CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE SEAL FIELDS.—SEALS AND SEALING.—CAPTAIN KNIGHT’S SHIPWRECK.
The sealers from St. Johns, for example, start upon their northern voyage, early in March, falling in with both ice and seals very frequently off the Capes of Conception and Trinity Bays. The ice, a snowy white, lies in vast fields upon the ocean, cracked in all ways, and broken into cakes or “pans” of all shapes and sizes. At one time, it resembles a boundless pavement dappled with dark water, into which vessels work their way, and upon which the seals travel: at another time, without the displacement of a block, this grand pavement of the sea rolls with its billows, rising and falling with such perfect order, that the men run along the ridges and down the hollows of the swells in safety. But this order goes into confusion in a storm, presenting in the succeeding calm a waste of ruins, masses of ice thrown into a thousand forms. In the long, starry nights, or the moonlight, or in the magic brilliancy of the aurora-borealis, the splendor of the scene,—dark avenues and parks of sleeping water, the silent glittering of mimic palaces and temples, sparkling minarets and towers, is almost supernatural. As will be seen at once, both the beauties and the perils incident to the ice, in calm and tempest, enter largely into the experience of the sealers. To-night, their vessel may repose in a fairy land or fairy sea, of which poets and painters may dream without the least suspicion that any mortal ever beholds the reality, and to-morrow night, it may encounter the double dangers of ice and storm.
Upon the fields just mentioned, the seals come from the ocean, in the depth of winter, and bring forth their young by thousands. There, while their parents come and go, the young things lie on the ice, fattening on their mothers’ milk with marvellous rapidity, helpless and white as lambs, with expressive eyes almost human, and with the piteous cries of little children. In March, about as soon as the voyagers can reach them, they are of suitable age and size for capture, which is effected by a blow on the head with a club, a much more compassionate way of killing these poor lambs of the sea than by the gun, which is much used in taking the old ones. Occasionally they are drawn bodily to the vessel, but usually skinned on the spot, the fat, two or three inches deep, coming off from the tough, red carcass with the hide, which, with several others is made into a bundle, dragged in by a rope, and thrown upon deck to cool. After a little, they are packed away as solidly as possible, to remain until discharged in port. Five, six, and seven thousand skins are frequently thus laid down, loading the vessel to the water’s edge. An accident to which the lucky sealer was formerly liable, was the melting of the fat into oil from the sliding of the skins, caused by the rolling of the ship in stormy weather. To such an extent was this dissolving process sometimes carried, as to reduce the cargo to skins and oil, half filling cabin and forecastle, driving the crew on deck, rendering the vessel unmanageable in rough weather, and requiring it to be abandoned. This is now securely guarded against by numbers of upright posts, which crib, and hold the cargo from shifting.
Several years ago, Captain Knight, while beset with the kind of ice, described as so beautiful in the bright nights, encountered, with many others, a terrific gale, to this day, a mournful remembrance to many people. If I am not mistaken, some eighty sail were wrecked, at the time, along these iron shores. In fact, very few that were out escaped. Several crews left their vessels and fled to land over the rolling ice-fields, the more prudent way. A forlorn hope was to put to sea, the course adopted by Captain Knight. By skill and coolness he slipped from the teeth of destruction, and in the face of the tempest escaped into the broad ocean. It was but an escape, just the next thing to a wreck. One single sea, the largest he ever experienced in numerous voyages along this dreadful coast, swept his deck, and nearly made a wreck of him in a moment, carrying overboard one man, nine boats, every sealing-boat on board, and every thing else that could be wrenched away. Another gigantic roller of the kind would have destroyed him. But he triumphed, and returned to St. Johns in time to refit, and start again.
Captain Knight was less fortunate, no later than last April, when he lost a fine brig with a costly outfit for a sealing voyage, under the following circumstances: Immersed in the densest fog, and driven by the gale, he was running down a narrow lane or opening in the ice, when the shout of breakers ahead, and the crash of the bows upon a reef, came in the same moment. Instantly, overboard they sprang, forty men of them, and saw their strong and beautiful vessel almost immediately buried in the ocean. There they stood, on the heaving field of ice, gazing in mournful silence upon the great, black billows as they rolled on, one after another, bursting in thunder on the sunken cliffs, a tremendous display of surf where the trembling spars of the brig had disappeared forever. To the west of them were the precipitous shores of Cape Bonavista, lashed by the surge, and the dizzy roost of wild sea-birds. For this, the nearest land, in single file, with Captain Knight at their head, they commenced at sunset their dreadful, and almost hopeless march. All night, without refreshment or rest, they went stumbling and plunging on their perilous way, now and then sinking into the slush between the pans or ice-cakes, and having to be drawn out by their companions. But for their leader and a few bold spirits, the party would have sunk down with fatigue and despair, and perished. At daybreak, they were still on the rolling ice-fields, beclouded with fog, and with nothing in prospect but the terrible Cape and its solitary chance of escape. Thirsty, famished, and worn down, they toiled on, all the morning, all the forenoon, all the afternoon, more and more slowly, and with increasing silence, bewildered and lost in the dreadful cloud travelling along parallel with the coast, and passing the Cape, but without knowing it at the time. But for some remarkable interposition of Divine Providence, the approaching sunset would be their last. Only the most determined would continue the march into the next night. The worn-out and hopeless ones would drop down singly, or gather into little groups on the cold ice, and die. As the Captain looked back on them, a drawn-out line of suffering men, now in the hollow of the waves, and then crossing the ridge, the last of them scarcely seen in the mist, he prayed that God would interpose, and save them. A man who prays in fair weather, may trust God in the storm. So thought Captain Knight, when he thought of home, and wife and children, and the wives and the children of his men, and made his supplication. They had shouted until they were hoarse, and looked into the endless, gray cloud until they had no heart for looking any longer. Wonderful to tell! Just before sundown they came to a vessel. A few rods to the right or to the left, and they must have missed it, and been lost. It was owing to this disaster that Captain Knight was at leisure in St. Johns upon our arrival, and found it agreeable to undertake, for a few weeks, our guidance after the icebergs.