Born to Wander Part 16

The _Fairy Queen_ was trying to round a rocky cape when the white horses of that gale of wind first appeared on the horizon, heading straight for them. Once round the point they would be comparatively safe.

"Look!" cried Leonard to Douglas, whose watch it was. The sun was going down behind the western waves. Wild and red he looked, and shorn of his beams, and tinging all the water 'twixt the barque and the horizon a bright blood-red.

On came the white horses. It was a race between the barque and the gale of wind. Before her loomed the rocky promontory. The cliffs rose straight up out of the sea, and their heads were buried in haze. Close to the wind sailed the barque, as close as ever could be.

On and on she speeds, but the white horses are almost close aboard of her.

"Hands, shorten sail!"

The wind is on her. To shorten sail now were madness. The wind is on her, the brave ship leans over to it, till the water rushes in through the lee scuppers.

The wind increases in force every moment.

The great black rocks are close above her lee bow. Looking upwards, the wild flowers can be seen hanging to the banks and cliffs--saxifrages, heath, broom, and golden gorse. So close is the barque that the sea-birds that have alighted on the cliffs as the sun kissed the waves, startled by the flapping canvas, soar off again and go screaming skywards.

The sun is down now altogether, and the gale has rushed at the vessel like a wild beast seeking its lawful prey; the seas are dashing over her, the spray flying high over the bending masts.

The gale has leapt upon them, too, from a pillar of cloud, and with forked and flashing lightning.

Are they round the point? No one on that deck can tell as yet. The roar and the surge is deafening. The gloom is appalling, men can hardly breathe, the words the captain tries to shout to those at the wheel are carried away on the wind. The crew clutch at the rigging, and feel choking, drowning.

"Keep her away now!" It was Leonard's voice in a wheelman's ear. They were round the point!

The barque is flying. The topsails are rent in ribbons. What matters it? The open sea is before them. Yes, but like a tiger baulked of its prey, the squall suddenly increases to the force of a hurricane, and next moment the good ship is helpless on her beam ends.

Had the force of the gale been kept up many minutes the ship would have foundered, none would have been left alive to tell the tale. In some sandy bay in through those rocks and cliffs other dead swollen bodies would have been cast up like those on the Shetland sh.o.r.es, to lie with l.u.s.treless eyes in the morning's sunshine.

The squall abated, the sky cleared, the gale itself has spent its fury, and goes growling away to leeward.

With hatchet and knife in hardy hands the wreck is cleared away at last, and the _Fairy Queen_ rides in the moonlight on an even keel.

The captain shakes hands with Leonard and Douglas. "You saved her," he said. "My boys, you saved her! It was excellent seamanship. Had you shortened sail when the wind got stiff we never would have rounded that point, and the sharks would have had what was left of us."

"Captain Blunt," said Douglas, "take credit to yourself as well, for you superintended the ballasting of the barque. Had that shifted, then--"

"Davy Jones, eh?" said the skipper, laughing.

He could afford to laugh now.

There was much still to be done, so no more was said. All hands were called to make the barque as snug as could be for the night.

When morning broke in a grey uncertain haze over the sea, and the rocky sh.o.r.e began to loom out to leeward and astern, the extent of the damage was more apparent, but after all the ship had come out of it fairly well. The fore topmast was gone, the mizzen damaged, the bulwarks broken, and more like sheep hurdles than anything else, but there was little other damage worth entering in the log-book.

The sky cleared when the sun rose, and after breakfast the men were set to work repairing damages.

The _Fairy Queen_ had little business on the Norwegian coast at all, but she had been driven far out of her course by adverse winds.

In a few more days the breeze was fair, and the ship was making good way westwards, albeit she was jury-rigged. It was sincerely hoped by all on board that the terrible gale they had just encountered was the worst they would meet. The ship had borne it wonderfully well, and leaked not in the least; for many a day, therefore, everything went as merry as marriage bells on board.

Captain Blunt was happy, so were our heroes, and so, for the matter of that, was every one fore and aft. The crew of the _Fairy Queen_ were all picked men. They were not feather-bed sailors; most of them had been in the Arctic regions before, and knew them well. But albeit a good seaman is not afraid to face danger in every shape and form, he is nevertheless happiest when things are going well.

So now, every night, around the galley fire, songs were sung and stories told, and by day many a jocund laugh around the fo'c's'le mingling with the scream of the circling sea-birds told of light hearts and minds that were free from care.

Everything in these seas was new to young Douglas and Leonard. They pa.s.sed the strange-looking Faroe group of islands to the north, and in good time Iceland to the south, and bore up, straight as a bird could fly, for Cape Farewell, the southernmost point of Greenland.

Those Faroe Isles, as seen from the sea, are indescribably fantastic and picturesque. Let me see if I cannot find a simile. Yes, here it is: take a number of pebbles and stones, with a few good-sized smithy cinders. Let these be of all sizes. Next take a broad, shallow basin, which partly fill with water stained dark blue with indigo; now place your stones, etc, in this water, with one end of each sticking up.

Paint these ends and tip them and streak them with green, with white, and with crimson, and lo and behold! you have a model of the Faroe Islands.

The _Fairy Queen_ called at Reykjavik, and the good people of that quaint wee "city" came trooping on board. Even the Danish parson came, carrying in his own hands--for he was not proud--a string of firm, delicious-looking rock cod as a present for the captain.

Almost every boat brought a gift of some kind. Well, I daresay they did expect some presents in return, and it is needless to say they got them.

This was, after all, only a very pleasant and very justifiable way of doing a barter; much better, in my opinion, than if they had lain on their oars and said,--

"We have fresh fish, and mountain mutton, and eggs and game for sale; how much tobacco, biscuits, knives, hatches, and cooking utensils have you to spare?"

The good little clergyman innocently inquired whether the war betwixt England and France was still going on, and was astonished to be told it was over years ago.

But nothing could exceed the kindness and hospitality of these people to our young heroes when they went on sh.o.r.e. Had they eaten and drunk a hundredth part of what they were pressed to partake of, they would have been cleverer far than the Welsh giant I used to read of in my boyhood in "The Wonderful Adventures of Jack the Giant-killer."

The _Fairy Queen_ lay at Reykjavik--having to take in water--for three days, and then sailed away. But would it be believed that in this short time Leonard and Douglas won so many hearts among old and young, that there was hardly a dry eye in the village the morning they left, so primitive and simple were those people then?

Note 1. Mawk, _Scottice_--a hare.

Book 2--CHAPTER FOUR.

ON SILENT SEAS.

"And now there came both mist and snow, And it grew wondrous cold, And ice, mast high, came floating by, As green as emerald.

"And through the drifts the snowy clilts Did send a dismal sheen, Nor shapes of men nor beast we ken-- The ice was all between."

Coleridge.

Scene: The Arctic Ocean. One solitary ship in sight. Ice all about, against which, in contrast, the water looks black as ink.

Yes, everything they saw in this voyage and in these seas was indeed very new to Leonard and Douglas. They certainly were pleased they had come. It was like being in a new world.

They saw so many icebergs before they reached Cape Farewell that they ceased to fear them. Nothing very tremendous, though, but of all sizes, mostly covered with snow, and of shapes the most fantastic. Everything on earth seemed to be mimicked in shape by these bergs. Churches and houses, or halls with domes and minarets, were common objects.

Furniture of all kinds came next in order of frequency; then came animals of all sorts, pigs, sheep, lions, bears, giraffes, geese, swans, horses, cattle, c.o.c.ks, and hens. And the most amusing part of the business was this: as the ship sailed past them, or through the midst of them, they kept altering their shapes or forms with the greatest coolness, so to speak.

A giraffe, for instance, developed into a ginger-beer bottle, a cow turned into a cab, a church into a chair, a pig became a pigeon, and a hen a horse, while, perhaps, a monster lion or couchant bear became a daft-looking old wife with a flap-cap on. It was funny.

Some of the smaller of these icebergs were tenanted by seals.

What a delightfully easy life those lovely creatures seemed to lead!

There goes one, for instance, basking on a bit of ice just like a sofa, pillow and all complete; and his snowy couch is floating quietly away through that blue and sunny summer sea, rising and falling gently on the waves in a way that must be quite delightful. He just raises his head as the ship sails past, and gazes after the _Fairy Queen_ with a kind of dreamy interest, then lets it drop again, and recommences his study of the birds that go wheeling and screaming round in the sky.