CHAPTER XIX.
ICEBERGS OF THE OPEN SEA.—THE OCEAN CHASE.—THE RETREAT TO CAT HARBOR.
Friday, July 1. The fog is so dense that the rigging drips as if it rained. In fact, if it be not the finest of all rain, then it is the thickest of all mists. C—— and I are sea-sick, almost as a matter of course, and look upon all preparations for breakfast with no peculiar satisfaction. Our consolation is, that we are sailing forward, although with only very moderate speed.
Delightful change! It is clearing up. The noonday sun is showering the dark ocean, here and there, with the whitest light. And lo! an iceberg on our left. Lo! an iceberg on our right. An iceberg ahead! Yes, two of them!—four!—five—six!—and there, a white pinnacle just pricking above the horizon. Wonderful to behold, there are no less than thirteen icebergs in fair view. We run forward, and then we run aft, and then to this side, and that. We lean towards them over the railing, and spring up into the shrouds, as if these boyish efforts brought us nearer, and made them plainer to our delighted eyes. With a quiet energy, C—— betakes himself to painting, and I to my note-book. But can you tell me why I pause, almost put up the pencil, and pocket the book? I am only a little sea-sick. The cold sweat starts upon the forehead, and I feel pale. We bear away now, such is the order, for the largest berg in sight. I freshen again with the growing excitement of this novel chase, and feel a pleasurable sense of freedom that I can never describe. I could bound like a deer, and shout like the wild Indian, for very joy. The vessel seems to sympathize, and spring forward with new spirit. The words leap out of the memory, and I give them a good strong voice:
“O’er the glad waters of the dark blue sea,
Our thoughts as boundless, and our souls as free.”
Indeed, there is a hearty pleasure in this freedom of the ocean, when, as now with us, it is “all before you where to choose.” Tied to no task, fettered to no line of voyage, to no scant time allowanced, the ship, the ocean and the day, are ours. Like the poet’s river, that “windeth at its own sweet will,” our wishes flow down the meandering channel of circumstances, and we go with the current.
And how lovely the prospect as we go! That this is all God’s own world, which he holdeth in the hollow of his hand, is manifest from the impartial bestowal of beauty. No apple, peach or rose is more within one network of sweet, living grace, than the round world. How wonderful and precious a thing must this beauty be, that it is thus all-pervading, and universal! Here on these bleak and barren shores, so rocky, rough and savage, is a rich and delicate splendor that amazes. The pure azure of the skies, and the deeply blue waters, one would think were sufficient for rude and fruitless regions such as these. But look, how they shine and scintillate! The iron cheeks of yonder headland blush with glory, and the west is all magnificent. Gaze below into the everlasting evening of the deep. Glassy, glittering things, like chandeliers dispersed, twinkle in the fluid darkness. The very fishes, clad in purple and satin, silvery tissues and cloth-of-gold, seem to move with colored lights. God hath apparelled all his creatures, and we call it beauty.
As we approach the bergs, they assume a great variety of forms. Indeed, their changes are quite wonderful. In passing around a single one, we see as good as ten, so protean is its character. I know of no object in all nature so marvelously sensitive to a steady gaze. Sit motionless, and look at one, and, fixture as it appears, it has its changes then. It marks with unerring faithfulness every condition of atmosphere, and every amount of light and shadow. Thus manifold complexions tremble over it, for which the careless observer may see no reason, and many shapes, heights and distances swell and shrink it, move it to and from, of which the mind may not readily assign a cause.
The large iceberg, for which we bore away this morning, resembled, at one moment, a cluster of Chinese buildings, then a Gothic cathedral, early style. It was curious to see how all that mimicry of a grand religious pile was soon transmuted into something like the Coliseum, its vast interior now a delicate blue, and then a greenish white. It was only necessary to run on half a mile to find this icy theatre split asunder. An age of ruin appeared to have passed over it, leaving only the two extremes, the inner cliffs of one a glistening white, of the other, a blue, soft and airy as the July heavens.
In the neighborhood, were numbers of block-like bergs, which, when thrown together by our perpetual change of position, resembled the ruins of a marble city. The play of the light and shadows among its inequalities was charming in the extreme. In the outskirts of this Palmyra of the waves, lay a berg closely resembling a huge ship of war, with the stern submerged, over which the surf was breaking finely, while the stem, sixty or seventy feet aloft, with what the fancy easily shaped into a majestic figure-head, looked with fixed serenity over the distant waters. As we ran athwart the bow, it changed instantly into the appearance of some gigantic sculpture, with broad surfaces as smooth as polished ivory, and with salient points cut with wonderful perfection. The dashing of the waves sounded like the dashing at the foot of rocky cliffs, indicative of the mass of ice below the surface.
As the afternoon advances the breeze strengthens, blowing sharply off to sea. We have the most brilliant sunshine, with a clear, cold, exhilarating air. It very nearly dispels all the nausea caused by this excessive rolling. We are now beating up from the east toward the land, and passing several of the bergs, in the chase of which we have spent so many joyous hours. Every few minutes we have new forms and new effects, new thoughts and fresh emotions. The grand ruins of the Oriental deserts, hunted on the fleetest coursers, would awaken, I fancy, kindred feelings. Full of shadowy sublimities are these great broken masses, as we sweep around them, fall away, tack and return again.
I never could have felt, and so must not think of making others feel through the medium of language, the possibility of being so deceived in respect of the bulk of these islands-of-ice, as our sailors always call them. What seems, in the distance, a mere piece of ice, of good snow-bank size only, is really a mass of such dimensions as to require you to look up to it, as you sail around it, and feel, as you gaze, a sense of grandeur. What you might suppose could be run down as easily as a pile of light cotton, would wreck the proudest clipper as effectually as the immovable adamant.
Between the great northern current, and the breeze which plumes the innumerable waves with sparkling white, our course has become rather more tortuous and rough than is agreeable to landsmen who have only come abroad upon the deep for pleasure and instruction. The painter has cleaned his pallet, wiped his brushes, shut his painting-box, and gone below. I am sitting here, near the helm, close upon the deck, screened from the spray that occasionally flies over, heavily coated, and cold at that, making some almost illegible notes. Life, it is often said, is a stormy ocean. It is on the ocean, certainly, that one feels the whole force of the comparison.
The wind, which is blowing strongly, is getting into the north, dead ahead, and sweeping us away upon our back track. We are too lightly ballasted to tack with success, and hold our own. The bergs are retiring, and appear like ruins and broken columns. We are now fairly on the retreat, and flying under reefed sails to a little bay, called Cat Harbor. All aloft has the tightness and the ring of drums, and the whistling of a hundred fifes. The voice of the master is quick, and to the point, and the motions and the footsteps of the men, rapid. On our bows are the explosion and the shock of swells, the resounding knocks and calls of old Neptune, and upon the deck such showers of his most brilliant flowers and bouquets as I feel in no haste to gather. The sea-fowl whirl in the gale like loose plumes and papers, pouring out their wild complaints as they pass.