One of the Six Hundred: A Novel
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