Part 19

The result of Binnacle's glances was satisfactory; and, descending to the cabin, whither we all followed, he ordered glasses and decanters, with a case of four square bottles that held something stronger than decanters usually do. We all betook us to brandy-and-water, except Frank Jocelyn, who imbibed noyeau and lemonade, a decoction which Binnacle viewed with sublime contempt; but Frank wore his hair, divided in the middle, and invariably used _w_ for _r_, so we excused him, as one might do a young lady.

After a few preliminary coughs and hems, Binnacle told us the following story, which is so horrible that it fully requires--let us hope deserves--an entire chapter to itself.

*CHAPTER XXVI.*

At length one whispered his companion, who Whispered another, and thus it went round, And then into a hoarser murmur grew, An ominous, and wild, and desperate sound; And when his comrade's thought each sufferer knew, 'Twas but his own, suppressed till now, he found, And out they spoke of lots for flesh and blood, And who should die to be his fellows' food.--BYRON.

"You must know, gentlemen, that five years ago, come December next, I was first mate of the _Favourite_, a brig of London, registered at Lloyd's as being two hundred tons burden, John Benson, master, with a crew consisting only of nine men and a boy. We had run, late in the year, to Newfoundland for a cargo of salted cod, and sailing later still, lost a topmast, and had to run up Conception Bay to refit at the town of Harbour Grace.

"Winter was close at hand now, so we lost no time in getting our gear ready; but the field ice came down swiftly from the north, and for the distance of two hundred miles from the mouth of the bay--that is, from Baccalieu and Cape St. Francis--away towards the Great Bank of Newfoundland, it covered all the sea, hard and fast, with hundreds of icebergs wedged amid it; so there was nothing for us now but patience and flannel, to strip the ship of her canvas and running rigging, to stow away everything till the spring, to muffle ourselves to the nose, and try to keep our blood from freezing by sitting close to wood-fires, and drinking red Jamaica rum mixed with snow-water, or that of the mineral springs on the hill of Lookout.

"A winter in Harbour Grace is not quite so lovely as one would be in London, as it is a poor little wooden town, with a few thousand miserable inhabitants, and a port that is difficult of entrance, though safe enough when one is fairly in. Well, everything passes away in time; so the winter passed, and the spring came; but, as usual in that imaginary season there, the snow fell heavier, till it was fathoms deep in the gulleys and flat places; the weather became more wintry than ever, and though the fierce black frost relaxes a little, it will still freeze half and half grog as hard as rock crystal.

"Some of our crew bemoaned this unlooked for detention bitterly, especially the captain, Tom Dacres, and one or two married men, whose wives, they feared, would deem them lost; but none were more impatient than the boy I have named. We called him Scotch Willy, for his name was William Ormiston, from the village of Gourock, on the Clyde. Well educated, with a smattering of Latin and other things, a passion for wild adventure, and chiefly for the sea--a passion fed by the perusal of Robinson Crusoe and other romances--made him run from home and ship for North America, where we picked him up; and often, in the watches of the night, poor Willy confided to me his remorse and repentance, and wept for his mother, whose heart he feared he had broken. Then he used to show me an advertisement cut from a Glasgow paper, that fell into his hands in New York:--

"Left his home, ten days ago, a boy fifteen years of age, named William Ormiston; dressed in a blue jacket and trowsers, with a Glengarry bonnet; has dark eyes and brown hair. Any information regarding him will be most thankfully received by his widowed and afflicted mother, at the Quayside, Gourock."

"'Such was the notice that caught my eye when I was more than two thousand miles away from her--with my heart as full of remorse as my pocket was empty,' Willy would say, in a voice broken by sobs; but he hoped yet to get home and cast himself into her arms.

"In his tribulation Willy always thought his mother would be praying for him, and that her prayers would be more efficacious than his own, and this conviction always consoled and strengthened him. He was a handsome boy, this Willy, with eyes so dark that he might have passed for a grandson of 'Black-eyed Susan,' only that she was an English girl, and our Willy was Scotch to the backbone--he was.

"In March we began to get ready for sea, as there is usually a partial breaking up of the ice about the middle of that month, so we resolved to get away if we could, and stand across for Cadiz, if once clear of that dreary and snow-covered land and the field ice. In Spain we were to exchange the salted cod for wine and fruit, and then return to London.

"A Russian whaler, which had been frozen in the same bight, but nearer the sea, was working out ahead of us some three miles or so, through the blue water and between the white floating floes, and we gave the greasy beggar a cheer as he passed out of the bay, made a good offing, and bore away, east by north, round Baccalieu Island.

"Conception Bay, I should tell you, gentlemen, is a large inlet of the Newfoundland coast, about fifty-three miles long, by some twenty or so broad; thus there is plenty of elbow-room for working out, even against a head-wind. Its coast is very bold and precipitous, especially about Point de Grates and Cape St. Francis. Harbour Grace and Carboniere on its shore were settlements of the old French times.

"As we followed in the Russian's wake, Bob Jenner, a fine, handsome young seaman, from Bristol, had the wheel, steering, with a steady hand, between the floes of broken ice that were drifting dangerously about the bay. We had the brig under easy sail; her fore and main courses, topsails, jib, and forestay-sail.

"Amid the quiet that prevailed on board, and the satisfaction we felt in having the blue water rippling alongside again, we were surprised by hearing a voice hailing us, as it were, from the sea.

"'A man in the water, sir; just abeam of us, to port,' shouted Scotch Willy, as he sprang into the main chains.

"And there, sure enough, in the sea, some twenty yards or so from us, we saw a man's head bobbing up and down like a fisherman's float, just as we neared the mouth of the inlet, where, beyond the headlands, that were covered with snow, and shining in the sea, we could see the waters of the Atlantic stretching far away.

"'Rope--a rope!--man overboard, Captain Benson; lay the maincourse to the wind!' were now the shouts.

"'Bear a hand--quick--diable!' cried the man in the water. 'Are you fellows fit for nothing, in heaven or hell, that you will let me drown before your eyes, d--n them?'

"Ere this remarkable speech reached us, the sheet was let fly to starboard, hauled into port, the brig lay to the wind, and the line was hove to this ill-bred personage in the water. He caught the bight of it with difficulty, for he was sorely benumbed, and actually sunk out of sight as he tied it under his armpits. However, up he came again, and we gently hauled him on board, where he fainted for a few minutes; but recovered when we poured some warm brandy-and-water down his throat, stripped off his wet clothes, and put him in a cosy spare hammock in the forecastle.

"By the time all this was done, we had cleared Conception Bay, and, with flocks of the Baccalieu birds screaming about us, were heading east by north, to keep clear of the floes, which the current was throwing in towards the land again, so rapidly, that many of them, like the links of an icy chain, were already drifting between us and the Russian, who was hoisting out his studding-sails on both sides, to make as good an offing as possible, before the sun set upon that frozen shore and tideless sea.

"By midday she was well-nigh hull down; but standing to the southward, having cleared the outer angle of the ice, while we were standing east and by north, to turn the end of a long mass, which we hoped to do ere night fell. In fact, the Russian had glided through some opening, which had closed again, for we could see only a line of ice, now stretching to the northern horizon, shutting us in towards the land.

"By midday our new hand was so far recovered as to be able to tell us that he was by name Urbain Gautier, a French Canadian, and that he had been a seaman on board the Russian whaler; that he had resented some ill-usage, been flogged, and thrown overboard. In proof of this summary procedure he showed us his back, which was covered with livid marks, evidently produced by the hearty application of a cat or knotted rope's end, but Scotch Willy lessened the general sympathy by informing me and Tom Dacres, in a whisper, that when the Canadian's knife fell from its sheath as we dragged him on board there was blood on its blade.

"Blood!

"This circumstance was whispered among the crew from ear to ear, and gave rise to many suspicions in no way favourable to our new acquisition, whom, however, they cared not to question, as he was a man singularly repulsive and brutal in aspect, and having a something in his expression of eye which made all on board shrink from him.

"Urbain Gautier was Herculean in stature and proportion, and most saturnine and satanic in visage. His eyes were too near each other, and too deeply set on each side of his long hooked nose, over which his two eye-brows met in a straight and black unbroken line. His mouth, with its thin lips and serrated fangs, suggested cruelty, and altogether there was a general and terrible aspect of evil about him. He spoke English, but when excited resorted to Canadian-French oaths and interjections.

"If 'twas he brought us ill-luck we got our first instalment of it that very night.

"The morning broke cold, grey, and cheerless, amid a storm of snow and wind, through which, to reduce the ship's speed, for we could see but little ahead, we drove under our fore-course and topsails all close-reefed now, and bitterly did we all regret the impatience which made us leave our snug moorings in Harbour Grace.

"Now and then the black scud would lift a little, but only to show the ice-fields drawing nearer and nearer, so, lest we should be crushed or enclosed amid them hopelessly, and then, it might be, starved to death when the last of our beef, biscuits, and water were gone, we steered in for the land, with the wild Arctic tempest--for such it was--increasing every moment.

"We tried sounding to leeward, but the lead always slipped from my benumbed hands, and in the end we lost the frozen line, as it parted in the iron block which was seized to the rigging by a tail-rope. Ere long we struck soundings with the hand lead, for the water was beginning to shoal!

"The brig's tops and the bellies of the close-reefed topsails became filled with snow, and now we began to look gloomily at each other, fearing rather than doubting the end.

"For most of that weary day we held on thus, running alternately west and north--sea-room was all we wanted till a safe harbourage opened; but ere long we knew it would be hopeless to look for either if the gale continued, and the briskest exercise could scarcely keep us from being frozen.

"We had been driven nor'-west I know not how many miles--for, perhaps, more than six-and-thirty--when a heavier sea than usual struck the brig on her starboard side, throwing her over on her beam ends to port, carrying away the bulwarks, tearing the long-boat from its chocks and lashings amidships, and making a clean sweep of everything on deck, buckets, loose spars, and handspikes; and with these went one of our men, who was never seen again.

"The brig righted, for she was a brave little craft, but with the loss of her topmasts and jib-boom, all of which, with yards and gearing, were broken off at the caps, and with hatchets and knives we worked amid the blinding and benumbing haze of drift and spray, snow, and the darkness of the coming night, to clear the wreck away--and away it all went astern with a crash, leaving the _Favourite_ now under only her forecourse and staysail.

"I shall never forget that night, if I live for a thousand years.

"The pumps were frozen; the boxes a mass of ice; the brakes refused to work; but I knew there was more water in the hold than was healthy for us. We could get no tea, coffee, nor any warm food, for the cook's galley had been swept overboard, and the tots of grog, which I served out from time to time, conduced, I think, rather to stupefy than to comfort the poor fellows, who were beginning to lose all heart, and to huddle together for warmth in the forecastle.

"Lightning, green and ghastly, glared forth at times, revealing the weird aspect of the crippled and snow-covered brig; yet it had the effect of clearing the atmosphere and enabling us to see the stars; but still the wind blew fierce and biting over the vast ice-fields, and still the fated craft flew on--we scarcely knew whither--but as the event proved, between the headland of Buenovista and the enclosing ice.

"We had the utmost difficulty in keeping a lamp in the binnacle, and by its light, amid the storm, Urbain Gautier, the French-Canadian, who had the wheel, was steering; no other man on board but he could have handled it singly and kept the brig to her course, for he had the strength of three of us, and seemed alike impervious to cold and to suffering.

"I think I can see him now as he stood then, with his feet firmly planted on the quarterdeck grating, his hands on the spokes of the wheel, and the livid lightning seeming to play about him, as the brig flew on through the storm and the darkness, and with every varying flash his features changed in hue. Now they were green, and anon red or blue; now purple, and then ghastly white; ever and again, as the lightning flashed forth, this infernal face came out of the gloom with a diabolical grotesqueness, and a strange smile on it that appalled us all; and now another day began to break.

"'Mate, that fellow is more like a devil than a human being,' whispered Bob Jenner to me, echoing my own thoughts, as we clung together to the belaying pins abaft the mainmast.

"He spoke in a low whisper; but in an instant the eyes of Urbain were on him.

"'Ah!' said he, showing his serrated teeth, 'a _maladroit_ speech, messmate.'

"'No messmate of yours,' growled Bob, unwisely.

"'Shipmate, then,' suggested the other, with a strange glance, between a grin and a scowl, for his black, glittering eyes wore one expression, and his cruel mouth another.

"'Well, mayhap, for so it must be,' said Bob, bluntly.

"'Ah,' said Urbain, with his horrible smile, as he held the wheel with one hand, and--even at that terrible time--felt for his sheath-knife with the other; 'ah! you think me a _mauvais sujet_, do you?"

"'I doesn't know what "mavy suggey" may be, and I doesn't care if I never does,' replied Bob, sturdily; 'but once I catches you ashore, mounseer, I'll teach you not to grip your knife when speaking to me.'

"'No quarrelling, lads,' said I, while my teeth chattered in the cold of that awful morning atmosphere. 'I only wish we were ashore.'

"'Then have your wish. Land ho!' sung out Urbain; and at that moment the grey wrack around us parted like a curtain; there was a dreadful crash, which tumbled us all right and left; the breakers which he had seen ahead were now boiling around us; and the brig lay bulged and broken-backed upon a reef, close to a lofty line of rocky coast, a helpless wreck, with the ice closing round her; and with a sound between an oath and a laugh, Urbain quitted the now useless wheel, which oscillated, as if in mockery, to and fro.

"Captain Benson, who, worn out by toil, had been snatching a few minutes' repose under the hood of the companionway, now sprang on deck, to find the brig totally lost, and that for us there was no resource, if we would save our lives, but to abandon her and get on shore.

"Broken and bulged, she was too firmly wedged on the reef for us ever to have the slightest hope of getting her off, save to sink her in deep water. As yet she might hold together for some hours, if the fury of the storm abated, and there were evident signs of such being the case.

"As each successive blast grew less in fury, and as the force and sound of the sea went down, we heard the wild streaming of the Baccalieu birds; and now, ere the water, which was rising fast in hold and cabin, destroyed everything, we procured charts and telescopes, to discover on what part of that barren, bleak, and most desolate of all the American shores, our fate had cast us.

"On comparing the outline of the snow-clad coast with the diagrams on the chart, we found we were stranded somewhere between the Bloody Bay and the Bay of Fair and False, about one hundred and twenty miles to the north-westward of the point from whence we had sailed.

"Few or no settlers, even of the most hardy and desperate description, are to be found thereabout, as the inhabitants between that place and the Bay of Notre Dame, about one hundred and fifty in number, are poor wretches who fish for cod and salmon in what they call summer, and for seals and the walrus in winter, and usually retire for the latter purpose to St. John's, or bury themselves in the woods till the snow disappears, about the month of June.

"We had but a sorry prospect before us; every instant the brig was going more and more to pieces beneath our feet, and our glasses swept the far extent of the snow-clad coast in vain, for not a vestige of a human habitation, or any sign of a human being, could be seen. No living thing was there save the Baccalieu birds, which screamed and wheeled in flocks above the seething breakers.

"Captain Benson's resolutions were taken at once. He resolved to abandon the wreck, and make his way by land at once for Trinity, a little town on the western side of the great bay that divides Avalon from the mainland of the island, or for Buenoventura, another settlement twelve miles to the southward.

"By circumnavigating the numerous bights, bays, and other inlets that lay between us and Buenoventura--especially the long, narrow, and provoking reach of Clode Sound--provided we failed to cross it on the ice, we should have at least a hundred miles to travel over a desolate and snow-covered waste, without a pathway, and without other guide than a pocket-compass.

"We set about our preparations at once. Every man put on his warmest clothing, and Tom Dacres lent a cosy Petersham jacket to the Canadian, Gautier. We greased our boots well, that they might exclude the wet, and made us long leggings to wear over our trousers by tying pieces of tarpaulin from the ankle to the knee, and lashing them well round with spun-yarn.

"For many hours we had been without food, and now examination proved that, save a few biscuits in the cabin locker, all the bread on board had been destroyed by the salt water; yet Urbain Gautier was able to make a meal of it. We were forced to content ourselves with a half biscuit each, to be eaten at our first halting place on shore. Beef or other provision we had none, and not a drop of rum or any other liquid could be had, for the brig was going fast to pieces, as the breakers surged up under her weather-counter, and all the hull abaft the mainmast was settling rapidly down in the water.

"Luckily we got up six muskets and some dry ammunition through the skylight. I say luckily, as we would have to hunt our way to Buenoventura; and these, with two tin pannikins, wherewith to cook and melt the snow for water, and a box of lucifer matches for lighting fires when we squatted in the bush for the night, we made our way ashore in the quarter-boat, and landed a chilled, wan, haggard, and miserable little band, consisting of eleven persons in all, including the captain, Bob Jenner, Tom Dacres, Willy Ormiston, the boy, myself, and five others.

"We were not without some fears of the Red Indians, though few or none, I believe, are now to be found on the island. Thus our first proceeding was to load and cap our muskets carefully.[*]

[*] It was a tradition, when the author was there, that in 1810 an exploring party, under Lieutenant Buchan, R.N., was sent to cultivate friendship with the Red Indians, and left with them, as hostages, two marines. Returning to the Bay of Exploits (about seventy miles westward from Bloody Bay) next summer, he found the savages gone, and the headless remains of his two marines lying in the bush.

"Captain Benson proceeded in front, with a fowling-piece on his shoulder, steering the way, with the aid of his pocket compass and a fragment of a chart; and he, too, was custodian of our box of lucifer matches. Just as we reached the top of the cliffs, by a slippery and dangerous ascent, we heard a sound, which made us all pause and look back towards the wreck. The field ice had already closed in upon the reef; but the last vestiges of the brig had disappeared where the Baccalieu birds were whirling thickest and screaming loudest.

"From the cliff that overlooked the sea, which was covered to the horizon with a myriad hummocks of field ice, diversified here and there by a great iceberg, the view landward differed but little in aspect. The whole dreary expanse was covered with snow--snow that made the frozen lakes and bays so blend with the land, that save for the dark groves of stunted firs and dwarf brushwood that grew in the arid soil, it was difficult to know where one ended and the other began. The hills were low, monotonous, and unpleasantly resembled icebergs, without possessing the altitude, the sharp peaks, and abrupt outlines of the latter.

"In all that wintry waste the most awful silence prevailed, and not a sound was stirring in the clear blue air, for now the snow-storm had ceased, the wind had died away, and the sky was all of the purest, deepest, most intense, and unclouded blue. Amid it shone the dazzling sun, causing a reflection from the snow that served partly to blind or bewilder us; but now, after sharing our tobacco--all save Urbain--for a friendly whiff, we set resolutely forth upon our journey, in a direction at first due south-west from Bloody Bay, towards the upper angle of the long and winding shores of Newman's Sound.

"Three days we travelled laboriously, each helping his shipmates on, for our strength was failing fast, and sleeping in the scrubby bush at night was perilous work, for the cold was beyond all description intense; but we selected places where the snow was arched and massed over the low fir-trees, and there we crept in for shelter, running only the risk of being completely snowed up. Three days we travelled thus, without a path, over the white waste, where, in some places, the snow was frozen hard as flinty rock, and where, in others, we sank to our knees at every step; and during those three days, save the half biscuit per man which we had on quitting the wreck, no food passed our lips, and no other fluid than melted snow; and when the damp destroyed our tiny store of matches, we had no other means of allaying the agony of our thirst than by sucking a piece of ice or a handful of snow, and these were sure to produce bleeding lips and swollen tongues, as they burnt like fire.

"On the third morning, as we turned out, a seaman, whose name I forget, did not stir; we shook and called him, but there was no response; the poor fellow had passed away in his sleep, and so we left him there.