Cast Away in the Cold Part 6

"Easy there, my lad," answered the Captain. "Do you think you catch an ancient mariner on the water without 'a shot in his locker'?"

"Wouldn't it have been jolly,--eating supper in the cabin," exclaimed William; "and then, Captain Hardy, would you have gone on with the story?"

"To be sure I would," answered the Captain.

"Then I'm sorry we didn't stay there," replied William.

"Good," said the Captain. "But what says little Alice?"

"I'd rather hear the story where we are," was the reply. And as the lightning flashed and the thunder rattled more and more, the little girl crept closer to the old man's side.

"Then I'm glad we came away," replied the captain; "and we'll go right on too, for I see you don't like listening to the storm."

"O, I'm dreadfully afraid!" said Alice.

"Go on, go on! Captain Hardy," exclaimed both the boys together.

"But where was I when we left off to run away, in such a lubberly manner, from the storm?" inquired the Captain. "Let me see," and he put his finger to his nose, looking thoughtful.

"You were just beginning to cry," put in William.

"To be sure I was, that's it; and so would you cry, too, my boy, if you had an empty stomach under your belt, and nothing but a jack-knife in it," answered the Captain.

"That I would," exclaimed William, "I should have cried my eyes out.

But, Captain Hardy,--if you'll excuse me,--was the jack-knife in the empty stomach or in the belt?"

"Ah, you little rogue! I'll not mind _you_ any more," said the Captain, laughing; "what would Fred have done?"

"I think I should have broke my heart," said Fred, promptly.

"That's not so easy done as crying," exclaimed the Captain. "But what says little Alice; what would she have done?"

"I don't know," replied Alice, gently; "but I think I should have gone and tried to get the poor boy to speak to me, and then I would have tried to comfort him."

"That's it, my charming little girl; that's just exactly what I did. But it wasn't so easy either, I can tell you; for the boy was still as dull as ever. I tried to rouse him in every way I could think of; but he would not arouse. I spoke to him, I called to him, I shouted to him; but he would not answer me a single word."

"What was his name, Captain Hardy? Won't you tell us his name?" asked Fred.

"Ah! that I should have done before; but I forgot it. His name was Richard Dean. The sailors always called him 'the Dean.' He was a bright, lively boy, and everybody liked him. To see him in such a state made my very heart ache. But he was growing warm under his great load of eider-down, and that I was glad to see; and at last he showed some feeble signs of consciousness. His eyes opened wide, his lips moved. I thought he was saying something, though I could not understand for some time what it was. Then I could make out, after a while, that he was murmuring, 'Mother, mother!' Then he looked at me, wildly like, and then he turned his head away, and then he turned it back and looked at me again. 'Hardy,' said he, in a very low voice, 'is that you?' 'Yes,' I said; 'and I'm glad you know me,'--which you may be very sure I was.

"But the poor fellow's mind soon wandered away from me again; and I could see that it was disturbed by visions of something dreadful.

'There! there!' he cried, 'it's tumbling on me!--the ice! the ice! it's tumbling on me!' and he tried to spring up from where he lay. 'There's nothing there at all, Dean,' said I, as I pressed him down. 'Come, look up; don't you see me?' He was quiet in an instant; and then, looking up into my face, he said, 'Yes, it's Hardy, I know; but what has happened to us,--anything?' Without pausing to give me time to answer, he closed his eyes and went on,--'O, I've had an awful dream! I thought an iceberg was falling on the ship. I saw it coming, and sprang away! As it fell, the ship went down, and I went down with it,--down, down, down; then I came up, clinging to some pieces of the wreck. Another man was with me; we were drifted with the waves to the land. I kept above the water until I saw somebody running towards me. When he had nearly reached me, I drowned. O, it was an awful dream!--Did you come to call me, Hardy?'--and he opened wide his eyes. 'Is it four bells? Did you come to call me?'--'No, no, I haven't come to call you, it isn't four bells yet,' I answered, scarcely knowing what I said; 'sleep on, Dean.'--'I'm glad you didn't come to call me, Hardy. I want to sleep. The dream haunts me. I dreamed that I was fast to something that hurt me, when I tried to get away. It was an awful dream,--awful, awful, awful!'--and his voice died away into the faintest whisper, and then it ceased entirely. 'Sleep, sleep on, poor Dean!' murmured I; and I prayed with all my heart that his reason might not be gone.

"'What could I do?' 'What should I do?' were the questions which soon crossed my mind respecting the Dean. There was, however, one very obvious answer,--'Let him alone'; so I rose up from his side, and saw, as I did so, that he was now sleeping soundly,--a genuine, quiet sleep.

He had become quite warm; and, after some minutes' watching, it appeared to me very likely that he would, after a while, wake up all right,--a conclusion which made me very happy; that is, as happy as one so situated could be.

"After leaving the Dean I once more considered my condition. It seemed to me that I had grown many years older in these few hours, and I commenced reasoning with myself. Instead of sitting down on the rock, and beginning to cry, as I had done before, I sat down to reflect. And this is the way I reflected:--

"'1st,' I said, 'while there is life there is hope'; and,

"'2d. So long as the land remains unexplored, I have a right to conclude that it is inhabited'; and,

"'3d. Being inhabited, there is a good chance of our being saved; for even the worst savages cannot refuse two such helpless creatures food and clothing.'

"Having thus reflected, I arrived at these conclusions respecting what I should do; namely,--

"'1st. I will go at once in search of these inhabitants, and when I find them, I will beg them to come and help me with a sick companion.'

"'2d. On my way I will make my dinner off raw eggs, of which there are so many hereabout, for I am so frightfully hungry that I can no longer resist the repulsive food.'

"'3d. I will also hunt on my way for some water, as I am so thirsty that I scarcely know what to do.'

"'4th. For the rest I will trust to Providence.'

"Having thus resolved, I immediately set out, and in a very few minutes I had eaten a whole dozen raw eggs,--and that, too, without any disgust at all. Then, as I walked on a little farther, I discovered that there were a mult.i.tude of small streams dashing over the rocks, the water being quite pure and clear,--coming from great snow-banks on the hill-tops, which were melting away before the sun.

"Being thus refreshed with meat and drink, it occurred to me to climb up to an elevation, and see what more I could discover. The ice was very thick and closely packed together all along the sh.o.r.e; but beyond where the wreck had happened the sea was quite open, only a few straggling bits of field-ice mixed up with a great many icebergs,--indeed, the icebergs were too thick to be counted. I thought I saw a boat turned upside down; but it was so far away that I could not make out distinctly what it was. It was clear enough to me that n.o.body had been saved from the wreck except the Dean and myself.

"As I looked around, it appeared very evident to me that the land on which I stood was an island.

"After hallooing several times, without any other result than to startle a great number of birds, as I had done before, I set out again, briskly jumping from rock to rock, the birds all the while springing up before me and fluttering away in great flocks. There seemed to be no end to them.

"As I went along, I soon found that I was turning rapidly to the left, and that I was not only on an island, but on a very small one at that. I could not have been more than two hours in going all the way around it, although I had to clamber most of the way over very stony places, stopping frequently to shout at the top of my voice, with the hope of being heard by some human beings; but not a soul was there to answer me, nor could I discover the least sign of anybody ever having been there.

"This failure greatly discouraged me, but still I was not so much cast down as you might think. Perhaps it was because I had eaten so many eggs, and was no longer hungry; for, let me tell you, when one's stomach gets empty, the courage has pretty much all gone out of him.

"Besides this, I had made some discoveries which seemed in some way to forebode good, though I could not exactly say why. I found the birds thicker and thicker as I proceeded. Their nests were in some places so close together that I could hardly walk without treading on their eggs.

I also saw several foxes, some of which were white and others were dark gray. As I walked on, they scampered away over the stones ahead of me, and then perched themselves on a tall rock near by, apparently very much astonished to see me. They seemed to look upon me as an intruder, and I thought they would ask, 'What business have you coming here?' They had little idea how glad I should have been to be almost anywhere else,--on the farm from which I had run away, for instance,--and leave them in undisputed possession of their miserable island. They seemed to be very sleek and well-contented foxes; for they were gorging themselves with raw eggs, just as I had been doing, and they were evidently the terror of the birds. I saw one who had managed in some way to capture a duck nearly as large as himself, and was bouncing up the hill--to his den, no doubt--with the poor thing's neck in his mouth, and its body across his shoulder.

"Then, too, I discovered, from the east side of the island, where the ice was solid, a great number of seals lying in the sun, as if asleep, on the ice; and when I came around on the west side, where the sea was open, great schools of walruses, with their long tusks and ugly heads, were sporting about in the water as if at play, and an equally large number of the narwhal, with their long horns, were also playing there.

Only that they are larger, and have these hideous-looking tusks, walruses are much like seals. The narwhal is a small species of whale, being about twenty feet long, and spotted something like an iron-gray horse. Its great peculiarity is the horn, which grows, like that of a sword-fish, straight out of the nose, and is nearly half as long as the body. Like all the other whales, it must come up to the surface of the water to breathe; and its breathing is done through a hole in the top of the head, like any other whale's. You know the breathing of a whale is called 'spouting,' or 'blowing,'--that is, when he breathes out it is so called, and when he does this he makes the spray fly up into the air.

"This breathing of the largest whales can be seen several miles; that is, I should say, the spray thrown up by their breath. So you see the common expression of the whale-fishers, 'There she blows!' is a very good one; for sometimes, when the whale is very large, the spray looks like a small waterspout in the sea.

"Besides the narwhal, which I have told you about, I saw another kind of whale, even smaller still. This is called the white whale, though it isn't exactly white, but a sort of cream-color. They had no horns, however, like the narwhal; and they skimmed along through the water in great numbers, and very close together, and when they come to the surface they breathe so quickly that the noise they make is like a sharp hiss.

[Ill.u.s.tration: John Hardy making Discoveries.]

"Considering the numbers of these animals,--the seals and walruses and narwhals and white whales,--I was not surprised, when I went close down to the beach, to find a great quant.i.ty of their bones there, evidently of animals that had died in the sea and been washed ash.o.r.e. Indeed, as I went along a little farther, and had reached nearly to the place where I had left the Dean, I found the whole carca.s.s of a narwhal lying among the rocks, where it had been thrown by the waves, and very near it I discovered also a dead seal. About these there were several foxes, which went scampering away as soon as they saw me. They had evidently come there to get their dinner; for they had torn a great hole in the side of the dead narwhal, and two of them had begun on the seal. I thought if I could get some of the skins of these pretty foxes, they would be nice warm things to wrap the Dean's hands and feet in, so I began flinging stones at them as hard as I could; but the cunning beasts dodged every one of them, and, running away up the hillside, chattered in such a lively manner that it seemed as if they were laughing at me, which provoked me so much that I went on vowing to get the better of them in one way or another.

"All this time, you must remember, I had left the poor Dean by himself, and you may be sure I was very anxious to get back to him; but before I tell you anything more about him, I must stop a minute longer to describe more particularly this island on which I had been cast away.

You must understand there were no trees on it at all; and, indeed, there were scarcely any signs of vegetation whatever. On the south side, where we landed after the wreck, the hillside was covered for a short distance with thick gra.s.s, and above this green slope there were great tall cliffs like the palisades of the Hudson River,--which you must all see some time; but all the rest of the way around the island I saw scarcely anything but rough rocks, very sharp and hard to walk over. In some places, however, where the streams of melted snow had spread out in the level places, patches of moss had grown, making a sort of marsh. Here I discovered some flowers in full bloom, and among them were the b.u.t.tercup and dandelion, just like what we find in the meadows here, only not a quarter so large; but my head was too much filled with more serious thoughts at that time to care about flowers.

"You can hardly imagine anything so dreary as this island was. Indeed, nothing could be worse except the prospect of living on it all alone, without any shelter, or fire, or proper clothing, and without any apparent chance of ever escaping from it.

"I found, however, a sort of apology for a tree growing among the moss beds. I have learned since that it is called a 'dwarf willow.' The stem of the tree, if such it might be called, was not larger than my little finger; and its branches, which lay flat on the ground, were in no case more than a foot long.

"Besides these willows, I discovered also, growing about the rocks, a trailing plant, with very small stem, and thick, dry leaves. It had a pretty little purple blossom on it, and was the only thing I saw that looked as if it would burn. I can a.s.sure you that I wished hard enough that I had some way of proving whether it would burn or not. However, since I had discovered so many other things on this my first journey around the island, I was not without hope that I should light upon some way of starting a fire. So I named the plant at once 'the fire plant;'

but I have since been told by a wise doctor that I met down in Boston, that its right name is 'Andromeda.' It is a sort of heather, like the Scotch heather that you have all heard about, only it is as much smaller than the Scotch heather as the dwarf willow I told you of is smaller than the tall willow-tree that grows out there in front of the door.