Seven Frozen Sailors

Monsieur and Madeline, with the little Cécile and their servants, came on board on Sunday morning, as the people were going to mass; for we would sail on a seaman’s lucky day. We weighed anchor. There was wind enough in the bay to fill our new white sails. All went without a hitch: we were off!

We had two months of the finest weather. Cécile’s cheeks wore new colour, and her black eyes sparkled with delight, as we sped along ten knots an hour. M. André was not dissatisfied. He saw Madame pleased. That is something for an elderly husband. He dined well, and he slept undisturbed under an awning on deck, or in his cabin. But this could not last forever. We were three days from the last port we had touched at, in a northerly latitude, and I could see we were going to have some weather. The sunset was angry; black clouds rose; the wind freshened into a stiff breeze. M. André called it an infernal gale.

The sea became rough for a landsman; and Monsieur not unnaturally felt squeamish. Dinner was served under difficulties that evening, and Monsieur could not taste even the soup.

I took every precaution. Sails were reefed, and all was made taut.

“Bad weather coming, sir!” said my mate.

“Do you think so?” I answered, not wishing my own opinion to get to the ears of Cécile, as she would be frightened enough before morning.

But I stepped aft, and told M. André. The brave merchant groaned, and wished he was in bed at Bénévent. But wishing will not take one there.

It was in the small hours. We men were all on deck. We were driving along at a fearful rate under bare poles. The waves were huge mountains. The storm raged with fury. The night was pitchy dark. Thunder and lightning did not serve to make things more agreeable. Not a seaman on board had ever seen such a night. It was necessary to lash oneself to the vessel to avoid being washed overboard.

Of a sudden there was a terrific crash!

The women below shrieked and prayed.

The chef wanted to jump overboard.

M. André cried, “We have struck on a rock! We are lost!”

“Have courage!” I cried. “Fetch the women on deck. There is not an instant to be lost. The yacht is filling!”

We had come into collision with a large vessel. I could see her lights. She had just cleared us. A flash of blue lightning showed me the name painted in white letters on her stern.

She was the Lépante, of Marseilles.

There was a lull in the storm.

There remained one chance for life – to get on board the vessel. The yacht was filling fast, and in a few minutes would settle down.

Except one or two tried sailors – old comrades of mine – everybody on board was paralysed.

It was for me to act – to choose for all.

The choice was – Death or the Lépante.

I chose the Lépante.

A Frenchman stays at the post of duty.

As captain, I was responsible for the lives of all on board. I was, therefore, the last to leave the sinking Zéphire. Cécile was hoisted up the side of the Lépante first. I heard a shriek. In the just-beginning twilight I could see two figures.

A man’s and a woman’s. I knew them.

Marc had raised Cécile on to the deck of the Lépante, and had recognised her, and she him.

The horrors of the storm, of the shipwreck, the prospect of death, were to me as nothing to this meeting.

Marc and Cécile!

In a few seconds I was safe on the deck of the Lépante.

M. André, the crew, the spectators, were horror-struck.

A man goes mad in an instant. Marc was again raving, as he had raved in the madhouse at Bénévent. But the sight of Cécile had given purpose to his language.

“Vengeance – vengeance! Fiend! The time has come! Fate – fate has brought us together! I could not escape you! I must kill you – kill you! We must be damned together! Hark at the roar of the waters! Hark at the wailing of the winds! Our shroud! – our dirge! – our requiem! that tells us of hell! for I am a murderer, and you – ”

He had the strength of ten strong men.

It took that number to hold him.

The wretched André fell prone in a swoon.

Cécile’s women called on the Virgin and the saints.

We all held Marc.

Cécile turned upon me.

“You told me he was dead,” she said.

Then, to the captain of the Lépante– “I am innocent – innocent – innocent!”

But, in moments of supreme danger, men’s ears are deaf to other people’s business.

It was save himself who can.

A leak had been sprung in the Lépante by the collision with our yacht. The pumps could not hold their own with the waters.

There was a panic on board.

The storm had abated. The boats were got ready. All rushed to them.

“Place aux dames!” I cried; and, with the spasmodic strength of great crises, I held back the men, and got the women off first. Then men enough to take charge of the boat.

M. André was in it; the first that was lowered. Another followed, filled with the crew of the Lépante. Her captain was the first to leap into it.

And Marc, freed from the arms that held him, dashed over the side into the foaming waters, to swim after Cécile.

His vengeance was not in this world.

As for me, I was left alone on the Lépante– with the rats.

I am a sailor, and have a sailor’s prejudices, fears, hopes, beliefs.

I saw the rats. They had not left the ship. I accepted the omen. I knew the Lépante was not doomed, if they stayed.

To take to such a sea in an open boat seemed certain death.

I preferred to stay with my friends, the rats.

Rudderless, dismasted, we still floated.

And drifted – drifted – drifted —

Northward, into the ice.

Into the ice-bound, ice-bearing sea that is round the North Pole.

I know no more.

“Gone again, sir!” I said, for just as the doctor made a lurch at the Frenchman, he melted away like the others.

“I never knew anything so provoking,” cried the doctor. “But never mind, we must find another, and keep to my old plan – cut him out in a block, and take him home frozen, like a fly in amber. What a sensation!”

“What! being friz?” said Scudds.

“No, my man. What a sensation it will make at the Royal Society, when I uncover my specimen, pointing to it like a huge fly in amber. It will be the greatest evening ever known.”

He gave us no peace till we found another specimen, which we did, and cut out by rule, and at last had it lying there by the tent, as clear as glass, and the doctor was delighted.

“Not a very handsome specimen, doctor,” I said, looking through the ice at a lean, long, ugly Yankee, lying there like a western mummy, with his eyes shut, and an ugly leer upon his face, just as if he heard what we said, and was laughing at us.

“No, not handsome, Captain, but a wonderful specimen. We must give up the North Pole, and go back to-morrow. I wouldn’t lose that specimen for worlds.”

I gave my shoulders a shrug like the Frenchman did, and said nothing, though I knew we could never get that block over the ice, even if it did not melt.

Just then I saw the doctor examining the glass, and before long a most rapid thaw set in. The surface ice was covered with slushy snow, and for the first time for days we felt the damp cold horribly, huddling together round the lamp, and longing for the frost to set in once more.

We had not stirred outside for twelve hours, a great part of which had been spent in sleep, when suddenly the doctor exclaimed —

“Why, it will be thawed out!”

“What will?” I said.

“My specimen!” he exclaimed.

“Here it is!” I said; and we all started, in spite of being used to such appearances; for just then the tent opening was dragged aside, and the tall Yankee, that we had left in the ice slab, came discontentedly in, and just giving us a nod, he stood there staring straight before him in a half-angry, spiteful way.

I never could have believed that tobacco would have preserved its virtue so long, till I saw that tall, lean, muscular Yankee begin slowly to wag his jaw in a regular grind, grind, grind; when, evidently seeing their danger, our men backed away. For our friend began coolly enough to spit about him, forming a regular ring, within which no one ventured; and at last, taking up his position opposite the lamp, he would have put it out in about a couple of minutes, had not the doctor slewed him round, when, facing the wind, we all set to wondering at the small brown marbles that began to fall, and roll about on the ice, till we saw that it was freezing so hard again that the tobacco-juice congealed as it left his lips.

“I like grit – I do like a fellow as can show grit!” he kept on muttering in a discontented kind of way, as he took a piece of pine-wood out of his pocket, and then, hoisting a boot like a canoe upon his knee, he sharpened his knife, and began to whittle.

“Where did you get that piece of wood?” said the doctor, then.

The Yankee turned his head slowly, spat a brown hailstone on to the ice, and then said —

“Whar did I get that thar piece o’ wood, stranger? Wall, I reckon that’s a bit o’ Pole – North Pole – as I took off with these here hands with the carpenter’s saw.”

“I’ll take a piece of it,” said the doctor, and turning it over in his hands, “Ha, hum!” he muttered; “Pinus silvestris.” Then aloud – “But how did you get up here, my friend?”

“Wall, I’ll tell you,” drawled the Yankee. “But I reckon thar’s yards on it; and when I begin, I don’t leave off till I’ve done, that I don’t, you bet – not if you’re friz. Won’t it do that I’m here?”

“Well, no,” said the doctor; “we should like to know how you got here.”

“So,” said the Yankee sailor, and, drawing his legs up under him, firing a couple of brown hailstones off right and left, and whittling away at so much of the North Pole as the doctor had left him, he thus began.

Chapter Eight.

The Yankee Sailor’s Yarn

I warn’t never meant for no sailor, I warn’t; but I come of a great nation, and when a chap out our way says he’ll du a thing, he does it. I said I’d go to sea, and I went – and thar you are. I said I’d drop hunting, and take to mining, and thar I was; and that’s how it come about.

You see, we was rather rough out our way, where Hez Lane and me went with our bit of tent and pickers, shooting-irons, and sech-like, meaning to make a pile of gold. We went to Washoe, and didn’t get on; then we went to Saint Laramie, and didn’t get on there. Last, we went right up into the mountains, picking our way among the stones, for Hez sez, “Look here, old hoss, let’s get whar no one’s been afore. If we get whar the boys are at work already, they’ve took the cream, and we gets the skim milk. Let’s you and me get the cream, and let some o’ the others take the skim milk.”

“Good for you,” I says; and we tramped on day after day, till we got right up in the heart o’ the mountains, where no one hadn’t been afore, and it was so still and quiet, as it made you quite deaf.

It was a strange, wild sort of place, like as if one o’ them coons called giants had driven a wedge into a mountain, and split it, making a place for a bit of a stream to run at the bottom, and lay bare the cold we wanted to find.

“This’ll do, Dab,” says Hez, as we put up our bit of a tent on a pleasant green shelf in the steep valley place. “This’ll do, Dab; thar’s yaller gold spangling them sands, and running in veins through them rocks, and yaller gold in pockets of the rock.”

“Then, let’s call it Yaller Gulch,” I says.

“Done, old hoss!” says Hez; and Yaller Gulch it is.

We set to work next day washing in the bit of a stream, and shook hands on our luck.

“This’ll do,” says Hez. “We shall make a pile here. No one won’t dream of hunting this out.”

“Say, stranger!” says a voice, as made us both jump. “Do it wash well?”

And if there warn’t a long, lean, ugly, yaller-looking chap looking down at us, as he stood holding a mule by the bridle.

Why, afore a week was over, so far from us keeping it snug, I reckon there was fifty people in Yaller Gulch, washing away, and making their piles. Afore another week as over some one had set up a store, and next day there was a gambling saloon. Keep it to ourselves! Why, stranger, I reckon if there was a speck of gold anywheres within five hundred miles, our chaps’d sniff it out like vultures, and be down upon it.

It warn’t no use to grumble, and we kept what we thought to ourselves, working away, and making our ounces the best way we could. One day I proposed we should go up higher in the mountains; but Hez said he’d be darned if he’d move; and next day, if he’d wanted me to go, I should have told him I’d be darned if I’d move; and all at once, from being red-hot chums, as would have done anything for one another, Hez and me got to be mortal enemies.

Now, look here, stranger. Did you ever keep chickens? P’r’aps not; but if you ever do, just you notice this. You’ve got, say, a dozen young cocks pecking about, and as happy as can be – smart and lively, an’ innercent as chickens should be. Now, jist you go and drop a pretty young pullet in among ’em, and see if there won’t be a row. Why, afore night there’ll be combs bleeding, eyes knocked out, feathers torn and ragged – a reg’lar pepper-box and bowie set-to, and all acause of that little smooth, brown pullet, that looks on so quiet and gentle as if wondering who made the row.

Now, that’s what was the matter with us; for who should come into the Gulch one day, but an old storekeeping sort of fellow, with as pretty a daughter as ever stepped, and from that moment it was all over between Hez and me.

He’d got a way with him, you see, as I hadn’t; and they always made him welkim at that thar store, when it was only “How do you do?” and “Good-morning,” to me. I don’t know what love is, strangers; but if Jael Burn had told me to go and cut one of my hands off to please her, I’d ha’ done it. I’d ha’ gone through fire and water for her, God bless her! and if she’d tied one of her long, yaller hairs round my neck, she might have led me about like a bar, rough as I am.

But it wouldn’t do. I soon see which way the wind blew. She was the only woman in camp, and could have the pick, and she picked Hez.

I was ’bout starin’ mad first time I met them two together – she a hanging on his arm, and looking up in his face, worshipping him like some of them women can worship a great, big, strong lie; and as soon as they war got by I swore a big oath as Hez should never have her, and I plugged up my six-shooter, give my bowie a whetting, and lay wait for him coming back.

It was a nice time that, as I sot there, seeing in fancy him kissin’ her sweet little face, and she hanging on him. If I was ’most mad afore, I was ten times worse now; and when I heer’d Hez comin’, I stood thereon a shelf of rock, where the track came along, meaning to put half a dozen plugs in him, and then pitch him over into the Gulch. But I was that mad, that when he came up cheery and singing, I forgot all about my shooting-iron and bowie, and went at him like a bar, hugging and wrastling him, till we fell together close to the edge of the Gulch, and I had only to give him a shove, and down he’ ha’ gone kelch on the hard rocks ninety foot below.

“Now, Hez,” I says; “how about your darling now? You’ll cut in afore a better man again, will yer?”

“Yes, if I live!” he says, stout-like, so as I couldn’t help liking the grit he showed. “That’s right,” he says; “pitch me over, and then go and tell little Jael what you’ve done. She’ll be fine and proud of yer then, Abinadab Scales!”

He said that as I’d got him hanging over the rocks, and he looked me full in the face, full of grit, though he was helpless as a babby; but I didn’t see his face then, for what I see was the face of Jael, wild and passionate-like, asking me what I’d done with her love, and my heart swelled so that I gave a sob like a woman, as I swung Hez round into safety, and taking his place like, “Shove me over,” I says, “and put me out of my misery.”

Poor old Hez! I hated him like pyson; but he wasn’t that sort. ’Stead of sending me over, now he had the chance, he claps his hand on my shoulder, and he says, says he, “Dab, old man,” he says, “give it a name, and let’s go and have a drink on this. We can’t all find the big nuggets, old hoss; and if I’m in luck, don’t be hard on yer mate.”

Then he held out his fist, but I couldn’t take it, but turning off, I ran hard down among the rocks till I dropped, bruised and bleeding, and didn’t go back to my tent that night.

I got a bit wild arter that. Hez and Jael were spliced up, and I allus kep away. When I wanted an ounce or two of gold, I worked, and when I’d got it, I used to drink – drink, because I wanted to drown all recollection of the past.

Hez used to come to me, but I warned him off. Last time he come across me, and tried to make friends, “Hez,” I says, “keep away – I’m desprit like – and I won’t say I shan’t plug yer!”

Then Jael came, and she began to talk to me about forgiving him; but it only made me more mad nor ever, and so I went and pitched at the lower end of the Gulch, and they lived at t’other.

Times and times I’ve felt as if I’d go and plug Hez on the quiet, but I never did, though I got to hate him more and more, and never half so much as I did nigh two years arter, when I came upon him one day sudden with his wife Jael, looking pootier than ever, with a little white-haired squealer on her arm. An’ it ryled me above a bit, to see him so smiling and happy, and me turned into a bloodshot, drinking, raving savage, that half the Gulch was feared on, and t’other half daren’t face.

I had been drinking hard – fiery Bourbon, you bet! – for about a week, when early one morning, as I lay in my ragged bit of a tent, I woke up, sudden-like, to a roarin’ noise like thunder; and then there came a whirl and a rush, and I was swimmin’ for life, half choked with the water that had carried me off. Now it was hitting my head, playful like, agen the hardest corners of the rock it could find in the Gulch; then it was hitting me in the back, or pounding me in the front with trunks of trees swept down from the mountains, for something had bust – a lake, or something high up – and in about a wink the hull settlement in Yaller Gulch was swep’ away.

“Wall,” I says, getting hold of a branch, and drawing myself out, “some on ’em wanted a good wash, and this ’ll give it ’em;” for you see water had been skeerce lately, and what there was had all been used for cleaning the gold.

I sot on a bit o’ rock, wringing that water out of my hair – leastwise, no: it was someone else like who sot there, chap’s I knowed, you see; and there was the water rushing down thirty or forty foot deep, with everything swept before it – mules, and tents, and shanties, and stores, and dead bodies by the dozen.

“Unlucky for them,” I says; and just then I hears a wild sorter shriek, and looking down, I see a chap half-swimming, half-swept along by the torrent, trying hard to get at a tree that stood t’other side.

“Why, it’s you, is it, Hez?” I says to myself, as I looked at his wild eyes and strained face, on which the sun shone full. “You’re a gone coon, Hez, lad; so you may just as well fold yer arms, say amen, and go down like a man. How I could pot you now, lad, if I’d got a shooting-iron; put you out o’ yer misery like. You’ll drown, lad.”

He made a dash, and tried for a branch hanging down, but missed it, and got swept against the rocks, where he shoved his arm between two big bits; but the water gave him a wrench, the bone went crack, and as I sat still there, I see him swept down lower and lower, till he clutched at a bush with his left hand, and hung on like grim death to a dead nigger.

“Sarve yer right,” I says coolly. “Why shouldn’t you die like the rest? If I’d had any go in me I should have plugged yer long ago.”

“Halloa!” I cried then, giving a start. “It ain’t – ’tis – tarnation! it can’t be!”

But it was.

There on t’other side, not fifty yards lower down, on a bit of a shelf of earth, that kept crumbling away as the water washed it, was Jael, kneeling down with her young ’un; and, as I looked, something seemed to give my heart a jigg, just as if some coon had pulled a string.

“Well, he’s ’bout gone,” I says; “and they can’t hold out ’bout three minutes; then they’ll all drown together, and she can take old Hez his last babby to miss – cuss ’em! I’m safe enough. What’s it got to do with me? I shan’t move.”

I took out my wet cake of ’bacca, and whittled off a bit, shoved it in my cheek, shut my knife with a click, and sot thar watchin’ of ’em – father, and mother, and bairn.

“You’ve been too happy, you have,” I says out loud; not as they could hear it, for the noise of the waters. “Now you’ll be sorry for other people. Drown, darn yer! stock, and lock, and barrel; I’m safe.”

Just then, as I sot and chawed, telling myself as a chap would be mad to try and save his friends out of such a flood, let alone his enemies, darn me! if Jael didn’t put that there little squealer’s hands together, and hold them up as if she was making it say its prayers – a born fool! – when that thar string seemed to be pulled, inside me like, agin my heart; and – I couldn’t help it – I jumped up.

“Say, Dab,” I says to myself, “don’t you be a fool. You hate that lot like pyson, you do. Don’t you go and drown yerself.”

I was ’bout mad, you know, and couldn’t do as I liked, for, if I didn’t begin to rip off my things, wet and hanging to me. Cuss me! how they did stick! – but I cleared half on ’em off, and then, like a mad fool, I made a run and a jump, and was fighting hard with the water to get across to Hez’s wife and child.

It was a bit of a fight. Down I went, and up I went, and the water twisted me like a leaf: but I got out of the roar and thunder, on to the bit of a shelf where Jael knelt; when, if the silly thing didn’t begin to hold up to me her child; and her lips, poor darling, said dumbly, “Save it! save it!”

In the midst of that rush and roar as I saw that poor gal, white, horrified, and with her yaller hair clinging round her, all my old love for her comes back, and I swore a big oath as I’d save her for myself, or die.

I tore her dress into ribbons, for there warn’t a moment to lose, and I bound that bairn somehow on to my shoulders, she watching me the while; and then, with my heart beating madly, I caught her in my arms, she clinging tightly to me in her fear, and I stood up, thinking how I could get back, and making ready to leap.

The flood didn’t wait for that, though. In a moment there was a quiver of the bank, and it went from beneath my feet, leaving me wrastling with the waters once more.

I don’t know how I did it, only that, after a fight and being half smothered, I found myself crawling up the side of the Gulch, ever so low down, and dragging Jael into a safe place with her bairn.

She fell down afore me, hugged my legs, and kissed my feet; and then she started up and began staring up and down, ending by seeing, just above us, old Hez clinging there still, with his sound arm rammed into the bush, and his body swept out by the fierce stream.

The next moment she had seized me by the arm, and was pynting at him, and she gave a wild kind of shriek.

“He’s a gone coon, my gal,” I says, though she couldn’t hear me; and I was gloating over her beautiful white face and soft, clear neck, as I thought that now she was mine – all mine. I’d saved her out of the flood, and there was no Hez to stand in our way.

“Save him! – save him!” she shrieked in my ear.

What, Hez? Save Hez, to come between us once more? Save her husband – the man I hated, and would gladly see die? Oh, I couldn’t do it; and my looks showed it, she reading me like a book the while. No, he might drown – he was drowned – must be. No: just then he moved. But, nonsense! I wasn’t going to risk my life for his, and cut my own throat like, as to the futur’.

She went down on her knees to me though, pointing again at where Hez still floated; and the old feeling of love for her was stronger on me than ever.

“You’re asking me to die for you, Jael!” I shouted in her ear.

“Save him – save Hez!” she shrieked.

“Yes, save him!” I groaned to myself. “Bring him back to the happiness that might be mine. But she loves him – she loves him; and I must.”

I give one look at her – as I thought my last – and I couldn’t help it. If she had asked me dumbly, as she did, to do something ten times as wild, I should have done it; and, with a run, I got well up above Hez afore I jumped in once more, to have the same fight with the waters till I was swept down to the bush where he was.