CHAPTER XVI THE AURORA AUSTRALIS
Whilst slowly sweeping the ice with the glass, I saw, or seemed to see, when the lenses pointed a little to the eastward of south, a blue shadow of land in the air. I took my eye away from the telescope and then the shadow was gone: I looked again through the glass and there it was, a dim, scarcely distinguishable liquid dye whitening as it climbed till it melted in the azure.
I very well knew that shadow must be land, probably one of the mountainous rocks of the South Orkneys; unless indeed it was that group which lies north-east of the South Shetlands—forming one of them, in short: but I could not persuade myself that our drift to the westwards had been so considerable. I said to Miss Otway:
'Do you see a shadow in the air yonder?'
She looked, preserving the frown of an intense stare, and replied:
'No; I see no shadow.'
I directed the glass; she put her eye to it and cried quickly, 'Yes; I see it.'
'It is land,' said I.
She looked eagerly at me and said, 'Inhabited land?'
'I'll not say so, but I believe they go sealing there. I've heard of whalers heaving-to and sending ashore.'
'For what?'
'I don't know.'
I put away the glass and said:
'I've been afraid of that land; but when I think of it, best after all for us, Miss Otway, it should be there. Only, how to come at it? What's our drift and where are we? Shall we wash perhaps round yonder point of film, clearing the whole blocking mass, to light, may be, upon some spouter crawling northwards from ten degrees lower south? Or—or——' But I broke off, for what was the good of conjecturing unless I could say something to bring a little of the poor girl's heart into her eyes?
On the chance of something lying hidden round a point of crystal I went forward, lowered the lantern, and ran the red flag aloft, jack down. This done, I fetched a sextant from the captain's cabin and stood with Miss Otway in the shelter of the companion-way waiting for the sun to cross his meridian, meanwhile searching the line of the ice, beholding the phantasy of a ship's white sails over and over again, and conversing with the girl.
The sea came ridging steadily out of north-west, the vast westerly swell of the mighty Southern Ocean pulsing through it in rounds so majestically regular, you didn't notice the heave of it. I had never beheld a more glorious breast of ocean. All was dark blue sparkling billows, heads of froth tossing into silken veils upon the wind, a roaring, flashing scene, deep blue above, looking in its silence down, and the ice southward, like a coast cut in ivory white, motionless, shining, coming and going as the hull sank and soared.
I got an observation and eagerly went below to work it out. Miss Otway followed me into the captain's cabin and watched me whilst I calculated. I made the latitude sixty degrees ten minutes south, and the longitude exactly forty-five degrees west. Then, looking at the chart, I judged that that shadow of land which was showing miles past the barrier of ice was some central mountain of Coronation Island, towering high four thousand five hundred feet. I marked the hull's place on the chart, and said:
'This is where we are.'
She peered, and after a pause exclaimed: 'It is all desolation down here! Look how far we are off from Cape Horn. There is no nearer civilisation than the Falkland Islands—how many hundreds of miles distant! Oh!' she cried, lifting her head and clapping her hand to her face, 'if we could but hoist even a little sail to save us from drifting to the ice and certain death.'
'No,' I exclaimed, 'death's not aboard yet, not even in sight. Sixty degrees south! The whalers make nothing of that. The Great Circle carries you lower;' but I would not add 'not here.'
Then, my eye going to a bookshelf, I spied a volume which I pulled down quickly. It was a directory to these seas. I searched the pages, and, putting my finger upon a paragraph, said:
'See here now, Miss Otway: men have visited this land, they have named it, surveyed it, sounded round about it, described it. Where one has been others may venture. Look at this,' and I read: '"At daylight on the morning of the 12th January 1823, we saw some pigeons and at six o'clock perceived the east end of the islands of South Orkneys bearing W. by S. distant about eleven leagues. We carried all possible sail to get under the land, but the wind soon became light and left us almost at the mercy of a heavy swell in the midst of ice islands, which made our navigation truly hazardous."'
'Their ship had masts and sails,' she exclaimed, 'and was under command.'
I read on, eager to learn all the book could tell me.
'"Being now close under the land I sent a boat from each vessel to explore them. We continued to tack the vessels about in a bay. The icebergs which form in the bays in winter and break away in the summer now produced so much drift ice that we had frequently to tack ship to avoid striking it."'
'That's it!' she cried. 'Their ship was under command.'
I proceeded: '"This coast is, if possible, more terrific in appearance than the South Shetland. The tops of the islands for the most part terminate in craggy towering peaks, and look not unlike the mountain tops of a sunken island. The loftiest of these summits, towering up to a point, I denominated Noble's Peak. This peak in a clear day may be seen at the distance of fifteen leagues."'
'Is that the shadow?' she asked.
'Possibly.'
'Oh! look at the book, Mr. Selby, and see if it says that the island's inhabited.'
'It's not inhabited,' I answered.
Then I stood with my finger upon the page musing upon the brief account. There was little to interest outside of what I had read aloud: the rest told of bearings and distances, and what had been brought up by the lead.
'But,' said I, looking at the girl, 'we are not stranded yet. That we've drifted south is sure; but how much westing has there been in this tumbling drive? Here's all about the currents shown here,' and I turned the leaves of the book and read:
'"Ten miles south of Cape Horn the ocean stream flows east-north-east, half to one mile in the hour." That should be good for us. Let this wind shift south or west, and the swell and the run of the sea will drive the hulk out of sight of the barrier.'
But I had something more to do just then than talk, basing chat on small hope and weak conjecture. I saw to the fire in the stove, then went on deck to sound the well; the pump was hard frozen as before. I freed it and got a cast, and found that no water had drained in since I last sounded. I'll not swear to an inch or two, but the depth was quite unimportant, and after readjusting the pump I took the glass for another long look at the ice.
It was land, sure enough, at the back of the barrier; the pearly blue shadow stood a clear shape in the lens, and I seemed to see it now with my bare sight when I looked a little away to right or left of it. I carefully took its bearings, also the bearings of certain defined features of what I call the barrier, though, as I have said, it was a length of dislocated stuff full of yawns and wide winding openings, with a menace of the revelation of many grotesque mighty shapes, startling miracles of form beyond the reach of the dreams of fever, should we be set close. There was a sort of salt sparkle upon the range in some places; and now, whilst looking over the side, I saw, streaming up the slant of a surge, a pistol-shot distant, a mass of the giant kelp of these waters: but I observed no birds, nothing more than that kelp to hint at the meaning of that distant shadow in the air.
It was miserable that I could not get the least idea of our drift save by waiting and watching, which presently became a sort of anguish. I sought, but could nowhere find, the deep-sea lead, or certainly I should have dropped it over the side, taking my chance of its finding bottom, and lying there to show by the angle of the line into what quarter of the sea we were drifting—whether we were making straight for the heart of the range, as it looked, or laterally rolling towards the south-western extremity of the ice.
The weather continued of a clear cold splendour, the horizon sharp-edged against the sky as the rim of a tumbler. The sea ran hard in spiteful foaming slopes which kept on shouldering the hulk dead to leeward, and within an hour the growth of the ice told me we were closing it; in fact, by the bearings I had taken I saw that the drive of the hull was as fair for the heart of the barrier as if she was being steered for it!
What was to be done? I had been cast in my time in many situations of peril, yet had never known myself despairful even in the blackest hour of my troubles: but I own my heart fell now, my spirits sank, hope died when I looked at those leagues of horizon of ice and reflected upon my helplessness. Could I have summoned the help of but another pair of hands I might have made some desperate effort with capstan and leading-blocks to cap the stump of the foremast with another height of spar, and get a jib stretched that her head might pay off and bring her under some sort of control to enable me to thread the waterways betwixt the bergs. But, single-handed, I could do nothing. There was no height of foremast for the setting of any sort of rag that would round her head away and keep her before it—I mean, in a fashion to hold her responsive to the helm.
When I made the discovery that the hull was setting dead on to the ice, Miss Otway was in the cabin boiling some cocoa for a scrambling afternoon meal; she came up while I stood swaying on the heave of the plank, my arms tightly folded, my eyes rooted to the ice; instantly it was as clear to her as to me whither our drift was tending, and she uttered a low cry as though she had been struck.
The mere sight of her, however, did me good—it quickened perception of my obligations as a man. Her face was white as the foam over the side; her pale lips moved, but the shrill wind sheared with icy-edge through her words as they came to her lips. She sent a blind, staggering glance round the western and northern sea line, and, knitting her face into a look of resolution, she said:
'It is God's will. But, Mr. Selby, it is a dreadful death to die.'
'I am pleased when you look so,' said I, 'but not when you speak so. It is God's will, as you say. But what is that will? What's to be our fate? Look how those blue shadows in the ice open and widen. The bergs appear close together; hundreds of fathoms separate them in reality, and if we are to drift into the huddle why shouldn't we scrape through?'
'To where?'
'To where?... There may be open water beyond, and a ship.'
'No, no, land!' she cried, 'land! See the shadow of it. It was visible in the telescope only a little while ago: now I see it like a forming cloud. It will be all ice to the rocks, and some break will let us in and we shall drift deep and be locked up and left—and left——'
And now she could scarcely articulate for some spasm in her throat, and her poor white face was all awork with the horrors of her imagination.
It made me sullen to hear her, she reasoned so well, beyond any trick that I had for cheering her.
'We must wait and hope,' said I; 'we are not in the ice yet; there may come a ship.'
And setting my teeth I swung the glass out of its brackets fiery with some passing mood of wrath born of hopelessness and helplessness; for no sailor will stand at gaze and be deserted by his spirit as a man whilst there is a chance for life, though it be dim as a corposant in a burst of wet squall; but put him in my place—as I then was; aboard a dismasted hull rolling to her waterways in a steady pouring sea, a doom of ice filling the horizon to leeward: how should a sailor act as a man then save by a stony endurance that sounds gallantly if you call it heroic fortitude?
But the girl had boiled some cocoa: it waited: so I begged leave to hand her below out of the ceaseless howl of the ice-charged wind. Yet neither of us stayed long. She could not eat, and for my part 'twas as much as I could do to gulp down the steaming cocoa, good as it was.
I believe the sun set soon after two; the sky was everywhere of a wild crimson, flashing gorgeously where the luminary was; the sea came running in hard green lines, tall with passing heads, out of the splendour; then the ice was a wonderful scene indeed, delicately tinctured as it was with the redness. The shadow of the land hung afar in a dim, pink cloud, but though the barrier had been plain in view for some while I could not swear that within the last hour we had sensibly closed it. This gave me a little hope—though I didn't know any: I bade Miss Otway note it and she agreed with me—she had a sailor's eye for atmospheric distance—that the ice looked no nearer than it had within the past hour.
'Can we be in the grip of a westerly current?' thought I. Then, before the blaze faded in the west, I hauled down the flag and hoisted the burning lantern, for the delicate figures of the ice in the remote recesses where the film of it died out were so cheating in their likeness to ships lifting canvas and heading for us, that I could not persuade myself but one must prove a vessel—if not now, then presently.
I obliged Miss Otway to go below when the night fell. It was too cold for her. She was like to freeze to death. The ice loomed as a range of snow-covered cliff to leeward: it showed of a savage and deadly paleness under the stars which sheeted down weakly to it, though here and there one brighter than the rest glowed like a lighthouse lantern on some faint point. It was a wonderfully brilliant night, however, no moon that I remember, but overhead the larger stars had the rich tremble you see in the tropics; I had never seen such a field of brilliants—the stardust hovered like mist, and the height of the sky that night was awful to my solitary gaze.
At about eight o'clock we were, as I reckoned, about five miles distant from the nearest elbow of the ice. But though a tall sea still ran, giving the hull the lofty motions of a stately dancer, the wind was sensibly taking off. A frightful time was this! for if the hull struck on the hurl of such a surge as still roared under us, she would go to pieces in the twinkling of an eye. I was constantly looking over the side, reckoning to find us setting on to some detached mass of drift stuff, flat, but not the less deadly for being awash, but saw none. Suddenly I perceived a light upon the horizon right over the bows. I fancied my vision deceived me, that the trend of the ice was not as I imagined it to be in that darkness, that the light was some burning mountain far past the barrier, and that a shift of wind or change of stream or tide had altered the bearings: this I conceived and rushed headlong for a bull's-eye, which I flashed upon the compass; but no! the indications were as before.
What, then, was that light ahead? Miss Otway had followed me when I fled up the companion steps with a lighted bull's-eye.
'What is it?' she cried.
'What's that?' I exclaimed, pointing ahead in the starlight.
But now, looking, I beheld a luminous arched cloud: it soared, always arched, increasing in brightness till the brow of it stood about twenty degrees above the horizon: the brightest of the stars shone wanly through it: then, whilst we watched, flashes of fire, darting like lightning, leapt from it; they changed into spiral columns of the brilliance of sunlight, scores of them, and they went twisting and streaming out of the cloud with the look of the rush of the Milky Way to the Zenith, whirling and winding their strands of fire into a very rope of flame, whose end seemed to search the furthest stardust. This wonderful, beautiful, sublime scene of joyous dancing, inwreathing lights, faded, but was quickly followed in the same quarter where the fiery curved cloud had shone by rich, straw-coloured arches of flame, linking and sinking and soaring, changing on a sudden with a vast spread of light, exactly fan shaped, and jewelled with colours manifold as the rainbow, as though it reflected some giant prism.
'What is it?' said Miss Otway, standing close beside me and speaking in a voice subdued by awe and astonishment.
'The Aurora Australis,' I answered, knowing it must be that by descriptions I remembered.
We lost all sense of time in watching. In some of the sublimest recesses of that show of fire it was as though the heaven of God were opening: one held one's breath not knowing what the next revelation would be, what spectacle of winged spirit shapes would glance upon one's mortal vision out of those chasms of splendour which looked, with the glory that burned in them, to have been cloven to the very Throne.
'Mark this!' I cried, and as I spoke—the vast fan of light then fading and no more lightning-like fire leaping—the wind that had been a fresh breeze dropped as if by magic: the sky over the bows darkened into its night of stars: the sea fell into a sloppy tumble, and within a quarter of an hour the hull was rolling quietly upon the long, wide swell of these seas with so oil-like a calm upon the steady run of the folds that, close to our port quarter, I watched the image of a bright star lengthen and shrink as it rode, till, but for the intense, dread cold of the atmosphere, you would have thought yourself becalmed near the line.
'We may drift north and go clear after all,' said I, taking the lighted bull's-eve out of the companion and looking at the binnacle by it.
'Do you hear the thunder?' said Miss Otway, following me.
I listened: it was not thunder but the crackling of ice. There was no roar of sea, no howl of gale now to kill that sound; it rolled up through the night from the southward in bursts and shocks like explosions of heavy artillery; it swept over the smooth swell which looked liked smoking grease as the huge rounds noiselessly floated eastward, and it sounded as though a thunderstorm were raging over the ice.
And still that brief peace that was in the night, spite of the distant thundering of the ice, was a wonderful refreshment to the spirits after the ceaseless flush of the surge to the side and the steady roar of the gale on high, shrieking as it split upon the barbs of ice the length of bulwarks bristled with. More: a change of weather might now happen to drive us northward, to drift us clear of the bergs, at all events, and so extend our chance of being fallen in with and rescued.
I stayed on deck till after nine watching anxiously for any signs of a change of weather. Miss Otway came and went: she was too restless and fearful to linger below, but the frost in the night wind was too stinging to allow her to remain long above. When I went into the cabin I left the hull rolling slowly upon a swell of the sea polished as ebony; nay, so glass-like was that swollen mirror that all about us the water was sprinkled with the images of stars, with one ice-like wake swinging like a pendulum as the silver of it seemed to sink.
I mixed a tumbler of hot rum and sat down before the stove to smoke a pipe, with the young lady's consent; there was a good stock of tobacco, cigars, and a little collection of pipes in the cabin that had been occupied by Captain and Mrs. Burke. Our talk was, you will suppose, all about our situation. I assured her there was little to fear saving the ice; and talked—the thing then coming into my head—of a sailor who had gone sealing for three years with one Captain Smyley; this same skipper having spent nearly half a century betwixt the River Plate and the South Shetlands.
'These waters are plentifully frequented,' said I. 'A century ago in such a case as this we shouldn't have had much to hope for. What was to come? In half a year a score of yellow, humpbacked, round bowed waggons blowing away under bladder-like sails, with topmast struck and nothing but the log to tell the longitude—that was about the sum of the navigation. There was no Australia then; nothing but a Western American coast yielding a month's saunter from Acapulco to the Philippines—wonderful that they should have ever got a Spaniard to face the ice down here.'
'Did they?'
'Why, yes; they sent treasure to Europe in galleons named after saints, and when they saw a waterspout they held up their swords as crosses, and bade the thing be off in Latin.'
'Ships were as safe then as they are now,' said she, pulling off a thick glove and toasting her hand, on which sparkled a diamond or two. 'Why should this vessel have been dismasted? What progress is there to boast of when you think of this hull? Can't they plant masts which will keep erect?'
'Had that been, you and all others who were here when the squall struck you would be deeper under water than the fangs of the biggest iceberg afloat,' I answered, with a half smile at her eager gravity, as though there were nothing to interest us now but shipbuilding!
'If my life is preserved I'll never go to sea again,' she said.
'You'll have had enough of it.'
'I came for my health and it seems I have come to die.'
'Has your health improved?'
'Yes—perhaps; I don't feel whilst I talk as if the voyage had done me much good.'
'You'll write an account of these experiences when you return, and the Queen will send for you that she may see and converse with as wonderful a heroine as ever flourished in her reign.'
'What have I done to be a heroine?'
I knocked the ashes out of my pipe and turned to lift the tumbler of grog that was yet half full; when my hand was arrested as though paralysed by an extraordinary noise, smooth, fierce, seething. I listened a moment, then sprang to the companion steps.