Born to Wander Part 18

They were gliding away, or south or north or east or west, they knew not whither.

Book 2--CHAPTER FIVE.

AFLOAT ON AN ICEBERG.

"Midnight soft and fair above, Midnight fierce and dark beneath, All on high the smile of love, All below the frown of death:

"Waves that whirl in angry spite With a phosph.o.r.escent light, Gleaming ghastly in the night, Like the pallid sneer of Doom."

Tupper.

Scene: In Baffin's Sea. Shipwrecked mariners afloat on an iceberg, which rises and falls on the smooth-rolling waves.

Morning broke grey and hazily; the wind, as if it had done its worst and spent its fury, went down, but the sea still ran very high, dashing in cold spray over the bergs on which the shipwrecked mariners were huddled together for warmth, and leaving a thick coating of ice on top of the sail that covered them.

Captain Blunt had gone on board one berg with half the crew, about ten all told, and Leonard, with Douglas, on board the other, along with the remainder, the two friends determining to be together to the bitter end, if indeed the end were to come.

The sea itself went down at last, as far as broken water was concerned; only a big round heaving swell continued, on which the icebergs rose and fell with a strange kind of motion that made all on board them drowsy.

When Leonard looked about him in the morning sunlight never a sign could be seen of the other berg. Nor all that day was it seen or on any other. It was gone. Other icebergs there were in dozens, but none with men on them.

Leonard heaved a sigh, and wished that he only had the wings of one of those happy sea-birds, that went wheeling and screaming round in the air, sometimes coming nearer and nearer, tack and half-tack, so close, out of mere curiosity, that they could have been knocked down with a boat-hook. All that day and all the next and next the berg floated silently on,--

"As idle as a painted ship Upon a painted ocean."

Almost every day strange, wondering creatures came up out of the water to gaze at them. The tusked walrus, the gazelle-eyed seal--yes, even the narwhal must have spied them, and felt curiosity, for he shifted his course, and ploughed down towards the berg to have a look; then, as if satisfied that his mind could not fathom so great a mystery, went on his silent, solitary way once more.

Happily for the poor sailors, they had provisions. Had the ship gone down at once when struck, as vessels do sometimes go, they would now have been in a pitiful plight indeed.

But the cold was intense. There was no keeping it out by day hardly; only by constant exercise, which, thanks to the magnitude of the iceberg, they were able to maintain.

But at night it was intense, chilling every one to the bone and spinal marrow.

They lay there pressed together; not a corner of the sail was left open to admit a breath of the frost-laden air, but even then they were not warm. It was impossible to sleep for hours and hours after lying down, and when at last they did drop off, the cold, the bitter, bitter cold, was with them still--with them in their dreams, with them in their hearts, and on their very brains.

When morning light came they would stagger up, looking wonderingly at each other's pale, pinched faces. To stand for a time was an impossibility. They managed to light a little fire of wood on an iron slab, morning, noon, and evening, to make a little coffee; this, with biscuit and raw pork, was their only diet, and right thankful they were to have such fare.

It was on a Tuesday the _Fairy Queen_ went down, and five long weary days rolled slowly on their course. For five weary nights they suffered and shivered, and when the Sabbath morning came round they were, to all appearance, as far from help as ever.

Hope itself began to fade in their hearts, especially when two of their number sank and died before their eyes.

They committed their bodies to the deep, and, horrible to relate, saw them devoured; for till now they had no idea that the sea around them was swarming with sharks. Some they had seen, it is true, but nothing like the number that now came up to the ghastly feast.

It was the Sabbath, and although every morning and evening they had prayed and sung hymns, after the fashion common in Scotland on this day--His day--many chapters of the Book of books were read, and first Douglas and then Leonard gave the men some earnest exhortations.

Leonard never knew his friend Douglas could speak so feelingly before, or that his heart was such a well--now bubbling over--of religious feeling and fervour.

"Ah, my dear fellows!" he ended with these words, "we never really feel our need of a Saviour until the prospect of death stares us in the face.

Then we feel the need of a friend, and, looking around, as it were, we find Him by our side, and right willing are we to take Him then, to grasp His hand, and trust our all in all to Him."

"Amen!" said the sailors fervently.

Then some verses of that bonnie hymn-psalm were sung, commencing:--

"The Lord's my Shepherd, I'll not want, He makes me down to lie By pastures green; He leadeth me The quiet waters by."

A strange sight on that clear, still, dark ocean, the white iceberg with its living freight drifting aimlessly about. Strange sound, this song of praise, rising from their cold, blue lips, and from hearts that hardly dared to hope.

Another day and another went by, and on the Wednesday an accident happened that had well-nigh proved fatal to nearly all on board the berg. More than one-third part of their ice-ship parted and fell away.

Luckily it first gave voice, and showed the rent before finally dropping off.

There was no denying it, the danger was now extreme. They had been drifting slowly southwards, and the iceberg was being influenced by warmer currents, and slowly wearing away.

It might, moreover, topple over at any moment. Things came to their very worst that same evening when another piece of the berg plunged into the sea, and when morning broke, there was barely room for the men to huddle together, looking fearfully around them, and down into the still black water, and at those hungry sharks, who now seemed to gambol about as if in momentary expectation of their prey.

"Look!" cried Douglas about noon that day, "what is that dark object yonder on that immense iceberg that we have been skirting these last two hours?"

"Seals, I think," said Leonard, in a feeble, hopeless voice.

"I think not, Leon. Oh, lad! I think they are men."

"Let us signal, anyhow."

A jacket was waved and--answered.

Next moment half-a-dozen swift kayaks or Eskimo boats were dashing from the sh.o.r.e to their rescue.

"Thank G.o.d!" said every man, and the tears rolled down the cheeks of many now, and half-choked them as they tried to speak.

But they clasped each other's thin, cold hands, and _looked_ the joy they could not utter.

They were Eskimos who had come to the rescue, and it was from the mainland they had come, and not from any iceberg, or even island.

Their joy was redoubled when they drew near and found Captain Blunt and their old shipmates waving their hands and hats to them from the snow-clad sh.o.r.e.

So happy a reunion no one can fully understand or appreciate except those who have been in the same sad plight, and saved as if by a miracle.

Longfellow, in his beautiful poem "The Secret of the Sea," tells us how Count Arnaldos--

"Saw a fair and stately galley Steering onward to the land.

"How he heard the ancient helmsman Chant a song so wild and clear, That the sailing sea-bird slowly Poised upon the mast to hear,--

"Till his soul was filled with longing, And he cried with impulse strong, 'Helmsman! for the love of Heaven, Teach me, too, that wondrous song.'

"'Would'st thou so,' the helmsman answered, 'Learn the secrets of the sea?

Only those who brave its dangers Comprehend its mystery.'"

Yes, reader, the sea hath many, many secrets. We may never know them all. Not even those who have been down to the sea in ships may fathom half the mysteries that everywhere surround them, or can ever hope to explain to those who dwell on land a t.i.the of what they know and feel.