Left on Labrador
C >>
Charles Asbury Stephens >> Left on Labrador
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 | 4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15
"Avast from under!"
And, a moment later, there was a tremendous crash on deck, accompanied
by a hollow, rattling sound. Dropping our knives and forks, we sprang
up the companionway.
"What was that, Trull?" demanded Capt. Mazard.
"A chunk of ice, sir, as big as my old sea-chest!"
"How came that aboard?"
"Rained down, sir. Went up from the top o' the barg, sir, at that
thunder-clap, and came plumb down on deck."
The deck-planks were shattered and split where it had struck, and
pieces of ice the size of a quart measure lay all about.
"Did you see it fly up from the top of the berg, Weymouth?" Raed
asked.
"Yes, sir. It didn't go up till the second pop. I was looking then. It
went up like as if it had been shot from a gun; went up thirty or
forty feet, then turned in the air, and came down on us. Thought
'twould sink us, sir, sure. There were streams of water in the air at
the same time; and water by the hogshead came sloshing over the side
of the ice."
"I don't understand that at all," said the captain.
"We must investigate it," said Raed, "if we can. But let's make sure
of our breakfast first. I suppose there will be no great danger in
letting down the boat as soon as it gets fairly light, will there,
captain? This iceberg seems to be a rather mysterious chap. I propose
that we circumnavigate it in the boat. Perhaps we may find a chance to
climb on to it."
It was already light; and, by the time breakfast was over, the rain
had subsided to a drizzly mist: but the fog was still too thick to see
far in any direction. The sea continued comparatively calm. A few
minutes after seven, the boat was lowered. Raed and the rest of us
boys, with the captain and Weymouth, got in, and pulled round to the
windward of the berg. It was a vast, majestic mass, rising from forty
to fifty feet above the water, and covering three or four acres. On
the south, south-east, and east sides it rose almost perpendicularly
from the sea. No chance to scale it here; and, even if there had been,
the water was much too rough to the windward to bring the boat up to
it. We continued around it, however, and, near the north-west corner,
espied a large crevice leading up toward the top, and filled with
broken ice.
"Might clamber up there," suggested the captain.
It looked a little pokerish.
"Let's try it," said Kit.
The boat was brought up within a yard or so of the ice. Watching his
chance, Capt. Mazard leaped into the crack.
"Jump, and I'll catch you if you miss," said he.
Raed jumped, and got on all right; but Kit slipped. The captain caught
him by the arm, and pulled him up, with no greater damage than a
couple of wet trousers-legs. Wade and I followed dry-shod.
"Shove off a few yards, Weymouth, and be ready in case we slip down,"
directed the captain.
But we had no difficulty in climbing up.
The top of the berg was irregular and rough, with pinnacles and
"knolls," between which were many deep puddles of water,--fresh water:
we drank from one. For some time we saw nothing which tended to
explain the explosions; though the dull, roaring noise still
continued, seeming directly under our feet: but on crossing over to
the south-west side, beneath which the schooner lay, Wade discovered a
large, jagged hole something like a well. It was five or six feet
across, and situated twenty or twenty-five yards from the side of the
berg. Standing around this "well," the rumbling noises were more
distinct than we had yet heard them, and were accompanied by a great
splashing, and also by a hissing sound, as of escaping air or steam;
and, on peering cautiously down into the hole, we could discern the
water in motion. The iceberg heaved slightly with the swell: the
gurgling and hissing appeared to follow the heaving motion.
"I think there must be great cavities down in the ice, which serve as
chambers for compressed air," remarked Raed; "and somehow the heaving
of the berg acts as an air-pump,--something like an hydraulic ram, you
know."
As none of us could suggest any better explanation, we accepted this
theory, though it was not very clear.
We were going back toward the crevice, when a loud gurgling roar,
followed by a report like the discharge of a twenty-four-pounder, made
the berg tremble; and, turning, we saw the water streaming from the
well. Another gurgle and another report succeeded, almost in the same
instant. Jets of water, and bits of ice, were spouted high into the
air, and came down splashing and glancing about. We made off as
expeditiously as we could. Fortunately none of the pieces of ice
struck us; though Wade and Raed, who were a little behind, were well
bespattered. We hurried down to the boat, greatly to the relief of
Weymouth, who expected we had "got blown up."
[Raed begs me to add that he hopes the reader will be able to suggest
a better explanation of this singular phenomenon than the one that has
occurred to him.]
Jumping to the boat, we pulled round to "The Curlew." The sailors were
watching for us, with a touch of anxiety on their rough, honest faces.
"Throw us a line!" shouted Capt. Mazard; "and bear a hand at those
pike-poles to shove her off. We'll get clear of this iceberg as quick
as we can. Something the matter with its insides: liable to bust, I'm
afraid."
Catching the line, we bent to the oars, and, with the help of the men
with the poles tugged the schooner off, and gradually towed her to a
distance of three or four hundred yards from the berg. The boat was
then taken in, sail made, and we were again _bumping_ on up the
straits.
CHAPTER IV.
The Fog lifts.--A Whale in Sight.--Craggy Black Mountains
capped with Snow.--A Novel Carriage for the Big
Rifle.--Mounting the Howitzer.--A Doubtful Shot.--The Lower
Savage Isles.--A Deep Inlet.--"Mazard's Bay."--A Desolate
Island.--An Ice-Jam.--A Strange Blood-red Light.--Solution of
the Mystery.--Going Ashore.--Barren Ledges. Beds of Moss.--A
Bald Peak.--An Alarm.--The Schooner in Jeopardy.--The Crash
and Thunder of the Ice.--Tremendous Tides.
The rain had now pretty much ceased. Some sudden change took place in
the air's density; for the fog, which had all along lain flat on the
sea, now rapidly rose up like a curtain, twenty, thirty, fifty feet,
leaving all clear below. We looked around us. The dark water was
besprinkled with white patches, among which the seals were leaping and
frisking about. Half a mile to the left we espied a lazy water-jet
playing up at intervals.
"There she blows!" laughed Bonney. "Seems like old times, I declare!"
"What's that, sir?" asked Capt. Mazard, who had been below for the
last ten minutes.
"A sperm-whale on the port quarter, sir!"
Two or three miles ahead, another large iceberg was driving grandly
down. We could also see our late _consort_ a mile astern,--see and
hear it too. Higher and higher rose the fog. The sky brightened
through transient rifts in the clouds. Glad enough were we to see it
clearing up.
Either the land had fallen off to the north; or else, in our fear of
running on the cliffs, we had declined a good deal from our course.
The northern shore was now three or four leagues distant. Fog and
darkness hung over it. The bases of the mountains were black; but
their tops glistened with snow, the snow-line showing distinct two or
three hundred feet above the shore. The sails were trimmed, and the
helm put round to bear up nearer.
"What a country!" exclaimed Raed, sweeping it with his glass. "Is it
possible that people live there? What can be the inducements?"
"Seals, probably," said Kit,--"seals and whales. That's the Esquimaux
bill of fare, I've heard, varied with an occasional white bear or a
sea-horse."
"A true 'Husky' (Esquimau) won't eat a mouthful of cooked victuals,"
said Capt. Mazard; "takes every thing raw."
"Should think so much raw meat would make them fierce and savage,"
remarked Wade: "makes dogs savage to give them raw meat."
"But the Esquimaux are a rather good-natured set, I've heard," replied
Kit.
"Not always," said the captain. "The whalers have trouble with them
very often; though these whalemen are doubtless anything but angels,"
he added. "In dealing with them, it is well to have a good show of
muskets, or a big gun or two showing its muzzle: makes 'em more civil.
Cases have been where they've boarded a scantily-manned vessel; to get
the plunder, you see. Hungry for anything of the axe or iron kind."
"It would not be a bad plan to get up our howitzer, and rig a carriage
for it," said Wade. "Let's do it."
"And Wash's cannon-rifle," said Kit. "We ought to get that up. I think
it's about time to test that rather remarkable _arm_."
"The problem with me is how to mount it," said I.
"I was thinking of that the other day," remarked the captain. "I've
got a big chest below,--an old thing I don't use now: we might make
the gun fast to the top of it; then put some trucks on the bottom just
high enough to point it out over the bulwarks. Here, Hobbs: come
below, and help me fetch it on deck."
While they were getting up the chest, Raed and I brought up the
cannon-rifle. It was about as much as we could get up the stairs with
easily. It was, as the reader will probably remember, set in a light
framework of wrought-iron, adjusted to a swivel, and arranged with a
screw for raising or lowering the breech at will. The bed-pieces of
the framework had been pierced for screws. It was, therefore, but a
few minutes' work to bore holes in the top of the chest and drive the
screws. Meanwhile the captain, who enjoyed the scheme as well as any
of us, split open a couple of old tackle-blocks, and, getting out the
trucks, proceeded to set them on the ends of two stout axles cut from
an old ice-pole. These axles were then nailed fast to the bottom of
the chest. The gun-carriage was then complete, and could be rolled
anywhere on deck with ease.
"Decidedly neat!" exclaimed Capt. Mazard, surveying it with a grin of
self-approbation.
"What say to that, Trull?" cried Raed.
The old man-of-war's-man had been watching the progress of the
invention with an occasional tug at his waistband.
"Yes; how's that in your eye?" exclaimed the captain. "You're a
military character. Give us an opinion on that."
"Wal, sur," cocking his eye at it, "I'm free to confass I naver saw
anything like it;" and that was all we could get out of him.
"Bring some ammunition, and let's give it a trial," said Kit.
I brought up the powder-flask, caps, and a couple of bullets. The
bullets we had run for it were of lead, about an inch in diameter,
and weighed not far from six ounces apiece. The breech was depressed.
Raed poured in half a gill of the fine powder by measurement; a wad of
paper was rammed down; then a bullet was driven home. There only
remained to prime and cap it.
"Fire at one of these seals," suggested Wade, pointing to where a
group of three or four lay basking on an ice-cake at a distance of
eight or ten hundred yards.
"Who'll take the first shot?" said Kit.
Nobody seemed inclined to seize the honor.
"Come, now, that seal's getting impatient!" cried the captain.
Still no one volunteered to shoot off the big rifle.
"I think Wash had better fire the first shot," remarked Raed. "The
honor clearly belongs to him."
Seeing they were a little disposed to rally me on it, I stepped up and
cocked it. At that everybody hastily stood back. I took as good aim as
the motion of the schooner would permit; though I think I should have
done better had not Palmleaf just at that moment sang out, "Dinner,
sar!" from behind. I pulled the trigger, however. There was a stunning
crack; and so smart a recoil, that I was pushed half round sidewise
with amazing spitefulness. The old chest rolled back, whirled round,
and upset against the bulwarks on the other side. The reader can
imagine what a rattle and racket it made.
"Golly!" exclaimed Palmleaf. "Am crazy!"
"Did it hit the seal?" recovering my equilibrium.
Wade was the only one who had watched the seal.
"I saw him flop off into the water," said he.
"Then of course it hit him," said I.
Nobody disputed it; though I detected an odious wink between the
captain and Kit.
The prostrate gun was got up on its legs again; old Trull remarking
that we had better trig it behind before we fired, in future: that
duty attended to, he thought it might work very well.
We then went to dinner. How to mount the howitzer was the next
question.
"We need a regular four-wheeled gun-carriage for that," said Raed.
"I think we can make one out of those planks," remarked Kit.
"The worst trouble will come with the wheels," said Wade.
But Capt. Mazard thought he could saw them out of sections of
fifteen-inch plank with the wood-saw.
"I'll undertake that for my part," he added, and, as soon as dinner
was over, went about it.
"Now we'll get old man Trull to help us on the _body_," said Kit.
The planks, with axe, adz, auger, and hammer, were carried on deck.
Our old man-of-war's man readily lent a hand; and with his advice,
particularly in regard to the cheeks for the trunnions, we succeeded
during the afternoon in getting up a rough imitation of the
old-fashioned gun-carriage in use on our wooden war-vessels. The
captain made the wheels and axles. The body was then spiked to them,
and the howitzer lifted up and set on the carriage. By way of testing
it, we then charged the piece with half a pint of powder, and fired
it. The sharp, brassy report was reverberated from the dark mountains
on the starboard side in a wonderfully distinct echo. Hundreds of
seals dropped off the ice-cakes into the sea all about,--a fact I
observed with some mortification. As the guns would have to remain on
deck, exposed to fog and rain, we stopped the muzzles with plugs, and
covered them with two of our rubber blankets. They were then lashed
fast, and left for time of need.
During the day, we had gradually come up with what we at first had
taken for a cape or a promontory from the mainland, but which, by five
o'clock, P.M., was discovered to be a group of mountainous islands,
the same known on the chart as the "Lower Savage Isles." The course
was changed five points, to pass them to the southward. By seven
o'clock we were off abreast one of the largest of them. It was our
intention to stand on this course during the night. The day had at no
time, however, been exactly fair. Foggy clouds had hung about the sun;
and now a mist began to rise from the water, much as it had done the
previous evening.
"If I thought there might be any tolerable safe anchorage among those
islands," muttered the captain, with his glass to his eye, "I should
rather beat in there than take the risk of running on to another
iceberg in the fog."
This sentiment was unanimous.
"There seems to be a clear channel between this nearest island and the
next," remarked Raed, who had been looking attentively for some
moments. "We could but bear up there, and see what it looks like."
The helm was set a-port, and the sails swung round to take the wind,
which, for the last hour, had been shifting to the south-east. In half
an hour we were up in the mouth of the channel. It was a rather narrow
opening, not more than thirty-five or forty rods in width, with
considerable ice floating about. We were in some doubt as to its
safety. The schooner was hove to, and the lead thrown.
"Forty-seven fathoms!"
"All right! Bring her round!"
The wind was light, or we should hardly have made into an unknown
passage with so much sail on: as it was, we did but drift lazily in.
On each side, the islands presented black, bare, flinty crags, distant
scarcely a pistol shot from the deck. A quarter of a mile in, we
sounded a second time, and had forty-three fathoms.
"Never saw a deeper gut for its width!" exclaimed Capt. Mazard. "What
a chasm there would be here were the sea out of it!"
Half a mile farther up, a third and smaller island lay at the head of
the channel, which was thus divided by it into two narrow arms,--one
leading out to the north-east, the other to the north-west. This
latter arm was clear of ice, showing a dark line of water crooking off
among numerous small islets; but the arm opening up to the north-east
was jammed with ice. "The Curlew" went in leisurely to three hundred
yards of the foot of the island, where we found thirty-three fathoms,
and hove to within a hundred yards of the ledges of the island on the
east side. The anchor was now let go, and the sails furled.
"We're snug enough here from anything from the north-east or north,"
remarked Capt. Mazard; "and even a sou'-wester would hardly affect us
much a mile up this narrow inlet."
It seemed a tolerably secure berth. The schooner lay as still as if
at her wharf at far-distant Portland. There was no perceptible swell
in the channel. Despite the vast mass of ice "packed" into the arm
above us, it was not disagreeably chilly. The thermometer stood at
fifty-nine degrees in our cabin. Indeed, were it not for the great
bodies of ice, these extreme northern summers, where the sun hardly
sets for months, would get insufferably hot,--too hot to be endured by
man.
The mist steamed silently up, up. Gradually the islands, the crags,
and even objects at the schooner's length, grew indistinct, and dimmed
out entirely by half-past ten. We heard the "_honk, honk_," of
numerous wild-geese from the islands; and, high overhead, the
melancholy screams of "boatswains." Otherwise all was quiet. The watch
was arranged among the sailors, and we went to bed. For the last sixty
hours we had had not over seven hours of sleep. Now was a good time to
make up. Profound breathing soon resounded along the whole line of
mattresses.
We had been asleep two or three hours, when a shake aroused me. A
strange, reddish glare filled the cabin. Donovan was standing at my
head.
"What's up?" I asked. "Fire? It isn't fire, is it?" jumping up.
"No, it's not fire," replied Donovan.
"Oh! morning, then," I said, greatly relieved.
"No; can't be. It's only one o'clock."
"Then what is it, for pity sake?" I demanded in fresh wonder.
"Don't know, sir. Thought I'd just speak to you. Perhaps you'll know
what it is. Won't you go up. It's a queer sight on deck."
"Of course I will. Go ahead. No matter about waking the others just
yet, though."
The cold mist struck in my face on emerging from the companion-way. It
was still very foggy and damp. Such a scene! The sky was of a deep
rose-color. The thick fog seemed like a sea of magenta. The deck, the
bulwarks, the masts, and even Donovan, standing beside me, looked as
if baptized in blood. It was as light as, even lighter than, when we
had gone below. The cliffs on the island, drear and black by daylight,
showed like mountains of red beef through the crimson fog.
"It was my watch," said Donovan. "I was all alone here. Thought I
would just speak to you. Come on quite sudden. I didn't know just what
to make of it."
"No wonder you didn't."
"I knew it couldn't be morning," he went on. "There must be a great
fire somewhere round: don't you think so, sir?"
I was trying to think. Queer sensations came over me. I looked at my
watch. It was four minutes past one. Donovan was right: it couldn't be
morning. A sudden thought struck me.
"It's the northern lights, Donovan!" I exclaimed.
"So red as this?"
"Yes: it's the fog."
"Do you really think so?" with a relieved breath.
"There's no doubt of it."
"But it makes a funny noise."
"Noise?"
"Yes: I heard it several times before I called you. Hark! There!"
A soft, rushing sound, which was neither the wind (for there was
none), nor the waves, nor the touch of ice, could be heard at brief
intervals. It seemed far aloft. I am at a loss how to describe it
best. It was not unlike the faint rustle of silk, and still more like
the flapping of a large flag in a moderate gale of wind. Occasionally
there would be a soft snap, which was much like the snapping of a
flag. I take the more pains to state this fact explicitly, because I
am aware that the statement that the auroral phenomena are accompanied
by audible sounds has been disputed by many writers. I have only to
add, that, if they could not have heard the "rustlings" from the deck
of "The Curlew" that night, they must have been lamentably deaf.
The light wavered visibly, brightening and waning with marvellous
swiftness.
"Shall we call the other young gentlemen?" Donovan asked.
"Yes; but don't tell them what it is. See what they will think of it."
In a few moments Kit and Wade and Raed were coming out of the
companion-way, rubbing their eyes in great bewilderment. They were
followed by the captain.
"Heavens!" he exclaimed. "Is the ship on fire?"
"Fire!" cried Wade excitedly, catching at the last word: "did you say
_fire_?"
"No, no!" exclaimed Kit. "It's _nothing_--nothing--but daybreak!"
"It's only one o'clock," said Donovan, willing to keep them in doubt.
Capt. Mazard was rushing about, looking over the bulwarks.
"There's no fire," said he, "unless it's up in the sky. But, by Jove!
if you aren't a red-looking set!--redder than lobsters!"
"Not redder than yerself, cap'n," laughed Donovan, who greatly enjoyed
their mystification.
"The sea is like blood!" exclaimed Wade. "You don't suppose the day of
judgment has come and caught us away up here in Hudson's Straits, do
you?"
"Not quite so bad as that, I guess," said Raed. "I have it: it's the
aurora borealis; nothing worse, nor more dangerous."
I had expected Raed would come to it as soon as he had got his eyes
open.
"A red aurora!" said the captain. "Is that the way you explain it?"
"Not a red aurora exactly," returned Raed, "but an aurora shining down
through the thick fog. The aurora itself is miles above the fog, up in
the sky and probably of the same bright yellow as usual; but the dense
mist gives it this red hue."
"I've heard that the northern lights were caused by electricity," said
Weymouth. "Is that so?"
"It is thought to be electricity passing through the air high up from
the earth," replied Raed. "That's what the scientific men tell us."
"They can tell us that, and we shall be just as wise as we were
before," said Kit. "They can't tell us what electricity is."
"Why!" exclaimed the captain, "I thought electricity was"--
"Well, what?" said Kit, laughing.
"Why, the--the stuff they telegraph with," finished the captain a
little confusedly.
"Well, what's that?" persisted Kit.
"What _is it_?" repeated the captain confidently. "Why, it
is--well--Hang it! I don't know!"
We all burst out laughing: the captain himself laughed,--his case was
so very nearly like everybody's who undertakes to talk about the
wondrous, subtle element. By the by, his definition of it--viz., that
it is "the stuff we telegraph with"--strikes me as being about the
best one I ever heard. Kit and Raed, however, have got a
theory,--which they expound very gravely,--to the effect that
electricity and the luminiferous ether--that thin medium through which
light is propagated from the sun, and which pervades all matter--are
one and the same thing; which, of course, is all very fine as a
theory, and will be finer when they can give the proof of it.
After watching the aurora for some minutes longer, during which it
kept waxing and waning with alternate pale-crimson and blood-red
flushes, we went back to our bunks; whence we were only aroused by
Palmleaf calling us to breakfast.
If there was any wind that morning it must have been from the east,
when the crags of the island under which we lay would have interrupted
it. Not a breath reached the deck of "The Curlew;" and we were thus
obliged to remain at our anchorage, which, in compliment to the
captain, and after the custom of navigators, we named _Mazard's Bay_.
As the inlet bore no name, and was not even indicated on the charts we
had with us, we felt at liberty to thus designate it, leaving to
future explorers the privilege of rechristening it at their pleasure.
"We shall have a lazy morning of it," Kit remarked, as we stood
loitering about the deck.
"I propose that we let down the boat, and go ashore on the island,"
said Wade. "'Twould seem good to set foot on something firm once
more."
"Well, those ledges look firm enough," replied Raed. "See here,
captain: here's a chap begging to get ashore. Is it safe to trust him
off the ship?"
"Hardly," laughed Capt. Mazard. "He might desert."
"Then I move we all go with him," said Kit. "Let's take some of those
muskets along too. May get a shot at those wild-geese we heard last
evening."
The boat was lowered. We boys and the captain, with Donovan and Hobbs
to row us, got over the rail, and paddled to where a broad jetting
ledge formed a natural quay, on which we leaped. The rock was worn
smooth by the waves of centuries. To let the sailors go ashore with
us, we drew up the boat on the rock several feet, and made it fast
with a line knotted into a crevice between two fragments of flinty
sienite rock at the foot of the crags. We then, with considerable
difficulty and mutual "boosting," clambered up to the top of the
cliffs, thirty or forty feet above the boat, and thence made our way
up to the summit of a bald peak half a mile from the shore, which
promised a good prospect of the surrounding islands. It is hardly
possible to give an idea of the desolate aspect of these ledgy islets.
There was absolutely no soil, no earth, on them. More than half the
surface was bare as black sienite could be. Huge leathery lichens hung
to the rocks in patches; and so tough were they, that one might pull
on them with his whole strength without tearing them. In the crevices
and tiny ravines between the ledges, there were vast beds of damp
moss. In crossing these we went knee-deep, and once waist-deep, into
it. The only plant I saw was a trailing shrublet, sometimes seen on
high mountains in New England, and known to botanists as Andromeda of
the heathworts. It had pretty blue-purple flowers, and was growing
quite plentifully in sheltered nooks. Not a bird nor an animal was to
be seen. Half an hour's climbing took us to the brown, weather-beaten
summit of the peak. From this point eleven small islands were in
sight, none of them more than a few miles in extent; and, at a
distance of seven or eight leagues, the high mountains of the
northern main, their tops white with snow, with glittering glaciers
extending down the valleys,--the source of icebergs. There was a
strong current of air across the crest of the peak. Sweeping down from
the wintry mountains, it made us shiver. The sea was shimmering in the
sun, and lay in silvery threads amid the brown isles. Below us, and
almost at our feet, was the schooner,--our sole connecting link with
the world of men,--her cheery pine-colored deck just visible over the
shore cliffs. Suddenly, as we gazed, she swung off, showing her bow;
and we saw the sailors jumping about the windlass.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 | 4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15