The Frozen Pirate Part 15

He struck the ice with his spear, and we toiled up the slippery rocks with difficulty to the ship. We walked past the bows to the distance of the vessel's length. Here were many deep holes and cracks, and as if we were to be taught how these came about, even whilst we were viewing them an ear-splitting crash of noise happened within twenty fathoms of us, a rock many tons in weight rolled over, and left a black gulf behind it.

The Frenchman started, muttered, and crossed himself. "Holy Virgin!" he cried, rolling his eyes. "Let us return to the schooner. We shall be swallowed up here."

I own I was not a little terrified myself by the sudden loud blast and the thunder of the uprooted rock, and the sight of the huge black rent; but I meant to view the scene from the top, and to consider how best to dispose of the powder in the cracks, and said, "There is nothing to be done on board; skulking below will not deliver us or preserve the treasure. Here are several fissures big enough to receive barrels of gunpowder. See, Mr. Ta.s.sard, as they stand they cover the whole width of the hollow."

And I proceeded to give him my ideas as to lowering, fixing the barrels, and the like. He nodded his head, and said, "Yes, very good; yes, it will do," and so on; but was too scared in his heart, I believe, to see my full meaning. He was perpetually moving, as if he feared the ice would split under his feet, and his eyes travelled over the face of the rocks with every manifestation of alarm in their expression. I wondered how so poor a creature should ever have had stomach enough to serve as a pirate; no doubt his spirit had been enfeebled by his long sleep; but then it is also true that the greatest bullies and most bloodthirsty rogues prove themselves despicable curs under conditions which make no demand upon their temper or their l.u.s.t for plunder.

He would have returned to the ship, had I encouraged him, but on seeing me start to climb to the brow he followed. The prospect disappointed me.

I had expected to witness a variety of surprising changes; but southward the scene was scarce altered. It was a wonderfully fair morning, the sky clear from sea-line to sea-line, and of a very soft blue, the ocean of a like hue, with a high swell running, that was a majestic undulation even from the height at which I surveyed it. The sun stood over the ice in the north-east, and the dazzle kept me weeping, so intolerable was the effulgence. Half of the delicate architecture that had enriched the slopes and surfaces that way was swept down, and ice lay piled in places to an elevation of many feet, where before it had been flat or hollow.

However, there was no question but that the gale had played havoc with the north extremity of the island: I counted no less than twenty bergs floating off the main, and it was quite likely the sea was crowded beyond, though my sight could not travel so far.

However, when I came to look close, and to recollect the features of the sh.o.r.e as they showed when I first landed, I found some vital changes near at hand. Where my haven had been the ice had given way and left a gap half a mile broad and a hundred feet deep. The fall on the schooner's starboard quarter was very heavy, and the ice was split in all directions; and in parts was so loose that a point of cliff hard upon the sea rocked with the swell. When Ta.s.sard came to a stand he looked about him north and south, shading his eyes with his hand, and then swearing very savagely in French, he cried out in English, freely employing oaths as he spoke,--

"Why, here's as much ice as there was before I fell asleep! See yonder!"

pointing to the south. "It dies out in the distance. If it does not join the pole there, may the devil rise before me as I speak. Thunder and fury! I had hoped to see it shrivelled to an ordinary berg!"

"What! in a week?" cried I, as if I believed his stupor had not lasted longer.

He returned no answer and gaped about him full of consternation and pa.s.sion.

"And are we to wait for our deliverance till this continent breaks up?"

he bawled. "The day of judgment will be a thing of the past by that time. Travelling north! 'sdeath!" he roared, his mouth full of the expletives of his day, French and English. "Who but a madman could suppose that this ice is not as fixed as the antarctic circle to which it is moored? Why, six months ago it was no bigger than it is now!" And he sent a furious terrified gate into the white solitudes vanishing in azure faintness in the south-west.

It was not a thing to reason upon. I was as much disappointed as he by the trifling changes the gale had made, and my heart felt very heavy at the sight of the great field disappearing in the south. The bergs in the north signified little. It is true they indicated demolition, but demolition so slow as to be worthless to us. It was not to be questioned that the island was proceeding north, but at what rate? Here, perhaps, might be a frozen crescent of forty or fifty leagues: and at what speed, appreciable enough to be of the least consequence to our calculations, should such a body travel?

I looked at the Frenchman.

"This must decide us!" said I. "We must fix on one of two courses: endeavour to launch the ship by blowing up the ice, or turn to and rig up the best arrangement we can contrive and put to sea."

"Yes," he answered, scowling as he darted his enraged eyes over the ice.

"Better set a slow match in the magazine and drink ourselves senseless, and so blow ourselves to h.e.l.l, than linger here in the hope that this continent will dissolve and release us. Where's Mendoza's body?"

I stared about me, and then pointing to the huge gap the ice had made, answered, "It was there. Where it is now I know not."

He shrugged his shoulders, took another view of the ice and the ocean, and then cried impatiently, "Let us return! the powder-barrels must have the first chance." And he made for the schooner, savagely striking the ice with his spear and growling curses to himself as he ploughed and climbed and jumped his way along.

CHAPTER XX.

A MERRY EVENING.

By the time we had reached the bottom of the hollow Ta.s.sard was blowing like a bellows with the uncommon exertion; and swearing that he felt the cold penetrating his bones, and that he should be stupefied again if he did not mind, he climbed into the ship and disappeared. I loved him so little that secretly I very heartily wished that nature would make away with him: I mean that something it would be impossible in me to lay to my conscience should befall him, as becoming comatose again, and so lying like one dead. a.s.suredly in such a case it was not this hand that would have wasted a drop of brandy in returning an evil, white-livered, hectoring old rascal to a life that smelled foully with him and the like of him.

It was so still a day that the cold did not try me sorely: there was vitality if not warmth in the light of the sun, and I was heated with clambering. So I stayed a full half-hour after my companion had vanished examining the ice about the schooner; which careful inspection repaid me to the extent of giving me to see that if by blasts of gunpowder I could succeed in rupturing the ice ahead of the schooner's bows there was a very good chance of the ma.s.s on which she lay going adrift. Yet I will not deny that though I recognized this business of dislocation as our only chance--for I could see little or nothing to be done in the way of building a boat proper to swim and ply--I foreboded a dismal issue to our adventure, even should we succeed in separating this block from the main. In fine, what I feared was that the weight of the schooner would overset the ice and drown her and us.

I entered the ship and found Ta.s.sard roasting himself in the cook-house.

"How melancholy is this gloom," said I, "after the glorious white sunshine!"

"Yes," said he, "but it is warm. That is enough for me. Curse the cold, say I. It robs a man of all spirit. To grapple with this rigour one should have fed all one's life on blubber. I defy a man to be brave when he is half-frozen. I feel a match for any three men now; but on the heights a flea would have made me run."

He pulled a pot from the bricks and filled his pannikin.

"I have been surveying the ice," said I, drawing to the furnace, "and have very little doubt that if we wisely bestow the powder in great quant.i.ties we shall succeed in dislocating the bed on which we are lying."

"Good!" he cried.

"But after?" said I.

"What?"

"As much of this bed as may be dislodged will not be deep: icebergs, as of course you know, capsize in consequence of their becoming top-heavy by the wasting of the bulk that is submerged. This block will make but a small berg should we liberate it, and I very much fear that the weight of the schooner will overset it the instant we are launched."

"Body of Moses!" he cried angrily, knitting his brows, whereby he stretched the scar to half its usual width, "what's to be done, then?"

"She is a full ship," said I, "and weighty. If the liberated ice be thin she may sit up on it and keep it under. We have a right to hope in that direction, perhaps. Yet there is another consideration. She may leak like a sieve!"

"Why?" he exclaimed. "She took the ice smoothly; she has not been strained; she was as tight as a bottle before she stranded; the coating of ice will have cherished her; and a stout ship like this does not suffer from six months of lying up!"

Six months, thought I!

"Well, it may be as you say; but if she leaks it will not be in our four arms to keep her free."

He exclaimed hotly, "Mr. Rodney, if we are to escape, we must venture something. To stay here means death in the end. I am persuaded that this ice is joined with some vast main body far south and that it does not move. What is there, then, to wait for? There is promise in your gunpowder proposal. If she capsizes then the devil will get his own."

And with a savage flourish of the pannikin he put it to his lips and drained it.

His sullen determination that we should stand or fall by my scheme was not very useful to me. I had looked for some shrewdness in him, some capacity of originating and weighing ideas; but I found he could do little more than curse and swagger and ply his can, in which he found most of his anecdotes and recollections and not a little of his courage.

I pulled out my watch, as I must call it, and observed that it was hard upon one o'clock.

"'Tis lucky," said he, eying the watch greedily and coming to it away from the great subject of our deliverance as though the sight of the fine gold thing with its jewelled letter extinguished every other thought in him, "that you removed that watch from Mendoza. But he will have carried other good things to the bottom with him, I fear."

"His flask and tobacco-box I took away," said I. "He had nothing of consequence besides."

"They must go into the common-chest," cried he; "'tis share and share, you know."

"Ay," said I, "but what I found on Mendoza is mine by the highest right under heaven. If I had not taken the things, they would now be at the bottom of the sea."

"What of that?" cried he savagely. "If we had not plundered the galleon, she might have been wrecked and taken all she had down with her. Yet should such a consideration hinder a fair division as between us--between you who had nothing to do with the pillage and me who risked my life in it?"

I said, "Very well; be it as you say," appearing to consent, for there was something truly absurd in an altercation about a few guineas' worth of booty in the face of our melancholy and most perilous situation; though it not only enabled me to send a deeper glance into the mind of this man than I had yet been able to manage, but made me understand a reason for the b.l.o.o.d.y and furious quarrels which have again and again arisen among persons standing on the brink of eternity, to whom a cup of drink or the sight of a ship had been more precious than the contents of the Bank of England.

I set about getting the dinner.

"Whilst you are at that work," cried he, starting up, "I'll overhaul the pockets of the bodies on deck;" and, picking up a chopper, away he went, and I heard him cursing in his native tongue as he stumbled to the companion-ladder through the darkness in the cabin.