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.
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!
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.
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.
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 5001. 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."