible to its furth”
reaches.
It was a fine wintry piece; the sea green and
running in ridges with frothing heads, the sky
very pale among the dark snow laden clouds the
sun darting a ray now and again, which was
swung into the north by the shadows of the clouds
until they extinguished it. Remote in the north-
West hung the gleam of an iceberg; there Was
-


Troubled by THOUGHTs of the TREASURE. 313
nothing else in sight. Yes—something that com-
forted me exceedingly, though it was not very
many days ago that a like object had heavily
scared me—an albatross, a noble bird, sailing on
the windward close enough to be shot. The sight
of this living thing was inexpressibly cheering; it
put into my head a fancy of ships being at hand,
thoughts of help and of human companions. In
truth, my imagination was willing to accept it as
the same bird that I had frightened away when in
the boat, now returned to silently reproach me for
my treatment of it. Nay, my lonely eye, my
subdued and suffering heart might even have
witnessed the good angel of my life in that solitary
shape of ocean beauty, and have deemed that,
though unseen, it had been with me throughout,
and was now made visible to my gaze by the light
of hope that had broken into the darkness of my
adventure. -
Well, supposing it so, I should not have been
the only man who ever, scared his good angel
away and found it faithful afterwards.
I unlashed the tiller and got the schooner
before the wind and steered until a little before
noon, letting her drive dead before the sea, which
carried her north-east. Then securing the, helm
amidships I ran for the quadrant, and whilst wait-
ing for the sun to show himself I observed that
the vessel held herself very steadily before the
wind, which might have been owing to her high
stern and the great swell of her sides and her
round bottom; but be the cause what it might,
she ran as fairly with her helm amidships as if I
3f4 THE FROzEN PIRAte.
had been at the tiller to check her, a most fortu.
nate condition of my navigation, for it privileged
me to get about other work, whilst, at the same
time, every hour was conveying me nearer tº the
track of ships and further from the bitter region;
of the south.
I got an observation and made out that the
vessel had driven about fifteen leagues during tº
night. She must do better than that, though I;
and when I had eaten some dinner I took
chopper, and, going on to the forecastle, lay"
upon the bowsprit, and after beating the spritsail.
yard block clearof the ice, cutaway the gaskets that
confined the sail to the yard, heartily beating the
canvas, that was like iron, till a clew of it fell
then came in and braced the yard Square, and the
wind, presently catching the exposed part of the
sail, blew more of it out, and yet more, until there
was a good surface showing; then to a sudden
hard blast of wind the whole sail flew Open with
a mighty crackling, as though indeed it ".
formed of ice; but to render it useful I had to
haul the sheets aft, which I could not manage
without the help of the tackles we had used in
slinging the powder over the side; so that what
with one hindrance and another, the setting "
that sail took me an hour and a half.
But had it occupied me all day it would have
been worth doing.' Trifling as it was as a cº".
its effect upon the schooner was like that "...
cordial upon a fainting man. It was not th; she
sensibly showed nimbler heels to it; its liſt";
tendency enabled her to ride the under-run”

ROUBLED BY THoughts of THE TREASURE. 315
Seas more buoyantly, and if it increased her speed
by half a knot an hour it was worth a million to
me, whose business it was to take the utmost
possible advantage of the southerly gale.
I returned to the helm, warm with the exercise,
and gazed forward not a little proud of my work.
Though the sail was eight-and-forty years old and
Perhaps older, it offered as tough and stout a
surface to the wind as if it was fresh from the
Salmaker's hands, so great are the preserving
qualities of ice. i looked wistfully at the topsail,
but on reflecting that if it should come on to blow
hard enough to compel me to heave the brig to
she would never hull with that canvas abroad, I
resolved to let it lie, for I could cut away the
Spritsail if the necessity arose and not greatly
regret its loss; but to lose the topsail would be a
serious matter, though if I did not cut it adrift it
might carry away the mast for me; so, as I say, I
Would not meddle with it. -
Finding that the ship continued to steer her-
Self very well, and the better for the spritsail, I
thought I would get the body of the old French-
man overboard and so obtain a clear hold for my-
Self so far as corpses went. I carried the lanthorn
into the forecastle, but when I pulled the ham-
mock off him I confess it was not without a stupid
fear that I should find him alive. Recollection of
his astounding vitality found something imperish-
able in that ugly anatomy, and though he lay
before me as dead and cold as stone, I yet had a
fancy that the seeds of life were still in him, that
'twas only the current of his being that had frozen,

316 The Frozen Pirate.
|
that if I were to thaw him afresh he might re.
cover, and that if I buried him I should actually
be despatching him. -
But though these fancies possessed, they did
not control me. I took his watch and whateve
else he had in that way, carried him on deck and
dropped him over théside, using as little cert:
mony as he had employed in the disposal of his
shipmates, but affected by very different emotions;
for there was not only the idea that the vital
spark was still in him; I could not but handle
with awe the most mysterious corpse the eye
had ever viewed, one who had lived through a
stupor or death-sleep, for eight-and-forty years.
in whom in a few hours time had compressed
the wizardry he stretches in others over half a
century; who in a night had shrunk from the
*śpect, of his prime into the lean, puckered
bleared-eyed, deaf, and tottering expression of a
hundred years. º - - ich
But now he was gone . The bubbles whic
ose to the plunge of his body were his epitaph;
had they risen blood-red they would have better
Symbolized his life. The albatross stooped to the
Spot where he had vanished with a hoarse salt
scream like the laugh of a delirious woman, an
the, wind, freshening momentarily in a squal
made one think of the spirit of Nature as eage.
to Purify the air of heaven from the taint of the
dead pirate's passage from the bulwarks to the
water's surface. - -
All that day and through the night that ſol.
lowed the schooner drove, rolling and plunging
TROUBLED BY THOUGHTS OF THE TREASURE. 317
before the seas, into the north-east, to the pulling of
the spritsail. I made several excursions into the
forehold, but never could hear the sound of water
in the vessel. Her sides in places were still
sheathed in ice, but this crystal armour was gra-
dually dropping off her to the working of her
frame in the seas, so that, since she was prov-
ing herself tight, it was certain her staunchness
owed nothing to the glassy plating. I had seen
some strange craft in my day; but nothing to
beat the appearance this old tub of a hooker
submitted to my gaze as I viewed her from the
helm. How so uncouth a structure, with her tall
stern, flairing bows, fat buttocks, sloping masts,
forecastle-well, and massive head-timbers ever
managed to pursue and overhaul a chase was only
to be unriddled by supposing all that she took
to be more unwieldy and clumsy than herself.
What would a pirate of these days, in his clean-
lined polacca or arrowy schooner, have thought of
such an instrument as this for the practice of his
pretty trade 2 The ice aloft still held for her
spars and rigging the resemblance of glass, and to
every sunbeam that flashed upon her from between
the sweeping clouds she would sparkle out into
many-coloured twinklings, marvellously delicate in
colour, and changing their tints twenty times over
in a breath through the swiftness of the reeling of
the spars. - -
I should but fatigue you to follow the several
little stories of these hours one by one; how I got
my food, snatched at sleep, stood at the helm,
gazed around the sea-line and the like. Just
*
3.18 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
before sundown I saw a large iceberg in the north
two leagues distant; no others were in sight, but
one was enough to make me uneasy, and I spent
a very troubled night, repeatedly coming on deck
to look about me. The schooner steered herself
as if a man stood at the helm. The spritsail further
helped her in this, for, if the curl of a sea under
her forefoot brought her to larboard or starboard
the sail forced her back again. Still, it was a very |
surprising happy quality in her, the next bºs;
thing to my having a shipmate, and a wonderful
relief to me who must otherwise have brought
her to, under a lashed helm, every time I had
occasion to leave the deck. -
The seaworthiness of the craft, coupled with the
reasonable assurance of presently falling in with a
ship, rendered me so far easy in my mind as tº
enable me to think very frequently of the treasure
and how I was to secure it. If I fell in with an
enemy's cruiser or a privateer I must expect to be
stripped. This would be the fortune of war, and I
must take my chance. My concern did not lº
that way; how was I to protect this property,
that was justly mine, against my own countrymº"
suppose "I had the good fortune to carry hº
schooner safely into English waters?. I had
brother-in-law, Jeremiah Mason, Esq., a Turkey
merchant in a small way of business, whose office
was in the City of London, and, if I could managº
to convey the treasure secretly to him, he woul!
I knew, find me a handsome account in, hº
settlement of this affair... But it was impossible.”
strike out a plan. I must wait and attend the



TROUBLED BY THOUGHTS OF THE TREASURE. 319
course of events. Yet riches being things which
fever the coldest imaginations, I could not look
ahead without excitement and irritability of fancy,
I should reckon it a hard fate indeed, after my
cruel experiences, my freeing the vessel from the
ice, my sailing her through some thousand of miles
of perilous seas, and arriving finally in safety, to
be dispossessed of what was strictly mine—as
much mine as if I had fished it up from the
bottom of the sea, where it must otherwise have
lain till the crack of doom.
I remember that, among other ideas, it entered
my head to tell the master of the first ship I met,
if she were British, the whole story of my adven-
ture, to acquaint him with the treasure, to offer to
tranship it and myself to his vessel and abandon
the schooner, and to propose a handsome reward
for his offices. But I could not bring my mind to
trust any stranger with so great a secret. The
mere circumstance of the treasure not being mine,
in the sense of my having earned it, of its being
piratical plunder, and as much one's as another's,
might dull the edge even of a fair-dealing conscience
and expose me to the machinations of a heavily
tempted mind. - -
Therefore, though I had no plan, I was resolved
at all hazards to stick to the schooner, and, with a
yiew to providing against the curiosity or rummag-
ing of any persons who should come aboard I fell to
the following work after getting my breakfast. I
hung lanthorns in the run and hatchways and cabin
to enable meto pass easily to and fro; I then emptied
one of the chests in my cabin and carried it to where
320 THE FROzEN PIRATE. -- .
the treasure was. The chest I filled nearly three-
parts full with money, jewellery, &c., which sank
the contents of the other chests to the depth I
wanted. I then fetched a quantity of small arms,
such as pistols and hangers and cutlasses, and
filled up the chests with them, first placing a thick-
ness of canvas over the money and jewellery, that
no glitter might show through. To improve the
deception I brought another chest to the run, and
wholly filled it with cutlasses, powder-horns, pistols,
and the like, and so fixed it that it must be the
first to come to hand. My cunning amounted to
this: that, suppose the run to be rummaged, the
contents of the first chest were sure to be turned
out, but, on the other chests being opened, and
what they appeared to contain observed, it was as
likely as not that the rummagers would be satis-
fied they were arms-chests, and quit meddling
with them.
Herenow might I indulge in a string of reflections
on the troubles and anxieties which money brings,
quote from Juvenal and other poets, and hold my-
self up to your merriment by a contemptuous ex-
hibition of myself, a lonely sailor, labouring to
conceal his gold from imaginary knaves, toiling in
the dark depth of the vessel, and never heeding
that, even whilst he so worked, his ship might split
upon some half-tide rock of ice, and founder with
him and his treasure too, and so on, and so on.
But the fact is I was not a fool. Here was money
enough to set me up as a fine gentleman for life,
and I meant to save it and keep it too, if I could.
A man on his deathbed, a man in such peril that

TROUBLED BY THOUGHTs of the TREASURE. 321
his end is certain, can afford to be sentimental.
He is going where money is dross indeed, and he
is in a posture when to moralize upon human
#: and the vanity of wishes and riches becomes
im. But would not a man whose health is hearty,
and who hopes to save his life, be worse off than a
sheep in the matter of brains not to keep a firm
grip of Fortune's hand when she extended it 2 I
know I was very well pleased with my morning's
work when I had accomplished it, and had no mind
to qualify my satisfaction by melancholy and
romantic musings on my condition and the uncer-
tainty of the future. This was possibly owing to
the fineness of the weather; a heavy black gale
from the north would doubtless have given a very
different turn to my humours.
The wind at dawn had weakened and come into
the west. There was a strong swell—indeed there
always is in this ocean—but the seas ran small.
The sky looked like marble, with its broad spread-
ings of high white clouds and the veins of blue sky
between. I wished to make all the northing that
was possible, but there was nothing to be done in
that way with the spritsail alone. Had not the
capstan been frozen I should have tried to get the
mainsail upon the ship, but without the aid of ma-
chinery I was helpless. So, with helm amidships,
the schooner drove languidly along with her head
due east, lifting as ponderously as a line-of-battle
ship to the floating launches of the high swell, and
the albatross hung as steadfastly in the wake of
my lonely ocean path as though it had been some
messenger sent by God to watch me into safety.
Y
Af
322 THE FROzEN PIRATE. *
CHAPTER XXVII.
I ENCOUNTER A WHALER.
I HAD been six days and nights at sea, and the
morning of the seventh day had come. With
the exception of one day of strong south-westerly
winds, which ran me something to the northwards,
the weather had been fine, bitterly cold indeed,
but bright and clear. In this time I had run a
distance of about six hundred and fifty miles to
the east, and with no other cloths upon the
schooner than her spritsail.
I confess, as the hours passed away and nothing
hove into view, I grew dispirited and restless; but,
on the other hand, I was comforted by the bright
weather and the favourable winds, and particularly
by the vessel's steering herself, which enabled me
to get rest, to keep myself warm with the fire, and
to dress my food, yet ever pushing onwards (how-
ever slowly) into the navigated regions of this
Sea. -
On the morning of the seventh day I came on
deck, having slept since four o'clock. The wind
was icy keen, pretty brisk, about west by south;
the movement in the sea was from the south, and
rolled very grandly; there was a fog that way,
too, that hid the º bringing the ocean-line
to within a league of the schooner; but the other
quarters swept in a dark, clear, blue line against
the sky, and there was such a clarity of atmo-
sphere as made the distances appear infinite.
I went below and lighted the fire and got my
I ENcountER A WHALER. 323
breakfast, all very leisurely, and when I was done
I sat down and smoked a pipe. It was so keen
on deck that I had no mind to leave the fire, and,
as all was well, I lounged through the best part of
two hours in the cook-house, when, thinking it
was now time to take another survey of the scene
I went on deck.
On looking over the larboard bulwark rail, the
first thing I saw was a ship about two miles off.
She was on the larboard tack, under courses, top-
sails, and main-topgallant sail, heading as if to
cross my bows. The sunshine made her canvas
look as white as snow against the skirts of the
body of vapour that had trailed a little to leeward
of her, and her black hull flashed as though she
discharged a broadside every time she rose wet to
the northern glory out of the hollow of the swell
with a curl of silver at her cutwater.
My heart came into my throat; I seemed not
to breathe; not to have saved my life could I
have uttered a cry, so amazed and transported
was I by this unexpected apparition. I stared
like one in a dream, and my head felt as if all the
blood in my body had surged into it. But then,
all on a sudden, there happened a revulsion of
feeling. Suppose she should prove a privateer—
a French war-vessel—of a nation hostile to my
own 2 Thought so wrought in me that I trembled
like an idiot in a fright. The telescope was too
weak to resolve her, I could do better with my
eyes; and I stood at the bulwarks gazing and
§: as if she were the spectre ship of the
candinavian legend.

Y 2
324 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
There were flags below and I could have
hoisted a signal of distress: but to what purpose 2
If the appearance of the schooner did not suffi-
ciently illustrate her condition, there was certainly
no virtue in the language and declarations of
bunting to exceed her own mute assurance. I
watched her with a passion of anxiety, never
doubting her intention to speak to me, at all
events to draw close and look at me, wholly con-
cerning myself with her character. The swell
made us both dance, and the blue brows of the
rollers would often hide her to the height of her
rails; but we were closing each other middling fast
she travelling at seven and I at four miles in the
hour, and presently I could see that she carried a
number of boats,
A whaler, thought I ; and after a little I was
sure of it by perceiving the rings over her top-
gallant rigging for the look-out to stand in.
On being convinced of this, I ran below for a
shawl that was in my cabin, and, jumping on to
the bulwarks, stood flourishing it for some minutes
to let them know that there was a man aboard.
She luffed to deaden her way, that I might
swim close, and as we approached each
other I observed a crowd of heads forward
looking at me, and several men aft, all staring
intently.
A man scrambled on to the rail, and with an
arm clasping a backstay hailed me:
“Schooner ahoy!” he bawled, with a strong
nasal twang in his cry. “What ship's that?”
“The Boca del Dragon,” I shouted back.
T
I ENCOUNTER A WHALER. 325
where are you from, and where are you bound
to yy
“I have been locked up in the ice,” I cried,
“and am in want of help. What ship are
you?”
“The Susan Tucker, whaler, of New Bedford,
twenty-seven months out,” he returned. “Where
in creation got you that hooker *"
“I'm the only man aboard,” I cried, “and
have no boat. Send to me, in the name of God,
and let the master come !” -
He waved his hand, bawling, “Put your helm
down—you're forging ahead l’ and so saying,
dismounted. - - -
I immediately cast the tiller adrift, put it hard
over, and secured it, then jumped on to the
bulwarks again to watch them. She was Yankee
beyond doubt; I had rather met my own country-
men; but, next to a British, I would have
chosen an American ship to meet. Somehow,
despite the Frenchman, I felt to have been alone
throughout my adventure; and so sore was
the effect of that solitude upon my spirits that
it seemed twenty years since I had seen a ship,
and since I had held commune with my own
species. I was terribly agitated, and shook in
every limb. Life must have been precious
always; but never, before had it appeared so
precious as now, whilst I gazed at that homely
ship, with her main-topsail to the mast, swing-
ing stately upon the swell, the faces of the
Seamen plain, the smoke of her galley-fire
breaking from the chimney, the sounds of

326 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
creaking blocks and groaning parrels stealing
from her. Such a fountain of joy broke out of
my heart that my whole being was flooded with
it, and had that mood lasted I believe I should
have exposed the treasure in the run, and in-
vited all the men of the whaler to share in it
with me. -
They stared fixedly; little wonder that they
should be astounded by such an appearance as
my ship exhibited. One of the several boats
which hung at her davits was lowered, the oars
flashed, and presently she was near enough to
be hit with a biscuit; but when there the master,
as I supposed him to be, who was steering,
sung out, “’Vast rowing !” the boat came to a
stand, and her people to a man stared at me with
their chins upon their shoulders as if I had been
a fiend. It was plain as a pikestaff that they were
frightened, and that the superstitions of the fore-
castle were hard at work in them whilst they
viewed me. They looked a queer company : two
were negroes, the others pale-faced bearded men,
wrapped up in clothes to the aspect of scarecrows.
The fellow who steered had a face as long as a
wet hammock, and it was lengthened yet to the
eye by a beard like a goat's hanging at the ex-
tremity of his chin.
He stood up—a tall, lank figure, with legs like
a pair of compasses—and hailed me afresh, but
the high swell, regular as the swing of a pendulum,
interposed its brow between him and me, so that
at one moment he was a sharply-lined figure
against the sky of the horizon, and the next he
- p

I ENCOUNTER A WHALER. 327
and his boat and crew were sheer gone out of
sight, and this made an exchange of sentences
slow and troublesome.
“Say, master,” he sung out, “what d'ye say the
schooner's name is 2" -
“The Boca del Dragon,” I replied.
"And who are you, matey P”
“An English sailor who has been cast away on
an island of ice,” I answered, talking very shortly
that the replies might follow the questions before
the swell sank him.
“Ay, ay,” says he, “that's very well; but when
was you cast away, bully ”
I gave him the date.
“That's not a month ago,” cried he.
"It's long enough, whatever the time,” said I.
Here the crew fell a-talking, turning from one
another to stare at me, and the negroes' eyes
showed as big as saucers in the dismay of their
regard.
"See, here, master,” sung out the long man,
"if you han’t been cast away more than a month,
how come you clothed as men went dressed a
century sin', hey?”
The reason of their misgivings flashed upon
me. It was not so much the schooner as my
appearance. The truth was, my clothes having
been wetted, I had ever since been wearing
such thick garments as I met with in the
cabin, keeping my legs warm with jackboots,
and I had become so used to the garb that I
forgot I had it on. You will judge, then, that
I must have presented a figure very nicely calcu-
**------ .
-- -----
£3 - ? . .
328 The Frozen PiRATE,
lated to excite the wonder and apprehension º
a body of men whose superstitious instincts were
already sufficiently fluttered by the appeara!!!”
of the schooner, when I tell you that, in
addition to the jackboots and a great fur cap,
my costume was formed of a red plush waist.
coat laced with silver, purple breeches, a cºat
of frieze with yellow braiding and huge cuff,
and the cloak that I had taken from the body
of Mendoza.
“Captain,” cried I, “if so be you are the
captain, in the name of God and humanity come
aboard, sir.” Here I had to wait till he reap-
peared. “My story is an extraordinary one.
You have nothing to fear. I am a plain Eng:
lish sailor; my ship was the Laughing Mary,
bound in ballast from Callao to the Cape."
Here I had to wait again. “Pray, sir, come
aboard. There is nothing to fear. I am alone
—in grievous distress, and in want of help. Pray
come, sir!”
There was so little of the goblin in this appeal
that it resolved him. The crew hung in the wind.
but he addressed them peremptorily. I heard
him damn them for a set of curs, and tell them
that if they put him aboard they might lie off till
he was ready to return, where they would be safe,
as the devil could not swim; and presently they
buckled to their oars again and the boat came
alongside. The long man, watching his chance,
sprang with great agility into the chains, and
stepped on deck. . I ran up to him and seized his
hand with both mine,
- “-- - ... --> -----" "
*,

1 ENcountER A WHALER. 329
“Sir” cried I, speaking with difficulty, so great
was the tumult of my spirits and the joy and
gratitude that swelled my heart, “I thank you a
thousand times over for this visit. I am in the
most helpless condition that can be imagined. I
am not astonished that you should have been
startled by the appearance of this vessel and by
the figure I make in these clothes, but, sir, you
will be much more amazed when you have heard
my story.”
He eyed me steadfastly, examining me very
earnestly from my boots to my cap, and then cast
a glance around him before he made any reply to
my address. He had the gauntness, sallowness
of complexion, and deliberateness of manner
peculiar to the people of New England. And
though he was a very ugly, lank, uncouth man, I
protest he was as fair in my sight as if he had
been the ambrosial angel described by Milton.
“Well, cook my gizzard,” he exclaimed pre-
sently, through his nose, and after another good
look at me and along the decks and up aloft, “if
this ain't mi-raculous, tew. Durned if we didn't
take this hooker for some ghost ship riz from the
sea, in charge of a merman rigged out to fit her
age. Y’ are all alone, air you ?”
“All alone,” said I. -
“Broach me every barrel aboard if ever I see
sich a vessel,” he cried, his astonishment rising
with the searching glances he directed aloft and
alow. “How old be she P”
“She was cast away in seventeen hundred and
fifty-three," said I.
} \

330 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
“Well, I'm durned. She's froze hard, º:
I reckon she'll want a hot sun to thaw her. Split
me, mister, if she ain't worth sailing home as a
show-box.”
I interrupted his ejaculations by asking him to
step below, where we could sit warm whilst I
related my story, and I asked him to invite his
boat's crew into the cabin that I might regale
them with a bowl of such liquor as I ventured to
say had never passed their lips in this life. On
this he went to the side, and, hailing the men,
ordered all but one to step aboard and drink to
the health of the lonesome sailor they had come
across. The word “drink” acted like a charm;
they instantly hauled upon the painter and brought
the boat to the chains and tumbled over the side,
one of the negroes remaining in her. They fell
together in a body, and surveyed me and the ship
with a hundred marks of astonishment.
“My lads,” said I, “my rig' is a strange one,
but I'll explain all shortly. The clothes I was
cast away in are below, and I'll show you them.
I'm no spectre, but as real as you; though I have
gone through so much that, if I am not a ghost, it
is no fault of old ocean, but owing to the mercy
of God. , My name is Paul Rodney, and I'm a
native of London. You, sir,” says I, addressing
the long man, “are, I presume, the master of the
Susan Tucker P’’
“At your sarvice—Josiah Tucker is my name.
and that ship is my wife Susan.”
“Captain Tucker, and you, men, will you please
step below,” says I. “The weather promises
|
-
* ~. I ENCOUNTER A WHALER, 33 I
fair; I have much to tell, and there is that in
the cabin which will give you patience to hear me.”
I descended the companion-stairs, and they all
followed, making the interior that had been so long
silent ring with their heavy tread, whilst from time
to time a gruff, hoarse whisper broke from one of
them. But superstition lay strong upon their
imagination, and they were awed and quiet. The
daylight came down the hatch, but for all that the
cabin was darksome. y
I waited till the last man had entered, and then
said, “Before we settle down to a bowl and a
yarn, captain, I should like to show you this
ship. It'll save me a deal of description and
explanation if you will be pleased to take a view.”
“Lead on, mister,” said he “but we shall have
to snap our eyelids and raise fire in that way, for
durned if I, for one, can see in the dark.”
I fetched three or four lanthorns, and, lighting
the candles, distributed them among the men,
and then, in a procession, headed by the captain
and me, we made the rounds. I had half-cleared
the arms-room, but there were weapons enough
left, and they stared at them like yokels in a
booth. I showed them the cook-house and the
forecastle, where the deck was still littered with
clothes, and chests, and hammocks; and, after
carrying them aft to the cabins, gave them a sight
of the hold. I never saw men more amazed.
They filled the vessel with their exclamations.
They never offered to touch anything, being too
much awed, but stepped about with their heads
uncovered, as quietly as they could, as though
332 THE FROZEN PIRATE,
they had been in a crypt, and the influence of
strange and terrifying memorials was upon them.
I also showed them the clothes I had come away
from the Laughing Mary in ; and, that I might
submit such an aspect to them as should touch
their sympathies, I whipped off the cloak and put
on my own pilot-cloth coat. :
There being nothing more to see, I led them to
the cook-room, and there brewed a great hearty
bowl of brandy-punch, which I seasoned with
lemon, sugar, and spices into as relishable a
draught as my knowledge in that way could com-
pass, and, giving every man a pannikin, bade him
dip and welcome, myself first drinking to them
with a brief speech, yet not so brief but that I
broke down towards the close of it, and ended
with a dry sob or two. -
They would have been unworthy their country
and their calling not to have been touched by my
natural manifestation of emotion; besides, the
brandy was an incomparably fine spirit, and the
very perfume of the steaming bowl was sufficient
to stimulate the kindly qualities of sailors who had
been locked up for months in a greasy old ship,
with no diviner smells about than the stink of the
try-works. The captain, standing up, called upon
his men to drink to me, promising me that he was
very glad to have fallen in with my schooner, and
then, looking at the others, made a sign, where-
upon they all fixed their eyes upon me and drank
as one man, every one emptying his pot and in-
verting it as a proof, and fetching a rousing sigh
of satisfaction. -
---, -,
—-
~ * - -

I ENCOUNTER A WHALER. 333
This ceremony ended, I began my story, be-
ginning with the loss of the Laughing Mary, and
proceeding step by step. I told them of the dead
body of Mendoza, but said nothing about the
Frenchman and the mate, and the Portugal boat-
Swain, lest I should make them afraid of the
vessel, and so get no help to work her. As to
acquainting them with my recovéry of Tassard,
after his stupor of eight-and-forty years, I should
have been mute on that head in any case, for so
extraordinary a relation could, from such people,
have earned me but one of two opinions: either
that I was mad and believed in an impossibility,
or that I was a rogue and dealt in magic, and to
be vehemently shunned. Yet there were wonders
enough in my story without this, and I recited it
to a running commentary of all sorts of queer
Yankee exclamations.
There were seven seamen and the captain and
I made nine, and we pretty nearly filled the cook-
room. 'Twas a scene to be handled by a Dutch
brush. We were a shaggy company, in several
kinds of rude attire, and the crimson light of the
furnace, whose playing flames darted shadows
through the steady light of the lanthorns, caused
us to appear very wild. The mariners' eyes
gleamed redly as their glances rove round the
place, and, had you come suddenly among us, I
believe you would have thought this band of pale,
fire-touched, hairy men, with the one ebon visage
among them, rendered the vessel a vast deal more
ghostly than ever she could have shown when
sailing along with me alone on board.
th
334 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
They were a good deal puzzled when I told
them of the mines I had made and sprung in the
ice. They reckoned the notion fine, but could
not conceive how I had, single-handed, broken out
the powder-barrels, got them over the side, and
fixed them.
“Why,” said I, “’twas slow, heavy work, of
course; but a man who labours for his life will do
marvellous things. It is like the jump of a hunted
stag.” - -
"True for you,' says the captain. “A swim
of two miles spends me in pleasurin'; but I've swum
eight mile to save my life, and stranded fresh
as a ‘new-hooked cod. What's your intentions,
Sir 2 '' -
“To sail the schooner home,” said I, “if I can
get help. She's too good to abandon. She'll
fetch money in England.”
“Ay, as a show.”
“Yes, and as a coalman. Righer modernly, and
carry your forecastle deck into the head, captain,
and she's a brave ship, fit for a Baltimore eye."
He stroked down the hair upon his chin.
“Dip, captain, dip, my lads; there's enough of
this to drown ye in the hold,” said I, pointing to
the bowl. “Come, this is a happy meeting for
me; let it be a merry one. Captain, I drink to
the Susan Tucker.” -
“Sir, your servant. Here's to your sweetheaſt,
be she wife or maid. Bill, jump on deck and take
a look round. See to the boat.”
One of the men went out.
“Captain,” said I, “you are a full ship 2"
~~~



* ENCOUNTER A WHALER 335
“That's so.”
“Bound home 2"
“Right away.”
“You have men enough and to spare. Lend
me three of your hands to help me to the Thames,
and I'll repay you thus; there should be near a
hundred tons of wine and brandy, of exquisite
vintage, and choice with age beyond language in
the hold. Take what you will of that freight;
there'll be ten times the value of your lay in your
pickings, modest as you may prove. Help your-
self to the clothes in the cabin and forecastle;
they will turn to account. For the men you will
Spare, and who will volunteer to help me, this will
be my undertaking: the ship and all that is in
her to be sold on her arrival, and the proceeds
equally divided. Shall we call it a thous-nd
pounds apiece P Captain, she's well found: ner
inventory would make a list as long as you; I'd
name a bigger sum, but here she is, you shall
overhaul her hold and judge for yourself.”
I watched him anxiously. No man spoke, but
every eye was upon him. He sat pulling down
the hair on his chin, then, jumping up on a sudden
and extending his hand, he cried, “Shakel it's a
bargain, if the men 'll jine.”
“I’ll jine !” exclaimed a man.
There was a pause.
“And me,” said the negro.
I was glad of this, and looked earnestly at the
others.
“Is she tight?” said a man.
“As a bottle,” said I.
*


336 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
They fell silent again.
“Joe Wilkinson and Washington Cromwell-
them two jines,” said the captain. “Bullies, he
wants a third. Don't speak all together."
The man named “Bilſ” at this moment returned
to the cook-room, and reported all well above.
My offer was repeated to him, but he shook his
head. -
“This is the Horn, mates,” said he. “There's
a deal o' water 'tween this and the Thames. How
do she sail 2—no man knows.”
“I want none but willing men,” said I. “Ame.
ricans make as good sailors as the English.
What an English seaman can face any of you
can. There is another negro in the boat. Will
you let him step aboard, captain He may
oin.”
J A man was sent to take his place. Presently
he arrived, and I gave him a cup of punch.
“'Splain the business to him, sir," said the
captain, filling his pannikin; “his name's Billy
Pitt.”
I did so; and when I told him that Washing:
ton Cromwell had offered, he instantly said, "All
right, massa, I'll be ob yah.”
This was exactly what I wanted, and had there
been a third negro I'd have preferred him to the
white man.
“But how are you going to navigate this craft
home with three men P” said the man “Bill" to
Iſle. -
“There'll be four; we shall do. The fewer the
more dollars, hey, Wilkinson 7"
... * *
… ."
I strike A BARGAIN with the Yankee. 337
He grinned, and Cromwell broke into a ventral
laugh.
They seemed very well satisfied, and so was I.
CHAPTER"XXVIII.
I STRIKE A BARGAIN WITH THE YAN KEE.
THE captain put his cup down; the bowl was
empty; I offered to brew another jorum, but he
thanked me and said no, adding significantly that
he would have no more here, by which he meant
that he would brew for himself in his own ship
anon. The drink had made him cheerful and
good-natured. He recommended that we should
go on deck and set about transhipping whilst
the weather held, for he was an old hand in
these seas and never trusted the sky longer
than a quarter of an hour. -
“This here list,” says he, “wants remedying
and that'll follow our easin' of the hold.”
"Yes,” said I, “and I should be mighty thank-
ful if some of your men would see all clear aloft
for me, that we might start with running rigging
that will travel, capstans that'll revolve, and sails
that'll spread.”
"Oh, we'll manage that for you,” said he,
"Tru-ly, she's been bad froze, very bad froze.
Durned if ever I see a worse freeze.”
So saying he called to “Bill,” who seemed
the principal man of the boat's crew, and gave
him some directions, and immediately afterwards
all the men entered the boat and rowed away to
the ship.
w-" rºzºan 2
**º

338 | THE FROZEN PIRATE,
Whilst they were absent I carried the captain
into the hold and left him to overhaul it. I told
him that all the spirits, provisions, and the like
were in the hold and lazarette, which was true
enough, wanting to keep him out of the run,
though, thanks to the precaution I had taken, I
was in no fear even if he should penetrate so deep
aft. Before he came out five-and-twenty stout
fellows arrived in four boats from the ship, and
when we went on deck, we found them going the
rounds of the vessel, scraping the guns to get a
view of them, peering down the companion, over.
hauling the forecastle-well, as I call the hollow
beyond the forecastle, and staring aloft with
their faces full of grinning wonder. The cap.
º sang out to them and they all mustered
aft. -
“Now, lads,” said he, “there's a big job before
you—a big job for Cape Horn, I mean; and you'll
have to slip through it as if you was grease.
When done there'll be a carouse, and I'll warrant
ye all such a sup that the most romantic
among ye'll never cast, another pining thought
in the direction o' your mother's milk.”
Having delivered this preface, he divided the
men into two gangs; one, under the boatswain,
to attend to the rigging, clear the canvas of
the ice, get the pumps and the capstans to
work, and see all ready for getting sail on the
schooner; the other, under the second mate, to
et tackles aloft and break out the cargo, taking
care to trim ship whilst so doing.
They fell to their several jobs with a will.
I STRIKE A BARGAIN WITH THE YANKEE. 339
'Tis the habit of our countrymen to sneer at
the Americans as sailors, affirming that if ever
they win a battle at sea it is by the help of
British renegades. But this I protest; after
witnessing the smartness of those Yankee whale-
men, I would sooner charge the English than the
Americans with lubberliness came the nautical
merits of the two nations ever before me to decide
upon. They had the hatches, open, tackles aloft,
and men at work below whilst the mariners of
other countries would have been standing looking
on and “jawing ” upon the course to be taken.
Some overran the fabric aloft, clearing, cutting
away, pounding, making the ice fly in storms;
others sweated the capstans till they clanked;
others fell to the pumps, working with hammers
and kettles of boiling water. The wondrous old
schooner was never busier, no, not in the heyday
of her flag, when her guns were blazing and her
people yelling. - -
I doubt whether even a man-of-war could have
given this work the despatch the whaler furnished.
She had eight boats and sixty men, and every
boat was afloat and alongside us ready to carry
what she could to the ship. I wished to help, but
the captain would not let me do so; he kept me
walking and talking, asking me scores of questions
about the schooner, and all so shrewd that, with-
out appearing reserved, I professed to know little.
The great show of clothes puzzled him. He also
asked if the crucifix in the cabin was silver. I
said I believed it was, fetched it, and asked him
to accept it, saying if he would give me the
* * :
Z 2
31O THE FROZEN PIRATE.
smallest of his boats for it I should be very much
obliged.
“Oh, yes,” says he, “you can have a boat,
The men would not sail with you without a boat;"
and after weighing the crucifix without the least
exhibition of veneration in his manner, he put it in
his pocket, saying he knew a man who would give
him a couple of hundred dollars for the thing on
his telling him that the Pope had blessed it.
“Ay, but,” says I, “how do you know the Pope
has blessed it *"
“Then I'll bless it,” cried he; “why, am I a
cold Johnny-cake that my blessing ain't as good
as another man's P’’ -
I was glad I had hidden the black flag; I
mean, that I had stowed it away in the cabin of
the Frenchman after he was dead. The Yankee
needed but the sight to make his suspicions of the
original character of the Boca del Dragon flame
up ; and you may suppose that I was exceedingly
anxious he should not be sure that the schooner
had been a pirate, lest he might have been tempted
to scrutinize her rather more closely than would
have been agreeable to me. -
He asked me if I had met with any money in
her ; and I answered evasively that in searching
the dead man on the rocks, I had discovered a few
pieces in his pocket, but that I had left them,
being much too melancholy and convinced of my
approaching end to meddle with such a useless
commodity. From time to time he would quit
me to go to the hatch, and sing down orders to
the second mate in the hold. How many casks
I strike A BARGAIN witH THE YANKEE. 341
he meant to take I did not know; when he asked
me how much I would give, I replied: “Leave me
enough to keep me ballasted; that will satisfy me.”
The high swell demanded caution, but they
managed wonderfully well. They never swung
more than three casks into a boat, and with this
cargo she would row away to the ship that lay
hove-to close, and the men in her hoisted the
casks aboard. - -
The wind remained light till half-past three ;
it then freshened a bit. Though all hands had
knocked off at noon to get dinner—and a fine meal
I gave them of ham, tongue, beef, biscuits, wine,
and brandy—by half-past three they had eased
the hold of ten boatloads of casks, besides clear-
ing out the whole of the clothes from the forecastle
along with as much of the bedding as we did not
require; and I began to think that my Yankee
intended to leave me a clean ship to carry heme,
though I durst not remonstrate. Yet was my
turn handsomely served too. The pumps had
been cleared and tried, and found to work well,
and—which was glad news to me—the well found
dry. The running rigging had been overhauled,
and it travelled handsomely. The sails had been
loosed and hoisted and lowered again, and the
canvas found in good condition. The jibboom
had been run out, and the stays set up. The
stock of fresh water had been examined and found
plentiful, and the casks in the head brought out
and secured on the main deck. In short, the
American boatswain had worked with the judgment
and care of a master-rigger, of a great artist in
342 The Frozen PIRATE.
ropes, booms, and sails, and the schooner was
left to my hands as fit for any navigation as the
whaler that rôse and fell on our quarter.
But, as I have said, at half-past three in the
afternoon, the breeze began to sit in dark curls
upon the water, and there was evidence enough
in the haziness in the west, and in the loom of
the shoulders of vapour in the dark-blue obscure
there, to warrant a sackful for this capful pre:
sently. - -
“I reckon,” says the captain to me, after look-
ing into the west, “that we'd best knock off now.
There's snow and wind yonder, and we'd better
see all snug while there's time.”
He called to one of the men to tell the second
mate to come up from below and get the hatches
on, and bringing me to the rail, he pointed to a
boat, and asked if that would do 2 I said yes, and
thanked him heartily for the gift, which was hand.
some, I must say, the boat being a very good One,
though, to be sure, he had got many times its
value out of the schooner; and a party of men
were forthwith told off to get the boat hoisted and
stowed. -
“Now, Mr. Rodney,” said the captain, standing
in the gangway, “how can I serve you further?"
“Sir” said I, “you are very obliging. Two
things I stand sadly in need of: a chart of these
waters and a chronometer.”
“I’ll send you a chart,” said he, “that'll carry
ou as high as San Roque; but I've only got one
%hronometer, sir, and can't spare him.”
* Well then,” said I, “if, when you get aboard,

* .
I strike A BARGAIN WITH THE YANKEE. 343
you'll give me the time by your chronometer, I'll
set my watch by it; but I'll thank you very much
for the chart. The tracings below are as shapeless
as the moon setting in a fog.” i
“You shall have the chart,” said he, and then
called to Wilkinson and the two negroes.
“Lads,” said he, “you're quite content, I hope P”
They answered “Yes.”
"You've all three a claim upon me for the
amount of what's owing ye,” said he, “and when
you turn up at New Bedford you shall have it
—that's square. I see fifteen hundred dollars a
man on this job, if so be as ye don't broach
too thirstily as you go along. Mr. Rodney,
Joe here's a steady, 'spectable man, and’ll make
you a good mate. Cromwell and Billy Pitt are
black only in their hides; all else's as good as
white.”
He then shook me by the hand, and, calling
a farewell to Wilkinson and the negroes, scrambled
into the chains and dropped into his boat, very
highly satisfied, I make no doubt, with the busi-
ness he had done that day.
A boat's crew were left behind to help us to make
sail. But the weather looking somewhat wild in
the west with the red light of the sun among the
clouds there, and the dark heave of the swell
running into a sickly crimson under the sun
and then glowing out dusky again, I got them to
treble-reef the mainsail and hoist it, and then
thanking them, advised them to be off. Then,
putting Cromwell to the tiller, I went forward with
the others and set the topsail and forestaysail (the


344 THE FROzEN rº- º- º
spritsail lying furled), which would be show enough
of canvas till I saw what the weather was to be
like. I kept the topsail aback, waiting for a boat
to arrive with my chart, and in a few minutes
the boat we had cheered returned with what I
wanted.
Meanwhile they were shortening sail on the
whaler, and though she was no beauty, yet, I tell
you, I found her as picturesque as any ship I had
ever beheld as she lay with her main topgallant.
sail clewed up, her topsail yards on the caps,
and the heads of men knotting the reef-points
showing black over the white cloths, her hull
floating up out of the hollow and flinging a wet
orange gleam to the west, a tumble of creamy
foam about her to her rolling, shadows like the
passage of phantom hands hurrying over her sails
to the swaying of her masts, and the swelling sea
darkling from her into the east.
I hollowed my hands, and, hailing the captain,
who was on the quarter-deck, asked him for the
time by his chronometer. He flourished his arm
and disappeared and, presently returning, shouted
to know if I was ready. I put the key in my
watch and answered yes, and then he gave me
the time. My watch, though antique, was a noble
piece of mechanism, and I have little doubt, as
trustworthy as his chronometer. But I was care.
ful to let it lie snug in my hand. I did not want
the negro at the tiller nor the others to see it.
They would wonder that sp fine a jewelled piece
as this should be in the possession of the second
mate of a little brig, and it was my business to
l strike A BARGAIN WITH THE YANKEE. 345
manage that they never should have cause to
wonder at anything in that way.
The dusk of the evening came quick out of the
east, and the wind freshened with a long cry in
our rigging as if the eastern darkness was a foe
it was rushing out of the west to meet. I brought
the schooner north-north-east by my compass
and watched her behaviour anxiously. The swell
was on the quarter, and the wind and sea a trifle
abaft the larboard beam ; she leaned a little to
the weight of her clothes, but was surprisingly stiff
considering how light she was. , Wilkinson and the
negro came and stood by my side. The sea broke
heavily from the weather bow, and the water roared
white under the lee bends and spread astern in a
broad wake of foam. The whaler did not brace
his yards up till after we had started, and now
hung a pale faint mass in the windy darkness on
the quarter. A tincture of rusty red hovered like
Smoke coloured by the furnace that produces it,
in the west, but the night had drawn down quick
and dark; the washing noise of the water was
sharp, the wind piercingly cold; each sweep of
the schooner's masts to windward was followed
by a dull roaring of the blast rushing out of
the hollows of the canvas, and she swung to the
seas with wild yaws, but with regularity suffi-
cient to prove the strict government of the
helm. - - - - -
But it was being at seal homeward bound too!
There was no wish of mine, engendered by my
hideous loneliness on the ice, by my abhorred
association with the Frenchman, that I could not
g
346 - THE FRozen PIRATE.
refer to as, down to this moment, gratified. My
heart bounded; my spirits could not have been
higher had this ocean been the Thames, and
yonder dark flowing hills of water the banks of
Erith and the Gravesend shore.
. I turned to the three men: “My lads," said I,
“you prove yourselves fine bold fellows by thus
volunteering. Do not fear: if God guides us
home—to my home, I mean—you shall find a
handsome account in this business.”
“Six more chaps would have jined had
th’ole man bin willin’,” said Wilkinson. “But
best as it is, master, though she's a trifle short-
handed.”
“Why, yes,” said I; “but being fore and aſt,
you know! It isn't as if we'd got courses to hand
and topsails to reef.”
“Ay, ay, dat's de troof,” cried Billy Pitt. "I
tort o' dat. Fore an' aft makes de difference.
Don't guess I should hab volunteer had she been
a brig.”
“There are four of us,” said I. “You’re my
, chief mate, Wilkinson. Choose your watch."
“I choose Cromwell,” said he ; “he was in my
watch aboard the whaler.”
“Very well,” I exclaimed; and this being
settled, and both negroes declaring themselves
good cooks, we arranged that they should alter.
nately have the dressing of our victuals, that
Wilkinson should have the cabin next mine, and
the negroes the one in which the Frenchman had
slept, one taking the other's place as he was
relieved.
-

** -
I strike A BARGAIN WITH THE YANKEE, 347
I asked Wilkinson what he thought of the
schooner. He answered that he was watching
her. -
“There's nothing to find fault with yet,” said
he, “she's a whale at rolling, sartinly. I guess
she walks, though. I reckon she's had enough
of the sea, like me, and’s got the scent o' the
land in her nose. I guess old Noah wasn't far off
when her lines was laid. , Mebbe his sons had the
building of her. There's something scriptural in
her cut. How old's she, master?”
“Fifty years and more,” said I.
“Dere's nuffin' pertickler in dat,” cried Crom-
well. “I knows a wessel dat am a hundred an’
four year old, s'elp me as I stand."
“I don’t know how the whaler's heading,” said
I, “but this schooner's a canoe if we aren't drop-
ping her l’’
Indeed she was scarce visible astern, a mere
windy flicker hovering upon the pale flashings of
the foam. It might be perhaps that the whaler
was making a more northerly course than we,
and under very snug canvas, though ours was
snug enough, too; but be this as it may, I was
mighty pleased with the slipping qualities of the
schooner. I never could have dreamt that so
odd and ugly a figure of a ship would show such
heels. But I think this: we are too prone to view
the handiwork of our sires with contempt. I do
not know but that their ships were as fast as ours.
They made many good passages. They might
have proved themselves fleeter navigators had they
had the sextant and chronometer to help them
348 The Frozen Pirate.
along. Fifty years hence perhaps mankind
be laughing at our crudities; at us, by heaven,
flatter ourselves that the art of ship-building
navigation will never be carried higher than the
pitch to which we have raised them! -
Cromwell being at the tiller, I told Billy Pitt tº
go below and get supper, instructing him what to
dress and how much to melt for a bowl, for as
you know there was nothing but spirits and Wilſº
to season our repasts with. I saw Cromwell gº
widely into the binnacle candle flame when he
heard me talk of ham, tongue, sweetmeats, ſº
malade and the like for supper, together with *
can of hot claret, and knowing sailor's natuº
middling well, I did not doubt that the fare of the
schooner would bring the three men more intolo"
with the adventure than even the reward that W*
to follow it.
I had noticed that the bundles which had been
sent from the whaler as belonging to the P",
fellows were meagre enough and showed indeed
fike the end of a long voyage, and I detaine
Billy Pitt a minute whilst ſtold them that tº
was a handsome stock of clothes in the cabins,
together with linen, boots, and other articlesoft”
sort; that, though the coats, breeches, *
waistcoats were of bright colour and old-fashioned
they would keep them as warm as if they hº
been cut by a tailor of to-day.
“These things,” said I, “you can wear at .
keeping your own clothes ready to slip on should
we be spoken or to wear when we arº,";
England. To-morrow they shall be divided


ºw-
I strike A BARGAIN WITH THE YANKEE. 349
among you, and they will become your property.
The suit you saw me in to-day is all that I shall
need.” -
Both negroes burst into a most diverting laugh
of joy on hearing this. Nothing delights a black
man more than coloured apparel. They had
seen the clothes in the forecastle and guessed
the kind of garments I meant to present them
with.
Whilst supper was getting, I walked the deck
with Wilkinson, both of us keeping a bright look-
out, for it was blowing, fresh ; the darkness lay
thick about us, there might be ice near us, and
the schooner was storming under her reefed main-
sail, topsail, and staysail through the hollow seas,
thundering with a great roaring seething noise
into the trough, and lifting to the foaming slope
with her masts wildly aslant. I talked to my
companion very freely, being anxious to find out
what kind of person he was, and I must say that
there was something in his conversation that im-
pressed me very favourably. He told me that he
had a wife at New Bedford, that he was heartily
sick of the sea, and that he hoped the money he
would get by this adventure, added to his lay,
would enable him to set up for himself ashore.
“Well,” said I, “we will see to-morrow what
cargo Captain Tucker has left us. But that you
may be under no misapprehension, Wilkinson, if
we are fortunate, enough to bring the ship safely
to England, I will enter into a bond to pay you
five hundred pounds sterling for your share one
week after the date of our arrival.”
340 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
`
smallest of his boats for it I should be very much
obliged. -
“Oh, yes,” says he, “you can have a boat.
The men would not sail with you without a boat;"
and after weighing the crucifix without the least
exhibition of veneration in his manner, he put it in
his pocket, saying he knew a man who would give
him a couple of hundred dollars for the thing on
his telling him that the Pope had blessed it.
“Ay, but,” says I, “how do you know the Pope
has blessed it P” -
“Then I'll bless it,” cried he; “why, am I a
cold Johnny-cake that my blessing ain't as good |
as another man's P” * º
I was glad I had hidden the black flag; I |
mean, that I had stowed it away in the cabin of
the Frenchman after he was dead. The Yankee
needed but the sight to make his suspicions of the
original character of the Boca del Dragon flame
up; and you may suppose that I was exceedingly
anxious he should not be sure that the schooner
had been a pirate, lest he might have been tempted
to scrutinize her rather more closely than would
have been agreeable to me. -
He asked me if I had met with any money, in
her ; and I answered evasively that in searching
the dead man on the rocks, I had discovered a few
pieces in his pocket, but that I had left them,
being much too melancholy and convinced of my
approaching end to meddle with such a useless
commodity. From time to time he would quit
me to go to the hatch, and sing down orders to
the second mate in the hold. How many casks
I strike A BARGAIN WITH THE YANKEE. 341
he meant to take I did not know; when he asked
me how much I would give, I replied: “Leave me
enough to keep me ballasted; that will satisfy me.”
The high swell demanded caution, but they
managed wonderfully well. They never swun
more than three casks into a boat, and with this
cargo she would row away to the ship that lay
hove-to close, and the men in her hoisted the
casks aboard. -
The wind remained light till half-past three ;
it then freshened a bit. Though all hands had
knocked off at noon to get dinner—and a fine meal
I gave them of ham, tongue, beef, biscuits, wine,
and brandy—by half-past three they had eased
the hold of ten boatloads of casks, besides clear-
ing out the whole of the clothes from the forecastle
along with as much of the bedding as we did not
require; and I began to think that my Yankee
intended to leave me a clean ship to carry heme,
though I durst not remonstrate. Yet was my
turn handsomely served too. The pumps had
been cleared and tried, and found to work well,
and—which was glad news to me—the well found
dry. The running rigging had been overhauled,
and it travelled handsomely. The sails had been
loosed and hoisted and lowered again, and the
canvas found in good condition. The jibboom
had been run out, and the stays set up. The
stock of fresh water had been examined and found
plentiful, and the casks in the head brought out
and secured on the main deck. In short, the
American boatswain had worked with the judgment
and care of a master-rigger, of a great artist in
34, the Frozen PIRATE.
ropes, booms, and sails, and the schooner was
left to my hands as fit for any navigation as the
whaler that rôse and fell on our quarter.
But, as I have said, at half-past three in the
afternoon, the breeze began to sit in dark curls
upon the water, and there was evidence enough
in the haziness in the west, and in the loom of
the shoulders of vapour in the dark-blue obscure
there, to warrant a sackful for this capful pre:
sently. -
“I reckon,” says the captain to me, after look-
ing into the west, “that we'd best knock off now.
There's snow and wind yonder, and we'd better
see all snug while there's time.”
He called to one of the men to tell the second
mate to come up from below and get the hatches
on, and bringing me to the rail, he pointed to a
boat, and asked if that would do 2 I said yes, and
thanked him heartily for the gift, which was hand-
some, I must say, the boat being a very good one,
though, to be sure, he had got many times its
value out of the schooner; and a party of men
were forthwith told off to get the boat hoisted and
stowed. -
“Now, Mr. Rodney,” said the captain, standing
in the gangway," how can I serve you further?”
“Sir” said I, “you are very obliging. Two
things I stand sadly in need of: a chart of these
waters and a chronometer.”
“I’ll send you a chart,” said he, “that'll carry
ou as high as San Roque; but I've only got one
£hronometer, sir, and can't spare him.”
“Well then,” said I, “if, when you get aboard,



I --
I strike A BARGAIN WITH THE YANKEE. 343
you'll give me the time by your chronometer, I'll
set my watch by it; but I’ll thank you very much
for the chart. The tracings below are as shapeless
as the moon setting in a fog.” t
“You shall have the chart,” said he, and then
called to Wilkinson and the two negroes.
“Lads,” said he, “you're quite content, I hope P”
They answered “Yes.”
"You've all three a claim upon me for the
amount of what's owing ye,” said he, “and when
you turn up at New Bedford you shall have it
—that's square. I see fifteen hundred dollars a
man on this job, if so be as ye don't broach
too thirstily as you go along. Mr. Rodney,
Joe here's a steady, 'spectable man, and’ll make
you a good mate. Cromwell and Billy Pitt are
black only in their hides; all else's as good as
white.”
He then shook me by the hand, and, calling
a farewell to Wilkinson and the negroes, scrambled
into the chains and dropped into his boat, very
highly satisfied, I make no doubt, with the busi-
ness he had done that day.
A boat's crew were left behind to help us to make
sail. But the weather looking somewhat wild in
the west with the red light of the sun among the
clouds there, and the dark heave of the swell
running into a sickly crimson under the sun
and then glowing out dusky again, I got them to
treble-reef the mainsail and hoist it, and then
thanking them, advised them to be off. Then,
putting Cromwell to the tiller, I went forward with
the others and set the topsail and forestaysail (the
...
º
spritsail lying furled), which would be show *
of canvas till I saw what the weather was to be
like. I kept the topsail aback, waiting for a boat
to arrive with my chart, and in a few minutes
the boat we had cheered returned with what I
wanted.
Meanwhile they were shortening sail on the
whaler, and though she was no beauty, yet, I tell
you, I found her as picturesque as any ship I had
ever beheld as she F. with her main topgallant.
sail clewed up, her topsail yards on the caps,
and the heads of men knotting the reef-points
showing black over the white cloths, her hull
floating up out of the hollow and flinging a wet
orange gleam to the west, a tumble of creamy
foam about her to her rolling, shadows like the
passage of 'phantom hands hurrying over her sails
to the swaying of her masts, and the swelling sea
darkling from her into the east.
I hollowed my hands, and, hailing the captain,
who was on the quarter-deck, asked him for the
time by his chronometer. He flourished his arm
and disappeared and, presently returning, shouted
to know if I was ready. I put the key in my
watch and answered yes, and then he gave me
the time. My watch, though antique, was a noble
piece of mechanism, and I have little doubt, as
trustworthy as his chronometer. But I was care.
ful to let it lie snug in my hand. I did not want
the negro at the tiller nor the others to see it,
They would wonder that sp fine a jewelled piece
as this should be in the possession of the second
mate of a little brig, and it was my business to
344 THE FROZEN PIRATE. º
I strike A BARGAIN WITH THE YANKEE. 345
manage that they never should have cause to
wonder at anything in that way.
The dusk of the evening came quick out of the
east, and the wind freshened with a long cry in
our rigging as if the eastern darkness was a foe
it was rushing out of the west to meet. I brought
the schooner north-north-east by my compass
and watched her behaviour anxiously. The swell
was on the quarter, and the wind and sea a trifle
abaft the larboard beam ; she leaned a little to
the weight of her clothes, but was surprisingly stiff
considering how light she was. , Wilkinson and the
negro came and stood by my side. The sea broke
heavily from the weather bow, and the water roared
white under the lee bends and spread astern in a
broad wake of foam. The whaler did not brace
his yards up till after we had started, and now
hung a pale faint mass in the windy darkness on
the quarter. A tincture of rusty red hovered like
smoke coloured by the furnace that produces it,
in the west, but the night had drawn down quick
and dark; the washing noise of the water was
sharp, the wind piercingly cold; each sweep of
the schooner's masts to windward was followed
by a dull roaring of the blast rushing out of
the hollows of the canvas, and she swung to the
seas with wild yaws, but with regularity suffi-
cient to prove the strict government of the
helm. -
But it was being at seal homeward bound too!
There was no wish of mine, engendered by my
hideous loneliness on the ice, by my abhorred
association with the Frenchman, that I could not
º
g


346 The Frozen Pirate.
refer to as, down to this moment, gratified. My
heart bounded; my spirits could not have been
higher had this ocean been the Thames, and
yonder dark flowing hills of water the banks of
Erith and the Gravesend shore.
. I turned to the three men: “My lads," said I,
“you prove yourselves fine bold fellows by thus
volunteering. Do not fear; if God guides us
home—to my home, I mean—you shall find a
handsome account in this business.”
“Six more chaps would have jined had
th’ole man bin willin’,” said Wilkinson. “But
best as it is, master, though she's a trifle short-
handed.”
“Why, yes,” said I; “but being fore and aft,
you know! It isn't as if we'd got courses to hand
and topsails to reef.”
“Ay, ay, dat's de troof,” cried Billy Pitt. "I
tort o' dat. Fore an' aft makes de difference.
Don't guess I should hab volunteer had she been
a brig.”
“There are four of us,” said I. “You’re my
, chief mate, Wilkinson. Choose your watch."
“I choose Cromwell,” said he ; “he was in my
watch aboard the whaler.”
“Very well,” I exclaimed; and this being
settled, and both negroes declaring themselves
good cooks, we arranged that they should alter.
nately have the dressing of our victuals, that
Wilkinson should have the cabin next mine, and
the negroes the one in which the Frenchman had
slept, one taking the other's place as he was
relieved.
I strike A BARGAIN WITH THE YANKEE. 347
I asked Wilkinson what he thought of the
schooner. He answered that he was watching
her. -
“There's nothing to find fault with yet,” said
he, “she's a whale at rolling, sartinly. I guess
she walks, though. I reckon she's had enough
of the sea, like me, and’s got the scent o' the
land in her nose. I guess old Noah wasn't far off
when her lines was laid. , Mebbe his sons had the
building of her. There's something scriptural in
her cut. How old's she, master?”
“Fifty years and more,” said I.
“Dere's nuffin' pertickler in dat,” cried Crom-
well. “I knows a wessel dat am a hundred an'
four year old, s'elp me as I stand.”
“I don’t know how the whaler's heading,” said
I, “but this schooner's a canoe if we aren't drop-
ping her l’”
Indeed she was scarce visible astern, a mere
windy flicker hovering upon the pale flashings of
the foam. It might be perhaps that the whaler
was making a more northerly course than we,
and under very snug canvas, though ours was
Snug enough, too; , but be this as it may, I was
mighty pleased with the slipping qualities of the
Schooner. I never could have dreamt that so
9dd and ugly a figure of a ship would show such
heels. But I think this: we are too prone to view
the handiwork of our sires with contempt. I do
not know but that their ships were as fast as ours.
* They made many good passages. They might
have proved themselves fleeter navigators had they
had the sextant and chronometer to help them
/
348 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
along. Fifty years hence perhaps mankind will
be laughing at our crudities; at us, by heaven, who
flatter ourselves that the art of ship-building and
navigation will never be carried higher than the
pitch to which we have raised them I
Cromwell being at the tiller, I told Billy Pitt to
go below and get supper, instructing him what to
dress and how much to melt for a bowl, for as
you know there was nothing but spirits and wine
to season our repasts with. I saw Cromwell grin
widely into the binnacle candle flame when he
heard me talk of ham, tongue, sweetmeats, mar-
malade and the like for supper, together with a
can of hot claret, and knowing sailor's nature
middling well, I did not doubt that the fare of the
schooner would bring the three men more into love
with the adventure than even the reward that was
to follow it. - - -
I had noticed that the bundles which had been
sent from the whaler as belonging to the poor
fellows were meagre enough and showed indeed
like the end of a long voyage, and I detained
Billy Pitt a minute whilst I told them that there
was a handsome stock of clothes in the cabins,
together with linen, boots, and other articles of that
sort; that, though the coats, breeches, and
waistcoats were of bright colour and old-fashioned,
they would keep them as warm as if they had
been cut by a tailor of to-day. -
“These things,” said I, “you can wear at sea,
keeping your own clothes ready to slip on should
we be spoken or to wear when we arrive in
England. To-morrow they shall be divided

1 STRIKE A BARGAIN WITH THE YANKEE. 349
among you, and they will become your property.
The suit you saw me in to-day is all that I shall
need.”
Both negroes burst into a most diverting laugh
of joy on hearing this. Nothing delights a black
man more than coloured apparel. They had
seen the clothes in the forecastle and guessed
the kind of garments. I meant to present them
with.
Whilst supper was getting, I walked the deck
with Wilkinson, both of us keeping a bright look-
out, for it was blowing, fresh ; the darkness lay
thick about us, there might be ice near us, and
the schooner was storming under her reefed main-
sail, topsail, and staysail through the hollow seas,
thundering with a great roaring seething noise
into the trough, and lifting to the foaming slope
with her masts wildly aslant. I talked to my
companion very freely, being anxious to find out
what kind of person he was, and I must say that
there was something in his conversation that im-
pressed me very favourably. He told me that he
had a wife at New Bedford, that he was heartily
sick of the sea, and that he hoped the money he
would get by this adventure, added to his lay,
would enable him to set up for himself ashore.
“Well,” said I, “we will see to-morrow what
cargo Captain Tucker has left us. But that you
may be under no misapprehension, Wilkinson, if
we are fortunate enough to bring the ship safely
to England, I will enter into a bond to pay you
five hundred pounds sterling for your share one
week after the date of our arrival."
350 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
He answered that if he could get that sum he
would be a made man for life. “But it's too
much to expect, sir,” says he.
I told him that he hº no idea of the value of the
cargo. The wines and spirits were of such a quality
I would stake my interest in the schooner in
their fetching a large sum of money. -
“That'll depend,” said he, “on how much the
capt'n left us.” -
“He helped himself freely,” I answered, “but
we are well off too. You shall judge to-morrow.
Then there's the schooner—as she stands:
besides a noble stock of stores of all kinds, sails,
ropes, tools, ammunition and several chests of
small arms. I tell you I will give you five hundred
pounds for your share.” -
His satisfaction was expressed by his silence.
“But," continued I, “we must act with judg-
ment. What we have we must keep. Are the
negroes trustworthy men P” - -
“Yes, they are honest fellows. I wouldn't
have shipped with them else.”
“We shall not require much for ourselves,"
said I, “and the rest we'll batten down and keep
snug. There'll be some manoeuvring needed in
order to come off clear with this booty when we
arrive: but there's plenty of time to think that
over, and our business till then is to look after
the ship and pray for luck to keep clear of any-
thing hostile.' * * -
And then we fell to other talk; in the course of
which he told me he was an Englishman born,
but having been pressed into a man-o-war,
º-
. I vaLUE THE LADING. 35 I
deserted her at Halifax and made several voyages
in American ships. He was wrecked on the Peru-
vian coast and became a beachcomber, and then
got a berth in a whaler. He married at New
Bedford and sailed with Captain Tucker—this
was his second whaling trip, he said, and he
wanted no more. I told him I was glad to learn
that he was a countryman of mine, but not sur-
prised. His speech was well-larded with ameri-
canisms, “but,” said I, “the true twang is
wanting, and,” added I, laughing, “I should
know you for Hampshire for all your reckons and
guesses if I had to eat you should I be mis-
taken.” " -
“The press-gang's the best friend the Yankees
has,” said he a little sheepishly. “Do any man
suppose I hadn't sooner hail from my native town
Southampton than from New Bedford 2 Half the
American folksles is made up of Yankees who'd
prove hearts of oak if it wasn't for the press.”
His candour gratified me as showing that he
already looked upon me as a shipmate to be
trusted, and, as I have said, this first chat
with the man left me strongly disposed to
consider myself fortunate in having him as an
associate.
CHAPTER XXIX.
I VALUE THE LADING.
The day had been so full of business, there had
been so much to engage my mind, that it was not
until I was seated at supper in the old cook-room
352 THE FROzEN PIRATE,
in which I had passed so many melancholy hours,
that I found myself able to . a calm survey of
my situation, and to compare the various motions
of my fortunes. I could scarcely indeed believe
that I was not in a dream from which I should
awake presently, and discover myself still securely
imprisoned in the ice, and all those passages of
the powder-blasts, the liberation of the schooner,
my º days. in her afloat, my encounter with
the whaler, as visionary and vanishing as those
dusky forms of vapour which had swarmed in
giant-shape over my little open boat.
But even if confirmation had been wanting in
the sable visage of Billy Pitt, who sat near the
furnace munching away with prodigious enjoyment
of his food and bringing his can of hot spiced
wine from his vast blubber lips with a mighty sigh
of deep delight, I must have found it in each
hissing leap and roaring plunge of the old piratical
bucket, so full of the vitality of the wind-swollen
canvas, so quick with all the life-instincts of a
vessel storming through the deep with buoyant
keel and under full control. Oh, heaven! how
different from the dull ambling of the morning,
the sluggish pitching and rolling to the weak
pulling of the spritsail! -
Wilkinson and Cromwell kept the deck whilst
Billy Pitt and I got our supper, and I had some
talk with my negro, who seemed to be a very
simple childish fellow, heartily in love with his
stomach and very eager to see England. He told
me that he had heard it was a fine country, and his
wish to see it was one reason of his volunteering.
I value THE LADING. 353
“Dey say,” said he, “dat Lunnon's a very fine
place, sah, bigger dan Philadelphy, and dat a
man's skin don'tell agin him among de yaller gals
dere.”
I laughed and said, that in my country people
were judged rather by the colour of their hearts
than by the hue of their faces.
“But dollars count for something too, sah, I
spects P’’ said he. -
“Why, yes,” said I, “with dollars enough you
can make black white in England.”
“Hum!” cried he, scratching his head. “I
guess it 'ud take an almighty load of dollars to
make me white, massa.”
“Put money in your pocket and chink it,” said
I, “and your face'll be found white enough, I
warrant.”
“By golly!” cried he, “I’ll do it den. S'elp
me de Lord, massa, I’d chink twenty year for a
white face. Dat comes ob bein’ civilized. Tell'ee
what dey dew, massa, dey makes you feel like a
white man, but dey lets you keep black, blast
'em ! jj ©
I checked his excitement by telling him that
in my country he would find that the negro was a
person held in very high esteem, that the women
in particular valued him for that very dinginess
which the Americans found distasteful, and told
him that I could name several ladies of quality
who had married their black servants.
He looked surprised, but not incredulous, and
said in his peculiar dialect that he had no doubt
I spoke the truth, as he had always heard that
- A a
354 The FROZEN PIRATE.
England was a fine country to live in. I then led
him insensibly from this topic to talk of the sea
and his experiences, and found that he had seen
a very great deal, having been freed when young,
and keeping to the ocean ever since in many
different sorts of craft. Indeed, I was as much
pleased with him as with Wilkinson, but then I had
foreseen a simplicity in both the negroes, and in ex-
pectation of finding this quality, so useful to one in
my strange position, I was overjoyed when they con-
sented to help me sail the schooner to the Thames.
We went on deck to relieve Wilkinson and
Cromwell. Billy Pitt took the tiller and I walked
to either rail and stared into the darkness. It
was very thick with occasional squalls of snow,
which put a screaming as of tortured cats into
the wind as they swung through it. The sea was
high, but the schooner was making excellent
weather of it, whilst she rolled and pitched through
the troubled darkness at seven knots in the hour.
'Twas noble useful sailing, yet a speed not to be
relished in these waters amid so deep a shadow.
Still the temptation, to “hold on all,” as we
say, was very great; every mile carried us by so
much nearer to the temperate parallels, and
shortened to that extent the long, long passage
that lay before us, -
I was pacing the deck briskly, for the wind was
horribly keen, when Pitt suddenly called out, “I
say, massal” - - -
“Hullo,” I replied.
“Sah,” he cried, “I smell ice l’
I knew that this was a capacity not un-
I value THE LADING. 355
common among men who had voyaged much in
the frosty regions of the deep, and instantly
exclaimed, “Luff, then, luff] shake the way out
of her l’’ sniffing as I spoke, but detecting no
added shrewdness in the air that was already
freezingly cold. He put the helm down, and I
called to the others below to come on deck and
flatten in the main sheet. They were up in a trice
and tailed on with me, asking no questions, till we
had the boom nearly amidships.
I was about to speak when Wilkinson cried out,
“I smell ice.” He sniffed a moment : “Yes,
there's an island aboard. Anybody see it?”
“Ay, dere it am, sure enough l’’ cried Crom-'
well. “Dere—on de lee-bow—see it, sah P. See
it, Billy *"
Yes, I saw it plain enough when I knew where
to look for it. "'Twas just such another lump of
faintness as had wrecked the Laughing Mary, a
mass of dull spectral light upon the throbbing
blackness, and it lay exactly in a line with the
course we had been steering when Pitt first called
out, so that assuredly we had not shifted our
helm a minute too soon. We chopped and wal-
lowed past it slowly, keeping a sharp look-out for
like apparitions in other quarters, and when it had
disappeared, I made up my mind to heave the
schooner to and keep her in that posture till
daylight, unless the night cleared. So we got
the mainsail down and stowed it, clewed up the
top-sail (which I lent a hand to roll up), and let
the vessel lie under a reefed foresail with her
helm lashed. The weather, however, must have




A a 2
356 THE FROZEN PIRATE,
ultimately compelled what the thickness had
required; for by ten o'clock it was blowing a
hard gale, with a frequent hoariness of 'ouds
of snow upon the blackness, the seas very high and
foaming, and the wind crying madly in the rigging,
I let some time go by, and then sounded the
well and found no more water than the depth at
which the pumps sucked. This did wonders in the
way of reassuring the men, who were rendered
uneasy by the violent motions of the unwieldy
vessel, and by the very harsh straining noises
which rose out of the hold, which latter they would
naturally attribute to the craziness of the fabric,
though the true cause of it lay in the number of
loose, movable bulkheads.
“It's amazin' to me that she holds together at
all,” cried Wilkinson, “so ancient she is 1"
“She's only old,” said I, “in the sound of the
years she's been in existence. The ice has kept
her young. Would the hams and tongues we're
eating be taken to be half a century old 2 yet
where could you buy sweeter and better meat of
the kind ashore ? A ship's well is your only honest
reporter of her condition. Ours has vouched in a
way that should keep you easy.”
“Arter de Soosan Zucker dis is like bein’ hung
up to dry,” exclaimed one of the negroes. “It
war pump, pump dere and no mistake. I call dis
a werry beautiful little sheep, massa; yes, s'elp me
de Lord, dere's nuffin could persuade me she ain't
what I says she am.” -
However, I was up and down a good deal during
the night. But for the treasure I should have
I VALUE THE Laosa. ****** *
357
been, less anxious, I dare say. I had come so
successfully to this point that I was resolved, if
my hopes were to miscarry, the misfortune should
not be owing to want of vigilance on my part; and
there happened an incident which inevitably tended
to sharpen my watchfulness, though I was per-
fectly conscious there was a million to one against
its occurring a second time. I came on deck to
relieve Wilkinson, at midnight, after a half-hour's
nodding doze by the furnace below. He went to
his cabin; I stood under the lee of a cloth seized
in the weather main rigging. Pitt arrived, and I
told him he could return to the cook-house and
stay there till I called him. The helm being
lashed, and the schooner doing very well, nothing
wanted watching in particular, yet I would not
have the deck abandoned, and meant to keep a
look-out, turn and turn about with Pitt, as Wilkin-
son and Cromwell had. The snow had ceased ;
but it was very dark and thick, the ocean a roaring
shadow, palpitating upon the eyes in rolling
folds of blackness, with the quick expiring
flash of foam to windward. On a sudden, looking
over the weather quarter, methought I discerned
a deeper shade in the night there than was else-
where perceptible. It was like a great blot of
ink upon the darkness. Even whilst I specu-
lated, it drew out in the shape of a ship running
before the gale. She seemed to be heading
directly for us. The roof of my mouth turned dr
as desert-sand; my tongue and limbs refused their
office; I could neither cry nor stir, being indeed
paralyzed by the terrible suddenness of that
358 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
apparition and the imminence of our peril. It all
happened whilst you could have told thirty. The
great black mass surged up with the water boiling
about the bows; she brought a thunder along
with her in her rigging and sails as she soared to
the crowns of the seas she was sweeping before.
I could not tell what canvas she was under, but
her speed was a full ten knots, and as I did not
see her till she was close, she looked to come
upon us as with a single bound. She passed us
to windward within a stone's throw, and vanished
like a dark cloud melting into the surrounding
blackness. Not a gleam of light broke from her;
you heard nothing but the boiling at her bows and
the thunderous pealing of the gale in her canvas.
A quarter turn of the wheel would have sent us to
the bottom, and her, no doubt, on top of us.
Whether she was the Susan Tucker, or some
other whaler, or a big South-Sea-man driven low
and getting what easting she could out of the
gale, I know not. She was as complete a mystery
of the ocean night as any spectral fabric, and a
heavier terror to me than a phantasm worked by
ghosts could have proved.
I knew such a thing could not happen again,
yet when I called Pitt I talked to him about it as
though we must certainly be run down if he did
not keep a sharp look-out, and when my watch
below came round at four o'clock, I was so agitated
that I was up and down till daybreak, as though
my duty did not end till then.
The gale moderated at sunrise, and, though it
was a gloomy, true Cape Horn morning, with dark
-

****
I value THE LADING. 359
driving clouds, the sea a dusky olive, very hollow,
and frequent small quick squalls of sleet which
brought the wind to us in sharp guns, yet as we
could see where we were going, I got the schooner
before it, heading her east-north-east, and under a
reefed topsail, mainsail, and staysail, the old bucket
stormed through it with the sputter and rage of a
line-of-battle ship. There was a log-reel and line
on deck, and I found a sand-glass in the chest in
my cabin in which I had met with the quadrants,
perspective glass, and the like, and I kept this log
regularly going, marking a point of departure on
the chart the American captain had given me,
which I afterwards found to be within two leagues
and a half of the true position. But for three days
the weather continued so heavy that there was
nothing to be done in the shape of gratifying the
men's expectations by overhauling what was left
of the cargo. Indeed, we had no leisure for such
work; all our waking hours had to be strictly
dedicated to the schooner, and in keeping a look-
out for ice. But the morning, of the fourth day
broke with a fine sky and a brisk breeze from a
little to the east of south, to which we showed
every cloth the schooner had to throw abroad,
and being now by dead reckoning within a few
leagues of the meridian of sixty degrees, I shaped
a course north by east by my compass, with the
design of getting a view of Staten Island that I
might correct my calculations. f
When we had made sail and got our breakfast,
I told Wilkinson and Cromwell (Pitt being at the
tiller) that now was a good opportunity for in-
*******

360 THE FROZEN PIRATE,
specting the contents of the hold; and (not to
be tedious in this part of my relation, however I
may have sinned in this respect elsewhere) we
carried lanthorns below, and spent the better part
of the forenoon in taking stock. From a copy of
the memorandum I made on that occasion (still in
my possession), we discovered that the Yankee
captain had left us the following: thirty casks
of rum, twenty-eight hogsheads of claret, seventy-
five casks of brandy, fifty of sherry, and eighteen
cases of beer in bottles. In addition to this were
the stores in the lazarette (besides a quantity of
several kinds of wine in jars, &c.) elsewhere
enumerated, besides all the ship's furniture, her
guns, powder, small-arms, &c., as well as the
ship herself. I took the men into the run and
showed them the chests, opening the little one
which I had stocked with small-arms, and lifting
the lids of two or three of the others. They were
perfectly satisfied, fully believing all the chests to
be filled with small-arms and nothing else, and
so we came away and returned to the cabin,
where, to please them, I put down the value of
the cargo at a venture, setting figures against
each article, and making out a total of two thou-
sand six hundred and forty pounds. This of course
included the ship. - -
“How much 'll dat be a man, massa?" asked
Cromwell. |
“Six hundred and sixty pounds,” I answered.
The poor fellow was so transported that, after
staring at me in silence with the corners of his
… . . a º - *-*.
--~~~#4&. & 3. - - - - - - ... see”, a - !
********** ºr
3. * : *:: º
* * * * - —
I value THE LADING. 36 I
mouth stretched to his ears, he tossed up his lands,
burst into a roar of laughter, and made several
skips about the deck.
“Of course,” said I, addressing Wilkinson,
“my figures may be ahead or short of the truth.
But if you are disposed to take the chance, I'll
tell you what I'll do; I'll stand by my figures,
accepting the risk of the value of the lading being
less than what I say it is, and undertake to give
each man of you six hundred and sixty pounds
for your share.” -
“Well, sir,” said he, “I don't know that I ought
to object. But a few pounds is a matter of great
consequence to me, and I reckon if these here
goods and the wessel should turn out to be worth
more than ye offer, the loss 'ud go agin the grit,
ay, if 'twere twenty dollars a man.”
I laughed, and told him to let the matter rest,
there was plenty of time before us; I should be
willing to stand to my offer even if I lost by it, so
heartily obliged was I to them for coming to my
assistance. And in this I spoke the truth, though,
as you will understand who know my position, I
had to finesse. It went against my conscience.
to make out that the chests were full of small-
arms, but I should have been mad to tell them
the truth, and, perhaps, by the truth made devils
of men who were, and promised to remain, steady,
temperate, honest fellows. I was not governed
by the desire to keep all the treasure to myself;
no, I vow to God I should have been glad to give
them a moiety of it, had I not apprehended the
362 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
very gravest consequences if I were candid with
them. But this, surely, must be so plain that it
is idle to go on insisting on it.
The fine weather, the golden issue that was to
attend our successful navigation, the satisfactory
behaviour of the schooner, put us into a high
good-humour with one another; and when it came
to my collecting all the clothes in the after cabins
and distributing them among the three men, I
thought Billy Pitt and Cromwell would have gone
mad with delight. To the best of my recollection
the apparel that had been left us by the American
captain (who, as you know, had cleared the fore-
castle of the clothes there) consisted of several
coats of cut velvet, trimmed with gold and silver
lace, some frocks of white drab with large plate
buttons, brocade waistcoats of blue satin and
green silk, crimson and other coloured cloth
breeches, along with some cloaks, three-corner
hats, black and white stockings, a number of
ruffled shirts, and other articles, of which I recol-
lect the character, though my ignorance of the
costumes of that period prevents me from naming
them.
Any one acquainted with the negro's delight in
coloured clothes will hardly need to be told of the
extravagant joy raised in the black breasts of
Cromwell and Pitt by my distribution of this fine
attire. The lace, to be sure, was tarnished, and
some of the colours faded, but all the same the
apparel furnished a brave show; and such was
the avidity with which the poor creatures snatched
at the garments as I offered them first to one and



I VALUE THE LADING. 363
then another, that I believe they would have been
perfectly satisfied with the clothes alone as pay-
ment for their services. I made this distribution
on the quarter-deck, or little poop, rather, that all
might be present: Wilkinson was at the tiller,
and appeared highly delighted with the bundle
allotted him, saying that he might reckon upon a
hearty welcome from his wife when she came to
know what was in his chest. The negroes were
wild to clothe themselves at once; I advised them
to wait for the warm weather, but they were too
impatient to put on their fine feathers to heed my
advice. They ran below, and were gone half an
hour, during which time I have no doubt they
put on all they had; and when at last they
returned, their appearance was so exquisitely
absurd that I laughed till I came near to suffocat-
ing. Each negro had tied a silver laced hat on to
his woolly head ; one wore a pair of crimson, the
other a pair of black, velvet breeches; over their
cucumber shanks they had drawn white silk
stockings, regardless of the cold; their feet were
encased in buckled shoes, and their costumes
were completed by scarlet and blue waistcoats
which fell to their knees, and crimson and blue
coats with immense skirts. What struck me as
most astonishing was their gravity. Their self-
complacency was prodigious ; they eyed each
other with dignified approbation, and strutted
with the air of provincial mayors and aldermen
newly arrived from the presence of royalty.
“They're in keepin’ with the schooner, any
ways,” said Wilkinson.
364 The Frozen PIRATE.
And so perhaps they were. The antique fabric
needed the sparkle of those costumes on her deck
to make her aspect fit in with the imaginations she
bred. But, as I had anticipated, the cold proved
too powerful for their conceit, and they were
presently glad to ship their more modern trousers,
though they clung obstinately to their waistcoats,
and could not be persuaded to remove their hats on
any account whatever,
CHAPTER XXX.
OUR PROGRESS TO THE CHANNEL.
WHEN I started to relate my adventure I never
designed to write an account of the journey home
at large. On the contrary, I foresaw that, by the
time I had arrived at this part, you would have had
enough of the sea. Let me now, then, be as brief
as possible.
The melting of the ice and the slowly increas-
ing power of the sun were inexpressibly consoling
to me who had had so much of the cold that I do
protest if Elysium were bleak, no matter how
radiant, and the abode of the fiends as hot as it
is pictured, I would choose to turn my back upon
the angels. I cannot say, however, that the
schooner was properly thawed until we were hard
upon the parallels of the Falkland Islands; she
then showed her timbers naked to the sun, and
exposed a brown solid deck rendered ugly by
several dark patches which, scrape as we might,
we could not obliterate. We struck the guns
into the hold for the better ballasting of the
OUR PROGRESS to THE CHANNEL. 365
vessel, got studding-sail booms aloft, overhauled
her suits of canvas and found a great square sail
which proved of inestimable importance in light
winds and in running. After the ice was wholly
melted out of her frame she made a little water,
yet not so much but that half an hour's spell at the
pump twice a day easily freed her. But, curi-
ously enough, at the end of a fortnight she
became tight again, which I attribute to the
swelling of her timbers.
We were a slender company, but we managed
extraordinarily well. The men were wonderfully
content; I never heard so much as a murmur
escape one of them; they never exceeded
their rations nor asked for a drop more of liquor
than we had agreed among us should be served
out. But, as I had anticipated, our security lay
in our slenderness. We were too few for disaffec-
tion. The negroes were as simple as children,
Wilkinson looked to find his account in a happy
arrival, and if I was not, strictly speaking, their
captain, I was their navigator without whom their
case would have been as perilous as mine was on
the ice.
Outside the natural dangers of the sea we had
but one anxiety, and that concerned our being
chased and taken. This fear was heartily shared
by my companions, to whom I also represented that
it must be our business to give even the ships of
our country a wide berth; for, though I had long
since flung all the compromising bunting over.
board, and destroyed all the papers I could come
across, which being written in a language I was
* * *

366 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
-
ignorant of, might, for all I knew, contain some
damning information, a British ship would be
sure to board us and I should have to tell the
truth or take the risks of prevaricating. If I told
the truth, then I should have to admit that the
lading of the vessel was piratical plunder; and
though I knew not how the law stood with regard
to booty rescued from certain destruction after
the lapse of hard upon half a century, yet it was
a hundred to one that the whole would be claimed
in the king's name under a talk of restitution,
which signified that we should never hear more of
it. On the other hand prevarication would not
fail to excite suspicion, and on our not being able
to satisfactorily account for our possession of the
ship and what was in her, it might end in our
actually being seized as pirates and perhaps
executed. + -
This reasoning went very well with the men and
filled them with such anxiety that they were for
ever on the look-out for a sail. But, as you may
guess, my own solicitude sank very much deeper;
for, supposing the schooner to be rummaged by
an English crew, it was as certain as that my
hand was affixed to my arm that the chests of
treasure would be transhipped and lost to me by
the law's trickery. .. -
Now, till we were to the north of the equator
we sighted nothing; no, in all those days not a
single sail ever hove into view to break the
melancholy continuity of the sea-line. But
between the parallels of 12° and 22° N. we met
with no less than eight ships, the nearest
—º

OUR PROGRESs to the CHANNEL. 367
within a league. We watched them as cats
watch mice; making a point to bear away if they
were going our road, or, if they were coming
towards us, to shift our helm—but never very
markedly—so as to let them pass us at the widest
possible distance. Some of them showed a
colour, but we never answered their signals.
That they were all harmless traders I will not
affirm ; but none of them offered to chase us.
Yet could I have been sure of a ship, I should have
been glad to speak. My longitude was little more
than guess-work; my latitude not very certain; and
my compass was out. However, I supported my
own and the spirits of my little company by telling
them of the early navigators; how Columbus,
Candish, Drake, Schouten and other heroic
marine worthies of distant times had navigated the
globe, discovered new worlds, penetrated into the
most secret solitudes of the deep without any
notion of longitude and with no better instruments
to take the sun's height than the forestaff and
astrolabe. We were better off than they, and I
had not the least doubt, I told them, of bringing
the old schooner to a safe berth off Deal or
Gravesend.
But it happened that we were chased when on
the polar verge of the North-East Trade-wind. It
was blowing brisk, the sea breaking in snow upon
the weather bow, the sky overcast with clouds,
and the schooner washing through it under a
single-reefed mainsail and whole topsail. It was
noon: I was taking an observation, when Pitt at
the tiller sang out “Sail hol” and looking, I
368 THE FROZEN PIRATE,
spied the swelling cloud-like canvas of a vessel
a line with our starboard cathead. I told Pitt to
let the schooner fall off three points, and with
slackened sheets the old Boca del Dragon
hummed through it brilliantly, flinging the foam
as far aft as the gangway. The strange sail rose
rapidly, and the lifting of her hull discovered her
to be a line-of-battle ship. We held on as we
were, hoping to escape her notice; but whether
she did not like our appearance, or that there was
something in the figure we cut that excited her
curiosity, she, on a sudden, put her helm up and
steered a true course for us.
At the first sight of her I had called Wilkinson
and Cromwell on deck, and I now cried out,
“Lads, d'ye see, she's after us. If she catches
us our dream of dollars is over. Lively now, boys,
and give her all she can stagger under; and what
she can't carry she must drag.” And we sprang
to make sail, briskly as apes, and every one work-
ing with two-man power. I knew the old Boca's
best point; it was with the wind a point abaft the
beam; we put her to that, got the great square sail
on her, shook out all reefs, and gave all she had to
the wind. The wake roared away from her like a
white torrent that flies from the foot of a foaming
cataract. She had the pirate's instincts, and
b. Ing put to her trumps, was nimble. God! how
she did swing through it ! Never had I driven the
aged bucket before like this, and I understoºd
that speed at sea is not irreconcilable with odd
bodies. But the great ship to windward hung
steady; a cloud bland and swelling cloths,
*"... }
O
sº.”

OUR PROGRESs to the CHANNEL. 369
When we had set the studding-sail we had nothing
more to fly with ; and so we stood looking. She
slapped six shots at us, one after another, as a
haughty hint to us to stop; but we meant to
escape, and at last we did, outsailing her by
thirteen inches to her foot—one foot to
her twelve—though she stuck to our skirts the
whole afternoon and kept us in an agony of
anxiety. - - -
The sun was setting when she abandoned us:
she was then some five or six miles distant on our
weather quarter. What her nation was I did not
know ; but Wilkinson reckoned her French when
she gave us up. We rushed steadily along the
same course into the darkness of the night and
then, shortening sail, brought the schooner to the
wind again, after which we drank to the frisky
old jade in an honestly-earned bowl.
It was on the 5th of December that we sighted
the Scilly Isles. I guessed what that land was,
but so vague had been my navigation that I durst
not be sure; until, spying a smack with her nets
over, I steered for her and got the information I
needed from her people. They answered us with
an air of fear, and in truth the fellows had reason;
for, besides the singular appearance of the ship,
the four of us were apparelled in odds and ends
of the antique clothes, and I have little doubt
they considered us lunatics of another country,
who had run away with a ship belonging to
parts where the tastes and fashions were behind
the age. -
Now, as you may suppose, by this º: I had
B
ºf fººt
* * * *
37o THE FROzEN PIRATE.
settled my plans; and as we sailed up channel, I
unfolded them to my companions. I pointed out
that before we entered the river it would be neces-
sary to discharge our lading into some little vessel
that would smuggle the booty ashore for us.
The figure the schooner made was so peculiar
she would inevitably attract attention; she
would instantly be boarded in the Thames on our
coming to anchor, and, if I told the truth, she
would be seized as a pirate, and ourselves dis-
missed with a small reward, and perhaps with
nothing.
“My scheme,” said I, “is this ; I have a rela-
tive in London to whom I shall communicate the
news of my arrival and tell him my story. You,
Wilkinson must be the bearer of this letter. He
is a shrewd, active man, and I will leave it to him
to,engage the help we want. There is no lack
of the right kind of serviceable men at Deal, and
if they are promised a substantial interest in
smuggling our lading ashore, they will run the
goods successfully, do not fear. As there is sure
to be a man-of-war stationed in the Downs, we
must keep clear of that anchorage. I will land
you at Lydd, whence you will make your way to
Dover and thence to London. Cromwell and Pitt
will return and help me to keep cruising. My
letter to my relative will tell him where to seek
me, and I shall know his boat by her flying a jack.
When we have discharged our lading we will sail
to the Thames, and then let who will come aboard,
for we shall have a clean hold. This,” continued
I, “is the best scheme I can devise. The risk
\
|
OUR PROGRESS TO THE CHANNEL. 371
of smuggling attend it, to be sure; but against
those risks we have to put the certainty of our
forfeiting our just claims to the property if
we carry the schooner to the Thames. Even
suppose, when there, that we should not be
immediately visited, and so be provided with an
opportunity to land our stuff—whom have we to
trust 2 The Thames abounds with river thieves,
with lumpers, scuffle-hunters, mud-larks, glutmen,
rogues of all sorts, to hire whom would mean to
bribe them with the value of half the lading and
to risk their stealing the other half. But this is
the lesser difficulty; the main one lies in this :
there are some sixteen hundred men employed in
the London Custom House, most of whom are on
river duty as watchmen; thirty of these people
are clapped aboard an East Indiaman, five or six
on West India ships, and a like proportion in other
vessels. So strange a craft as ours would be
visited, depend on 't, and smartly, too. D'ye see
the danger, lads 2 What do you say, then, to
my scheme P”
The negroes immediately answered that they
left it to me; I knew best; they would be satis-
fied with whatever I did. *
Wilkinson mused a while and then said,
“Smuggling was risky work. How would it be
if we represented that we had found the schooner
washing about with nobody aboard P”
“The tale wouldn't be credited,” said I.
“The age of the vessel would tell against such
a story, even if you removed all other evidence
by throwing the clothes and small-arms over-
B b 2
372 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
board and whatever else might go to prove that
the schooner must have been floating about
abandoned since the year 1750 !”
“Musn't lose de clothes, massa, on no account,"
cried Pitt.
“Well, Šir,” says Wilkinson, after another spell
of reflection, “I reckon you're right. If so be the
law would seize the vessel and goods on the
grounds that she had been a pirate and all that's
in her was plunder, why, then, certainly, I don't
see nothin' else but to make a smuggling job
of it, as you say, sir.”
This being settled (Wilkinson's concurrence
being rendered the easier by my telling him
that, providing the lading was safely run, I
would adhere to my undertaking to give theſ,
six hundred and sixty pounds Teach for their
share), I went below and spent half an hour
over a letter to Mr. Jeremiah Mason. There
was no ink, but I found a pencil, and for paper
I used the fly-leaves of the books in my cabin.
I opened with a sketch of my adventures, and
then went on to relate that the Boca was
a rich ship; that as she had been a pirate, I
risked her seizure by carrying her to London;
that I stood grievously in need of his counsel
and help, and begged him not to lose a momen!
in returning with the messenger to Deal, and
there hiring a boat and coming to me, whom h;
would find cruising off Beachy Head. That I
might know his boat, I bade him fly, a jack.”
little below the masthead. “As for º Boca del
42ragon,” I added, “Wilkinson would recognize he
--

OUR PROGRESs to THE CHANNEL. 373
if she were in the middle of a thousand sail, and
indeed a farmer's boy would be able to distin-
guish her for her uncommon oddness of figure.”
I was satisfied to underscore the words “a rich
ship,” quite certain his imagination would be
sufficiently fired by the expression. At anything
further I durst not hint, as the letter would be
open for Wilkinson to read. -
When I had finished, I took a lanthorn and the
keys of the chest and went very secretly and expe-
ditiously to the run, and removing the layers of
small-arms from the top of the case that held the
money, I picked-out some English pieces, quickly
returned the small-arms, locked the chest, and
returned.
All this time we were running up Channel before
a fresh westerly wind. It was true December
weather, very raw, and the horizon thick, but I
knew my road well, and whilst the loom of the
land showed, I desired nothing better than this
thickness.
But wary sailing delayed us; and it was not
till ten o'clock on the night of the seventh that
we hove the schooner to off the shingly beach of
Lydd within sound of the wash of the sea upon
it. The bay sheltered us; we got the boat over;
I gave Wilkinson the letter and ten guineas, bid-
ding him keep them hidden and to use them
cautiously with the silver change he would receive,
for they were all guineas of the first George and
might excite comment if he, a poor sailor, ill-clad,
should pull them out and exhibit them. Happily,
in the hurry of the time, he did not think to ask
~~~~

362 - THE FROzEN PIRATE.
º
very gravest consequences if I were candid with
them. But this, surely, must be so plain that it
is idle to go on insisting on it. -
The fine weather, the golden issue that was to
attend our successful navigation, the satisfactory
behaviour of the schooner, put us into a high
good-humour with one another; and when it came
to my collecting all the clothes in the after cabins
and distributing them among the three men, I
thought Billy Pitt and Cromwell would have gone
mad with delight. To the best of my recollection
the apparel that had been left us by the American
captain (who, as you know, had cleared the fore-
castle of the clothes there) consisted of several
coats of cut velvet, trimmed with gold and silver
lace, some frocks of white drab with large plate
buttons, brocade waistcoats of blue satin and
green silk, crimson and other coloured cloth
breeches, along with some cloaks, three-corner
hats, black and white stockings, a number of
ruffled shirts, and other articles, of which I recol-
lect the character, though my ignorance of the
costumes of that period prevents me from naming
them. -
Any one acquainted with the negro's delight in
coloured clothes will hardly need to be told of the
extravagant joy raised in the black breasts of
Cromwell and Pitt by my distribution of this fine
attire. The lace, to be sure, was tarnished, and
some of the colours faded, but all the same the
apparel furnished a brave show; and such was
the avidity with which the poor creatures snatched
at the garments as I offered them first to one and
I value the Laping. 363
then another, that I believe they would have been
perfectly satisfied with the clothes alone as pay-
ment for their services. I made this distribution
on the quarter-deck, or little poop, rather, that all
might be present: Wilkinson was at the tiller,
and appeared highly delighted with the bundle
allotted him, saying that he might reckon upon a
hearty welcome from his wife when she came to
know what was in his chest. The negroes were
wild to clothe themselves at once; I advised them
to wait for the warm weather, but they were too
impatient to put on their fine feathers to heed my
advice. They ran below, and were gone half an
hour, during which time I have no doubt they
put on all they had ; and when at last they
returned, their appearance was so exquisitely
absurd that I laughed till I came near to suffocat-
ing. Each negro had tied a silver laced hat on to
his woolly head ; one wore a pair of crimson, the
other a pair of black, velvet breeches; over their
cucumber shanks they had drawn white silk
stockings, regardless of the cold; their feet were
encased in buckled shoes, and their costumes
were completed by scarlet and blue waistcoats
which fell to their knees, and crimson and blue
coats with immense skirts. What struck me as
most astonishing was their gravity. Their self-
complacency was prodigious; they eyed each
other with dignified approbation, and strutted
with the air of provincial mayors and aldermen
newly arrived from the presence of royalty.
“They're in keepin’ with the schooner, any
ways,” said Wilkinson.
364 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
And so perhaps they were. The antique fabric
needed the sparkle of those costumes on her deck
to make her aspect fit in with the imaginations she
bred. But, as I had anticipated, the cold proved
too powerful for their conceit, and they were
presently glad to ship their more modern trousers,
though they clung obstinately to their waistcoats,
and could not be persuaded to remove their hats on
any account whatever,
CHAPTER XXX.
OUR PROGRESS TO THE CHANNEL.
WHEN I started to relate my adventure I never
designed to write an account of the journey home
at large. On the contrary, I foresaw that, by the
time I had arrived at this part, you would have had
enough of the sea. Let me now, then, be as brief
as possible.
The melting of the ice and the slowly increas.
ing power of the sun were inexpressibly consoling
to me who had had so much of the cold that I do
protest if Elysium were bleak, no matter how
radiant, and the abode of the fiends as hot as it
is pictured, I would choose to turn my back upon
the angels. I cannot say, however, that the
schooner was properly thawed until we were hard
upon the parallels of the Falkland Islands; she
then showed her timbers naked to the sun, and
exposed a brown solid deck rendered ugly by
several dark patches which, scrape as we might,
we could not obliterate. We struck the guns
into the hold for the better ballasting of the
-
OUR PROGRESS to THE CHANNEL. 365
vessel, got studding-sail booms aloft, overhauled
her suits of canvas and found a great square sail
which proved of inestimable importance in light
winds and in running. After the ice was wholly
melted out of her frame she made a little water,
yet not so much but that half an hour's spell at the
pump twice a day easily freed her. But, curi-
ously enough, at the end of a fortnight she
became tight again, which I attribute to the
swelling of her timbers.
We were a slender company, but we managed
extraordinarily well. The men were wonderfully
content; I never heard so much as a murmur
escape one of them ; they never exceeded
their rations nor asked for a drop more of liquor
than we had agreed among us should be served
out. But, as I had anticipated, our security lay
in our slenderness. We were too few for disaffec-
tion. The negroes were as simple as children,
Wilkinson looked to find his account in a happy
arrival, and if I was not, strictly speaking, their
captain, I was their navigator without whom their
case would have been as perilous as mine was on
the ice.
Outside the natural dangers of the sea we had
but one anxiety, and that concerned our being
chased and taken. This fear was heartily shared
by my companions, to whom I also represented that
it must be our business to give even the ships of
our country a wide berth; for, though I had long
since flung all the compromising bunting over.
board, and destroyed all the papers I could come
across, which being written in a language I was
~f~ **** --rº-'---
* 4. *
366 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
ignorant of, might, for all I knew, contain some
damning information, a British ship would be
sure to board us and I should have to tell the
truth or take the risks of prevaricating. If I told
the truth, then I should have to admit that the
lading of the vessel was piratical plunder; and
though I knew not how the law stood with regard
to booty rescued from certain destruction after
the lapse of hard upon half a century, yet it was
a hundred to one that the whole would be claimed
in the king's name under a talk of restitution,
which signified that we should never hear more of
it. On the other hand prevarication would not
fail to excite suspicion, and on our not being able
to satisfactorily account for our possession of the
ship and what was in her, it might end in our
actually being seized as pirates and perhaps
executed.
This reasoning went very well with the men and
filled them with such anxiety that they were for
ever on the look-out for a sail. But, as you may
.guess, my own solicitude sank very much deeper;
for, supposing the schooner to be rummaged by
an English crew, it was as certain as that my
hand was affixed to my arm that the chests of
treasure would be transhipped and lost to me by
the law's trickery. º
Now, till we were to the north of the equator
we sighted nothing; no, in all those days not a
single sail ever hove into view to break the
melancholy continuity of the sea-line. But
between the parallels of 12° and 22° N. we met
with no less than eight ships, the nearest
tº:
OUR PROGRESs to THE CHANNEL. 367
within a league. We watched them as cats
watch mice; making a point to bear away if they
were going our road, or, if they were coming
towards us, to shift our helm—but never very
markedly—so as to let them pass us at the widest
possible distance. Some of them showed a
colour, but we never answered their signals.
That they were all harmless traders I will not
affirm; but none of them offered to chase us.
Yet could I have been sure of a ship, I should have
been glad to speak. My longitude was little more
than guess-work; my latitude not very certain; and
my compass was out. However, I supported my
own and the spirits of my little company by telling
them of the early navigators; how Columbus,
Candish, Drake, Schouten and other heroic
marine worthies of distant times had navigated the
globe, discovered new worlds, penetrated into the
most secret solitudes of the deep without any
notion of longitude and with no better instruments
to take the sun's height than the forestaff and
astrolabe. We were better off than they, and I
had not the least doubt, I told them, of bringing
the old schooner to a safe berth off Deal or
Gravesend.
But it happened that we were chased when on
the polar verge of the North-East Trade-wind. It
was blowing brisk, the sea breaking in snow upon
the weather bow, the sky overcast with clouds,
and the schooner washing through it under a
single-reefed mainsail and whole topsail. It was
noon: I was taking an observation, when Pitt at
the tiller sang out “Sail hol” and looking, I

368 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
spied the swelling cloud-like canvas of a vessel on
a line with our starboard cathead. I told Pitt to
let the schooner fall off three points, and with
slackened sheets the old Boca del Dragon
hummed through it brilliantly, flinging the foam
as far aft as the gangway. The strange sail rose
rapidly, and the lifting of her hull discovered her
to be a line-of-battle ship. We held on as we
were, hoping to escape her notice; but whether
she did not like our appearance, or that there was
something in the figure we cut that excited her
curiosity, she, on a sudden, put her helm up and
steered a true course for us.
At the first sight of her I had called Wilkinson
and Cromwell on deck, and I now cried out,
“Lads, d'ye see, she's after us. If she catches
us our dream of dollars is over. Lively now, boys,
and give her all she can stagger under; and what
she can't carry she must drag.” And we sprang
to make sail, briskly as apes, and every one work-
ing with two-man power. I knew the old Boca's
best point; it was with the wind a point abaft the
beam ; we put her to that, got the great square-Sail
on her, shook out all reefs, and gave all she had to
the wind. The wake roared away from her like a
white torrent that flies from the foot of a foaming
cataract. She had the pirate's instincts, and
b. Ing put to her trumps, was nimble. God! how
she did swing through it ! Never had I driven the
aged bucket before like this, and I understood
that speed at sea is not irreconcilable with odd
bodies. But the great ship to windward hung
steady; a cloud of bland and swelling cloths.
, - … • * *
, ºr * . . ;
*-****


OUR PROGRESS TO THE CHANNEL. 369
When we had set the studding-sail we had nothing
more to fly with ; and so we stood looking. She
slapped six shots at us, one after another, as a
haughty hint to us to stop; but we meant to
escape, and at last we did, outsailing her by
thirteen inches to her foot—one foot to
her twelve—though she stuck to our skirts the
whole afternoon and kept us in an agony of
anxiety. - -
The sun was setting when she abandoned us:
she was then some five or six miles distant on our
weather quarter. What her nation was I did not
know; but Wilkinson reckoned her French when
she gave us up. We rushed steadily along the
same course into the darkness of the night and
then, shortening sail, brought the schooner to the
wind again, after which we drank to the frisky
old jade in an honestly-earned bowl.
It was on the 5th of December that we sighted
the Scilly Isles. I guessed what that land was,
but so vague had been my navigation that I durst
not be sure; until, spying a smack with her nets
over, I steered for her and got the information I
needed from her people. They answered us with
an air of fear, and in truth the fellows had reason;
for, besides the singular appearance of the ship,
the four of us were apparelled in odds and ends
of the antique clothes, and I have little doubt
they considered us lunatics of another country,
who had run away with a ship belonging to
parts where the tastes and fashions were behind
the age. - -
Now, as you may suppose, by this º: I had
B
*: Fººl
* -º-;

37O THE FROzEN PIRATE.
settled my plans; and as we sailed up channel, I
unfolded them to my companions. I pointed out
that before we entered the river it would be neces.
sary to discharge our lading into some little vessel
that would smuggle the booty ashore for us.
The figure the schooner made was so peculiar
she would inevitably attract attention; she
would instantly be boarded in the Thames on Our
coming to anchor, and, if I told the truth, she
would be seized as a pirate, and ourselves dis.
missed with a small reward, and perhaps with
nothing.
“My scheme,” said I, “is this: I have a rela-
tive in London to whom I shall communicate the
news of my arrival and tell him my story. You,
Wilkinson must be the bearer of this letter. He
is a shrewd, active man, and I will leave it to him
to,engage the help we want. There is no lack
of the right kind of serviceable men at Deal, and
if they are promised a substantial interest in
smuggling our lading ashore, they will run the
goods successfully, do not fear. As there is sure
to be a man-of-war stationed in the Downs, we
must keep clear of that anchorage. I will land
you at Lydd, whence you will make your way to
Dover and thence to London. Cromwell and Pitt
will return and help me to keep cruising. My
letter to my relative will tell him where to seek
me, and I shall know his boat by her flying a jack.
When we have discharged our lading we will sail
to the Thames, and then let who will come aboard,
for we shall have a clean hold. This,” continued
I, “is * best scheme I can devise. The risk
º
|
\
|
OUR PROGRESS TO THE CHANNEL. 371
of smuggling attend it, to be sure; but against
those risks we have to put the certainty of our
forfeiting our just claims to the property if
we carry the schooner to the Thames. Even
suppose, when there, that we should not be
immediately visited, and so be provided with an
opportunity to land our stuff—whom have we to
trust 2 The Thames abounds with river thieves,
with lumpers, scuffle-hunters, mud-larks, glutmen,
rogues of all sorts, to hire whom would mean to
bribe them with the value of half the lading and
to risk their stealing the other half. But this is
the lesser difficulty; the main one lies in this :
there are some sixteen hundred men employed in
the London Custom House, most of whom are on
river duty as watchmen; thirty of these people
are clapped aboard an East Indiaman, five or six
on West India ships, and a like proportion in other
vessels. So strange a craft as ours would be
visited, depend on 't, and smartly, too. D'ye see
the danger, lads 2 What do you say, then, to
my scheme 2" - -
The negroes immediately answered that they
left it to me; I knew best; they would be satis-
fied with whatever I did.
Wilkinson mused a while and then said,
"Smuggling was risky work. How would it be
if we represented that we had found the schooner
Washing about with nobody aboard P”
“The tale wouldn't be credited,” said I.
“The age of the vessel would tell against such
a story, even if you removed all other evidence
by throwing the clº and small-arms over-
B 2

372 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
board and whatever else might go to prove that
the schooner must have been floating about
abandoned since the year 1750 !”
“Musn’t lose de clothes, massa, on no account,"
cried Pitt.
“Well, Šir,” says Wilkinson, after another spell
of reflection, “I reckon you're right. If so be the
law would seize the vessel and goods on the
grounds that she had been a pirate and all that's
in her was plunder, why, then, certainly, I don't
see nothin' else but to make a smuggling job
of it, as you say, sir.”
This being settled (Wilkinson's concurrence
being rendered the easier by my telling him
that, providing the lading was safely run, I
would adhere to my undertaking to give them.
six hundred and sixty pounds each for their
share), I went below and spent half an hour
over a letter to Mr. Jeremiah Mason. There
was no ink, but I found a pencil, and for paper
I used the fly-leaves of the books in my cabin.
I opened with a sketch of my adventures, and
then went on to relate that the Boca was
a rich ship; that as she had been a pirate, I
risked her seizure by carrying her to London;
that I stood grievously in need of his counsel
and help, and begged him not to lose a moment
in returning with the messenger to Deal, and
there hiring a boat and coming to me, whom he
would find cruising off Beachy Head. That I
might know his boat, I bade him fly, a jack a
little below the masthead. “As for the Boca del
Dragon,” I added, “Wilkinson would recognize her
------------vº"
OUR PROGRESs to THE CHANNEL. 373
if she were in the middle of a thousand sail, and
indeed a farmer's boy would be able to distin-
guish her for her uncommon oddness of figure.”
I was satisfied to underscore the words “a rich
ship,” quite certain his imagination would be
sufficiently fired by the expression. At anything
further I durst not hint, as the letter would be
open for Wilkinson to read. -
When I had finished, I took a lanthorn and the
keys of the chest and went very secretly and expe-
ditiously to the run, and removing the layers of
small-arms from the top of the case that held the
money, I picked out some English pieces, quickly
returned the small-arms, locked the chest, and
returned.
All this time we were running up Channel before
a fresh westerly wind. It was true December
weather, very raw, and the horizon thick, but I
knew my road well, and whilst the loom of the
land showed, I desired nothing better than this
thickness.
But wary sailing delayed us; and it was not
till ten o'clock on the night of the seventh that
we hove the schooner to off the shingly beach of
Lydd within sound of the wash of the sea upon
it. The bay sheltered us; we got the boat over;
I gave Wilkinson the letter and ten guineas, bid-
ding him keep them hidden and to use them
cautiously with the silver change he would receive,
for they were all guineas of the first George and
might excite comment if he, a poor sailor, ill-clad,
should pull them out and exhibit them. Happily,
in the hurry of the time, he did not think to ask
~~~~

374 THE FROZEN PIRATE,
me how I had come by them. He thrust them
into his pocket, shook my hand and dropped into
the boat, and the negroes immediately rowed him
ashore. -
I stood holding a lanthorn upon the rail to
serve them as a guide, waiting for the boat to
return, and never breathed more freely in my life
than when I heard the sound of oars. The two
negroes came alongside, and, clapping the tackles
on to the boat, we hoisted her with the capstan,
and then under very small canvas stood out to
sea again. -
CHAPTER XXXI.
THE END.
I should require to write to the length of this
book over again to do full justice by description
to the difficulties and anxieties of the days that
now followed. If it had not been thick weather all
the time, I do not know how I should have fared,
I am sure. I was between two fires, so to say;
on the one side the French cruisers and privateers,
and on the other side the ships of my own country,
and particularly the revenue cutters and the
sloops and the like cruising after the smugglers.
As I knew that my relative could not be with me
under four days, I steered out of sight of land
into the middle of the Channel, betwixt Beachy
Head and the Seine coast, and there dodged
about under very small canvas, heartily grateful
for the haze that shrouded the sea to within a
mile of me. I scarcely closed my eyes in sleep,
* ... wº *
3]
THE END. 375
and though my worries were now of a very
different kind from those which had racked me on
the ice, they were, in their way, to the full as tor-
menting. Every sail that loomed in the dinginess
filled me, with alarm. Several ships passed me
close, and I could scarce breathe till they were out
of sight. Indeed, I lay skulking out upon that
Sea as if I was some common thief broken loose
from jail. However, it pleased heaven that I
should manage to keep out of sight of those
whom I most strenuously desired not to see; and
the afternoon of the fourth day found the Boca
lying off Beachy Head, and I peering over the
i. with a haggard face, at the dark shadow of the
and. . . . . . . "
It had been blowing and snowing all day. The
Seas ran short and spitefully. It was a dismal
December afternoon, and the more sensibly dis-
gusting to us who were fresh from several weeks
of the balm and glory of the tropics. And yet I
would not have exchanged it for a clear fine day
for all that I was like to be worth.
It was the most reasonable thing in the world
that a vessel should be hove-to in such sombre
weather, and so I was under no concern that our
posture in this respect would excite suspicion,
should we be descried. . The hours stole away
one by one. Now and again a little coaster
would pass, some hoy bound west, a sloop for the
Thames, a lugger on some unguessable mission :
all small ships, oozing, dark and damp out of the
Snow and mist and passing silently. I kept the
land close aboard to be out of the way of the
*º
ſº

º:
376 THE FRozen Pirate. |
bigger craft, and held the vessel in the wind till
it was necessary to reach to our station. The
three of us were mighty pensive and eager, stating
incessantly with alſ our eyes; but it looked as If
we were not to expect anything that day when the
night put its darkness into the weather, Then,
as I foresaw a serious danger if the wind shifted
into the south, and as I could not obtain a glimº
of a shorelight, I resolved to bring up and tº
till dawn. Long ago we had got the schooner's
old anchors at the catheads and the cables ben,
so, lowering the mainsail and hauling dºwn the
stay foresai, we let fall the starboard anchº and
the ship came to a stand. I put the lead over
the side that we might know if she dragged, h";
a lantern on the forestay and one on either qual"
that our presence might be marked by my relative
should he be out in quest of us, and went below,
leaving Cromwell to keep the look-out. ,
I was extremely fretful and anxious, and had
no patience to taſk with Billy Pitt. There wº
too many risks, too many vague chances in this
exploit to render contemplation of it tolerable.
Suppose my relative should be dead? Supp.
Wilkinson should be robbed of his money? fall
to the cutting of capers, as a sailor newly delivered
to the pleasures of the land with ten guineas ºn
his pocket? Get locked up for breaking the
peace? Blab of us in his cups and start the
Customs on our trail? There was no end to Su%
conjectures, and I made myself, so melancholy
that I was fool enough to think that the treasuſt
was no better than a curse, and that on the whole
|
THE END. 377
I was better off on the ice than here with the
anchor in English ground and my native soil with-
in gunshot.
I was up and about till midnight, and then,
being in the cabin and exhausted, I fell asleep
across the table, and in that posture lay as one
dead. Some one dragging at my arm, with .
very little tenderness, awoke me. I was in the
midst of a dream of the schooner having been
boarded by a party of French privateersmen, with
Tassard at their head, and the roughness with which
I was aroused was exactly calculated to extend
into my waking the horror and grief of my sleep.
I instantly sprang to my feet and saw Wash-
ington Cromwell. .
“Massa Rodney,” he bawled, “Massa Rodney,
de gent's 'longside—him an' Wilkinson—yaas, by
de good Lord—dey'se both dere ! Dey hail me
an' I answer and say who are you, and dey say are
you de Boca 2 We am, I say, and dey say—”
I had stood stupidly staring at him, but my full
understanding coming to me on a sudden, I
jumped to the ladder and darted on deck. I
heard voices over the starboard side and ran there.
It was not so dark but that I could see the out-
line of a Deal lugger. Whilst I was peering, the
voice of my man Wilkinson cried out, “On deck,
there ! Cromwell—Billy—where's Mr. Rodney 2”
“Here I am l’’ cried I. -
“My God, Paul l’exclaimed the voice of Mr.
Mason, “this encounter is fortunate indeed.”
I shouted to the negroes to show a light, and
in a few minutes Mr. Mason, Wilkinson, and a
| i
378 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
couple of Deal boatmen came over the side. I
grasped my relative by both hands. I had not
seen him for four years.
“This is good of you, indeed " I cried. “But
you must be perished with the cold of that open
boat. Come below at once—come Wilkinson,
and you men—there's a fire in the cook-room and
drink to warm us;” and down I bundled in the
wildest condition of excitement, followed by
Mason and the others. * - -
My relative was warmly clad and did not seem to
suffer from the cold. He took me by the hand and
brought me to the lanthorn-light, and stood view-
ing me. -
“Ay,” said he, “you are your old self: a bit
worried looking, but that'll pass. Stout and
burnt. Odd's heart 1 Paul, if you have passed
through the experiences Wilkinson has given me
a sketch of, we must have your life, man, we
must have your life—for the booksellers.”
Well, I need not detain you by reciting all the
civilities and congratulations which he and I
exchanged. He and Wilkinson had arrived at
Deal at three o'clock that afternoon, and, after a
hurried meal, had hired a lugger and started at
once for Beachy Head. It was now three o'clock
in the morning; and what I may consider a truly
extraordinary circumstance is, that they had
sailed as true a course for the schooner as if she
had lain plain to the gaze at the very start;
that since the night had drawn down they had
met no vessel of any kind or description, until
they came up to us; that in all probability they
- ~f~
The End. 379
would have run stem on into us if they had
not seen our lights, and that their seeing our
lights had caused them to hail us, their “ship
ahoy!” being instantly answered by Cromwell.
“Well,” said I, “there are stranger things to
tell of than this, even. Now, Wilkinson, and you
Billy, and Cromwell, get us a good supper and
mix a proper bowl. How many more of you are
in the lugger ?”
“Four, sir,” says one of the boatmen.
“Then fetch as many as may safely leave the
boat,” said I. “Billy, get candles and make a
good light here. Throw on coal, boys; there's
enough to carry us home.” -
I saw Mason gazing curiously about him.
“'Tis like a tale out of the Arabian Nights,
Paul,” he exclaimed.
“Ay,” said I, “but written in bitter prose, and no
hint of enchantment anywhere. But, thank God,
you are come ! I have passed a dismal time of ex-
pectation, I promise you.”. I added softly, “I have
something secret—we will sup first, man—I shall .
amaze you ! We must talk apart presently.”
He bowed his head.
Three more boatmen arrived, giving us the
company of five of them. Soon there was a
hearty sound of frying and a smell of good things
upon the air. Pitt put plates and glasses upon
the cabin table, two great bowls of punch were
brewed, and in a little time we had all fallen to.
I whispered Wilkinson, who sat next me, “These
boatmen know nothing of our business; I shall
have to take Mr. Mason apart and arrange with
i
s|
380 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
him. These fellows may not be fit for our
service. Let no hint escape you.”
“Right, sir,” said he.
This I said to disarm his suspicions should he
see me talking alone with Mr. Mason. He enter-
tained us with an account of his excursion to
London; and then, partly to appease the pro-
found curiosity of the boatmen and partly to save
time when I should come to confer with my
relative, I gave them the story of my shipwreck,
and told how I had met with the schooner and
how I had managed to escape with her.
“And now, Mason,” said I, “whilst our friends
here empty these bowls, come you with me
to the cook-room.” And with that we quitted
the cabin.
“D'ye mean to tell me, Paul,” was the first
question my relative asked, “that this vessel was
on the ice eight-and-forty years P”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Surely you dream?”
“I think not.” -
“What we have been eating and drinking—is
that forty-eight years old, too?”
“Ay, and older.”
“Well, such a thing shall make me credulous
enough to duck old women for witches. But what
brandy—what brandy Never had spirit such a
bouquet. Every pintis worth its weightinguineas
to a rich man. To think of Deal boatmen and
niggers swilling such nectar!”
“Mason,” said I, speaking low, “give me now
your attention. In the run of this schooner are
--ºr-tºrº...
THE END. 381
ten chests loaded with money, bars of silver and
gold, and jewellery. This vessel was a pirate, and
her people valued their booty at ninety to a
hundred thousand pounds.
His jaw fell; he stared as if he knew not whether
it was he or I that was mad.
“Here is evidence that I speak the truth,”
said I. “A little sample only—but look at it !”
And I put the pirate captain's watch into his
hand.
He eyed it as though he discredited the intelli-
gence of his sight, turned it about, and returned
it to me with a faint “Heaven preserve me!”
Then said he, still faintly, “You found some of
the pirates alive P”
“No.” -
“Who told you that the people of the vessel
valued their plunder at that amount?”
I answered by giving him the story of the
recovery of the Frenchman.
He listened with a gaze of consternation: I saw
how it was; he believed my sufferings had affected
my reason. There was only one way to settle
his mind; I took a lanthorn, and asked him to
follow me. As we passed through the cabin I
whispered Wilkinson that I meant to show my
relative the lading below, and bade him keep the
Deal men about him. I had the keys of the
chests in my pocket: lifting the after-hatch, we
entered the lazarette, and Mason gazed about
him with astonishment. But I was in too great
a hurry to return to suffer him to idly stand and
stare, I opened the second hatch and descended

382 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
into the run, and crawling to the jewel chest opened
it, removed a few of the small-arms, and bade him
look for himself. -
“Incredible 1 incredible!” he cried. “Is it
possible ! is it possible! Well, to be sure "
And for some moments he could find no more to
say, so amazed and confounded was he.
I quickly showed him the gold and silveringots
and then returned the firearms and locked the
chests. - .
“These,” said I emphatically, pointing to the
cases, “have been my difficulty; not the lading,
though there is value there too. My crew know
nothing of these chests: of their value, I mean;
they believe them cases of small-arms. How am
I to get them ashore? If I tell the truth, they
will be seized as piratical plunder. If I equivo-
cate, I may tumble into a pit of difficulties. I
durst not carry them to the Thames, the river
swarms with thieves and Custom House people,
I am terrified to linger here, lest I be boarded
and the booty discovered. There is but one plan,
I think: we must hire some Deal smugglers to
run these chests and the cargo for us. The boat
now alongside might serve, and I don't doubt the
men are to be had at their own price.” .
My relative had regained his wits, which the
sight of the treasure had temporarily scattered,
and surveyed me thoughtfully whilst I spoke ; and
then said, “Let us return to the fire; I think I
have a better scheme than yours.”
The men still sat around the table talking.
Some liquor yet lay in one of the bowls, and
- →-m
THE END. 383
the fellows were happy enough. I smiled at
Wilkinson as I passed, that he might suppose
our inspection below very satisfactory, and I
saw him look meaningly and pleasantly at
Washington Cromwell, who sat with a laced hat
on his head.
“Paul,” said Mason, sitting down and folding
his arms, “your smuggling plan will not do. It
would be the height of madness to trust those º
chests to the risks of running and to the honesty
of the rogues engaged in that business.”
“What is to be done P’’
“Tell me your lading,” said he.
I gave it to him as accurately as I could.
“Why,” he exclaimed, “a single boat would
take a long time to discharge ye—observe the
perils—several boats would mean a large number
of men; they would eat you up ; they would
demand so much, you would have nothing left.
And suppose they opened the chests! No, your
scheme is worthless.” •
“What's to do, then, in God's name P” •
“I’ll tell you !” he exclaimed, smiling with the
complacency of a man who is master of a great
fancy. “I shall sail to Dover at once. 'Tis now
a quarter past four. Give me twelve hours to
make Dover: I shall post straight to London and
be there by early morning. Now, Paul, attend
you to this. To-day is Wednesday; by to-morrow
night you must contrive to bring your ship to an
anchor off Barking Level.”
“The Thames I’” I cried.
He nodded.

384 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
I looked at him anxiously. He leaned to mi
putting his hand on my leg.
“I own a lighter,” said he “she will be
alongside of you at dusk. I have people of my
own whom I can trust. The lighter will empty
your hold and convey the lading to a ship
chartered by me, arrived from the Black Sea on
Sunday and lying in the Pool. The stuff can be
sold from that ship as it is—”
“But the chests—the chests, Mason 1"
“They shall be lowered into another boat, and
taken ashore and put into a waggon that will be
in waiting—I in it—and driven to my home."
I clapped him on the shoulder in a transport.
“Nobly schemed indeed l’” I cried; “but have
we nothing to fear from the Customs people?"
“No, not low down the river and at dark.
You bring up for convenience, d'ye see. Mind it
is dark when you anchor. A lighter and boat
shall be awaiting you. It is down the river, you
know, that all the lumpers drop with the lighters
they go adrift in from ships' sides. There's more
safety in smuggling over Thames mud than on
this coast shingle. One thought more : you
say that Wilkinson believes the chests hold small.
arms P”
“Yes.”
“Then account to him for sending the chests
away separately by saying that I have found a
purchaser, and that they are going to him direct.
You º your cue—you see all !’
“All.”
“Let me hurry, then, Paul; that brandy should

THE END. 385
fetch you half a guinea a pint. You are in luck's
way, Paul. See that you bring your ship along
safely. Till to-morrow night!”
He clasped and wrung my hand and ran into
the cabin.
“Now, lads, off with us !” he cried. “Off to
Dover ! Put me ashore there smartly and you
shall find your account. Off now—time presses.”
Five minutes afterwards the boat was gone.
When fortune falls in love with a man she
makes him a bounteous mistress. Everything
fell out as I could have desired. We got our
anchor at five, and by daybreak were off Hastings
jogging quietly along towards London river, the
weather conveniently obscure, the wind south, and
forty hours before us to do the run in. I
exactly explained my relative's scheme to Wilkin-
son and the others, who declared themselves
perfectly satisfied, Wilkinson adding that though
he had not objected to the Deal smuggling pro-
ject he throughout considered the risk too heavy
to adventure. I told them that Mr. Mason
believed he could immediately find a purchaser
for the small-arms, in which case they would have
to be sent privately ashore; and to give a proper
colour to this ruse I made them pack away all
the remaining weapons in the arms-room and
carry them to the run, ready to be taken with the
other chests.
Once fairly round the Forelands half my
anxieties fell from me. There was no longer the
French cruiser or privateer to be feared, and how-
ever wonderingly the people of my own country's
C C

376 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
bigger craft, and held the vessel in the wind tillº
it was necessary to reach to our station. The
three of us were mighty pensive and eager, staring
incessantly with all our eyes; but it looked as if
we were not to expect anything that day when the
night put its darkness into the weather. Then,
as I foresaw a serious danger if the wind shifted
into the south, and as I could not obtain a glimpse
of a shore-light, I resolved to bring up and ride
till dawn. Long ago we had got the schooner's
old anchors at the catheads and the cables bent,
so, lowering the mainsail and hauling down the
stay foresail, we let fall the starboard anchor, and
the ship came to a stand. I put the lead over
the side that we might know if she dragged, hung
a lantern on the forestay and one on either quarter
that our presence might be marked by my relative
should he be out in quest of us, and went below,
leaving Cromwell to keep the look-out. ,
I was extremely fretful and anxious and had
no patience to talk with Billy Pitt. There were
too many risks, too many vague chances in this
exploit to render contemplation of it tolerable.
Suppose my relative should be dead P Suppose
Wilkinson should be robbed of his money? fall
to the cutting of capers, as a sailor newly delivered
to the pleasures of the land with ten guineas in
his pocket? Get locked up for breaking the
peace P Blab of us, in his cups and start the
Customs on our trail? There was no end to such
conjectures, and I made myself so melancholy
that I was fool enough toºthink that the treasure
was no better than a curse, and that on the whole

THE END. 377
I was better off on the ice than here with the
anchor in English ground and my native soil with-
in gunshot. -
I was up and about till midnight, and then,
being in the cabin and exhausted, I fell asleep
across the table, and in that posture lay as one
dead. Some one dragging at my arm, with
very little tenderness, awoke me. I was in the
midst of a dream of the schooner having been
boarded by a party of French privateersmen, with
Tassard at their head, and the roughness with which
I was aroused was exactly calculated to extend
into my waking the horror and grief of my sleep.
I instantly sprang to my feet and saw Wash-
ington Cromwell. ,
“Massa Rodney,” he bawled, “Massa Rodney,
de gent's 'longside—him an' Wilkinson—yaas, by
de good Lord—dey'se both dere ! Dey hail me
an' I answer and say who are you, and dey say are
you de Boca 2 We am, I say, and dey say—”
I had stood stupidly staring at him, but my full
understanding coming to me on a sudden, I
jumped to the ladder and darted on deck. I
heard voices over the starboard side and ran there.
It was not so dark but that I could see the out-
line of a Deal lugger. Whilst I was peering, the
voice of my man Wilkinson cried out, “On deck,
there ! Cromwell—Billy—where's Mr. Rodney 2”
“Here I am l’’ cried I.
“My God, Paul l’exclaimed the voice of Mr.
Mason, “this encounter is fortunate indeed.”
. I shouted to the negroes to show a light, and
in a few minutes Mr. Mason, Wilkinson, and a


378 THE FROZEN PIRATE, - | |
couple of Deal boatmen came over the side. I
grasped my relative by both hands. I had not
seen him for four years.
“This is good of you, indeed 1” I cried. “But
you must be perished with the cold of that open
boat. Come below at once—come Wilkinson,
and you men—there's a fire in the cook-room and
drink to warm us;” and down I bundled in the
wildest condition of excitement, followed by
Mason and the others. *
My relative was warmly clad and did not seem to
suffer from the cold. He took me by the hand and
brought me to the lanthorn-light, and stood view-
ing me. . -
“Ay,” said he, “you are your old self: a bit
worried looking, but that'll pass. Stout and
burnt. Odd's heart | Paul, if you have passed
through the experiences Wilkinson has given me
a sketch of, we must have your life, man, we
must have your life—for the booksellers.”
Well, I need not detain you by reciting all the
civilities and congratulations which he and I
exchanged. He and Wilkinson had arrived at
Deal at three o'clock that afternoon, and, after a
hurried meal, had hired a lugger and started at
once for Beachy Head. It was now three o'clock
in the morning; and what I may consider a truly
extraordinary circumstance is, that they, had
sailed as true a course for the schooner as if she
had lain plain to the gaze at the very start;
that since the night had drawn down they had
met no vessel of any kind or description, until
they came up to us; that in all probability they
---
- -
THE END. * ------ ----- 379
would have run stem on into us if they had
not seen our lights, and that their seeing our
lights had caused them to hail us, their “ship
ahoy!” being instantly answered by Cromwell.
“Well,” said I, “there are stranger things to
tell of than this, even. Now, Wilkinson, and you
Billy, and Cromwell, get us a good supper and
mix a proper bowl. How many more of you are
in the lugger ?” -
“Four, sir,” says one of the boatmen.
“Then fetch as many as may safely leave the
boat,” said I. “Billy, get candles and make a
good light here. Throw on coal, boys; there's
enough to carry us home.” -
I saw Mason gazing curiously about him.
“'Tis like a tale out of the Arabian Nights,
Paul,” he exclaimed.
“Ay,” said I, “but written in bitter prose, and no
hint of enchantment anywhere. But, thank God,
you are come ! I have passed a dismal time of ex-
pectation, I promise you.”. I added softly, “I have
something secret—we will sup first, man—I shall .
amaze you ! We must talk apart presently.”
He bowed his head.
Three more boatmen arrived, giving us the
company of five of them. Soon there was a
hearty sound of frying and a smell of good things
upon the air. Pitt put plates and glasses upon
the cabin table, two great bowls of punch were
brewed, and in a little time we had all fallen to.
I whispered Wilkinson, who sat next me, “These
boatmen know nothing of our business; I shall
have to take Mr. Mason apart and arrange with
380 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
him. These fellows may not be fit for
service. Let no hint escape you.” -
“Right, sir,” said he.
This I said to disarm his suspicions should he
see me talking alone with Mr. Mason. He enter.
tained us with an account of his excursion to
London; and then, partly to appease the pro-
found curiosity of the boatmen and partly to save
time when I should come to confer with my
relative, I gave them the story of my shipwreck,
and told how I had met with the schooner and
how I had managed to escape with her.
“And now, Mason,” said I, “whilst our friends
here empty these bowls, come you with me
to the cook-room.” And with that we quitted
the cabin.
“D'ye mean to tell me, Paul,” was the first
question my relative asked, “that this vessel was
on the ice eight-and-forty years ”
“Yes,” I replied.
“Surely you dream P”
“I think not.” -
“What we have been eating and drinking—is
that forty-eight years old, too?”
“Ay, and older.”
“Well, such a thing shall make me credulous
enough to duck old women for witches. But what
brandy—what brandy Never had spirit such a
bouquet. Every pint is worth its weightinguinea;
to a rich man. To think of Deal boatmen and
niggers swilling such nectar!”
* Mason,” said I, speaking low, “give me now
your attention. In the run of this schooner are

-vº ***...
THE END. 381
ten chests loaded with money, bars of silver and
gold, and jewellery. This vessel was a pirate, and
her people valued their booty at ninety to a
hundred thousand pounds.
His jaw fell; he stared as if he knew not whether
it was he or I that was mad.
“Here is evidence that I speak the truth,”
said I. “A little sample only—but look at it!”
. I put the pirate captain's watch into his
and. '
He eyed it as though he discredited the intelli-
gence of his sight, turned it about, and returned
it to me with a faint “Heaven preserve me!”
Then said he, still faintly, “You found some of
the pirates alive 2"
“No.” -
“Who told you that the people of the vessel
valued their plunder at that amount?”
I answered by giving him the story of the
recovery of the Frenchman.
He listened with a gaze of consternation: I saw
how it was; he believed my sufferings had affected
my reason. There was only one way to settle
his mind; I took a lanthorn, and asked him to
follow me. As we passed through the cabin I
whispered Wilkinson that I meant to show my
relative the lading below, and bade him keep the
Deal men about him. I had the keys of the
chests in my pocket: lifting the after-hatch, we
entered the lazarette, and Mason gazed about
him with astonishment. But I was in too great
a hurry to return to suffer him to idly stand and
stare, I opened the second hatch and descended
382 THE FROzEN PIRATE.
into the run, and crawling to the jewel chestopºd
it, removed a few of the small-arms, and bade him
look for himself. - -
* Incredible! incredible!” he cried. "Is .
possible ! is it possible ! Well, to be sure
And for some moments he could find no more *
say, so amazed and confounded was hº; .
I quickly showed him the gold and silverigº
and then returned the firearms and locked the
chests. - . . .
“These,” said I emphatically, pointing to the
cases, “have been my difficulty; not the lading,
though there is value there too. My crºw know
nothing of these chests: of their value, I mean;
they believe them cases of small-arms. How am
I to get them ashore? If I tell the truth, they
will be seized as piratical plunder. If I, 4”,
cate, I may tumble into a pit of difficulties. I
durst not carry them to the Thames, the river
swarms with thieves and Custom House, Pºº".
I am terrified to linger here, lest I be boarded
and the booty discovered. There is but on. plan,
I think: we must hire some Deal smugglers tº
run these chests and the cargo for us. The boat
now alongside might serve, and I don't doubt the
men are to be had at their own price." , .
My relative had regained his wits, which the
sight of the treasure had temporarily scattered,
and surveyed me thoughtfully whilst I spoke : and
then said, “Let us return to the fire; I thin
have a better scheme than yours.” -
The men still sat around the table talking.
Some liquor yet lay in one of the bowls, an
|#
W
|
THE END. 383
the fellows were happy enough. I smiled at
Wilkinson as I passed, that he might suppose
our inspection below very satisfactory, and I
saw him look meaningly and pleasantly at
Washington Cromwell, who sat with a laced hat
on his head.
“Paul,” said Mason, sitting down and folding
his arms, “your smuggling plan will not do. It
would be the height of madness to trust those
chests to the risks of running and to the honesty
of the rogues engaged in that business.”
“What is to be done P”
“Tell me your lading,” said he.
I gave it to him as accurately as I could.
“Why,” he exclaimed, “a single boat would
take a long time to discharge ye—observe the
perils—several boats would mean a large number
of men; they would eat you up; they would
demand so much, you would have nothing left.
And suppose they opened the chests | No, your
Scheme is worthless.”
“What's to do, then, in God's name P”
“I’ll tell you!” he exclaimed, smiling with the
Complacency of a man who is master of a great
fancy. “I shall sail to Dover at once. 'Tis now
a quarter past four. Give me twelve hours to
make Dover: I shall post straight to London and
be there by early morning. Now, Paul, attend
you to this. To-day is Wednesday; by to-morrow
night you must contrive to bring your ship to an
anchor off Barking Level.”
“The Thames I’” I cried.
He nodded.
384 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
I looked at him anxiously. He leaned to me,
putting his hand on my leg. º
“I own a lighter,” said he “she will be
alongside of you at dusk. I have people of my
own whom I can trust. The lighter will empty
your hold and convey the lading to a ship
chartered by me, arrived from the Black Sea on
Sunday and lying in the Pool. The stuff can be
sold from that ship as it is—”
“But the chests—the chests, Mason 1"
“They shall be lowered into another boat, and
taken ashore and put into a waggon that will be
in waiting—I in it—and driven to my home.”
I clapped him on the shoulder in a transport.
“Nobly schemed indeed l’” I cried; “but have
we nothing to fear from the Customs people?”
“No, not low down the river and at dark.
You bring up for convenience, d'ye see. Mind it
is dark when you anchor. A lighter and boat
shall be awaiting you. It is down the river, you
know, that all the lumpers drop with the lighters
they go adrift in from ships' sides. There's more
safety in smuggling over Thames mud than on
this coast shingle. One thought more: you
say that Wilkinson believes the chests hold small.
arms ?”
“Yes.”
“Then account to him for sending the chests
away separately by saying that I have found a
urchaser, and that they are going to him direct.
you have your cue—you see all !’
“All.”
“Let me hurry, then, Paul; that brandy should

*-* Tº
THE END. 385
fetch you half a guinea a pint, You are in luck's
way, Paul. See that you bring your ship along
safely. Till to-morrow night!”
He clasped and wrung my hand and ran into
the cabin.
“Now, lads, off with us !” he cried. “Off to
Dover ! Put me ashore there smartly and you
shall find your account. Off now—time presses.”
Five minutes afterwards the boat was gone.
When fortune falls in love with a man she
makes him a bounteous mistress. Everything
fell out as I could have desired. We got our
anchor at five, and by daybreak were off Hastings
jogging quietly along towards London river, the
weather conveniently obscure, the wind south, and
forty hours before us to do the run in. I
exactly explained my relative's scheme to Wilkin-
son and the others, who declared themselves
perfectly satisfied, Wilkinson adding that though
he had not objected to the Deal smuggling pro-
ject he throughout considered the risk too heavy
to adventure. I told them that Mr. Mason
believed he could immediately find a purchaser
for the small-arms, in which case they would have
to be sent privately ashore; and to give a proper
colour to this ruse I made them pack away all
the remaining weapons in the arms-room and
carry them to the run, ready to be taken with the
other chests.
Once fairly round the Forelands half my
anxieties fell from me. There was no longer the
French cruiser or privateer to be feared, and how-
ever wonderingly the people of my own country's
C C
386 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
vessels might stare at the uncommon figure of my
schooner, they could find no excuse to board us,
Besides, as I have said, I was greatly helped by
the weather, which continuing hazy, though
happily never so thick as to oblige me to stop,
delivered me to the sight only of such vessels
as passed close, and offered me as a merc
smudge to the shore.
We arrived off Barking Level on the Thursday
night, and dropped anchor close to a lighter
that lay there with a large boat hanging by
her. It was then very dark. The first person
to come on board was Mason. He was
followed by several men, one of whom he
introduced to me as his head clerk, who would
see to the unloading of the schooner and to the
transhipment of the goods to the ship in the Pool.
He informed me that there was a covered van
waiting on shore; and telling Wilkinson that the
small-arms had been disposed of, and that Mr.
Mason would hand over the proceeds on our
calling at his office, I went with a party of my
relative's men into the run and presently had the
whole of the chests in the boat. Mason went
with her.
Then, as she disappeared in the darkness, but
not till then, did I draw the first easy breath
I had fetched since the hour of the collision
of the Zaughing /l/ary with the iceberg. A
sob shook me : I had gone through much :
many wonderful things had happened to me: I
had been delivered from such perils “that the
mere recollection of them will stir my hair, though

POSTSCRIPT. 387
it is years since; my duty I knew, and I dis-
charged it by withdrawing to my cabin and kneel-
ing with humble and grateful heart before
the throne of that Being to whom I owed every-
thing. -
POSTSCRIPT.
HERE concludes the remarkable narrative of Mr.
Paul Rodney. It is to be wished that he had found
the patience to tell us a little more. The circum-
stance of his dying in 1823, worth 31,000l., leads
me to suspect that his associate Tassard greatly
exaggerated the value of the treasure. I am
assured that he lived very quietly, and that the
lady he married, who bore him two children, both
of whom died young, was of a nunlike simplicity
of character and loved show and extravagance.
as little as her husband. Hence there is
no reason to suppose that he squandered any
portion of the fortune that had in the most
extraordinary manner ever heard of fallen into his
hands. I have ascertained that he very substan-
tially discharged the great obligation that his
relative Mason laid him under, and that his three
men received a thousand pounds apiece. It is
possible, then, that the pirates were themselves
deceived, that what they had taken to be gold or
silver ingots were not all so; or it might be that
the case of jewellery was less valuable than the
admiring and astonished eyes of a plain sailor,
who admits that he had never before seen such a
sight, figured it. Be this, however, as it may, it

C C 2
388 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
is nevertheless certain, as proved by Mr. Rodney's
last will and testament, that he did uncommonly
well out of his adventure on the ice.
Whatever may be thought of his story of the
Frenchman's restoration to life, in other directions * -
Mr. Rodney's accuracy seems unimpeachable. -
It is quite conceivable that a stoutly-built vessel
locked up in the ice and thickly glazed, should
continue in an excellent state of preservation for
years. The confession of his superstitious fears
exhibits honesty and candour. It is related that
a Captain Warren, master of an English merchant-
ship, found a derelict (in August, 1775) that had
long been ice-bound, with her cabins filled with
the bodies of the frozen crew. “His own sailors,
however, would not suffer him to search the
vessel thoroughly, through superstition, and
wished to leave her immediately.” A pity they
did not try their hands at thawing one of the poor
fellows: the result might have kept Mr. Rodney's
strange experience in countenance
Accounts of vast bodies of ice, such as that
which Mr. Rodney fell in with, will be found in the
South Atlantic Directory. For instance –
“Sir James C. Ross crossed Weddel's track in
Lat. 65° S., and where he had found an open sea,
Ross found an ice-pack of an impassable cha-
racter, along which he sailed for 160 miles; and
again, when only one degree beyond the track of
Cook, who had no occasion to enter the pack,
Ross was navigating among it for fifty-six
days.
“But these appear insignificant when compared
... .º.


PostSCRIPT. 389
with a body of ice reputed to have been passed
by twenty-one ships during the months of
December, 1854, and January, February, March,
and April, 1855, floating in the South Atlantic
from Lat 44° S., Long. 28° W., to Lat. 40° S., Long.
20° W. Its elevation in no case exceeded 300
feet. The first account of it was received from the
Great Britain, which in December, 1854, was
reported to have steamed 50 miles along the
outer side of the longer shank.” One ship was
lost upon it: others embayed.
THE END,



|
|
|
|

<vºr" tºº.,
THE END. 381
ten chests loaded with money, bars of silver and
gold, and jewellery. This vessel was a pirate, and
her people valued their booty at ninety to a
hundred thousand pounds.
His jaw fell; he stared as if he knew not whether
it was he or I that was mad. -
“Here is evidence that I speak the truth,”
said I. “A little sample only—but look at it !”
And I put the pirate captain's watch into his
hand.
He eyed it as though he discredited the intelli-
gence of his sight, turned it about, and returned
it to me with a faint “Heaven preserve me!”
Then said he, still faintly, “You found some of
the pirates alive P” - -
“No.” - -
“Who told you that the people of the vessel
valued their plunder at that amount?”
I answered by giving him the story of the
recovery of the Frenchman.
He listened with a gaze of consternation: I saw
how it was; he believed my sufferings had affected
my reason. There was only one way to settle
his mind; I took a lanthorn, and asked him to
follow me. As we passed through the cabin I
whispered Wilkinson that I meant to show my
relative the lading below, and bade him keep the
Deal men about him. I had the keys of the
chests in my pocket: lifting the after-hatch, we
entered the lazarette, and Mason gazed about
him with astonishment. But I was in too great
a hurry to return to suffer him to idly stand and
stare, I opened the second hatch and descended
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
DATE DUE
9 138U
|-
M
→

THE END. 383
the fellows were happy enough. I smiled at
Wilkinson as I passed, that he might suppose
our inspection below very satisfactory, and I
saw him look meaningly and pleasantly at
Washington Cromwell, who sat with a laced hat
on his head.
“Paul,” said Mason, sitting down and folding
his arms, “your smuggling plan will not do. It
would be the height of madness to trust those
chests to the risks of running and to the honesty
of the rogues engaged in that business.”
“What is to be done P”
“Tell me your lading,” said he.
I gave it to him as accurately as I could.
“Why,” he exclaimed, “a single boat would
take a long time to discharge ye—observe the
perils—several boats would mean a large number
of men; they would eat you up ; they would
demand so much, you would have nothing left.
And suppose they opened the chests | No, your
Scheme is worthless.”
“What's to do, then, in God's name P”
“I’ll tell you!” he exclaimed, smiling with the
Complacency of a man who is master of a great
fancy. “I shall sail to Dover at once. 'Tis now
a quarter past four. Give me twelve hours to
make Dover: I shall post straight to London and
be there by early morning. Now, Paul, attend
you to this. To-day is Wednesday; by to-morrow
night you must contrive to bring your ship to an
anchor off Barking Level.” -
“The Thames I’” I cried.
He nodded.
384 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
I looked at him anxiously. He leaned to m
putting his hand on my leg.
“I own a lighter,” said he “she will be
alongside of you at dusk. I have people of my
own whom I can trust. The lighter will empty
your hold and convey, the lading to a ship
chartered by me, arrived from the Black Sea on
Sunday and lying in the Pool. The stuff can be
sold from that ship as it is—”
“But the chests—the chests, Mason 1" -
“They shall be lowered into another boat, and
taken ashore and put into a waggon that will be
in waiting—I in it—and driven to my home."
I clapped him on the shoulder in a transport.
“Nobly schemed indeed l’” I cried; “but have
we nothing to fear from the Customs people?”
“No, not low down the river and at dark.
You bring up for convenience, d'ye see. Mind it
is dark when you anchor. A lighter and boat
shall be awaiting you. It is down the river, you
know, that all the lumpers drop with the lighters
they go adrift in from ships' sides. There's more
safety in smuggling over Thames mud than on
this coast shingle. One thought more: you
say that Wilkinson believes the chests hold small-
arms ?”
“Yes.”
“Then account to him for sending the chests
away separately by saying that I have found a
urchaser, and that they are going to him direct.
You have your cue—you see all !’
“All.”
“Let me hurry, then, Paul; that brandy should

THE END. 385
fetch you half a guinea a pint. You are in luck's
way, Paul. See that you bring your ship along
safely. Till to-morrow night !”
He clasped and wrung my hand and ran into
the cabin.
“Now, lads, off with us!” he cried. “Off to
Dover ! Put me ashore there smartly and you
shall find your account. Off now—time presses.”
Five minutes afterwards the boat was gone.
When fortune falls in love with a man she
makes him a bounteous mistress. Everything
fell out as I could have desired. We got our
anchor at five, and by daybreak were off Hastings
jogging quietly along towards London river, the
weather conveniently obscure, the wind south, and
forty hours before us to do the run in. I
exactly explained my relative's scheme to Wilkin-
Son and the others, who declared themselves
perfectly satisfied, Wilkinson adding that though
he had not objected to the Deal smuggling pro-
ject he throughout considered the risk too heavy
to adventure. I told them that Mr. Mason
believed he could immediately find a purchaser
for the small-arms, in which case they would have
to be sent privately ashore; and to give a proper
colour to this ruse I made them pack away all
the remaining weapons in the arms-room and
carry them to the run, ready to be taken with the
other chests.
Once fairly round the Forelands half my
anxieties fell from me. There was no longer the
French cruiser or privateer to be feared, and how-
ever wonderingly the people of my own country's
C C
- *-* * *------ * * * * * * *
386 THE FROZEN PIRATE.
vessels might stare at the uncommon figure of m
schooner, they could find no excuse to board us.
Besides, as I have said, I was greatly helped by
the weather, which continuing hazy, though
happily never so thick as to oblige me to stop,
delivered me to the sight only of such vessels
as passed close, and offered me as a mere
smudge to the shore.
We arrived off Barking Level on the Thursday
night, and dropped anchor close to a lighter
that lay there with a large boat hanging by
her. It was then very dark. The first person
to come on board was Mason. He was
followed by several men, one of whom he
introduced to me as his head clerk, who would
see to the unloading of the schooner and to the
transhipment of the goods to the ship in the Pool.
He informed me that there was a covered van
waiting on shore; and telling Wilkinson that the
small-arms had been disposed of, and that Mr.
Mason would hand over the proceeds on our
calling at his office, I went with a party of my
relative's men into the run and presently had the
whole of the chests in the boat. Mason went
with her.
Then, as she disappeared in the darkness, but
not till then, did I draw the first easy breath
I had fetched since the hour of the collision
of the Zaughing Mary with the iceberg. A
sob shook me : I had gone through much;
many wonderful things had happened to me: I
j’ been delivered from such perils that the
...re recollection of them will stir my hair, though

POSTSCRIPT. 387
it is years since; my duty I knew, and I dis-
charged it by withdrawing to my cabin and kneel-
ing with humble and grateful heart before
the throne of that Being to whom I owed every-
thing. -
POSTSCRIPT.
HERE concludes the remarkable narrative of Mr.
Paul Rodney. It is to be wished that he had found
the patience to tell us a little more. The circum-
stance of his dying in 1823, worth 31,OOO/., leads
me to suspect that his associate Tassard greatly
exaggerated the value of the treasure. I am
assured that he lived very quietly, and that the
lady he married, who bore him two children, both
of whom died young, was of a nunlike simplicity
of character and loved show and extravagance.
as little as her husband. Hence there is
no reason to suppose that he squandered any
portion of the fortune that had in the most
extraordinary manner ever heard of fallen into his
hands. I have ascertained that he very substan-
tially discharged the great obligation that his
relative Mason laid him under, and that his three
men received a thousand pounds apiece. It is
possible, then, that the pirates were themselves
deceived, that what they had taken to be gold or
silver ingots were not all so; or it might be that
the case of jewellery was less valuable than the
admiring and astonished eyes of a plain sailor,
who admits that he had never before seen such a
sight, figured it. Be this, however, as it may, it
C C 2
388 | THE FROZEN PIRATE,
is nevertheless certain, as proved by Mr. Rodney's
last will and testament, that he did uncommonly
well out of his adventure on the ice.
Whatever may be thought of his story of the
Frenchman’s restoration to life, in other directions
Mr. Rodney's accuracy seems unimpeachable,
It is quite conceivable that a stoutly-built vessel
locked up in the ice and thickly glazed, should
continue in an excellent state of preservation for
years. The confession of his superstitious fears
exhibits honesty and candour. It is related that
a Captain Warren, master of an English merchant-
ship, found a derelict (in August, 1775) that had
long been ice-bound, with her cabins filled with
the bodies of the frozen crew. “His own sailors,
however, would not suffer him to search the
vessel thoroughly, through superstition, and
wished to leave her immediately.” A pity they
did not try their hands at thawing one of the poor
fellows: the result might have kept Mr. Rodney's
strange experience in countenance
Accounts of vast bodies of ice, such as that
which Mr. Rodney fell in with, will be found in the
South Atlantic Directory. For instance —
“Sir James C. Ross crossed Weddel's track in
Lat. 65° S., and where he had found an open sea,
Ross found an ice-pack of an impassable cha:
racter, along which he sailed for 160 miles; and
again, when only one degree beyond the track of
Cook, who had no occasion to enter the pack,
Ross was navigating among it for fifty-six
days.
“But these appear insignificant when compared
. . .”.

POSTSCRIPT. 389
with a body of ice reputed to have been passed
by twenty-one ships during the months of
December, 1854, and January, February, March,
and April, 1855, floating in the South Atlantic
from Lat 44° S., Long. 28° W., to Lat. 40° S., Long.
20° W. Its elevation in no case exceeded 300
feet. The first account of it was received from the
Great Britain, which in December, 1854, was
reported to have steamed 50 miles along the
outer side of the longer shank.” One ship was
lost upon it: others embayed.
THE END.


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