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Title: Jack Manly; His Adventures by Sea and Land

Author: James Grant

Release date: October 27, 2020 [eBook #63566]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JACK MANLY; HIS ADVENTURES BY SEA AND LAND ***




Produced by Al Haines








  JACK MANLY.




  BY JAMES GRANT

  Price 2s. each, Fancy Boards.

  THE ROMANCE OF WAR.
  THE AIDE-DE-CAMP.
  THE SCOTTISH CAVALIERS.
  BOTHWELL.
  JANE SETON; OR, THE KING'S ADVOCATE.
  PHILIP ROLLO.
  LEGENDS OF THE BLACK WATCH.
  MARY OF LORRAINE.
  OLIVER ELLIS; OR, THE FUSILIERS.
  LUCY ARDEN; OR, HOLLYWOOD HALL.
  FRANK HILTON; OR, THE QUEEN'S OWN.
  THE YELLOW FRIGATE.
  HARRY OGILVIE; OR, THE BLACK DRAGOONS.
  ARTHUR BLANE.
  LAURA EVERINGHAM; OR, THE HIGHLANDERS OF GLENORA.
  THE CAPTAIN OF THE GUARD.
  LETTY HYDE'S LOVERS.
  THE CAVALIERS OF FORTUNE.
  SECOND TO NONE.
  THE CONSTABLE OF FRANCE.
  THE PHANTOM REGIMENT.
  THE GIRL HE MARRIED.
  FIRST LOVE AND LAST LOVE.
  DICK RODNEY.
  THE WHITE COCKADE.
  THE KING'S OWN BORDERERS.
  LADY WEDDERBURN'S WISH.
  ONLY AN ENSIGN.
  JACK MANLY.
  THE ADVENTURES OF ROB ROY.
  THE QUEEN'S CADET.

  GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS.
  THE BROADWAY, LUDGATE.




  JACK MANLY;

  His Adventures by Sea and Land.



  by

  JAMES GRANT,

  AUTHOR OF
  "THE ROMANCE OF WAR," "OLIVER ELLIS,"
  ETC. ETC.



  LONDON:
  GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS,
  THE BROADWAY, LUDGATE.
  NEW YORK: 416, BROOME STREET.




  LONDON:
  RAVILL, EDWARDS AND CO., PRINTERS, CHANDOS STREET,
  COVENT GARDEN.




  CONTENTS.

  CHAP.

  I. WHY I WENT TO SEA
  II. ADVENTURE IN A CASK
  III. THE NARROWS OF ST. JOHN
  IV. THE BRIG "LEDA"
  V. KIDD THE PIRATE
  VI. THE "BLACK SCHOONER"
  VII. THE CHASE
  VIII. OUR REVENGE SCHEMED
  IX. OUR REVENGE EXECUTED
  X. THE SEAL-FISHERS
  XI. COMBAT WITH A SEA-HORSE
  XII. ON AN ICEBEEG
  XIII. ON THE ICEBERG--THE MASSACRE AT HIERRO
  XIV. ESCAPE FROM THE ICEBERG
  XV. UNDER WEIGH ONCE MORE
  XVI. BESET WITHOUT HOPE
  XVII. THE DEATH-SHIP
  XVIII. LEAVES FROM THE LOG
  XIX. THE GRAVES ON THE STARBOARD BOW
  XX. ADRIFT ON THE DEAD FLOE
  XXI. CAPE FAREWELL
  XXII. THE MUSK-OX
  XXIII. THE FOUR BEARS
  XXIV. WOLMAR FYNBÖE
  XXV. ADIEU TO THE REGION OF ICE
  XXVI. A SHARK
  XXVII. THE FATAL VOYAGE OF THE HEER VAN ESTELL
  XXVIII. THE FATAL VOYAGE--HOW THEY CAST LOTS
  XXIX. ADVENTURE WITH A WHALE
  XXX. LOSS OF THE "LEDA"
  XXXI. THE CRY
  XXXII. THE TWELFTH DAY
  XXXIII. WHAT FOLLOWED
  XXXIV. THE SAILOR'S POST-OFFICE
  XXXV. MS. LEGEND OF EL CABO DOS TORMENTOS
  XXXVI. LEGEND CONTINUED--THE CATASTROPHE
  XXXVII. LEGEND CONCLUDED--THE SEQUEL
  XXXVIII. WE LAND IN AFRICA
  XXXIX. THE KING OF THE SNAKE RIVER
  XL. THE GABON CLIFF
  XLI. HOW THE CAPTAIN PERISHED
  XLII. AMOO
  XLIII. THE RESCUE OF HIS CHILD
  XLIV. THE GRATITUDE OF HIS WIFE
  XLV. FLIGHT
  XLVI. FLIGHT CONTINUED
  XLVII. THE WOOD OF THE DEVIL
  XLVIII. RETAKEN
  XLIX. THE CARAVAN
  L. WE REACH THE CAPITAL
  LI. AN OLD FRIEND IN A NEW PLACE
  LII. HARTLY'S STORY
  LIII. THE FEMALE GUARDS
  LIV. ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE AGAIN
  LV. THE FORMOSA
  LVI. A PERILOUS JOURNEY
  LVII. PURSUIT AGAIN--CONCLUSION




JACK MANLY.



CHAPTER I.

WHY I WENT TO SEA.

It was the evening of the sixteenth of March.

Exactly six months had elapsed since I left my father's snug villa at
Peckham, with its walls shrouded by roses and honeysuckle; and now I
found myself two thousand three hundred miles distant from it, in his
agent's counting-room, in the dreary little town of St. John, in
Newfoundland, writing in a huge ledger, and blowing my fingers from
time to time, for snow more than ten feet deep covered all the
desolate country, and the shipping in the harbour was imbedded in ice
at least three feet in thickness; while the thermometer, at which I
glanced pretty often, informed me that the mercury had sunk twelve
degrees below the freezing point.

While busily engrossing quintals of salted fish, by the thousand,
barrels of Hamburg meal and Irish pork, chests of bohea, bales of
shingles, kegs of gunpowder, caplin nets, anchors and cables, and
Indian corn from the United States, with all the heterogeneous mass
of everything which usually fill the stores of a wealthy merchant in
that terra nova, I thought of the noisy world of London, from which I
had been banished, or, as tutors and guardians phrased it, "sent to
learn something of my father's business--_i.e._, practically to begin
life as he had begun it;" and so I sighed impatiently over my
monotonous task, while melting the congealed ink, from time to time,
on the birchwood fire, and reverting to what March is in England,
where we may watch the bursting of the new buds and early flowers;
where the birds are heard in every sprouting hedge and tree, and as
we inhale the fresh breeze of the morning, a new and unknown delight
makes our pulses quicken and a glow of tenderness fill the heart--for
then we see and feel, as some one says, "what we have seen and felt
_only_ in _childhood and spring_."

"Belay this scribbling business, Jack," said a hearty voice in my
ear; "come, ship on board my brig, and have a cruise with me in the
North Sea.  I shall have all my hands aboard to-morrow."

I looked up, threw away my pen, closed the gigantic ledger with a
significant bang, and shook the hand of the speaker, who was my old
friend and schoolfellow, Bob Hartly, whose face was as red as the
keen frost of an American winter evening could make it, albeit he was
buttoned to the throat in a thick, rough Flushing coat, and wore a
cap with fur ear-covers tied under his chin--a monk-like hood much
worn in these northern regions during the season of snow.

"I don't think your cruise after seals and blubber will be a very
lively affair, Bob," said I, rubbing my hands at the stove, on which
he was knocking the ashes of his long Havannah.

"Lively! if it is not more lively than this quill-driving work, may I
never see London Bridge again, or take,

  'Instead of pistol or a dagger, a
  Desperate leap down the falls of Niagara!'"


"I am sick of this Cimmerian region!" said I, stamping with vexation
at his jocular mood, when contrasted to my own surly one.

"Cimmerian--ugh! that phrase reminds me of school-times, and how we
used to blunder through Homer together, for he drew all his images of
Pluto and Pandemonium from the dismal country of the Cimmerii.  By
Jove!  I could give you a stave yet from Virgil or Ovid, hand over
hand, on the same subject; but that would be paying Her Majesty's
colony a poor compliment."

"Well, Bob, I am sick of this place, in which evil fate, or rather
bad luck, has buried me alive--this frozen little town of wood and
tar, without outlet by sea or land in winter, without amusement, and,
at this time, seemingly without life."

"It forms a contrast to London, certainly," said Hartly, assisting
himself, uninvited, to the contents of a case-bottle of Hollands
which stood near; "but there is a mint of money to be made in it."

"The first English folks who came here were reduced to such straits,
we are told, that they killed and ate each other; and those who
returned were such skeletons that their wives and mothers did not
know them."

Hartly laughed loudly, and said--

"But that was in the time of King Henry VIII., and people don't eat
each other here now.  But to resume what we were talking about----"

"Old Uriah Skrew, my father's agent, and I are on the worst terms; he
keeps a constant watch over me.  I go from my desk to bed, and from
bed to my desk--so passes my existence."

"Why not slip your cable and run, then?"

"Skrew being a partner in the firm," I continued, warming at the idea
of my own rights and fancied wrongs, "cares for nothing but making
money from the riches of the sea, and thinks only of cargoes of fish
to be bartered in Lent, at Cadiz, for fruit and wine, oil, seals, and
blubber; and really in this cold season----"

"Ah, but summer is coming," interrupted Bob, drily.

"Summer!  How is the year divided here?"

"Into nine months of winter and three of bad weather."

"A pleasant prospect!  If I were once again at Peckham----"

"Well, Jack, I have a grudge at old Uriah Skrew, for, like a swab, he
played me a scurvy trick about a cargo I had consigned to your father
and him, from Cadiz, last year--a trick by which I lost all my profit
and tonnage.

"Likely enough; this ledger is Uriah's bible--and his God----"

"Is gold!  So I care not a jot if, for the mere sake of provoking
him, I lend you a hand to give him the slip, for a few months at
least.  Ship with me to-morrow--as a volunteer, passenger, or
whatever you please."

"I shall," said I, throwing my pen resolutely into the fire.

"Your hand on it!  I like this.  Get your warmest toggery sent on
board; you'll need it all, I can tell you!  I can give you a long
gun, and bag for powder and slugs; and then, with a bowie-knife in
your belt, a seal-skin cap with long flaps, and a stout pea-jacket,
you will make as smart a seal fisher as ever sailed through the
Narrows!  By this time to-morrow you may be forty miles from your
ledger, running through the North Sea with a flowing sheet.  By Jove,
I know a jolly old Esquimau who lives at Cape Desolation under an old
whaleboat.  He will be delighted to make your acquaintance, and give
you a feed of sea weed and blubber that will make your mouth water,
though we eat it when the mercury is frozen in the bulb."

This cheerful prospect of Arctic hospitality might have persuaded me
to remain where I was, but soured by the treatment I experienced from
Mr. Skrew, who misrepresented my conduct and habits to my family at
home, and tired of the monotony of his counting-room, I looked
forward with eagerness to an anticipated escape.

How little could I foresee the consequences of my impatience, folly,
and wayward desire for rambling!  Ere a month was past, I had
repented in bitterness my boyish repugnance for steady application
and industrious habits.

My friend, Robert Hartly, who was eight years my senior, was master
and owner of the _Leda_, a smart brig of two hundred and fifty tons
register--a craft in which he had invested all his savings.  Last
year he had lost a wife and two children, whom he tenderly loved; he
had come to St. John from Cadiz, missed a freight and been frozen-in,
and now, with all a sailor's restlessness and dread of being idle,
even for a month or two, he had resolved to sail for the spring seal
fishery, as a change of scene, and a trip which he hoped would not
prove unprofitable, as his vessel was one of a class far superior to
those which usually venture into the region of ice, being well found,
well manned, coppered to the bends, and, in short, the perfection of
a British merchant brig.

"By the bye," said he, "talking of powder and slugs, we may need
both, for other purposes than shooting seals."

"How?" I asked.

"I mean if we came athwart the _Black Schooner_ which has been
prowling and plundering about the coast for the last six weeks."

"Are there more news of her?"

"No; but here is a placard given to all shipmasters yesterday," said
he, unfolding a paper surmounted by the royal arms, and running in
the name of "His Excellency the Governor and Commander-in-Chief over
the Island of Newfoundland and its Dependencies," offering 500_1._ to
the crew of any ship that would capture "the vessel known as the
_Black Schooner_," &c.  "She is a queer craft," continued Hartly,
"and said to be a slaver, bankrupt, and out of business; though Paul
Reeves, my mate, maintains that she is the _Adventure_ galley.  which
sailed from London in the time of King William III., and that her
crew are the ghosts of Kidd and his pirates; but ghosts don't steal
beef and drink brandy."

Hartly's father had been in the navy; thus he had received a good and
thorough nautical education, but early in life had been left to work
his way in the world; so he made the watery portion thereof his home
and means of livelihood.  He was a handsome, hardy, and cheerful
young fellow, and the _beau idéal_ of a thorough British seaman.

On the third finger of his left hand he wore a curious ring of base
metal, graven with runes of strange figures.  This was the gift of an
old woman to whom he had rendered some service when in Iceland, and
who had promised, that while he wore it, he could _never be drowned_;
consequently Hartly was too much imbued with the superstition of his
profession to part with it for a moment.

"But how am I to elude old Skrew, and get on board," said I, after we
had concluded all our arrangements, over a glass of hot brandy-punch,
in Bob's lodgings in Water-street.

"True--the brig lies frozen-in at the end of his wharf, the hatches
are all locked, and the hands ashore."

"If he sees me on board, there will be an end of our project, for I
have no wish to quarrel with him in an unseemly manner; but merely to
'levant' quietly, leaving a letter to announce where I am gone, and
when I may, perhaps, return."

"All right--I have it!  I'll send an empty cask to Skrew's store
to-morrow.  Paul Reeves, the mate, and Hammer, the carpenter, will
head you up in it, and so you may be brought on board unknown to all
save them--ay, under the very nose of old Uriah.  Will that suit you?"

"Delightfully!" said I, clapping my hands.  The whole affair had the
appearance of an adventure, and though there were a hundred ways by
which I might have joined the brig, when the _cutting-out_ of the
sealing fleet took place next day, like a young schoolboy--for in
some respects I was little more--I accepted the strange proposal of
going on board in a cask, and retired to bed, to dream of adventures
on the high seas; for being young, healthy, and active, I could
always have pleasant dreams without studying the art of procuring
them--an art on which Dr. Franklin wrote so learnedly in the last
century.




CHAPTER II.

ADVENTURE IN A CASK.

On the next day (17th of March), when the fleet of adventurers
departs for the spring seal fishery, the little seaport town of St.
John's presents an unusual aspect of bustle and gaiety.  On that
anniversary, at least one hundred vessels, having on board three
thousand seamen, batmen, and gunners, sail to seek their fortune in
the ice-fields; but on the day I am about to describe, the number of
craft and their crews far exceeded this.

The day was clear and sunny, not a speck of cloud was in the sky,
whose immensity of blue made the eye almost ache, while the intense
brilliance of the snow, which covered the hills and the whole
scenery, made them seem to vibrate in the sunshine, and caused a
species of blindness, especially on entering any apartment, however
large or well-lighted; for after being out of doors in that season
and region for an hour or so, a house usually seems totally dark for
a time.

For some days previous there had been that species of drizzle which
is termed locally "a silver thaw," thus, all the houses of the town,
the roofs, walls, and chimneys; the trees, the shipping in the frozen
harbour, every mast, yard, and inch of standing or running rigging,
were thickly coated with clear ice, which sparkled like prisms in the
sunshine, making them seem as if formed of transparent crystal.
Then, there was a glittering in the frosty atmosphere, as if it was
composed of minute particles, while the intensity of the cold made
one feel as if a coarse file were being roughly applied to one's nose
or cheekbones on facing the west, the point whence the wind came over
the vast and snow-covered tracts of untrodden and unexplored country
which stretch away for three hundred miles towards the Red Indian
Lake and the Bay of Exploits.

The keepers of stores and shops--who in St. John are usually dressed
like seamen, in round jackets and glazed hats--with all idlers, were
pouring through every avenue and thoroughfare, and spreading over the
harbour.  All the ships displayed their colours, and the sound of
music, as bands perambulated the ice, rang upon the clear and ambient
air, mingled with the musical jingle of the sleigh bells, as the more
wealthy folks, muffled and shawled to the nose, galloped their horses
with arrow-like speed from side to side of the harbour.

The latter and the town (but especially the grog-shops) were crowded
by the seal fishermen, who had come in from all parts of the coast,
and bore bundles of clothing slung over their backs, each having his
carefully selected club wherewith to smite the young seals on the
head, and also to be used as a gaff or ice-hook.  Many of these men
were also armed with long sealing-guns, which are twice the size and
weight of an ordinary musket, and resemble the huge, unwieldy gingals
of the East Indians, having flintlocks of a clumsy fashion.

They are generally loaded with coarse-grained powder and pieces of
lead, termed _slugs_, to shoot the old seals, who frequently prove
refractory, and dangerous when defending their young.

Those fishers who are thus armed as gunners rank before the mere
clubmen, and receive a small remuneration, or are remitted some of
the "berth money" which is usually paid to the storekeeper or
merchant who equips the vessel for the ice; "the outfitting," says
one who is well-informed on these matters, "being always defrayed by
the receipt of one-half the cargo of seals, the other half going to
adventurers, with these and other deductions for extra supplies."
But, as Captain Hartly fitted out his own vessel and shipped his own
crew, gunners, and batmen at stipulated salaries, he expected to reap
the whole profits of the expedition.

In addition to the project I had in view, I was particularly anxious
to witness the gaiety of this the only and yearly colonial gala
day--the shipping of the crews, (who always proceed in procession
along the ice,) with the cutting-out and departure of the sealers;
but old Mr. Uriah Skrew, with his clean-shaven face and small cunning
eyes, was in the counting-room betimes, and piled work upon me thick
and fast, to anticipate any application for a day's leave.

"May I not go out for an hour, sir, and see what is going on in the
harbour?" I asked, gently.

"No, sir," he replied, sharply; "such nonsense only leads to
idleness--idleness to dissipation, and dissipation to ruin!  That is
the sliding-scale, young man----"

"Oh! my good sir, you are too severe."

"Severe!  Mr. Jack Manly!----"

"Well, sir?"

"I have always been kind and indulgent to you."

"Kind--hum."

"Yes; more kind and indulgent than your father, my worthy partner,
wishes--and more than he would be."

"Query?"

"What do you mean by 'query'?" he demanded in a bullying tone, for he
intensely disliked me, fearing that I should soon be admitted into
the firm.

"Because I have my doubts on the subject, and your refusal to grant
me leave to-day confirms my opinion of you, Mr. Skrew."

"Very well; enough of this, not a word more, or by the first ship for
Europe I will write what you'll wish had not been written.  Not a
word more."

"I am mute as a fish."

"Engross these papers--but, first, go to the store on the wharf, and
tell the keeper to speak with me; and look sharp!"

I put on my cap and left the counting-room, feeling assured that many
a day would elapse ere I stood within it again, as I caught a glimpse
of Paul Reeves, mate of the _Leda_, and two seamen, loitering
outside; but near the window, wherein stood my desk, under the leaf
of which I deposited a letter addressed to Mr. Skrew, informing him,
in the parlance of Bob Hartly, that "I had slipped my cable and gone
to sea."

"Captain Hartly's friend, sir?" said the mate, touching his hat, and
winking knowingly.

"Yes."

"All right, sir! here is the cask, step in, and Tom Hammer, our
carpenter, and his mate, will head you up in it comfortably in less
than a minute."

"No one is near?" said I, anxiously glancing round the courtyard.

"Not a soul, sir: in you go, on with the head, Tom, and be quick, for
the ice channel is cutting fast to the fairway; the jib and
foretopsail are loose, and the lashings all but cast off."

The counting-room of Messrs. Manly and Skrew stood within a
courtyard, which was entered by a gateway from Water-street; and from
this court--which was formed by four large wooden stores, all
pitched, tarred, and now coated with snow and ice--a path led down to
the wharf, at the end of which, as at the end of all the others that
jutted into the harbour, a mercantile flag was displayed from a mast.
In this court were piles of old barrels, hampers, boxes, an anchor, a
spare topmast or so, half buried under the usual white mantle, on
which a flock of poor little snowbirds were hopping and twittering
drearily.

"Do you feel snug, sir?" inquired Paul Reeves, through the bunghole.

"Yes; but please to lose no time in getting me through the crowd on
the wharf, and on board the _Leda_" I replied, in a somewhat
imploring tone of voice; for the cask, though a roomy one, was the
reverse of comfortable, and already I longed to stretch myself.

"The _Leda_ lies just outside the Bristol clipper."

"She that was overhauled and plundered, and had three of her crew
shot by the _Black Schooner_?"

"Yes, sir," replied Reeves, as the two seamen hoisted up the cask;
and I soon became aware by the clamour around me that I was being
conveyed down to the wharf, where Mr. Skrew, in a full suit of
Petersham and sables, was walking to and fro till his sledge arrived.

"Hallo, what have you fellows got in the cask?" he demanded as I was
borne past him.

"Some of the captain's stores, sir," replied Reeves.

"His grandmother's best featherbed," added the carpenter.

"Very good," said Uriah, as I was deposited almost on his gouty toes.

Men often stumbled against my cask, and swore at it or pushed it
aside.  Once a fellow seated himself on it, and kicked with his heels
till I was nearly deranged, and the impulse to scare him by a shout
became almost irrepressible.  For a time, I dreaded that it might be
tumbled off the wharf into the sludge and broken ice alongside!

Ere long the wharf was cleared; I heard the clanking of the gates, as
the keeper, by order of Mr. Skrew, locked them, doubtless to exclude
me therefrom on this great gala day; and then followed the jangling
of bells, as he stepped into his sledge, and departed upon the ice.
Thus I was left to my own reflections on the solitary wharf.

Before this, a great commotion had taken place at the extremity
thereof, as the Bristol clipper by some mismanagement ran foul of the
_Leda_, and the usual volleys of threats, oaths, and orders incident
to such collisions in harbour were exchanged from the decks and
rigging of both vessels, while, by using boat-hooks aloft and fenders
below, the crew strove to keep the rigging clear and the hulls apart.

Amid this unexpected hurly-burly, I was _forgotten_ in my cask!

The wharf stood near the western extremity of the town, which lies
along the basin of the harbour.  The sounds in my vicinity seemed all
to die away, as the crowd along the shore and upon the ice followed
the ships, which in succession were warped along their ice-channels
into the fairway, and each was greeted by a tremendous cheer as the
sails fell, their head canvas filled, and they broke into blue water;
but hours seemed to elapse, without a person coming near the horrible
cask in which I was imprisoned, and the agonies I endured are beyond
description!

The sense of oppression and of being cramped amounted to intense
bodily torture; thus a perspiration alternately burning hot and icy
cold burst over me.  The interior of this now detested prison seemed
hot as a furnace; yet there was in my soul a deadly fear of perishing
by cold, as I should assuredly do, if left all night on the locked
wharf, in such a climate, with the thermometer at twelve degrees
below the freezing point!

How fruitlessly I repented me of the silly project of thus escaping,
and alternately longed to be back again in Skrew's snug
counting-room, or on board the departing brig--of being anywhere,
instead of being thus "cabin'd, cribb'd, confin'd," and forgotten.  A
terror of being conveyed on board, and left, perhaps, in the
hold--left undiscovered till dead of suffocation, gave me wild
energy; madly I strove to kick or beat out the head of the cask; but
my legs were powerless, as if suffering from paralysis, for my aching
knees were wedged under my chin, and I might as well have attempted
to escape from a block of adamant.

Faintness and delirium were fast coming over me!  I screamed like a
madman; but my hoarse voice was lost in the hollow of the cask.
Though a perspiration bathed all my aching limbs, my tongue clove to
my palate, and soon became hot and dry.  Starry lights seemed to
flash and dance before me in the darkness; my brain reeled; then I
gasped, as sense and pulsation ebbed together, and after enduring
three hours (as I afterwards learned) of such agony as those who were
confined in the stone chests of the Venetians, or in the iron cages
which Louis XI. placed in the Bastille, alone could have known--I
fainted.




CHAPTER III.

THE NARROWS OF ST. JOHN.

On recovering, I found myself in the cabin of the _Leda_, with
Captain Hartly hanging over me, and chafing my hands and temples, in
anxiety and solicitude, with hartshorn and vinegar; for being a
kind-hearted fellow, he was seriously alarmed.

In these friendly offices he was ably assisted by Cuffy Snowball, his
black cook, who burned several grey goose-quills under my nose, and
who brought me a rummer full of brandy-punch steaming hot from the
galley.  On swallowing this, which they forced me to do at two
draughts, I became considerably revived and invigorated.

"Why did you leave me there, Hartly--it might have been, to die?" I
asked, reproachfully.

"I did not leave you, my dear boy, at least not a moment longer than
we could help," he replied.  "It cost us no small trouble to get
clear of that lubberly barque.  I wish the _Black Schooner_ had sunk
her, when athwart her hawse!  We had to clap on all hands to warping
into the fairway, and once there, we had to keep constantly forging
a-head, as other craft were crowding into the channel astern of us."

"Then I was pretty near being left till the wharf-keeper came next
morning.  My heaven!  I should have been stiff enough by that time!"

"I sent Paul Reeves and Hans Peterkin to bring off the cask on a
sledge, and you may imagine the fright we were in on finding you
cramped up and lifeless as a pickled herring!"

"Oh, Hartly," said I, "the torture I endured was frightful!  I now
repent of my undertaking, and wish myself back again."

"Repent--bah!  It has been a stupidly managed job, but it is over
now, and there is an end of it.  Take another sip of the hot
brandy-and-water, and come on deck; we are abreast of the Crow's Nest
now, and in ten minutes more will be in blue water; then hurrah for
the ice-fields!"

I followed him on deck, and found that we were, as he said, abreast
of a high sugar-loaf shaped rock, crowned by a little battery named
the Crow's Nest, and that around us a very exciting scene was passing.

The _Leda_ was now in the fairway, or main channel, which was formed
through the ice in the centre of the harbour, and into which there
were cut more than fifty canals, or connecting links, along which the
sealing ships were being warped from the various wharves at which
they had been fitted out.  All were gaily decked with their owners'
private colours, and had their courses, or lower sails, cast loose,
and were accompanied by crowds, who were conversing, laughing, and
expressing their hopes of a successful fishery to the crews, whose
voices rang cheerily as they tripped round the capstan or wrenched at
the windlass, till they came abreast of the kedge anchor which was
wedged in the ice; and then it was torn up, and carried off a-head
towards the Narrows.  when the cheering, warping, and tripping began
anew.

Thousands of persons, many of them on skates, covered all the glassy
expanse of the frozen harbour, which from some points of view appears
land-locked, so closely do the mountains of rock converge at its
entrance; and hundreds of sledges (Mr. Uriah Skrew's among the
number), with round Russian bells at their horses' collars, or on the
circular iron rod above their ears, with the drivers muffled in furs,
swept to and fro; while bands of music playing the air invariable on
this occasion, "St. Patrick's Day," marched alongside of the
departing fleet.

Flags of every fashion--square, triangular, and swallow-tailed--were
streaming everywhere; on the mastheads of the shipping, on the
black-tarred mercantile stores, and on the dwellings of their
owners--a passion for a display of bunting being one of the
peculiarities of this our most northern colony in America.

The aspect of its capital, which covers the northern slope of the
harbour, is rather pretty, though the country beyond is nearly as
wild and as dreary as when, in the words of Hakluyt--"in the yeere of
our Lord 1497, John Cabot a Venetian, and his son Sebastian, with an
English fleet from Bristol, discovered that land which no man had
before attempted, on 24th June, about five of the clocke, early in
the morning.  That island which lieth out before the land, he called
of _St. John_, as I think, because it was discovered upon the day of
John the Baptist."

During the brief summer, this harbour, the entrance of which is so
narrow that two ships can scarcely pass in the dangerously deep
mid-channel, is smooth as a mill-pond, and presents a lively scene,
for there the smart Clyde-built clipper, the dark and battered
Sunderland collier brig, the smart Yankee liner, with her gaudy stars
and stripes, her snowy decks, and gear so taut; the Pomeranian, with
her grass-green hull and fur-capped crew; the Dutch galliot, all
brown varnish, and shaped like a half cheese, or like the old craft
that bore the Crusaders to Palestine; the huge ship of Blackwall,
redolent of guano, all blistered, rusted, and turned yellow by the
sun of the fiery south; the sharp Spanish brig, which had run her
cargo of slaves in South Carolina and escaped here, to go quietly
home, with her brass nines hidden in the hold, and with fish in Lent
for the pious at Cadiz or Oporto--during the brief season of summer,
I say, all these had been here; but now when a snowy mantle covered
the land, and black ice locked the harbour, its basin or bosom
presented a very different scene.

Floundering through sludge and water, a thousand of those men who are
England's real pioneers in the Far West--Irish emigrants--in long
boots, were cutting the thick ice with ponderous saws, and pushing
the blocks under the solid mass on either side, to form a fairway or
clear channel for the shipping; and this channel, though at least
twenty feet broad, would certainly be frozen hard and fast ere
morning dawned.

On this occasion there passed out with us, as I have elsewhere
stated, more than one hundred sail of sealing craft.  There were
brigs, brigantines, and schooners, ranging from fifty to two hundred
and fifty tons, all following each other through the fairway, warping
ahead, till beyond the Chain Rock, where they got into open water.

Many of the smaller craft are miserably adapted for the dangers they
have to encounter, and thus are frequently crushed or lost in the ice
by being swept off among the floes and fields to the far north, from
whence they never return.  Some, I have observed, had only a box
lined with fire-brick placed on edge, lashed aft the foremast, for a
caboose, and an iron cauldron on three legs placed therein for
boiling the wretched mess of old salt pork and doughballs which form
the daily food of the crew, who, with such apparatus, would be unable
to cook anything in foul weather or a heavy sea.

The wind was southerly for a time, but gradually veered a little to
the west as we neared the harbour mouth.  After passing the Chain
Rock, where a cable of Cyclopean aspect, that now lies a mass of rust
thereon, was wont in times of war and alarm to be stretched across to
the Pancake Rock to secure the harbour at night, we found ourselves
in the deep water.  With a loud cheer we brought the kedge anchor and
hawser on board.  Paul Reeves took the wheel; we sheeted home the
foresail and gib, let fall the fore and main topsails, and brought
the starboard tacks on board when we were clear of the Signal Hill,
and the Dead Man's Bay--a dreary inlet of the sea--lay on our quarter.

This hill is a stern and precipitous mountain of sandstone and
slate-rock, nearly six hundred feet in height, with batteries that
rise over each other in tiers, to the highest, which is named "The
Queen's."  Opposite, towers an equally abrupt mountain of similar
height and aspect, having at its base a little promontory defended by
Fort Amherst.

The slender gut between is named the Narrows of St. John.

The breeze came more and more round upon our quarter as we ran past
Signal Hill, ploughing through a somewhat heavy surf; past the Sugar
Loaf, and a little creek where, in the clear summer sea, I have seen
the guns of an ancient and forgotten wreck lying like black dots on
the smooth white sand many fathoms below; for in these regions, when
a brilliant sun shines upon the ocean, its waters become transparent
to a wondrous depth; thus giant corals, dusky weeds, and the
snow-white bones of mighty fish,

  "With the rainbow hues of the sea-trees' bloom,"

may be seen distinctly at the depth of a hundred and fifty feet from
the surface.

There, too, I have seen the bright yellow sea anemone, with its long
fibrous leaves, that close and shrink into the rocks from view when
touched.

Cape St. Francis, one of the eastern promontories of Avalon, was soon
upon our beam; Cape Spear light had sunk into the waves astern, and
night was coming down upon the wintry sea, when we hauled up a point
or two to the north and west, and stood right away to the icy regions
of the North; and that night merrily at supper we sang in the cabin--

  "'Twas in the year of 'sixty-one,
  Of March the seventeenth day,
  That our gallant ship her anchor weighed
  And to the North seas bore away,
                                  Brave boys," &c.




CHAPTER IV

THE BRIG "LEDA."

We had twenty-four hands on board; twelve of these were landsmen,
being gunners and batmen, half agriculturists and half fishermen,
who, at times, in summer, left their families to till the scanty
soil, while they fished in open boats among the countless creeks and
bays which indent the peninsula of Avalon; and now in winter, when
all out-of-door operations were suspended, and the land was buried
under fourteen feet of frozen snow--and when the sea, even to the
distance of two hundred miles, would soon be bound with ice, they
became seal-fishers; and, like others, had shipped in the little
fleet which, on St. Patrick's Day, always departed from this
Iro-American isle for the stormy seas that lash the Labrador.

All these men were Irish and oft at sea; I have heard the poor
fellows, when seated under the leech of the foresail, with the icy
spray flying over them to leeward, singing the sweet or merry songs
they had learned at their mothers' knee, in the brave old land they
were fated never to see again--for the story of our crew is a sad one!

We had a negro, who was our cook (of course), Cuffy Snowball--I never
heard him named otherwise; and his adventures had been somewhat
singular.

Cuffy had been a warrior of Congo, and dwelt in a hut on the banks of
the Zaire, where, by dint of "his spear and shaggy shield," he had
amassed a wealth of baskets, gourds, carved calibashes, and wooden
spoons from cowards who could not defend them.  He could tell, with
great simplicity, innumerable stories of his combats with other
tribes, and with lions, leopards, buffaloes, crocodiles, and
hippopotami; and in evidence of his prowess, he wore on his left arm
a bracelet formed entirely of lions' teeth--which form a kind of
"Order of Valour" in Congo.  He had been very happy in his wigwam,
till the daughter of a Chenoo or chief--a beautiful damsel, with her
teeth painted blue and the bone of a shark through her nose--espied
him one day, and desired to have him for her husband, as it is the
right of these ladies to do.

The chosen, of whom she becomes absolute mistress and proprietress,
dare not refuse, so poor Cuffy was married to the Chenoo; there were
great rejoicings, and three prisoners of war were devoured at the
marriage-feast.

But his sable fair one tired of him in a short time, and by certain
artful means decoyed him one evening to the mouth of the Zaire, and
there sold him into slavery.

The slave-ship was wrecked; but Cuffy got ashore on the island of
Jamaica, where he was very much surprised to see some of his
countrymen, dressed and armed like white men, in coats of a red
colour, with light blue trousers; so he enlisted as a soldier in one
of her Majesty's West India Regiments.

Ere long Cuffy was made a corporal; and though he ground his sharp
teeth now and then when thinking of his wigwam in Congo, and the
treacherous Chenoo his wife, he was very happy, for he had plenty of
rice, yams, and sangaree, and as a corporal, carried his black snub
nose very high indeed!

From Jamaica his company was ordered to Trinidad, and the whole, a
hundred in number, were shipped on board of a Yankee barque which had
been freighted for the purpose.  Her skipper, on seeing such a choice
lot of tall and handsome young negroes, proposed to their captain (a
reckless fellow, who was steeped to the lips in debt and all kinds of
West Indian dissipation) to bear away for the Southern States of the
Union, and there sell the whole as slaves.  Singular as it may seem,
the captain, who owed more money in Trinidad than he could ever hope
to pay, accepted the proposal, and the soldiers of this company of
H.M. West India Regiment, instead of garrisoning the isle where the
"mother of the cocoa" blooms, were duly landed at Charleston in South
Carolina, where they were all sold to the highest bidders.  The
skipper and captain put the money in their pockets, leaving the
astonished lieutenant and ensign to get back to headquarters in
Jamaica as they best could.

Cuffy's new master proved a severe one, and under his lash he often
sighed for the rice, yams, and his quiet duty as sentinel under a
sunshade, or the high authority he could wield as corporal over
Scipio, Sambo, or Julius Cæsar, in the days when he was the white
man's comrade; but one day Cuffy lost his temper, and gave his master
a tap on the head with a sugar-hoe!

Then, without waiting to see whether or not he had killed him, he
fled into the woods--crossed the Savannah river, and getting on board
a British vessel became a sailor, and within one year thereafter, was
shipped, as cook, on board the _Leda_.

The rest of our crew were all steady and hardy men, and Paul Reeves,
the senior mate, was the model of an English sailor.

The wind had changed during the night; thus, when next day dawned, we
were still in sight of Cape St. Francis--a snow-covered headland,
which shone white and drearily, as the sun came up from the blue sea.

Hartly expressed some impatience at our progress as we trod to and
fro aft the mainmast in the clear, cold, bracing air of the morning,
while the odour of a hot breakfast, which Cuffy was preparing, came
in whiffs from the galley.

"Never mind," said I; "the wind will soon change again--I can see by
the clouds there are contrary currents overhead; and when once among
the ice, we shall have great fun!"

"Fun!  I don't know much about that," said Hartly, who, like every
seaman, was put in a sulky mood by a foul wind.

"We shall have perils to encounter!"

"Perils may be fun to one so young as you, Jack," said Hartly,
pausing thoughtfully; "however, in our trade, I have ever found that
peril and profit go together.  Think over all we have read of what
Parry, Ross, Scoresby, Franklin, and Kane underwent in those regions
of ice and snow; and I do not remember the word _fun_ occurring once
in their narratives."

"Well," said I, abashed by his monitory tone, "we shall have
excitement, at all events."

"Both excitement and danger, I grant you," said he, as we resumed the
usual quarter-deck step and trod to and fro again: "it is a
well-paying speculation, a sealing expedition; and, by Jove! it would
need to be so to compensate poor fellows for all they undergo in such
a rigorous season, and in such seas as those which sweep round the
frozen rocks and shores of Newfoundland and the drearier Labrador in
the blustering month of March.  Some crews are frozen in, far at sea,
for months and months, till all perish of starvation; others are lost
in detached parties on the ice-fields, in fogs, and are never found
again.  Some are swept out to sea on broken floes, or fall through
holes in the ice, and are never more seen.  Then the strongest ships
are often crushed, as you would crush an egg upon an anvil, by the
ice-fields, masses of which, perhaps a hundred miles in extent, are
whirled, dashed, and split against each other by opposite currents,
with a sound so frightful, that one might well imagine the last day
was at hand, or that chaos had come again!  Ah, we should have some
profit, after encountering all that!"

"I should think so," said I while glancing at my watch, and
reflecting that Mr. Uriah Skrew would, about this time, find the
farewell letter I had left for him on my desk in the counting-room.

"But I do not say all this, Jack Manly, to cast you down," said
Hartly, laughing; "for you will always be safe with me, as you know I
never can be drowned, while wearing _this_ ring."

"Do you really believe in it?" I inquired.

"Why, I don't know, Jack; but I should not like to lose it now: we
sailors have strange fancies at times, but, with all our alleged
superstition, are, I cannot help thinking, more religious than you
landsmen.  One who finds his daily bread upon the waters, and is for
ever struggling with the wild elements by night and day, must at
times think solemnly of the mighty Hand and Will that fashioned them
out of thin air."

"But your ring?"

"She who gave it me was a strange old woman, whom we called Mother
Jensdochter--a kind of Norna of the Fitful Head, who lived, or for
aught I know, lives still, in a hut at the base of Mount Hecla, in
Iceland.  I was wrecked there, when on a voyage in the _Princess_, of
Hull, bound for Archangel, five years ago.  This witch occupied a
regular Icelandic hut.  It was built of wreck and drift wood, caulked
with moss and earth, roofed with rafters of whale-ribs covered with
turf, and having in the centre a hole for a chimney.  Her bed was a
mere box of seaweed, feathers, and down; but I seldom saw any house
of a better kind in Iceland."

"Well?"

"She used to sell fair winds or foul, blessings or maledictions, as
the matter might be, to the fishermen of the fiords.  She would give,
as the simple folks believed, a fair wind that would carry a craft as
far as Cape Horn without lifting tack or sheet; or a curse that would
sink the _Royal Albert_ line-o'-battle ship, for a loaf of ground
codfish, or a bottle of hockettle oil for the iron cruse that hung
from her whalebone rafters; but she conceived a strong regard for me,
because I had saved her miserable life in a snowstorm one night, and
carried her in my arms--ugh! what a precious armful she was!--to her
wigwam.  She used to assure me that whenever there was a battle being
fought anywhere in the world, the terrible mountain that overhung her
dwelling vomited black ashes and stones; and then, as she sat at her
door, with her long grey locks hanging over her fierce red eyes, she
could see troops of infernal spirits carrying the souls of the
damned, shrieking through the air, towards the flaming crater.  The
noise of the ice-floes dashed against the shore, she alleged to be
the groans of others, who were doomed to endure excess of cold for
eternity, even as those in Hecla were to endure excess of heat; and
she had many other fancies wild enough to make a poor Jack Tar's hair
stand up on end!

"Near her hut stood a conical knoll, covered with fine green grass,
and thence named the Groenbierg.  There, she asserted, by putting an
ear to the ground, she could hear the large-headed gnomes and little
bandy-legged dwarfs, who dwelt in it, busy at work, fashioning
trinkets and curiously carved goblets--especially at Yule, where the
clink of their tiny hammers rang like chime-bells on little anvils;
and the puff of their bellows and forge could be heard, with the
jingle of gold and silver coins, and opening and shutting of
quaintly-carved and iron-bound treasure-chests, which they were
shoving to and fro, and hiding in the bowels of the mountain.  She
fell asleep there one evening, and dreamed that the Grcenbierg
opened, and there came forth a little man in a red cloak and pair of
puffy breeches, with a white beard the entire length of his body
(that is, about two feet,) and he bestowed this ring upon her, with a
promise that whoever wore it was free from all danger hereafter.  He
then vanished into a mole-track on the hill-side.  Mother Jensdochter
awoke, and found the ring upon her finger, where it remained, until,
in a burst of gratitude, she bestowed it on me, with the comfortable
assurance (I give you the yarn, Jack, for what it is worth) that I
'could never be drowned while it remained on my finger.'  Hans
Peterkin--forward there!"

"Ay, ay, sir."

"Brace those foreyards sharper up; set the fore and main staysails
and foretopmast staysail; and keep her a point or so further off the
land.--And now, Jack, come below, for Cuffy has gone down with the
bacon and coffee, piping hot, too."

Leaving Hans, the second mate, in charge of the deck, with orders to
announce the slightest indication of a change of wind, we descended
to breakfast with the appetites of hawks.

On this morning only two of our sealing companions were visible, and
these were at the far horizon to the eastward; so as we were forced
by change of wind to hug the land, we soon lost sight of them, and,
ere noonday, were alone upon the sea.




CHAPTER V.

KIDD THE PIRATE.

We had scarcely lost sight of Cape St. Francis when the wind became
light and variable, and one of those dense fogs peculiar to that
region settled surely and slowly, densely and darkly, over land and
sea.  We shortened sail, and sent ahead the jolly-boat with four
hands in her, to feel our way as it were; while Paul Reeves kept
sounding ever and anon, for in that ocean of strong currents, with a
slight wind from the eastward, and a shore of reefs and shoals upon
our lee, every precaution was necessary.

The raw cold of a fog upon a wintry sea in that latitude of ice and
snow must be felt to be understood.  The clear bracing frost, however
intense, may be endured; but this chill and murky dampness made one
intensely miserable.

As we crept along, a strange sound reached us from time to time.

"What is that?" I asked.

"The voices of the penguins," replied Hartly--"the Baccalao birds.
We are off that island; and their cries are as good as fog-guns to
people situated as we are.  See! the fog lights a bit; and now there
is the land about two miles off, on the lee bow!"

As he spoke, the dense bank of vapour which shrouded sea, land, and
sky, parted for a few minutes; a gleam of brilliant sunshine fell
upon the rough and precipitous rocks of the wild and desert isle
named Baccalao, which, in summer and winter, are alike ever whitened
by a species of guano, deposited there by the auks or penguins, which
we could see hovering above them in countless myriads, uttering
shrill cries while they soared, wheeled, and flew hither and thither,
as if to warn us of our danger in being so near those treacherous
reefs, which are a source of terror to mariners.  Their dangers are
only seen, however, by the daring egg-gatherers, who come from the
mainland in summer, and sling themselves by ropes from the summit of
the cliff, to rifle the nests; although these poor birds are
specially under the protection of Government, by a proclamation,
being sea-marks, or danger-signals (as we found them) in foul or
foggy weather.

With some interest I surveyed the stern cliffs of Baccalao, as they
were the first land seen by Cabot, the Grand Pilot of England, after
ploughing the mighty Atlantic in his little caravel; and he named
them in his joy _La Prima Vista_, though a "vista" grim enough.

"The shore is dark, dreary, and sterile," said I to Hartly.

"Yes," said he, "but there are many strange stories of treasure being
buried there by the pirates in old times."

"Do you see that deep chasm in the rocks in the north end of the
isle?" said Paul Reeves, lowering his voice impressively as he
pointed to the land.

"Yes, it seems quite black among the snow."

"That is _not_ snow, but the deposit of the Baccalao birds," said the
mate.  "In the old buccaneering times, the pirates are said to have
buried their treasure there; and a cask branded with the King's broad
arrow, and the name _Adventure_, was once found in it.  Now all the
world knows that the _Adventure_ was the ship of the famous Captain
Kidd, who cheated King William out of the finest craft in the English
navy."

"How?" said I.

"Let us hear," added Hartly.

"At a time when all the seas about the coasts of North and South
America and the West India Islands were swarming with buccaneer
craft, manned by desperadoes of every country, who made war upon all
ships that sailed the ocean and were unable to resist them, the
Government of King William III. selected a mariner of doubtful
reputation, named Captain William Kidd, who volunteered to root out
those sea-hawks, who persecuted the thrifty traders of New Amsterdam."

"King William acted on the principle of setting a thief to catch a
thief."

"Exactly so, Jack," said Hartly, "for Kidd, though ostensibly a
merchant-mariner, was something of a smuggler, and had done a little
in the way of picarooning.  He was always heard of in out-of-the-way
places, departing on voyages no one knew whither, and coming from
places never heard of before.  Then he was always followed by a crew
of well-armed, black-muzzled, drinking, swearing, tearing fellows,
who were as flush of money as if they had been at the overhauling of
Havannah.  But go a-head, Paul."

"Well," resumed the mate, "in 1695 Kidd sailed down Channel in the
_Adventure_ galley, of forty-four guns, with a royal pennant flying,
duly commissioned by King William to fight all buccaneers, and his
crew were all selected by himself.  But Master Kidd was barely off
the Lizard when he hauled down the King's pennant, hoisted the skull
and crossbones, and bore away for the East Indies.  He burned two
towns in Madeira, and after plundering and sinking every craft he
could overmatch, reached the entrance of the Red Sea, where he
captured a Queda merchantman, the cargo of which lined the pockets of
himself and his followers to their complete satisfaction.

"Queda is a town of Asia, situated on the western coast of the
peninsula of Malacca; and so Kidd was cunning enough to attempt
passing-off this capture as a crusade against the enemies of
Christianity; but, unfortunately for him, the ship was commanded by a
Scotchman, and people did not believe in crusaders under Orange
William.

"A year or two after this, he was cruising off the American coast,
and in dread of the King's ships, which were all on the look-out for
him, he ran north as far as Newfoundland, and was alleged to have
buried on its coast all the treasure amassed on his long and rambling
voyage; but _where_, no one could exactly say, until the old barrel
head, marked _Adventure_, and bearing the King's broad arrow, found
in yonder cavern, seemed to indicate Baccalao as being the place.
Moreover, he is known to have run up Conception Bay in quest of the
gold and silver rocks which Frobisher and Sir Humphrey Gilbert
averred were to be seen there."

"Rocks of gold and silver!" said I, incredulously.

"They are only the fire-stones of the Red Indians, and emit sparks
when struck together," said Hartly.[*]


[*] They were the solid iron pyrites which deceived the early
navigators who visited these barren shores.  In the "List of H.M.
Royal Navy for 1701," we find among the "fifth-rates, the
_Adventure_, 120 men, 44 guns."


"His treasure," continued the mate, "if he had any, was never found;
though _he_ was, for Richard Coote, Earl of Bellamont, and Governor
of New England, caught him one day in 1701, when swaggering about the
streets of Boston, and sent him home to King William, who lost no
time in hanging him.  But he died as hard as he had lived, for the
rope broke with his weight in Execution Dock, so he was reeved up
again with a new one.

"He was hung in chains on the banks of the Thames, but his body
disappeared in the night, and the sailors in London declared that he
could neither be hanged nor chained, as he had a _charmed_ life,
having sold his poor soul to the devil.  Be that as it may, on the
_same night_, in 1701, my Lord Bellamont was found dead in his bed at
Boston, and many affirmed that this event had some connexion with
Kidd's mysterious disappearance from the gallows, as he was said to
have been seen by some of his old shipmates near the dead Governor's
house.

"Fishermen when jigging or trawling off Baccalao in the clear
moonlight nights, often saw a solitary man sitting on the rocks at
the mouth of yonder cavern, but his figure always seemed to melt away
into the moonshine when any one approached; so a story went abroad
that the island was haunted by the ghost of a drowned man.  However,
a stout fellow, named Tom Spiller, who was rather bolder than the
rest, and who lived alone at Breakheart Point, where he had a little
hut and stage for drying the fish he caught, went off to the island
one night, when there was little cloud and a bright moon.  The sea
was calm, for there was but a puff of wind off the land from time to
time.

"Tom Spiller was a brave and devil-may-care kind of fellow, whom I
knew well, for he was an old man when I went to sea with him first as
a boy, so I have often heard him tell the story without variation or
leeway, or shaking out a new reef by way of a change.

"On approaching the island, he saw the solitary figure sitting on the
rocks at the mouth of the deep black chasm, motionless, with his head
resting, as it were, sorrowfully on the palm of his right hand, and
his eyes fixed apparently on the sea that rippled to his feet, though
it boiled and roared in white foam over the reefs that lay a few
fathoms off outside.

"Tom steered his boat straight for the cave, and now, when the
towering rocks of the desert isle were over his head, covered with
thousands upon thousands of wild auks, screaming, whirling, and
flapping their wings, as if to scare him away; when the deep black
chasm in which the sea was gurgling and moaning yawned before him,
and everything seemed so weird and wan in the pale moonlight, he
_did_ feel queer, and more so when the solitary man, instead of
melting into thin air as usual, turned his white face towards him,
and arose, just as he let go the halyards, lowered the brown flapping
sail, and running his boat into the cave, adroitly noosed a rope over
a large stone to moor her, and stepped ashore.  Tom's heart was
beating wildly and strangely, for he was determined to discover
whether this figure, which he had so often seen from the sea, and
which had so invariably eluded his brother fishermen, was man, ghost,
or devil.

"He perceived that the stranger was clad in an old-fashioned dress,
his coat having large metal buttons, broad pocket-flaps, and deep
cuffs.  He was ghastly pale, his glassy eyes glistened in the
moonlight, and dark crimson blood was flowing from what appeared to
be a pistol-shot in his left temple.

"'What seek you here?' he asked, in a voice so hollow that the
terrified fisherman, who now repented sorely of his rashness, knew
not whether the sound came from the spectre's white lips, from the
depth of the dreary chasm, or from the sea.  'Speak,' continued the
figure, with mournful earnestness; 'what seek you?'

"'To discover who and what you are,' said Tom.

"'May you never be what I was, or what I am,' replied the other,
sadly.

"'But what are you?'

"'A restless spirit.'

"Tom's knees bent under him, for the pale eyes of that cold white
visage seemed to pierce his soul.

"'A wretched spirit--left here by a fiend to guard his ill-gotten
spoil--so begone, I charge you.'

"The fisherman shrank back on hearing these strange words, while the
gloomy terrors of the scene--the screaming of the Baccalao birds that
whirled in a cloud about him, the dashing of the waves upon the reef,
and the mournful gurgle of the backwash within the vast cavern, with
the weird glimpses of the moon as the white clouds sailed swiftly
past her face--all combined to make this interview a dreadful one.

"Suddenly there was a sound of oars to seaward, the spirit seemed to
become excited, and clasped his thin white hands.

"'See! see! he comes!' he exclaimed.  'Kidd the pirate!  Kidd, my
murderer!  But he comes, blessed be God! to release me after a
hundred years of restless watching and penance!'

"For you must know that this occurred, as Tom Spiller told me, in
1801.

"'Land ho!' cried a deep hoarse voice from the sea, while Spiller,
overcome by terror, shrank behind a fragment of rock.

"'Hilloa!' answered the spirit, in nautical fashion.

"'Clouds and thunder! why the devil don't you show a light?' cried
the strange voice, as a large barge full of men shot round a
promontory, against which the waves were dashing in foam.  On it
came--on and on--at every stroke of the oars, till they were all
triced up in true man-o'-war fashion as she sheered into the creek,
and a man sprang on shore, uttering a tempest of oaths and
maledictions.

"Tom Spiller now fancied that they were all dressed in the fashion of
a hundred years ago, with deep square-skirted coats, long flowing
perriwigs, and little three-cocked hats, and that all were pale,
silent, and spectral; in short, it was a boat manned by unquiet
spirits!  Strangely enough, he felt less afraid of them _all_ than of
_one_, and continued to gaze at them like a person in a dream.

"The man who sprang ashore was a short, squat fellow of ferocious
aspect; his battered visage was covered with cuts and patches of
black plaster; a hellish spark glittered in each of his eyes.  He
wore a coarse perriwig with long curls, a three-cocked hat, an
old-fashioned blue coat, covered with tarnished lace, and brass
buttons; he had also a pair of brass-barrelled Spanish pistols, and a
hanger sustained by a broad belt.

"_Two_ ropes were knotted round his neck, which was bare, and pieces
of rusty chain were dangling at his wrists and ankles.  Then the
marrow froze in the bones of Tom Spiller, for he knew that he looked
upon William Kidd, the pirate, who had been _twice_ hanged a hundred
years before in Execution Dock.

"'Now, you canting, cowardly lubber, why the henckers didn't you hang
out a light?' he bellowed in a hoarse voice.

"'I have been in the dark these hundred years,' replied the spirit,
meekly.

"'Likely enough; seas and thunder! you were the faintest-hearted
fellow in the _Adventure_.'

"'I suffered sorely at your hands since you captured the ship of
Queda, of which I was captain, and made me a prisoner in yon galley.'

"'Bah!' thundered Kidd.

"'I have repented me of my sins in life,' said the spirit, mournfully.

"''Sblood and plunder!' shouted the other, with a diabolical laugh;
'I shot you through the head, as a canting Scotsman, on this night
one hundred years ago, and buried you here--you know for what
purpose.'

"'That my unquiet spirit might watch your buried treasure,' moaned
the other.

"'Right,' chuckled the pirate; 'I shot you as I would have done my
lord the Earl of Bellamont, though he was Governor of New England and
Admiral of all the seas about it, for that long-snouted Dutch lubber,
William of Orange, who sent him to lord it over the Yankees.'

"'I have waited and watched your treasure long, and now am anxious
for the repose of the grave.'

"On hearing this, Kidd and his boat's crew laughed, and gnashed their
teeth; but a few there were who wept and wailed heavily, and the
sound of their lamentation was fearful as it mingled with the chafing
of the surge.

"'I have some fine things stowed away here in Baccalao,' said Kidd;
'but I have some that are better still in the haunted Kaatskill
Mountain, and at Tapaan Zee, up the Hudson.'

"The spirit-watcher groaned.

"'Since I saw you last, brother, I have been twice hanged and strung
in chains on the banks of the Thames--ha! ha! at Gravesend Reach.'

"'Hanged!'

"'Yes, by all the devils in New Amsterdam!--HANGED!  Hanged by order
of him of pious, glorious, and immortal memory--by Orange Billy, who
assassinated the De Witts in Holland, who murdered eighty men, women,
and children in cold blood in Scotland; who abandoned his soldiers at
Steinkirk; who boiled and burned women alive in London for coining a
few brass halfpence; and who departed this life amid the prayers of
canting hypocrites and lawn-sleeved parasites, on the 8th day of
March, 1701!  He roasts now, for some of his pranks, I can tell you!
But heave a-head, brother! we must ship our cargo, and be off
to-night for Cape Cod at New Amsterdam (or New York, as the folks
call it now-a-days), ere the moon wanes or the tide falls.  Where is
the plunder?'

"The sad spirit-watcher pointed to a place which seemed to have
opened in the rocky cavern; and there Tom Spiller could see, by the
beams of the moon, heaps of gold and silver vessels, sparkling jewels
and trinkets, with veritable pyramids of gold and silver coins of
every nation and of every size, piled up in confusion.

"Bewildered by this sight, he permitted rather too much of his figure
to be seen; for suddenly a yell of rage came from the spectre boat's
crew; and Kidd, drawing one of the long brass pistols from his broad
buff girdle, uttered a dreadful oath--

"'A spy!' he exclaimed; 'take _that_ and perish!'

"He fired full at the head of Tom, who felt the ball pass through his
brain like a red-hot arrow, and he sank upon the rocks--where he
found himself lying stiff enough when he awoke next morning, and saw
the Baccalao birds wheeling about in the sunshine."

"So the whole affair was only a dream!" said I.

"I cannot say," replied Reeves; "for strangely enough, an old Spanish
pistol, with a strong smell of powder about it, and 'W. K.' on the
butt, was lying on the rocks by his side.  Tom lost no time, you may
be assured, in jumping into his boat, and clapping on all sail to
leave the island astern; but after that night the spirit was seen no
more at the mouth of the cavern, for Kidd had come to release him, or
to take away his treasure."

"And Tom Spiller?"

"Forsook his hut at Breakheart Point, and went to sea for many years:
he felt unhappy, for the parsons say that folks always are so who
have conversed with ghosts; but his mind dwelt for ever on the
treasure in the cavern, and he never ceased to spin yarns about it,
and express hopes that some, if not all that he saw, might yet
remain.  He returned to Breakheart Point about twenty years ago, an
old and white-haired man; and one night, accompanied by three men
armed with picks and shovels, sailed in search of the treasure; but
they never reached the island, for a tempest came on and drove their
boat to the northward.  He tried to fetch Ragged Harbour, but was
blown right across Conception Bay for more than thirty miles, and was
drowned at La Cabo Bueno Vista, on a rock called, to this hour,
Spiller's Point.

"As for Captain Kidd, he has never been seen since, though some folks
hereabout say he commands the _Black Schooner_, which has overhauled
so many of our merchantmen and escaped the Queen's cruisers.  So that
is my yarn, Mr. Manly."

"Steady, Paul, steady," said Hartly; "the fog has concealed your
haunted island again."

"Steady it is, sir; but we had better take a pull at these larboard
tacks, otherwise we may not be able to clear the three rocks that lie
to the northward of Baccalao; and I think we can hear the breakers
already!"




CHAPTER VI.

THE BLACK SCHOONER.

Long ere the mate's story was concluded, the dense fog--chilly,
white, and drenching--had shrouded the dreary isle of Baccalao, and
the voices of the penguins alone indicated its locality; but they
became fainter, until we lost the sound altogether as we ran further
to the north.

Now a furious snow-storm came on; thick and fast the white flakes
fell ceaselessly aslant through a dark-grey sky upon the winter sea
(for in that region there is _no_ spring), covering the rigging, the
decks, and storm-jackets of the watch, who shrank to leeward, while
the wind, which blew keenly from the N.N.E., and thermometer, which
had sunk very low, made me begin to reflect that there were more
unpleasant places in the world than the counting-room of Mr. Uriah
Skrew.

This snow-storm continued for three or four days, during which the
whole seamanship of Hartly, Reeves, and Hans Peterkin was required to
prevent the _Leda_ being driven upon a lee shore.  By chart and
soundings they were constantly at work, to keep her off a land which
was veiled in obscurity, for the wind was dead and strong against us;
and frequently through the blinding snow, and grey hazy drift to
leeward, we could hear the sullen booming of breakers, as they rolled
in foam that froze upon the granite rocks and islets about Cape
Freels.

This foul weather lasted for several days, and weary of beating
fruitlessly to windward, when the storm abated, and the sky became
again blue and serene, we found ourselves under easy sail, at the
rate of four knots an hour or so, passing the Twillingate Isles,
which lie between the Bay of Exploits and the vast Bay of Notre Dame.
They were covered with snow, and are desolate, bleak, and little
known, as on that part of the coast there are only about one hundred
and fifty inhabitants--poor people--who, after fishing for cod and
salmon in summer, quit their wigwams in winter to live in the
sheltered woods, or sail south towards St. John.  And now we began to
get ready our boats and guns, and with telescopes to sweep the
snow-clad shore for seals, and the open sea for ice-floes.

It was about the hour of six; the sun had just set, and the western
sky was all a-blaze with fiery-coloured light, which tinged with
roseate hues the waves that rolled upon the bleak and snow-clad
shore.  Captain Hartly took the wheel, and Reeves stood anxiously
close by the binnacle, for we had to weather a long, sharp, and lofty
promontory which abutted like a wall of rock into the ocean, and
round which there eddied a swift and dangerous current.  The wind,
though now off the land, was too light to enable us to make headway
against the stream.

On the brig we had but little "way," and a general exclamation of
satisfaction rose from the hitherto silent crew, when the _Leda_
_shaved_--as they phrased it--past the promontory, and we saw a deep
cove of blue water opening beyond it; but lo!

There lay at anchor a schooner--a long, low, sharply prowed and
rakish-like craft--with her hull painted black as jet could be, and
with a number of rough-looking fellows crowding along her gunwale.
We were not three hundred yards apart.

"Reeves, take the wheel," cried Hartly, in an excited voice.  "The
glass, Cuffy, the spy-glass!" he added with sharp energy, snatching
from the hands of Snowball the telescope which usually hung on two
hooks in the companion; "a row of ugly dogs they are that man her.
By Heaven, she is the _Black Schooner_!"

"The _Black Schooner_!" we all exclaimed with something of dismay in
our varying tones; and I felt, that with Paul Reeves's grim legend
about Captain Kidd fresh in our memory, we had some cause for alarm
in meeting with this robber ship upon those solitary seas.

"Are you sure, Hartly?" I asked.

"Not a doubt of it!  see, Reeves--she is a two-topsail schooner!"

"What does that mean?" said I.

"A brig without tops, in fact."

A kind of growling cheer, mingled with wild and insolent halloing,
rose from her crew on beholding us suddenly come round the abrupt
promontory, from the brow of which a fringe of gigantic icicles
overhung the sea.  A commotion was instantly observable on deck; a
man in authority sprang up the companion-ladder, and we heard him in
a loud and clear voice ordering sail to be instantly made on the
schooner as we altered our course.

"Man the windlass-bars--up anchor--rouse it to the catheads with a
will, my boys!  Shake out everything fore and aft--every stitch that
will draw.  Stand by the jib and flying-jib halliards," he shouted.

After a pause, during which we heard the clanking of the windlass
pauls, as her anchor was started, and would soon be a-cockbill, and
dangling by its ring, we heard his voice again.

"Up with the jib and flying-jib now--sheets to starboard!  Heave and
away--presto! my Jack Spaniards.  Stand by topgallant and topsail
sheets and halliards.  Bear a hand, you French devils!  Well done, my
Kentucky rowdies!"

In less than three minutes the swelling of the jib and other
head-sails, as well as the motion of the schooner when her bows fell
round, proved that she was under weigh.  These orders, which were
obeyed with skilful alacrity, seemed to indicate alike the mixed
character of her crew and the hostility of their intentions.

"Ready a gun there forward! sheet home and hoist away, topsails and
topgallant sails!"

This alarming order, uttered in a loud voice, rang distinctly upon
the clear frosty air, and, on the other hand, Captain Hartly was not
slow in his preparations to avoid her.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed, "this is the very craft we have heard so
much about, and for the capture of which the Governor offers 500_l_.
I have no wish to be caught by these fellows--see, they are shaking
out a couple of reefs in her fore and aft mainsail already!  Hands
make all sail--Reeves, set everything that will draw--square away the
after yards."

"Ay, ay, sir," said Reeves, jumping about and setting all the men to
the yards, braces, and halliards; "port the smallest bit--keep her
full--so--steady!"

"Maldito los Inglesos renegades!" ("Curse the English runaways!")
cried a Spaniard, shaking his clenched hands at us over her starboard
bow.

"Caramba!" cried another.

"Sangbleu!" added a Frenchman, "stop hare--lie to--or it vill be ze
vorser for you."

"Will it, you rascally thief!" shouted Hartly, as his eyes flashed
and his cheek glowed with excitement: "Manly, look alive, my lad!
load all the double-barrelled rifles in the cabin.  Snowball, get up
the kegs of powder and slugs.  We shall not be overhauled by a pirate
without having a skirmish first."

"Luckily for us the wind is off the land, and it freshens too," said
Reeves: "we shall beat her when running before the wind; but she
would come up with us hand over hand on a taut bowline.  It was on a
wind she overtook the Bristol clipper."

In the red glow of the winter sunset, we saw the foam flying on each
side of her sharp bows as the breeze freshened, and she rolled
heavily from side to side; while the _Leda_, being square-rigged, had
a greater spread of canvas, and caught more of the wind: thus,
notwithstanding that our dangerous pursuer was built for sailing
fast, as Paul Reeves foretold, she was no match for us, when running
right before the wind.

Our crew, half of whom were only poor seal-fishers, became very much
excited; but inspired by the example of Hartly, Reeves, and myself,
they proceeded to load all the sealing guns and muskets, lest the
schooner might lower her boats to overtake us and attempt to board.

The stern and confident order to get "ready a gun," was repeated more
than once before we got beyond hearing; but as no gun was ever fired,
we believed this to be a mere bravado to frighten us into shortening
sail, till she might run alongside and board us, when a ruinous scene
of plunder, if not of bloodshed, would be sure to ensue.

"She sails with the speed of an arrow," said I, while carefully
loading and capping my rifle.

"This _Black Schooner_ was one of the craft employed in protecting
the French fishery of Miquelon, on the south side of the island,"
said Hartly; "but her crew mutinied, shipped some runaways of all
countries and colours, and turned slavers.  These rascals have
committed several outrages hereabouts by sea and land, but have
always escaped our cruisers, as she alternately shows a British,
French, and Yankee ensign, and runs all kinds of paint-strokes along
her bends."

On, on, we bore; and on, on, she came after us, with the still
freshening breeze, the foam flying before her bows and ours; but ere
long we were evidently half a mile apart.

She was a handsome clipper-like craft of about two hundred tons'
burthen, coppered to the bends; her lower masts were long and heavy,
so as to carry fore and aft sails of immense spread upon a wind, with
a square sail, top and topgallant sail aloft.

"Massa Hartly--Massa Captain--look out!" exclaimed Cuffy Snowball,
who had armed himself with a musket, and stood in soldier-fashion at
"the ready," grinning over the taffrail at the rolling schooner.

"Look out for what?" said Hans Peterkin.

"Something make you all look white as de debbil."

"What do you mean by _white_," asked the carpenter, "when we all know
the devil is black?"

"In my country him white, sare," replied Cuffy, angrily.

"Then," said Hartly, to keep up the spirits of his crew by jesting,
"what colour do you think he is, Cuffy?"

"I tink him _blue_," replied the prudent negro; and then he added
with a yell, "dere come something will make you look blue too, Massa!"

As he spoke, a puff of white smoke rose from the bow of the _Black
Schooner_; the report of a musket rang in the air, and a conical
rifle-ball whistled past the ear of Hartly, and sank with a heavy
_thud_ into the mainmast.




CHAPTER VII.

THE CHASE.

Cuffy Snowball fired his musket at our pursuer, whether with or
without effect we know not; but, in reply, a confused discharge of
firearms followed, and the balls pattered among the rigging, and
knocked little splinters from our spars and gunwale.

"Now, my lads," said Hartly, "let fly at her with everything you
have--sealing-guns and rifles!"

This order was executed with alacrity.  We had four good rifles and
ten long-barrelled and wide-muzzled sealing-guns, each of which sent
ten or twelve slugs of lead _whirring_ through the air at every
discharge, and we blazed away right valiantly at the crowd of rascals
in the schooner's bows; but so great was the distance between us,
that I am certain our fire fell harmlessly into the sea--the rifle
shots alone could have told with effect.

On first deliberately levelling my rifle (a fine Enfield, presented
to me by my father on leaving Peckham) at a man in the starboard bow
of the pirate, a strange sensation came over me!

I lowered my weapon and paused; but a shot that struck one of the
davits at which the stern-boat hung, removed my momentary, and at
that unpleasant crisis most unnecessary scruple.

I levelled again--fired and reloaded, and without considering whether
or not I had killed a man, continued to pepper away with all the
coolness and precision of Cuffy Snowball, the ex-corporal of H.M.
West India Regiment.

"Run up our ensign, and let her rascally crew see it while there is
light," said Hartly.  "Paul Reeves, rig out the lower studding-sail
booms forward, and bring aft those two carronades and the small
anchor, to trim her more by the stern.  Tom Hammer, see to this!"

"Ay, ay, sir," was the ready response.

The orders were promptly obeyed.  The small anchor and two little
guns, for which we unfortunately had only powder for signals, were
brought aft; the sharp bows of the _Leda_ thus rode more easily over
the water.  The lower studding-sails were rapidly spread and hoisted
up; and then we flew through the darkening sea till its water seemed
to smoke alongside, and bubbled in snowy froth under the counter,
leaving a long white wake, like that of a steamer, astern.

Closely in this long wake followed our pursuer, with deadly
pertinacity.

It is impossible to convey in words any idea of the excitement of
this chase--this flight and pursuit--this race of rivalry, of life
and death!  The daring ruffians who manned the schooner had committed
several murders and robberies on sea and land.  They had overhauled
and rifled several merchant ships, carrying off compasses, charts,
provisions, watches, money, and everything of value: thus, to have
undergone such a ransacking at their hands--even if our lives were
spared--would effectually have marred our expedition for that year.

They were evidently well armed, for their rifle-balls flew thick and
fast about us.  The cracking report, and the _pingeing_ sound of the
conical shot that followed every red flash which broke over the sharp
bows of the schooner, added considerably to our anxiety to escape,
and to our exasperation at being thus molested on the high seas, and
within two hundred miles of where we had left one of her Majesty's
sloops of war in the harbour of St. John, but frozen in,
unfortunately.

Though these missiles struck the brig's stern and rigging
incessantly, we had only one man hit--an Irish seal-fisher, who had
left a wife and family at Dead Man's Bay, to try his fortune with us
in the North.  A ball pierced his shoulder, smashing the collar-bone;
and the poor fellow sank on the deck with a shrill cry of agony.  A
lad named Ridly had his cheek grazed by another shot.

The dusk was fast increasing; but the red flush of the winter sunset
yet lingered in the western sky; the snow-clad islets that stud the
Bay of Exploits had assumed a dark purple hue, and the sea through
which we were careering, northwest, towards the Bay of Notre Dame,
wore a deep and sombre blue.

Clearly defined against the dusky and ruddy sky, we could see the
pursuing schooner, her tall slender spars swaying from side to side,
with every stitch of snow-white canvas spread upon them; and she tore
through the waves like a giant bird, swimming in the wake of dead
water that ran like a long path astern of us.

We had everything set aloft and alow; to her very trucks the _Leda_
was covered with swelling canvas, and she was a beautiful sight!  The
keen and anxious eyes of Hartly, who was at the wheel, scanned ever
and anon the taut cordage, the bending masts, and then he would cast
a fierce glance astern.

"We are leaving her fast, sir," said Paul Reeves, confidently; "in
another hour we shall be far enough apart to feel comfortable."

"Bravo, my little _Leda_!" responded my friend; "she is trimmed and
masted to perfection!  You see, Jack, how a square-rigged craft has
the advantage over even a sharp little serpent with a floating sheet,
like that rascally schooner!"

Her crew still continued to blaze at us with their rifles; but ere
long the bullets fell far short, for we were now more than a thousand
yards apart, and with cheers of derision we continued to surge
through the darkening ocean.

"If we had only possessed a few round-shot, we might have knocked
some of their sticks away with these two useless carronades," said
Hartly, as he now relinquished the wheel to Hans Peterkin, his second
mate, and ordered glasses of grog to be served all round.  "Corporal
Cuffy, do you think you could have knocked her mainboom away, when
the sea is so smooth?"

"Like to knock all him brains out!" replied the Congo-man with a
savage grin; for, inspired by some of his old African instincts,
Snowball was the only person on board who regretted that we had not
enjoyed a hand-to-hand conflict with these outlaws.

But now the darkness of the descending night, together with the
gathering clouds and haze, concealed the schooner from us.

We extinguished all lights on board, and ere long when a red spark
about seven miles astern indicated that she was still tracking us,
Hartly took in his studding-sails, reduced the canvas on the brig,
brought his larboard tacks on board, and bore up for Cape St. John,
the boundary of the French shore, to land our wounded man, who was
suffering great agony from his compound fracture, and with whom, as
we had no medical officer, it would have been impossible to pursue
our voyage.

This rencontre, chase, and escape, formed a staple topic for
conversation to all on board, and till the night was far advanced no
one thought of turning in.

When day broke we found ourselves close in shore, on the northern
side of the great Bay of Notre Dame, with Cape St. John bearing about
three miles off on our lee bow.  We swept the sea with our glasses,
but not a sail was visible in the offing, nor all along the snow-clad
coast.  Save Cuffy Snowball, all expressed their satisfaction at
this; but we were not yet entirely done with our sable acquaintance,
the _Black Schooner_.




CHAPTER VIII.

OUR REVENGE SCHEMED.

We came to anchor, handed our topsails, but merely hauled up our
courses, so as to be ready for sea at a moment's notice.  We were in
a little sheltered cove, abreast of a small village of wooden huts,
surrounded by fences that were buried deep in the frozen snow.

These huts, like all others in this wild terra nova, were built of
fir-poles with the bark on, braced or pegged closely together, and
having chimneys of rough stone built without mortar.  Bark and sods
formed the roofs, and all the crevices were carefully caulked with
moss and mud.

There, in a wretched and dreary region, dwelt--and, I presume, still
dwell--a little Irish colony of fifty or sixty poor souls, who fished
for cod in summer and seals in winter, each family herding together
for warmth in the same apartment with their pigs, fowls, and the
shaggy dogs which dragged in harness the stunted trees that formed
their fuel, and which were cut in the adjacent bush--the desolate
place which once formed the summer hunting-grounds of the extinct Red
men of the island.

Our anchoring in the cove was a great event--the entire population
came forth to gaze and their dogs to bark at us.

Though Newfoundland is larger than England and Wales together, it is
indented by broad bays of deep water, which run for forty or fifty
miles into the interior, and are but little known.  On some of these
solitary shores are little stations of Europeans, such as this we
visited, so remote from all intercourse, and so secluded, that their
reckoning of time has become confused as to days, months, and even
years; thus Sunday is frequently held by them in the _middle_ of a
week.

To the care of these pioneers, or squatters, we consigned our wounded
man.  By the intensity of the frost mortification had commenced, so
the poor fellow died a few days after being landed.

We had scarcely conveyed him ashore, when a man arrived from the bush
with a large tree, which he had cut down, and which his dogs had
dragged easily over the snow (after it was denuded of its bark and
branches) in the usual manner, by having their traces secured to his
hatchet, which was wedged in the broad end of the log.  He informed
us that a schooner--by his description, our identical _Black
Schooner_--was then at anchor under the lee of the Gull Island, about
five miles distant; and added that the poor French people at La Scie
complained bitterly of the rifling they had undergone at the hands of
her crew, which consisted of forty well-armed desperadoes, of all
nations, but principally English and Frenchmen.

Here was startling intelligence!

"Only five miles distant, say you?" reiterated Hartly.

"Yes, sir; and you may see Gull Island from the mouth of our cove
here."

"You are sure she is a schooner?"

"Yes, with masts raking well aft."

"All black in the hull, with slender spars and double topsails?"

"Sure as I now spake to yer honour," replied our informant, who was
an Irish fisherman and squatter; "her crew have let go both anchors
to make all snug, and gone in a gang to enjoy themselves, or
rob--which you plaze--I suppose it's all one to them, at La Scie; bad
luck to them, and may the devil fly away with them all!"

"Are they all gone?"

"All except six rapparees, whom I could count from the bush where I
was hiding."

"Six--left as a deck-watch, I suppose?"

"Just so; yer honour's right again."

"How long have you lived here?" I inquired, for his brogue was as
strong as if he had only left his native Kerry yesterday.

"I have lived here, plaze yer honor, five-and-forty years this last
St. Patrick's Day, and have niver had an hour's illness, glory be to
God!"

"Five-and-forty years!" I reiterated, with a shudder, while surveying
the snow-clad wilderness amid which the wigwams stood.

"How far is La Scie from the Gull Island?" said Hartly, after a pause.

"Six miles, capthin."

"Then by Heaven I'll burn her to the water-edge, or sink her at her
anchors!" exclaimed Hartly, who, with all the rapidity of his nature,
at once conceived and prepared to execute a very daring scheme.

While the quarter-boat was got ready, and four oars, with as many
rifles loaded and capped, and a case of ammunition, were put into
her, Hartly, with Paul Reeves, proceeded in the most simple and
methodical manner to prepare their apparatus for burning the
piratical schooner.

He took a common ship-bucket, and secured an iron ring to the iron
handle, for a purpose to be afterwards explained.  He filled this
bucket with pieces of rope and spun-yarn, well steeped in tar and
grease, mixing them with rosin and gunpowder.  They were nearly three
hours in getting these combustibles prepared to their complete
satisfaction; and so impatient were they to put their scheme in
execution, that they would scarcely wait until dusk to make the
attempt.  But the moment the sun set, Hartly issued orders to Paul
Reeves and Hans Peterkin to heave short on the anchor to get it
apeak, to cast loose the topsails, and prepare the jib for hoisting;
and while he started along the coast in the quarter-boat, to follow
him under easy sail, keeping pretty well to windward of Gull Island,
and out of sight of the schooner.  If the night became obscure, on
hearing the report of a rifle a blue light was to be burned on board
the _Leda_, to indicate her whereabouts.

While Paul Reeves got the brig under weigh, and, favoured by a very
light breeze, crept slowly out of the cove, Bob Hartly, with Hammer
the carpenter, Cuffy Snowball, and I, started in the sharp little
quarter-boat, and aided by a current which there runs north to Cape
St. John, pulled swiftly along the shore towards Gull Island, which
lies beyond the extremity of the headland.




CHAPTER IX.

OUR REVENGE EXECUTED.

The evening, as it deepened into night, was calm and beautiful: as
yet the moon had not risen, but the sky was clear, with an intensity
and purity of blue that can only be found in the icy north, and
studded by ten thousand sparkling stars.  Some of these were so
bright as almost to cast our shadows on the smooth water as we
stretched to our oars, and swept along the snow-white coast.

The latter being nearly destitute of inhabitants, after we left the
cove was voiceless, silent, and desolate.  Not a light was visible,
and no sounds broke the stillness save the booming of the surf on the
rocks of Cape St. John, our own hard breathing, and the clatter of
the oars in the rowlocks.  Then (as that is a species of noise which
the water conveys to a vast distance) we proceeded to muffle them by
our handkerchiefs, and once more we stretched out vigorously.

Notwithstanding the intensity of the cold, so invigorating was the
exercise of rowing, and so full were our minds of excitement and of
our project for destroying the pirate schooner, that we all felt in a
glow of heat, and almost uttered a shout when, after pulling about
three miles, on clearing the bluff Cape of St. John, on the flinty
brow of which the spray was frozen white as it was dashed up by the
sea, we saw the steep rocks of Gull Island; and at anchor, half a
mile to leeward of it, the dark hull and tall spars of the _Black
Schooner_!

The increasing light at one part of the horizon showed that the moon
would shortly be up, so we pulled with might and main to get close
under the lee of the island, and out of the long brilliant track the
Queen of Night would shortly send across the rippling ocean.

"I might have brought an auger and bored a hole or two in her
sheathing under water, and so have scuttled her quietly at her
anchors," said the carpenter.

"But that boring would have kept us alongside too long," said Hartly;
"and the rascals might have got some of their plunder out before she
went down; moreover, your auger would have made too much noise.  But,
hush! we are seen--two fellows are looking over her side!"

"All her boats are gone," said I.

"Yes, to La Scie, except one at the stern."

"They are hailing us, sir," said Hammer.

"Hush!  I'll weather the ruffians yet," said Hartly.

We spoke in whispers, while our hearts beat like lightning, as we
knew not the issue of our attempt, or the moment we might be fired on
from her deck.  The schooner rode with both her anchors out, to make
sure of her holding-ground in case a squall came suddenly on.  Her
canvas was neatly handed, her fore and aft foresail and boom mainsail
were tightly brailed up, and her topgallant yards sent down.

Though black and sombre, with nothing light about her save her
copper, which shone brightly as burnished gold in the clear and
starlit sea, she was a beautiful little vessel; and Hartly almost
sighed on thinking that he was about to destroy instead of capturing
her.

"She is a lovely craft!" said he, "sharp at the bows as a needle
below the water-line, clear at the counter, and coppered to the
bends.  What a glorious yacht she would make!"

"In sheering alongside, take care, sir, they don't scuttle us--by a
cold shot, or a large stone," said Hammer.

"Well," replied Hartly, "my friend the Greenland witch said I should
never drown; but that does not prevent me from being shot, or hung
from the schooner's topsail yard."

As we pulled round across her bows to starboard, keeping pretty well
off, we were hailed again.

"Boat--boat ahoy! what are you?"

"Fishermen," replied Hartly.

"From where?"

"La Scie, where all your fellows are enjoying themselves."

"Got any feesh?" asked a Frenchman.

"No--not at this season."

"Any zeels?"

"Seals--no."

"Then prenez-garde, messieurs."

"Which means, in plain English, sheer off, d--n your eyes!" growled
the first speaker; but by this time we were close under her starboard
counter.

"Sheer off, or it may be the worse for you!"

"What the devil are you lubbers about under the counter?" exclaimed
another; "Baptiste, hand me a musket----"

"We have dropped an oar, and our boat has run foul of yours," replied
Hartly; adding, in a whisper, "The gimlet, carpenter--quick, the
gimlet!"

In less time than I have taken to write these last half-dozen lines,
Hartly had screwed the long gimlet into the vessel's side, under her
counter, and hooked on the bucket, through the iron ring which he had
secured to its handle, and there it hung close to the rudder and
stern-post.  By the swift application of a single lucifer-match he
fired the touch-paper that was to light the carefully-prepared
combustibles, the gathering flame of which shot upward from the
bucket, and began at once to lick and flicker on the newly-painted
planking of the schooner.

"Shove off, and give way--for your lives, give way!" said Hartly, in
a hoarse whisper.

"Cut away stern-boat--let hims all burn--agh! agh!" grinned Cuffy,
who, by a slash of the knife which hung at his neck, cut adrift the
boat which was moored astern.  We had not intended thus to destroy
the retreat of the wretches on board, but the African was merciless
to his enemies, and we had no time to repair his severity.

"Give way," shouted Hartly, as soon as we were clear of her; "clap on
dry nippers!  By Jove! those lads of the knife and pistol will never
come athwart the hawse of the _Leda_ again!"

We had not pulled ten strokes from her, ere a flame seemed to play on
the water beneath her counter!

It spread rapidly between the rudder and sternpost, burning through
outer and inner sheathing; penetrating the rudder-case, and reaching
the cabin, which was unoccupied, as all the crew were ashore save the
six already mentioned, whom we saw loitering amidships.  One was
provided with a musket, which no doubt he would have discharged at
us, had we lingered another moment alongside.

Suddenly they raised a shout; then we saw them rush aft, when they
immediately discovered the vessel to be on fire, and that their only
boat was adrift!

He with the musket took a long aim at us, and fired; but as we were
now three hundred yards from the schooner, and our boat was
alternately rising and falling on the long rolling swell that heaved
between Gull Island and Cape St. John, his shot fell far from us.

By this time the schooner was hopelessly on fire; her whole
quarter-deck, stern, and cabin, forward to the mainmast, were sheeted
with red and roaring flame.  It spread along the deck; it leaped up
the well-greased masts like a fiery corkscrew, round the tarred
rigging and over the handed canvas, till everything was in a blaze;
the great fore and aft sails fell from their brails like fiery
curtains; then we saw her two tall, slender spars, the long boom of
her mainsail, her towering gaffs and topsail yards, all swaying
to-and-fro, as the decks fell in and the shrouds sank smouldering
into the sea.  Then everything went to cinders fore and aft--aloft
and alow!

A lurid glare that outshone the light of the rising moon, overspread
the calm blue sea, casting a ruddy glow upon our faces as we paused
upon our oars, close to the island, where the weird illumination
scared all the sea-birds; thus we heard the shrill scream of the
wagel or great grey gull, as he rose with booming wings and flew to
seek the darker waters of the offing or the frozen bluffs of Cape St.
John, on which the thundering breakers as they reared their heads,
gleamed in the double light of red and silver, like showers of
diamonds and rubies.

"Jack--see how she burns!" said Hartly: "there goes her mainmast
crash into the sea--and now the foremast, a mass of whizzing sparks,
with all its top-hamper!  Pull for the island, till the brig comes
abreast of it;" and then cheerily he sang--

  "Haul away, pull away, pull, jolly boys!
    At the mercy of fortune we go,
  _We're in for it now_, and 'tis all folly, boys,
    To be faint or downhearted, yeho!"


By this time the schooner was a mass of fire, and burnt down nearly
to her bends.  Through the flames we could see the blackened stumps
of her timber-heads, standing in a row from stem to stern.  Suddenly
there was an explosion, and a mighty column of red and blue sparks
and burning brands shot into mid air, arching over in every direction
as they fell hissing into the sea.

A quantity of powder had exploded on board!

Just at that moment we beached our boat upon Gull Island, and
ascended the rocks in haste to view the result of our handiwork.

A great cloud of smoke was now settling over her, as the flames
approached the water; and beyond this cloud we could see a little
boat with some men in it, pulling in the direction of Cape St. John.
Hartly was pleased on seeing this; for although he had resolved to
destroy the schooner, his heart reproached him for leaving six of the
pirates to perish in her.  One, no doubt, had swum after their
drifting boat, and brought her alongside in time to save his five
shipmates; and then we laughed on thinking how cold his swim would be
in the wintry waves, and of the baffled rage of the ruffians at La
Scie, left there without a vessel or any means of escape from a
desolate fishing-station, which in a week or two more would have,
perhaps, three hundred miles of field-ice between it and the sea.

A faint hurrah now came from seaward.  We turned, and saw the smart
and saucy _Leda_ with her foresail backed flat to the mast, and her
maintopsail full and swelling--her straight sharp hull, and her taut
rigging, in all its details, clearly and distinctly defined against
the vast silver disc of the moon, which seemed to linger as it rose
from the flat horizon of the distant offing.  There was no need of
showing lights on board the brig, as we could see each other
distinctly, and also the burning pirate.  No flame rose from her now;
but a vast black pall of smoke enveloped all her hull.

From the centre of this, there came a sound like a deep sob, as she
filled and went down.  Then when the smoky pall arose and melted into
thin air, not a vestige could be seen of the _Black Schooner_!

"And now, my lads, away for the brig," said Captain Hartly, as we
descended from the highest part of the island to reach our boat,
passing through deep snow, among thickets of dwarf firs and great
juniper trees--over rocks covered with savin and frozen furze, where,
in the short season of summer, the wild Indian tea called
_wisha-capucoa_ grew plentifully, and where the beaver and the
musk-rat had their holes.

As we floundered down to the creek, a yell from Cuffy Snowball, who
was behind, startled us all.  A wild cariboo deer had rushed past
him.  How it came on the island puzzled us, for usually in winter
these animals seek the forests of the interior, till the sun of the
brief summer melts the snow, and enables them to browse on the scanty
herbage of _the barrens_, as the cleared patches of moorland are
named by the squatters.

"If the Governor adheres to his proclamation, this night's work adds
five hundred pounds to our profits," said Hartly, as the crew
received us with hearty cheers; the headsails were filled, and we at
once stood off the shore.

Next morning, when day broke, we could see by our glasses a band of
men assembled on the snow-covered summit of Cape St. John.

These were evidently the outwitted crew of the schooner; so, hoisting
the ensign at our gaff-peak, Paul Reeves dipped it to them thrice,
ironically bidding them farewell, as we stood away to the eastward to
make up for the time we had lost in being driven, by their attack and
pursuit, so far out of the course our captain first intended to steer.




CHAPTER X.

THE SEAL-FISHERS.

Some days after this event, we saw the dark blue of the sea flecked
at the horizon by white spots.  These increased in size as we
approached, and proved to be the floes, or detached portions of a
vast field of ice, coming down from Davis' Straits, and with them
came masses of strange sea-weed, uprooted from the bottom of the
ocean, as some writers aver, by the mighty tusk of the male narwhal
when searching for food.

We were soon amid the floes, and after passing through them, Paul
Reeves from the fore-crosstrees announced that he could discern the
field of ice, extending along the whole line of the horizon; and we
soon became sensible of its vicinity by a very perceptible increase
of the cold, which ere long became almost unbearable.  But our
seal-fishers prepared with alacrity for the great work of our little
expedition, by getting up their wooden clubs, their long
sealing-guns, and shot-pouches; their knives, sledges, and
rue-raddies or collar-ropes, by which to drag the loads of skins to
the brig, as they might have to pursue and slaughter the seals for
some miles from where she would anchor by the outer edge of the ice.
The inner, Hartly knew by his observations, partly rested on Wolf
Island, off the coast of Labrador.

On the detached floes, we saw a few seals like black dots; but on the
ice nearing the brig they always disappeared.

"There they go, souse into the water, tail up for old Greenland!"
said Hans Peterkin.  "Now, Cuffy, get your fiddle in order."

"A fiddle!" said I; "for what?"

"That you shall soon see, Jack," said Hartly.  "Paul Reeves, get
ready a gang with the ice-anchor and cable!"

As we neared the scene of our operations, we passed ten or twelve
gigantic icebergs, the bases of which were merged deep in the icy
sea.  Solemnly still, and intensely cold and pure they seem, to those
who first behold these voiceless floating mountains, so terrible in
their form and whiteness, the shades of which are blue.

By a telescope, I perceived that some of them bore masses of gravel,
frozen mud, and even enormous boulder-stones, torn from the
shore--but from what shore?

From unknown and untrodden lands beyond the Arctic Circle--shores
where, perhaps, the last of Franklin's fated crew are lying unburied
save by the eternal snow; and while I gazed on these floating
islands, so awful in their aspect and solitude and so mysterious in
their formation, there came to memory the oft-quoted words of the
Psalmist, how "they who go down to the sea in ships, and occupy their
business in great waters, see the works of the Lord, and His wonders
in the deep."

No small care, skill, and seamanship were requisite to avoid those
perilous "wonders;" but erelong we were close to the mighty field of
ice which covered all the ocean to the far horizon--a white and
desolate expanse, like a snow-covered moorland--varied only by the
incessant hummocks, as those ridges of broken ice formed by the
collision of ice-fields, are named; or by the wavy outline or sharp
spiral pinnacles of bergs which were wedged in the floating mass, and
seemed to form the crags and mountains of this white and desolate
world of ice and snow.

We considered it singular, that up to this time we had not seen a
single ship bent on the same errand, either of those which sailed
with us on St. Patrick's Day through the Narrows of St. John, or any
of the steam sealers which leave the northern ports of Scotland about
the same season of the year.

Now the quarter-boat was lowered, and Paul Reeves with her crew took
off the cable and ice-anchor, which is formed like a pick-axe; the
courses were hauled up, the fore and aft mainsail brailed, the
topsails and topgallant sails handed, and we warped close to the
ice-field, fairly coming to anchor alongside its edge, just as we
might have warped close to a quay or wharf.

This was about ten in the morning of the 25th of March, and after
receiving a glass of stiff rum-grog per man, the whole of our
seal-fishers "landed," as they phrased it, on the ice, with all their
apparatus, including Cuffy with his violin; and, after, three hearty
hurrahs for Captain Hartly, proceeded in quest of their prey, scores
of which were seen dotting the white ice-scape (if I may so term it)
within the distance of a mile from the brig.

Seals of every species live or consort in droves along those desolate
shores where the bergs and ice-fields float; and they are often found
basking in the rays of the sun.  Thus, when falling asleep they
easily become a prey, though, when reposing, the seal is cunning
enough to open its large black eyes from time to time, to see whether
all is quiet around it.  The female produces two or three at a
litter, and feeds them for a fortnight or so on the shore where she
has brought them forth, suckling them in a position nearly upright,
till the fattened cubs depart to see the Arctic world upon the
ice-floes, and are old enough to search the waves for food.

Armed with my double-barrelled rifle and a sheathed knife that
dangled at my shot-belt, and well prepared to encounter the cold by a
suit of the warmest clothing (Flushing lined with English blanket), I
set out alone in quest of adventures, feeling a strange emotion of
mingled alarm and delight on finding myself afoot upon that frozen
sea.  The intense purity and rarity of the atmosphere carried the
voices of our scattered men to a vast distance.  I could hear Cuffy
vigorously scraping a hornpipe on his violin half a mile off; and
thus won by the lyre of our sable Orpheus, the seals with their hairy
paws (usually known as flippers), their round black heads, soft
gleaming eyes, and spotted skins, from which the brine was dripping,
began to appear in herds from subtle holes in the ice--holes through
which I was frequently in terror of vanishing from mortal ken; and as
these strange amphibious animals rolled upon the field, turning up
their full round bellies, which reminded me of those of gorged swine,
I could see their bodies steaming in the frosty sunshine, for being
warm-blooded they emit at times a vapour.

Seated on a sledge, under the lee of a hummock, Cuffy played
vigorously; but how his black fingers could handle his instrument in
such an atmosphere was beyond my comprehension, for though the glare
of the noonday sun, as he shone through a cloudless sky, was almost
blinding, the degree of cold was indescribable.  Ere long Snowball
had a numerous auditory, for music allures and fascinates these
animals, as it does many others; we are told how

  "Rude Heiskar's seal through surges dark,
  Will long pursue the minstrel's bark;"

but the moment our treacherous musician replaced his violin in its
canvas bag, an appalling scene of butchery began.

The batmen rushed about as if a frenzy had seized them, striking the
seals on their round bullet-like heads, knocking them over, stunned
and motionless.  Others followed, with long sharp knives, by _five_
slashes of which the expert hunter will denude the largest cub of his
smooth glossy skin, to which the thick white fat adheres, and after
being thus denuded, on more than one occasion I have seen the
miserable animal, bared to its slender ribs, when stung, as it were,
by the intense frost reaching its vitals, revive for a minute, and
make efforts to crawl along the ice, or drop into the sea!

The whole ice-field, which a moment before had been so white in its
spotless and untrodden purity, now, within the radius of a mile,
presented the aspect of a battle-field, strewn with gashed carcases
and heaps of bloody skins that were steaming in the sunshine.  Cuffy
seemed in his element--in his glory!  Flourishing his long knife, he
uttered yells as if every seal he stripped had been the Chenoo wife
who sold him into slavery, or the Yankee taskmaster whose whip had
skinned _him_ more than once.

This wholesale butchery sickened me.

The attachment of the mother-seal to her offspring is very great; and
here I saw a great hooded one carrying off a little wounded cub in
her mouth toward the edge of the ice-field, where they dropped into
the sea, escaping Cuffy, who pursued them.  There are times when the
mother turns fiercely with tusks and claws upon the destroyers of her
young, and then the long gun with its charge of slugs is brought into
action; for on the _old_ seals (Buffon avers that some of them live
for more than a hundred years) the sturdiest batman's arm would swing
the knotted club in vain.  The membrane of the hooded seal can be
drawn over the nose, and inflated, so as to protect the head like a
helmet of gutta-percha.

Leaving our people engaged in the work of slaughter, halloing,
shouting, and encouraging each other, as they threw their bloody and
greasy spoil upon little sledges, to be dragged by ropes alongside
the brig, I proceeded over the hummocks in search of--I scarcely knew
what.

Our men seldom fired their guns, as shot destroys the skin, which,
after the cargo is brought into port, has the fat or blubber
carefully removed and placed in the great wooden tanks or vats of the
oil-merchant; while the pelts are cleaned, spread, and, after having
layers of coarse salt placed between them, are packed in bales for
transport to other countries.




CHAPTER XI.

COMBAT WITH A SEA-HORSE.

We continued to fish, or rather to hunt, the seals here with
considerable success, warping the brig from day to day along the
outer edge of the ice, between which and her side we placed strong
and soft fenders; and the satisfaction of Hartly and his crew
increased in proportion as the piles of pelt and blubber replaced in
the hold the stone ballast which we had brought from the island of
Newfoundland.

I had shot a few refractory seals, but one evening, when the
atmosphere was singularly clear, I rambled far along the ice-field,
floundering and scrambling among the hummocks, in the hope of finding
worthier game.  I was accompanied by one of the crew, a smart and
intelligent lad from North Shields, named Ridly, who was armed only
with an ice-gaff.

One who has been among the countless waves and ridges of a frozen sea
can alone have an idea of the toil of travelling, even for a mile, on
an ice-field.

But on this vast floating waste we failed to discern anything worth
powder and shot, and so, worn with our fruitless and desultory hunt,
after wandering about for an hour or two, we turned our steps towards
the brig, which still lay at anchor by the edge of the field, about
three miles off, and the masts and yards of which formed the chief
and sole feature in the flat and dreary prospect.

The sun had set, but there was a dusky red flush in the sky which
marked the place of his declension; and now the ice began to assume
the cold green tints of salt water when frozen, as the shadows of
night stole over the sky from the eastward like a crape mantle, and
one by one the stars came out in the deep blue dome above us.

Sliding, toiling, and scrambling on, we were endeavouring to reach
the brig, when suddenly Ridly and I uttered a mutual exclamation of
alarm, paused, and shrunk back.

In our front we heard an astounding roar, as of an earthquake, and
lo! between us and the brig--between us and our friends, our home
upon the waters--there yawned a mighty fissure of zigzag form, that
ran east and west, and was about fifteen or twenty feet wide, as the
ice-field split under the influence of some atmospheric change!

We stood and gazed blankly into each other's faces on beholding this
terrible barrier to our progression, and fearing that the ice might
yawn as suddenly under our feet.

"Separated from all succour from the ship--alone upon the ice, and
with night coming on, what will become of us?" said I, thinking aloud.

"God only knows, sir," responded my companion; "but we must endeavour
to reach the brig somehow."

"There goes a lantern up to her mainmast-head," said I, as a light
was hoisted swiftly by the ensign halliards.

"The captain is showing a signal to indicate her whereabouts.  He has
heard the noise of the splitting ice."

"If a fog should come on!" said I.

"Don't think of it, sir," said my companion, hastily; "the night is
as clear as if day were overhead.  So let us find the end of this
crack; it cannot be very far off."

We proceeded westward for more than a mile, being compelled to make
many detours to avoid falling into the water among the ragged floes
or pieces of ice that lay along the margin of this zigzag fissure;
but, as it extended far away beyond the range of our vision, and
seemed to widen, we were compelled after long consideration, and
suffering great anxiety, to retrace our steps and proceed eastward,
in the hope of gaining the _east end_ of it, or at least of
discovering a place so narrow that we might leap across without the
danger of immersion, which, in such a season and at such an hour,
would have been fatal, as our entire clothing would in an instant
have become a casing of ice.

To favour our efforts the moon now rose, ascending slowly from the
edge of the vast plain of ice, and notwithstanding the peril of our
situation, her beauty filled me with a glow of pleasure and hope.

Far over that waste--so wide, so desolate, and mysterious--fell her
flood of silver light, so bright in its intensity, and redoubled by
reflection from the snow.  It glittered on every rounded hummock and
splintered berg, and formed strange fantastic figures in their cold
green shadows, elsewhere making prisms that seemed like fairy
crystals, or gemwork of rubies, emeralds, and silver.  Clouds of
fleecy whiteness came up with her from the sea, and as she _waded_
among them, I recalled the words of Sir Walter Scott:--

"There is something peculiarly pleasing to the imagination in
contemplating the Queen of Night when she is wading, as the
expression is, among the vapours which she has not the power to
dispel, and which on their side are unable entirely to quench her
lustre.  It is the striking image of patient virtue calmly pursuing
her path through good report and bad report, having that excellence
in herself which ought to command all admiration; but bedimmed in the
eyes of the world by suffering, by misfortune, and by calumny."

While I felt something of the poetry of our situation and the beauty
of the night, my more practical and prosaic companion was sensible
only of the danger we ran, and after a minute reconnaissance, assured
me, with an exclamation of joy, that the split in the ice was
narrowing.

We were then four miles from the brig, the crew of which had sent
more lanterns aloft, and ever and anon burned a brilliant red or blue
light, for Cuffy Snowball was a great pyrotechnist.

"What is that?" said I, as a strange sound reached us.

"I cannot tell," replied my comrade, as he toiled on, supporting
himself with his ice-gaff; "I never heard it before, and don't like
it at all, sir.  I wish we were on board," he added, shuddering alike
with cold and superstitious fear, as the sound came again and again
from among the hummocks, and it was as weird and mournful to the ear
as their aspect was to the eye.

It was a strange _mooing_, and gradually swelled into a bellowing as
we proceeded; thus it evidently came from the throat of a large
animal--but what species of animal could it be in such a place?

We were not left long in doubt, for on the centre of a narrow isthmus
of ice, _over which lay our way to the ship_, as the fissure beyond
it opened wider than elsewhere, sat a huge, dark monster of the deep,
in which, on approaching it, I recognised (from pictures I had seen)
a sea-horse, or walrus, which the reader must remember is _not_ a
seal, but a ferocious animal that can defend itself and frequently
destroys its assailants, and this one manifested not the slightest
intention of making way for us.

He was fearfully pre-Adamite, or antediluvian, in his proportions,
being fully twenty feet in length, and having a pair of tusks thirty
inches long protruding from the mass of quill-like bristles which
covered (like a thick moustache and whiskers) his upper lips and
cheeks.  Grimly and ferociously he regarded us with his deep-set
eyes, which glittered in the moonlight amid the square mass of his
elephantine visage, and on beholding us, his hollow mooing turned
into a species of grunting bark.

Finding that he obstinately barred our way, and, moreover, seemed
inclined to attack us, I levelled my rifle full at his grizzly front
and fired, while Ridly rashly and fatally charged him in the smoke
with his ice-gaff, which was armed with a sharp pike.

My ball had pierced his great sloping shoulder, pricking him as a pin
might have done, and serving only to incense him, for his bark
changed to a mighty roar, and when the smoke cleared away, I saw poor
Ridly, who had fallen, lying under one of his gigantic fore-flippers.
The foam of rage was frothing on the bristles of the sea-horse, and
with his two enormous tusks, which stood upward through them like two
crooked sabre-blades, he was alternately rending the limbs and body
of his assailant and then great fragments of ice, which he dashed
into the water on each side of him.

Ridly had only power to utter a faint cry, when he expired.

Appalled by this sudden and terrible catastrophe, I reloaded my
rifle, and full of mingled rage and fear--a combination which made me
no longer feel the intensity of the cold--I fired again and again at
the horrid front of the walrus; but every shot seemed only to
redouble his wrath, and he continued to rend to pieces the clothes
and body of Ridly, till in less than five minutes the ice around him
was covered by the blood of his victim and that which gushed from his
own wounds.  Ridly's left leg he wrenched completely off, and cast
into the sea.

Rolling about in his wrath, and in his lubberly efforts to reach me,
he at last fell into the water; I then rushed across the narrow
isthmus where my poor companion lay.  As I did so, the walrus made
many ineffectual efforts to reach me, grasping the ice with his
forepaws, or dashing his vast shoulders madly against it, while he
plunged and bellowed and covered all the water in the chasm around
him with mingled blood and foam, and, in his impotent fury, tore
great blocks off the ice by the tusks of his lower jaw.

I fired ten shots into his body, point blank, without his strength or
wrath appearing to diminish in the least.

On perceiving this, a species of superstitious dread came over me,
and turning away, I hastened towards the brig, which, as I have
stated, lay about four miles distant, leaving my walrus to flounder,
bellow, and drown in the moonlight.

Anxiety to reach the vessel, lest I might be overcome by fatigue, or
that fatal drowsiness caused at times by intense cold, made me strain
every energy; and thus in a much shorter time than could have deemed
possible, considering the alternately rough or slippery and laborious
nature of the ice-field to be traversed, I found myself among the
carcasses of our slaughtered seals, and within hail of the _Leda_.

Furnished with ice-gaffs, a bottle of rum, a sledge, and plenty of
blankets, so as to be prepared for any emergency, Captain Hartly,
with Hans Peterkin and ten of the crew, met me, just as I was sinking
with fatigue, half sleepy and half delirious with cold.  Thus a
considerable time elapsed ere I could relate the story of my
adventure and our shipmate's death.

They had heard the roar of the splitting ice, and knew why we were
wandering so long and so deviously among the hummocks, but the sound
of firing puzzled them extremely; and thus, while Paul Reeves with a
gang was hoisting out the jolly-boat upon a sledge, to have it
launched in the chasm for our conveyance across, Hartly had come on
in advance, and he met me just in time, for in ten minutes more I
must have perished of fatigue and cold!

On returning next morning to collect poor Ridly's remains and commit
them to the deep, we found his great destroyer dead, but floating by
the margin of the ice, to which he was literally anchored, or hooked,
by his two longest tusks.

By this, and the affair with the _Black Schooner_, we had lost two of
our crew.




CHAPTER XII.

ON AN ICEBERG.

Soon after this, in a dark and howling night, we were blown from our
moorings, and forced to run before the wind, with our topmasts
struck, and only our jib and a close-reefed foresail set, as we were
in the dangerous vicinity of innumerable broken floes, or masses
detached from the field-ice: the decks were so slippery that one
could scarcely keep afoot; and amid the arrowy sleet and snow that
rendered all so murky and obscure around us, and which stung the face
like showers of sharp needles, we were hurried on, expecting every
moment a collision which would stave our bows or snap the masts by
the board.

We were repeatedly frost-bitten in the ears, nose, or hands; but snow
scraped up in the scuppers and promptly applied, soon brought a hot
glow in the benumbed member, and proved our best, indeed our only
remedy.

All who could cultivate beards had permitted them to grow in Crimean
luxuriance, as any attempt at soapsudding in those latitudes produced
a coating of ice in a moment.

Surging on through blinding drift and pitchy darkness, amid the
howling of the fierce tempest, the _Leda_ went bravely!  Her spars
and cordage straining and groaning, her timbers creaking, while wave
after wave broke over her decks and hardy crew, each leaving its
legacy of ice upon everything.  From time to time we were conscious
of a rude shock, or a furious scraping sound, as she grazed upon the
passing floes; and now, to add to the gloomy horrors of that
tempestuous night, Paul Reeves, who was keeping an anxious look-out
forward, shouted back through his trumpet--

"Icebergs ahead!  Hard to port, or we are foul of one!"

"Hard to port," echoed the two men at the wheel; sharply it revolved,
and in a moment we swept under the frowning cliff of a stupendous
iceberg, the cold white mass of which was discernible through the
gloom, as the arm of the mainyard grazed it!

We passed on and it vanished in the darkness astern.

"Thank Heaven!"

"Thank God!"

"A narrow escape!"

Such were the muttered exclamations of our half-frozen crew; but at
that instant an icy sea broke over us, and two men were swept into a
watery grave, without the possibility of our rendering them the least
assistance.

A minute had scarcely elapsed before we were sensible of a fierce
concussion; the masts reeled and the icicles fell in a shower as they
were shaken from our stiffened top-hamper.  Then the brig's head was
tilted up and her stern correspondingly depressed; but still impelled
by the fury of the wind, she continued to advance upwards and _out of
the water_, as if she was being steamed up a landing-slip, or into a
dry dock.

"We are ashore--beached!" said some one, beholding this phenomenon.

"We are foul of an iceberg," exclaimed Hartly, while the brig
continued slowly to ascend till little more than the sternpost and
counter were in the water; then she heeled over to port and remained
there, wedged, with her jib-boom broken off at the cap, and dangling
in the jib-guys, her canvas bellying out so furiously that we thought
the masts would be carried away before the benumbed fingers of the
seamen could get it handed.

In a trice the _Leda_ was under bare poles, while around us the
tempestuous wind was bellowing, the surf was roaring, and vast blocks
of ice, many tons in weight, were crashing against each other, adding
to the dread horrors of this bewildering catastrophe!

It is impossible to depict the dismay of all on board, when finding
the vessel in this situation--high and dry upon a berg; for,
influenced by the storm, by the wind, or the slight additional weight
of the brig and her cargo, we felt the monstrous mass on which we
were wedged, _oscillating_ and gradually heeling forward ahead; thus
the stern of the _Leda_ was raised until her hull remained in the air
horizontally, just as she usually sat in the water.

In blank horror we endured the gloomy hours of that northern night,
amid the drift, the sleet, and a darkness so dense that we could in
no way discover our real position, or how to extricate ourselves from
it.

One fact, we were alarmingly alive to.  It was this:--The sea no
longer dashed against the hull of our vessel, which lay on her side,
well careened over to port; and though we could _hear_ the roaring of
the waves, amid the oppressive gloom that enveloped us, we could no
longer _see_ them.

As day broke the tempest gradually lulled, and the sleet, the snow,
and wind passed away together.  Then the increasing light enabled us
to see the perils of our situation.

We were nearly eighty feet above the ocean, on the flat, table-like
summit of a mighty iceberg; which, though it had presented a sloping
face _up_ which we had run last night before the furious wind and
sea, had now changed its position by heeling over, as icebergs always
do, from time to time, when their base in the ocean becomes
honeycombed and decayed.*


* Her Majesty's steam ship _Intrepid_, when commanded by Captain
Cator, was similarly carried bodily up the face of a berg, and left
high and dry in air, without injury.


The sky was clear now to the horizon; the icefield on which we had
pursued our hunting so successfully was no longer visible; but about
half a mile distant lay the island of floating ice we had escaped
last night; and around for miles, far as the eye could reach, the
sea, still perturbed by the past storm, was flecked by white floes,
the ruins probably of a third berg, which had been shattered by the
waves or by being dashed against others.

Both these icebergs were several miles in circumference.  The summit
of ours was flat as a bowling-green; but that portion on which the
brig rested was soft, pulpy, and rotten by its long immersion in the
sea.

The other had many spiral pinnacles, some of them being several
hundred feet in height; and, save for the peril in which we were
situated, I could have admired the sublimity of that cold and silent
mass--so dazzlingly white when the beams of the rising sun fell on
it, so indigo-blue in its shadows--for it resembled a fairy isle,
which had steep hills, deep valleys, and chasms all fashioned of
alabaster; while around its base was a thick fringe of frozen foam of
snowy brilliance.

While we were gazing upon it that morning, one of its loftiest
pinnacles, with a mighty crash, fell thundering into the sea.

The _Leda_ was soon frozen into the bed she had ploughed by her keel
in the ice; and _how_ to get her launched again, _how_ to descend
from our perilous eminence, were the questions we asked of each
other, and which no one could answer.

The summit of the berg was nearly a mile in circumference, and, as I
have said, was more than eighty feet from the water.  This we
ascertained as a fact, though there was no small peril in venturing
from the ship upon its surface, which was so glassy and smooth that
in some places the lightest among us would have slipped off, as if
shot by a catapulta, into the sea below.

Council and deliberation availed us nothing.  Even Hartly, Reeves,
and Hans, with all their united skill, foresight, and seamanship,
found their invention fail in suggesting any means of release.

"There is nothing for it but to wait the event," said Hartly, after a
long and solemn council.

"But suppose that we waited a month, captain," asked Reeves,
gloomily, "where would our provisions be?--where our fresh water?"

"We may be driven south into warmer latitudes where the bergs melt
rapidly in the sunshine."

"But we may be drifted north into latitudes where the bergs freeze
harder, and where ice may close around us for ever," said Hans
Peterkin.

"Or," said one of the seamen, who all crowded anxiously to this
conference, which we held around the capstan-head, "the berg may
_capsize_, and what will become of us then?"

"Hold hard, my lads," exclaimed Hartly, "hold hard, and be stout of
heart and cheery.  Remember that however miserable we may deem
ourselves, there is one Blessed Eye upon us--the eye of a kind, good
God," he added, uncovering his head reverently to the bitter frost,
"One who will never forget the poor sailor, if he is true to himself.
Think of the 'sweet little cherub that sits up aloft,' as the song
says, and rail not at fate, for fate guides man neither at home nor
abroad, at sea or on shore.  Put all your trust aloft, my boys, and
hold on by poor Jack's best bower anchor!"

This harangue was exactly suited to his hearers.  We tried to feel
hopeful and trusting, and to have patience.  But we longed very much,
nevertheless, to be free of the iceberg, and to have the blue sea
dashing alongside once more.




CHAPTER XIII.

ON THE ICEBERG--THE MASSACRE AT HIERRO.

In this appalling situation we remained for ten days before any
alteration in the position either of the brig or of the two icebergs
was perceptible.

We missed our lost companions sorely, for the death of a shipmate in
his hammock, or by falling overboard, makes a great impression on the
secluded survivors at sea.  His watery grave is in itself a fearful
mystery, the depth of which we cannot realize or fathom.  No stone or
mound marks the place where he lies; he is hurled, as it were, soul
and body into eternity, and blotted out of existence like the bubbles
that break round the place where he sinks.

During these ten days Hartly was indefatigable in his efforts to keep
his crew employed, and their spirits from depression.  Lest
provisions might become scarce, and our water fall short, he had
portions of the seals, the hideous paws especially, cleaned,
prepared, and pickled, while the snow and ice which adhered to the
rigging was boiled down, and added to our supply of fresh water.  To
save our fuel, the fire for these purposes was fed with the fat of
the seals, and the blubber (so long as it lasted) of the gigantic
walrus I had slain.

The seal "flippers," hairy and bloody, like the claws of a baboon
hewn off at the wrist, made a very cannibal-like repast when
fricasseed.  Remembering how I had shuddered on seeing such repulsive
carrion sold at a penny per bunch in the streets of St. John, I could
scarcely digest such a meal; though Cuffy Snowball, when he made them
into sea-pies, rolled his eyes and grinned from ear to ear while
declaring his handiwork "de berry best dish in de 'varsal creation!"

Our rigging was carefully inspected and prepared for any emergency,
as if we expected to make sail on the brig at a moment's notice; but
_how_ was she ever to reach her natural element again?

On this subject, though we were wearied of it, conjecture became
utterly _lost_!

Still, like a brave fellow, Hartly left nothing unsaid or undone to
keep up our hopes, though his own sank at times.  Save the watch on
deck, he nightly assembled all hands in the cabin for companionship
and also for warmth.  There he sang songs, (while Cuffy accompanied
him on the violin,) and told stories, or read aloud, and spoke again
and again to the poor crest-fallen seal-fishers (who thought only of
their wives and families) of their profits on the voyage, and the
reward they would receive from the Governor of Newfoundland for
destroying the obnoxious _Black Schooner_; and of that affair he drew
up a statement, to be attested by all on board.

His example was invaluable, for he had somehow acquired the greatest
influence over all his crew.  "It is pleasing to see a family, a
farm, or establishment of any kind (says Lorimer, in his "Letters to
a Young Merchant-Mariner") when, from long servitude, the assistants
and domestics are considered as humble friends or distant relations;
and independently of the kind feelings thereby occasioned and
cherished, all seems to prosper with them.  Such a state of things is
by no means unfrequent in this happy country, Britain; and I see no
good reason why the same attachment to the master and to each other,
should not be more frequent on shipboard; indeed, considering the
dangers they are continually sharing, one is almost surprised that
they can _separate_ so readily.  How to obtain a kind but powerful
influence over, and a devoted attachment _from_, a crew, is a secret
worth our deep consideration;" and Robert Hartly eminently possessed
this secret, which, in the desperation of our circumstances, proved a
priceless gift to him and to us.

Every night one story or yarn produced others, and so the time passed
on, and peril was half forgotten.

Most of these narratives were gloomy enough, however.  They told of
ships whose crews were all poisoned save one man, by partaking of a
mysterious fish, or whose crews turned pirates, and slaughtered all
who opposed them; or of men who were marooned on lonely isles, and
left to perish miserably.

Hans Peterkin, an Orkneyman, could tell us of queer shadowy craft,
manned by spectres, demons, and evil spirits, who displayed lights to
lure vessels ashore on Cape Wrath and the rocks of Ultima Thule, like
the wreckers of Cornwall and Brittany.

Then Paul Reeves matched them by a curious tale of an enchanted
island in the Indian Seas, on which the lights of churches and houses
could be seen at night, and where the tolling of bells and the song
of vespers could be heard, with many other sounds; but lo! as the
ship approached, the isle would seem to recede till it sank into the
sea and reappeared _astern_!

Then Tom Hammer, the carpenter, gave us a yarn of an ice-cliff in
Hudson's Bay that long overhung a whaler he was once serving in.  One
day the cliff was changed in form, for a mighty piece had fallen from
it into the sea; and wonderful to relate, there was seen a man's
figure among the ice--a man imbedded up there a hundred feet above
the sea.  Telescopes were at once in requisition, and they made out
that he was frozen--dead--hard and fast; but by his dress--a red
doublet, trunk-hose, and a long black beard--they supposed he was
some ancient mariner; and some there were on board who vowed he was
no other than the famous voyager Hendrick Hudson, who discovered the
bay, and was marooned by his mutinous crew in 1610.

But one night, when we were all nestling close together, muffled in
our pea-jackets, and smoking, to promote warmth, a narration of
Hartly's far exceeded all that preceded it in interest, being a
veritable occurrence, and by its barbarity singular.

"My grandfather," said he, "as thoroughbred an old salt as ever faced
a stiff topsail breeze, was skipper of the _Dublin_, a smart little
ship of three hundred and fifty tons, pierced for twelve
six-pounders, being a letter of marque that fought her own way when
the way upon the high seas was somewhat more perilous than it is now.

"About the autumn of the year 1784--now a long time ago, my lads--she
was chartered as an emigrant ship for Canada, and sailed from the
Mersey with one hundred and eighty poor folks, half of whom were
women and children, going to seek their bread in another laud; and a
troublesome voyage the old gentleman had with them, for foul weather
came on; many of his spars were knocked away, and then a heavy
sickness broke out among the emigrants.  Their little ones died daily
and were hove overboard, till those whose children survived became
wild with fear and apprehension that theirs would follow next; and,
to make matters worse, there was no doctor on board; for this was in
1784, as I told you, and the lives of the poor were not worth much to
any one, save themselves, in those old times.

"Well, my grandfather was a soft-hearted old fellow, and his heart
bled for the poor people.  His sick bay was crammed, and the
sailmaker's needle was never idle, but made one little shroud after
another till the man's heart sickened of the dreary task.  So, when
foul weather mastered the _Dublin_, and blew her out of her course,
the old gentleman put his helm a-lee and bore up for the Canaries,
which were once called the Fortunate Isles, and came in sight of
Hierro, the most westerly of these islands, on the 6th December,
1784.  He had his ensign flying; but knowing well what slippery
devils the Spaniards are, and that the _Dublin_ had rather a
man-o'-war cut in her spars and bends, he hoisted a _white_ flag at
his foremast head, and so came peacefully to anchor about sunrise.

"The morning was beautiful; the shore was desolate, but fertile and
green.  The poor emigrants were mad with joy at the sight of land,
and in an hour or two he set them all ashore, about a hundred in
number, on the smooth sandy beach.  Many of them were women with
infants in their arms or at their skirts--men supporting their young
wives or old parents; and new life and health seemed returning to
them as they rambled on the sunny shore, or drank of the pure springs
that gushed from the rocks, and as they pulled the green leaves and
aromatic flowers, or the broad plantain leaves which always flourish
best near the sea.

"Meanwhile, my grandfather had triced up his portlids, and a gang
with buckets and swabs were busy cleaning, airing, and fumigating
every place fore and aft, ere the live cargo were shipped again at
night, when an unforeseen catastrophe took place----"

"A catastrophe!" said I; "the ship was blown out to sea?"

"Not at all," said Hartly, refilling his pipe.

"What then?"

"His poor people were all dead ere nightfall."

"Murdered?"

"Aye, in cold blood, as you shall hear.  They were all enjoying
themselves--the children were playing, gambolling and tumbling over
each other in heaps on the warm sands; the women were busy washing,
dressing and arranging each other's hair; the men smoking their
pipes, and talking, perhaps regretfully, of that jolly old England
they had left for ever and, it might be hopefully, of the new shores
they were bound for, when a long line of bright bayonets that
glittered ominously in the sunshine, appeared suddenly upon the steep
rocks which completely enclosed the sandy cove, and three companies
of lubberly Spanish militia commanded by Don Juan Briez de Calderon,
encircled them on all sides, save towards the sea, where the _Dublin_
lay at anchor about three-quarters of a mile off.  The reason of this
military display I shall explain.

"False rumours of a plague said to be raging in Europe had reached
these isles, and filled the selfish and superstitious Spanish
colonists with such alarm, that Señor the Governor, fearing, or
pretending to fear, the strangers might bring it among them,
instantly convened la Mesa del Consejo--his council-board, as they
call it in their lingo--and quietly proposed to cut off all these
voyagers root and branch!

"Some of the councillors vigorously opposed a course so revolting,
and pled the cause of the poor Inglesos, the rights of religion and
humanity, and called upon Don Juan to remember the honour of the king
he represented, and that he was the lineal descendant of that
adventurous Don Diego de Hierro, of Old Castile, who had captured the
island in the days of Ferdinand the Catholic, King of Arragon,
bestowing in memory thereof his own illustrious name upon it, and so
forth.

"Señor Don Juan did not reply, but knit his fierce black brows,
lighted a cigar, and puffed away with true Castilian imperturbability.

"'Señor el Gobernador,' urged a venerable Spanish friar, 'these poor
people who have landed on our shores, after a long voyage apparently,
we know not from whence, have been forced hither, as our mariners
aver, by those recent storms which have swept over the Canary
Isles----'

"'What is all this to me?' growled Don Juan.

"'Simply, Señor, that it will be alike cruel and unjust to inflict
the penalty of death upon them all for this.'

"'Padre, they have transgressed the laws of Hierro,' thundered the
Governor.

"'Laws temporarily made by _yourself_--laws with which they can in no
way be acquainted.  If they have sickness among them, let us send
tents and supplies; but guard the avenues to the ground we may allot
them, until they are all re-embarked with their wives and little
ones.  I will myself go among them,' continued the old friar, warming
in his merciful advocacy, 'and say that you will graciously afford
them succour, until the orders of the most illustrious señor, our
Governor-General at Teneriffe, can be obtained.'

"'_Silencio!_' thundered Don Juan, and rudely threw the remains of
his cigar in the old man's face; 'order out our troops--we shall
march instantly and exterminate these dangerous vermin!'

"The drums were beat, and the militia, three hundred strong, with the
valiant Don Juan at their head, marched to where the poor visitors,
ignorant of the horrors that were impending, were still amusing
themselves upon the beach.  Some were gathering the brilliant shells,
flowers, and leaves; others were filling little kegs and jars with
the pure spring water that poured over the ledges of rock.  The women
were sitting in groups, with their children gambolling about them;
others were gazing sadly on the evening sea, as if calculating the
number of miles that lay between them and their old home; or the
miles they had yet to traverse ere they found a new one amid the
forests of the western world.

"To gather them all together, the villanous Briez de Calderon
procured an empty sugar puncheon, and tossed it over the summit of
the cliffs on which his men were posted.  From thence, with a loud
noise, it rolled to the beach below.  Curiosity made all the
loiterers rush towards it, as many of them thought it contained food,
clothes, or other necessaries for them.  The men gave a hurrah, and
waved their hats in hearty English jollity to the crafty Spaniards,
and gathered with the women and children around the puncheon.

"'Fire!' cried Don Juan.

"Savage as they were, the Spaniards paused a moment; but Don Juan was
the first to fire a musket, and observing that his men were still
reluctant, he knocked one down with the butt-end, and threatened the
rest with death if they disobeyed him.

"'Fire!' he shouted again, and then on the unsuspecting crowd there
was poured the concentrated volley of these three hundred miscreants;
thus, in ten minutes the dreadful massacre was complete.  On the
beach all were lying dead and drenched in blood--husband and wife,
parent and child--all save one woman, who, with her infant, concealed
herself in the rocks, and her husband, who, with a ball lodged in his
arm, sprang into the sea and endeavoured to swim to the ship.

"Failing in this, faint with loss of blood, weary and despairing, he
turned about and sought the shore, where he was hewn to pieces by
sabres as he clung to a seaweedy rock.  On beholding this dreadful
sight, his poor wife, who was concealed in a cleft of the cliffs not
far off, uttered a shriek of dismay, which drew the murderers, now
flushed with blood, towards her.

"She was soon dragged out, and with his own dagger Don Juan stabbed
her to the heart, and then killed the child, which he tossed into the
sea beside its father!

"Paralysed by rage and astonishment, my grandfather and his crew saw
all this from the deck of the _Dublin_.  They could see the red
musketry flashing from the rocks, filling all the little cove with
slaughtered corpses and smoke.  They could hear the shrieks that were
borne over the water on the evening wind; and after a time, when all
was still, they could see the beach strewn with dead bodies, and in
possession of the Spaniards, who were stripping them, and who brought
up field-pieces to fire on the _Dublin_.

"He hoisted his anchor and bore away; but on coming abreast of the
capital with British colours flying _above_ the Spanish ensign
_reversed_, he pitched a few shot into it from his carronades, sunk
three craft at their anchors, with all their crews on board, and then
bore away for England, and there was an end of it.  We were at peace
with Spain; but I never heard that satisfaction was given, or the
atrocity revenged.  That is _my_ yarn, lads."*


* The papers of the time fully corroborate Hartly's story.  "The news
of this barbarity," says the Annual Register for 1785, "has been
received at Teneriffe by all ranks of people with the deepest concern
and regret, and by none more than the Governor-General, who deplores
it extremely.  He could not at first give credit to it; but was at
last convinced of the fatal truth, by letters from the wretch Briez
de Calderon himself.  Exasperated to the highest pitch, he has given
a commission to an officer of rank to go over to Hierro to take
cognizance of this tragical affair,"--of which we hear no more.




CHAPTER XIV.

ESCAPE FROM THE ICEBEBG.

Though our apprehensions were great, our chief sufferings were from
cold in that lofty and listless situation; yet our dread of impending
dangers was so keen, our hope of a change so great, that even the
oldest seamen on board never turned into their berths or bunks at
night but with their clothes on, "to be ready," as they said, "to
turn up with all standing at a moment's notice."

Hartly, who was rather scientific and was wont to expatiate upon the
theory of storms, and so forth, endeavoured to account for the
intensity of the frost, which I deemed a somewhat unnecessary
illustration to us who were on the summit of an iceberg.

"The thermometer--" he would begin.

"Ugh! don't speak of the thermometer, Bob," said I, one day, when
trembling in every fibre, as we endeavoured to tread to and fro on
the sloping deck.  "It is so cold now, that the atmosphere can never
be colder!"

"So you think; but wait until--"

"When?"

"--we are a few degrees further north, perhaps in the centre of an
ice-field, and then you will know what cold is!  But the _degree_ of
it depends upon the power of the wind, after passing over
snow-covered wastes, rather than the actual state of the
mercury;--that was all I was about to remark."

I was too miserable to thank him for the information, but said:

"I do not think our vicinity to that other atrocious iceberg adds to
the pleasantness of our temperature."

"Of course not--but see," he added, raising his voice, "by Heaven, it
is oscillating!"

Just as he spoke, the cold, glistening, and splintered peaks of the
mighty berg seemed to topple over and sink into the sea, as it
_reversed_ with a stunning roar--its former base coming upward, and
imparting an entirely new form to it.

All on board stood gazing at this reversal, which is a common
occurrence with icebergs; but it filled us with a horror of what
_our_ fate would be should a similar capsize occur with us, for now
the berg on which we were wedged heaved and surged in the foaming
eddy made by the other.

"Icebergs have usually nine times as much of them below water as
appears above it," said I.

"Yes, and at that ratio, if this one of ours reversed, we should find
ourselves in a moment somewhere about six hundred and forty feet
below the surface of the sea," replied Hartly, with a grim smile.

"Ay," added Paul Reeves, "and our poor little _Leda_ would be
adhering, keel upmost and trucks down, like a barnacle at the bottom
of this vast floating island."

On the tenth day of our imprisonment, as I have elsewhere said, after
rain had been falling all night in such torrents that we had battened
all the hatches fore and aft, on day breaking, we found a very
perceptible alteration in the position of the brig.  From careening
over to port, she had gradually righted, and now rested fairly on her
keel, with her masts upright.  The summit of the berg had again
become soft and pulpy on its surface, and the _Leda_ seemed to sink
lower by her own weight every minute, while the ice on each side
sloped upward, leaving her in a kind of valley; and so rapidly did
this state of matters go on, that in four hours the sides were nearly
eight feet above our deck, and suggested a new terror, that they
might collapse--close over, and freeze us in more hopelessly than
ever.

As the rain abated, the berg began palpably to oscillate, that
portion of it which lay under the brig's head, however, became
depressed, and then the rainwater and _sludge_ that had collected in
the valley where we lay, poured over its icy brow like a cataract,
and we heard it thundering, as it fell into the sea below.

"She moves--the brig moves! she forges ahead!" exclaimed Hartly, in
an excited voice, as the berg careened over more and more, and we all
stood pale, breathless, speechless, and rooted to the deck, expecting
a capsize that would bury her masts downward in the sea.

This change of position continued to progress, but very slowly.

There were about sixteen feet of ice from the cutwater of the _Leda_
to the edge of the berg, and about forty from her stern-post to the
edge in the other direction.

"If this depression forward continues slowly," said Hartly, "we shall
be floating in the blue in two hours, my lads; clear away two
hawsers, an ice-anchor, and kedge.  Stand by with the capstan-bars,
cast loose the jib and foretopsail, to lift her head a bit, if the
wind serves when she slips off, and then stand by the braces to sheet
home!"

These orders recalled us to life, for they filled us with hope, and
inspired us with activity.

Led by Hartly, Hans Peterkin and two other adventurous fellows named
Abbot clambered along the soft ice astern, and fixed there a kedge
with our strongest hawser, which was to be eased gently off the
capstan, as the brig continued to forge downward and a-head, for her
motion was a double one.  It was perilous work for these four brave
men, as the rain had rendered the face of the berg slippery as wetted
glass; but Hartly was full of inherent courage, and in the excitement
of the moment forgot all his superstition about his ring, the gift of
the reputed witch Jensdochter.

He was scarcely on board again, ere the depression continued so
rapidly that the entire hull of the brig lay at an angle of
forty-five degrees from the line of the water below--her bows being
yet twenty feet distant from it.

This was a momentous crisis for us all!

A deathlike stillness was every where on board; on our pale lips, as
we grasped the shrouds or belaying pins to preserve our footing; on
the mighty isle of ice, from the shelving summit of which we were
about to be precipitated; and from the lonely sea below, there came
no sound; at least, we heard only its wavelets rippling against the
cold, glistening, and glacial sides of our prison.

Slowly the brig moved, as if to protract that time of agonizing
suspense.  Every man compressed his lips and stifled his breathing.
We seemed to speak our thoughts in silent and expressive glances, for
all had the certainty now that in _three_ minutes more, we should be
floating on the free waters of the ocean, or foundered and sunk,
headforemost, far beneath them.

Foot by foot she forged ahead, as the berg continued to heel over,
and ere long our bowsprit projected in the air over the edge, and
then the bows, headboards, and cutwater!  The angle at which the
_Leda_ lay was fearful; we could no longer work the capstan; I
clasped it with my arms, and shut my eyes.  Then a heavy sob seemed
to escape from me, as Reeves, by one slash with a sharp axe on the
taffrail, parted the stern warp, which recoiled with a crack like a
coach-whip.  Then followed a rushing sound--a mighty plunge, and the
waves dashed in foam on each side of us, as the _Leda_ shot off the
berg, and went souse, bows foremost into the sea; but rising up
again, and shaking all the spray off her, as a duck would have done.

There was a deep silence after the shock and escape of this launch,
and all seemed to await the signal to utter a hearty hurrah of joy
and thankfulness for our miraculous preservation.  Ere long it burst
forth, but Hartly cut it short by his orders to sheet home the jib
and foretopsail, to set the foresail, fore and aft mainsail and
maintopsail.

Rapidly he was obeyed, and just as the _Leda_ fell off, and bore away
from the dangerous vicinity of the ice-island, it capsized, as its
companion had done, and with a roar, as if defrauded of its prey.




CHAPTER XV

UNDER WEIGH ONCE MORE.

The chainbobstay under the bowsprit was snapped, our rudder was split
and its pintles were started, but these defects were soon repaired by
the carpenter; and next day, at noon, Hartly and Reeves on comparing
their observations, discovered that, unknown to ourselves, we had
drifted nearly one hundred miles towards the western coast of
Greenland, so a look-out was kept for the field-ice, as they were
anxious to complete their interrupted seal-fishing, to haul up for
St. John's, and then freight for Europe in the spring.

Poor fellows! ...

We seemed to have returned to life once more.  Again we were dashing
through the blue sea with a free sheet, with the white canvas
bellying full upon the breeze; again, on waking in the morning, the
first familiar sounds that met the ear were the decks undergoing
their customary ablutions, by bucket and swab, and the rasping
holystones; Cuffy singing some Congo melody as he lighted the cabin
fire, the wind whistling through the rigging, the patter of the
reef-points on the bosom of the swollen sails, the dashing of the
spray over the sharp black bows, the occasional order issued on deck,
the clatter of the rudder in its case, and the bubble of the water as
it frothed past under the counter.

All these spoke of our wonted life of activity, and of the _Leda_
being under canvas.

In a day or two we descried the slender white line of an ice-field,
stretching for miles along the horizon towards the north, and
approached it under easy sail, as the fields usually drift southward
at this season.  By the appearance of the ice and the state of the
thermometer, we concluded this to be a much larger field than that
from which we had been blown by the gale of wind.

While Reeves got ready the ice-hooks, sledges, warps, and gangs of
seal-hunters, with their bats, guns, and other apparatus, Hartly and
I were treading to and fro talking of various matters.  I can
remember that he was relating to me, how, in his last voyage with the
_Leda_ up the Mediterranean, St. Elmo's blue and phosphorescent light
had enveloped fully three feet of her masts below the trucks, to the
great terror of Cuffy Snowball, and others who were ignorant of the
cause of that phenomenon, which lasted nearly an hour.  He was
proceeding with his narration, when Tom Hammer, who was repairing
something aloft, hailed the watch.

"Deck--ahoy!"

"Hallo?" responded Hans Peterkin.

"There is a craft wedged in the ice, sir."

"Where away?"

"About twenty miles off."

"How does she bear?"

"On our lee bow."

"And what do you make her out to be?"

Hammer stood on the main-crosstrees, with his left arm embracing the
mast, and through his telescope took a long and steady glance with a
somewhat perplexed air at this vessel, which we could not see from
the deck.

"She is a brig with her topgallant masts struck."

"Indeed!"

"No," stammered the carpenter.

"What then?"

"A ship with all her canvas unbent."

"Unbent! that is strange," said Hartly, shading his eyes, and peering
away to leeward.

"No--now, sir, she looks like a brigantine, or hermaphrodite brig,
with her yards topped up in different ways."

"Do you wish your nightcap sent up to you, Tom?" said the mate,
drily; "look again, perhaps she is the _Flying Dutchman_."

"Or the ghost of the _Black Schooner_," said one.

"Or a whale," added another.

But on nearing the edge of the ice-field--so close that we sent off
the mate in the jolly boat with the warps, and handed our canvas,
preparatory to resuming the war against the seals--we could all see
the vessel which Hammer had discerned, lying among the ice about
fifteen miles off, and various were the discussions on board as to
her rig and nation.  Even our oldest seamen were puzzled.  Her hull
was scarcely visible, so high were the hummocks around her.  She had
two masts, but her spars were, as Tom said, topped up in various ways
and at various angles, and seemed covered by long-accumulated ice and
snow, from which we augured that she had been long beset.

We hoisted our colours and displayed the private signal of Messrs.
Manly and Skrew, but received no response, by which we supposed that
she had been deserted by her crew, or that her signal halliards had
given way.

Some averred stoutly that they could distinguish a flag flying at her
gaff peak; others that she had no gaff peak whatever, but had _one_
man seated in her fore rigging.  Hartly ridiculed these fancies,
saying that the intensity of the cold, and the dazzling glare of the
sun shining on a sea covered by white ice, bewildered the vision of
most men; and so, full of vague conjectures as to what our neighbours
might be, we saw the sun set and night close in upon us.

Next morning another large field of ice was discovered on our
larboard quarter, closing in upon us with considerable rapidity.  It
extended along the offing for twelve or fourteen miles, and increased
to the eye as it was borne towards us by an under-current.

Hartly conjectured it had drifted down Hudson's Strait from the Bay,
and to avoid being _beset_ like the unfortunate craft we had been
observing, he brought off the ice-anchor and made sail on the brig,
steering due west and keeping her close hauled with his starboard
tacks on board; but the field of ice we endeavoured to leave kept
close alongside, as if it sailed or floated _with_ us, which I have
no doubt it did.

Thus both fields verged towards each other rapidly, one before the
wind, the other before a current; and so, ere sunset, we were closely
wedged in a frozen sea--BESET, amid a wilderness of pack-ice, of
bergs, and hummocks, which extended, as far as the eye could discern
from the main-crosstrees, in every direction, and probably far beyond
the horizon.

Though this predicament was not without great peril, still it was
preferable by many degrees to our last situation; for here we could
pursue the object of our expedition, and hoped to have our cargo
complete, the hatches battened down, and all ready for our return to
Newfoundland when the ice broke up, amid the warmer water of more
southern latitudes, towards which we expected the field, like others,
would be borne by the currents.

Alas! how little did we then foresee how long we and our desolate
neighbour, whose disordered aspect and bare spars made her resemble a
withered bush or bunch of reeds at the horizon, were to remain in
sight of each other.




CHAPTER XVI.

BESET WITHOUT HOPE.

I cared little about the slaughter of the seals,--indeed, I rather
disliked it--and for several days my attention was excited solely by
the vessel which was beset so far from us.

My imagination drew many painful scenes.  I endeavoured to picture
how long she had been there--weeks, months, it might be years!

Where was she from?  What had she been--a ship, brig, or schooner?
for by the confusion of her rigging, and the distance at which she
lay from us, there was a difficulty in discovering this, even by by
our most powerful glasses, or whether the smoke ever rose from her
galley funnel.

How many of her crew were alive, or had she a crew at all?  If so,
what were their sufferings--if abandoned, amid that world of ice,
whither had they gone, and where had their perilous journey ended?
On Greenland, on the Labrador, or in the grave?

These queries were for ever recurring to me, and that old beset
ship--I had made up my mind that she _was_ old--was the first object
to which my eyes turned when coming on deck in the morning, and the
last at night.  Fogs--the dense fogs of the Arctic seas--came on and
shrouded us for days, till one's lungs almost filled with icy vapour,
and the pulses of the heart seemed to freeze.  The wind blew a gale
at times, but the ice remained fast as adamant around us; but when
the obscurity passed away, there lay the beset ship in the dim
distance, wearing the same lifeless aspect as ever, so dreary and
forlorn amid that waste of cold white glistening ice, with its
endless vistas of hummocks and splintered bergs.

We became somewhat alarmed on discovering by observations that
instead of drifting into southern latitudes, where the ice-fields are
usually broken into floes, and a ship becomes free to shape her
course in any direction, we were being borne almost due west, and
with considerable rapidity.  By this the temperature remained nearly
the same, and our besetting, like that of our unfortunate neighbour,
became a permanence, and would probably continue so, unless we
weathered Cape Farewell, of which Hartly had some doubts at that
season.

We had now reached the first week of April, and could only look
forward to the early days of May, when the field-ice breaks up, and
from the unknown seas and inlets of the north, floats southward in
masses so mighty, that a girdle of ice, sometimes two hundred miles
in breadth, environs the coasts of Newfoundland and the Labrador.

Ere long we became sensible of a tremendous pressure upon the sides
of the brig, a pressure so great that her timbers in some places
became distorted, and Hartly was seriously alarmed lest she might be
crushed and destroyed.

This unwonted pressure rendered us very anxious, and inspired many
with dread.

One night when it was greater than usual, I was on deck, and from
thence ascended into the main-rigging a little way to contemplate the
snow-covered scene--so vast, so silent, and so terrible in its beauty!

Spreading far as the eye could reach--far beyond the old deserted
ship, for such we deemed her now--lay the hummocks in uncounted
myriads, ascending here and there into bergs and mountains, so
impressive in their cold purity, so solemnizing in their silence and
monotony, their spiral peaks glistening and vitreous against the blue
immensity of the sky--an accumulation of ice and snow that would seem
to have lasted since the will and hand of God had first separated the
land from the water, and marked the limits of both.

While lost in reverie, and surveying this scene, a strange sound,
like that which might be caused by the rending of a vast rock
asunder, fell upon my ear; then there was a shock which made every
fibre in my body tingle.  A mighty power below us seemed to be
hoisting the brig out of the ice, while her masts and hull began to
sway to and fro.

"Aloft, lads--all hands aloft!" cried Hartly; "we are about to be
crushed--God help us! for all is over with us now!"

All our men rushed into the rigging on hearing this terrible
announcement, and at the same moment there was another crashing
shock, and lo! about a league from us, there ascended slowly and
vertically into the air, a sheet or wall of ice, perhaps twenty feet
thick, nearly a hundred feet in height, and several miles in length!

Erect it stood for some moments, like a giant rampart, and then broke
into fragments, and as the field collapsed below, these fell with a
roar as if heaven and earth were coming together.

How many _millions of tons_ might have been in that erected mass no
man could conceive, but the thunder of their fall, as they crashed
and glittered in the moonlight, caused one's soul to shrink with awe
and wonder at the grandeur and sublimity of such a scene.

The ice around us cracked and rent in every direction, but though
there was a vibration, a seeming heaving of the icebound sea, the
brig settled down again into her bed, and we were only relieved of
that intense pressure which had threatened us with immediate
destruction.

"We are saved--for this time," said Hartly.

"Have the currents caused this?" I inquired.

"Partly: and the east edge of the ice-field has crashed upon a
western shore."

"Greenland?" suggested Paul Reeves.

"Of course."

"Then we are to the _north_ of Cape Farewell!"

I gazed wistfully towards the east.  Hartly saw the glance, and
smiled.

"You wish to snuff the land," said he; "but whether the land on which
this mass of ice that imprisons us and our neighbour--a floating mass
perhaps as large as Ireland--be just below the horizon, or two
hundred miles distant, I have no means of ascertaining until I make a
correct observation at noon."

The morrow came duly, and at twelve o'clock, Hartly, on consulting
the sun and his chart, declared that we were at least one hundred and
seventy miles due westward of Cape Farewell, on the coast of
Greenland.  We had thus drifted before the wind many hundred miles
with the ice.  The cold had now rendered the action of our compasses
sluggish; but, situated as we were, that was of little consequence.

Our anxiety increased as our provisions diminished; we were placed
upon a scanty allowance; symptoms of scurvy became visible among our
seal-fishers; and how shall I find words to describe the intensity of
the cold?

As we huddled together in the cabin at night, the ice actually came
down the funnel of the stove, and formed a little arch above the
fire.  Our breath froze on our beards and whiskers, and on the
blankets of our beds.  The barrels of salted junk had to be dashed to
pieces ere the food could be separated from the brine and staves.
Stiff grog froze as hard as our beer; and every day a smoky haze rose
from the sea, and freezing as it rose, when blown about by the wind,
seemed to scrape the very skin off one's face.  This frost-rime
frequently enveloped us like a dense fog for days, and when it
cleared, the wearied eye had no object to rest on but the everlasting
ice and the old ship in the dreary distance.

Chancing to stumble one day against the anchor, my bare hand touched
the fluke, and a portion of skin adhered to it as if it had been hot
iron.

We hunted diligently for seals, as they formed our staple food, when
cooked on a fire of blazing blubber.  The flesh of the cub,
especially the heart and liver, when hashed, and well seasoned with
pepper, was not unacceptable to appetites sharpened by the northern
blast that came from the Arctic circle.

The middle of April came and passed away without a change, save that
the sun shone with a brilliance which somewhat alleviated the cold.
One day, at noon, I saw Hartly form a piece of pure fresh-water ice
from the scuttle-bucket into a lens, through which he concentrated
the rays of the sun as through a burning-glass, and thus igniting
little puffs of powder on the capstan-head, to the great astonishment
of our seamen, and the terror of Cuffy, who began to consider him a
species of Obi man.

So day followed day of captivity!

Seal-hunting and idling over, we would assemble, and sit for hour
after hour, crouching close together for warmth, around our little
fire, watching the glowing embers and the upward sparks; often in
dreamy silence, mentally wondering where, when, and _how_ this
monotony, misery, and suffering were to end!

At times each almost fancied himself the last man in the world--and
certainly we were the last men to be envied.  Then terrible
sensations crept over us, and horror filled our souls--the horror of
being the _last survivor_, when famine and death came together among
us.

As a relief from this intolerable monotony, a party of us resolved to
visit the other ship.  All were anxious to go; but Hartly said we
could never know the moment when the ice would partially break up;
thus half the crew at least must remain with him for the safety of
the whole.

Furnished with a sledge, on which we placed a supply of such
provisions as the _Leda_ could afford, a small breaker, or gang-cask
of stiff grog, hatchets, guns, a compass, plenty of blankets, and
tobacco, so as to be ready for any emergency or detention, twelve
men--Paul Reeves, Hans Peterkin, Tom Hammer, Cuffy, and myself
inclusive--departed one bright morning about an hour after dawn,
resolved to overhaul the stranger, and if we found her deserted, to
cut away her masts, and drag them to the brig for fuel, though she
lay now at least fifteen miles distant.




CHAPTER XVII.

THE DEATH-SHIP.

Inured though we were to the cold, we felt the toil and peril very
great when traversing the ice for fifteen miles; but fortunately the
day was clear, and not a speck of cloud appeared upon the blue
immensity of the sky.

The crew of the _Leda_ cheered us from time to time until we were at
some distance, when they hoisted a red flag at the mainmast-head; but
in the hollows between the hummocks and vast blocks of ice which were
jammed and piled upon each other by the recent concussion and
compression of the field, we lost sight of both ships at times, and
could only discover them while surmounting some of the frozen ridges.

We toiled bravely, anxious to attain the object of our journey ere
night came on, as we were assured of quarter on board, whatever might
be the circumstances of this strange-looking craft, the attention of
whose crew our colours by day, and our lanterns by night, had totally
failed to attract.

Fifteen miles over an ice-field--especially such an ice-field as that
which inclosed us, rent by chasms in some places, and piled in giant
blocks elsewhere--were equal to the toil of traversing forty miles on
land; thus about two P.M., we found ourselves only eight miles from
the _Leda_, but rapidly gaining on the hull of the strange craft,
which seemed to rise out of the ice as we approached, and the aspect
of which puzzled us more than ever.  We halted for a brief space;
then each man partook of a biscuit and piece of seal's flesh boiled,
a ration of rum, and in ten minutes more we pushed on again, four
dragging our sledge, laden with stores, by shoulder-belts made for
the purpose, and relieved by other four at every two miles or so.

Our expedition was not without several dangers.  Fog might come on
and conceal both ships from us; a blinding storm of snow might have
the same effect, and pile its drifts above our corpses for ever.  The
ice-field might break up, and separate us from our ship so long that
when our slender stock of necessaries was expended, we should
infallibly perish.  Each man among us thought of these possible and
terrible contingencies as the distance increased between us and the
_Leda_--our home amid the icy waste--but none spoke of them _then_;
all sang cheerily, and pushed on to overhaul the strange craft; thus
about five in the afternoon we found ourselves alongside, and all
paused to survey her with deep and undefinable emotions of awe in our
breasts, for she had evidently been long deserted, and now wore a
most chilling and desolate aspect.

She was an old-fashioned pink-built barque, of about six hundred
tons, with bulging ribs and bluff bows; broad and clumsy in the
counter and deep in the bends--all fenced about with iron bands; she
looked like a whaler of George the Second's time, for, with a fiddle
head, she had the remains of a jack-staff and spritsail yard upon her
bowsprit.  Her hull and spars were thickly coated with ice.

Her fore and main topmasts were gone; her mizen was broken off at the
crosstrees, and hung, truck downward, in its gear.

The topping-lifts and braces of the yards had long since given way,
and tatters of them swung mournfully on the wind.  Many of the yards
had dropped from their slings, and lay athwart the deck or among the
ice alongside, where the gales had tossed them.

Her ironwork was red and corroded; almost every vestige of paint and
tar had long since disappeared, as if she had been scraped by the
ice; beaten, battered, and washed by Arctic storms, American fogs,
and Greenland showers of sleet and rain, for many, many years must
have elapsed since the keel of this old craft had last been in blue
water, and first been frozen in the treacherous ice; years of
drifting to and fro in the far and frozen regions of the north, where
perchance not even the eye of the Esquimaux had seen her.

We seemed all to read and know her history instinctively at a glance;
but her crew--what had their fate been?

Inspired by a strange emotion, we hung back, while gazing at her, as
she stood like a silent ruin, or the ghost of a ship in the frosty
sunshine of the April evening; but no man attempted to board her,
till Paul Reeves, taking a hatchet from the sledge, exclaimed,

"Come on, shipmates--we'll overhaul her!" and proceeded at once to
mount from the ice into her mainchains.  As he grasped the starboard
shrouds about the upper dead-eyes, the whole gave way from their
rotten cat-harpings and crashed about him, with a shower of the ice
that had coated them for years.

"By Jove! lads, 'twas not yesterday this craft left the rigger's
hands!" said he, as we clambered after him, and at length stood upon
her deck, which was coated about two feet deep with hard frozen snow,
on the pure whiteness of which no foot-track was visible.

Sailors are ever superstitious; but theirs is an honest and
reverential superstition, very different from that of the landsman;
thus in breathless silence our party paused upon her deck, as if it
had been the lid of a huge coffin.

"Go on--go on!" said several; yet no man moved, for there was a
deathlike silence in and around her.

Her main-hatch was battened down; but we could see that the companion
aft and the fore-hatch were partly open.  Her long-boat was turned
keel upmost on deck, aft the foremast; and by other indications it
had doubtless formed a species of round-house.  Various large white
bones, fragments of broken casks, coils of old bleached ropes, and
rusty harpoons were strewn about, and served to indicate that she had
been a whale-ship.

Urged by curiosity, I proceeded towards her cabin, my eleven
shipmates following closely at my heels.

The skylight was covered with snow; yet through a broken pane I could
perceive the figures of men below: then I turned to descend into her
dark, gloomy, and slimy cabin, on entering which I beheld a wondrous
scene of horror, such as can never be forgotten by me, nor was it by
those who accompanied me.

The red glow of the sun, now setting beyond the distant waste of ice,
shone from the west through her two square stern windows, pouring
athwart her cabin a sombre and dusky light.  Its sides were covered
by a damp mould, which was green and thick as moss.  Nearly three
feet of snow, which had drifted down the companion-hatch, was lying
upon its floor; half buried among it and huddled close together in a
corner, lay the bodies of three emaciated men, with fur caps tied
under their wasted jaws.

A blue and ghastly hand that hung over one of the cabin berths
announced that a dead man lay there; and seated at the table was
another, whose arms, head, and back were half covered by the snow,
that had drifted over him after he had sunk into the sleep of death.
His coat was old in fashion, with large brass buttons and square
pocket-flaps.  Amid the snow that covered the table, and amid which
his face was hidden, there appeared the necks of one or two square
case-bottles--empty.

A quill was also standing amid the snow, and seemed to indicate that
the dead man had been writing, for it was still in the pewter
inkhorn, and near it stood a lamp, used by him probably to keep his
ink from freezing.  Close by appeared the corner of a book, which I
drew with difficulty from amid the frozen snow, and then impelled by
a horror, of that cold dark floating grave, like frightened
schoolboys we rushed up the cabin-stairs, and regained the deck, just
as the last segment of the sun's red disc went down beyond the frozen
sea.

We stood in a group near the mouldering mainmast, gazing at each
other awe-struck, for we had looked on the faces of men who had been
dead for years--how many, we knew not.

"There is _something moving_ in the forehold!" exclaimed Tom Hammer,
the carpenter, while his teeth chattered alike with cold and fear.

"Something?" I reiterated.

"Ay, sir, and alive, too!  Do you hear _that_?" added old Hans
Peterkin, in terror.

It was a strange, croaking sound; and then, as we approached the
half-open hatch of the forehold, we heard the flapping of large wings.

Though almost paralysed by hearing such an unwonted sound in such a
place, one of our seal-fishers fired his gun in his confusion.  I
crept forward and peeped fearfully down, but could not distinguish
anything amid the gloom below.

Then we heard another croak, which sounded so loud and so dreadful to
our over-strained organs of hearing that it nearly made us all
scamper over the side; when suddenly two giant ravens, who had
doubtless long made the empty wreck their home, rose through the
fore-hatchway on their black booming pinions, and soaring high into
the clear air, winged their way directly to the east, and so swiftly
that they soon disappeared.

"The land lies where they are flying to," said Reeves.

"And it is not far off, as their presence here would indicate," added
a seaman.

This idea encouraged us all very much, as we forgot that they might
have floated with the ice-field for years.  We were about to descend
into the forehold, but on lifting the other half of the decayed
hatch, we found the frozen remains of a man hanging there by the
neck, and half devoured by those obscene birds.  A capstan-bar had
been placed athwart the combing, and to this he had suspended himself
by a well-greased rope.

Was this unfortunate the last survivor, who, in desperation, had thus
awfully ended his misery?

His situation seemed to say so.




CHAPTER XVIII.

LEAVES FROM THE LOG.

We repaired to our sledge alongside, and dragging it a little way
from the deserted barque, took a ration of grog (of which we stood
much in need), and then I proceeded to examine the volume we had
brought away.  It proved to be the mouldered fragments of a log-book
or diary kept by the mate--doubtless the dead man, who was seated on
the stern locker, and whose body was reclining on the snow-covered
cabin table.

From this book we could glean that she was the _Royal Bounty_, a
Peterhead whaler, which had been beset in the ice off Cape Desolation
in 1801, and that one by one all her crew had perished of cold,
hunger, and despair!

The thick and crystalline coat of ice which covered every portion of
the ship, from her tops to her chain-plates--a coat that had never
melted or been disturbed--had protected her rigging, spars, and hull
from the natural progress of decay; so let none suppose it marvellous
that in a region or atmosphere of eternal snow, bodies are also thus
preserved; for frequently the remains of elephants and mammoths which
lived before the flood, and of pre-Adamite monsters, are found buried
in the Arctic ice, unchanged, undecayed, and entire.

At the mouth of the Lena, in Siberia--a river which traverses the
vast and uninhabited plains of Asiatic Russia--there was discovered,
in 1805, a mammoth entire, with the hair on its skin four inches
long, and all of a reddish-black; and so frequently are similar
discoveries made along the shores of the Frozen Sea, that the poor
Russians believe that race of animals to be still extant in their
country, but existing like moles which dwell underground, and cannot
endure the light of day; and their exhumation from the ice is ever
deemed a forerunner of calamity, as it is said that all who see them
die soon after.  But to resume.

The book was much mouldered and decayed; only a few entries here and
there could be traced, as its leaves, now soft and pulpy, perished in
our fingers when we attempted to turn them over.  A few passages ran
thus:--

"March 3rd, 1801; a brisk breeze from the S.W.  The Faroe Isles
bearing about twenty miles off on our starboard quarter.

"At 7 P.M., took in the topgallant sails, and all fore and aft canvas
........ set the ........

"April 4, 8 P.M.  Set more canvas--out reefs--set foretopmast and
maintopgallant studdingsails.  Ice-floes a head.  Compasses not
working well.  The captain ordered ........, and Cairns ........

"9 P.M.  Land ahead--supposed to be Cape Farewell.  Weather squally.
Beset by an ice-field in a strong current running N. and by E.  Took
in everything fore and aft--sent down the topgallantyards, and
brought the masts on deck ........"

After a successful whale fishing in latitude 76°-77°, they had been
again, or were still, beset.

"1st May, 1801; hoisted a garland of false flowers, made by our wives
and sweethearts at home in Scotland, between the fore and
mainmast........"

Then followed days and weeks, to the effect that they were _still
beset_.  These memoranda were in the handwriting of various persons,
and were frequently mingled with earnest prayers for release.  Then
scurvy appears to have broken out among them, and disease was quickly
followed by death.

"1802.  Birnie from Buchan-ness, off duty, unwell--Birnie's teeth
fell out of his head.  Willie Cairns from Southhouse Head, off duty,
unwell.  Poor Birnie died, and was buried in the ice, where the
_others_ lie, half a mile off, on the starboard bow.  God rest them!

"May 6th.  Jobson ill with scurvy and blindness--Cairns died, and was
buried beside Birnie ........."

Many leaves totally illegible followed, till we deciphered a passage
like this--

"1802, 4th Dec.  The captain died in his berth this day at 8 A.M.,
and we are too weak to move him.  Smith, Arthur, and the cook are
dead, or dying of hunger on the cabin floor!  We have now been beset
two years and twenty-one days.  In that time twenty-four men have
died out of a crew of nine-and-twenty--no hope! no mercy!  My God!
where is all this to end?  We sailed upon a Friday, and this ........"

I shut the book abruptly, for I could perceive in the twilight a
blank horror stealing over the pale features of my companions as we
stood beside that old vessel--a frozen tomb; and favoured by the
light of the rising moon, we proceeded to regain the _Leda_, with all
the speed we could exert; for to some it appeared as if our future
fate was fearfully foreshadowed in the story of this old doomed
whale-ship.  Half a mile distant, on her starboard bow, an ice-coated
pole was visible.  It seemed to indicate where her dead were buried.

Hans Peterkin and three others strapped the collar-ropes over their
shoulders for the first "spell," and proceeded briskly in front with
our sledge of blankets, &c.  The rest followed in silence, and only
turned from time to time to cast a backward glance at the old whaler,
whose decaying spars, coated with ice, glimmered darkly against the
starry sky.  The moon arose in her full northern splendour--clear,
glorious, and wondrous!  The sharp summits of the bergs (the
ice-mountains that rose from the plains of ice) gleamed and glittered
like mighty prisms, or spires, pyramids, and obelisks of crystal and
spar.

After all we had seen, the dead, the awful stillness of the frozen
sea--that snow-clad plain, "the silence of which seemed to come from
afar and to go afar," impressed us with deep and solemn emotions.
Thus, for several miles we trod gloomily on, equally desirous of
reaching the _Leda_ and of leaving far behind the scene of gloom I
have described.

The spirits of our party were sorely depressed; but Paul Reeves and I
did everything in our power, by cheerfulness and anecdotes, to divert
the gloomy current of their ideas; though poor Paul was not without
fears that a day might come when he would be inserting in the log of
the _Leda_, entries similar to those I have quoted from the
mouldering volume we had brought away.

"We have found a ship of the dead," said he, "but that is nothing!
What think you, shipmates, of a whole city full?"

"A city full!" reiterated our men.

"Not exactly a city like London--but a city, nevertheless."

"And where was this?" asked Hans, doubtfully.

"I read of it in a book--a real printed book--when I was in South
Carolina.  There was one Lionel Wafer, an English surgeon, who,
having nobody to physic at home, took a voyage with the old
buccaneers to the South Seas.  Well, on one occasion, his craft was
cruising off Vermijo, at the mouth of the Red River, in Peru.  It was
a wild and solitary place; but he went ashore with a boat's crew, and
travelled four miles up the stream in quest of adventures; and there,
from the margin of a fine sandy bay, a plain spread inland as wide as
this ice-field, all covered with the ruins of streets, built of
mighty blocks of stone carved with wonderful sculptures, like those
of the Egyptians--only more terrible and quaint; and among these
crumbling streets and mansions were thousands of graves half open,
with the dead bodies of men, women, and little children in them, all
mummified and light as cork, for they had been dead two hundred years
or more.

"His men were terrified, and fled back to their boat; but on the way
they met an old Indian, who related that, in the days of his
forefathers, this arid plain had once been fruitful and green as the
greenest savannah, and the country so populous, that a fish of the
Red River could have been passed through the land from hand to hand,
till it was laid at the foot of the throne of the Inca (that was
their king, shipmates); but the cruel, murdering Spaniards came, with
their guns and bloodhounds, and laid siege to the capital city.  Its
defence was long and desperate; and rather than yield, the
inhabitants slew themselves, and buried each other in the sand, till
there was only one man left, and _he_ drowned himself in the Red
River.

"In after years the stormy winds had blown the dry sand aside, and
there the grim Mexicans lay in thousands--the women with the pearls
of Vermijo at their ears and round their necks, their little
children, their distaffs and hand-mills by their sides, and their
long black hair filled with coins and precious stones.  There, too,
lay the warriors, with their flint axes and broken spears, and the
war-paint yet traceable on their mummies.  Lionel Wafer brought away
the body of a child, but the buccaneers would not admit it on board
lest it might bring a plague or a curse upon them; so he threw it
into the Rio Grande."

This yarn produced others equally lively, of course; but while
conversing we got over the dreary waste of hummocks more rapidly, and
some time after midnight were welcomed on board the _Leda_, where
those whom we had left were burning with curiosity to learn the
result of our expedition.

The impression of all we had seen was so vivid, that a horror lest
the same fate should befal us, made our men suggest and revolve every
rash plan for release.

The flight of the two ravens eastward indicated that land could not
be far off.  Hans Peterkin, a hardy Orcadian, who was suffering from
scurvy, proposed that if matters grew more desperate, we should
travel over the field, taking with us the longboat upon
sledge-runners.  Some urged that we should bore through the ice with
canvas set, while gangs went ahead blasting it up with gunpowder.

"Bore and blast through ice twenty feet thick, for a hundred miles,
perhaps!" said Hartly, with sorrowful irony.

But scurvy continued to increase among us; and on the eighth day
after our visit to the ship one of our crew died, and was buried in
the ice; while the brig was thrown in mourning, her colours
half-mast, her running-gear cast in loose bights, and her yards
topped up variously.

After his funeral, which had a most depressing effect upon us all, I
remarked to Hartly, that either by a strange coincidence or by an
irresistible fatality, we had interred him _half a mile distant on
the starboard bow_, exactly as the crew of the old whaler had
interred _their dead_!




CHAPTER XIX.

THE GRAVES ON THE STARBOARD BOW.

The last of our stone ballast had long since been thrown overboard on
the ice, and was replaced by seal skins.  We had now a valuable
cargo, over which the hatches were barred and battened; but Hartly's
hopes for an honest profit on his adventurous expedition were
forgotten, or merged in the overwhelming desire for freedom and the
safety of our lives and of the brig.

Already five deaths were recorded in her log; and Hartly vowed that
if ever again her bows cut blue water, he would never more tempt Dame
Fortune in _the region of ice_.

By this time our monotonous detention had so far exceeded every
expectation and contingency; that our beer, rum, and other spirits,
our salted beef, preserved meats, and lime-juice were consumed; and
though our biscuits were doled out in very small rations indeed, grim
starvation was before us, or food composed of seal and blubber alone;
so scurvy in its worst forms assailed us all more or less.  Our
strongest seamen were the first who sank under it: their complexions
became yellow, with swollen gums, loosened teeth, and fetid breath.
These symptoms were accompanied by a difficulty in respiring, which,
on the least exertion being made, amounted almost to suffocation.

Two of our gunners died one evening within an hour of each other.  We
wrapped them in blankets, and buried them quickly, under cloud of
night, lest the survivors might be affected by the scene.

Hartly, Hans Peterkin, Cuffy, and I performed this melancholy office,
when we had no lamp but the twinkling stars and the sharp streamers
of the northern lights, shooting upward from the icebergs that edged
the plain, over which the wind blew keen and bitingly.

Grim seemed the pale faces of the dead in that wavering gloom, as we
lowered them into their last home, heaped the ice above them, and
returned to the _Leda_, leaving them to sleep the sleep of death
among their shipmates _half a mile distant on her starboard bow_.

And now with each day there sank a deeper horror over us--the horror
that, like the old whaler at the horizon, the _Leda_ was a ship
foredoomed!  Yet, like her, we had _not_ sailed upon a Friday.

We were without a surgeon; but Hartly was a skilful fellow, and by
administering such simples as we possessed, he endeavoured to
ameliorate the condition of his suffering crew.

Common potatoes he washed, cut into thin slices, and gave raw to
some, for the cure of their swollen and bleeding gums--usually a
sovereign remedy in this case.  To others he gave decoctions of
tamarinds, scraped from an old gallipot, and boiled with cream of
tartar; or a ship biscuit pounded into a panada, and sweetened with
sugar; or gargles made of honey of roses and elixir of vitriol; but,
ere long, even these remedies failed us; and we had Reeves, Hans
Peterkin, and more than half our remaining crew, unable to raise
their heads or hands, sick and despairing.

The miserable Esquimaux, by scraping the snow from their native
rocks, can find coarse berries, sorrel, and cresses, with which to
correct their blubber food; but in that world of ice we had no such
boon accorded us.

Armed with our rifles and knives, I set forth with two of our
healthiest men, Dick and James Abbot, two brothers, in search of a
few fresh seals, as they had learned to shun our locality, and had
ceased to venture through their holes in the ice for some time past.

We left the brig about two o'clock, P.M.

On this day the wind was blowing hard, the white scud was flying fast
through the blue sky, and for the first time we felt a heaving motion
in the ice, which warned us instinctively not to venture far from the
_Leda_.  After a ramble of three hours, we had only shot one seal and
knocked two cubs on the head with our rifle-butts, when we sat down
on a hummock to rest, at the distance of two miles or so from our
ice-bound home.

"I wonder much how the masts of that old craft the _Bounty_ have
stood these many years?" said Dick Abbot, breaking a long silence.

"The coating of ice has saved them, as it has preserved everything on
board--from decay, at least," replied his brother.

"Always thinking of that ship," said I, with an air of annoyance.
"Come, let us talk of something more cheerful.  You know that
she--but _where is she_?" I added, as we swept the horizon in vain
for her--the sole object on which our eyes had rested for so many
dreary weeks.

"Sunk, by Jove! or can her old spars have gone by the board at last?"
exclaimed James Abbot, starting up.

In great excitement we clambered to the summit of a mass of ice, and
looked around us.  Not a vestige of the old barque could be seen, but
dense clouds that came heavily up from the north were overspreading
the sky, against the blue of which her crystal-coated spars had so
long been visible.

"We shall have foul weather," said Dick Abbot.

"And so they seem to think, sir, aboard the brig," added his brother:
"see--they've run the ensign up to the gaff peak as a signal for us
to return, Mr. Manly."

"But our three seals----"

"We must leave them where they are--that big hummock will mark where
they lie till to-morrow."

"James is right, sir," said Dick Abbot; "let us get back to the brig
as fast as we can."

"She is two miles distant, at least," said I.

"The sky darkens fast; and see--see!" he added, with wild joy
expressed in all his features, his eyes, and voice; "the captain
expects something--they've cast loose the courses, and are hoisting
the topsailyards--THE ICE IS BREAKING UP!"

These words made every pulse quicken, and as if in corroboration of
his surmise, we felt the field on which we trod agitated by
convulsive throes, and these increased as the fierce and darkening
blast, armed with showers of hailstones large as peas, that fell
aslant the cold grey sky, deepened the atmosphere around us.  Madly
we toiled, scrambled, and rolled--fell, rose, and fell again--shouted
and cheered to each other, as we surmounted the endless succession of
glassy hummocks and snowy hollows to reach the _Leda_; but the gloom
increased so fast, that in less than half an hour we could no longer
distinguish where she lay.

We did not feel cold--our brains seemed on fire, our bloodshot eyes
were wild and eager in expression, as we toiled on and on--but
_where_ was the brig?

A misty veil of hail and snow--an atmosphere dark as the twilight of
the Scandinavian gods--enveloped us like a curtain.  We paused at
times in our desperation, and uttered a simultaneous hallo; but no
voice replied, no sound responded, save the hiss of the hailstones as
they showered on the hard hummocks.  Then we heard from time to time
a stunning crash, as the field was rent asunder into floes, that were
surged and driven against each other with such force as the waves of
an irresistible sea can alone exert.

To us this crisis was, as I have said, maddening.  We tossed away our
rifles, shot-belts, knives, bats, and everything that might impede
our progress, and toiled in wild despair in search of the _Leda_--but
alas, alas! the _Leda_ was nowhere to be seen!

"Can we have passed her?" we asked repeatedly.

To return was to acknowledge still more that we were at fault.

Left upon the breaking ice, with night deepening, and a tempest,
perhaps, coming on together; the ice-field rending into floes, and
the _Leda_, when last seen, with her topsails loose for sea, and now
we knew not where, but assuredly not within call of our united
voices, which the envious wind, the very spirit of the wintry storm,
swept from our trembling lips, as if in mockery of efforts and
struggles so feeble as those of man when contending with the warring
elements of God,--how terrible was our situation!

Inspired either by the activity of youth, or a greater dread of
perishing, I left my companions some twenty yards behind me.  In this
race for life and death poor Dick Abbot was failing, and his younger
brother was loth to leave him a single pace behind.

"Mr. Manly," I heard him cry, "take time, please; do you see anything
yet, sir--of the brig, I mean?" "Not a vestige," said I, turning to
wait until they joined me.

The ice was bursting in every direction, and the waves seemed to boil
through the yawning rents in snowy foam; vast pieces, like bergs,
arose from the water, and were dashed against each other, to sink
into the deep, to arise, and then be dashed together again.  Add to
this the darkness of the gathering night, the roar of the biting
wind, and the dense murkiness caused by the hail as it swept through
that mighty waste, and the reader may have an idea of the scene when
I paused and looked back for my two companions.

At that moment the ice heaved beneath my feet, I was thrown forward
on my face and almost stunned.  There was a terrific splitting sound
as the field around us broke into a thousand floes: I found myself
separated from my two friends, upon a piece of ice about half a mile
square, and borne away with it, despairing and alone, into the mist
and darkness of the stormy night.




CHAPTER XX.

ADRIFT ON THE DEAD FLOE.

All was obscurity around me--a chaos of tumbling waves, of crashing
ice and hissing hail.

I shouted wildly, fiercely, as the dying or despairing alone may
shout.

A faint response seemed to come through the drift and the hail that
was sowing the ice and pathless sea; but it might have been fancy, or
my own cry tossed back by the mocking wind.  And now from time to
time I was covered by the icy _spoondrift_, as the water which the
wind sweeps from the wave-tops is named by seamen.

For a time I felt the impossibility of realizing the actual horrors
of such a situation, and murmured repeatedly--

"Oh, this cannot be reality; if so, it must soon come to an end, and
I shall be dead!"

The floe on which I sat surged and rolled heavily, as it was rasped,
dashed against others, and whirled round in the eddies they made.  On
its slippery surface I was driven hither and thither, even when
seated; and at last, on finding myself among some large stones which
were frozen into the snow, and which I knew to be a portion of the
brig's ballast, I shuddered with instinctive dread when discovering
that I was adrift on that portion of the ice in which our dead were
buried, and which had lain on her starboard bow.  Thus I learned that
at the moment of my separation from the Abbots, I had been within
half a mile of the _Leda_.

There was agony in this now useless conviction!

"Am I to find a grave here, after all?" was my thought.

If I could live till dawn, the crew of the _Leda_ (if she, too,
survived the night) might see and save me; but who could live on an
ice-floe through so many freezing hours?

After a time the wind lulled, the hail ceased, the clouds were
divided in heaven, and a star or two shone in its blue vault.  The
ice-blocks ceased to crash against the floe, thus its motion became
steadier, and under the lee of a hummock, I endeavoured to keep
myself as warm as my upper garments, which were entirely composed of
seal-skins, would enable me.

The moon was rising, and its fitful light added to the chaotic
terrors of the scene around me.  To be alone--_alone_ upon a floe at
midnight, with the open sea rolling around me!  All seemed over with
me now.  I felt that my sufferings could not last long, as I should
certainly pass away in the heavy slumber of those who perish by
exhaustion and intensity of cold.  In spite of this horrible thought,
I gradually became torpid.

I had been, perhaps, an hour in this situation, when I seemed
suddenly to start to life, as a bank of vapour close by parted like a
crape curtain, and the moonbeams fell upon the white canvas of a
vessel.  She was a brig--she was the _Leda_, under weigh, and distant
from the floe not more than one hundred yards!

She was under sail, with her foreyards aback to deaden her way, as
she was rasping along a lee of ice-floes and _brash_, as the smaller
fragments are technically named.  The weather had now become so calm,
that her canvas, which glittered white as snow in the moonshine, was
almost, as the sailors say, _asleep_, there being just sufficient
wind to keep it from waking.

I endeavoured to shout, but my tongue was paralysed as if in a
nightmare; sobs only came from my heart, and I thought all sense
would leave me, as the brig, like a spectre, came slowly gliding
past.  Again and again I endeavoured to hail her, but in vain.

I rushed to the edge of the floe, at the risk of slipping off it into
the sea.  Then a faint shout reached my ear, and made my heart throb
with joy.  Those on deck could not hear my voice, but they had seen
my figure in the moonlight; and in a few minutes I beheld a boat
shoved off from her, and heard the cheerful voice of old Hans
Peterkin, crying with his Orkney _patois_--

"Quick, my lads--lay out on your oars!" as they pulled through the
rack and drift towards me.

I was soon dragged on board the boat, and on reaching the deck of the
_Leda_, fainted, after all I had undergone, and the joy of escaping a
death so terrible.  The last sounds I remember were the voice of
Hartly welcoming me, and the jarring of the yards and braces, as the
foreyards were filled, and the brig payed off bravely before the
gentle breeze.

Of my unfortunate companions, no trace was ever seen!




CHAPTER XXI.

CAPE FAREWELL.

For three days our course was encumbered by masses of broken ice,
which seemed to crowd upon and follow us; thus the brig was
constantly being put about or thrown in the wind, backing and filling
to avoid the large floes and calves, as those treacherous pieces of
sunken or detached ice which suddenly rush to the surface are named.
To avoid the lesser floes, we had often to carry a warp to a large
one, and track along its side.  The cheerful voice of Hartly might
always be heard encouraging the faint and weary on these occasions.

"Now, my lads--tally on! bowse away upon the guess-warp!"

"Hurrah!" the men would answer, as they pulled together vigorously.

"Once more we are afloat, Jack," said he to me, on the third morning.
"I began to fear we should berth all our ship's company in the ice
that lay on the starboard bow; but now we may sit cosily in the
cabin, as of yore, and learn how her head lies by the _tell-tale_
compass that swings in the skylight."

Again at sea, our sick recovered as if by a miracle; but still many
antidotes against scurvy were requisite before we could haul up for
the long voyage that lay between us and St. John.  I caught a few
fish, and they formed a delicious change for Cuffy's fricasees of
odious blubber, served up half cold in a greasy mess-kid.

Once more there was a reckoning to keep.  For a few cloudy days we
had merely kept a dead one, by log and compass; but on making a solar
observation, Hartly and Reeves found that they were many hundred
miles eastward of where they expected to be; and this was a
circumstance over which they had no control.

It is well-known that a current which comes down Davis' Straits
eddies round the east coast of Greenland.  By this we had been borne
towards its western shore with great rapidity.

In 1818, the _Anne_, of Poole, when beset by an ice-field, was thus
drifted at the rate of two hundred and twenty miles per day!

Early on the morning of the fourth day, the sea was pretty clear of
floes; but a dense and dusky fog-bank came down like a curtain, and
seemed to float upon the water, about twenty miles from us.  We had
suffered considerably in our besetting, and by concussions among the
floes; so, as the morning was calm and sunny, Hartly had all hands at
work, tarring, painting, and repairing our various damages.  A spare
jib-boom was shipped, and it was soon taut with its heel-rope and
jib-guys; our rudder was finally repaired, and two new staysails were
being bent, when there was a cry of "land" from aloft.

"Land in sight!" shouted Hans Peterkin, who was out on the arm of the
fore-topgallant yard, repairing something.

"Lad!--where?" asked Hartly, snatching his telescope from the
companion.

"On the lee quarter, sir."

"You must have deuced good eyes, Hans," said the captain, sweeping
along the fog-bank with his glass; "for nothing like land can I see!"

"The bank is rising, sir," replied the Orcadian, as he sat jauntily
astride his lofty perch, and pointed to the east.  "I see either an
island or headland."

Even while he spoke, the dense mountain of vapour, behind which the
morning sun was shining, rose slowly from the surface of the sea, and
with the naked eye we could see, at the far horizon, a low dark
streak, that ended in a bluff or promontory Hartly sharply closed his
telescope.

"Luff, Paul--keep your luff," said he; "lie closer to the wind, while
I prick off our place on the chart."  He hurried below; but soon
returned, saying, "That is either Cape Farewell, or I am bewitched."

"Off the coast of Greenland?" said I.

"No, _on_ the coast of Greenland," he replied, laughing.  "And now,
as the ice and current have driven us so near it in spite of our
teeth, we may as well stand in for the shore, and get some fresh
provisions, before bearing up for Newfoundland."

A careful examination of the chart proved that we had drifted, or
been driven (in our endeavours to avoid the floes) to latitude 59°
48' North, and were in longitude 43° 54' West of Greenwich,
consequently, the land we saw was undoubtedly Cape Farewell, a lofty
promontory which forms the most southern extremity of Greenland.

With considerable satisfaction we stood in towards the shore, in the
hope of obtaining supplies from some of the Moravian settlements.

About four hours after, some of the natives who were fishing came
about us in their strange boats, which are made of whalebone covered
with seal-skin, and shaped like a weaver's shuttle, so that they may
be rowed any way.

By sunset we were close upon the land, and came to anchor several
miles north of the cape in a little cove of Nennortalik, or the Isle
of Bears, where, as Reeves said jestingly, we had no _groundage_ to
pay for letting go our cable; and there the wondering population of
the little Moravian colony received us with acclamation.  The canvas
was handed and most of the crew were allowed to go on shore, with
instructions to return with as much scurvy-grass as they could
collect; for with this herb, like Baffin, the voyager of old, Hartly
proposed to brew scurvy-beer for his patients.




CHAPTER XXII.

THE MUSK-OX.

Rejoicing that we trod on firm land once more, Paul Reeves, Hans
Peterkin, and I set off to shoot on the great Island of Sermesoak,
which is divided from the mainland of Greenland by the Fin Whale
Strait, while Hartly arranged with the Danish resident at the village
for such supplies of fresh food as a place so poor could afford.

Leaving the Isle of Bears, we ran our boat into a creek called
Cunninghame's Haven, from John Cunninghame, a Scotsman, who was
Admiral of Denmark, and who, on his return from Davis' Straits, in
1605, appeared off Greenland with three ships, and carried away some
of the natives, whom he presented to Christian IV., together with a
chain weighing twenty-six ounces, formed of fine silver, found by him
among the rocks at a place still named Cunninghame's Fiord.

With all our anxiety to add to the fresh provisions on board, we were
not without a desire to encounter some of the bears with which one
always associates the name of Greenland; and ere twenty-four hours
elapsed, I was certainly gratified to the fullest extent in that way.

The people of Sermesoak were then in consternation, owing to the
depredations of a fierce herd of Bruins which had crossed the strait
from the mainland, and devoured many of their children, dogs, and
reindeer.

These bears are as revengeful and subtle as they are savage.  "Some
years ago," says a traveller, "the crew of a boat belonging to a ship
in the whale-fishery shot at a bear and wounded it.  The animal
immediately uttered the most dreadful howl, and ran along the ice
towards the boat.  Before he reached it a second shot hit him; this,
however, served but to increase his fury.  He presently swam to the
boat, and in attempting to get on board, placed one of his fore-feet
on the gunnel; but a sailor, having a hatchet in his hand, cut it
off.  The animal still continued to swim after them, till they
arrived at the ship; several shots were fired at him which took
effect, but on reaching the ship he ascended to the deck; and the
crew having fled into the shrouds, he was actually pursuing them
_thither_ when a shot laid him lifeless on the deck."

Allured by the odour of the seal oil, they had surrounded and broken
into the dwellings of the natives in herds, and devoured them in
their beds; and numerous stories of these terrible _raids_ were told
to Hans (who knew something of the language) by the people of
Sermesoak, as we set out on our expedition.

We shot several white hares, and consigned them to a large canvas bag
which Hans had slung over his shoulder.  In our sporting ardour we
penetrated several miles into the country, and in making a détour to
beat up for nobler game, I lost my companions among the furze-covered
rocks of a ravine.  Dusk was coming on, and, wearied with halloing, I
sat down to look around me.  I was quite alone and in a strange
place, but more safe and comfortable in every way than when I was
alone on the ice-floe.  Though in a foreign and barbarous country,
this reflection set my mind completely at ease.

A wild and dreary scene lay around me.

Mountains piled on mountains of stern rock rose on every side,
covered with snow unmarked by footstep, track, or road.  No trees
were growing there and no verdure was visible, save some patches of
short grass and moss where the wind had torn the snow from the rocky
surface.  It seemed as if the icy breath of the Northern Sea, when it
swept through the Fin Whale Strait, destroyed all vegetable nature;
and as for the flowers of spring, one might as well have looked for
them on an iceberg.

Why that country was named the _Green_land, Heaven only knows!

In 1610, Jonas Pool, a whaling captain, called it King James'
Newland, from James VI. of Scotland; but that name was soon forgotten.

Above me impended a bluff of sullen aspect, the rifts of which formed
the eyrie of myriads of white sea-gulls and birds like the great
Solan goose of the Scottish isles; and these were whirring,
screaming, and booming on their broad pinions, as they came home from
the shore.

As the shadows deepened, even these sounds ceased, and nothing met
the ear but the croak of a lonely raven which sat on a granite
boulder.

Far away in distance, down below me, stretched the headlands which
jutted into the deep blue waters of the Whale Strait--starting up in
fantastic pinnacles and precipitous ridges, like the towers and
turrets of crumbling castles.  These walls of rock were black and
sombre, though their summits were crowned by eternal snow.

From the mountains the sleet and melting snows of ages have long
since washed away every grain of earth; hence, no verdure can spring
there, and their rugged fronts present the most harsh and singular
outlines.  The higher ridges are rendered inaccessible by glaciers;
and when the snows melt from their gloomy lichened fronts, long and
silvery runnels, that seem like threads in the distance, trickle down
the precipices; then winter comes again, converting these runnels
into ice, which splits and rends the hardest rock to fragments, that
roll with the sound of thunder down the steep glaciers into the
valleys below.

Leaning on my gun, I was surveying this wild and dreary scene, and
careless alike of the cold and the coming night, was lost in reverie,
when a sound aroused me, and on looking up, I saw close by an animal
of strange form, such as I had never seen before, even in a menagerie.

It was larger than a pony, but had singularly short limbs, which were
almost entirely concealed by the long dark hair that covered all its
body, and reached nearly to the ground.  It had a short tail, and
large crooked horns of powerful aspect, with a mass of hair like a
horse's mane hanging beard-wise under its throat.

A very strange sensation comes over one on beholding an unknown
animal for the first time, and on this musk-ox--for such it
was--approaching, with its large projecting eyes glaring, and while
shaking those formidable horns, by which it can encounter and slay
the bear and walrus, astonishment soon gave place to alarm, and I
regretted more than ever the absence of my two comrades.

The ox was only a pistol-shot distant, so, with my heart beating
quickly--as I knew not what the sequel might be--I levelled my gun,
and fired full at its head.  The animal uttered a bellowing roar,
bounded furiously forward, and fell motionless on its side.

The ball had pierced its brain.

With a thousand echoes, the report of my gun rang among the hills of
rock, peak after peak seeming to catch the sound and toss it from one
to the other, until it died away on the wind that blew through the
Fin Whale Strait.

I was not without hope that the sound might reach Reeves and Hans
Peterkin, and guide them towards me; but I hoped in vain.

The ox I had slain was one of the largest of the Musk species, and
might have weighed, perhaps, seven hundredweight.  It would, I knew,
prove a most acceptable addition to our scanty stores on board the
_Leda_; moreover, I was not a little vain of having slain, by a
single ball, an animal so large and so little known by Europeans; but
_how_ to get it conveyed to the brig, or how to guide any of our crew
to the spot where it lay, were puzzling queries.

I observed that at the distance of a hundred yards from it, there
rose a steep and rugged rock, cleft into three singular peaks, so
lofty as to be visible from a great distance.  Conceiving this to be
a sufficient landmark, I reloaded my gun, and resolved, if possible,
to discover Cunninghame's Haven, where our boat lay.  Without a
track, a road, or native to guide me, I toiled over the steep and
rugged mountains, and through ravines and hollows half filled with
drifted snow, steering my way by the stars in that direction which I
conceived might lead me to our boat.

To enhance the wildness and gloomy grandeur of the scenery, there now
came a wondrous and fan-shaped light over all the clear cold blue of
the northern sky--a glorious Aurora Borealis.  This light, sent by
Heaven to cheer the lone denizens of that frozen wilderness, spread a
rich and wavering glow over all the northern firmament, playing in
streaks or lines that alternately faded away, and resumed their
dazzling brilliance.  These alternations fill with awe the simple
Greenlander, who calls them the _Merry Dancers_, and who deems,

  "By the streamers that shoot so bright,
  The spirits are riding the Northern light."


At times, the whole sky seemed a blaze of diamond-like light, tinged
with rainbow hues, and in front of these, the stern rocks, crags, and
mountains stood forth in sharp black outline.  Ever and anon, an
electrical meteor shot athwart the sky, leaving, as these falling
stars always do, a train of momentary light.

Frequently the long streamers played across this luminous white
radiance as if a mighty fan were being opened and shut, or like the
spokes of some revolving wheel whose axle was at the Pole.  Then a
burst of glory would open in the zenith, and for a moment every
feature in the desolate landscape and the far-stretching vista of the
Whale Strait between its walls of rocks would be distinctly visible.

Alone in that sterile solitude, I gazed upon the Aurora with emotions
of mingled awe and wonder, turning again and again to the north, as I
stumbled over rocks and frozen snow piles in my efforts to discover a
path that led to Cunninghame's Haven; so the result was this--that
after more than an hour of toil, I found that I had been proceeding
in a circle, and came back to the place from whence I had set out,
the bluff with the three pinnacles, at the foot of which my musk-ox
was lying; but there a very singular scene presented itself, for my
property had already been converted into a banquet by two denizens of
the wilderness.




CHAPTER XXIII.

THE FOUR BEARS.

On first approaching, I imagined that a heap of snow had fallen from
the upper rocks on the dead ox, and advanced so close that I was only
twenty paces from it before discovering in my supposed snow-heap two
enormous white bears who were rending the body asunder with their
giant claws as one might rend a chicken, and were devouring it with
all the gusto of an appetite whetted by the frosty air.

To add to my dismay at this unexpected rencontre, I perceived close
by, some portions of a human body, half-devoured--red, raw, and
appalling!

A horror came over me, suggesting that this victim might be either
Paul Reeves or Hans Peterkin; and it was not until some time after,
that I was assured, by fragments of the dress which remained, that
the unfortunate was a Greenlander, whom they had crushed to death and
dragged away.  Pausing in their banquet, these savage brutes, which
were of enormous size, uttered a hoarse growl, and while their black
nostrils seemed to snuff the breeze, their deep-set eyes surveyed me
ominously.

My gun had but a single barrel, thus if I killed one bear I might
fall a prey to the other before there was time to reload; and if my
first shot missed, my fate would be sealed by both, as they were
certain to crush and devour me between them!

Turning, I fairly fled up the rocks towards the three pinnacles,
pursued by the bears, whose progress was slow, as they were evidently
gorged by their double repast on the dead man and the musk-ox.

Twice I stumbled in my flight, and fell heavily on my hands and face.
My breath came thickly and fast, and my long seal-skin boots and
overalls, which were strapped up to a waistbelt, greatly incommoded
me; but love of life and dread of a horrible death are sharp
incentives to exertion and activity; thus I struggled to gain a cleft
in the rocks, from whence I might turn and shoot down these unwieldy
monsters at vantage and at leisure, while they trotted laboriously
after me, uttering a succession of deep and menacing growls.

I had left them nearly fifty yards behind, while clambering up the
slope, terrified every instant lest by slipping on the ice-covered
rocks I might roll down under their very paws.  Already I was within
twenty feet of the cleft, beyond which the dazzling gleam of the
Aurora played, when a hoarser growl saluted my ears; and
there--there--above me in the cleft--in the very haven I was toiling
to reach, appeared a huge brown bear, squatted on his hams, licking
his great red lips, and quietly waiting my approach!

Bewildered by this new enemy, taken in front and rear, for a moment I
remained irresolute, with my rifle cocked, but not knowing which to
shoot before I met the rest with my weapon clubbed; and now to add
still more to my dismay and peril, a _fourth_ bear appeared,
advancing from another point!

The monster in the cleft above me, now began to utter hoarse and
savage roars, in anticipation of my destruction, which seemed
certain; for those northern bears are so cruel and rapacious, that
the female secludes her cubs (of which she never has more than two at
a litter) from the male, lest he should devour them during the first
month of their blindness.  I leave the reader to judge of my emotion
on finding my single self opposed to _four_ such antagonists; for the
white Greenland bears are double the size of those melancholy looking
brown brutes whom one may see dancing in the streets at home, being
generally about twelve feet long.

I was blindly desperate, yet my heart did not entirely fail; and I
felt forcibly "how an influence beyond our control lays its strong
hand on every deed we do, and weaves its iron tissue of necessity."

Clambering up the flinty face of the rocks to elude the three,
finding footing where, under circumstances less exciting, I might
have found none, I ascended resolutely towards the bear which stood
in the cleft snuffing the air, roaring, and showing his glistening
teeth.  Already his hot and fetid breath began to taint the air about
me.  I was within six feet of him, when, taking an aim there was no
doubt would be true, I fired, and the conical ball pierced deeply
into his vast chest.

Maddened by pain, Bruin made a wild bound at me, but missed his mark,
as I crouched low; so he rolled, dead I suppose, to the bottom of the
rocks, in his progress tumbling over one of those which were in
pursuit of me.  Springing into the cleft he had so lately occupied, I
hastened to reload, and defend my position, for only one brute at a
time could assail me, unless there were, as I feared, others among
the rocks in my rear.

Now what were my emotions on discovering that in my exertions, while
struggling up the rocks, the strap of my shot-belt had given way, and
that I had _lost_ it, with all my ammunition!

A wild perplexity filled my heart, and a cold perspiration burst over
my temples; but at that moment of desperation a happy thought
occurred to me.

Remembering that I had a long clasp-knife, which opened and shut with
a spring, I applied it in bayonet-fashion to my rifle, and with my
handkerchief lashed it hard and fast to the muzzle and ramrod head.
This was barely accomplished, when one of the bears had its fore-paws
on the edge of the rock whereon I stood, and by the light of the
stars I could see his fierce red eyes, his long white teeth, and
enormous claws, while burying my impromptu bayonet thrice in his
great broad breast, and then the blood flowed darkly over his pure
white coat.  The wounds were not deep enough to kill him at once, so
uttering roar after roar, the infuriated bear scraped away with his
hind feet, making vigorous but ineffectual efforts to reach me, till
by a furious kick I drove one of his paws off the ledge of rock.  The
other relaxed immediately, and then Bruin rolled like a great
featherbed to the bottom, about thirty feet below, where he moved no
more.

But in a moment a second bear took his place.  Emotion almost
exhausted me; but in my confusion when charging him, fortunately my
knife was thrust into his right eye.  He uttered a hideous cry,
between a bellow of rage and a moan of agony, and fell down the
rocks--also dead!

The weapon had evidently penetrated to the brain, and killed him.

A wild and joyous glow now filled my heart.  It was a triumphant
emotion, a lust for destruction and revenge, after the terror I had
endured; and I believe that had a whole army of bears appeared, I
should, without fear, have encountered them--one by one.

Uttering a "hurrah" just as the fourth bear arrived at my feet, I was
about to charge him as I had done the others when--oh, terror!--the
knotting of my handkerchief gave way, and the knife dropped from the
muzzle of my gun, and fell to the bottom of the rocks.

Clubbing the weapon, I rained a torrent of blows upon the great head
of this new assailant, which seemed the largest and most ferocious of
them all, as he probably had neither partaken of the poor Greenlander
or of that most unlucky musk-ox, the slaying of which had no doubt
brought me into this perilous predicament; but my blows fell on his
fur-covered skull as harmlessly as they would have fallen on a bale
of cotton.

Furiously I struck with butt and barrel at his broad black nose and
great round paws, the deadly claws of which grasped the rock with the
tenacity of iron hooks.  Bruin uttered neither roar nor other sound,
but concentrating all his energies, drew up his hams, made a vigorous
spring, and in a moment I was dashed to the ground--his hot and
horrible breath was in my nostrils and on my face, while his weight
pressed me down as he prepared to hug or crush me to death.  But now
a gun-shot rang between the rocks of the deep chasm, and I found
myself suddenly freed.  Pierced through the heart by a single
well-aimed ball, the bear rolled over me dead, a quivering mass of
flesh and fur!

So severely was I stunned by the shock of Bruin's attack, and so
confused by the whole combat, that some minutes elapsed before I had
sufficient strength or breath to thank my preserver, to whom I might
as well have spoken in Greek or Choctaw, as he proved to be a poor
Greenlander who had never heard a word of English before.




CHAPTER XXIV.

WOLMAR FYNBÖE.

After various efforts to make ourselves mutually understood, he said
something in a kind of jargon which resembled German, and as I had
learned that language at home for commercial rather than literary
purposes, we contrived to converse, though not with great fluency,
using grimaces and signs when words failed us, which was a
circumstance of frequent occurrence.

He informed me that he had been searching for a friend who came forth
to hunt for a musk-ox, which had been seen in their district, and who
he feared had fallen a victim to its horns or the bear's paws.

"I shot the musk-ox," said I; "and as for your friend, I fear your
surmises are only too correct, for the half-devoured remains of a
dead man are lying at the foot of these rocks just now."

He hurried to the base of the precipice, where I was too exhausted to
follow him, and by the sounds of rage and lamentation which preceded
his return, I was assured that his friend or kinsman had been the
victim of these rapacious brutes.  This comforted me, however, with
the conviction that the remains were neither those of Paul Reeves nor
old Peterkin, our second mate.

But, meantime, where were they?

The Greenlander rejoined me, with my shot-belt and gory knife, which
he found among the rocks.  He thanked me for so amply avenging his
friend's death on his destroyers, and proceeded at once to calculate
the value of the four skins and eight hams of the bears.  He invited
me to his house, which he said was not far off, adding that his name
was Wolmar Fynböe; that he was a merchant who exported to Europe
seal-skins, the horns of the sea-unicorn, whalebone, and blubber;
bartering these, and the skins of blue and white foxes, hares, and
bears, for knives and guns, shot, tobacco, barley, beer and brandy,
&c. that he had once been as far as Kiobenhaven,[*] but did not like
the manners of the _kablunaet_ (foreigners), who were but half men
when compared to the Greenlanders; for national vanity is a great
characteristic of these poor people, as it is of many others even
less civilized.


[*] Copenhagen.


Like the Lapps, he wore a long pelisse of untanned reindeer skin,
having a hood like a friar's cowl attached thereto, and buttons of
walrus teeth.  His hose, boots, and breeches, which were all in one,
were of the same material, but decorated at the sides by bunches of
thongs and tufts of white bearskin.  Thus, but for his fair
complexion, he might have passed very well for an Esquimau of the
Labrador coast.

I gladly committed myself to his guidance.

We soon reached his house, a dwelling of singular aspect, built on
the slope of a snow-covered hill which overlooked the Fin Whale
Strait, on the waters of which the rays of the northern Aurora were
still playing with wondrous beauty; and from thence he dispatched
some of his men to bring home the remains of his friend, the dead
bears, and the head of the musk-ox.

We were received at the door by an old servant, a woman of fearful
aspect, also dressed in skins; but these were adorned by stripes of
red and blue leather to indicate her sex.  She was aged, and being of
"the _old_ school"--for there is one there, even in Greenland--she
was tattooed as completely as if she had been a denizen of Nootka
Sound.  Aloft in her hand, which resembled a crow's talons, she held
a lamp to light us into an inner apartment, where Wolmar Fynböe
introduced me to his daughters, two girls dressed in skins; but these
were neatly adorned with variously-coloured leather, especially about
the moccassins which encased their trim legs.  Their dresses were cut
low at the neck, either to reveal its whiteness (for females have
vanity even in that region of ice), or to display their under
garments, which were formed of the skins of little birds, ingeniously
preserved, sewn together, and worn with the soft feathers next the
skin.

Wolmar Fynböe was the tallest man in Greenland, yet he measured only
five feet; and though deemed handsome, he had all the peculiarities
of his race--to wit, a paunchy figure, a broad flat visage, of a
brown brick-dust colour; small eyes, thick lips, and coal-black
locks, that waved upon his shoulders like those of a gnome.
Nevertheless, his daughters Grethe and Alfa had rather regular
features, clear complexions, and long brown hair, their mother having
been a woman of Iceland.

They were preparing a supper of _grod_ (Danish), a species of food
made of oats or barley, and eaten with butter and milk, when their
father's entrance with a _stranger_--a being more seldom seen than
mermaids and gnomes, by common report--startled them so much, that
some time elapsed before they could resume their occupation, and
swing upon the fire the great pot-stone kettle containing the
aforesaid _grod_ with my assistance--in proffering which I won the
hearts of all, politeness to females being rather a rarity on the
shore of the Fin Whale Strait.

The large fire burned brightly and cheerily, being composed of
drift-wood; for upon that barren coast, in addition to the stranded
wrecks of Scottish and Russian whalers, are found at times the spoil
of the Great Gulf Stream, the palmettoes of South America, and,
covered with weeds and barnacles, the vast logs that whilome cast the
shadows of their foliage on the lovely Bay of Honduras.  By this
strange current the spoils of Virginia and Carolina are also cast on
the shores of Iceland, and by it the main-mast of H.M.S. _Tilbury_,
which was burned in Jamaica, was thrown upon the western coast of
Scotland.

After having fed so long upon the spoils of the ice--the odds and
ends of seals and blubber--I made a veritable banquet with the worthy
merchant and his two daughters.  Then we had the luxury of hot
brandy-and-water thereafter--the Ganymede who served us being, ugh!
the old tattooed woman.

I have mentioned that the mansion of Weimar Fynböe presented a
curious aspect, but this arose from the circumstance of its being (as
he informed me) built from the remains of an old whale-ship of large
dimensions, which had been cast away in the Fin Whale Strait about
one hundred and fifty years ago.  Her ribs and timbers formed the
roof and uprights of the walls; on these the outer and inner
sheathing were bolted or pegged anew, and filled-in between with moss
and turf.  The lockers in which her cabin stores had been placed were
our seats, the beds were her berths; the room of the fur-clad Grethe
and Alfa was merely separated from ours by an old bulkhead, in the
centre of which a cabin door was hinged.  The four stern-windows were
framed into the wall, a luxury, a piece of splendour, in Greenland,
where the casements are usually formed of the entrails of seals and
dolphins dried, and neatly stitched together.  Some faded charts were
nailed on the wall as pictures.  An old musket or two, and a
pinchbeck watch, were nearly all that now remained of the spoil found
in the ship, which had been deserted by her crew; but from none of
these relics could her name or country be discerned, though I
supposed her to have been English from the circumstance of a Bible
and little book in that language having been found in her by the
grandfather of Wolmar Fynböe, who built his house from her materials.

The "little book" Wolmar showed me.  It was a curious black-letter
pamphlet, printed at London in the time of Charles II., and in Dutch
types.  I took a particular fancy for it, as it contained the
relation of a perilous voyage performed by a ship which belonged to
the Seven United Provinces.

Wolmar Fynböe offered to barter it for the horns of the musk-ox; but
I assured him that he was welcome alike to the entire head, the
bears' skins, and hams to boot.  To this he agreed at once,
conceiving, probably, that one who parted so readily with spoil did
not deserve to possess any; so I retired with my literary acquisition
(the contents of which I shall give to the reader elsewhere), begging
Wolmar Fynböe to have me summoned betimes in the morning, as I was
most anxious to reach Cunninghame's Haven, and rejoin my friends on
board the _Leda_.




CHAPTER XXV.

ADIEU TO THE REGION OF ICE.

Next morning I was up early, my bed not being exactly so luxurious as
I could have wished; and there was about everything that overpowering
odour of blubber which pervades a Greenland household.  For
breakfast, Grethe brought in a gaily-painted Muscovite bowl, full of
warm milk, and a hot barley-cake, made by Alfa.  Her father soon
after brought my gun, cleaned and oiled; and then bidding adieu in
rather symbolical language to his daughters, we set forth into the
clear, cold atmosphere of the young May morning--for we were now in
what is deemed in kindlier climes the second month of summer--but as
yet no sun was visible.

Far away in distance stretched the Fin Whale Strait, towards Kalla
Fiord, which opens into the Icy Sea; its broken scenery, its
splintered crags, its lofty bluffs and pinnacles, exhibiting the most
singular combinations of light and shadow in the yellow blaze of the
yet unrisen sun.  The summits seemed tipped with fire, while the
bases which rose sheer from the still, deep waters of the waveless
strait were dark and sombre as ebony.

Waveless it truly was, save where broken by the knoblike head of a
blackfin-whale, as he swam against the wind, and blew clouds of water
into the air.

As we proceeded, I could perceive that Wolmar Fynböe, though merry
and good-humoured, like all Greenlanders was deeply imbued with
superstitions dark and gloomy as those of the Scandinavian Edda.
Leaning on his hunting-spear, he pointed to a rock in the strait,
saying that his mother's sister Alfa (from whom he named his youngest
daughter) was wont to see a handsome young merman seated thereon,
every time she came to the beach to gather shell-fish or dry nets.

"A merman!" I reiterated, believing that I had not heard him
correctly.

"A merman," continued Fynböe, emphatically.  "His curling beard was
green, and his features, like those of the _Innuit_ (Greenlanders),
were as soft and pleasing as his manner was mild and persuasive.  He
took her by the hand, and after their fourth meeting led her under
the sea, where she lived with him at the bottom of the Fin Whale
Strait for a great many years, and never grew less beautiful, though
she frequently pined for the dwelling of her mother, whom at times
she could behold from the windows of her watery home, every summer
when the ice-floes floated out to sea, and the young whales came to
play about the headlands in the sunny waves.

"One summer came, but the old woman appeared no more on the slope of
the hill; and then Alfa knew that her sorrowing mother had gone to
the Island of the Dead.

"Alfa dwelt with the merman, till one night as he was sporting about
in the moonbeams amid the waters of the strait, Grön Jette, the wild
huntsman, who once in every year comes over the sea at midnight out
of Denmark, slew him by a blow of his lance, as he sped with his
yelling hounds and fierce black horses over land and ocean towards
the north, where the bright streamers were dancing.

"The spell was thus broken; and the young girl found herself turned
suddenly into an old woman, seated on the same rock where, twenty
years before, the merman had wooed and won her; but now seven
well-grown children with fish-tails, and hair that was half green
like her husband's and half golden like her own, were swimming about
in the flood before her, weeping for her return.  So, to rejoin them,
she plunged in and was drowned--for the spell of the merman's
presence was no longer around her.  Next day I found her body
floating in the strait, and by a string of crystals round her neck,
knew her to be the sister my mother had lost twenty years before.  We
bore her to the Island of the Dead; and as we use no coffins, like
the red-haired Danes, we heaped up stones to hide her from view; but
a bear swam off from Sermesoak, tore our gathered heap asunder, and
devoured her!"

Wolmar Fynböe rehearsed this strange story with the utmost good
faith; for he was simple enough to believe that Torngarsück, the God
of Greenland--a spirit which, though no larger than one's thumb, at
times assumes the form of a gigantic white bear--dwelt at the bottom
of the Whale Strait, with his wife the Demon of Evil, guarded by
droves of narwhals and ferocious seals, and surrounded by vast lamps
filled with train-oil, in which the sea-birds swam by night.

With many a strange story of witches, and conflicts with whales,
walruses, and with devils that sailed through the air and changed
themselves into snowdrifts to overwhelm belated hunters, he beguiled
the way, until we reached Cunninghame's Haven, where I found Paul
Reeves and Hans Peterkin awaiting me in considerable anxiety, and
irresolute whether to put off for the Bear Isle and report to Hartly
that I had been lost, or to return once more in search of me.

I now gave the honest Greenlander two crown pieces, as neck amulets
for each of his daughters (among whose descendants they may become
heirlooms for ages), and bidding him farewell, we stepped into our
boat, which was well stocked with game--a large white bear, a pile of
hares, and several brace of birds shot by the two mates.  Then we
shoved off to join the _Leda_, and Wolmar Fynböe, ever and anon
pausing to look after us, slowly ascended the cliffs, assisted by his
harpoon-shaped hunting spear, and at last disappeared on the path to
his half-barbarous and wholly secluded home.

In two hours after, we reached the _Leda_, which had her courses
loose, a signal for sea.  Our quota of provisions proved a very
acceptable addition to those obtained by Hartly from the Danish
resident.

"Bravo, Jack!" said he, as we hoisted the bear on board, "our
victualling department is complete now, and if this wind holds we
shall weigh an hour before sunset."

"But the victualling--of what does it consist?"

"The dainties--the luxuries of Greenland!"

"Indeed," said I, doubtfully.

"In exchange for a few hundred seal-skins, and some kegs of rancid
blubber, we have got pickled bear's flesh, bull-heads, gulls and
belugas, salmon-trout, and reindeer tongues, hares and partridges in
pickle, with a few tubs of whortleberries, preserved in oil.  We
shall have the white bear in the cabin to ourselves."

"Why?"

"Sailors won't eat white bear hams?"

"But why?"

"They assert that the flesh makes their hair grey.  We have also a
cask of sorrel preserved in blubber."

"Ugh! of course; but for what purpose?"

"As a preservative against scurvy.  And now up blue-peter, man the
windlass, and heave short on the anchor!"

We sailed an hour before sunset; and ere the pale white moon rose
from the sea, the jagged pinnacles of Sermesoak and the stormy bluff
of Cape Farewell were melting into the brilliant sky astern, while
our sailors sang cheerily as they hoisted the working anchor on
board, unbent the chain-cable and stowed it in the tier.  The month
being May we had the light of the sun nearly all night, though in the
daytime he only rises thirty-three degrees above the horizon.

However, we lit our binnacle lamps when he set, the sails were
trimmed for a south-west course, and now we fairly bore away into the
mighty ocean, and bade adieu for ever to the REGION OF ICE.




CHAPTER XXVI.

A SHARK.

For the fourth time during our rambling voyage, the _Leda_ was again
free and under sail upon the blue and boundless sea.

I cannot describe the emotions of joy with which, after our recent
long imprisonment amid the waste of ice we gazed upon its buoyant
ripples shining in the sun of May.  Its broad vast bosom of
resplendent blue--a blue so indicative of immensity--that spread far
away beyond the dim horizon, flecked with tiny floes of ice, seemed
as the mirror wherein we could trace the future.

It was freedom, it was the high road to our homes, to sunshine and
the genial south.  Everything was set that would draw--royals, flying
jib, and studding-sails, as we bore on with a breeze, which, though
keen, cold, and cutting, enabled us soon to leave the clime of frost
and suffering, bears and icebergs far astern.

On the second day we passed a ship waterlogged and dismasted,
battered, and abandoned.  Her boats, bulwarks, and everything had
been swept from her decks.  We bore down upon her, but there was no
sign of life on board, so we hauled our wind again and left her to
drift, where she would no doubt prove a prize, on the sterile coast
of Greenland.

One day a shark followed us with singular pertinacity, eluding every
shot we fired at his black dorsal fin from our rifles and sealing
guns, till Hans Peterkin, who was skilful in the use of the harpoon,
evidently wounded the monster by a well-directed blow over our stern
quarter, after which our enemy disappeared.  Old Hans exulted
considerably in his victory, but awoke that night in the midst of a
frightful dream, and alarmed all his shipmates by crying out that a
shark was devouring him.

"Take care, Hans," grumbled Tom Hammer, as he turned in his hammock,
annoyed on being roused from a sound sleep, "don't be falling
overboard, for it is my belief that Jack Shark is in the dead water
astern yet, looking out for his revenge."

This passed as a joke at the time, but next day it had a singular
sequel.

We were almost becalmed.  From being light and variable, the wind had
nearly died away.  The sea was smooth as if oil covered all its
surface; the listless canvas hung asleep, or flapped heavily as the
masts swayed to and fro, the reef points pattering, as the _Leda_
rolled lazily on the long glassy ridges that swelled up and shone in
the meridian sun.

Amid the general apathy which such a state of matters produces on
board of a ship, we were roused by the cry of "a dolphin alongside;"
and though these fish are generally met in droves, when the waves are
breaking and the wind blowing fresh, one was seen rising and sinking,
as if sporting in the sunshine.

Immediately Hans appeared on the bowsprit, armed with his Orkney
harpoon, a long spear pointed with barbed iron.  Rapidly he bent the
line to the foreganger of his weapon, and grasping it, with a handful
of slack in his right hand, he slid under the bowsprit, and along the
martingale stays which are stretched taut to the end of the jib-boom.
Clasping the vertical spar of the martingale with his left arm, he
took a steady aim at the dolphin, and launched his harpoon with all
his strength.

The stroke was followed by a shout from the crew, who crowded into
the bows and forerigging, for poor Hans had overstruck himself, and
after swinging violently round the martingale, fell into the sea,
missing the dolphin, which instantly disappeared.

"My dream--oh, my dream!" cried old Hans in terror, as he rose
floundering and sputtering to the surface.

Then came the appalling cry of "A shark! a shark!" and in the very
place where the dolphin sank, the short crooked fin of this great
monster of the deep was seen making straight towards Hans, who,
though an expert swimmer, a hard-a-weather salt, accustomed to all
the hardships and terrors of Ultima Thule and his native Orcades, was
struggling wildly for life, having got entangled in the slack line of
his harpoon.

"Captain Hartly--man overboard! a rope--a rope!"

"Cut away the life-buoy!"

"Lower away the stern-boat!"

Such were the cries on every hand, while the current soon swept
Peterkin past the brig, till he was nearly fifty yards astern.

Old Hans uttered a cry of despair, echoed by a groan from all, and
sank!

Regardless of the shark, which was then double the distance of Hans
from us, Hartly, who had rushed on deck at the first alarm, with the
rapidity of thought, threw off his coat, knotted a line round his
waist, lowered himself into the mainchains, and joining the palms of
his hands together in the cut-water fashion of a diver, urging the
while his agile body by a sharp push from the chain-plate, sprang
into the sea, and vanished amid the ripples.  Then in half minute or
less he reappeared with Hans, whose grey locks he grasped firmly, as
he cast upward a glance of mingled hope and terror--hope of aid from
his crew, and terror of the monster, which was shooting towards them;
for though the ring of Mother Jensdochter was to save him from
drowning, the good dame omitted all mention of sea-lawyers.

"Down with the stern-boat!" cried Reeves.

In a moment the falls were cast loose and the boat was lowered from
the davits, manned, and shoved off with a rapidity which nothing but
the discipline of the crew and their love for Hartly could have
ensured!  Save those in the boat, all held their breath--all were
paralysed by the scene, and our complete inability to aid or to
protect our friends.  However, the splashing of the half-drowned Hans
somewhat scared the monster, and kept him off.

The boat soon reached the spot; they were drawn on board, and just in
time, for the shark's nose was close to Hans' heels, while a hearty
hurrah greeted him and his gallant preserver.

Ere the boat was again dangling at the stern davits, the shark, which
had now recovered his surprise and the alarm Hans' splashing had
occasioned him, was seen darting furiously to and fro in search of a
victim; and but for the celerity of our boat's crew, one or other
must have perished in his horrible jaws.  Though the shark has rarely
the power to bite a man in two, he can strip the flesh from his body
in such a manner, that death is sure to follow.

The wind freshened after this, and the ship's course was resumed; but
as night came on, the studdingsails and royals were taken in.  Hans
appeared in very low spirits after his recent adventure, so Hartly
excused him from deck duty for that night.  Then, as we sat over our
grog in the cabin, the deck being in charge of Tom Hammer, Hartly
said--

"By the bye, Jack, you said something of finding an old printed yarn
about a shipwreck in Skipper Fynböe's house in Greenland."

"Yes--a queer old story it seems."

"Let us have it, then; read it aloud.  Cuffy, trim the lamps; bring
another case-bottle from the locker, and shut the cabin door.  Pass
word for Mr. Reeves and Hans Peterkin to step down--Mr. Manly is
about to spin us a yarn."

I soon produced my little story-book, of which (as it was an
authentic narrative) I shall give the exact title; though I prefer to
rehearse the contents in my own manner, as the language and spelling
of its author are somewhat quaint and antiquated.

It was called "The Wonderfull and Tragical!  Relation of a Voyage
from the Indies, printed at the Black Raven, in Duck Lane, A.D. 1684."

The substance thereof was as follows.




CHAPTER XXVII.

THE FATAL VOYAGE OF THE HEER VAN ESTELL.

It was in the month of August, 1670, that the barque _De Ruyter_,
bearing the flag of the Seven United Provinces (then under their High
Mightinesses the States General) and named after Michael Adrian de
Ruyter, Admiral of Holland--the same valiant mariner who beat the
English, burned Chatham, and bombarded Tilbury--left the port of
Pernambuco, in Peru, for Rotterdam, tacking carefully to avoid the
shoals and rocks which made the Portuguese of old name it the "Mouth
of Hell"--_Inferno-bocca_--hence its present corrupted name.

She was manned by Captain Koningsmarke and sixteen seamen; she
carried four brass guns, and had her stern decorated by the lions,
spotted sable and gules, which form the arms of Rotterdam.  Her mate
was an Englishman named Carpinger, a brave and skilful seaman.

As passengers, she had the Heer Van Estell, his wife Gudule, their
two little children, Erasmus and Cornelius, with Dame Trüdchen, their
faithful old nurse.  The Heer was a native of the Low Countries, who,
after a long residence in the Dutch colony at Brazil, had amassed a
magnificent fortune, and risen to be a Director of the Company of the
Great Indies, a dignity which no one could attain unless he vested
twelve thousand guilders in the old stock.  Now, having amassed all
the wealth he deemed desirable, with his wife and children--little
curly-haired Erasmus, whom he had named after the great philosopher
of Rotterdam (towards whose statue in the Bürger-platz he gave a
thousand rix-dollars), and chubby little Cornelius, whom he had named
after Cornelius de Witt, who, with his brother, was so barbarously
assassinated by William of Orange (and afterwards of England)--he was
returning to his native city to spend his days in peace and quiet,
with the three beings whom he loved most on earth.

The day was cloudless and clear, the wind was fair, but light, and
while the bark, with all her canvas set, from her flying-jib to her
spanker, and with the colours of the Seven Provinces flying at her
gaff-peak, passed in safety the flat sandbanks of St. Antonio, and
that long reef which receives the full force of the sea, and guards
the town of Recife, the tall and portly Heer, with his beautiful wife
and chubby little ones beside him, sat in a cushioned chair on the
warm deck, enjoying a long pipe of tobacco with all the ease and
complacency that became a wealthy Hollander and Director of the Great
India Company.

Without any emotion, save joy that he was returning, he saw the hill
of Olinda, the tall slender spires of the town, and the grim
batteries of Cinco Pontas, melt in the distance astern, as the _De
Ruyter_ bore away into the Western Ocean.

For more than a month the voyage was delightful and prosperous; but
adverse winds came anon, and storms too; and Captain Koningsmarke was
blown out of his course; moreover, he lost his reckoning, as the sky
remained obscured by clouds, and for weeks both quadrant and sextant
were used in vain.

His anxiety and that of the Heer became great, for provisions were
becoming scarce--so much so that, ere long, all on board received but
a scanty allowance.  Then Van Estell and Dame Gudule beheld with
secret agony the roses fading from the cheeks of their children,
their pretty faces becoming blanched, and their once round forms
attenuated.

Week after week rolled anxiously, mournfully away!

Still the winds were adverse, and still the _De Ruyter_ tacked and
tacked again, like the fabled ship of Vanderdecken, but without
meeting a craft that might assist them, till at last there fell a
death-like calm upon the sea; and then, for many, many days under a
hot sun, and in the breathless nights that followed, the helpless
vessel lay like a log, with her blocks and cordage rattling, and her
loose canvas flapping until it was frittered and frayed on the
blistering yards and masts, while the sea chafed her rusting
chain-plates and the pitch boiled from her planking--yet "she lay so
that, for several weeks, they could scarcely tell whether they were
forwarded a league's space."

And now a deadly pest broke out on board--a malignant fever, which
covered its victims with livid blotches, like the spotted lions,
gules and sable, on the ship's stern; and among those who perished
were Koningsmarke, the captain, and eight of his crew.  They were
thrown overboard, and for days their bodies remained in sight, with
fishes sporting about them, and obscene birds of the sea lighting on
them, as they floated on its still and waveless surface.

Provisions were now dealt out more sparingly than ever.  Strong men
grew wan, and gaunt, and feeble; for as their strength failed and
hope faded, so did their spirit die within them; and then even the
most superstitious ceased to _whistle_ for wind.

At last they were reduced to a half biscuit and single morsel of meat
per day; the latter failed, and then the half biscuit; and now they
looked grimly and terribly in each other's hollow visages and
bloodshot eyes, while wondering what was to become of them, for
although lines had long hung overboard, the sea had refused to yield
them fish.

"To wait with hope is nothing, but to wait with DESPAIR is worse than
death!"

So did the Heer Van Estell wait, and his wife Gudule--now no longer
the beautiful Gudule, for she was wan, wasted, and sinking, having
given her pittance of food for several days to sustain her little
ones.  All his wealth, all the riches acquired by years of prudence
in the Indies, would the unhappy Van Estell have given gladly to
purchase a single biscuit, to sustain for one day more the lives of
those he loved so well.

At last little Erasmus and Cornelius died, passing away without pain
or a murmur, having become of late too weak even to weep for food.

They passed away, and the Heer and his wife remained by the pretty
corpses as if transformed to stone!

Four days passed after this--still no food--no hope--no wind in the
air, no ship upon the sea!

Gudule could not consent to cast her dead children into its mighty
depth; but anon she repented of it bitterly, for the eight seamen who
remained, after a long conference on the forecastle, and frequently
casting glances aft towards the cabin--glances like those of
wolves--came in a body, and demanded that the dead children should be
surrendered to them as _food_!

The entreaties and tears of the parents were vain.  The Heer (now
shorn of his strength) and his miserable helpmate were thrust into
their cabin, while the wasted bodies of their children were borne
away and laid on the drum of the capstan, where they were cut to
pieces by the cook's knife, and then devoured raw.  Hunger seemed to
make the sailors insane, and able to overcome all aversion for food
so unnatural; but whether it was that they ate immoderately, or that
with satiety came a horror of their meal, I know not, but they were
immediately assailed by a dreadful sickness, which left their bodies
weaker than ever.

Gudule lay in a stupor on her bed, but the Heer loaded his pistols,
though scarcely knowing for what purpose; and exerting all his
strength, he contrived to burst open the cabin door and stagger on
deck, when the crew, whom the hunger of another day assailed again,
had just concluded the last of a second dreadful banquet--a banquet
on his children!

On the capstan there lay the head of one.  It had the fair curly
locks of little Erasmus.

"Oh, madness and agony!" groaned the miserable Van Estell, as he took
it in his tremulous hands, kissed it tenderly thrice, and slowly and
solemnly dropped it into the glassy sea.

He could not weep--his hot dry eyes refused a tear, but groans burst
from his overcharged breast and parched lips, and he swooned on the
deck.  There he lay, and so another day passed.  When he recovered it
was about the time of midnight, and a full round moon was shining on
that now neglected ship of death and of despair.

The atmosphere was mild and warm.

The Heer stole into the cabin, and saw that his poor, sad, childless
wife lay very still and motionless.  Tremblingly he drew near, lest
she might be dead; for then he had resolved to cast her and himself
into the sea, lest her fair form might also be devoured by the madmen
on deck.  But she was in a soft sleep, dreaming, perhaps, that her
lost little ones were alive, and seated by her side in a palm grove
of Peru, listening to the voice of the campanero, or sweet bell-bird
of Brazil.  The deep slumber that follows long hours of mental and
bodily suffering had fallen upon her.

The poor man wept and kissed her tenderly, but at that moment the
mate, George Carpinger, entered, and roughly ordered him to come
forward to the capstan head, where he and his comrades were
deliberating on what was to be done next.

Heer Van Estell assured himself that his pistols were still in his
pocket, that they were primed and loaded, and then he obeyed.  As
these nine men stood round the capstan, they resembled spectres
rather than human beings, when the cold lustre of the moon fell on
their pallid visages and bloodshot eyes that glared wildly from out
their sunken sockets.

Eleven persons were still on board, namely, the Heer, his wife and
servant, the mate, and seven seamen; it was evident that one must be
sacrificed to prolong the existence of the rest, and mentally they
resolved that whoever became the victim, should be cooked, lest the
flesh might sicken them again......




CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE FATAL VOYAGE--HOW THEY CAST LOTS.

"I am aware," says the author of _Antonina_, "of the tendency in some
readers to denounce truth itself as improbable, unless their own
personal experience has borne witness to it."  In this spirit, some
may denounce the fatalities of the Heer's voyage as improbabilities,
though the hideous circumstance of human beings in extremity of
hunger destroying each other for food, has been too well and too
terribly established in many instances--such as the wreck of the
French frigate _Medusa_; when the British frigate _Nautilus_ was lost
on a solitary rock in the Mediterranean; during the famine on board
the American ship _Peggy_; and on many other occasions.

But to resume our little quarto.

The mate conducted the Heer Van Estell to the capstan, where the
starving seamen stood in a silent group, and then he informed him in
a hoarse whisper--

"That unless they contrived a means of furnishing themselves with
food, they must all die of starvation; it was impossible for them to
subsist for another day.  That there were eleven persons on board,
and they had come to the resolution of determining by lot who should
die that the rest might live."

"_Eleven_ on board!" reiterated the Heer, faintly, for his poor wife
Grudule was one of these.

"Eleven," added a seaman named Adrian Crudelius, with a wild glare in
his eye; "if one dies, ten may live.  Bring your wife on deck, sir;
she must take her chance with the rest.  There must be no distinction
here."

"Nay," said George Carpinger, "we may excuse her presence, and so
spare her some of this horror; but her husband shall draw for her."

"Sirs," replied the poor Heer, "I thank you.  Even here she finds the
privileges of her sex accorded her."

Then with tremulous hands the mate tore a sheet of paper into eleven
pieces, and numbered them from _one_ to _eleven_.  He folded and
placed them in his hat.  It was then agreed that he who drew number
_one_ was to die, and that he who drew number _two_ was to be the
executioner.  After shaking the fatal pieces of paper, amid a silence
that was awful--the silence of horror--for food or want, death or
life, were on the issue, every glassy eye was fixed, each nether jaw
relaxed, while with hot and feverish hands that trembled, they drew
forth their lots--the Heer taking two in succession.  He opened them
hastily, smote his forehead, uttered a wailing cry, and reeled
against the capstan.

He had drawn numbers "one" and "two," so it was the lot of him to
die, and by the hand of Grudule, or _vice versâ_!

The unhappy seamen had scarcely foreseen a chance so terrible as
this.  Carpinger urged that the wife should be spared, or that lots
should be cast once more; but those who by risking their fate had
escaped death, were loth to tempt it again, and with sullen murmurs
declined.  Propping himself against the capstan, the unfortunate Van
Estell summoned all his energies, and thus addressed them:--

"My good companions in misery, you have seen our sorrow and despair
for the loss of our dear little children; and though I know that
death would be a relief and refuge to my poor Grudule, neither she
nor I can perish by the other's hand.  Thus I offer myself freely and
willingly as the victim and sacrifice.  When I am dead, I charge
you--I pray you be kind unto her.  Conduct her to her friends, her
home, her country, and be assured that if ever you are happy enough
to see the waters of the Maese, and the old spires of Rotterdam, she
will have wealth enough to reward you all.  May Heaven bless you!
Gudule, farewell--my poor Gudule!"

At these words he drew a pistol from his pocket, shot himself through
the head, and fell flat on the deck.  Some appeared stunned by the
whole affair, but two threw themselves upon the yet quivering body
like wild animals, and sucked up the blood that oozed from it.

In the weird light of the moon, that bloody deck, that silent group
and fallen corpse, presented an awful scene to Gudule Van Estell, who
tottered from her cabin, being roused by the sound of the pistol; but
now Carpinger the mate, Adrian Crudelius, and her old nurse, bore her
back into the cabin, and fastened the door to prevent her seeing the
dreadful scene that was sure to ensue, when the famished men, in
their voracity and fury, almost tore the clothes from the body of the
Heer, being rendered more mad than ever by the contents of a single
case-bottle of Geneva which had been discovered.  They hewed the body
to pieces, cast its head into the sea, and again the horrible repast
commenced--a repast which rendered two raving mad, for with loud
yells they sprang overboard and disappeared.

All the rest became insane, save the mate and Adrian Crudelius, who
endeavoured to control their extravagance.  One proposed to scuttle
the ship, or set her on fire, that all might perish together; another
raved and blasphemed Heaven for withholding the wind; a third
denounced the craft as being under a spell, and thus fixed to one
part of the sea, from whence she would never stir till her timbers
rotted and her planks opened; and all, save the mate, were unanimous
that next time the wife of the Heer, upon whom one of the lots had
fallen, should perish for their sustenance if a sail came not in
sight.

That day passed as others had done; the glassy sea without a ripple,
the hot sun overhead, the sails flapping against the masts; the
banner of the Seven Provinces, inverted as a sign of distress,
hanging listlessly downward from the gaff-peak; the sky without a
cloud, the horizon without a sail, and the hearts of the cannibals on
board the _De Ruyter_ without hope!

Gudule Van Estell was still surviving.  The kind mate had caught a
couple of mice; these he gave to the nurse, who cooked them in secret
for her mistress and herself.  But now, towards evening, four of the
crew, who were bereft of reason, approached her cabin door, and were
attempting to force it open, for the purpose of dragging her to the
capstan head, when George Carpinger, armed with a cutlass, rushed
forward, and drove them back.

They soon procured arms, and howling like wild animals, attacked him,
staggering the while like drunken men with weakness.  Crudelius now
joined the mate, and there ensued a conflict in which two were slain,
and their bodies were cast overboard by the survivors, who were
already so glutted by their horrible food as to have no desire for
more.

By the noon of the next day, all had perished by exhaustion, save the
mate and the Dame Van Estell.

Night was coming on, and the poor solitary seaman was sitting on the
windlass in a species of stupor, when an unusual coolness in the
atmosphere roused his attention, and, with a sailor's instinct, he
felt the coming breeze.

First there came a gentle catspaw upon the darkening water, then a
ripple, and now a whitening of the wave-tops at a distance.  He
stretched his tremulous hands towards them, and wept in joy!

Anon, clouds came banking up in dense masses to leeward, and
rain--blessed rain! began to fall, while the wind of heaven blew the
long neglected rigging out in bands, and filled the flapping sails.

A brace of lazy gulls suddenly appeared wheeling about; and a bird--a
land bird--perched on the end of the studding-sail boom alongside.

The haggard eyes of Carpinger swept the horizon, and saw afar off a
spark, which he at first supposed to be a star, but, ere long,
discovered to be a light; yet whether it shone on board of a ship, or
on the shore, he knew not; so he lashed the helm, and rushing to the
lifts and braces, strove to trim the sails and shape the vessel's
course towards it.

The bunting began to shake at the gaff-peak; ere long it floated out
upon the wind, while a wake whitened astern, a bubble rose under the
bows, and the _De Ruyter_ walked through the water as of yore.

The breeze continued, and next morning she was close in upon a bleak,
rugged, and mountainous coast, which proved to be the Lizard Point in
Cornwall, the most southern promontory of England.*


* It must be borne in mind that the mouth of the Channel was less
frequented by shipping in 1670, than now.


George Carpinger had the Dame Van Estell conveyed ashore in the
stern-boat, together with a casket of valuable jewels; and the _De
Ruyter_, after drifting about the coast, escaping the Cornish
wreckers, who deemed a wreck "a Godsend," was taken into Plymouth and
sold.  Gudule Van Estell was afterwards conveyed to Rotterdam, where
she found herself one of the wealthiest widows in the city; and as a
reward to George Carpinger for defending her life so valiantly in the
fated _De Ruyter_, she bestowed her hand and guilders upon him.

"They lived long and happily together; and he died Burgomaster of
Rotterdam in 1720, when Anne was Queen of Britain."

------------

"So ends this story," said I.

Hartly filled his glass of grog, and emptied it in silence.

Then I could perceive that the perusal of the history of this fatal
voyage had a most unpleasant effect upon all who heard it, for
Reeves, Hartly, and Hans Peterkin, frequently recurred to it
afterwards.

"That little black pamphlet came from a wrecked ship," said Hartly,
one day--"'a fated craft'--I can't help wishing you had never brought
it on board, Jack."

"Why?" I asked.

"It is such a devil of a horse-marine yarn about these Dutchmen
eating each other."

"How?"

"I always think about it."

"I can easily put it out of existence by stuffing it under a kettle
in the cook's galley; it may aid Cuffy in cooking the dinner."

"No, no," said he, hastily, "that would be worse."

"In what way?"

"I don't know," said he, thoughtfully; "but such things are like the
Flying Dutchman's letters, which must neither be taken or refused
when the wind blows them on board."

Some days after this, Hartly lost his ring--the ring given him by old
Mother Jensdochter--the amulet which, until that moment, he had never
been without.  It was torn from his hand while assisting to haul the
maintack on board, and dropped over the gunnel.

This trivial event, and the story of the _De Ruyter_, together with
the past evils of our voyage, affected Hartly and Reeves more
seriously than I could have imagined.  From the cabin, Cuffy Snowball
soon carried the vague fears forward among the seamen.  Hans Peterkin
began to shake his white head ominously, for old mariners have, they
know not why or how, strange instincts and presentiments; so our
crew, without any just reason, became more than usually solicitous
about their duties, and anxious for the termination of the voyage.




CHAPTER XXIX.

ADVENTURE WITH A WHALE.

Next day the wind veered due west, and we trimmed the _Leda_, to lie
close to it, making long tacks to the southward, as we had been
driven so far to the north-east.

Hartly and I were leaning over the weather-quarter, chatting and
gazing listlessly at the white water that bubbled like a flooded
mill-race under the brig's counter, while Mother Cary's chickens came
tripping lightly after us, when suddenly a huge whale (like a ship's
hull, bottom uppermost) rose from the waves close by us, with the
water pouring in torrents from its dusky and shining sides.  Its
appearance was so sudden and alarming, that I started back; but
Hartly laughed, saying,

"Don't mind him, Jack; he is not coming on board."

For a full minute he floated in the water, keeping pace with the
brig, to the great admiration of our old Orkney whaleman, Hans, and
then sank slowly down--down far below.  We could see his vast bulk
shining as he passed _under_ us, and came up on our other side, so
close that he almost grazed the copper of the _Leda_.

This monster of the deep was nearly as large, at least as long, as
the brig, and his aspect was calculated to inspire awe in those who
were less familiar than we now were with the denizens of the sea.

He was a common whale, and the head being, as usual, out of all
proportion, was one-third the entire size of the fish, while the eyes
were no larger than those of an ox.  The smooth and slippery skin,
from which the foam dripped, was mottled; and it--or _he_, as we
named him--swam not as whales generally do, _against_ the wind, but
with us.

Our friend was evidently in a playful mood, as he repeatedly rose and
sank, plunged and surged up on each side of the _Leda_ alternately,
and twice grazed our rudder.

"He smells the blubber and sealskins aboard, sir," said Hans
Peterkin, "and they make him frolicsome, you see."

"Look out, sir!" added Reeves, who was in the mainchains; "by Jove,
he'll be foul of us in his next gambol!"

"And we may have our rudder unshipped--I don't like this at all,"
replied Hartly.  "Cuffy, bring me a sealing-gun, with powder and a
handful of slugs."

In half a minute Hartly stood in the boat at the stern davits, with
the long gun loaded and charged with ten square junks of lead, each
larger than a rifle ball.  Then, just as the whale, for the fifth or
sixth time rose under the stern, he fired.

The whole charge entered one of the great spiracles, or blow-holes,
which are situated in the middle of the head, about sixteen feet from
the nose, and through which this fish can spout to a vast height when
wounded or annoyed.  The moment the gun was fired, our whale sunk
like a stone.

"There he goes, for ever I hope!" cried Hartly.

"We have not seen the last of him, sir," said old Hans, as he got
astride the boom of the fore-and-aft mainsail in his excitement to
see the whale again; "he has a long way to go _down_, before he'll
come up again.  Why, Lord love you, sir, I have known them in the
sound of Yell, when struck by a harpoon, descend head-foremost for
eight hundred fathoms, (at the rate of eight knots an hour, till the
line in the bowpost smoked, ay, blazed with friction,) and then come
up with their jawbones broken, by running foul of a rock at the
bottom.  That one has gone down fully four hundred fathoms."

"How do you know, Hans?"

"By the eddy--he'll be up to _blow_, directly."

"Where?" said I.

"On our weather beam, I think.  See! there are the bubbles of his
blowing already!"

Hans was right; even while he spoke, the whale rose to the surface,
about fifty yards from us, and from his blow-holes shot a vast spout
of water streaked with blood into the air, and then it pattered like
rain as it fell into the sea.  After lashing the water furiously with
his tail till it boiled in foam around him, and the air above became
filled with vapour, he threw himself into a _perpendicular_ position,
and stood for a moment like a pillar, from the sea.

It was a strange and exciting scene!

He now flapped his mighty flukes, which were perhaps thirty feet
apart, till they cracked like a gigantic whip, and then sank from our
gaze in a deep eddy, around which the concentric waves heaved and
broke for a considerable time; but we saw him no more.

"Well, Hans," said I, "how do you like this adventure?"

"Not much, Master Manly," replied the old Scotsman, shaking his white
hairs; "'cause you see, sir, when a whale takes to dancing about on
his nose in this fashion, after lashing the water with his flukes, a
_storm_ is sure to follow.  A whale knows better than a human
creature when a close-reefed topsail breeze is coming, by a pricking
pain that comes over their bodies, and so, after dancing about as
that fellow did, they run right away from that quarter of the sea to
another.  I have known o' this many times, when I was a wee bairn at
home in Whalsoe.  I'll stake a trifle we have our topgallant yards on
deck before the sun sets."

And old Hans proved correct.




CHAPTER XXX.

LOSS OF THE "LEDA."

On the night after our adventure with the whale I had turned in to
bed betimes; but was roused about two in the morning by the noise
made by Hammer, our carpenter, Cuffy Snowball, and others battening
the deadlights of the stern windows.  At the same moment I became
sensible of the unusual motion of the vessel, of the tremendous din
that reigned on deck, and of the furious manner in which my cot, the
brass cabin lamp, and the tell-tale compass swung about.

"What is the matter?" I asked, starting up, while the prophecy of
Hans flashed on my memory.

"Matter, sir! faith, if you were on deck you would soon find out!"
was the somewhat impatient response of Tom Hammer, who was drenched
to the skin.

"Is it blowing hard?" said I.

"'Twill nebber blow harder, Massa Tanly, till him blows himself right
out," grinned Cuffy Snowball.

"A regular hurricane! the brig is almost under bare poles, and we
sound the pumps every half-hour," added Hammer, who seemed indignant
at the soundness of my past slumber.

On hearing all this, I leaped out, dressed myself, and hurried on
deck.

A wild gale, in short, a tempest, was roaring through the rigging and
straining the shrouds of the _Leda_; she lurched and pitched heavily,
as she rushed through mountains of seething foam; for amid the black
obscurity on all sides we could see its whiteness, and the snowy
surf, which was torn by the wind from the wave-crests, and swept,
like smoke, along the sea.

The brig was driving right before the wind, under a foresail,
foretopsail, and fore and aft mainsail, all closely reefed.
Everything was done that might render her snug.  The deadlights had
barely been shipped before she was struck by a wave which buried her
in the black trough of the sea--tore her stern-boat from the iron
davits, and swept it away like a leaf shred from a twig.

Hans and Paul Reeves were at the wheel.  Hartly stood by them pale
and excited, as I could perceive by the glimmering lights of the
binnacle.  All hands were on deck, and muffled in their glazed
storm-jackets and dripping sou'-westers, so they seemed as drenched
as if they had come up from the bottom of the sea.

"Take care of yourself, Jack--take care!" cried my friend; "every sea
she ships sweeps something off the deck, and we have already lost one
man from the fore-yardarm."

"Good Heavens--when?"

"About an hour ago--poor Bill Bradley!"

I grasped one of the mainshrouds, for the deck was so slippery, the
gusts of wind so fierce, and the force of the seas, which broke ever
and anon across the brig, so overwhelming, that I could never have
kept afoot for a moment without some support.

On, on careered the _Leda_, through wind and waves--on through
whitening foam and tossing wrack--on through drenching rain,
darkness, and obscurity, with the storm roaring and whistling amid
her straining spars and rigging, while she groaned in every timber,
and seemed to quiver to her backbone, as the ponderous waves pursued
and burst upon her.

Once or twice the gloom around us was varied by sheets of lightning
which gleamed luridly at the far horizon; and then for an instant the
black waves seemed to be washing _against_ the reddened sky.
Elsewhere to the northward, when the black flying scud was torn
asunder in heaven, we saw the long flickering rods of the "merry
dancers" playing athwart the sky.  Then the crape-like rent would
close, and all again became pitchy darkness.  The sea which tore away
our quarter-boat had started the sternpost.  Tom Hammer and his mates
rushed to sound the pumps, and reported that "the water in the well
had risen _four feet_!"

Hoarse orders were bellowed by Hartly through his trumpet, and the
clank of the pumps rang incessantly, for it was evident she had
sprung a leak somewhere aft, the _clear_ water having replaced the
bilge; so a fresh gang was required every quarter of an hour.  Here
was a place in which I could make myself useful, and take my "spell"
with the rest; and where, though the dread of perishing was strong in
my heart, I worked hard but mechanically, like one in a terrible
dream.

Hammer, with all the hands that could be spared from the deck,
hurried below, but soon reappeared, to announce--why I know not--that
to get at the leak was impossible!

"Do we gain upon her?" was the constant question of those who toiled
at the pumps; but Hammer was too full of hopelessness to reply; so
for hours the monotonous clanking went on, till the chains and
leathers of the pumps became almost useless, and then the water rose
rapidly in both the fore and after hold!

We threw our large anchors and carronades overboard to lighten her by
the head; but without much avail.  Pale and composed--resolute yet
anxious--poor Hartly had stood by the pumps, encouraging us by his
voice and example.  He was, however, sad and gloomy.  That the loss
of his _ring_ affected him was evident.  How strong and yet how weak
is the mind of man!

The water continued to rise rapidly, though we toiled till our knees
and arms ached; grey dawn began to brighten in the east, but there
was no symptom of the storm abating.

"If she ships one sea more, such as that which struck our quarter,"
said Hartly, "she will founder!"

The words were scarcely uttered, when a mighty mountain of black
water reared up like an arching cliff, fringed by foam, came hissing
and roaring towards us, and burst in thundering volume on our decks,
sweeping poor Tom Hammer the carpenter, another seaman, and all the
spare booms, spars, buckets, and everything that previous waves had
left, overboard--starting the longboat from its lashings, and dashing
it with such violence against the larboard bulwarks, that a vast
breach was made in them.  The gang at the pumps were all tumbled in a
heap into the starboard scuppers, and returned to their work with
difficulty.  The iron sling of the mainyard gave way at the same
moment, and the spar with the handed sail fell heavily with all their
gear into the sea.

Under this shock the Leda literally _stood still_, as if paralysed in
her forward progress.

Another fatal volume burst upon her quarter, and _then_, alas! she
began to settle down into the trough of the sea.  She had lost all
her buoyancy and was sinking!  Her rudder was torn away--the stern
frame shattered, and so she filled with perilous rapidity.

"Clear away the longboat, Reeves--unship the compass in the
binnacle," ordered Hartly; "Hans, get up a beaker of water, a bag of
bread--in oars and blankets--we must quit instantly and shove off!"

"In such a sea as this?" asked Reeves, with wildness in his eye, as
he clung to a belaying pin.  "No boat can live----"

"Ay, Paul, even in such a sea as this; we must quit the ship, or sink
with her.  Stand by, my lads, and throw her head to the wind."

"The foremast will go like a reed--but see--the wind has already done
what you wish."

The loss of her rudder had rendered the _Leda_ (her chain plates were
now in the water) unmanageable, but, with the promptitude and
decision of brave and desperate hearts, some of our men hurried to
the braces, to strive and keep the vessel's head to windward, while
others got the longboat cleared of all that endless _débris_ and
rubbish which usually accumulate there during a voyage--launched it,
and by fending, with no small exertion of skill and strength,
prevented it from being dashed to pieces against the side of the
foundering _Leda_.  A cask of water was thrown in, also the binnacle
compass, which, unfortunately, was broken during the confusion.  The
oars were luckily lashed to the thwarts; the mast, yard, sail, and
rudder were also there, and we prepared at once to leave.

Wild though the wind, the atmosphere was dense and full of vapour and
obscurity; the mingled rain and surf were so blinding, that one could
scarcely see one's hand outstretched at arm's length.  To keep our
feet in such a howling tempest was almost impossible; thus in passing
forward or aft, we were obliged to drag ourselves along by clutching
belaying pins, cleats, and ring-bolts, while many of us were severely
injured by pieces of broken wreck that floated about the deck, and
were dashed to and fro by the waves.

Two or three of our men were stunned, and on falling overboard were
seen no more; but in less than three minutes after the longboat was
launched, we had all left the ship--Hartly being the last to do
so--and to the number of fourteen in all (including Paul Reeves, Hans
Peterkin, Cuffy Snowball, and me), committed ourselves to the mercy
of the sea and storm, in that small craft, which was tossed like a
cork upon the billows.

For a time the boat was rasped so furiously against the side of the
brig, that all our united strength was requisite to get under her
shattered stern, and fairly shove off.  We worked in silence--the
silence of black desperation!

But on falling astern of the sinking brig, the boat became exposed
still more to the fury of the sea.

"Pull her round," cried Hartly; "keep her bow to the break of the
sea, or we shall be swamped.  Pull to windward of the _Leda_!"

As we did so, a single wave nearly filled the boat, and we had
nothing for it but to bear away before the roaring blast.

Through the black drift we could see the brig, from which we were
only a few yards distant, sinking deeper and deeper; at last the
waves rolled in fierce tumult over her deck; still not a word escaped
us.  Our hearts were too full for utterance; but a pang of sorrow and
dismay thrilled them when the poor little _Leda_, with her masts
still standing, went down into the waste of waters and disappeared
for ever!

Hartly now took off his sou'-wester, and briefly told us "to be of
good heart, for God would be sure to protect us."

All present untied and took off their hats, and listened to him in
silence, though he could scarcely be heard amid the wild fury of the
gale.  Then Paul Reeves, who pulled the bow oar, shouted--

"Three cheers, my lads, for our captain!"

And they gave them with all the heartier will that he was now as poor
as themselves, for all that Hartly possessed in the world had gone
down with the _Leda_, as she was not insured.  To keep the boat from
being swamped, with incredible difficulty we now stepped her mast,
hoisted a little of the sail, and bore away before the wind; but when
we were in the _trough_ of the sea, it flapped against the mast, and
the next instant, when we rode on the _summit_ of a wave, the wind
almost tore it to shreds.  Then the wild water bubbled over her
stern, often immersing the steersman to his ears, and obliging us
incessantly to bale with our hats; but the increasing light of dawn,
and an evidence of some abatement in the tempest, encouraged us to
persevere in our efforts to save our lives; and so we struggled
manfully with the warring elements.




CHAPTER XXXI.

THE CRY.

The wind and sea went down together as day brightened on the
cheerless scene.  After the night we had passed, how grimly pale and
wan our faces seemed in the cold grey dawn of morning!

This catastrophe occurred in the middle of May, when we were about
three hundred miles from St. John, our destination.  Our compass was
broken, but we continued to steer south-west and by west, as well as
we could determine.

The gale having abated, we hoisted the sail to the masthead, shipped
our oars, and after receiving about a tablespoonful of rum per man,
endeavoured to make the best of our way towards Newfoundland, in the
hope of being picked up, ere long, by one of the many outward or
homeward bound traders.

When day was fully in, we swept the sea with anxious eyes, but not a
sail was visible!

Cast thus helplessly on the wide ocean, with a few biscuits, a small
beaker of fresh water, and a gallon keg of rum, at a distance of
three hundred miles from land, our prospects were gloomy in the
extreme; and amid them all, the horrible story of the _De Ruyter_,
and similar miseries endured by those of whom I had heard and read in
such situations, haunted me.

Exertion warmed us: we now got our clothing wrung out and dried, the
boat thoroughly baled, and by midday we were as comfortable as men so
circumstanced might be.  Cuffy, who had saved his violin, the only
article of property he ever possessed, now proceeded to enliven us,
as he had often done before, by singing a negro melody, to his own
accompaniment; yet this was but ghastly mirth at best.

Our biscuits being soaked by the brine, excited a thirst which we
were without the means of allaying.  Moreover, the _idea_ of being
upon allowance in itself excites a thirsty craving; thus by the noon
of the second day, the water in the beaker was nearly consumed, and
we had no hope now but for rain.

I believe some hours elapsed before we were fully aware, or had
realized a true sense of our dreadful situation.

How shall I describe the days that passed--and how the nights?
Morning after morning only dawned to raise our hopes of success; and
these faded as the day wore on; and then the nights were dark
monotonous hours of bitterness and despair.

Yet they were the short nights of May; and it must be borne in mind
that however warm they are upon the land, and in more temperate
latitudes, they were cold and chilly when passed in an open boat,
upon the mighty Atlantic.  The evening of the fourth day deepened,
and still not a sail was in sight.  About nine o'clock, one of our
forlorn party, whose clothing was thinner than the rest, and who had
suffered much from hunger and exposure, died in the bottom of the
boat, and we silently committed his body to the deep.

There were neither prayer nor funeral service, but we all stood up,
and uncovered our heads, while Hans and a seaman launched the poor
fellow into the sea.

Our last drop of water was now expended, for it had been poured
between the parched lips of this sufferer, in vain.

Our bread we dared scarcely eat, even in the morsels in which it was
doled out, lest it might excite that awful thirst which we had no
liquid to assuage, and which the summer sun, when blazing over our
heads at noon, rendered worse by a thousand degrees, making us long
for night, when the moist dew would fall on our parched lips and arid
visages; then night made us long for day, in the hope of seeing a
sail, as we were in terror lest one should pass us unseen; and I am
assured that more than one must have done so.

Amid his own bodily misery, poor Hartly frequently reproached himself
for having, as he said, "lured me from a quiet occupation into a
career so fatal and disastrous."

The older seamen sought to encourage us by relating how often they
had been wrecked, and yet had escaped death.

"I remember," said Hans Peterkin, "when the _Brenda_, a bark of
Kirkwall, was wrecked on her voyage from Jamaica.  The night was
rough, and we were under close-reefed topsails, when a sea struck
her, and unshipped her rudder, just as she sprang a leak.  All hands
were ordered to the pumps, and to the thrumming of a sail; but the
loss of the rudder hove her dead in the wind's eye, so her mainmast
went by the board, bringing with it the fore and mizen topmasts,
making her a useless wreck in a moment.  I was washed overboard; but
there was no time to look after me, so I rode on the mainmast all
night.  When day broke there was no ship to be seen--she must have
foundered in the dark.  Three days and two nights I rode upon that
shattered mast, till a Spanish schooner, bound for Rio, picked me up;
yet I never lost heart, shipmates, for I knew I should be saved."

"How?" said Reeves.

"Because we have a saying among us in Orkney, that he who eats of the
dulse of Guiodin,* and drinks of the well of Kildingie, will escape
everything but the _Black Death_; and many a time I have eaten of one
and drunk of the other."


* The creek of Odin, in Stronza.


On the fifth day another man died, and was committed to the deep.  No
one stood up this time, we were becoming either too weak or too
callous.

"Water--water," sighed Paul Reeves; "when ashore, I will never drink
aught but pure spring water again."

"Bide ye, messmate, and dinna gut a swimming fish; or, as we say in
Orkney, cut up nae herrings till ye have them in your net.  When you
are ashore!--ashore indeed--when shall we ever see the shore?"

Even the strong mind of the hardy Hans was wandering now.  The wind
kept tolerably fair, and though by alternate spells at the oars we
toiled day and night to add to the speed of our sail, we had no means
of ascertaining the distance we ran; and now the pangs of hunger were
alternately maddening or paralyzing, but they were trivial when
compared with those of thirst.  By skilfully striking with his oar,
Hans contrived to kill four petrels when they came tripping by close
to our boat.  Since the days of Clusius and Pliny, tradition has
foolishly made these poor birds the precursors of a storm; but the
elements had done their worst upon us, so we cared not.  They were
soon plucked and demolished.

We found them very fat and nutritious, as the whole genus of petrels
have a singular facility for creating and for spouting pure oil from
their bills in defence of themselves and their eggs if molested; and
of this oil they can produce plenty, as they feed on blubber and
fish.  The quantity in them astonished all but Hans Peterkin, who had
been wont to harry the nests of the skua, as the petrel is named in
his native isles, and who told me that whales were often discovered
in the Firth of Westra and the Sound of Yell by the flocks that
followed in the hope of a gorge of blubber.

"My father was drowned by a _skua_," said he.

"Drowned--how, by a skua?"

"Ay, for so they called the petrels in Orkney once, and so they call
them in Faroe now."

"But how was he drowned?" asked Hartly.

"He was a bold fellow who could climb the steep rocks that overhung
the most furious sea, to get eggs and catch the petrels _asleep_ if
possible; for the skua or fulmar supply us with feathers for our
beds, medicine in illness, and oil for our lamps.  My mother used to
make the whole bird a candle by passing through its mouth a wick,
which the fat of the body fed.  My father, Magnus Peterkin, was, I
have said, a bold fellow, though he wore a _glain neidr_, or
adder-gem, an old amulet of the Druid days, and believed that while
it hung at his neck he was safe.  On a stormy night he swung himself
over a rock in Pomona to pull some petrels out of their holes, but
one squirted a billful of salt oil right into his eyes---just as I
might a quid--which so confused him, that he quitted hold of the
rope, fell upon the rocks three hundred feet below, and perished
miserably--poor man!"

The fifth night was calm and beautiful--too calm for us, as the wind
had almost died away, and a clear moonlight was shining on the silent
sea, when a singular and startling event occurred--one that filled us
with vague terror and awe.

Six of us, faint, worn, and half-asleep, were tugging monotonously at
our oars; four slept in the bottom of the boat, and Reeves was
steering by a star, while honest Cuffy Snowball, whose native
good-humour and cheerfulness even the horrors of our situation could
not repress, was playing sweetly on his violin, and, to keep our
spirits from sinking, sang a negro song which he had picked up during
the years of his slavery in South Carolina--and sung it while his
tongue clove to the roof of his mouth with thirst.  I leave the
reader to judge how in such a time and place the soft melody and
grotesque pathos of a hackneyed popular air sounded in the ears of
the starving and the dying!

  "All round de leetle farm I wandered,
    When I was young;
  Den my 'appy days I squandered,
    Many de songs I sung.

  "When I was playing wid my brudder,
    'Appy was I;
  Oh take me to my kind old mudder,
    Dere let me lib and die.

  "All the world am sad and dreary,
    Ebberywhere I roam;
  Oh darkies, how my 'art grows weary,
    Far from de old folks at home!"


Alas, it was grotesquely horrible!

The calmness of the night, the sickness of my heart, the weakness of
my limbs, and the sweetness of the violin as its notes floated far
over the moonlit sea, together with the monotonous sound of the oars,
made me fall into a waking doze--yet I still tugged mechanically on,
though dreaming.

At times I imagined that I was in a dense fog off the harbour mouth
of St. John.  I heard the booming of the fog-guns from the battery on
the mountains, though they sounded faint and far off.  Then followed
the welcome voice of the gunner on the low rocky point of Fort
Amherst, challenging as usual--

"What ship is that?"

I strove to answer as we ran in through the Narrows, but my tongue
refused its office.

Again, I was at my desk, engrossing in giant ledgers, with the
snorting voice of old Uriah Skrew grating on my ear.  Anon I was in
my father's rose-covered villa at Peckham--in London, amid the roar
and gaiety of its streets--its evening bustle and lights--in the
theatre--at the opera--galloping out of town on the Derby-day.  Then
I was in a silent forest--but lo!

My dreams were broken by a shriek which made us all start as if
electrified--the oarsmen at the oars, the sleepers at the bottom of
the boat.  Cuffy dropped his violin, and Reeves his tiller, as we all
sprang up, looked in each other's sunken eyes, and on the glassy sea,
that rippled in flat immensity far away in the moonlight.

"What is it--where did it come from?" we all gasped.

But none could answer correctly.

"It seemed to rise from the sea, far away on the starboard bow," said
Reeves.

"_The starboard bow!_" repeated Hartly, shuddering.

We gazed intently around us, and though one of our men insisted that
he could see a large figure like that of a man swimming towards us in
the moonlit water, the rest could discern nothing.

This supernatural cry or sound seemed to belong neither to earth nor
heaven; it rent the air and penetrated to our inner hearts; its
cadence, too, was horrible, and unlike anything we had ever heard
before.  Its source occasioned us endless surmise, and we never
discovered it; but the circumstance affected us all variously, and
for a time we forgot our thirst, our hunger, and our danger, in the
mystery and vague fear it occasioned.

That it could be given, as one surmised, by a drowning seaman who had
escaped from some wreck, was impossible, for under the brilliant moon
of the early May night, the whole sea was visible to us as at
noonday.  Hans of Orkney declared it to be a spirit of the sea, a
water-bull, or the ghost of a man, whom we had unwittingly deserted
in the foundering wreck.  Cuffy moaned out that it was a warning from
the Obi man.  An Irish batman muttered something about a Banshee, but
poor Hartly was too careless now, or too desponding, to suggest
anything, and remained silent.

I can scarcely conceive that this cry, so strange, so wild and
thrilling--so appalling to those who were in such a solemn and
terrible situation--and which was heard by us all at the same moment,
was the combined effect of imagination; but whether it was some
phenomenon--a sound brought through the air from a vast distance, by
some unknown cause--the echo of a crime committed elsewhere, or a
jarring of the elements that affected our over-strained organs of
hearing, I know not.

I merely relate the event as it occurred; but never, while life
remains, shall I forget the bewildering and terrifying effect of that
appalling shriek, when it rang in our ears, across the otherwise
silent sea on that most mournful night.




CHAPTER XXXII.

THE TWELFTH DAY.

The sixth day dawned as the wind freshened and the waning moon went
down in clouds; it dawned upon an angry sea, a leaden sky, and with a
cold breeze that bore no ship--no hope of release towards us.

On, this day two more of our men, who had been lying in a torpid
state for three hours, died, and were cast overboard.  We were
completely callous now.  About eleven in the forenoon, Hans Peterkin,
who was steering, suddenly uttered a hoarse cry.

"See--see!" he exclaimed, pointing a-head, while glaring with haggard
eyes; "a sail--a sail!  Thanks be to God," he added, pulling off his
fur cap, "we are saved!"

We that were rowing turned, and those who were dozing between the
thwarts sprang up; and there sure enough, hull down about eighteen
miles off, we saw a large ship under a cloud of dark canvas, which
had evidently been wet by rain overnight, running close-hauled upon
the starboard tack, and going with great speed through the water.

Oh the ecstasy of this sight!

We trimmed our little sail anew; we hoisted all our neck-ties at the
mast-head, as a signal; we pulled with the strength of
madmen--madmen, who were dying and despairing--towards her; but she
saw us not, (I dare not say that her crew _heeded_ not.) Though for a
time we seemed to gain upon her, the wind freshened so much that she
was soon out of sight; and once more, after all our prayers, our
longings, and our joy, we were left alone upon the sullen sea--alone
amid emotions too terrible to delineate, for hope and life went with
her!

Some of our strongest men wrung their hands and wept.  Three days
after this, those who had restrained the maddening desire to drink of
the sea, now gave loose to their burning thirst, and heedless of the
appeals of Hartly and the warnings of Peterkin, plunged their wasted
hands in the brine, and drank it in great quantities.

The sequel soon followed--a delirium and insanity which rapidly
became infectious.

All were soon raving.  Hartly talked of his dead wife--of their
little ones, and the green churchyard, where they lay under an old
yew-tree; then of his lost ship, and the ring of the Iceland witch.

Hans sang Orkney songs in a guttural dialect--half Scottish and half
Norse; and believed himself to be whaling in the Pentland Firth, and
Sound of Yell.  Paul Reeves sat with a serious but fatuous aspect,
writing an imaginary log with his fingers on the boat-thwart; Cuffy
played scraps of negro-melodies on his violin; and believed himself
to be in his caboose, cooking a sumptuous dinner for those in the
cabin.

Some raved of rich repasts, and with idiot joy enumerated the viands
that smoked before them, or the cool draughts of spring water that
gurgled over mossy rocks and under broad green leaves in shady
woods--and of luscious fruit that grew in ripe clusters, but which
they strove to reach in vain, as, like the gushing spring, it always
eluded them.  In pursuit of one of these illusions, poor Hans
Peterkin fell overboard, and, without an effort to save himself, sank
like a stone.  Alas! the holy well of Kildingie and the blessed dulse
of Guiodin, availed him nothing now!

At last we ceased to row, for the strongest among us "caught crabs"
from time to time, and had the oars twitched out of their hands by
the sea, for we were helplessly and hopelessly worn out.

The haggard features of some became rigid; the black fur of fever
gathered upon their cracked lips; and their wild, sunken, and
blood-shot eyes assumed a snaky glare.  Their wasted forms seemed to
dwindle before me; then they grew and dwindled again like a species
of phantasmagoria, as I sat bewildered and half torpid among them;
then a lurch of the boat would throw some of them off the thwarts
motionless and dead!

On the _Twelfth_ day after we had abandoned the _Leda_, there
remained in the boat only four alive, including Hartly, Reeves, a
seaman named Jones, and myself.  All the rest had been thrown
overboard in succession as they died--even poor Cuffy Snowball,
clutching his violin to the last.

In their delirium some had been very violent--proposing to scuttle
the boat; others threw the oars overboard and unclasped their knives
to slay their messmates.  One sprang into the sea, with a husky cry,
and ended his miseries at once.

Grim and fearful as they were, I thought the calm aspect of those who
died was to be envied.  They seemed so free from every ill and storm
that might assail them, while those who yet lived and lingered were
the most helpless of human beings.  I know not why or how it was that
so many strong and hardy men perished, while I survived.

Reeves, Hartly, and Jones the sailor, lay prostrate in the bottom of
the boat; and at times I knew not whether they were alive or dead,
save by an occasional spasm that twitched their features, or a
quivering in their limbs.  After a time even these symptoms of
existence ceased.

I felt the slumber of long exhaustion stealing over me.  Lest the
boat might capsize in a squall, I remember having just sense and
strength sufficient to enable me to let go the halyard, and lower the
sail, or rather, let it fall by its own weight, when I sank down in
the stern sheets, and must have lain there for hours.

A drizzling rain refreshed me, and when I awoke, the silver moon, was
shining on the sea.

Another night had descended upon us!

I baled out the boat with a hat, for the forms of my passive
companions were half-covered by water.  As I did so, I thought Hartly
spoke--at least, that his white and bloodless lips moved; but this
might be fancy.  My mind was a chaos of gloom, misery, and terrible
forebodings.

Anxious to learn whether life yet lingered in my friend, or whether I
was quite alone--the last man--with the dead upon that silent
midnight sea, I stooped close to Hartly; but at that moment the boat
gave a sudden lurch, which threw me violently among the three bodies.
In falling, my head struck against one of the thwarts, and happily I
became senseless.

* * * * *




CHAPTER XXXIII.

WHAT FOLLOWED.

After that night a long time of dreamy stupor seemed to elapse,
before any distinct sense of existence forced itself upon me.  Then I
seemed to wake from a heavy slumber (which had frequently been
crowded by dreadful images), and found myself in bed, and in what
appeared to be a little state-room that opened off a ship's cabin.

The roof seemed close and near my eyes; but the bed was soft and
screened by green curtains, which hung upon a brass rod.  The little
panelled apartment had shelves crammed with books and bundles of
papers; a gun, a cutlass, and telescope were hung on hooks; and from
the deck above, a bull's-eye threw the sun's rays vertically down
upon me.  I saw all these details at a glance, but believed them to
be portions of a dream--that I was still tossing in the open boat,
with my dead or dying companions rolling about in the bilge-water
below the thwarts--so my last thoughts of loneliness, of despair, and
coming death recurred to me in all their bitterness.

Gradually, however, the warmth and softness of the couch on which I
lay became too confirmed and real to be doubted; and now a hot but
soothing liquid, like mulled wine, was poured between my lips.  I
drank deeply, and not until the draught was ended did I open my heavy
eyes, and again look round me, fearing to dispel the delicious
illusion of imbibing a liquid, for the wild agonies of unassuaged
thirst were still in my memory.

A jolly and bluff-looking seaman, well tanned by exposure to the
weather, and well whiskered; squat in figure, merry in eye, and
hearty in voice, wearing a straw hat and pea-jacket, with a handsome
gold ring to secure the ends of his black silk neck-tie, was holding
back the green curtain, and surveying me with some solicitude of
manner.

"How do you feel yourself now, my lad?" he asked.

"Weak--giddy--ill--Hartly--Bob Hartly, keep her head to the break of
the sea, or we shall be swamped," said I, incoherently.

"By Jove, I thought the mulled port would bring you up with a round
turn and make you speak if nothing else would."

"Where am I?" said I, partially recovering again.

"On board ship at last."

"Which--what ship?"

"The barque _Princess_ of London."

"Thank God--thank God!" I exclaimed; but though my breast heaved with
wild emotions of joy, not a tear would come, for even that fount of
tenderness seemed dried up within me.

"We picked you up when in an awful plight, my poor fellow!  Your boat
was half full of water, with two dead bodies washing about in it."

"Two!"

"Yes--two, and you were lying in the stern-sheets looking as pale and
as stiff as the others.  We were just about to send you over to
leeward with a cold shot at your heels, when, fortunately, some signs
of life escaped you."

"And you, sir----"

"Am the master of this craft--Captain John Baylis--I think you won't
forget the name," he added, smiling.

"Forget it!  Oh, sir, how shall I ever forget it?" I groaned.  "But
Hartly--poor Bob Hartly!"

"Who was he?"

"_Was_--is he then dead?" I exclaimed.

"I cannot say, until you tell me more."

"He was Master of the _Leda_, and my dear friend.  She foundered in a
tempest, and those you found in the longboat were the last of
twenty-five stout fellows who sailed in her from St. John's,
Newfoundland, on the 17th of March."

"Is he about my size; with very dark whiskers and short curly hair?"

"Yes."

"Then he is getting on famously, and lies in my chief mate's
berth--but you must not speak any more at present, try to sleep; a
little time, and I will be with you again."

This was joyous intelligence!

In short, I learned by degrees that Hartly and I were the sole
survivors of the crew of the _Leda_.  Paul Reeves and Jones the
seaman had been found dead in the long boat by the crew of the
barque, who buried them in blankets, each with a heavy shot at their
heels.  After this they scuttled the boat, as the sight of her
suggested unpleasant ideas.

The vessel which picked us up proved to be the barque _Princess_, a
stately Blackwaller of sixteen hundred tons register, Captain John
Baylis, from Quebec, bound for the Cape of Good Hope, with a general
cargo.  Our poor boat, tossing on the sea, had been descried about
daybreak, by a man who was at work on the maintopgallant yard.  She
immediately bore down upon us, and hence our rescue at a time so
critical.  I must have been insensible for about four hours when her
crew found me; and but for their ministrations, could not have
survived another.

Fortunately for Hartly and me, the jolly and hospitable captain had
his wife on board, and she nursed us with the tenderness of a mother.
Indeed, honest Baylis and his whole crew vied with her in their
attention to us.

Our feet and legs were so soddened by the bitter, briny water in
which they had been so long immersed, that for some days
mortification was dreaded; but as Mrs. Baylis had six goats on board,
she made, and skilfully applied, poultices of bread and milk, which
ameliorated the symptoms and our sufferings.

Food and liquids were administered to us in homoeopathic doses at
first; and several days elapsed before our interiors became
accustomed to receive their usual quantities.  At times we were both
somewhat bewildered in mind--especially when the vessel encountered
rough weather, and rolled much.  Then Hartly and I were sure to
imagine ourselves again in the longboat on the desolate sea, with the
starving and dying around us; and long the voices of poor Hans
Peterkin, of Paul Reeves, and the notes of Cuffy's violin, lingered
in my ear, especially in dreams.

In about a fortnight--thanks chiefly to the kindness and nursing of
Mrs. Baylis--we were able to sit on a sofa under an awning on the
poop-deck; for we were now in warmer latitudes, and a protection from
the sun of June was necessary.  We greeted each other like two
kinsmen who had escaped death; but Hartly mourned the loss of the
_Leda_ and of her crew, as they were all picked men, whom he never
paid off on entering a port, but who had sailed with him to all parts
of the world, and would as readily have thought of attempting to fly
in the air as of leaving the poor old _Leda_.

For many days her loss, and the anecdotes connected with it, formed a
staple subject for our conversation, until other thoughts, with
returning health, forced themselves upon us; for those who are in the
world must live for it.

The _Princess_ was bound, I have said, for the Cape of Good Hope,
where she would, perhaps, take a freight home for London; but there
was an equal probability of her being chartered for Bombay, Hong
Kong, or anywhere else, so that on reaching Cape Town there would be
an immediate necessity for Hartly and me looking about us, and
seeking means for returning to the great metropolis.

As we approached the line, the heat increased rapidly, awnings were
spread over the decks, wind-sails were rigged down the hatchways, and
skeets over the sides were resorted to daily.

The latter are pieces of grooved wood, for throwing water over the
planks or outer sheathing of a ship, to prevent them from being rent
by the heat of the sun in warm climates.

For some weeks Hartly and I were totally unable to make ourselves of
any use, so great was the lassitude which succeeded our recent
sufferings, and rapid transition from starvation and misery to
comfortable quarters, and from the Regions of Ice to those of the
burning sun; for after passing St. Jago, the most southerly of the
Cape de Verd Isles, we rapidly approached the line; and then Captain
Baylis, his wife, Hartly, and others, prepared letters for home, to
be left at the Isle of Ascension, or given to the first ship that
passed us for England.

Day after day I reclined listlessly under the awning, watching the
shining sea, on which many an argonauta now was floating; and, in a
warm latitude, singularly beautiful are those little "Portuguese
men-of-war," as our sailors term them, when whole fleets of them may
be seen sailing past, with their purple sails up and rowing swiftly,
with all their tentacula or feelers out.

But, on being approached by anything, in go the tentacula, and down
sinks the miniature sail, as the fish concentrates itself in its
shell, and both vanish together, like a fairy in the sea.




CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE SAILOR'S POST-OFFICE.

We crossed the line on the last day of June.  I need not rehearse the
description of a hackneyed ceremony known to all--how curtains were
rigged amidships--how Father Neptune with his hempen beard came on
board, seated on a gun-carriage, and how roughly all who had _not_
crossed the line before were tarred, scraped, shaved, and soused by
his whimsically attired barbers, courtiers, and Tritons, to the great
delight of the older salts--a ceremony which I only escaped in
consequence of my recent sufferings.

Two days after, we passed St. Matthew, a little desert isle on which
the Portuguese formed a settlement so early as 1516, and which lies
"amid the melancholy main," at a vast distance from the African
coast.  It is the abode of sea-birds alone.

Then we completed our bag of letters, which were all duly gummed
up--wax will not do in the tropics--for delivery at Ascension, which,
after three hundred miles' further run, we sighted on the evening of
the 9th July, for we had a fine wind, and the _Princess_ carried her
studdingsails night and day.

I was not without hope that we might find some homeward-bound vessel
at Ascension, on board of which we might be transferred, as I was
most anxious to return home to tranquillize the minds of my own
family, whom I knew must long since have numbered me with the dead;
but this hope was dissipated when we came abreast of the roadstead,
which was _empty_, and let go our anchor about midnight, in fourteen
fathom water, on a red sandy bottom.

The anchorage of this solitary isle is a sheltered creek,
overshadowed by a high pyramidal mountain, having on its summit the
remains of two great crosses, erected of old by the pious and
adventurous followers of Juan de Nova, a Portuguese mariner who
flourished in the days of King Alfonzo Africanus.

The heat was so great now that the atmosphere in the cabin rendered
one absolutely breathless; and with pleasure, Hartly and I, clad in
light clothes, with broad straw hats, furnished to us by kind Captain
Baylis, accompanied him and his wife ashore next morning after
anchoring, and landed at the little town, which is fortified, and the
harbour of which frequently forms a rendezvous for our African
squadron.  The longboat with her crew afterwards came off for fresh
water and turtles.  The superintendence of collecting these was left
to the chief mate, while with Hartly (who had been there before),
Captain Baylis and I set forth on a ramble over the island, which is
only nine miles long by six miles broad.

An undefinable interest is excited when landing on a lonely little
island after a long sea voyage; and for ages Ascension has been a
species of halfway house, or resting-place for ships between Europe
and the Cape.

We resolved to visit the _Sailor's Post-office_, a cranny in the
rocks, known for ages to the mariners of all nations, who were wont
to deposit their letters there, closed up in a bottle, to be taken
away by the first ship which passed in an opposite direction--a
custom which the Dominican, Father Navarette, mentions as being
_old_, at the time of his visit in 1673.

The little isle is barren, but having been rent by volcanic throes,
it has hills of pumice-stone and calcined rocks, with abrupt
precipices overhanging sterile ravines that are full of black ashes.
Here and there a solitary goat might be seen cropping the scanty
herbage, or perched upon a sharp pinnacle, snuffing the sea breeze
that waved its solemn beard.  Where a spring gurgled from the rocks
into the sea the turtle were seen in plenty, and there our boat's
crew came in search of them.  There also lay the skeletons of great
numbers, which seamen, in mere wantonness, had turned on their backs,
and left thus to die.

From the summit of the pyramidal hill which overlooks the anchorage
we could survey the boundless ocean, spreading away towards the
distant shores of Africa, the still more distant coast of Peru, and
the unexplored waves of the Southern Sea, all glassy, heaving, and
vibrating like a mighty mirror under the vertical glare of the
tropical sun.

Fanning ourselves with banana leaves, for at times we gasped in the
heat, we trod among ashes ankle deep, and over rocks where the power
of the sun had turned to fine salt the spray cast upon them by the
sea.

At last we reached the Sailor's Post-office, and examined the cleft
in the rocks, where the bottles or cases containing many a letter
that carried to the hearts and homes of generations long since gone
to dust, hope and happiness, or it might be sorrow and woe--the
tidings of loved and lost ones far away in lands and seas that were
then so little known and so little traversed; and then combining
prose with poetry, we sat down to discuss some light sherry, pale
ale, and sandwiches, which the worthy Captain Baylis insisted on
conveying for us in a travelling-bag slung over his shoulder.

As evening drew on, the sterile rocks and impending bluffs, the great
rugged pyramidal hill that towered over the anchorage, the little
town of Ascension, with its battery and gaudy Union Jack, all assumed
a dusky red hue; and when the sun sank westward, the shadow of the
_Princess_ at her anchor was thrown far across the bright blue water
of the creek.  Our last boat with turtle, bananas, fish, and fresh
water, was to leave the harbour at sunset; so we were preparing to
descend, when an object lying among some stones at the bottom of the
cleft in the rock, caught Hartly's eye.

Scrambling among ashes and black pumice-stone, he reached, and drew
it forth.

It was a stone jar, shaped like a ginger-beer bottle, tightly corked,
and covered over the mouth and neck by thin sheet-lead, which was
paid over with old tarred spunyarn; but it was so thickly encrusted
with lichens and dust, which the sun and dew had baked upon it, that
it had quite the colour and aspect of the stones that lay around it.

"Now, what the deuce is this?" asked Captain Baylis.

"A bottle," said Hartly, turning it over.

"A bottle in the Post-office!"

"It must have lain here a long time, if we judge by its outside,"
said I.

"Letters have never been deposited here since 1816," observed Baylis,
"when the British built the town and battery yonder."

"So if it has lain here one year, it must have lain fifty."

"Shake it, Hartly," said I.

"It is full of something that rattles!"

"Letters, probably; but few folks can care about them now."

"Faith! the man's head does not ache that untwisted this spunyarn; it
is at least seventy years old!" said Captain Baylis, fraying the
strands with his fingers; "but we'll crack the bottle when we get on
board, and see what the contents are."

We joined Mrs. Baylis at the landing-place.  She was reclining in the
stern of the gig with a large white umbrella over her head, and could
scarcely repress her curiosity to discover the contents of the old
stone jug, or bottle, till we got on board.

Then we broke it by a blow of a hammer, and there fell out, not
letters, as we expected, but a roll of paper, consisting of leaves
stitched together, and closely covered with writing, containing a
narrative, or something of the kind, which had been deposited in that
strange mode and strange place by some waggish or eccentric person,
in the hope, perhaps, that if ever discovered, by the mystery
enveloping their literary production, it would assuredly be given to
the public.

It was without date; but fortunately the handwriting was plain and
legible, though the ink was dim and faded, for the stone bottle being
porous, the paper had become damp, almost wet, and had to be
carefully dried in the sunshine, which curled it up like crisped
leaves in autumn, so the preparation of it for perusal was consigned
to my care by Captain Baylis, who had discovered that I was, as he
said, "a regular-built bookworm."

"It is a history," said he, as he lighted his long clay pipe in the
cabin, after the _Princess_ got under weigh next evening, and stood
out of the anchorage under her courses and topgallant sails, with her
royals, spanker, and gaff-topsail set.

"Or the narrative of an unfortunate voyage," suggested Hartly,
thinking, doubtless, of his own.

"Or the revelation of some dreadful crime, or unfortunate
love-story," lisped Mrs. Baylis, all impatience, pausing and looking
up in the act of pouring out our tea.

"It is none of these," said I; "but seems to be the translation of a
Portuguese legend, connected in some way with the discovery of the
Cape of Good Hope."

And so, while the good captain lounged in his shirt sleeves on the
cabin sofa, and puffed away with his long clay pipe, while his buxom
wife made tea for us, and Hartly lit his Havannah, I commenced to
read the MS. we had found so singularly; and it ran thus--but
requires a chapter or two to itself.




CHAPTER XXXV.

MS. LEGEND OF EL CABO DOS TORMENTOS.

It is written--says the Spanish Dominican Friar and Missionary
Priest, the Padre Navarette--that the first time reports reached
Europe of a spectre haunting the Cape of Storms, was by the
narratives of certain Portuguese adventurers, who sailed into the
Southern Sea, with the Senhor Bartholomew Diaz, in the early part of
the fifteenth century, when Dom Joam II. occupied the throne of
Portugal.

His cousin and successor, King Emmanuel, fired by the discoveries
made in the reigns of his predecessors, who had planted their flag
and cross on the shores of Madeira, the Azores, and Isles of the Cape
de Verd, resolved to accomplish what they had failed in, and with
praiseworthy zeal despatched an admiral to discover a passage to
India by sea.

After a long absence this cavalier returned and reported that he had
found the _southern_ extremity of the mighty African continent; but,
that his ships had encountered great perils when off a flat-headed
mountain of wondrous form, which he had named _El Cabo dos Tormentos_.

The King of Portugal suggested that "_El Cabo de Buena Esperanto_,
(_i.e._, the Cape of Good Hope), would be a better term;" and it was
at once adopted by his courtiers, though the mariners of the Admiral
adhered to "the Cape of Torments," as they alleged that, not only had
they nearly been swallowed by the waves of a black and stormy sea,
but that they had seen a stupendous form, resembling a human figure,
riding upon the whirling scud above the Table Mountain, and spreading
his giant arms as if to clasp them in his terrible embrace, and hurl
them into the yawning deep.

They insisted that this dangerous promontory was the end of the
habitable world--the abode of devils, spectres, and torments--a place
wherein nothing human could dwell; and that the seas which washed its
shore should be shunned by all future navigators.

They ridiculed the title of _Buena Esperança_, and urged that no
mariner in his senses would visit the place again; for the old salts
of those days devoutly believed in tales of

  "That sea-snake tremendous curled,
  Whose monstrous circle girds the world,"

and that the earth was girt with fire at the Equator; that whoever
passed the tempestuous Cape Bojador, which was first doubled by the
Portuguese in 1433, and which forms the southern limit of Morocco,
was doomed never to return, as a mysterious breeze (the trade wind?)
blew for ever against them; that ships got into currents that ran
_down hill_--currents against which they might beat and struggle in
vain, till their shattered hulls were cast upon Bermuda--the "vexed
Bermoothes" of Shakespeare, which, as Stowe tells us, "were supposed
to be inhabited by witches and devils"--an iron shore where perpetual
storms raged, and fated ships were dashed upon the rocks.

Despite these terrors, animated by a spirit of adventure, Vasco da
Gama, a valiant mariner and cavalier of Alentejo, resolved to sail in
quest of this terrible cape, accompanied by many of his friends,
among whom was a noble young hidalgo, named Vasco da Lobiera,
grandson of the gallant knight of that name, who fought at the battle
of Aljubarotta, and received his spurs on the field from King Joam of
good memory, at whose feet, in after years, he laid his famous
romance, "Amadis de Gaul."

From his grandsire young Vasco inherited a love of wild adventure;
thus his mind was full of tales of

  "The days when giants were rife
    With their towers and painted halls,
  And heroes, each with a charmed life,
    Rode up to their castle walls--
  When gentle and bright ones with golden hair
    Were wooed by princes in green,
  And knights with invisible caps to wear,
    Could see, and yet never be seen."


Notwithstanding the alleged terrors of the spectre or storm fiend
which haunted the Cape, the brave Da Gama and his friend Lobiera
resolved to set forth upon these mysterious waters, and to double the
promontory of Southern Africa.  So the former, as Captain-General,
hoisted his banner on board the _San Gabriel_, of two hundred and
twenty tons; while Paulo da Gama, his brother, commanded the _San
Rafael_, of one hundred tons.

Vasco da Lobiera had the caravella named _Nossa Senhora da Belem_ (or
Bethlehem), with Joam da Coimbra as pilot, and Gonsalo Nunez had
their great storeship laden with provisions.

All these vessels were built of the pines which were planted in the
forest of Marinha by King Denis the Magnificent, and were manned by
one hundred and sixty chosen mariners.

King Emmanuel made them a farewell oration, and gave into the hands
of each commander a white silk banner of the military order of
Christ, together with his royal letters to an imaginary potentate,
who was supposed to dwell beyond the Southern Sea, and was named
Prester John of the Indies, Lord and Emperor of Ethiopia; and so,
with the prayers of all good Portuguese for their success, the little
squadron sailed from Lisbon, on the 8th July, 1497, when it is
recorded that "thousands remained weeping on the shore, until the
last traces of the receding fleet had disappeared."

Among their own crews, as well as among those of the other two ships,
Da Gama and Da Lobiera found men averse to touching at the Cabo dos
Tormentos; and these urged, that to double this dreadful promontory,
they should stand further out to sea than the adventurers of Dom
Joam's days, and then visit in safety the realms of Prester John on
the other side.  Gama and his friend heeded neither their remarks,
their exhortations, or their fears, but bore away steadily to the
southward.

After a long and perilous voyage, and after anchoring in a great bay
which they named Angra de Santa Elena, the crew of _Our Lady of
Belem_ first saw the land of Table Bay on the morning of Saturday,
the 4th of November, when, in obedience to Dom Vasco da Lobiera, the
ship's company donned their gayest apparel, discharged a volley from
their culverins, and blew all their trumpets; but, as they stood
towards the shore, they were compelled to lessen their canvas, for
the wind, which had hitherto been moderate and favourable, now
changed to the south-east, and increased to a gale, while the sun set
in dense clouds, and turning from light green to black, the waves
began to froth and break as they alternately rose into hills or sank
into valleys.

And now as night and mist descended together on the sea, and on the
Cabo dos Tormentos, lightnings began to play about the awful summit
of the Table Mountain, which rises for more than three thousand two
hundred feet above the shore.  The four ships which prior to this
evening had kept close together, were compelled by the violence of
the gale to separate, lest they might be dashed against each other;
and in the murk and gloom they continued to beat against the
headwind, with their topsail-yards lowered upon the cap, their
courses close reefed, and their spritsails stowed.

When the vessels last saw each other, the Senhor Vasco da Lobiera was
much chagrined to perceive that his caravella had dropped far astern
of her companions.  He had ever prided himself upon the swiftness of
her sailing, and now he burned lights, and strove to come abreast of
the Captain-General, who had beat far to windward, and who he feared
might attribute his drifting so much a-lee, and towards danger, to
want of skill or seamanship.

He set as much canvas as he dared, and _Nossa Senhora da Belem_ tore
through the angry sea with her foresail and foretopsail close reefed,
and her jib and spritsail set, while the waves lashed her worn sides,
and burst in foam over her carved and lofty prow at every furious
plunge.

The seamen told their beads, lit candles before the shrine of Nossa
Senhora in the great cabin, shook their heads, muttered under their
long black beards, or maintained gloomy silence, fearing they knew
not what, but anticipating all the terrors that had beset the
followers of Bartholomew Diaz in the same waters.

And now wave after wave broke in thundering volume over her decks,
till Lobiera was fain to cast overboard the brass culverins which had
been consecrated by the Bishop of Lisbon, and his men averred that
each uttered _a cry_ as it sank into the sea.

By midnight they were, as Joam da Coimbra stated, about six miles
from the mouth of Table Bay.

Hoarsely roared the wind through the strained shrouds of the
labouring caravella, as she rolled and pitched wildly amid the black
and fearful waste of water, and ere long she was driving under bare
poles with only her jib and staysail to lift her head from the sea,
which rushed upon her like a succession of watery mountains.

With all the firmness of true mariners and cavaliers, Vasco da
Lobiera and his friend Joam stood at the tiller, crossing themselves
ever and anon when they shouted a command through the trumpet, or
invoked our Lady of Belem.  The deck had long since been cleared of
every loose spar, bucket, or other material by the waves; and more
than one poor mariner had been swept overboard to perish miserably in
the midnight sea, for no human hand could assist them.

Some there were who asserted that they had seen the claws of a giant
figure start from the black waves, and drag their shipmates down
below by their beards and trunk hose.

"We make no progress," said others, rending their hair; "a mighty
magnet, buried deep in the sea, holds us to one accursed spot!"

"Nay," said Joam da Coimbra; "'tis the teeth of a mighty fish that
grasp our keel."

"Be of good cheer, I pray you, my friends," said Vasco, pointing to
the Southern Cross, which was then visible through a rent in the fast
flying scud; "behold the sign by which we shall conquer!  What says
the motto of our country?"

"_In hoc signo vinces!_" exclaimed Joam da Coimbra, throwing his
hands towards the south.

"Amen," responded the terrified crew, and still their ship bore on.

"Thou art right, Joam," said Vasco da Lobiera; and the courage of the
crew revived, for their pilot was a mariner of great experience, and,
like Chaucer's shipman--

  "By many a tempest had his beard been shaken."




CHAPTER XXXVI.

LEGEND CONTINUED--THE CATASTROPHE.

The moon, which had hitherto been concealed in dense vapour, now
glanced at times through the flying clouds.  It was one of those
stormy moons well known in that quarter of the world.  She seemed
small, but keen and bright, gilding with whitest silver the ragged
edges of the torn vapour, which fled past with such speed as to give
her literally the aspect of sailing through the sky.

A mournful and moaning sound now came upon the wind which traversed
that dashing sea, and the mariners of Lobiera, who had never looked
on such a scene, nor beheld such lightnings as those that girdled
like a fiery belt the flat summit of the Table Mountain, were
becoming more bewildered and faint of heart, when a cry of dismay
burst from Joam da Coimbra, and now even the resolute Vasco stood
speechless and aghast.

Above the Table Mountain the clouds rapidly rolled themselves into a
denser and darker mass, which assumed the outline of a human figure
that grew in volume while they gazed upon it, until it towered into
the sky, against the moonlit blue of which it was defined with
terrible distinctness.

"The spectre--il demonio del Cabo dos Tormentos!" said each in his
heart, while it continued to tower, with mighty arms outstretched, as
if to clutch the devoted ship, or bury it in the sea that seethed
around this dreadful cape--the great promontory of the southern world.

With one foot planted on Table Mountain, and the other on the Devil's
Hill, with a head that darkened heaven, stood this mighty form, which
appeared to have the power of curbing and of loosening the elements,
for at every wave of its threatening arms the sea increased in
turbulence, and the wind in fury, for the thunder appeared to be his
voice, the lightning the flashes of his eye, the tempest the breath
of his nostrils!

"Madre de Dios--our Lady of Belem!" prayed Dom Vasco.

"Dei genetrix, intercede pro nobis!" was the faint response of his
quailing crew.

"Courage, comrades," he exclaimed; "I have still the blessed banner
which our Lord the King gave me, and it shall yet float above the
storm."

"But the ship has become unmanageable!" cried Joam da Coirabra.

"Nay, say not so--Heaven forefend!  _Nossa Senhora da Belem_ is as
gallant a craft as ever came from the woods of Marinha, and she shall
bear us yet to seas beyond the power of this resentful demon!"

Vasco da Lobiera would have said more, but a burst of thunder drowned
every other sound; lightning filled the entire sky with lurid flame;
the wind bellowed, and the blinding rain descended in a solid sheet
upon the trembling sea with such power as almost to still its waves.
He ordered the masts to be cut away; only two of his crew heard the
order, or had the courage to obey it.  The rest were crouching in a
group, stupified by despair and fear.

Three blows of a sharp axe were alone required, the tempest did the
rest, and the stately masts with all their yards and gear vanished
alongside.  The rudder was torn from its iron bands, and now the
boasted _Lady of Belem_ floated like a log upon the waves, which
incessantly broke over her, washing the crew in succession away.  Now
it was that the heart of Vasco da Lobiera began to sink, and he gave
himself up for lost!

In a few minutes more he found himself struggling in the sea, for his
ship was hurled upon the rocky coast and dashed to pieces.

Clutching a piece of wreck, he was tossed up by a vast wave, that
cast him stunned, breathless, helpless and alone, upon the desolate
shore of that terrible promontory; so his holy banner availed him
nothing.

And there he lay as the sea receded, wave after wave continuing to
hiss and roar behind him, as if loth to lose their prey.

* * * * *




CHAPTER XXXVII

LEGEND CONCLUDED--THE SEQUEL.

When the Senhor Dom Vasco came to his senses, says the Padre
Navarette, morning had dawned.  All nature was calm, and the warm
rays of the rising sun were shedding light and gladness on the land
and sea.

Above him rose in sullen majesty the triple crest of the Table
Mountain, the Devil's Hill, and the Hill of Lions; and undisturbed by
a single ripple before him lay that treacherous sea, which, but a few
hours before, had destroyed _Nossa Senhora da Belem_.  With some
surprise, Vasco found that his doublet and hose were dry; and that
his bruises were not so severe as he might have expected, under all
the circumstances.

He arose, invoked Heaven on his knees, and surveyed the watery plain
with anxiety, to discover whether any fragment of the wrecked
caravella was floating there; but not a vestige was to be seen, and
apparently none of his crew had reached the shore save himself, all
had perished.

The forlorn cavalier could not repress an exclamation of bitterness
and grief, on realizing the full horror of this catastrophe; for he
loved his crew, and also the little caravella in which he had sailed
so gaily from the Tagus, on that auspicious 8th of July.

Distant from his native land many, many thousand miles, without a
hope of rescue or release, he was about to abandon himself to
despair, when in the vague hope of meeting another survivor, he
traversed the plain which lies at the base of the Table Mountain, and
which was then covered by white lilies, gorgeous tulips, and almond
trees, all growing wild.

To add to his grief and terror, here he found the remains of his
friend, Joam da Coimbra, half devoured by lions or wolves, who had
dragged him from the beach.  Dom Vasco shuddered, and was hastening
on, when a deep voice that seemed to fill the whole welkin, cried,

"_Stay!_"

He turned, and beheld a copper-coloured man of wondrous stature, and
savage, yet noble aspect, who held in his right hand a hunting spear,
so long, that it was twice the length of any Vasco had ever
seen--aye, thrice the length of the lance his grandsire had carried
at Aljubarrota--and in his left a reeking skin, which he had just
torn from a lion--perhaps one of those that had been feasting on the
hapless pilot.  His aspect was alike sublime and terrible; his black
beard was of majestic length; his bright eyes wore a sad and gloomy
expression, and his hair which rose in great curls, like those of the
Phidian Jove, resembled the mane of a sable lion.  But what is
stranger than all, this wild man spoke very good Portuguese.

"In the name of Heaven," said the cavalier, "who and what are you?"

"The spirit of the Cabo dos Tormentos--the demon of the storm which
rent your ship asunder, and cast it on yonder shores, dashed to a
thousand pieces," replied the form in a deep, but melodious voice.

Vasco--continues the Padre Navarette--doubted the evidence of his
senses.  This was like one of the adventures with which the history
of "Amadis de Gaul" had filled his mind--one for which he longed; but
he felt the reality the reverse of pleasant.

"I have ruled these regions since the ark rested on Mount Ararat, and
since the land was parted from the waters; but never until now, has
the foot of man invaded them; and had my power prevailed in the storm
of yesternight, instead of being here, thou too shouldst have found a
grave where many other adventurers lie, in yonder rolling sea."

"Terrible spirit," said Dom Vasco, "is the presence of a mere mortal
so hateful to you?"

"Yes," replied the demon, shaking his mighty locks with gloom and
sadness; "for now my power over these seas, and shores, and clouds,
must end where thine begins.  Else, wherefore did I bury ship after
ship in that tempestuous sea, or split them by the flaming bolts,
that all on board might perish?  Many have sought to pass my
promontory, to reach the golden realms of Prester John, but none have
escaped me save _thee_!  I have had the power of assuming what form I
please.  To-day I am a man, to-morrow I should tower to the skies
astride the Table Mountain, or ride the wild blast that comes from
the arid desert of Zahara, to bury some barque in the distant sea;
but that my power is passing away from me.  I tell thee, O most
fortunate and valiant cavalier, that from this day the Cabo dos
Tormentos shall be a Cape of Storms no more, but one of Good Hope to
all the mariners of the earth--for so it was ordained by the hand
which placed Adam in Eden and gave such wondrous power unto the Seal
of Solomon."

As the spirit concluded, his voice became fainter; his broad and
dusky chest heaved as he sighed deeply, and he gradually appeared to
dissolve into a thin white vapour, which floated upwards and melted
away on the summit of the Table Mountain.  But the power of the
spirit lingers there still; for over the same spot where he vanished
from the eyes of Dom Vasco, _a thin white cloud_, which rises from
the hill, is unto this day the sure forerunner of a storm.*


* In summer, when the S.E. wind blows, a cloud called _the
Tablecloth_ appears on the mountain, and always indicates a tempest.
This cloud is composed of immense masses of fleecy
whiteness.--_Arnott_.


Next day, the _San Rafael_, the vessel of Da Gama, which had been
greatly shattered by the tempest, appeared off Table Bay, and on
Vasco da Lobiera making signals, a boat was sent for him and he was
brought on board, more dead than alive after all he had undergone.

To the wondering followers of his friend, he related his adventure.
They deplored the loss of his caravella, and of so many good and
pious Portuguese; but they shook their long beards doubtfully when he
spoke of the spectre, though the unusual calmness of the weather
about the Cabo dos Tormentos seemed to verify his story and the
promises made to him.

On being joined by the vessels of Paulo da Gama and Gonzalo Nunez,
they bore away to the eastward, and named the coast La Terra de Noel
(or Natal) having anchored off it on Christmas Day.  Sixty leagues
from the Cape, they found a bay, which they named San Blaz, and in it
an island, full of birds with bat's-wings.  (Penguins.)

Thus the passage of the Cape of Storms was fully achieved and the
spell broken by these valiant Portuguese; but they could nowhere
discover the realms of Prester John, so the royal letters of Dom
Emmanuel remained unopened.

On his return to Lisbon, Dom Vasco applied to the King of Portugal
for a gift of the Table Mountain, and money to colonize the land
about it, in virtue of his interview with the spectre; but he was
laughed at by the courtiers, and especially by the priests, who
proved his greatest enemies.

The King, after this, styled himself Lord of the Seas on both sides
of Africa; Lord of Guinea, Ethiopia, Persia, India, Brazil, and many
other lands; but how fared it with Dom Vasco da Lobiera?

Fury, pride, and mortification turned his brain; but he survived till
the reign of King Joam III., when he was last seen, an old and
impoverished man, with a white head and threadbare doublet, hovering
in the Rua d'Agua de Flore in Lisbon, at the gate of the Estrella, or
at the chapel of Nossa Senhora da Belem, raving to the passers about
the friendly Demon of el Cabo de Buena Esperança, and the colony of
which the King had deprived him.

So--says the Padre Navarette--ends this wild story.




CHAPTER XXXVIII.

WE LAND IN AFRICA.

And now to resume my own more simple narrative.

The barque _Princess_, which, until we touched at Ascension, had been
favoured with singularly fine weather, now encountered strong
head-winds.  She was driven out of her course, and had to run well
in, on the African coast.

After long beating about, on the 2nd of August we saw the great
continent on the southern shore of the Gulf of Guinea.

The winds had become light and the weather cloudy.  On this day I
remember the crew were variously employed, and the carpenters were
busy in making two new topgallant masts, to replace those injured in
the rough weather we had so recently encountered.

About six P.M. the weather became squally.  Captain Baylis ordered
the studding-sails to be taken in, and the chain-cables bent to the
anchors.  At midnight we took in the royals and flying-jib.

At four o'clock on the morning of the 3rd, as we required fresh
water, we came to anchor in a little sheltered bay of the Rio Gabon,
which lies between the Bight of Benin and Cape Lopez Gonsalvo.

The wondrous transparency of the atmosphere here exceeded all I had
seen--even in the pure region of eternal ice; for amid the clear
splendour of the heavens, the eye could observe without a telescope
many a lesser star unseen in the north; and on this morning when we
were coming to anchor, two of the fixed planets shone with a
refulgence so brilliant as to cast the shadow of the ships far across
the estuary.

By this time, the hot vertical sun of the tropics had peeled all the
paint off the blistered sides of the _Princess_.  Her anchors and
ironwork had become mere masses of red rust, her once white paint had
been turned to orange colour, and her tar to dirty yellow, while the
caulking and pitch had boiled out from her planks and seams.

Captain Baylis had no intention of remaining here longer than he
could avoid, as the climate is unhealthy.  Though the hills which
overlook the river are of considerable height, the land between it
and them is but a series of swamps, where the gigantic water-weeds of
Africa and the wild mangrove-trees flourish in rank luxuriance, and
where the hideous crocodile squatters in the slime, or crawls along
the sand, where its eggs are hatched by the hot sun, if they are not
previously stolen by the ichneumon.

While the chief mate went off in the long-boat to the Pongos--as the
little isles at the mouth of the estuary are named--to fill several
casks with fresh water, Captain Baylis proposed a visit to a negro
village on the coast, for the purpose of procuring some elephants'
teeth and leopard skins, and having a _palaver_ with the natives,
many of whom, though extremely savage, have picked up a little
English by the frequent visits of our ships, particularly those of
the African squadron.

With a view to barter, he placed in his gig four old rusty muskets,
some well-worn table knives, old coats, pots and kettles, while, to
be prepared for any emergency, four rifles, carefully loaded and
capped, were concealed in the stern sheets, and Mrs. Baylis, Hartly,
and I accompanied him on this expedition, which was the commencement
of a series of disasters, that ended in the destruction of nearly all
concerned.

For the lady's comfort, an awning was rigged over the stern of the
gig, which, being rowed by eight oars, ran rapidly close in shore,
where we saw a number of black fellows in a state of semi-nudity,
gabbling, gesticulating violently, and watching our arrival with
considerable interest.

Some of their actions seeming to indicate hostility as they
brandished long spears and asseguys, Captain Baylis stood up in the
boat and displayed his old pots and kettles, making signs that he
wished to trade or barter with them.  On this they uttered a
simultaneous yell, and disappeared among the mangroves, which fringed
all the bank of the river, and formed a species of natural arcade by
their branches arching over from the solid soil, and taking root in
the slimy water.

Of this unsatisfactory result we could make nothing; but in no way
daunted, Captain Baylis (though saying that he "wished he had left
his good wife on board") steered for a little creek, on entering
which, we lost sight alike of the Pongo islets and the _Princess_,
which lay at anchor in the estuary, about four miles off.

Beaching partly the sharp-prowed and handsome gig in the soft sand,
Baylis, Hartly, and I sprang ashore, and looked in every direction
among the tall weeds and mangroves for our sable traders; but all was
silent and still.  The breast of the broad river was undisturbed by a
ripple, and seemed to sleep in the sultry sunshine; the silence of
the mighty forests that grew along its banks was unbroken by a sound;
and the vast baobab or calibash trees, with their gigantic yellow
fruit and wondrous horizontal branches, covered by foliage, were
drooping listlessly in the hot and breathless atmosphere of the
tropical noon.

"I don't understand this, and, moreover, I don't much like it," said
Captain Baylis, in a low voice to Hartly and me; "for when I was here
before I found the darkies ready enough to 'make friends,' as they
term it, and to exchange their elephants' tusks, panther skins, and
camwood for any rubbish we could collect on board."

But he knew not that, at this time, one of the crew of an American
ship which sailed on the previous day had wantonly shot the fetisher,
or priest of a village, and thus inspired the people with hostility
to all white strangers; and it is not improbable that they conceived
the Yankee and the _Princess_ to be one and the same vessel.

After looking about us for some time, and finding that none of the
natives returned, Baylis proposed that we should pull a little higher
up the stream, to the village of the Rio Serpientes--or Snake River,
as it is called in the charts--a tributary of the Gabon.

The giant size of the plants, shrubs, and trees, their wonderful
greenness and luxuriance, the brilliance of the flowers, the loud hum
of insect-life, where insects are as large as birds at home, the
depth of the forest dingles, and the overpowering heat of the
atmosphere, all served to impress me with novelty and strangeness;
while mingled emotions of wonder, pleasure, and apprehension filled
my breast.

With deep interest I trod this wondrous soil, of which so little is
known.  "For three centuries," says some one, "our ships have
circumnavigated Africa, and yet, with a few exceptions, our knowledge
of its districts is very incomplete; while the interior presents to
the eye a _blank_ in geography--an unsolved problem, in moral as well
as physical science."  Though nearly four thousand years ago the
valley of the Nile was the cradle of art and commerce, we know no
more about the Mountains of the Moon than old Ptolemy himself knew.

We were about to re-embark, when the united yells of more than a
hundred negroes rent the clear welkin, and starting from the leafy
seclusion of the mangroves into the blaze of sunlight, a horde of
black and naked savages rushed upon us with long asseguys, bows,
clubs, and knives; and in a moment we found ourselves their prisoners.

Two seamen in the bow of the gig, while attempting to shove her off,
were struck through the body with poisoned spears, and slain on the
instant; the rest were dragged out, the gig itself was lifted fairly
out of the water, hoisted on the brawny shoulders of nearly twenty
men, and borne with yells of derision and exultation up the bank,
where they hurled it high and dry ashore among the mangroves; while
at the same moment, poor Baylis with horror saw his shrieking wife
dragged by others into the jungle.

After being beaten with asseguy-shafts until we were nearly
senseless, our clothes were rent from us roughly, and in a state
nearly approaching nudity, covered with bruises, and in some
instances with blood, we were dragged into a thicket, and brought
before the King of the village, who was seated on a grass matting,
which was spread under the umbrageous shadow of a baobab-tree, where
he was smoking a great wooden pipe.

All this passed in less than five minutes; and I was so stunned by
the rapidity of the transaction, as well as by several blows received
on the head from lance-shafts, that the whole affair resembled a
terrible dream!




CHAPTER XXXIX.

THE KING OF THE SNAKE RIVER

In that district of Africa every village has its petty monarch, and
these are all vassals of the King of Gabon, who, in turn, is vassal
of the King of Benin; and Zabadie, the sooty sovereign of this
empire, had just died about this time.

The town, or capital (of his Majesty of the Snake River), if it could
be so named, in which we found ourselves, was composed of some six
hundred huts or so; and these resembled a large collection of
beehives, being constructed with meshes, twigs, straw, and turf.

I was dragged to the door of one, while a savage, whom I conceived to
be the proprietor, and who wore a large coin at his neck, threw in my
hat, coat, vest, and trowsers, of which he had violently possessed
himself, being a person in authority and near relation of the King.
While he grasped me by a thong which secured my right wrist, I could
perceive within that his dwelling consisted of one apartment, the
appurtenances of which were only mats, calibashes, a stone mortar for
pounding millet, and a cauldron of earthenware.

Closing the door, which was composed of basket-work, he dragged me to
our forlorn group, which stood before the King, who for some time
permitted us to be pelted with stones, decayed gourds, and pulpy
water-melons, by the women and children of his capital; and under
this treatment and her terror, poor Captain Baylis saw his
unfortunate wife about to sink without being able to yield her the
least assistance, as the point of an asseguy menaced his throat at
the slightest movement.

As an accessory to the alarm our situation excited within us, close
by where his Majesty sat was a negro, on whom a sentence of his had
just been executed.

This miserable wretch had been tied to a stake, disembowelled alive,
and had his body thereafter filled with hot salt.  Despite the
terrors of our own situation, his dying agonies suggested terrible
thoughts of what our own fate might be.  At last his contortions and
quiverings ceased for ever, and then, on the hoarse beating of an old
Arab drum, the pelting was stopped, the King of the Snakes laid aside
his pipe, and while all his sable subjects, save those who guarded
us, prostrated themselves on the turf, he commenced to address us;
and Baylis, who knew something of his jargon, replied, and translated
the conversation to us.

The Captain earnestly deprecated our treatment, as we had come among
them with the peaceful intention of trading.  He pled especially on
behalf of his wife, and offered a great store of bottled rum, old
firelocks, pots, kettles, brass buttons, and iron nails, as ransom
for us all.

At these offers his sable Majesty, the Solon of the Snake River,
before whom had been laid the entire contents of the gig, with the
bloody garments of the poor fellows slain in her, only grinned from
time to time, and then uttered a diabolical laugh, which boded us no
good.

This savage chief presented a dreadful aspect.  Black as ebony, tall,
strong, and muscular in form, he had a horizontal slit in his nether
lip (a custom of his people) through which he could loll his tongue
at pleasure.  This unusual aperture was so large as to give him the
appearance of having two mouths; thus, when he grinned, the white
teeth appeared at the upper, and the red cruel tongue through the
lower.  He wore long splints of wood through the lobes of his ears;
one eye had a fiery red circle painted round it, the other a yellow.
He wore the skin of an ape in front like an apron; and this, with a
pair of sandals, formed of elephant hide, completed his attire.  His
weapons were a long asseguy of tough teak wood, having a point of
iron; and a short sword of iron, curiously fashioned, with a great
leathern tassel at the end of the sheath, hung on his left side.

Behind him a savage held the bridle of his dromedary, which was
covered by a multiplicity of barbaric trappings.

"It is the law of Empungua," said the King, "that he who slays a man
shall have a public trial in face of the tribe; and if he cannot
justify the act, he and all his adherents are doomed to die."

"Then," replied Baylis, "I demand justice on those who slew two of my
men, and plundered our boat."

"But how know we not that one or both killed the fetisher, who was at
worship in the Wood of the Devil?" demanded the King, with a dreadful
expression in his yellow eyeballs.

"Ya--ya--ya--yah!" chorused the tribe.

"I swear to you that we know nothing of the act you mention," replied
Baylis, with great earnestness.

"The white men are liars!"

"If we had known, or been guilty of it, would we have ventured ashore
to trade or barter with you like brothers?"

"Yes; because the white men are all liars!"

"It was done by the ship of another nation."

"All the white men belong to one tribe, and one big canoe is very
like another.  You are liars who come over the Sea of Darkness."*


* The Atlantic.


Baylis, on finding that all his assertions of innocence met with
utter disbelief, bent all his energy to bribe our release; but his
sable Majesty only grinned through _both_ his horrid mouths, and
said--

"Enough! the King of the Snake River will keep what he has got,
without trusting to getting more.  The white men are false.  Who of
my people would venture to your ship when we know now what we never
knew before?"

"And what is this?"

"Accursed dog and son of a race of dogs!" thundered the King,
spitting a quid of something like beetel-nut full in the face of
Baylis; "we have learned that you white men take our people away in
shiploads to fatten them for food, in a land far beyond the sea!"

On this, a yell similar to that we had first heard made wood and
welkin ring.  Violent hands were again laid on us, and we expected
instant immolation; but their purpose at present was merely to denude
us more fully of anything we had about us.

On having his shirt torn from him, poor Hartly endeavoured to protect
or conceal a little gold locket, which contained the hair of his dead
wife and of their little ones, and which was hung at his neck by a
black silk riband.  But he received a blow from a carved war-club
which covered his face with blood; he reeled backward, and the prized
relic was instantly appropriated by the King, who, no doubt, deemed
it the white man's fetish, a "great medicine," or amulet.

Mrs. Baylis became insensible, and was delivered over to a crowd of
women, who shouted and laughed like devils as they bore her into a
wigwam, while her husband, Hartly, six seamen, and I, were, by the
King's order, conducted through the town of huts, and driven like a
herd towards the summit of a high mountain, where we fully expected
to be put to death in some barbarous fashion.

Mounted on his dromedary, the King accompanied his savages, one of
whom, brilliantly smeared over with ochre, was an esquire of the
royal body, I presume, as he sat behind, and held outspread a broad
umbrella of grass matting.




CHAPTER XL.

THE GABON CLIFF.

A sad series of barbarities, suffering, danger, and death make up the
remainder of my story.

We were in the hands of a tribe addicted to fetishism of the lowest
kind.  Worse than the ferocious Bisagos, who pay divine homage to a
dunghill cock, or the people of Benin, who worship their own shadows,
they adored the devil and all snakes, from the little adder to the
great cobra-capello, and maintained temples and priests in their
honour; remaining, in this age of steam, gas, and electricity, as
ignorant as the people mentioned by Ælian, who worshipped flies, and
offered up full-fed oxen on their shrines!

Amid a yelling horde, who, by their menacing tones, seemed full of
animosity, and no doubt were pouring upon us their whole vocabulary
of abuse, though we understood it not, we were led up the steep rough
slope of a mountain, which rose at a very sharp angle to a great
height.  The side on which we ascended was covered with loose stones,
amid which the wild coffee and tobacco plants, with innumerable
thorny trees--the _persea_ of Theophrastus--grew in tangled masses,
with serrated grass, having blades as sharp as knives, with many a
nameless bramble that tore our tender skins, while gnats came upon us
in swarms, and well-nigh drove us mad; and all this we endured, while
the well-armed crew of the _Princess_, in ignorance of our fate, were
within a few miles of us!

On reaching what we supposed to be the summit of a mountain, we found
ourselves upon a green plateau that terminated abruptly in a
precipitous cliff nearly four hundred feet in height, and overhanging
some rocky shelves, which sloped down to the bed of the Gabon River.

Here the King dismounted from his dromedary, and squatted his sable
person on a piece of grass matting under the royal umbrella, while
several of his chief men seated themselves at a respectful distance,
after knocking their woolly heads upon the earth, in token of their
slavish submission.

From the brow of this cliff we could see our ship at anchor in the
estuary, but alas! far beyond the reach of signals.  We could also
see the little green Pongos, which stud the bay formed by the great
sweep of the Gabon.

Afar off on the other hand towards the east, we could discern where,
between groves of strange trees--the plantain, banana, and the
baobab--with many a giant plant and mighty flower upon its shores,
the great river of Guinea, the Rio Gabon, rolled from its distant
source, in the unexplored land of Ungobai--a stream so broad and deep
that a sloop of war has ascended it for more than seventy miles.

Transparent though the air was around us, a hot sunny haze shrouded
those green forests through which the Gabon came rolling like a
mighty flood of gold towards the west--rolling through a vast plain,
covered by a leafy wilderness, where the lordly lion with his shaggy
mane, the cruel panther with his stealthy step, and the ponderous
elephant, roved in herds; and amid the luxuriant flowers and lovely
fertility of which, the scaly cobra-capello, and a hundred kinds of
dreadful reptiles, with tongues that teemed with poison, lurked;
where every fruit and herb were gigantic in proportion to the mighty
continent which produced them; where the crocodile squattered in the
green miasmatic slime, and the hippopotami, huge, misshapen, and
pre-Adamite in form, swam like the great tusky walrus of the icy
regions I had left so recently.

All these natural wonders were contained in the vast plain at our
feet--a plain that seemed to vibrate under the cloudless glare of the
burning sun; for the heat at noon must have been somewhere about 107°
in the shade, and our tender skins were blistering under it.

But the thoughts this scene inspired for a moment were soon diverted
from it, by the terrors about to be enacted there.

A hideous old negro, whose barbaric ornaments announced his rank and
character as a _fetisher_, proceeded to examine, with gipsy-like
care, the various lines on the palms of our hands.

What he affected to gather therefrom we could not divine, but the
lines proved fatal to three of our companions, whom, with yells of
satisfaction, he thrust aside from the rest, and the work of torture
and death at once began by order of the King.

Three strong and handsome young seamen had their hands tied behind
them by a thick thong.

To this a rope was attached; after this they were thrust over the
cliff, and a piercing cry, which curdled the blood in our hearts,
burst from each, when, by the violence of the jerk and their own
weight, their arms were torn round and upward, and dislocated in the
shoulder socket.

In this horrible situation they swung at the extremity of the
suspending lines, which were made fast to the roots of a palm-tree;
and there with a pendulous motion, they swayed to and fro in mid-air,
over the sharp edge of that impending cliff, with the rocky bank of
the Gabon four hundred feet below.

Need I say their shrieks and cries for pity were piercing and
unheeded?

Unable to yield them the slightest assistance, we gazed in speechless
horror; while, as their strength waned, their sad moans arose from
time to time to the plateau on which we stood.

The hungry cormorants, in anticipation of their coming repast, came
out of their holes in the cliff, and with flapping wings, wheeled and
swooped up and down about them.

To protract the mental and bodily agony endured by these poor
fellows, they were permitted to hang thus for nearly half an hour,
when the King gave a signal, and a score of tum-tums, or drums, were
beaten.  On this, the cords were parted by three blows of a sharp
hatchet, then the bodies of our companions fell whizzing through the
air, and vanished from sight far down below, where no doubt the river
crocodiles, the greedy cormorants, and the wild ducks would soon rend
their poor corses asunder.

So perished these unfortunates!

We looked into each other's haggard eyes with blank dismay; and it
may readily be supposed that such an episode made us still more
spiritless and timid.

"Oh, my wife! my poor wife!" exclaimed the unfortunate Baylis from
time to time.  "Death is but the birthday of _another_ life, the
parsons tell us; but I think with horror of her fate among such
cowardly dogs as these.  God help her!  God help her!"

A series of prolonged and exulting yells now announced that our
captors conceived they had appeased the spirit of the fetisher whom
the Yankees had slain.

"Let them die! let them die!" (Baylis told me were their shouts;)
"they are but white dogs who worship neither the sun nor moon, nor
the big snake that lives in the wood."

There were now but six of us remaining, and our fate was soon
decided.  The King selected Hartly and Baylis as slaves for himself,
assigning the four others to different chief men of his town or
territory.

"My poor friend," said Hartly, "this is from bad to worse!  Why did
we not perish with the _Leda_?  We shall never weather these fellows,
I fear!"

I fell to the lot of the savage with the coin at his neck, a
personage whom they named Amoo--the same supple fellow who had first
pounced upon me when we landed in that fiendish country.

As we were separated, Hartly and I had only time to exchange a
farewell glance.  My hands were still secured by the thong, which was
tied so tightly that the flesh of my wrists was becoming blue, livid,
and swollen almost to bursting, so my aching arms were powerless.  By
blows with the shaft of his asseguy, Amoo drove me down the hill, and
conducted me to his wigwam, when the tribe separated, and save on one
occasion I never again saw any of my poor companions in misfortune;
though I afterwards learned the miserable fate of Captain Baylis and
his wife.




CHAPTER XLI.

HOW THE CAPTAIN PERISHED.

I have mentioned that the gentle Mrs. Baylis--she who had nursed us
so kindly in our helplessness--had been carried off by the women of
this tribe of devils, who confined her in a wigwam.

On perceiving the whiteness of her skin, and the great length and
softness of her hair, which was of a fair auburn colour, forming thus
a strange contrast to their sooty exteriors, and the short,
poodledog-like tufts of wool with which their own round skulls were
covered, they diligently proceeded to make her as like themselves as
possible.

A species of gum and certain herbs were boiled in an earthen pipkin,
and with this decoction they rubbed her whole face and body, until
they became black as ebony.

They next rooted out the whole of her soft and beautiful hair, making
her perfectly bald.  Her head was then smeared thickly with gum, and
coated over with green and crimson parrot's feathers.  They then
streaked her breast and shoulders with red and yellow paint.  This
process occupied two entire days, during which she remained a passive
victim in their hands, and at the close--when these ladies of the Rio
Serpientes thought they had made the unhappy woman as fiendish in
aspect and as like themselves as possible--they placed a kind of hoe
in her hands and dragged her into a plantation of millet to work with
them; as the naked warriors and lazy husbands of Gabon, like those of
other savage districts, disdainfully leave all manual labour to their
slavish helpmates.

Despair and exhaustion rendered Mrs. Baylis unable to work; so the
negresses beat, scratched, and bit her, till she sank under their
hands at the root of a date-tree, where she lay inert and reckless
alike of life and death; but the horrid hiss of a serpent close by,
aroused her.

So great is the instinctive love of life, that on beholding this
hideous reptile, which was of the venomous kind and some six or eight
feet long, rearing its head to attack her, she uttered a shrill and
piercing cry for aid.

Two white prisoners who had been hewing wood in an adjacent thicket
came forth on hearing this; but the negresses, who laughed and danced
on seeing the poor woman assailed by one of their holy snakes, met
the two men with their hoes in a hostile attitude, and barred their
advance to a rescue: while the white men, conceiving the shrieking
victim to be a mere savage--so darkly was the skin of Mrs. Baylis
dyed by the decoctions of her tormentors--were not over anxious to
interfere.

In one of these white prisoners, worn to a skeleton, haggard in eye,
and covered with sores and bloody bruises, she had nearly as much
difficulty in recognising her husband, the once plump and jolly
captain of the _Princess_, as he had, in tracing in the face of that
dusky and copper-coloured squaw, with her gummed wig of red and green
parrot's feathers, his pretty English wife, with her once snowy skin
and silky auburn hair; but she cried aloud,

"Save me, Baylis--Oh, save me!  I am your poor wife, your own Annie!"

The unfortunate Baylis trembled with mingled rage and horror, and
snatching a hoe from a negress rushed upon the poisonous serpent,
which had already bitten its victim thrice, and beat it furiously
upon its flat head and scaly body; but while doing so, the frantic
cries of the negresses, who deemed this an act of sacrilege, brought
to the spot Amoo, with a crowd of savages, one of whom pierced Baylis
through the heart with his asseguy, and mercifully slew him on the
instant.

The negresses then rushed upon his wife, and by repeated blows of
their implements upon her head, face, and bosom, soon ended her
miseries.

On beholding this scene of double barbarity, the seaman who had been
at work with Baylis, and who, like him, was also a mass of sores and
bruises by the ill-usage he had undergone, became filled by a species
of frenzy.  Wresting an asseguy from Amoo, he ran three of his
followers through the body in quick succession, and killed, or
mortally wounded them, as all these weapons are poisoned; but he was
soon overpowered by numbers, beaten down, secured, and condemned to
death by tortures, almost too horrible for narration.

His eyes, mouth, and nostrils were forced open and filled with hot
pepper.  He was then enclosed in a strong basket of cylindrical form,
full of long sharp thorns, and this was rolled for hours about the
town of wigwams, until he became a shapeless mass of flesh and blood,
which dropped through the wattling of the cage; and during this
dreadful torture, under which he must soon have perished, if he
uttered cries they were unheard, as they were unheeded, for the
whooping, yelling, and beating of tum-tums, might have made one
suppose that Pandemonium had vomited all its denizens on the bank of
the Gabon River.

While this was going on, I was at work among the plants which grew in
a patch of ground adjoining the wigwam of Amoo; but I could in no way
discover _who_ this last victim was.  However, as Baylis and Hartly
had been condemned to slavery together, I was full of deep sorrow
lest the sufferer might be my friend.




CHAPTER XLII.

AMOO.

Amoo, the savage who wore the amulet or coin at his neck, proved to
be the King's brother; and when first dragged to his miserable
dwelling he informed me, by signs--pointing to the earth which I was
to till, and to the trees which I was to hew--that I was to be his
obedient servant or slave, and by placing the poisoned point of his
asseguy in dangerous proximity to my throat, he menacingly indicated
that death would be the result of the least attempt at resistance or
escape.

I understood his grim pantomime in all its terrible minutiæ; but in
no way daunted thereby, resolved, whatever froward fate might have in
store for me, to leave no means untried to fly his thraldom and reach
the coast, in the hope of escaping to any vessel that might come in
sight, or anchor off the Pongos on the same unfortunate errand as the
_Princess_.

I could no longer hope that she was still there, as the chief mate,
after the lapse of a week, would suppose we were all murdered, and so
continue his voyage to the Cape of Good Hope.

Amoo, though savage and exacting in the tasks he set me, was nothing
in severity when compared to his wife, for this Brave of the Rio
Serpientes had "a helpmate meet for him," who hoed his rice and
maize, shared his matted hut and couch of skins, and who scraped in
thankful silence what he was pleased to leave her after meals at the
bottom of his calibash; who shared with the house-dog his half-picked
bones, and nursed a frightful little imp about a month old.  They had
three others, and Amoo doubtless fondly hoped (to quote Ossian) "they
would carry his name and fame to future times."

By an anomaly in savage life, Amoo was very much attached to his four
children, while their mother was tolerably indifferent about them,
and often forced me to carry her black bantling, which I did, with an
exhibition of all the solicitude I could assume, and with as little
disgust as possible, conceiving that if her good will and confidence
could be won, they might improve my chances of escape; but I strove
in vain, and might as well have caudled the cub of a she-bear.

My mistress was a negress of Guinea, and of unusually horrible
aspect.  Her lower lip was slit, and had a long wooden peg inserted
in it so curiously, that the end thereof dangled upon her breast.
Her great ears, set high upon her woolly head, had ponderous rings of
metal, which dragged them downward to her shoulders.  Her teeth were
dyed blood red by some native herb, known to the fetishers alone, and
her whole body, where revealed by her only garment--an apron of grass
matting--was covered with a species of tattooing, and always smeared
with a thick unctuous grease, in which the embedded gnats and flies
could revel undisturbed.

To eat repasts which were cooked by her odious hands excited a
loathing which hunger alone could conquer; but anxiety for the
future, and the intense heat of the atmosphere, made me generally
averse to animal food; hence I found the yams, which there grow like
turnips (and shoot out long leaves like French beans), my most
pleasant food, as I could cook them for myself, either by boiling
them in a pipkin, or roasting them among cinders.  The inside is
white as flour, and sweet and dry.

For many days I lived on these, with such fruit as I could find when
at work near our wigwam, and Amoo gave me at times a little olive oil
and palm wine, but in secret, for this warrior, though fearless in
other respects, was civilized enough to be afraid of his wife.

My days were spent in hoeing yams, cutting fuel, carrying water in
calibashes, selecting long and straight reeds for baskets, or boughs
and bark to keep the wigwam water-tight.  My mistress would have had
me dive into the bay in search of sea-eggs, but to this I would by no
means consent, and my refusal caused an open and standing feud
between us.

At night, in a corner of their wretched dwelling, I coiled myself up
on a panther skin, and for hours would lie awake in the dark,
revolving plans of escape.  To push a passage through the wattles,
and make off under cloud of night, would have been an easy task,
could I have silenced or circumvented the herd of ferocious dogs
which guarded the town, or rather village, after sunset, and the
yells of which, on the slightest movement, raised an alarm that would
soon cause their being unleashed and let slip upon my track.

The negroes among whom I was cast worshipped the sun, the moon, and
the devil; and in many instances, with singular barbarity, offered up
their youngest children to the latter, that rain might fall in due
season to make the yams big and the bananas grow.

Amoo strove in vain to lessen the severity of his wife, who
frequently beat me with a hard club, till I grew weary of existence,
and my heart swelled with savage thoughts of revenge.

Among the glass beads, feathers, rusty nails, and other trash which
Amoo wore as a necklace, was his great amulet, a curious coin, which
he one day permitted me to examine, but which he would have yielded
up less readily than his life.

It proved to be a piece of the reign of Servius Tullius, sixth King
of the Romans, and consequently must have been more than twenty-three
centuries old.  How came it there, and what was its history?  So this
prize, which half the savans of Europe would have rejoiced to
possess, hung, and, for aught that I know, still hangs at the neck of
an African savage, who found it on the sea-shore.

It was several ounces in weight, and bore on one side the head of
Minerva, on the other an ox, as plain as if struck yesterday; and
accoutred with this "great medicine," Amoo rushed fearlessly to
encounter alike human enemies and the wild beasts of the forests
which bordered the Gabon and the River of Snakes.

In the course of three weeks I picked up several words of the native
language, which is full of rather musical sounds, as most of the
words end in a vowel.  The desire for escape added to the care with
which I studied it.

One day when Amoo, with other savages, was hunting in the forest, and
his better half was paddling about in her canoe on the river fishing,
she suddenly uttered a shrill yell, which arrested me at my work
among the yams, where I was hoeing under a broiling sun.

She was only about forty yards from me, and was pointing frantically
to a huge baboon, which had squatted itself close by where her
youngest child was asleep, under two large plantain leaves, the stems
of which had been stuck in the turf as a species of sun-shade.

The baboon was of the ursine species, larger than a Newfoundland dog,
and though common enough in South Africa, I now beheld it for the
first time.  It was a hideous brute, covered with shaggy brown hair,
except on the hind feet and hands, for its forepaws are literally
_hands_, and bare as a man's, being constantly employed in climbing
rocks and trees, pulling fruit, or grubbing up roots and esculents
for food.  Its head resembled that of a dog, but its hind feet were
rather human in form.

These baboons are so strong and bold, that they will attack a leopard
or hyæna, and by their teeth, which are an inch-and-a-half long, and
their sharp fore-claws, can rend the throat and jugular vein with
ferocious dexterity.

The woman uttered yell after yell, and pointing to her nursling with
one hand, paddled vigorously towards the shore with the other, while
I gazed at her with irresolution; thus, before either of us could
come to the rescue, the grisly she-baboon had snatched it up and
bounded into the forest!

Though I had no great love for the tribe of the Rio Serpientes, the
natural impulses of humanity, together with a dread of the vengeance
that might fall upon me for neglect, caused me instantly to rush away
in pursuit.




CHAPTER XLIII.

THE RESCUE OF HIS CHILD.

Some time before this, I had fortunately made for myself a pair of
long sandals, formed of panther's skin, which I wore as Bryan O'Lynn
did his breeches--

  "With the skinny side out and the hairy side in."

Indeed these, and a kind of shirt of grass-matting, were all the
garments I possessed; for the savages, on our capture, tore all our
clothes into strips, that each might have a portion; thus, every coin
and button found upon us were appropriated; even our watches were
broken up, and the wheels and springs of them were worn in their
noses and ears as ornaments.

These sandals enabled me to run with ease and safety through patches
of prickly yams, among serrated blades of grass, wild vines, dense
creepers, and all kinds of thorny bushes.

Two warriors, on hearing the alarm, joined me in the pursuit.  One
soon passed me, but went upon a false trail; the other stumbled and
hurt himself severely; so relinquishing my wooden hoe for his
asseguy, I continued the pursuit alone.

Encumbered by her prey, the baboon could only run upon her hind legs,
thus I easily kept her in sight after seeing her again.  She was
making straight towards those steep and lofty rocks which overhang
the Gabon river--the same fatal rocks where three of our boat's crew
had perished so miserably.

But her progress was soon impeded by a wall of gigantic reeds about
ten feet high, through which a passage seemed impossible, as they
grew close and dense amid a deep miasmatic quagmire, which covered
all the plain at the base of the rocks, and amid which myriads of
water-snakes lurked, and poisonous reptiles squattered.  Here, too,
there was no air--not a breath could be inhaled with freedom, for the
density of the reeds obstructed every passing current; and, gasping
and bathed in perspiration, as I drew near the savage animal she
turned, and was about to make a hostile, and perhaps most fatal
spring, in which case all had ended with me then; when suddenly
perceiving a narrow opening in the reedy wall, she changed her
intention, and entering, again vanished with the child.

Further pursuit seemed impossible!

I sank under a tree, and for some time fanned myself with a large
leaf.  While thus employed, I heard a strange railing cry at a
distance, and on looking round perceived the baboon, about a hundred
yards off, clambering up the face of the rocks, where it entered a
hole, and disappeared.

Though I could scarcely hope that the child of Amoo would be alive or
undevoured, I marked well the locality of the crevice its captor had
entered, and making a detour, reached the end of the reedy marsh, and
then proceeded boldly to ascend the rocks.

In some parts the climbing convolvoli and papyrus grew in such
masses, and were so interlaced, as to form a rampart, against which I
toiled in despair, and had my skin torn in innumerable places, ere I
could burst through them.  One feels so helpless without clothing.

At last I reached the vicinity of the hole, and after pausing for a
time to recover breath, advanced with the asseguy charged breast
high, lest the fierce brute might spring forth upon me; but on
peering into the den, I saw its eyes glancing, and its grim
satyr-like visage grinning at me, while uttering a hoarse cry.

The infant was alive, and its captor was kindly fondling it; having
been probably deprived of her own offspring by some hunter's shaft,
the act of abduction had been prompted by a strange and erratic
maternal emotion in herself.

Amoo explained this to me afterwards as being no uncommon occurrence.
I had no thought of it then, but rushed upon her with the long and
sharp asseguy, and thrust it deeply into her breast.  Coiled up in
her little den, and thus rendered incapable of active resistance, she
could only howl, bite, and writhe upon the tough teakwood shaft;
while her life-blood smeared all the little black infant, and ebbed
away among the well-picked bones of the small monkeys and wild ducks,
which strewed the hole that formed her lair.

The poor baboon expired just as I drew forth the asseguy for a
finishing thrust; and at that moment Amoo, with a crowd of other
savages, came rushing up the rocks, and joined me, with excitement
expressed in all their wide mouths and glittering eyeballs.

Breathless and drenched in perspiration, overcome by exertion, and
somewhat sickened by the cries and death agonies of the half
human-like creature I had slain, I sank upon a bank of turf,
incapable of further exertion.

Amoo, after holding up his offspring by each leg alternately, and
viewing it over as one might do a dead duck or rabbit, to ascertain
if any of its bones were broken, found that it had suffered only a
few scratches, on which he uttered sundry shrill howls expressive of
paternal satisfaction, and patted me kindly on the head and breast,
in token that henceforth we were friends, and in amity.

"You are brave--you are brave!  Yah--yah!" said he repeatedly.  "You
are the brother of Amoo."

Thus did I achieve the very end I had in view--to win the confidence
of my savage task-masters!

We returned to the wigwams in triumph, bringing with us the skin of
the ursine baboon on the point of an asseguy; and the circumstance of
a creature so agile and ferocious having been slain by me, the poor
despised white slave, was evidently the cause of much marvel to that
dingy community.

From this day there was a sensible alteration in the bearing of my
mistress towards me.  I cannot say that I gained more of her
confidence, or had fewer tasks set me, but when beating me with her
club, she entirely ceased to strike me on _the head_ or face, as she
had been wont to do.  But the reason of this unusual forbearance was
explained to me by Amoo, and proved a very cogent reason for
hastening my departure from the unpleasant vicinity of the Snake
River.




CHAPTER XLIV.

THE GRATITUDE OF HIS WIFE.

In two instances she patted my head and smiled on me, till the
corners of her mouth went up to her ears.

On the last occasion she gave me a large iron knife to sharpen,
indicating by various signs that a very fine edge must be put upon it.

"She is grateful to you for saving her child," said Amoo, who
observed her.

"I am glad of it," said I, with a sigh of mingled bitterness and
impatience.

"She means to show you and the tribe that she is so."

"The tribe too, how?"

"Yah, yah," said Amoo, as he placed one hand on my head, and drew the
right forefinger of the other across his throat, in a way that was
unpleasantly suggestive.  Then he laughed and pointed to a gaily
painted canoe that lay among some reeds by the river-side.

"She will assist me to escape in it to a big ship at the Pongos?"
said I with a glow of hope.

Amoo frowned, then he grinned and shook his head.

"What then?" I asked anxiously.

After a good deal of pantomime, with which he endeavoured to aid his
explanations, at last the horrid truth broke upon me!

She wished my caput as a figure-head to her canoe, for which purpose,
after being duly prepared by gums, balms, and herbs, she could make
it suitable.  Amoo flatteringly added that such had been her desire
from the first, as "I was the youngest and best-looking of the
prisoners."

Here was a pleasant prospect!

"And it was for this purpose she gave me the long knife to sharpen so
carefully?"

"Yah, yah," replied Amoo, while a glow of rage filled my breast; "and
even now she is gathering herbs on the borders of the wood to boil in
the stone jar with it."

"It--what?"

"Your head."

"I must watch."

"It is of no use to watch," replied Amoo; "sometime, when you are not
thinking of it, she will give you some red berries, that will cause
you to sleep _very sound_; and then with her knife or a sharp
shell--yah, yah!" he concluded by a guttural laugh, and again pressed
his finger round his neck.

"Oh, Heavens!" I exclaimed, "aid me to escape from this atrocious
squaw!"

I asked Amoo if he, in gratitude to me for saving his child, would
aid me to escape; but he shook his head, adding:

"I am the brother of a great king, and must keep my slave."

"Why?"

"To punish the white men, who fatten up our brothers beyond the Sea
of Darkness, and eat them."

After reiterated applications to his gratitude and pity for freedom
or assistance, finding that he was gradually losing his temper and
becoming suspicious; that his snake-like eyes were beginning to gleam
and his thick red nostrils to quiver, I abandoned the subject, and
resuming my hoe, went to my daily task in the patch of garden where
our yams and other esculents grew, and affected to work as usual,
conscious that, for a time, my savage owner was eyeing me with vague
doubts, and while playing ominously with his long reed-like asseguy,
was probably repenting that by his admissions he had put me on my
guard against the artistic views of his better half.

After a time he disappeared, yet I dreaded that it was only to
conceal himself under some of the bushes, or the leaves of the
creeping gourds, to watch me, so I affected to hoe
industriously--yes, and to whistle too, though my heart was sick and
full of dreadful apprehensions.  One thing I had resolved, come what
might, never again to commit my head to sleep, or to pass a night
within the same wigwam with that horrible woman.

While revolving in my mind, and almost blind with desperation, what
measures I should take to save myself, to escape from my present
danger and misery, I saw her pass from the wood towards the town of
wigwams.  In one hand she held the knife I had sharpened so nicely
for her, in the other a basket filled with herbs--herbs, I doubted
not, for my especial behoof; and she "grinned horribly a ghastly
smile," as she walked on with that shuffling gait peculiar to these
negresses.

My heart swelled with so much rage and hatred at this hideous
creature, that I had some difficulty in repressing a vehement desire
to beat her down with my hoe; but such a proceeding would only have
ensured and accelerated my own destruction; as I knew not what number
of watchful savages might at that moment be eyeing me from amid the
jungle of leaves, flowers, and fruit which bordered the patch wherein
I worked, under a sun so vertical that I had scarcely a shadow.

Lest such a surveillance might be maintained, I resolved as soon as
she disappeared to adopt something of their own subtlety.

I seated myself under a tree among some weeds, as if tired, and then,
after a time, affected to sleep; though keeping watch with open ears
and half-closed eyes, lest any one might approach; but all remained
still around me, save the monotonous hum of the millions of insects
that revolved in the shade of the adjacent wood.

On being assured of this, I crept on my hands and knees into the
jungle, dragging my hoe after me, and going feet foremost on my face
for nearly a hundred yards or so, that I might with my fingers
obliterate all traces of a _trail_; and in this, I was very
successful by raising the crushed grass and shaking the bruised twigs.

At last I reached a runnel, the waters of which I knew would destroy
all scent of my footsteps, and baffle the keen nostrils of those
ferocious dogs, which would certainly be let slip in search of me the
moment I was missed.

Assured that this runnel of water would be a tributary of the Rio
Serpientes, I proceeded up its course for several miles, and in my
anxiety to escape the human race forgetting all about the ferocious
denizens of the African forest--the snakes and other dreadful
reptiles with which the woods, the water, and the bordering deserts
teemed.

I must have proceeded about ten miles without meeting either man or
beast to molest or obstruct me, when evening was beginning to close,
and I found myself nearly exhausted, but within a pleasant thicket of
orange, citron, and chestnut trees, which bordered a pretty lake, and
flourished amid the thousand flowering shrubs of this luxuriant
wilderness.

The necessity for rest forced itself upon me; but I dared not sleep
on the earth lest snakes might assail me, and even in a tree I was
not safe from the panthers, yet I chose my couch in the latter.
Furnished with a large stone, as a missile for defence in any
emergency, grasping the hoe by my teeth, I clambered into a
chestnut-tree, scaring therefrom a whole covey of kingfishers,
copper-coloured cuckoos, and green and flame-coloured parrots.

Then selecting a place where the leafy branches were forked out from
the stem, and grew in such a form that I could rest upon them with
ease, and without fear of falling, I deposited the stone in a hollow
of the tree, and after an hour of anxious and exciting watchfulness,
gradually felt sleep stealing over me--a sleep to which the "drowsy
hum" of the insects, the balmy air of the evening, the lassitude
produced by my recent travel after a day's toil under a burning sun,
all conduced; and so, heedless of everything, at last I slept
profoundly on my awkward perch.




CHAPTER XLV.

FLIGHT.

In this precarious situation I must have been asleep for some hours,
when awakened by a dreadful sound, and with a start so nervous that I
nearly fell from my roost upon the long, reedy grass below.

This sound was the roaring of a lion!

I had heard it often in menageries at home; but there the sound was
feeble as the bay of a house-dog when compared to the dread roar,
which rolled along the ground and rent the still air of the morning
in that lone African forest.  A terror possessed me; yet, grasping my
hoe, while quivering in every fibre, I gazed with keen anxiety
between the leaves of the chestnut-tree for the approaching enemy.

Ignorant alike of his powers of leaping and scenting, I knew not
whether the lion might, on discovering me, at once spring up like a
tree-leopard, which can pursue its prey, like a cat, from branch to
branch.  Oh, how I longed for a good rifle--a sharp sword--a
dagger--for any other weapon than the miserable wooden club (for the
hoe was no better) with which I was armed at that moment.

The lilac light of dawning morn poured through the thick green vista
of the wild forest, and the little lake which lay near my
chestnut-tree shone white as a sheet of milk, bordered by countless
gaudy tulips and opening flowers.

The sun was yet below the horizon, but every dew-drenched herb, and
leaf, and tree, were distinctly visible in the clear pale light that
overspread the sky.

Every pulse quickened, and all my energies became wound up to the
utmost pitch by excitement, when I saw the mighty lord of the
wilderness--a vast dun-coloured lion, with his large round head and
shaggy mane, powerful legs, his close round body and tufted tail,
that shook wrathfully aloft as he trotted past swiftly, bearing a
dead sheep in his mouth.

Passing almost under the tree, and round the margin of the lake, he
disappeared in the forest; but a sense of his terrible presence
seemed to linger about me still.  My doubts and irresolution were
increased; the dangers of the wilderness in which I wandered, alone
and unarmed, became more vividly impressed upon me, and for a time I
almost regretted that I had left the coast, and the protection of my
savage task-masters.  But then the wife of Amoo, and her hideous
desire for possessing my head!

"Hope is the bounty of God!" thought I, and as the forest remained
still and quiet--at least, as no sound reached my ear, save the
increasing hum of the myriads of insects warming into life and sport
in the light and heat of the rising sun--I resolved to descend from
my perch, and follow the track of any stream which might lead to the
coast, for by the sea--the open, free, wide sea--lay my only hope of
escape from this dangerous and detested shore.

Remembering the geographical form of Africa, as represented on the
map, I knew that if I could, by any means, proceed westward for about
two hundred and fifty miles or so round the Bight of Benin, I should
be so near our settlement at Cape Coast Castle as to be in safety.
But how, in such a country, was this to be accomplished?

I had already begun my descent from the tree, when the noise of
something coming rapidly through the forest made me scramble into my
perch again.  And lo! a savage, armed as usual with a long asseguy,
but mounted on a swift dromedary, came from amid the trees, and
paused by the lonely lake to give his great misshapen nag a drink;
and while he did so, in his brawny form and tasselled apeskin apron
and sandals, his eyes with their circles of red and yellow paint, the
slit under his mouth, his hideous aspect and barbaric trappings, I
recognised the brother of Amoo--the King of the Rio Serpientes!

Were both upon my track, or had chance alone brought him here?  I
knew that if retaken, I had met with more mercy from the lion than
from either; and the image of the wife of Amoo, with her sharp knife
and basket of herbs and gums, seemed to rise before me.

The savage looked around him, and suddenly turning his dromedary,
rode straight towards my place of concealment.  I grasped my hoe,
resolved if he had seen me, not to yield up my wretched existence
without a desperate struggle; but all unconscious of my presence, his
sable majesty dismounted, placed his asseguy against the chestnut
tree, spread a grass-mat at its root, and seating himself, proceeded
quietly to light a species of hubble-bubble, or pipe made from a reed
and a nut-shell.  Stuffing therein some dried herbs, he applied flint
and steel, and began leisurely and literally to enjoy his morning
weed.

At his neck I could see poor Robert Hartly's gold locket glittering.

The vicinity of this ferocious and tremendous personage, with the
chances of his horde being all within hail, like the band of Roderick
Dhu, so greatly alarmed me, that fully a quarter of an hour elapsed
before I rallied sufficiently to conceive the idea of appropriating
his quiet and docile dromedary (which was cropping the herbage close
by), and using it as a means of reaching Cape Coast Castle, the
western goal of all my hopes.

I knew that this animal was deemed a miracle of swiftness even in
that burning clime, where they will travel with ease fifty miles per
day.

The savage King seemed to be asleep, or in a waking doze; but I knew
that by habits of danger, activity, and a life spent in the open air,
the senses of these people were so acute, that the slightest sound
would revive him; and that, if once discovered, he could crush me
like a shrimp in his powerful grasp.

"Can I not kill him?" thought I, as furious thoughts began to fill my
mind; "my hoe is too light--ha! the stone!"

I snatched the stone, which with difficulty I had conveyed up the
tree overnight, as a missile against wild animals, and poised it in
my hands.  It was nearly twelve pounds weight, and the woolly skull
of the King was immediately below me; but it might be thick as that
of an elephant, so the missile would prove more harmless than a ball
of worsted.

If I missed, death to me was certain; if I slew or stunned him, I had
an equal certainty of escape.  Then I thought of poor Captain Baylis,
of his tortured wife, of Hartly, and of that horrible butchery by the
steep rocks of the river Gabon, and a glow of merciless fury filled
my soul!

The stone shot from my hand, and, bathed in blood, quivering and
senseless, the brutal King of the Snake River rolled among the long
dry grass, with foam issuing from his mouth, and the aperture below
it.

Swift as lightning I descended the tree--all cramped and stiff by a
night passed amid its branches; caught his dromedary by the bridle,
sprang upon its back, snatched up the asseguy as a weapon for
defence, and, without casting a glance to ascertain whether I had
been guilty of actual regicide, or had merely given him a crack upon
his imperial crown, urged the animal I bestrode westward at furious
speed, through a grove of pale green orange trees, where the rich
dewy fruit hung like balls of gleaming gold in the light of the
morning sun.




CHAPTER XLVI.

FLIGHT CONTINUED.

Steering my course westward, so closely as I could judge, I rode
rapidly through wild and pathless places; and when mounted on an
animal so sure and swift of foot, I felt more confident of escape
from any savages in whose way I might fall.

I was not without a dread of wild animals, for the furious lion and
the stealthy panther roam everywhere through the forests of Africa;
and though nearly the whole day passed without meeting one of either
species, hundreds of pernicious serpents, black, or brown, or green
and scaly, with glaring eyes, hissed at me from amid the long rank
grass; while brightly pinioned birds flew about me, and horrid
baboons and monkeys, of all kinds and sizes, leaped and frisked on
every hand, springing from branch to branch of the trees, where they
swung madly to and fro by their tails as I passed.

At a distance rose the smoke of fires, with the dome-shaped wigwams
of three negro villages; but these I avoided by keeping far off, and
without tarrying a moment for food or refreshment, pushed on
westward, through a broad plain where the maize, cassava, and pulse
were cultivated in little patches.  On, on where the banana, the
papaw, the lemon, orange, and tamarind trees grew wild in thickets;
where the spotted giraffe, the striped zebra, and the graceful little
antelope, made their lair, and trembled when they heard the roar of
the lion of Libya.

On, on I rode to reach the castle of Cape Coast, and urged the
dromedary to his utmost speed.

Leaving the plain, at the end of which the sun was setting now, I
continued my way still westward across a long tract of desert sand;
and now for the first time I paused to look around me.

On the borders of this desert grew some wild lotus trees.
Dismounting, I took some of their farinaceous berries with joy to
assuage my hunger, and found their flavour to resemble sweet
ginger-bread.

After a draught of water from a runnel--water that was actually
tepid--I remounted with difficulty, as my strength was nearly gone
now; having ridden the livelong day under a burning sun, which left
the sand so hot that it scorched my feet, while the finely pulverized
grains of it were floating in a cloud about me, and filling my mouth
and eyes as it whirled in eddies when the faint evening wind passed
over the arid waste, rippling up its surface as if it was water.

At a distance appeared some bustards and long-legged cranes; but no
other living thing, as the setting sun, vast, round, and blood-red,
after shedding a steady crimson glare across the desert waste, sank
beneath the horizon.

At the quarter of his declension, I perceived a grove of trees, and
fearing to remain all night on the open waste, rode swiftly towards
them; but they were farther off than I imagined, and seemed to recede
as I progressed, so deceptive is the distance of a level sandy
desert; thus night was far advanced when I reached the shelter of
their foliage, and overcome by a lassitude--a total
prostration--there was no resisting, I had just strength sufficient
to throw the bridle of the dromedary over the branch of a tree, and
to roll off his back upon a bank of soft turf, when a heavy sleep
fell on me.

Waking next morning, stiff, cramped, and drenched with dew, I looked
round for my four-footed friend, but he had disappeared, and not a
trace of him remained.

Thus, after all the toil and travelling of the past day, my prospects
were little better than before.

But the forest scene was lovely!  It was full of scarlet and golden
blossoms, all bright as the glossy plumage of the parrots that
nestled amid the foliage; while the perfume of the orange and lemon
trees, which the dew of the past night had refreshed, filled the
morning air with delicious fragrance; and now the mighty hum of a
myriad great insects loaded it with monotonous and perpetual sound.

On the outskirts of the wood, between me and the far-stretching vista
of the white sandy desert, my eye suddenly detected the tall dark
figure of a savage, stalking about with a long asseguy in his right
hand.  He was naked, all save a scanty scarlet grass-cloth around his
body.

Coiled up in my lurking-place, I watched with considerable interest
the motions of this man of the wilderness.  Supple, brawny, and
strong, he had the form of a bronze Hercules, the agility of an
antelope, and the eye of an eagle.  He had detected the footmarks of
the dromedary, and gliding about, with a light stealthy step, and a
keen prowling eye, he tracked them with his face near the ground,
until he came close to where I lay, but never, the while, did he
venture _within_ the actual boundary of the wood.

Suddenly his eye fell upon me!

He started; uttered a shrill cry, and poised his long asseguy, as if
about to launch it; then he lowered it, and uttered a whoop, which
brought some twenty or thirty other savages around him.

They all pointed to me in a manner and with expressions that seemed
to indicate surprise or rage; they gesticulated violently, and by
what they said, I could learn that by being _within_ the forest, I
was guilty of an act of sacrilege.  Their language seemed a dialect
of that spoken by the tribe I had lied from, on the north bank of the
Gabon.




CHAPTER XLVII.

THE WOOD OF THE DEVIL.

Making signs that I was a friend, or wished to be considered one, by
casting away my asseguy, and placing my hands upon my head and
breast, I advanced with a resolute aspect, but with a quaking heart,
towards them.

By what I heard then, and learned afterwards, I had violated the
sanctity of a holy place--the abode of a fetish--as this wood had for
ages been dedicated to the Devil, whom these savages, like those of
Benin, worship as a dreadful spirit, not to love, but to conciliate.

No one entered this wood, which was composed of giant chestnuts,
palm, orange, and lime trees, all growing wild for many leagues, as
the spirit of evil was alleged to harbour in its inmost recesses.

Here then, on its skirts, a mother and her infant were sometimes
sacrificed with tortures too terrible for description, to propitiate
this dark spirit; though in some rare instances a husband might
ransom his doomed wife with a poor female slave, captured from a
hostile tribe.

So sacred is this wood deemed, that if a person accidentally enters
it by one path, he must force his way through it to the very end
without turning or looking back--a feat none ever performed, as it
teems with wild beasts, whose fangs and claws speedily dispose of the
intruder.  Even a foreign _negro_, or his wives, dare not enter it;
then, what punishment was due to me, a white man, for having ventured
to do so?

Dapper, a very old traveller, and a bold fellow, too, mentions that,
to ridicule the faith of the people in this forest, he went shooting
into it, and deliberately turned _back_ when about half way through.

"What will the Devil think of this?" he asked the negro priests, who
were scared by his audacity, and confounded by his return in safety.

"He does not trouble himself about white men," was their response;
and, singular to say, our traveller was permitted to go unscathed,
for savages generally admire courage and temerity.

However, the negroes into whose hands I had unfortunately fallen
seemed of a different opinion from Mr. Dapper's friends; and after a
noisy palaver, to which I listened with an agonizing interest, my
life being in the balance, they laid violent hands upon me.

I was dragged to a tall palm-tree, which grew on the verge of the
forest, with some of its fibrous roots extending among the grassy
border on one side, and into the dry sand of the desert on the other.

I was placed with my back against the stem; and there they bound me
hard and fast by drawing my arms round it and tying my wrists
securely by the tendrils of a convolvolus--one of the climbing kind,
which, when tough and green, is strong as a new inch-rope.

They then retired, mocking and grinning, and ever and anon
threatening to launch their asseguys at me; thus I fully expected to
be martyred like St. Sebastian, as we see him in Guido's picture at
Dulwich; but they left me, and disappeared round an angle of the
forest, abandoning me to my fate and my own terrible reflections.

It was midday now, and above me shone the blaze of an almost vertical
sun; thus I found the shade of the drooping palm branches grateful
and pleasant--a boon, a blessing.

Lest the savages might be watching me from a distance, I did not
attempt to release my hands; but after nearly an hour elapsed,
fearing that strength might fail me from the cramped manner in which
my arms were bound backward round the tree, I strove to rend the
green withes which fettered me to it.

Vain task!

Strain them as I might, the tough and unyielding tendrils of the
convolvoli only seemed to tighten, and to cut me as I tore, wrenched,
and struggled, without success.

The horror of being left thus defenceless at the mercy of the wild
animals with which the forest teemed was so great, that I forgot
alike the pangs of hunger and those of thirst, which are greater
still; and again and again strove frantically for freedom, until,
with the futility of each successive effort, the conviction forced
itself upon me, that without human assistance I could never be
released, but might perish of starvation, or be devoured alive.

Human assistance! who, then, would be disposed to aid me?  And, if
so, who would come in time?

And so the hot day passed breathlessly, slowly, and terribly on!

As the burning sun revolved towards the West, the lengthening shadows
of the wood went round in the reverse direction, until the level
sunbeams cast them far across the arid desert I had traversed so
swiftly yesterday; and as the light of evening sank, the hues of that
white glistening waste changed to yellow, then to brown, and then to
amber.

My arms ached till they seemed in process of being rent from my
shoulders: so, panting, hot, breathless, and half dead with thirst, I
reclined against that abhorred tree, from which I could in no way
free myself.

As evening deepened, the hum of insect life lessened, and the
bright-plumed birds of the wilderness were seeking their nests in the
foliage above me; but on me their beauty was lost.  Even the cock of
the Libyan forest, with his purple breast, his crimson and green
pinions, was unheeded, as he picked up a few grains of millet at my
feet, and passed to his mate in the orange tree.

A raven or two, soaring through the blue immensity of the sky,
suggested dreadful thoughts of what I _might be_ on the morrow.

Then little snakes came from amid the long grass to writhe and
wriggle on the sand, which was yet warm with the sunshine of the past
day; and they made me think of the dreadful cobra-capello, with his
flamelike tongue, charged with poison and death--the hooded serpent,
which, when in fury, has been known to rear its horrid front, and
spring at a man on horseback; and then of the berg-adder, which I
feared still more, because it is so difficult to discover, and which
I had no means of avoiding if it approached me.

My past reading had given me, moreover, a somewhat exaggerated idea
of the number of wild animals in Africa.  At Ascension, I had seen a
narrative of a _Voyage à l'Isle de France_, by a person who styled
himself an _Officier du Roi_, and who stated that, in the forests of
Africa, "there were to be found whole _armies_ of lions."

Later travellers have ridiculed this idea, but be that as it may, the
distant roaring of a lion now added to the accumulating dangers which
surrounded me, and filled my soul with emotions of horror so great
that I could not summon even a thought of prayer, and memory refused
to supply me with the most hackneyed ejaculation of piety.

Bound and helpless, without means of defence or flight, I now heard
this terrible animal approaching me, crushing the shrubs and branches
in his native forest as he came.

On hearing this sound, so fraught with danger, a zebra and several
antelopes bounded out of the wood and paused to listen.  Again that
prolonged cry rang upon the still air.  The zebra cowered and
shuddered, and after crouching for a moment, sprang away into the
desert of sand, followed by the fleet little antelopes (which were of
the kind called Guinea Deer, having legs no thicker than a
tobacco-pipe), and they were all soon out of sight.

The roar was singular in sound.  Hoarse and inarticulate, it swelled
upon the air like a prolonged O, that seemed to come from and pass to
a vast distance.  It never became loud or shrill, but the _idea_ it
suggested of the animal itself, made it seem to pierce the very soul;
and all the tales I had read or heard of the lion, and all the
terrors I had conjured up as being embodied in his tremendous person,
came upon me like a flood.

There are some who aver that if he has once tasted human flesh he
will for ever disdain any other.

With great bewilderment of mind--like one in a dream that is full of
nightmare--I beheld a great and dark-skinned lion, with an enormous
dusky mane, run out of the wood about a hundred yards off, and, after
looking about, he came straight towards me, for by some strange
instinct he became sensible of my vicinity in a moment.  In his mouth
he bore a zebra (about the size of a Shetland pony), which he grasped
by its crushed back, and the legs of which were trailing on the
ground as he bore it along, with all the air and all the ease of a
cat carrying off a large rat.

On beholding me he dropped his prey, which was quite dead, and after
uttering another hoarse roar, continued to approach, with his nose
close to the ground, while switching his tufted tail and shaking his
shaggy mane, preparatory, as I imagined, to making a spring upon me;
then I closed my eyes, and with a heart that died within me, resigned
myself to my fate.

Onward he came, step by step, for I could hear his footfalls on the
ground!

Onward yet, and now every pulse seemed to stand still!

Then a warm and fetid breath played upon my face, I felt his whiskers
touch my breast, and there was a strange snuffing sound in my
tingling ears.

Opening my eyes, I beheld close to mine the tremendous visage of the
lion, the enormous upper lip, in form so suggestive of cruelty and
rapacity, and all studded with wiry hairs, bristling out fiercely on
either side; the low flat forehead and impending brows; the wild orbs
that seemed to glare from amid the masses of his tangled mane; the
open jaws and sharp teeth, reeking and steaming with the warm blood
of the zebra he had just slain!

After deliberately snuffing at me in this manner for a second or
so--a time which seemed an eternity, so much agony of thought and
tension of the heart were compressed within it, he quietly _turned
about_, took his dead zebra, as if he deemed it the most preferable
supper of the two, trotted into the wood and disappeared.

The agonies of a lifetime seemed concentrated into that minute!

All I had endured now proved too much for me.  A sudden insensibility
sank like a cloud over all my senses, and a sleep--the sleep of utter
prostration of mind and body, fell upon me.  Thus, the noon of the
next day was far advanced before I became again conscious, or aware
of my miserable existence.




CHAPTER XLVIII.

RETAKEN.

Released from the tree, but still benumbed and sore after being so
long bound to it, I was now stretched upon the grass, under the
shadow of its great fan-like branches.  Many persons were moving
about me, and the hum of their voices filled my ear.

Raising myself slowly and heavily upon my hands, I saw around me
hundreds of negroes, and close to mine was the ugly visage of--Amoo.

"Oh," thought I, bitterly; "this is too much!  A prisoner again, and
after all the dangers I have dared--the friends I have seen
perish--the miseries I have undergone!  Will fate never weary of
persecuting me?"

But Amoo was not such a wicked fellow after all.

Producing his gourd bottle of palm wine, he mixed it with cool water
from a shaded spring, and forced me to imbibe a long draught, after
which I sat up and looked about me more collectedly.

I was in the midst of a species of negro bivouac, consisting of many
hundreds of men and women, with camels and dromedaries laden with
various stuffs and rudely fashioned weapons and utensils, made up in
bales with grass matting and cordage.

They were cooking at several fires, and in various modes, the flesh
of an elephant which they had snared, as Amoo informed me, in a pit
on the other side of the forest on the preceding day, and the meat of
which is esteemed in these latitudes as a veritable dainty--a right
royal luxury.  He pressed me to eat a slice or so, but in my weak
state, and the fever of my spirit, the odour and the aspect of it
were more than enough for me, so a mouthful or two of boiled yam and
palm wine sufficed.

The negroes were all well armed with asseguys, swords, bows, muskets,
and targets, as if proceeding on a hostile expedition.  Among them
were many who were better clad and more civilized in aspect than the
painted savages who dwell by the Snake River, and these, Amoo
informed me, were subjects of the King of Benin.

After relating how his companions had found me bound to the tree,
senseless or asleep, he inquired how it came to pass I was there.

"I fled to escape your wife," said I, looking round fearfully.

"Yah, yah," said he, laughing; "I was sorry for the loss of my white
slave, but am glad you escaped her knife; for she wished much to
ornament her big canoe, so she got the head of another white man."

"Another--who--which?"

"Amoo does not know; he tried to steal a canoe and escape to the
Pongo Islands, but was retaken, and so my wife got his head for her
canoe.  She boiled it in a stone pipkin, with gums and herbs, stuck
fish-bones in its nose and ears, and now it will last for many, many
suns and moons, without decay."

(Who was this _other_ unfortunate that had perished so miserably?  He
might be my friend Hartly--if indeed it was not he who was so cruelly
destroyed in the basket of thorns.)

"Never mind who it was," said Amoo, divining my thoughts, "since you
are found again."

"To be your prisoner?" I sighed.

Amoo grinned, leered cunningly, and shook his woolly head.

"What then?"

"To be reserved for something better than being my slave."

"_Better!_" I reiterated, with perplexity; "how--where?"

"Yah, yah--you will learn in good time."

"When?" I exclaimed, with impatience.

"On our reaching the capital of Benin."

"You are going there with all these people?"

"Yah."

"For what purpose--to fight?"

"No."

"What then?"

"To bury Zabadie, the king, who is dead."

I was somewhat comforted by this, as everything added to the chances
of escape; for I knew that European vessels frequently anchored in
the Bight of Benin, and I associated ideas of greater civilization
with that quarter of Africa, though it bordered on Dahomey--that
barbarous land of blood and terror.

It was evident that Amoo knew nothing about my encounter in the wood
with the King, his brother, or the manner in which I had borrowed the
royal dromedary; for he informed me, in the course of our obscure and
somewhat pantomimic conversation, that on his return he would
probably find himself King of the Snake River, as his brother was not
expected to live.

I inquired why.

"As he was asleep under a tree, a great baboon let a big stone fall
upon his head, and nearly killed him," replied Amoo, with perfect
unconcern, and I cannot plead guilty to feeling the smallest
compunction in the matter.

This species of caravan was proceeding from the territory of Gabon,
whose king is a vassal of the monarch of Benin, with a tribute of
female slaves, baskets, gourd vessels, panther skins, elephants'
teeth, and gold dust, to assist at the funeral of the late royal
defunct, or to lay at the feet of his successor; and I was pleased to
find that we were to proceed as nearly as possible along the coast.

I resolved to take the first opportunity of securing arms--a musket
and knife if possible--of leaving the cavalcade, and concealing
myself in a wood near the sea-shore, there to await a ship; but the
hope was formed in vain, for Amoo, who frequently spoke of the "great
future in store for me at Benin," never lost sight of me for an
instant, either by night or by day, when we halted.

When we did so, we warily lighted a circle of large fires to scare
wild animals from our bivouac.  and thus could sleep in security.




CHAPTER XLIX.

THE CARAVAN.

The whole of the coast there is broken by innumerable river
estuaries, the banks of which are covered by bright green reeds, and
broad-leaved weeds and canes of mighty growth.  Thus our progress was
slow, as we had frequently to embark in canoes on those frowsy
waters, whose miasma is so pestilential by night, and which are ever
rendered dangerous by the alligators and hippopotami that lurk in the
oozy holes along their banks.

At a place where we were about to cross, the black scouts, who formed
a species of advanced guard, returned in haste and excitement to
state that one of the last-named animals (one of great size, too) was
asleep on the bank.

On hearing this the caravan halted, and Amoo, being a brave and hardy
warrior, and moreover the brother of a king, claimed the privilege of
assailing it.  Armed with a spear made specially for the purpose, he
advanced to the enterprise, accompanied only by one companion and by
me, to whom he relinquished for a time his gaily painted bow and
quiver of poisoned arrows.

I had heard so much of those fierce and unwieldy monsters, that I
followed him with considerable interest and curiosity as we
shouldered and pushed a passage through a dense and leafy jungle of
gigantic weeds, prickly yams, serrated grass, and reeds of enormous
height, which flourished amid the deep quagmire that bordered the
broad bosom of this majestic but nameless river, whose waters are now
rolling, as they have rolled for ages, into the Gulf of Guinea.

On forcing our way through a wall of reeds, we suddenly came upon the
hippopotamus, which was lying on his left side, asleep in the
sunshine, and stretched at full length upon a piece of greensward,
where, probably, he had been grazing overnight.

The aspect of this mis-shapen monster, which was about fourteen feet
long--his singular form, a great round body with short elephantine
legs, a broad, square head and stunted tail--was as repulsive as the
size of his great cavernous mouth with its terrible incisors was
appalling.

He slept soundly, however, so Amoo, gliding stealthily as a serpent,
approached until within seven feet of where he lay, snoring heavily,
and basking in the hot and breathless sunshine.

With a dexterity which my poor old friend Hans Peterkin would have
appreciated highly, Amoo, with a line, attached to his spear a light
wooden float which serves to show where the animal lurks when he
takes the water after being struck; then, while the attending warrior
stood near to hand a second lance, Amoo raised his sinewy form on
tiptoe, poised his barbed weapon, and hurled it, whizzing, with
singular force and dexterity, full at the sleeping animal.

Deep through the thick, dark hide sunk the pointed spear, until its
iron head was completely buried.  At the moment it left his hand,
Amoo, an agile and practised huntsman, sprang backward several paces;
but not so his unfortunate companion, on whom the awakened monster
leaped with the weight of an elephant united to the fury of a
panther, and in an instant crushed him to death in his enormous jaws,
doubling up the body and grinding ribs and legs together till they
were churned into a mass of blood.

Then plunging into the river, he disappeared, leaving the water
covered with froth and bloody ripples, that ran in circles to either
shore; but still the little buoy attached to the spear or harpoon
floated and bobbed up and down to indicate where he lay writhing
among the weeds and beds of bright blue coral far down below--for the
coral is blue there.

Amoo's shrill cries brought several negroes to his assistance; and
these, enraged by the sudden death of their friend, began to haul
sturdily on the line, which was a good English rope, obtained from
some passing ship by theft or barter; this irritated the wounded
animal, so he came surging, bleeding, and frothing to the surface
again, when a dozen spears, whizzing through the air, were launched
by unerring hands, and he was soon slain, and amid exulting yells,
whooping, and beating of tum-tums, was hauled close in shore among
the reeds, and there, as he was too bulky to be pulled entirely out
of the water, was cut up in large pieces and placed in baskets on the
backs of the camels, dromedaries, and slaves.

Amoo declared this prey was too full-grown, and consequently too fat
for eating; but added, that his "skin would make excellent whips."

This was the _fifth_ he had slain--thus he equalled Commodus who slew
five in the amphitheatre.

The country through which we travelled was low, flat, and thickly
wooded; thus we seldom saw the sea; yet, when glimpses of its bright
blue waters, stretching to the horizon far away, came before us at
times through the groves of orange, lime, and palm trees, or through
valleys where the white tufts of the cotton buds flecked the
greenness of the luxuriant scenery, how anxiously, how affectionately
I gazed upon it, for it was the high road to my home--the way to
freedom and dear old England!

After travelling many days, until I was almost sinking with fatigue,
by the intense heat of the atmosphere and the number of things I was
compelled (as a slave) to carry, we came at last in sight of the
great city of Benin, which stretches far along the right bank of the
river Formosa.

I hailed it with emotions of undisguised joy, for Amoo had been daily
recurring to the liberty and honours that were in store for me there.




CHAPTER L.

WE REACH THE CAPITAL.

I resolved while life remained to persevere to the last in attempting
an escape.

"'I shall never succeed,' is often the parent of failure" (to quote
Isaac Taylor when writing on character).  "'I will not try any more,'
ensures disappointment.  'It is all _chance_, and I am not in luck,'
most commonly leads to disgrace."

Calling his words to memory, I resolved to trust to none of these
fatal phrases, for I had passed through too many perils not to hope
that a few more might be surmounted.

An old writer says, "The King of Benin has men in pay to furnish
travellers with water, and these keep great pots full of that which
is fresh and clear at convenient distances, with a shell to drink it
out of; but no person must take a drop without paying for it; and if
the waterman is absent, they drink, leave the money, and pursue their
way."

It may have been so when old Dapper wrote or romanced, but not a drop
of water found we on the weary track to quench our burning thirst,
save in stagnant tarns by the wayside.

It was towards the close of a day when we had been nearly choked by
the sulphurous heat which filled the air after a violent
thunderstorm, that we approached the city of Benin, and saw its long
lines of huts, or wigwams, each one story high, covering for many
miles the right bank of the Formosa, one of the greatest estuaries
which disgorge their waters into the Bight of Benin.

Groves of beautiful wood, orange, lime trees, cotton and pepper
bushes, spread along the banks of the river, and many floating
islets, covered with flowers and unknown fruit trees, are constantly
borne past by its waters, from the unexplored lands through which
they flow.

The city and its walls too were unlike aught I had ever seen before;
yet their extent was great, and the dusky hordes that peopled them
are probably unnumbered and unknown.

We were admitted through a wooden gate in the ramparts, which were
composed of the trunks of trees pegged together, as palisades are in
America, but loopholed for arrows or musketry; and the guard at this
gate, as at all the others, was composed entirely of women armed with
bows, lances, and old firelocks, for, like his royal brother of
Dahomey, the sovereign of Benin has somewhere about four thousand
wives, whom he has armed and formed into troops, and who--when off
duty--make crocks, pots, and pipkins of clay, from the sale of which
he derives his principal revenue.

They were all stout and handsome negresses, attired in a species of
petticoat which reached below the knee, with a vest to cover the
breast; their hair was dyed into alternate red and white locks, and
they had great rings of polished metal on their otherwise bare arms.

Through this guarded gate our long cavalcade of laden camels,
dromedaries, negroes, and slaves, passed down a populous street of
great width, and nearly three miles in length.  The houses, or huts,
on either side, were alike singular in aspect and construction, being
built of red clay, and having behind or around them spacious gardens
and shady groves of lime and orange trees.  Vast crowds of male and
female blacks followed us, but in solemn silence, as the cavalcade
bore a double tribute to the dead king and his successor, towards
whose royal palace--if the odd collection of fantastic buildings
could so be called--we now proceeded.

We passed through a kind of square, which Amoo described to me as the
market-place; and there the king's female guards were exposing for
sale great quantities of their clay pots and pipkins, gourd bottles,
calibash basons, wooden spoons and ladles of all sorts and sizes, at
their own prices; for these industrious Amazons enjoyed the entire
monopoly of this branch of trade; and as a hint that none might
interfere with them, there hung by iron hooks upon a gibbet the
headless bodies of four men, in a frightful state of decay, with
turkey buzzards feeding on the fragments that dropped from them, as
they sweltered in the burning sunshine.

In the centre of this market-place rose a pyramid some twenty feet
high, formed entirely of human skulls, bleached white as snow by the
alternate rain and sun--a ghastly and terrible trophy of barbarism
and cruelty, which reminded me of stories I had read of old Mexico,
where similar monuments adorned the cities of the Incas; or of the
tower formed of the skulls of slaughtered Christians, now standing in
the Mohammedan isle of Gerba.

Fascinated by this revolting spectacle, I passed on with the dusky
multitude; and Amoo informed me (while all prostrated their ugly
faces in the dust) that we stood at the gate of the king's palace!

It was a vast collection of rambling wooden houses, which formed the
dwellings of the sovereign, his wives, fiadoors, or officials,
stables for his horses and dromedaries, dens for slaves or prisoners
(a commodity with which he seldom troubled himself), magazines for
stores and plunder.  These edifices extended for nearly a mile before
us; and on all those quaint buildings, which were barbarously adorned
with the bones and horns of animals, a grinning human skull was the
chief ornament.

Through a barrier _manned_ by a motley multitude of female guards,
many of whom were armed with bayonets and old brass-butted Tower
muskets, which may have done service under Moore and Wellington, we
were conducted into a court surrounded by copper figures, so
monstrous in aspect and conception, that the eye laboured in vain to
discover whether they were meant to represent men, beasts, or birds.

The crowd who followed were all well armed with spears, bows and
arrows, which, as Amoo informed me, were duly poisoned by the
_fetishers_, or priests.  Many of the fiadoors wore gay dresses of
Dutch scarlet cloth, caps edged with civet fur, and necklaces of
jasper and fine coral, or rings of yellow copper, bracelets of lions'
teeth, and bucklers of rhinoceros hide.

Round this court were wooden pillars, curiously carved and painted,
and, in some instances, covered with plates of engraved copper--the
hieroglyphical records of battles, victories, and massacres--the
edifices were roofed with palm canes, and had many fantastic
pinnacles, surmounted by human skulls, or birds dried and prepared,
with their pinions outspread.

In the centre of the court, about twenty negroes, captured from some
hostile tribe, were digging a deep hole, like a vast grave, with
wooden shovels; and they grinned at us malevolently as we passed them.

Amoo now told me "that the time was come to which he had so often
referred, when a great honour would be conferred on me, and when we
must part."

I knew not what all this meant, but bewildered by the scenes through
which I had passed, the strange places in which I found myself,
wearied by the toil of our journey, choked by dust and heat almost to
fainting, I resigned myself to the custody of the negress guard, and
left Amoo, whom hitherto I had considered a species of protector.
Perceiving the dejected state I was in, he gave me a draught from his
gourd bottle; and as I was thrust into my prison, and the door of it
closed upon me, I saw for the last time save once, the dark visage of
this friendly savage, who never forgot that I had rescued his child
from the baboon.

The wooden door was secured upon me; the hum of guttural voices died
away as the cavalcade passed on to some other portion of this vast
and rambling habitation of barbarous royalty; then I was left to my
own reflections, and partly in the dark; at least, there was just
sufficient light to enable me to see a pile of straw, or dried river
grass, on which I threw myself in weariness, if not in despair, as I
knew not what new misfortune fate had in store for me.

Sleep, oblivion, I courted in vain.  I was now, though exhausted, in
too high a state of nervous excitement for sleep; and as my eyes
became accustomed to the dim twilight of my prison, I could perceive
the chamber to be fashioned of the trunks of trees, squared,
smoothed, and pegged together, and then painted with barbarous
figures.  Above the door by which I had entered were three human
skulls, placed upon the hoofs of hippopotami, as brackets.

A sound as of something rustling in a distant corner attracted my
attention.  I approached, and saw upon a pile of straw and dry leaves
a white man extended at full length, and almost destitute of clothing.

I drew nearer softly, for I knew not whether this new companion in
misfortune might be alive or dead.

Then imagine what were my emotions on discovering him to be my
friend, sunk in a profound slumber--my old friend, Robert Hartly,
captain of the fated _Leda_.




CHAPTER LI.

AN OLD FRIEND IN A NEW PLACE.

The pallor of his countenance, his wasted form, and sunken features
shocked me, for I was quite unaware or heedless that he would find an
equal ravage in my own appearance.  His beard and hair grew in matted
masses about his sunburnt face, and his once stout and manly hands
were thin and wan as those of a consumptive girl.

I shook his shoulder; he awoke, and turned listlessly to me at first;
then with a strange cry of mingled joy and grief, he exclaimed--

"Jack!"

"Bob--Bob Hartly!"

Such was all we could utter for some seconds as each clasped and
shook the hands of the other.

"Oh, Jack Manly," he exclaimed, in a broken voice, "I would rather
see you in your grave than in this place with me!"

"How--why--what do you mean?"

"My poor lad, you know not for what we are reserved."

"Not--not to be killed and eaten?" said I, in a low voice of dismay.

"Oh, worse than that.  Do you not know?"

"No."

"My poor friend--my poor friend!"

"What on earth can be worse than that?  Amoo told me----"

"Who is Amoo?"

"A chief, the brother of the King of the Rio Serpientes."

"The savage brother of a savage!  And he told you----"

"That I was reserved for the greatest honour?"

"Honours indeed!" reiterated Hartly, with a bitter laugh.

"Yes."

"Did he add, you should have _liberty_ to enjoy your honours?"

"No."

"Air--breath--sunshine--light--life?"

"No!"

"I thought not, for these accursed savages are as subtle and severe
as they are cruel and sanguinary."

"What _do_ you mean, Hartly?"

"That we are reserved for _burial alive_."

"Alive!"

"Yes--with their king who is just dead.  It is the custom here to
celebrate the obsequies of royal personages--of kings especially--in
a frantic and barbarous manner.  Oh, Jack! after all we have seen and
suffered together, is it not cruel of fate to persecute and finish us
thus?  And is it not strange that in this age of a civilized world
such things _can_ be?"

"I will fight to the last!" I exclaimed, furiously.

"We have not a single weapon."

"But these female guards have plenty."

"The weakest among them is stronger than both of us put together
_now_," said he, despondingly.

"We must not perish thus, Hartly--we _shall_ escape!" said I,
emphatically.

"But how?"

"Time will show--we were nearly as desperately circumstanced when
foul of the iceberg, or beset in the field ice."

"We have still a few days for deliberation; but meantime, tell me how
you came here."

"I was brought to Benin by Amoo, who saved me from dying of hunger,
or by the teeth and claws of wild animals in the Devil's wood, where
some savages found me concealed, and bound me hand and foot by withes
to a tree."

"Tell me all about this, Jack."

I related briefly all that had occurred to me since we had been
separated at the cliff above the Gabon, where three of our hapless
party perished; the destruction of poor Captain Baylis and his wife;
and how I feared that he, Hartly, was the seaman who had been
tortured in the basket of thorns; of my slavery with Amoo, and his
squaw's felonious intentions with regard to my head; of my flight and
recapture--to all of which he listened with varying expressions of
anger and honest grief, for the loss of so many brave English seamen.

"And now, Bob," added I, "for your own story."

"I have little to relate that is not similar to what you have told
me.  On that fatal day when our boat's crew were captured, and we
were separated, I was given by the King to a fetisher, or priest, a
hideous old fellow who was covered with tattooing, and wore a copper
ring in each of his ears, and had the dorsal fin of a shark through
his nose, in sprit-sail-yard fashion.

"He employed me as his 'slavey,' in making and pointing arrows for
the warriors, as the manufacture of that commodity is a perquisite,
or portion of the priestly trade in Gabon, for the tips of the arrows
are poisoned by a combination of herbs, of which these fetishers
alone possess, or pretend to possess, the knowledge, and with true
priestcraft take especial good care to keep the secret among
themselves.  If the monstrous negro race hereabout have any religion,
it consists of an adoration of the Devil, to whom they never tire of
sacrificing wild animals, and occasionally each other--which is a
sacrifice of much less consequence."

"Have they no belief in a Supreme Being?"

"They know that some power superior to themselves created the skies
and the earth; but because He is not an evil, but a good spirit, they
deem it better policy to appease the Devil, and so they work in _his_
service with all their might; and from all we have seen, they seem to
have the gift of doing so to the utmost.  My old master, the
fetisher, professed to be on very intimate terms with Whirlwind Tom,
and by his aid could always foretell what was to happen."

"How?"

"He had an old pipkin perforated by three holes, through which he
alleged the Devil spoke to him in whispers.  He was a vicious old
wretch, and on one occasion _bit me_, which was no joke, as his teeth
were all filed, till they were sharp as those of a tiger cat.

"When not employed in selecting and cutting reeds for arrows, or
feathering, or pointing and poisoning them, this fetisher made me
fish for him in a tributary of the Snake Elver, on the bank of which
he lived in a wigwam, which stood amid a grove of mimosa trees; and
it resembled a huge punch-bowl or beehive, as it was built entirely
of reeds and turf, plastered over with mud, which the sunshine had
burned as white as Kentish chalk.

"There he led me a dog's life, for he was an ill-tempered old savage,
who hourly reviled, kicked, beat, and spat upon me, and as my beard
grew, he was wont to snatch and tear it, a proceeding, you must
allow, very trying to one's temper.

"I perceived that we dwelt in a secluded place; that, save a warrior
who came from time to time for a bundle of arrows, no one ever
approached us, so I resolved to escape.  In my fur socks, and a
species of cummerbund which my master permitted me to wear, I
secreted a good stock of fishing apparatus, and selected a strong
javelin with an iron point, well steeped in those precious poisonous
stuffs which he was wont to brew in a pipkin.

"On the day I had finally made up my mind to slip my cable and be
off, we were cutting reeds for arrow-shafts on the summit of a rock
above the Gabon River.  It was a lovely place, covered with feathery
fern, bright scarlet geraniums, and flowering reeds, but I thought it
looked very like the place where I had last seen you, and where our
three shipmates perished in so barbarous a manner.  My heart became
filled with wild and dark thoughts, and I was neglecting my work,
when suddenly my beard was grasped by the old tattooed fetisher, who
squirted a whole quid of some stuff full in my face, while raining a
shower of blows upon my bare back with a _sjambok_, or supple-jack,
of rhinoceros hide, which he always carried for my especial benefit.

"Flesh and blood could stand this no longer.

"We were close to the brink of the rock which overhung the stream
that rolled about a hundred feet below, so I gave his sooty reverence
a vigorous kick which shot him over like a crow, and souse he went
through the air, with arms outspread.

"Whether he swam, sank, or fed some hungry crocodile, I know not, as
I fled into the adjacent forest, and after lurking there
long--sleeping at night in the trees, as many a time I had done on
the swinging topsail-yard--I began, like you, to make for the coast
to the westward, in the hope of seeing a ship venture into the Bight,
or bearing toward the Pongos for fresh water.

"For many days and nights I wandered through forests of oak, cypress,
myrtle, and mimosa trees, enduring constantly the terror of being
devoured by wild animals, or falling again among savages who might
force me to render a severe account of the blessed fetisher I had
kicked into the Gabon, till at last I found myself in a stately wood
of sea-pines and _then_ I saw the ocean--the brave old ocean,
Jack!--the broad turnpike that could lead us home--the same ocean
whose waves swept up by the Nore and Greenwich Reach, to mingle their
waters with the Thames--and I laughed with joy, though its bosom was
glistening under the vertical sun that scorches the coast of Guinea.

"All the memories of home and Old England swelled up within me as I
gazed upon the girdle of her shores.  The sea! that

  "----glorious mirror where the Almighty's form
  Glasses itself in tempests; in all time,
  Calm or convulsed--in breeze, or gale, or storm,
  Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime
  Dark-heaving;--boundless, endless, and sublime!"




CHAPTER LII.

HARTLY'S STORY.

"When night fell, I came out of the lonely forest to gaze upon the
moonlit sea--not that the forest was very _lonely_, after all, as
there seemed to be at least fifty thousand baboons, monkeys, and
squirrels, which jabbered and leaped as if they had all gone mad, the
whole night, from tree to tree, and more than once the roar of a lion
came hollowly from a distance, under the lower branches of the pines.

"I sat upon a piece of detached rock, and, to seek for food, dropped
my fishing-line into the water.  There I soon caught a fish, on which
I breakfasted next day, after spreading it, split open, on the rocks,
where it was half cooked by the burning sun.  As for salt, there was
plenty of that to be found among the crevices, where the heat had
burned up the spray of the sea.

"For three nights I fished there with success and safety.  On the
third, I found at my line a fish of strange aspect, and, sailor-like,
had some doubts about breakfasting on it, but hunger soon ends all
niceties.  When morning came, I sought a secluded part of the wood,
and thought of lighting a little fire by rubbing dried branches
together that I might broil my fish.

"Now, unless I could produce ocular proof of what I am about to say,
you would laugh at me for telling you a forecastle yarn, but the
proof shall not be wanting.

"While opening and cleaning the fish at a spring, previous to
broiling it (an almost epicurean process to me), I found in its
entrails--what?  MY RING--the ring given me by old Mother
Jensdochter, in Iceland, and which, as you remember, I lost a few
days after we left Sermersoak, when lending a hand to haul the
main-tack on board the _Leda_."

"Your ring!" I exclaimed; "this is like a bit of a fairy tale."

"My ring," he continued; "and here it is, hid among my hair to
conceal it from these greedy negroes, who would at once deprive me of
it, and keep it as an ornament or amulet."

"This is most singular!"

"Singular indeed, but on beholding it a new glow of hope filled my
breast.  I resolved to persevere in my efforts to escape, and so
became too bold, for, venturing upon the open beach next day, I was
seen by some savages belonging to the King of Biafra, who pursued and
soon made me their prisoner.  The rest of my story is nearly the same
as your own, as my captors were with a caravan on their way to Benin,
to attend the funeral of King Zabadie.

"I was severely treated by them.  Under a burning and vertical sun,
they employed me constantly in loading and unloading their
dromedaries, or in pulling up esculent roots for them, and this was a
serious task even to a hard-handed sailor, as these roots lay among
thorny leaves and serrated grass, the blades of which were like
newly-sharpened saws.

"In the desert, the sand was so hot that it baked or roasted the eggs
I stole or found at times, and was fain to eat in secret.  When my
work was over, I was always malevolently treated by the women, and
more especially by those little black imps, the children of the
caravan.  Their chief occupation was spitting at me, reviling and
pelting me with stones, bones, rotten gourds, and every missile that
came to hand.

"The women had a particular animosity to my beard, and the men
hereabouts, like other darkies, not being troubled with much of that
commodity, joined them in the general desire for having it uprooted,
but I contrived to weather them by singeing it off.

"Every way I endured great misery.  I was not even permitted to drink
of spring water, save from a calabash, which some of their dogs had
used; and to tell the truth, I preferred to drink after the poor
doggies rather than after their beastly masters.

"Well, it would seem that His High Mightiness, the King of Biafra, is
a vassal of that more illustrious nigger the King of Benin; so, five
days ago, I was sent here, with many other miserable wretches, to
be--to be----"

"What?"

"Immolated on the grave of the late king, or buried within it."

"Is such the custom?" I asked, with indescribable dismay.

"Benin borders on the kingdom of Dahomey, and all the world knows how
the people there celebrate the obsequies of their kings."

"How?"

"Frequently by the massacre of thousands."

"Hartly!  Hartly--we seem to go from bad to worse!"

"I have been in the Pongo Isles, along the coast of Guinea, and in
the Bight of Benin before, and know all about the fiendish ways of
their inhabitants.  Jack, did you observe a great hole in the
courtyard without?"

"Yes; and I can hear the shovels of the workers among the earth even
now."

"When a king dies here, his body is laid in a kind of great hall,
which, like that at Dahomey, has a ceiling ornamented by the jawbones
of his enemies.  There the very sleeping chambers of royalty are
paved with human skulls, and have cornices entirely composed of them!
Zabadie, the King of Benin, is just dead, and his son proposes to
inter him with unusual splendour."

"In that hole?"

"Yes."

"But what is all this to us?"

"Oh," groaned Hartly, "do you not understand--have I not told you?
When a king dies here, a great grave is dug somewhere near the
palace, and it must be hollowed so deep, that the diggers are drowned
by the water which bursts in upon them, and there they lie, after
concluding their work.  In this great hole the fiadoors place the
royal corpse, dressed in all its barbaric finery, with a lance,
sword, bow and arrows.  With the dead king are placed all his
favourites and servants, who are supposed to follow him to the other
world, and serve him there; and so proud are they of this
distinction, that it occasions the most violent disputes as to who
shall have the honour of entombment, so blind and idolatrous is the
veneration of these creatures for their dingy monarchs.  When the
last man has descended into the hole, an immense stone is placed over
it; this is removed a few days after, and one of the great fiadoors
inquires what are the tidings from beneath, adding,--

"'Who has gone to serve the king?'

"Then the poor wretches who are expiring below reply according to
circumstances.

"Day after day the stone is removed, and the same questions are
asked, until all in that horrid pit have 'gone to serve the king,'
and are dead of starvation and the noxious miasma of the vault.  When
no voice responds to the inquiry of the fiadoor, the great stone is
securely built over, a mighty fire is made upon it, a great festival
is held, and the flesh of an elephant is roasted and given to the
multitude."

"And we--we----"

"Are to be placed there among the slaves of the dead Zabadie."

I remained silent, oppressed by the horror of what was before us; but
Hartly spoke again:--

"When a year has passed and gone, these wretches, in honour of their
dead king and his dead followers, make a dreadful sacrifice of men
and animals, till about five hundred are destroyed.  Most of the
human victims are malefactors, or slaves taken in war.  If enough of
either are not to be had, the king sends his female guards into the
streets at night to decoy and seize men till the number is made up."

This was a cheerful account of the state of society in the realm of
Benin, and it afforded ample food for thrilling reflection and
fruitless surmises.




CHAPTER LIII.

THE FEMALE GUARDS.

Yams, bananas, plantains, even boiled potatoes, and pipkins of pure
spring water were liberally provided for us by our black female
guardians, six of whom appeared once daily with our food and then
retired, securing us with great bars of wood fastened outside in some
fashion known only to themselves.

These Amazons were all well armed, and some were richly clad in
braided vests and petticoats of Dutch scarlet cloth.  Among them were
several veteran female warriors, whose skins, by the process of time
under a tropical sun, had become spotted yellow and brown, like the
hides of the leopard and panther.

Light was admitted to our prison by a small square hole cut through
one of the trees which formed the wall, and from thence, when each
supported the other on his shoulders, we could see by turns the
progress of the diggers of the royal grave in the courtyard, and to
judge by the quantity of earth and stones thrown up, the depth must
have been immense; and it seemed as if King Zabadie was going to the
other world accompanied by all his wives, slaves, dromedaries, and
diabolical courtiers to boot.

We knew not _when_ this dreadful interment and immolation were to
take place.  When day dawned on us, we knew not if we should be
permitted to see it close; when it closed, we knew not if we should
ever behold another dawn.

So the wretched hours passed slowly, wearily on; and the close of the
third day found us still captives, and still unresolved on any
expedient to dree ourselves.

Sailor-like, Hartly was fertile in schemes and resources; but the
former were no sooner proposed than they were abandoned as
impracticable.

One time he suggested that we should endeavour to procure a light by
friction, set fire to the old wooden den in which we were confined,
and then seek an escape amid the consequent confusion; at another, he
proposed that we should close with our guards, wrest away a musket,
kill one or two of them, and fight our way off; but how could we
attack women?

"If once free of the palace, the town, and its suburbs----" resumed
he.

"Free! how can we remain free, Hartly, in a land where our colour,
which there is _no_ disguising, renders us constantly liable to
recognition, to attack, and recapture?"

"True; but if we could only reach the coast, after having so dearly
learned circumspection, we might lurk in the woods."

"Without arms?"

"We have done so before.  Then we might steal a canoe, or fashion
one, and put to sea."

"But the tools and the skins?"

"We could steal both, as these fellows won't lend."

"Escape from this is necessary first: and in the pilfering visits you
suggest, we should certainly be retaken, together or singly; and then
how miserable would be the reflections of the survivor."

"Tut, Jack! unless we venture we shall never win."

"Ah, Hartly," said I, "at last I have lost all hope!"

"Do not say so; we are both too young to despair," was the sturdy
response of the English sailor.

We thought of the old stereotyped modes of escape--by ropes or
ladders manufactured from shirts and trowsers, and by ample
melodramatic mantles; but such were impossible to us, who were nearly
as nude as when we came into the world; by drugging our guards or
sentinels; by bribing, coaxing, or assassinating them; but these, and
all the thousand other modes by which heroic and romantic gentlemen,
when in trouble or durance, effect escapes in novels and plays, were
useless or impracticable there.

Hartly, indeed, proposed to make love to one or two ladies of the
royal guard, and by gaining their confidence, to effect the
appropriation of their muskets and ammunition.  But those dingy
Amazons seemed of a very unapproachable nature; and moreover, were so
thickly smeared with war-paint and vegetable oils, as to be too
hideous in aspect and repulsive in odour to render the attempt at all
pleasant.

So the darkness of the third night closed upon us, and undecided as
to any mode of escape, we sat gazing with longing eyes on the little
bit of blue sky that was visible through the hole, which by day
afforded light and air into our den.

A single star of uncommon brilliance shone through it now, and so
brightly as to cast the form of the loophole upon the floor like a
little white patch.

"If once we were out of this place," said Hartly, for the twentieth
time, "I would certainly trust to my two hands and pair of heels for
doing the rest."

"The town walls seem a high palisade."

"Yes.  I had a good view of them for an hour and more on the unlucky
day I first arrived in Benin.  And yet, Jack," he added, kindly, "I
am glad those devils brought me here, after all--we should never have
met again else.  The town walls are a double palisade, sparred over
on the outside and in--double sheathed a sailor would call it--and
then the whole is plastered over with red clay."

"Their height----"

"Is not less than twelve feet; and at those parts of the town which
are without a rampart, there is a ditch of great depth, full of slime
and poisonous serpents, and bordered by an impassable hedge of
brambles, through which fire alone could make its way."

If I attempted to sleep, I was haunted by visions of being buried
alive in that enormous tomb, from which there could be no
escape--buried amid a hecatomb of hideous and sweltering negro
corpses and the dead royalty of a savage race.  The pictures my
imagination drew of the future nearly distracted me; and I began to
consider whether it was not better, by rushing barehanded and unarmed
upon our captors, to provoke a more speedy and merciful death under
their knives, asseguys, or muskets; and failing an escape, Hartly
agreed with me that it was a wiser alternative; but Heaven lent us
its helping hand ere the third night was passed.




CHAPTER LIV

ATTEMPT TO ESCAPE AGAIN.

On this night, for more than an hour, there was an unusual beating of
tum-tums, and the chorus of some barbaric songs stole upon the wind
at times from that quarter of the royal dwelling in which the wives
of the late King Zabadie were enclosed.

During the past day the digging in the courtyard had ceased; and this
circumstance, together with the sounds we heard (the adoration of
some great fetish, or idol), made us tremble in our hearts lest the
following day might see us placed in that more horrible prison, from
whence there could be no release but by death.

We mutually expressed our fears of this; and so absorbed were we in
this terrible surmise, that some time elapsed before we perceived
that the blue of the sky and the light of the stars had disappeared;
that a thick vapour had overspread both--that rain was pattering
heavily on the flat roofs of the wooden city; and that thunder, the
deep, hoarse thunder of the tropics, which sounds as if it would rend
the earth in twain, was roaring athwart the darkened firmament.

The rain now poured down in such mighty torrents, that we listened to
the din of its fall in silent wonder; for it seemed as if once again
that "all the fountains of the great deep had broken up, and the
windows of heaven were opened."

Ere long we felt the drops descending upon us, tepid and sulphureous,
as the clay coating that covered the split canes, or lathing, which,
formed the roof of our prison, soon became a puddle; while the straw
and leaves on which we usually sat or reclined, were reduced to a
mass of wetted mire.

For nearly an hour this continued, till our den became so thoroughly
wet, that when the rain was over not a single dry spot could we find;
and (as Hartly said) King Zabadie's trench in the courtyard would
have the water some fathoms deep in it by this time.

On the rain ceasing, and the clouds dispersing, which they did as
suddenly as the storm had come on, we saw the stars shining through a
breach which the moisture had made in the roof, and something like a
branch that was waving to and fro fell on my upturned face.

I grasped it.

It was the strong sinewy tendril of a climbing convolvulus, which had
fallen through the aperture.  I drew it down, so far as it would
come, and then _another_ branch fell in.  On this I called joyously
to Hartly, that "here were the first means of escape!"

Without a moment's hesitation he grasped them, twisted them together,
and with sailor-like agility swung himself up, hand over hand, till
he reached the crevice through which they had fallen.

Supporting the whole weight of his body by the left hand, with the
right he tore down a mass of the fragile roof, and swinging himself
up, passed through and at length stood upon the outside.

"Now, Jack," said he, "come up in the same fashion, hand over
hand--it is just like going through the lubber's hole, instead of
over the futtock shrouds.  Bravo! we'll weather this dead devil of a
king and his armed wenches to boot."

I dragged myself up by the twisted tendrils, but when near the hole
should have fallen to the ground, had not Hartly's strong and
friendly hands grasped and dragged me on to the roof, where for a
little time we lay flat on our faces, panting alike with exertion and
excitement, and listening anxiously to hear if any guards or watchers
were near us.

By the starlight we could see the long rows of flat wooden huts which
composed the palace divided into various courts.  At the distance of
three hundred yards from us, on our right, a ruddy glow that deepened
into crimson, then wavered, sunk, and flashed up again, revealed the
outline of a monstrous fetish, or wooden idol, of hideous aspect,
which the young King, his fiadoors, guards, and people were
worshipping; and we could see the woolly heads bowed before it packed
thick and close as cannon balls in Woolwich arsenal.

The long vista of the great street of huts, which stretches the
entire length of the town, and is alleged to be three miles long, lay
upon our left.

We had no guide to the ramparts or outskirts; but as the long extent
of this street seemed empty and silent, our best chance of ultimate
escape lay through it.

Again grasping the tendrils of the convolvulus, we slid down from the
roof and reached the ground.  Robert Hartly dropped first.  When I
was following, the tendrils gave way, and I fell heavily, making thus
a noise which roused a large dog in an adjacent shed, where it barked
furiously; but as we lay close and still, it gradually ceased, and
growled itself off to sleep again.

We were in a garden attached to the King's residence; and being (by
our white skins) liable to immediate pursuit, capture, or
destruction, the moment we were seen--a contingency that would become
a certainty when day broke--we hurried through it, getting our legs
and feet severely cut and torn by the flowers and prickly plants; but
of this minor evil we had no heed at that time.

A paling of split canes was soon surmounted, and once more we found
ourselves in the long street of Benin.




CHAPTER LV

THE FORMOSA.

"If once we are free from the town," said Hartly, "we can find
concealment during the day, and by travelling at night may reach the
coast.  Then, if we can but obtain a canoe, and pass over to one of
the little isles in the Bight, we might remain there snugly enough,
till some ship ran in on the same unlucky errand which brought poor
Baylis here."

"I pray it may end as you say."

"Courage, Jack!  Energy and faith will work miracles!"

"But I imagine----"

"Don't talk of imagination; it may only paralyse you by the fears it
fashions, the danger it suggests; but hush!"

At that moment the fire before the idol flared up broad and redly,
and then the mingled roar of many voices swelled upon the night air.

High above the hedge-rows or kraals for containing cattle, and the
lines of countless huts, formed of turf, of wickered cane, and other
rude materials which the wild vines, creepers, and convolvuli
concealed, rose the lurid flame that blazed before the misshapen god
of Benin; and far across the flat city it cast the shadows of the
tall giraffe trees, which grew in rows around the palace wall.

This red light mingled with the pale white lustre of the moon, which
was just rising at the horizon, from whence its splendour cast long
and steady shadows across the streets, and thereby favoured alike our
concealment and escape.

As we hurried along the empty thoroughfares towards the town wall,
Hartly found at the door of a hut, a war-club, of which he
immediately took possession.  It was formed of teak-wood, black as
ebony, ponderously heavy, and its knob was covered by elaborate
carvings.

While our hearts alternately glowed with hope, or sank with
apprehension, unseen we reached the high wall of wood and clay, and
ran alongside it, in search either of an outlet, or some means of
surmounting it; but no wild creepers, no gourd vines or climbing
convolvuli were permitted to grow there.

We had been out of our prison at least half-an-hour without being met
or seen by a single negro.

At last we reached a place where, for more than a hundred feet, the
wall was breached by the recent storm of wind and rain, which had
overturned and beaten its ruins flat on the ground.

With mutual exclamations of joy, we were proceeding to clamber over
the fallen piles of rotten palisades and clay, when a wretched negro,
who appeared suddenly, on perceiving the whiteness of our skins in
the bright moonlight, uttered a loud cry of wonder or alarm!

In an instant we heard the clatter of steel, and at least a dozen of
the King's armed women issued from a kind of wooden tower which stood
near the fallen wall.

Hartly uttered something very like an oath; he struck the negro to
the earth by a blow of his club, and crying--"Follow me, Jack!"
sprang over the scattered ruin, and rushed into the moonlit country
beyond.

Swift of foot and active as these "fair viragoes" were, they proved
no match for us in a race for life or death, especially when
encumbered ty their muskets, asseguys, and red petticoats, which were
covered with heavy beads, lions' teeth, and grass braiding.

Two shots were fired after us, but where the balls went, Heaven only
knows; fortunately, they fell far from us.

On we ran in the full blaze of the moonlight, bathed in perspiration,
now floundering among wild gourds and creeping plants, where little
snakes started up to hiss at us; anon over waste tracts, where lilies
and geraniums covered all the wilderness; then among long and
serrated grass, which cut our shins like saws and sabre-blades.  Next
we tore a passage through dense masses of wild canes, then through
fields of maize, or rice, or millet, and often through cattle kraals,
till we reached a wood, where, after taking the precaution of running
in _one_ direction in the full light of the moon, we turned and,
hare-like, doubled in the _other_.

By this manoeuvre, I believe, we baffled our _fair_ pursuers, as we
saw no more of them for the remainder of that night or the following
morning, during the long hours of which we lay close to the earth,
buried and hidden under a cool and shady mass of leaves and jungle.

And there, without water to quench our thirst, and without other food
than a few wild berries that grew within arm's length of our lurking
place, we lay concealed during the whole of the next day.

When night fell, Hartly climbed into a chestnut-tree, and after
looking carefully around him, uttered an exclamation of delight.

"I see the way we must steer, Jack," he added.

"You can see the ocean?"

"Ay, or a large river, rippling in the moonlight to the horizon far
away."

A sigh of joy escaped me.

"And so, Jack, if our company is necessary to complete the happiness
of King Zabadie in the next world, I am sorry for him, as he is
likely to take his long voyage without us."

The chestnut was lofty, and from it Hartly could see on one hand the
distant hills which form the termination of that mighty chain, the
mountains of Kong, and end at the river Formosa.  On the other hand,
beyond the flat and open country, he could see the great river
itself, flowing towards the Bight of Benin, along whose shores and by
whose waters lay all our ultimate hope of escape.

We bathed ourselves in a limpid pool to freshen and brace our nerves;
I armed me with a cudgel formed of a young tree torn up by the roots;
Hartly had still his war-club; and resolving to travel only under
cloud of night, as cautiously as possible, and to avoid all negro
camps and villages, we found the highway--if it could be called
so--which leads from the city of Benin towards the Waree.




CHAPTER LVI.

A PERILOUS JOURNEY.

In our ignorance of the wild country through which we travelled, our
sole guide towards the sea was the course of the river Formosa, which
rapidly widened into a mighty estuary, along the left bank of which
we proceeded with the utmost circumspection; and inspired by the
triple dread of being recaptured and killed by the natives, devoured
by wild animals, or sinking under the heavy miasma which exhales from
the marshy creeks and isles of the uncounted river-mouths which there
pour their muddy tides into the Bight of Benin, laden with the
decaying vegetable débris of an unexplored world.

By various sounds which the wind swept after us at times, such as the
baying of dogs, and notes of cane horns, we feared a pursuit by the
people of Benin, and the sequel proved that our fears were but _too_
true.

We were frequently bewildered by seeing large lakes, which we
conceived to be the sea, till dawn of day would reveal their size,
and the gigantic trees or walls of wavy reeds which surrounded their
stagnant waters.

Hartly often beguiled the way by relating strange stories he had
heard or read, and by the margin of one of those silent lakes in the
wilderness he told me of the shattered hull of an ancient ship being
found, beached upon the bank of one of those inland waters in the
continent of Africa.

"How came it to be cast up there?" I asked, with surprise.

"Some alleged that it came through a subterraneous opening, a channel
in the bowels of the earth, connected with the same vortex or
whirlpool which had sucked it down long years ago--the Maelstrom,
perhaps, though many say that, like Charybdis, no such place exists.
But it sounds very like a bouncing yarn, such as one may hear at the
Royal Society, or under the leech of the foresail of a fine night,
Jack, when the middle watch are spinning their _twisters_."

We spent a whole night wearily and anxiously circumnavigating the
banks of one of those lakes whose waters were full of thick green
slime, of sturdy reeds, and leaves of wondrous size and form; falling
into black quagmires and deep holes made by the clumsy hippopotami,
and every instant in danger of being pounced upon by a panther or a
poisonous snake for our intrusion upon their secluded domains.

It is in these lakes of Benin, and in those of the kingdom of Angola,
that the quaint old writer named Dapper (who must have been a very
fanciful or credulous personage) relates he saw "water animals which
the negroes call _ambisiangula_, and the Portuguese _pezze-moueller_.
These monsters are both male and female.  They are eight feet long
and four broad, with short arms and long fingers of three joints,
like ours.  They have an oval head and eyes, a high forehead, a flat
nose, and great mouth.  Snares are laid for them, and when caught,
they sigh and cry like women till they are killed by darts.  Their
entrails and flesh are like those of hogs in scent, taste, and form.
'Tis said the filings of certain skull-bones in the males, if mixed
with wine, are an excellent remedy against gravel, and the bone which
extends towards the membrane of the ear is good against bad vapour,
if we may believe the Portuguese."

Master Dapper then goes on to state, that of the ribs of this
wonderful fish, particularly those on the left side, surgeons can
make a powder which will effectually stanch bleeding, and that
bracelets made of them were worn for the preservation of health.
Another account, published in 1714, adds, that in the Cabinet of
Rarities at Leyden one of their _hands_ is preserved, and two others
were in the _Musæum Regium_ at Copenhagen.

We, however, never saw aught but the fibrous leaves of enormous
aquatic plants, large as table-cloths, floating on the water of these
lakes, under the clear lustre of a lovely moon, that cast the shadows
of the feathery palm and bending orange-trees from banks where the
alligator dozed amid the slime, or the hippopotamus came to crop the
herbage and bask in the rays of the sun when he rose above the
foliage of the vast untrodden forest.

Manfully we struggled on, supporting nature by such fruits and
esculents as we found, especially yams, and on the sixth night after
our escape, with a prayer of thankfulness, we found ourselves under
the friendly shelter of a chestnut grove, and close upon the shore of
the mighty sea.

We were now so scorched and burned by the sun, and so embrowned by
daily and nightly exposure, that we might very well have passed for a
couple of mulattoes, and so have claimed kindred with our tormentors.

We had now left the territories of Benin, and were in the land of
Waree, which has a dingy sovereign of its own.  The whole of this
district is covered by wild forests, which in the wet season are
frequently converted into lakes and marshes, where the stems of the
trees are submerged for two or three feet in water.

Opposite to where we lay concealed, and at the distance of a mile
from us, we saw a little green island, having upon its summit a negro
village, some of the inhabitants of which, when day broke, came over
to the mainland with four canoes, which they moored or beached in a
creek not three hundred yards distant from where we lurked among some
long grass.

These negroes were sixteen in number, all armed with asseguys,
muskets, and bows, and they proceeded into the forest apparently to
hunt.

We climbed into a leafy chestnut for security, and passed the entire
day amid its branches, thus escaping the hunting party, several of
whom passed underneath us, on their way back to the canoes in which
they embarked, and returned to the island laden with game.

These canoes were large; each appeared to be a single tree hollowed
out, and flattened in the bottom.  Hartly, who announced his
intention of borrowing one _sans_ leave on the first available
opportunity, said, that after being scooped out, straw was burned in
them to save the wood from being spoiled by worms.  They can be rowed
swiftly, and are steered by a long spar, which acts as a rudder.  The
oars are usually made of teak-wood, and fashioned like spades.

Each of these canoes had a round knob on its prow; and by this they
were pulled ashore with ease, and beached high and dry upon the thick
mangrove leaves of the creek.

When night fell again, I sank into a profound sleep among the
branches of our chestnut tree.  There was no danger of a tumble, we
had become so accustomed to roosting on such perches.

Day dawned again, and we looked about us.

Ah! what were our emotions _then_ on seeing in the blue waters of the
bay, and about two miles from the green island, _two vessels at
anchor_--one a brig, with American colours flying; and the other a
stately ship, with the broad scarlet ensign of Britain floating at
her gaff peak!

There they rode proudly at their moorings; but we were destitute
alike of means for reaching them or making signals; as yet all their
boats were on board, and we could perceive no sign of any of them
being despatched ashore.  Their topsails and topgallant sails were
handed; but their courses were only hauled up, and some of their fore
and aft canvas hung loose in the brails.

We gazed at them with tearful and haggard eyes, our hearts swelling
the while with mingled hope and fear--hope that they might yet save,
and fear that they might unwittingly sail and abandon us.

While we were debating what was to be done, the four canoes with the
sixteen negroes again shot off from the island village, and
disappeared among the mangroves of the creek; and soon after we saw
them, as on the previous day, pass, armed, into the wood to hunt.

"Now is our opportunity, Jack--now or never!" cried Hartly, as he
dropped lightly from the tree; "let us make a rush at the canoes,
seize one and shove off!"

I instantly followed his example; but, alas! we were too rash in our
desire to embark, for at the same instant we dropped from our
perches, we found ourselves confronted by two of the savages, whom
the suddenness of our appearance seemed to fill with astonishment and
irresolution.




CHAPTER LVII.

PURSUIT AGAIN.

Without pausing for a moment to express friendly or other signs, we
rushed down with headlong speed towards the creek, where the canoes
lay beached upon the thick fringe of mangrove leaves, and eight of
the sixteen hunters pursued us; but notwithstanding the swiftness of
foot they possessed--a swiftness acquired by a savage and roving
life--we distanced them with ease, for despair seemed to lend us the
strength and speed of ostriches as we rushed towards the beach.

An asseguy, aimed with almost fatal precision, glanced over my left
shoulder, and shivered as it sank into the turf beyond me.  Then a
war-club, thrown with fatal force and dexterity, struck poor Hartly
between the shoulders, and nearly prostrated him; but in less than
two minutes we were in the creek, and had one of the largest canoes
afloat.

"In, in, Jack--leap in!" cried Hartly, while he lightly and adroitly
pushed the other three into the water, and setting them all afloat to
cut off pursuit, sprang in after me.

His presence of mind was most fortunate, for on the steep brow of an
eminence which overhung the creek on the side opposite to our more
immediate pursuers, there suddenly burst a storm of shrill yells and
discordant shouts, mingled with the beating of tum-tums and the
snorting of ferocious dogs, as a number of Benin savages, who
doubtless had tracked us thither with the most fell intentions,
rushed to the shore in pursuit--but thank Heaven, happily too late!

Hartly's sinewy hand had shot two of the canoes some thirty yards or
so from the beach; and while towing a third by its bow-knob, he
proceeded to row most vigorously with one of the spade-like paddles
which lay in our craft.

Ere we got out of the wooded creek its water smoked and boiled under
the shower of missiles--arrows, asseguys, clubs, and stones--which
were sent after us, while five negroes and several dogs plunged in to
pursue or to slay.

These tracking dogs were animals of strange aspect--sharp-nosed, with
skins spotted black and white, or red--they had slender legs, sharp
tusks, and a low, but ferocious bark.

While four of the negroes busied themselves in bringing back the
drifting canoes--an operation during which one of them was shot by
the musket of some blundering comrade--the fifth, a man of fierce and
resolute bearing, having red and yellow circles painted round his
eyes, and a knife in his teeth, swam after us, accompanied by a dog,
the most formidable of the whole.

Swiftly though our canoe shot through the water, and vigorously
though we paddled, they were soon alongside of us.  The dog had his
fore paws, and the man his black hands, upon the gunnel at the same
moment.

The time was painfully critical!

I struck the dog with my paddle, and broke both his fore legs; unable
to swim, he floated away sinking, yelping, and drowning; while Hartly
relinquishing the canoe he was towing, dealt the painted savage--in
whom I recognised Amoo, my former master--a tremendous blow on the
head.  Though the latter proved _harder_ than the hard wood paddle,
which was split and splintered, Amoo sank with a yell of rage and
pain.

After the danger was past, I was pleased to see that he rose to the
surface again and reached the shore; for this negro chief was not, in
some respects, and apart from a general inclination to homicide,
ungenerous.

The three canoes were quickly crowded by armed warriors, and rowed
out of the creek at a speed that bade fair soon to overhaul us,
though we paddled away, each on his own side, with all the rapidity
our strength and our desperation enabled as to exert.

We were now entirely clear of the creek, and about a quarter of a
mile from the shore, when a hearty English cheer rang across the
water towards us.

On turning and looking ahead, we saw two large and well-manned boats,
which had been put off from the ship (the craft nearest the shore),
pulled rapidly towards us; while two rifles from the headmost one
were discharged into the canoes, as a hint for their owners to sheer
off, which they immediately did with great expedition.

We were soon alongside of the nearest boat, the crew of which pulled
us on board, canoe and all, continuing to cheer the while so lustily,
that some time elapsed before we could inform them that we were
countrymen.

The steersman then inquired whether there were any more fugitives
ashore.

We replied "No;" on which the boat's head was turned towards the
ship; the oars again fell into the water, and the creek soon lessened
and melted, as it were, into the general scenery of the wooded shore.

The vessel by which we were so providentially rescued, proved to be
the _Havelock_, of London, a fine clipper ship of a thousand tons
register, belonging, by a singular coincidence, to my father--at
least, to the firm of Manly and Skrew, homeward bound from the Cape;
but which had been, like the barque of poor Captain Baylis, driven
out of her course by the hurricane of the other night, and had
anchored in the Bight to procure fresh water, and repair some
trifling damages.

Soon her spars and hull (old England's wooden wall), a welcome sight,
rose higher from the water as we pulled towards her; and as they
rose, the low, level, and marshy shore we had left, with all its
mangrove creeks and reedy lagunes--its wildernesses of giant leaves,
and long and fibrous creepers--its dense jungles, where serpents
hissed, monkeys chattered, and crocodiles laid their eggs; where the
great yellow gourd and coarse serrated grass flourished under the
feathery palm and broad baobab trees, amid slime and miasma, that
carry death to the vitals of the European--soon all these diminished
and sank astern, as our boat sped through the shining sea; and, ere
long, Robert Hartly and I shook each other's hands with honest warmth
and joy, when we found ourselves among our own countrymen, treading a
deck of good English oak, with the old scarlet bunting floating from
the peak halyards above us.

Three days the _Havelock_ remained in the bay; and during that time,
you may be assured, neither Hartly nor I had any wish to venture on
shore.

I shall never forget the glow of happiness that thrilled through me,
when, on the third evening, the Captain gave orders to hoist the
boats on board and prepare for sea.

"Man the windlass!" was the cry; "hands, up anchor!"

The bars were inserted by sturdy hands in the huge beam, and then the
pauls clattered cheerily, while the iron cable rattled as it was
dragged aft along the deck, and soon the great clipper ship came
round with her head to the wind.

"Cast loose the courses; away aloft--shake out the topsails, and let
fall!"

And anon the snowy canvas fell like white curtains on the lower
spars, as the topsail yards ascended to the crosstrees.

"Heave on the cable--weigh!" was the next order.

Tight as if its iron rings would snap like pack-thread grew the
mighty chain, for strong hands and muscular arms were tugging with
united strength at the bars of bending ash.

"Together, lads--together--hurrah!" cried Hartly, who had supplied
himself with a handspike.

  "Uptorn, reluctant, from its oozy cave,
  The ponderous anchor rises o'er the wave."


And soon the great iron flukes were dripping with glittering brine,
as the ring rattled at the cathead; then the yards were trimmed; the
larboard tacks were brought on board, and with a fine spanking
breeze, that came from the burning shores of Benin, our fleet clipper
ship bore away for Old England.


* * * * *


CONCLUSION.

Such were my adventures in the lands of snow and sunshine--the
latitudes of ice and fire!

On the 17th of December, exactly nine months after the day on which
Hartly and I had sailed through the Narrows of St. John, we found
ourselves bowling along the crowded and busy streets of London in a
hackney cab, with our African canoe--all the property we
possessed--lashed on the roof thereof.

We separated for a time at the Bank; he to look after another ship,
and I--like he of old, who came to the husks and the swine trough--to
return to my father's house at Peckham (a tamer and wiser youth than
when I left it) and to the circle of my family, who had long since
gone into mourning for me.

I am delighted to add that my worthy Robert Hartly soon got another
vessel.  As sole survivors of the crew of the _Leda_, we obtained,
after a world of trouble with the Red-tapists of the Circumlocution
Office, the 500_l._ offered by the Governor of Newfoundland for the
destruction of the _Black Schooner_.

My share I made over to Hartly, who invested it in the capital of his
new owner.

He still preserves, with religious care, the ring of old Mother
Jensdochter; and undeterred by all he has undergone, sails from
Blackwall for China on the 10th of next month.



THE END.













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