The Frozen Pirate by William Clark Russell
CHAPTER XXII.
A CHANGE COMES OVER THE FRENCHMAN.
Tassard was dogged and scowling. Such was his temper that had I been asmall or weak man, or a person likely to prove submissive, he would havegiven a loose to his foul tongue and maybe handled me very roughly. Butmy demeanour was cold and resolved, and not of a kind to improve hiscourage. I levelled a deliberate semi-contemptuous gaze at his own fierystare, and puzzled him, too, I believe, a good deal by my cool reserve.He muttered whilst we ate, drinking plentifully of wine, and garnishinghis draughts with oaths and to spare; and then, after falling silent andremaining so for the space of twenty minutes, during which I lighted mypipe and sat with my feet close to the furnace, listening with eagerears to the sounds of the ice and the dull crying of the wind, heexclaimed sulkily, "Your scheme is a failure. The schooner is fixed.What's to be done now?"
"I don't know that my scheme is a failure," said I. "What did yousuppose? that the blast would blow the ice with the schooner on it intothe ocean clear of the island? If the ice is so shaken as to enable theswell to detach it, my scheme will have accomplished all I proposed."
"_If!_" he cried scornfully and passionately. "_If_ will not deliver usnor save the treasure. I tell you the schooner is fixed--as fixed as thedamned in everlasting fire. Be it so!" he cried, clenching his fist."But you must meddle no more! The _Boca del Dragon_ is mine--_mine_,d'ye see, now that they're all dead and gone but me"--smiting hisbosom--"and if ever she is to float, let nature or the devil launch her:no more explosions with the risks your failure has made her and me run!"
His voice sank; he looked at me in silence, and then with a wild grin ofanger he exclaimed, "What made you awake me? I was at peace--neithercold, hungry, nor hopeless! What demon forced you to bring me tothis--to bring me back to _this_?"
"Mr. Tassard," said I coldly, "I don't ask your pardon for myexperiment; I meant well, and to my mind it is no failure yet. But fordisturbing your repose I do sincerely beg your forgiveness, and solemnlypromise you, if you will return to the state in which I found you, thatI will not repeat the offence."
He eyed me from top to toe in silence, filled and lighted his hideouspipe, and smoked with his back turned upon me.
Had there been another warm place in the schooner I should have retiredto it, and left this surly and scandalous savage to the enjoyment of hisown company. His temper rendered me extremely uneasy. The arms-room wasfull of weapons; he might draw a pistol upon me and shoot me dead beforeI should have time to clench my hand. Nor did I conceive him to have hisright mind. His panic terrors and outbursts of rage were such extremesof behaviour as suggested some sort of organic decay within. He hadbeen for eight-and-forty years insensible; in all that time the currentof life had been frozen in him, not dried up and extinguished;therefore, taking his age to be fifty-five when the frost seized him, hewould now be one hundred and three years old, having subsisted into thisgreat span of time in fact, though confronting me with the aspect of anelderly man merely. Death ends time, but this man never had been dead,or surely it would not have been in the power of brandy and chafing andfire to arouse him; and though all the processes of nature had beenchecked in him for near half a century, yet he must have been throughoutas much alive as a sleeping man, and consequently when he awoke he arosewith the weight of a hundred and three years upon his brain, which maysuffice to account for the preternatural peculiarities of his character.
After sitting a long while sullenly smoking in silence, he fetched hismattress and some covers, lay down upon it, and fell fast asleep. Iadmired and envied this display of confidence, and heartily wishedmyself as safe in his hands as he was in mine. The afternoon passed. Iwas on deck a half-dozen times, but never witnessed the least alterationin the ice. My spirits sank very low. There was bitter remorselessdefiance in the white, fierce rigid stare of the ice, and I could notbut believe with the Frenchman that all our labour and expenditure ofpowder was in vain. There was no more noticeable weight in the wind, butthe sea was beginning to beat with some strength upon the coast, andthe schooner sometimes trembled to the vibrations of the blows. Therewas also a continuous crackling noise coming up out of the ice, and justas I came on deck on my third visit, a block of ice, weighing I dare saya couple of hundred tons, fell from the broken shoulder on the starboardquarter, and plunged with a roar like a thunder-clap into the chasm thathad opened in the night.
I sat before the furnace extremely dejected, whilst the Frenchman snoredon his mattress. I could no longer flatter myself that the explosionshad made the impression I had expected on the ice, and my mind wasutterly at a loss. How to deliver myself from this horrible situation Icould not imagine. As to the treasure, why, if the chests had all beenfilled with gold, they might have gone to the bottom there and then forme, so utterly insignificant did their value seem as against thepricelessness of liberty and the joy of deliverance. Had I been alone Ishould have had a stouter heart, I dare say, for then I should have beenable to do as I pleased; but now I was associated with a bloody-mindedrogue whose soul was in the treasure, and who was certain to oppose anyplan I might propose for the construction of a boat or raft out of thematerial that formed the schooner. The sole ray of hope that gleamedupon me broke out of the belief that this island was going north, andthat when we had come to the height of the summer in these seas, thewasting of the coast or the dislocation of the northern mass wouldrelease us.
Yet this was but poor comfort too; it threatened a terrible long spellof waiting, with perhaps disappointment in the end, and months ofenforced association with a wretch with whom I should have to live infear of my life.
When I was getting supper Tassard awoke, quitted his mattress, and cameto his bench.
"Has anything happened whilst I slept?" said he.
"Nothing," I answered.
"The ice shows no signs of giving?"
"I see none," said I.
"Well," cried he, with a sarcastic sneer, "have you any more fineschemes?"
"'Tis your turn now," I replied. "Try _your_ hand. If you fail, Ipromise you I shall not be disappointed."
"But you English sailors," said he, wagging his head and regarding mewith a great deal of wildness in his eye, "speak of yourselves as thefinest seamen in the world. Justify the maritime reputation of yournation by showing me how we are to escape with the schooner from theice."
"Mr. Tassard," said I, approaching him and looking him full in the face,"I would advise you to sweeten your temper and change your tone. I haveborne myself very moderately towards you, submitted to your insults withpatience, and have done you some kindness. I am not afraid of you. Onthe contrary, I look upon you as a swaggering bully and a hoary villain.Do you understand me? I am a desperate man in a desperate situation. Butif I don't fear death, depend upon it, I don't fear _you_--and I takeGod to witness that if you do not use me with the civility I have aright to expect, I will kill you."
My temper had given way; I meant every word I spoke, and my air andsincerity rendered my speech very formidable. I approached him byanother stride; he started up, as I thought, to seize me, but in realityto recoil, and this he did so effectually as to tumble over his bench,and down he fell, striking his bald head so hard that he lay for severalminutes motionless.
I stood over him till he chose to sit erect, which he presently did,rubbing his poll and looking at me with an air of mingled bewildermentand fear.
"This is scurvy usage to give a shipmate in distress," said he. "'Od'slife, man! I had thought there was some sense of humour in you. Yourhand, Mr. Rodney; I feel dazed."
I helped him to rise, and he then sat down in a somewhat rickety manner,rubbing his eyes. It might have been fancy, it might have been theillusion of the furnace light combined with the venerable appearance hislong hair and naked pate gave him, but methought in those few minutes hehad grown to look twenty years older.
"Never concern yourself about my humour, Mr. Tassard," said I,preserving my determined air and coming close to him again. "How is itto s
He stooped away from me, and raised his hand in a posture as if to fendme off, and cried in a whining manner, "I lost my head--this gunpowderbusiness hath been a hellish disappointment, look you, Mr. Rodney. Come!We will drink a can to our future amity!"
I answered coldly that I wanted no more wine and bade him beware of me,that he had gone far enough, that our hideous condition had filled mysoul with desperation and misery, and that I would not have my life onthis frozen schooner made more abominable than it was by his swagger,lies, and insults, and I added in a loud voice and in a menacing mannerthat death had no terrors for me, and that I would dispatch him with aslittle fear as I should meet my doom, whatever shape it took.
I marched on deck, not a little astounded by the cowardice of the oldrascal, and very well pleased with the marked impression my bearing andlanguage had produced on him. Not that I supposed for a moment that mybold comportment would save me from his knife or his pistol when heshould think proper to make away with me. No. All I reckoned upon wascowing him into a civiller posture of mind, and checking his aggressionsand insolence. As to his murdering me, I was very sure he would notattempt such an act whilst we remained imprisoned. Loneliness would havemore horrors for him than for me; and though my machinery of mines hadapparently failed, he was shrewd enough, despite his rage ofdisappointment, to understand that more was to be done by two men thanby one, and that between us something might be attempted which would beimpracticable by a simple pair of hands, and particularly old hands,such as his.
I stayed but a minute or two on deck. Such was the cold that I do notknow I had ever felt it more biting and bitter. The sound of foamingwaters filled the wind, and the wind itself was blowing fairly strong,in gusts that screamed in the frozen rigging or in blasts that had thedeep echo of the thunder-claps of the splitting ice. The clouds werenumerous and dark with the shadow of the night; and the swiftness oftheir motion as they sailed up out of the south-west quarter wasillustrated by the leaping of the few bright stars from one dusky edgeto another.
I returned below and sat down. The Frenchman asked me no questions. Hehad his can in the oven and his death's head in his great hand, andpuffed out clouds of smoke of the colour of his beard, and indeed in thecandle and fire light looked like a figure of old Time with his longnose and bald head. I addressed one or two civil remarks to him, whichhe answered in a subdued manner, discovering no resentment whatever thatI could trace in his eyes or the expression of his countenance; andbeing wishful to show that I bore no malice I talked of pirates andtheir usages, and asked him if the _Boca del Dragon_ fought under thered or black flag.
"Why, the black flag, certainly," said he; "but if we met withresistance, it was our custom to haul it down and hoist the red flag,to let our opponents know we should give no quarter."
"Where is your flag locker?" said I.
"In my berth," he answered.
"I should like to see the black flag," I exclaimed: "'tis the one pieceof bunting, I believe, I have never viewed."
"I'll fetch it," said he, and taking the lanthorn went aft very quietly,but with a certain stagger in his walk, which I should have put down tothe wine if it was not that his behaviour was free from all symptoms ofebriation. The change in him surprised me, but not so greatly as youmight suppose; indeed, it excited my suspicions rather than my wonder.Fear worked in him unquestionably, but what I seemed to see best wassome malignant design which he hoped to conceal by an air ofconciliation and a quality of respectful _bonhomie_.
He came back with a flag in his hand, and we spread it between us; itwas black, with a yellow skull grinning in the middle, over this anhourglass, and beneath a cross-bones.
"What consternation has this signal caused and does still cause!" saidI, surveying it, whilst a hundred fancies of the barbarous scenes it hadflown over, the miserable cries for mercy that had swept up past it tothe ear of God, crowded into my mind. "I think, Mr. Tassard," said I,"that our first step, should we ever find ourselves afloat in this ship,must be to commit this and all other flags of a like kind on board tothe deep. There is evidence in this piece of drapery to hang an angel."
He let fall his ends of the flag and sat down suddenly.
"Yes," he answered, sending a curious rolling glance around thecook-room and at the same time bringing his hand to the back of hishead, "this is evidence to dangle even an honester man than you, sir.All flags but the ensign we resolve to sail under must go--all flags,and all the wearing apparel, and--and--but"--here he muttered acurse--"we are fixed--there is to be no sailing."
He shook his head and covered his eyes. His manner was strange, and thestranger for his quietude.
I said to him, "Are you ill?"
He looked up sharply and cried vehemently, "No, no!" then stretched hislips in a very ghastly grin and turned to take the can from the oven,but his hand missed it, and he appeared to grope as if he were blind,though he looked at the can all the time. Then he catched it and broughtit to his mouth, but trembled so much that he spilt as much as he drank,and after putting the can back sat shaking his beard and stroking thewet off it, methought, in a very mechanical lunatic way.
I thought to myself, "Is this behaviour some stratagem of his? Whatdevice can such a bearing hide? If he is acting, he plays his partwell."
I rolled the black flag into a bundle and flung it into a corner, and,resuming my seat and my pipe, continued, more for civility's sake thanbecause of any particular interest I took in the subject, to ask himquestions about the customs and habits of pirates.
"I believe," said I, "the buccaneers are so resolute in having clearships that they have neither beds nor seats on board."
"The English," he answered, speaking slowly and letting his pipe droopwhilst he spoke with his eyes fixed on deck, "not the Spanish. 'Tis thecustom of most English pirates to eat and sleep upon the decks for thesake of a clear ship, as you say. The Spaniard loves comfort--you mayobserve his fancy in this ship."
"How is the plunder partitioned?" I asked.
"Everything is put into the common chest, as we call it, and brought tothe mast and sold by auction--Strange!" he cried, breaking off andputting his hand to his brow. "I find my speech difficult. Do you noticeI halt and utter thickly?"
I replied, No; his voice seemed to be the same as hitherto.
"Yet I feel ill. Holy Mother of God, what is this feeling coming uponme? O Jesus, how faint and dark!"
He half rose from his bench, but sat again, trembling as if the palsyhad seized him, and I noticed his head dotted with beads of sweat. Hehad drunk so much wine and spirits throughout the day that a dram wouldhave been of no use to him.
I said, "I expect it will be the blow on the back of your head, when youfell just now, that has produced this feeling of giddiness. Let me helpyou to lie down" (for his mattress was on deck); "the sensation willpass, I don't doubt."
If he heard he did not heed me, but fell a-muttering and crying tohimself. And now I did certainly remark a quality in his voice that wasnew to my ear; it was not, as he had said, a labour or thickness ofutterance, but a dryness and parchedness of old age, with many breaksfrom high to low notes, and a lean noise of dribbling threading everyword. He sweated and talked and muttered, but this was from sheerterror; he did not swoon, but sat with a stoop, often pressing his browsand gazing about him like one whose senses are all abroad.
"Gracious Mother of all angels!" he exclaimed, crossing himself severaltimes, but with a feeble, most agitated hand, and speaking in French andEnglish, and sometimes interjecting an invocation in Italian or Spanish,though I give you what he said in my own tongue; "surely I am dying. OLord, how frightful to die! O holy Virgin, be merciful to me. I shall goto hell--O Jesu, I am past forgiveness--for the love of heav
I was much astonished and puzzled by this illness that had come uponhim, for, though he talked of darkness and faintness and of dying, hecontinued to sit up on his bench and to take pulls at the can of brandyI had handed to him. It might be, indeed, that a sudden faintness hadterrified him nearly out of his senses with a prospect of approachingdeath; but that would not account for the peculiar note and appearanceof age that had entered his figure, face, and voice. Then anextraordinary fancy occurred to me: Had the whole weight of the unhappywretch's years suddenly descended upon him? Or, if not wholly arrived,might not these indications in him mark the first stages of a graduallyincreasing pressure? The heat, the vivacity, the fierceness, spirits,and temper of the life I had been instrumental in restoring to himprobably illustrated his character as it was eight-and-forty yearssince; that had flourished artificially from the moment of his awakeningdown to the present hour; but now the hand of Time was upon this man,whose age was above an hundred. He might be decaying and wasting, evenas he sat there, into such an intellectual condition and physical aspectas he would possess and submit had he come without a break into hispresent age.
I was fascinated by the mystery of his vitality, and breathlesslywatched him as if I expected to witness some harlequin change in hisface and mark the transformation of his polished brow into the leanausterity of wrinkles. His voice sank into a mere whisper at last, andthen, ceasing to speak altogether, he dropped his chin on to his bosomand began to sway from side to side, catching himself from falling withseveral paralytic starts, but without lifting his head or opening hiseyes that I could see, and manifesting every symptom of extremedrowsiness.
I got up and laid my hand on his shoulder, on which he turned his faceand viewed me with one eye closed, the other scarce open.
"How are you feeling now?" said I.
"Sleepy, very sleepy," he answered.
"I'll put your mattress into your hammock," said I, "and the best thingyou can do is to go and turn in properly and get a long night's rest,and to-morrow morning you'll feel yourself as hearty as ever."
He mumbled some answer which I interpreted to signify "Very well!" so Ishouldered his mattress and slung a lanthorn in his cabin, and thenreturned to help him to bed. He sat reeling on the bench, his chin onhis breast, catching himself up as before with little sharp terrifiedrecoveries, and I was forced to put my hand on him again to make himunderstand I had come back. He then made as if to rise, but trembled soviolently that he sank down again with a groan, and I was obliged to putmy whole strength to the lifting of him to get him on to his legs. Heleaned heavily upon me, breathing hard, stooping very much andtrembling. When we got to his cabin I perceived that he would never beable to climb into his hammock, nor had I the power to hoist a man ofhis bulk so high. To end the perplexity I cut the hammock down and laidit on the deck, and covering him with a heap of clothes, unslung thelanthorn, wished him good-night, closed the door, and returned to thefurnace.