Cast Away in the Cold Part 11

"As I have said before, the loss of Sunday much grieved the Dean. So, you see, we had nothing else to do but make one on our own account."

"What, make a Sunday!" exclaimed William. "I've heard of people making almost everything, even building castles in the air; but I never heard before of anybody putting up a Sunday."

"Well, you see, we did the best we could. It is not at all surprising that we should have lost our reckoning in this way, seeing that the sun was shining, as I have told you, all the time; and we worked and slept without much regard to whether the hours of night or day were on us. So we had good reason for a little mixing up of dates. In fact we could neither of us very well recall the day of the month that we were cast away. It was somewhere near the end of June, that we knew; but the exact day we could not tell for certain. We remembered the day of the week well enough, and it was Tuesday; but more than this we could not get into our heads; and so it seemed that there was nothing for us but to sink all days into the one long day of the Arctic summer, and nevermore know whether it was Sunday, or Monday, or Friday, or what day it was of any month; and if it should be Heaven's will that we should live on upon the island until the New Year came round, and still other years should come and go, we should never know New Year's day.

"But, as I was saying, about making a Sunday for ourselves. I did everything I could to refresh my memory about it. I counted up the number of times we had slept, and the number of times we had worked, and recalled the day when I first walked around the island; and I tried my best to connect all those events together in such a way as to prove how often the sun had pa.s.sed behind the cliffs, and how often it had shone upon us; and thus I made out that the very day I am telling you about proved to be Sunday,--at least I so convinced the Dean, and he was satisfied. And that's the way we made a Sunday for ourselves.

"So we resolved to do no work that day; and this was well, for we were very weary and needed rest.

"I need not tell you that we pa.s.sed the time in talking over our plans for the future, and in discussing the prospects ahead of us, and arranging what we should do. You see we had settled about Sunday, so that was off our minds; and after recalling many things which had happened to us, and things which had been done on the _Blackbird_, we finally concluded that we had found out the day of the month, and so we called the day 'Sunday, the second of July,' and this we marked, as I will show you, thus: On the top of a large flat rock near by I placed a small white stone, and this we called our 'Sunday stone'; and then, in a row with this stone, we placed six other stones, which we called by the other days of the week. Then I moved the white stone out of line a little, which was to show that Sunday had pa.s.sed, and afterwards, when the next day had gone, we did the same with the Monday stone, and so on until the stones were all on a line again, when we knew that it was once more Sunday. Of course we knew when the day was gone, by the sun being around on the north side of the island, throwing the shadow of the cliffs upon us.

"For noting the days of the month we made a similar arrangement to that which we had made for the days of the week; and thus you see we had now got an almanac among other things.

"'And now,' said the Dean, 'let us put all this down for fear we forget it.' So away the little fellow ran and gathered a great quant.i.ty of small pebbles, and these we arranged on the top of the rock so as to form letters; and the letters that we thus made spelled out

'JOHN HARDY AND RICHARD DEAN, CAST AWAY IN THE COLD, TUESDAY, JUNE 27, 1824.'

"Now, when we came to look ahead, and to speculate upon what was likely to befall us, we saw that we had two months of summer still remaining; and, as midsummer had hardly come yet, we knew that we were likely to have it warmer than before, and we had now no further fears about being able to live through that period. In these two months it was plain that one of two things must happen,--a ship must come along and take us off, or we must be prepared for the dark time that must follow after the sun should go down for the winter; otherwise a third thing would certainly happen, that is, we should both die,--an event which did not, in any case, seem at all unlikely; so we pledged ourselves to stand by each other through every fortune, each helping the other all he could. At any rate, we would not lose hope, and never despair of being saved, through the mercy of Providence, somehow or other.

"Having reached this resigned state of mind, we were ready to consider rationally what we had to do. It was clear enough that, if we only looked out for a ship to save us, and that chance should in the end fail, we would be ill prepared for the winter if we were left on the island to encounter its perils. Therefore it was necessary to be ready for the worst, and accordingly, after a little deliberation, we concluded to proceed as follows:--

"1st. We would construct a place to shelter ourselves from the cold and storms. (In this we had made some satisfactory progress already.)

"2d. We would collect all the food we could while there was opportunity.

"3d. We would gather fuel, of which, as had been already proved, there was Andromeda (or fire-plant) and moss and blubber to depend upon. Of this latter the dead narwhal and seal would furnish us a moderate supply; but for the rest we must rely upon our own skill to capture some other animals from the sea; though, as to how this was to be done, we had to own ourselves completely at fault.

"4th. We would in some manner secure for ourselves warmer clothing, otherwise we would certainly freeze; and here we were completely at fault too.

"5th. We would contrive in some way to make for ourselves a lamp, as we could never live in our cave in darkness; and here was a difficulty apparently even more insurmountable than the others,--as much so as appeared the making of a fire in the first instance,--for while we had a general idea that we might capture some seals, and get thus a good supply of oil, and that we might also get plenty of fox-skins for clothing, yet neither of us could think of any way to make a lamp.

"When we came thus to bring ourselves to view the situation, the prospect might have caused stouter hearts than ours to fear; but, as we had seen before, nothing was to be gained by lamentation, so we put a bold front on, firmly resolved to make the best fight we could."

"A poor chance for you, I should think," said Fred, "and I don't see how you ever lived through so many troubles,"--while little Alice declared her opinion that "the poor Dean must have died anyway."

"A very bad prospect, indeed, my dears," continued the Captain,--"very bad, I can a.s.sure you; but as it is a poor rule to read the last page of a book before you read the rest of it, so we will go right on to the end with our story, and then you will find out what became of the Dean, as well as what happened to myself.

"Well, as I was going to say, when Monday came, we set about our work, not exactly in the order which I have named, but as we found most convenient; and as day after day followed each other through the week, and as one week followed after another week, we found ourselves at one time building up the wall in front of the cave, then catching ducks and gathering eggs, then collecting the fire-plant, and then throwing moss up on the rocks to dry, and then cutting off the blubber and skins of the dead seal and narwhal.

"All of these things were carefully secured; and in a sort of cave, much like the one we were preparing for our abode, only larger, we stowed away all the fire-plant and dried moss that we could get. Then we looked about us to see what we should do for a place to put our blubber in,--that is, you know, the fat we got off the dead narwhal and the seal, and also any other blubber that we might get afterwards.

"When we had cut all the blubber off the seal and narwhal, we found that we had an enormous heap of it,--as much, at least, in quant.i.ty, as five good barrels full,--and, since the sun was very warm, there was great danger, not only that it would spoil, but that much of it would melt and run away. Fortunately, very near our hut there was a small glacier hanging on the hillside, coming down a narrow valley from a greater ma.s.s of ice which lay above. From the face of this glacier a great many lumps of ice had broken off, and there were also deep banks of snow which the summer's sun had not melted.

"In the midst of this acc.u.mulation of ice and snow we had little difficulty in making, partly by excavating and partly by building up, a sort of cave, large enough to hold twice as much blubber as we had to put into it. Here we deposited our treasure, which was our only reliance for light in case we invented a lamp, and our chief reliance for fire if the winter should come and find us still upon the island.

"After we had thus secured, in this snow-and-ice cave, our stock of blubber, we constructed another much like it near by for our food, and into this we had soon gathered a pretty large stock of ducks and eggs.

[Ill.u.s.tration: John Hardy and the Dean provide for the Future.]

"When we contemplated all that we had done in this particular, you may be sure our spirits rose very much."

"Odd, wasn't it?" said Fred, "having a storehouse made of ice and snow.

But, Captain Hardy, if you'll excuse me for interrupting you, what did this glacier that you spoke about look like? and what was it anyway?"

"A glacier is nothing more," replied the Captain, "than a stream of ice made out of snow partly melted and then frozen again, and which, forming, as I have said before, high up on the tops of the hills, runs down a valley and breaks off at its end and melts away. Sometimes it is very large,--miles across,--and goes all the way down to the sea; and the pieces that break off from it are of immense size, and are called _icebergs_. Sometimes the glaciers are very small, especially on small islands such as ours was. This little glacier I tell you of lay in a narrow valley, as I said before; and, as the cliffs were very high on either side, it was almost always in shadow, and the air was very cold there; so you see how fortunate it was that we thought of fixing upon that place for our storehouses. Then another great advantage to us was, that it was so near our hut,--being within sight, and only a few steps across some rough rocks; but among these rocks we contrived, in course of time, to make, by filling in with small stones, a pretty smooth walk.

"As we caught and put away the ducks in our storehouse, we began at length to preserve their skins. At first we could see no value in them, and threw them away; but we imagined at length that, in case we could not catch the foxes, they would serve to make us some sort of clothing, while out of the seal-skin which I mentioned before we could make boots, if we only had anything to sew with.

"Thus one difficulty after another continued to beset us; but this last one was soon partly overcome, for the Dean, on the very first day of our landing, discovered that he had in his pocket his palm and needle, carrying it always about him when on shipboard, like any other good sailor; but we lacked thread."

"What is a palm and needle, Captain Hardy?" inquired William.

"A palm," answered the Captain, "is a band of leather going around the hand, with a thimble fitted into it where it comes across the root of the thumb. The sailor's needle differs only from the common one in being longer and three-cornered, instead of round. It is used for sewing sails and other coa.r.s.e work on shipboard. The needle is held between the thumb and forefinger, and is pushed through with the thimble in the palm of the hand, and hence the name.

"To come back to our story (having, as I hope, made the palm and needle question clear to you), let me ask you to remember that I told you, when I landed on the island, I had four things,--that is:--

"1st. My life;

"2d. The clothes on my back;

"3d. A jack-knife; and

"4th. The mercy of Providence.

"But now, you see, I had added a fifth article to that list, in the Dean's needle; and I might also say that I had a sixth one, too, in the Dean himself, which I did not dare enumerate in the list at first, as I felt pretty sure that the Dean was going to die, or at least wake up crazy.

"But you see a sailor's palm and needle could be of very little use unless we had some thread, of which we did not possess a single particle, except the small piece that was in the needle, and by which it was tied to the palm. It was a good while before we obtained anything to make thread of, so we will pa.s.s that subject by for the present, and come back to what we had more immediately in hand. This was the preparation of our cave, or rather, as we had better say, hut,--that being more nearly what it was.

"The building of our hut, then, was indeed a very difficult task, as the solid wall we had to construct in front was much higher than our heads, and in this wall we had, of course, to leave a doorway and a window, besides a sort of chimney, or outlet, for the smoke from the fireplace, which was beside the door.

"We must have been at least two weeks making this wall, for we had not only to construct the wall itself, but when it got so high that we could no longer reach up to the top, we had to build steps, that we might climb there. We left a window above the doorway, not thinking, of course, to find any gla.s.s to put in it, but leaving it rather as a ventilator than a window. It was very small, not more than a foot square, and was easily shut up at any time, if we should not need it.

For a door, we used a piece of the narwhal skin. This skin was fastened above the doorway with pegs, which we made of bones, driving them into the cracks between the stones, thus letting the skin fall down over the doorway like a curtain.

"In making the wall, we were greatly helped by the bones which I had found down on the beach, as they were much lighter than the stones, and aided in holding the moss in its place, so that we were able to use much more of that material than we otherwise should have been. When the wall was completed, we were gratified to see how tight it was, and how perfectly we had made it fit the rocks by means of the moss.

"Having completed the wall, our next concern was to arrange the interior; but about this we had no need to be in so great a hurry as with the wall, for we had now a place to shelter us from any storm that might come, and we could hope to make ourselves somewhat comfortable there, even although the inside was not well fitted up; for we had a fireplace, and could do our cooking without going outside. When we found how perfect was the draft through the outlet, or chimney, you may be very sure we were greatly delighted.

"As it fell out, we had secured this shelter in the very nick of time, for in two days afterwards a violent storm arose,--a heavy wind with hail and gusts of snow,--a strange kind of weather, you will think, for the middle of July. This storm made havoc with the ice on the east side of the island, breaking it up, and driving it out over the sea to the westward, filling the sea up so much in that direction, that there was no use, for the present at least, in looking for ships, as none could come near us. The storm made a very wild and fearful spectacle of the sea, as the waves went dashing over the pieces of ice and against the icebergs. When I looked out upon this scene, and listened to the noises made by the waves and the crushing ice, and heard the roaring wind, I wondered more than ever what could possess anybody to go to such a sea in a ship, for it seemed to me that the largest possible gains would not be a sufficient reward for the dangers to be encountered.

"But so it always was, and always will be, I suppose. Whenever there is a little money to be made, men will encounter any kind of hazard in order to get it. Thus the risks in going after whales and seals for their blubber, which is very valuable, are great; but then, if the ship makes a good voyage, the profits are very large, and when the sailors receive their 'lay,' that is, their share of the profits on the oil and whalebone which have been taken, it sometimes amounts to quite a handsome sum of money to each, and they consider themselves well rewarded for all their privations and hardships. And it must be owned that the whalers and sealers are a very brave sort of men, especially the whalers who go among the ice; for besides the dangers to the vessel, and the danger always encountered in approaching a whale to harpoon him (for, as you must know, he sometimes knocks the boat to pieces with his monstrous tail, and spills all the crew out in the water), he may, while swimming off with the harpoon in him, and dragging the boat by the line which is fast to it, take it into his head to rush beneath the ice, and thus destroy the boat and drown the people.

"But this is too long a falling to 'leeward' of our story, as the sailors would call it; so we will come right back into the wind again.

"When the weather cleared off after the storm, we went to work as before. But everything about looked gloomy enough. The cliffs were besprinkled with snow, and about the rocks the snow had drifted, and it lay in streaks where it had been carried by the wind. The sea was still very rough, and, as there were many immense pieces of ice upon the water, when the waves rose and fell, the pounding of it on the rocks made a most fearful sound.

"The sun coming out warm, however, soon melted the snow, and, getting heated up with work, we got on bravely. Indeed, we soon became not less surprised at the rapid progress we were making than at the facility with which we accommodated ourselves to our strange condition of life, and even grew cheerful under what would seem a state of the greatest possible distress. Thus you observe how perfectly we may reconcile ourselves to any fate, if we have but a resolute will, and the fear of G.o.d in our hearts. I do not mean to boast about the Dean and myself: but I think it must be owned that we kept up our courage pretty well, all things considered,--now, don't _you_ think so, my dears?"