The Frozen Pirate by William Clark Russell
CHAPTER VI.
AN ISLAND OF ICE.
I had to approach the coast within two miles before I could satisfy mymind of its nature, and then all doubt left me.
It was _ice!_ a mighty crescent of it--as was now in a measuregatherable, floating upon the dark blue waters like the new moon uponthe field of the sky.
For a great while I had struggled with my misgivings, so tyrannicallywill hope lord it even over conviction itself, until it was impossiblefor me to any longer mistake. And then, when I knew it to be ice, Iasked myself what other thing I expected it should prove, seeing thatthis ocean had been plentifully navigated since Cook's time and no landdiscovered where I was; and I called myself a fool and cursed the hopethat had cheated me, and, in short, gave way to a violent outburst ofpassion, and was indeed so wild with grief and rage that, had my ecstasybeen but a very little greater, I must have jumped overboard, so greatwas my loathing of life then, and the horror the sight of the ice filledme with.
Indeed, you cannot conceive how shocking to me was the appearance ofthat great gleaming length of white desolation. On the deck of a stoutship sailing safely past it I should have found the scene magnificent, Idoubt not; for the sun, being low with westering, shone redly, and therange of ice stood in a kind of gold atmosphere which gave anextraordinary richness to the shadowings of its rocks and peaks, and aparticular fullness of mellow whiteness to its lustrous parts, softeningthe dazzle into an airy tenderness of brightness, so that the whole massshone out with the blandness visible in a glorious star. But its mainbeauty lay in those features by which I knew it to be ice--I mean in avast surprising variety of forms, such as steeples, towers, columns,pyramids, ruins as it might be of temples, grotesque shapes as of mightystatues, left unfinished by the hands of Titans, domes as of cathedrals,castellated heights, fragments of ramparts, and the like. These featureslay in groups, as if veritably the line of coast were dotted withgatherings of royal mansions and remains of imperial magnificence, allof white marble, yet with a glassy tincture as though the material ownedsomething of a Parian quality.
I had to come within two miles, as I have said, before these eleganciesbroke upon me, so deceptively did their delicacy of outlines mingle withthe dark blue softness beyond. In places the coast ran up to a height oftwo or three hundred feet, in others it sloped down to twenty feet. Forsome miles it was like the face of a cliff, a sheer abrupt, with scarcea scar upon its front, staring with a wild bald look over the frostybeautiful blue of that afternoon sea. Here and there it projected aforefoot, some white and massive rock, upon which the swell of the oceanburst in thunder, and flew to almost the height of the cliff in a verygreat and glorious fury of foam. In other parts, where I suspected asort of beach, there was the silver tremble of surf; but in the main,the heave coming out of the north-east, the folds swept the base of theice without froth.
I say again, beheld in the red sunshine, that line of ice, resembling acoast of marble defining the liquid junction of the swelling folds ofsapphire below and the moist violet of the eastern sky beyond and overit, crowned at points with delicate imitations of princely habitations,would have offered a noble and magnificent spectacle to a mind at ease;but to my eyes its enchantments were killed by the horror I felt. It wasa lonely, hideous waste, rendered the more shocking by the considerationthat the whole vast range was formed of blocks of frozen water whichwarmth would dissolve; that it was a country as solid as rock and asunsubstantial as a cloud, to be shunned by the mariner as though it wasDeath's own pavilion, the estate and mansion of the grisly spectre, andcreating round about it as supreme a desolation and loneliness of oceanas that which reigned in its own white stillness.
Though I held the boat's head for it I was at a loss--in so muchconfusion of mind that I knew not what to do. I did not doubt by thecharacter of the swell that its limits in the north-east extended onlyto the sensible horizon; in other words, that its extremity there wouldnot be above five miles distant, though to what latitude its southernarm did curve was not to be conjectured.
Should I steer north and seek to go clear of it? Somehow, the presenceof this similitude of land made the sea appear as enormous as spaceitself. Whilst it was all clear horizon the immensity of the deep was ina measure limited to the vision by its cincture. But this ice-line gavethe eye something to measure with, and when I looked at those leagues offrozen shore my spirits sank into deepest dejection at the thought ofthe vastness of the waters in whose heart I floated in my little boat.
However, I resolved at last to land if landing was possible. I couldstretch my limbs, recruit myself by exercise, and might even make shiftto obtain a night's rest. I stood in desperate need of sleep, but therewas no repose to be had in the boat. I durst not lie down in her; ifnature overcame me and I fell asleep in a sitting posture, I might waketo find the boat capsized and myself drowning. This considerationresolved me, and by this time being within half a mile of the coast, Iran my eye carefully along it to observe a safe nook for my boat toenter and myself to land in.
Though for a great distance, as I have said, the front of the cliff, andwhere it was highest too, was a sheer fall, coming like the side of ahouse to the water, that part of the island towards which my boat's headwas pointed sloped down and continued in a low shore, with hummocks ofice upon it at irregular intervals, to where it died out in thenorth-east. I now saw that this part had a broken appearance as if ithad been violently rent from a mainland of ice; also, to my approach,many ledges projecting into the sea stole into view. There were ravinesand gorges, and almost on a line with the boat's head was an assemblageof those delicate glass-like counterfeits of spires, towers, and thelike, of which I have spoken, standing just beyond a brow whosedeclivity fell very easily to the water.
To make you see the picture as I have it in my mind would be beyond myart; it is not in the pen--not in the brush either, I should think--toconvey even a tolerable portraiture of the ruggedness, the fairygrouping, the shelves, hollows, crags, terraces, precipices, and beachof this kingdom of ice, where its frontal line broke away from thesmooth face of the tall reaches, and ran with a ploughed, scarred, andserrated countenance northwards.
Very happily I had insensibly steered for perhaps the safest spot that Icould have lighted on; this was formed of a large projection of rock,standing aslant, so that the swell rolled past it without breaking. Therock made a sort of cove, towards which I sailed in full confidence thatthe water there would be smooth. Nor was I deceived, for I saw that therock acted as a breakwater, whose stilling influence was felt a good waybeyond it. I thereupon steered for the starboard of this rock, and whenI was within it found the heave of the sea dwindled to a scarceperceptible undulation, whereupon I lowered my sail, and, standing tothe oar, sculled the boat to a low lump of ice, on to which I stepped.
My first business was to secure the boat; this I did by inserting themast into a deep, thin crevice in the ice and making the painter fast toit as to a pole. The sun was now very low, and would soon be gone. Thecold was extreme, yet I did not suffer from it as in the boat. There isa quality in snow which it would be ridiculous to speak of as _warmth_;yet, as you may observe after a heavy fall ashore on top of a blackfrost, it seems to have a power of blunting the sharp edge of the cold,and the snow on this shore of ice being very abundant, though frozen ashard as the ice itself, appeared to mitigate the intolerable rigour Ihad languished under upon the water, in the brig and afterwards. Thismight also be owing to the dryness of the cold.
Having secured the boat I beat my hands heartily upon my breast, andfell to pacing a little level of ice whilst I considered what I shoulddo. The coast--I cannot but speak of this frozen territory as land--wentin a gentle slope behind me to the height of about thirty feet; theground was greatly broken with rocks and boulders and sharp points,whence I suspected many fissures in which the snow might not be so hardbut that I might sink deep enough to be smothered. I saw no cave norhollow that I could make a bedroom of, and the improved circulation ofmy blood giving
So I went to work. I took the oar and jammed it into such anothercrevice as the mast stood in, and to it I secured the boat by anotherline. This moored her very safely. There was as good promise of a fairquiet night as I might count upon in these treacherous latitudes; thehaven in which the boat lay was sheltered and the water almost still,and this I reckoned would hold whilst the breeze hung northerly and theswell rolled from the north-east. I spread the sail over the seats,which served as beams for the support of this little ceiling of canvas,and enough of it remained to supply me with a pillow and to cover mylegs. I fell to this work whilst there was light, and when I hadprepared my habitation, I took a bottle of ale and a handful of victualsashore and made my supper, walking briskly whilst I ate and drank.
I caught myself sometimes looking yearningly towards the brow of theslope, as though from that eminence I should gain an extensive prospectof the sea and perhaps behold a ship; but I wanted the courage to climb,chiefly because I was afraid of tumbling into a hole and miserablyperishing, and likewise because I shrank from the idea of beingovertaken up there by the darkness. There was a kind of companionship inthe boat, the support of which I should lose if I left her.
The going of the sun was attended by so much glory that the whole weightof my situation and the pressure of my solitude did not come upon meuntil his light was gone. The swell ran athwart his mirroring in linesof molten gold; the sky was a sheet of scarlet fire where he was, palingzenithwards into an ardent orange. The splendour tipped the frozen coastwith points of ruby flame which sparkled and throbbed like sentinelbeacons along the white and silent range. The low thunder of far-offhills of water bursting against the projections rolled sulkily down uponthe weak wind. Just beyond the edge of the slope, about a third of amile to the north of my little haven, stood an assemblage of exquisitelyairy outlines--configurations such as I have described; theircrystalline nature stole out to the lustrous colouring of the glowingwest, and they had the appearance of tinted glass of several dyes ofred, the delicate fibres being deep of hue, the stouter ones pale; andnever did the highest moon of human invention reach to anything moreglorious and dainty, more sweetly simulative of the arts of a fairy-likeimagination than yonder cluster of icy fabrics, fashioned, as it enteredmy head to conceive, as pavilions by the hands of the spirits of thefrozen world, and gilt and painted by the beams of the setting sun.
But all this wild and unreal beauty melted away to the oncoming of thedusk; and when the sun was gone and the twilight had put a new qualityof bleakness into the air, when the sea rolled in a welter of darkshadows, one sombre fold shouldering another--a very swarming ofrestless giant phantoms--when the shining of the stars low down in theunfathomable obscurity of the north and south quarters gave to the oceanin those directions a frightful immensity of surface, making you feel asthough you viewed the scene from the centre of the firmament, and weregazing down the spangled slopes of infinity--oh, _then_ it was that thefull spirit of the solitude of this pale and silent seat of ice tookpossession of me. I found a meaning I had not before caught in thecomplaining murmur of the night breeze blowing in small gusts along therocky shore, and in the deep organ-like tremulous _hum_ of the swellthundering miles distant on the northward-pointing cliffs. This was anote I had missed whilst the sun shone. Perhaps my senses were sharpenedby the darkness. It mingled with the booming of the bursts of water onthis side the range, and gave me to know that the northward extremity ofthe island did not extend so far as I had supposed from my view of it inthe boat. Yet I could also suppose that the beat of the swell formed amighty cannonading capable of making itself heard afar, and the ice,being resonant, with many smooth if not polished tracts upon it, readilytransmitted the sound, yes, though the cause of it lay as far off as thehorizon.
I will not say that my loneliness frightened me, but it subdued myheart with a weight as if it were something sensible, and filled me witha sort of consternation that was full of awe. The moon was up, but therocks hid the side of the sea she rode over, and her face was not to beviewed from where I was until she had marched two-thirds of her path tothe meridian. The coast ran away on either hand in cold motionlessblocks of pallor, which further on fell (by deception of the sheen ofthe stars) into a kind of twisting and snaking glimmer, and you followedit into an extraordinarily elusive faintness that was neither light norcolour in the liquid gloom, long after the sight had outrun thevisibility of the range. At intervals I was startled by sounds,sometimes sullen, like a muffled subterranean explosion, sometimessharp, like a quick splintering of an iron-hard substance. These noises,I presently gathered, were made by the ice stretching and cracking infifty different directions. The mass was so vast and substantial youcould not but think of it as a country with its foot resting upon thebed of the sea. 'Twas a folly of my nerves no doubt, yet it added to myconsternation to reflect that this solid territory, reverberating therepelled blows of the ocean swell, was as much afloat as my boat, and somuch less actual than my boat that, could it be towed a few degreesfurther north, it would melt into pouring waters and vanish as utterlywith its little cities of columns, steeples, and minarets as a wreath ofsteam upon the air.
This gave a spirit-like character to it in my dismayed inquiring eyeswhich was greatly increased by the vagueness it took from the dusk. Itwas such a scene, methought, as the souls of seamen drowned in theseseas might flock to and haunt. The white and icy spell upon it wroughtin familiar things. The stars looking down upon me over the edge of thecliffs were like the eyes of shapes (easy to fashion out of thedarkness) kneeling up there and peering at the human intruder who waspacing his narrow floor of ice for warmth. The deceit of the shadowsproportioned the blanched ruggedness of the cliff's face on the northside into heads and bodies of monsters. I beheld a giant, from his waistup, leaning his cheek upon his arm; a great cross with a burlesquefigure, as of a friar, kneeling near it; a mighty helmet with a whiteplume curled; the shadowy conformation of a huge couchant beast, with ahundred other such unsubstantial prodigies. Had the moon shone in thewest I dare say I should have witnessed a score more such things, forthe snow was like white paper, on which the clear black shadows of theice-rocks could not but have cast the likeness of many startlingphantasies.
I sought to calm my mind by considering my position, and to divert mythoughts from the star-wrought apparitions of the broken slopes I askedmyself what should be my plans, what my chance for delivering myselffrom this unparalleled situation. At this distance of time I cannotprecisely tell how long the provisions I had brought from the founderedbrig were calculated to last me, but I am sure I had not a week'ssupply. This, then, made it plain that my business was not to lingerhere, but to push into the ocean afresh as speedily as possible, for tomy mind nothing in life was clearer than that my only chance lay in myfalling in with a ship. Yet how did my heart sink when I reflected uponthe mighty breast of sea in which I was forlornly to seek for succour!My eyes went to the squab black outline of the boat, and the littlenessof her sent a shudder through me. It is true she had nobly carried methrough some fierce weather, yet at the expense of many leagues ofsouthing, of a deeper penetration into the solitary wilds of the polarwaters.
However, I was sensible that I was depressed, melancholy, and under acontinued consternation, something of which the morning sun mightdissipate, so that I should be able to take a heartier view of my wofulplight. So after a good look seawards and at the heavens to satisfymyself on the subject of the weather, and after a careful inspection ofthe moorings of the boat, I entered her, feeling very sure that, if asea set in from the west or south and tumbled her, the motion wouldquickly arouse me; and getting under the roof of sail, with my legsalong the bottom and my back against the stem, which I had bolsteredwith the slack of the canvas, I commended myself to God, folded my arms,and went to sleep.