Heart of Oak: A Three-Stranded Yarn, vol. 3

by William Clark Russell

CHAPTER XXVII CORONATION ISLAND

But it was not till next day that we had the land in view, and then it was ten o'clock on February morning, making it a few days above a month since we had sailed out of Table Bay. As on the previous day, so on this, the sun shone brightly, with even some comfort of warmth in its light. Many great clouds of a milk-white softness were sailing into the east; the wind was fresh out of the west, but though the sea ran briskly, with a shrewd vapour of salt in the shrill fling of the frothing curls, it was not a hollow sea; it rolled the brig in stately measures, but she was now under small sail, the ice being very plentiful and the sea crowded with bergs of all sizes, whilst right ahead were tall cliffs of ice backed by a blue shadow of mountain rising into a silver faintness where the eternal snows upon it sparkled and died out from the sight in the deep blue.

I was beside myself with excitement and wretched with distress of expectation, dread, and hope. That height of white cliff right ahead, broken in the foreground by pale floating islands, its face discoloured in places as though the ice that masked the rock had broken from the black and savage rampart, was Coronation Island, and on the port bow, looming distant but immense, were the mountains of Laurie Island.

Our anchors were at the cathead, ready for letting go in case of sudden need; the men hung about on the look-out for ice, ready in an instant to trim sail. We were sailing towards the island through an avenue of bergs: clear water sparkled from the thrust of our stem to the very wash of the distant surf, with no other obstructions than here and there a lump of the crystal stuff lifting sullenly with the swell, flashing gloriously, and so proclaiming itself to the sight when the sunbeam smote the foam that poured off it.

A chart of the islands lay upon the skylight, and every few minutes I would be dropping the telescope to look at the chart, to gather from the tracing the point of coast we were heading for. The whaleman had said that the wreck lay on a ledge in Palmer's Bay, and Cliffe and I were agreed that that large indent was between the two towering shadows, to the right of the taller peak that soared a thousand feet higher than Table Mountain.

The icebergs obstructed the view. The line of coast was studded with them: yet every moment I was sinking my sight through the lenses into each opening betwixt the bergs. The brig's progress under her small canvas was about four knots and a half; I'd glanced for a moment at some stately frozen pile majestically rocking and slowly veering by, then put my eye to the glass afresh. My very soul was now loathing the sight of the ice. The largest of the islands was no longer an object of splendour and sublimity, but of horror and heart-weariness, charged with a spirit of desolation that subdued me to a sort of numbness of mind if I looked long: it seemed to stonefy the very principle of life in me, as though there was a horrid magic in its bald white stare to look a man into craziness, and emptiness, and into its own frozen lifelessness.

But now, as we approached, the features of the land began to steal out into a brilliant keenness wherever there was space for them to show betwixt the floating ice, and on a sudden, whilst I was looking through the glass, the motion of the brig slided a seaborne hill away to the left, and exposed a front of cliff that lay with a shadow upon it as though it was a sort of ravine, at the foot of which, though I instantly guessed it would lift to some height above the sea as we got nearer, lay a black speck. I looked again, and cried out wild with excitement:

'Cliffe, I have the hull! I have the hull!'

The little man came headlong to my side, and put his grimacing face to the telescope.

'Yes! I see it, I have it!' he shouted. 'Just as reported—high above the wash—fair in the heart of the Bay. It'll be all plain sailing now. Lor, but there ought to be no difficulty in boarding her.'

He returned the glass to me: I levelled it afresh at the instant that the corner of a big heap of berg floated right into the field of vision.

It needed another hour of careful sailing to expose the hull anew: then through the glass I saw her clearly. She lay, a large black hulk of ship, upon a projection of ice that was at least thirty feet above the sea. I made out her bowsprit, and the stump of her foremast. The cliffs soared sheer and abrupt at the back of her to a great height. Even at that distance it was not hard to guess that, after having stranded, she had been lifted by some earthquake dislocation of ice into the posture she rested in. Suppose the sea clear, she must have been visible to passing ships for leagues.

The seamen were congregated in the bows, leaning over the rail, Bodkin amongst them pointing eagerly. The mate roared to them to keep a bright look-out, they then scattered, but the sight of that wreck had brought them heedlessly together as one man. Cliffe's glass was not a powerful one, yet the hull in the lens lay within half a mile, and I saw her plainly. She had her head towards the cliffs, and sat very nearly upon a level keel. A great portion of her starboard bulwarks were gone. She was a mass of ice under her stern: looked to be fixed there to her bed of white pillars. The sun shot sparkles into her as we advanced, and still she showed black, as though the ice that coated her was as glass. Nothing moved: I strained my vision till my brain reeled and the object swung in the glass and was eclipsed: Cliffe looked, he saw no smoke nor signs of life any more than I.

'If there's anyone alive aboard her,' said he, 'now's our time for letting them know we're here.'

'Right,' I answered, speaking with my teeth almost set; 'do what you will, Cliffe; do what is for the best.'

He called to Bland and a man, and they fetched a number of blank charges for the cannon. The little skipper left the gun to the mate's handling, himself taking charge of the brig, which needed exquisite watching and management, so crowded was the water here with loose ice.

'Let fly fast as you can load, Mr. Bland,' said the captain; 'fire six rounds.'

As he spoke came a cry from the forecastle: 'Lie close under the port bow, sir!'

Thus was it, thus had it been, saving that now the pack stuff had thickened perilously.

The gun was fired; it made a noble thunder, and roared in dying echoes from near ice crag to ice crag. Again it was fired, yet again; all this while the brig was rolling forwards with her helm going up and down to the cries from the forecastle and to the gestures of the little captain.

I stood at a backstay with a levelled glass steadied against it, and in the moment of the third explosion I saw smoke rise feathering from the deck of the hull; still watching, my breath so thick and difficult it was as though a hand was upon my throat, I marked that the smoke thickened; but I could not see the red of the flame, nor the figure of the person feeding it. I daresay I was as white as any corpse when I stepped over to the captain and, putting the glass into his hand, said: 'There is life there.'

'There's smoke arising from that wreck,' shouted someone forward.

'We're here for some purpose, then, anyway,' cried Cliffe with a small oath, letting fall the glass to his side with the most extravagant grimace I had ever beheld in him.

One saw the smoke easily now with the naked eye; it rose black against the whiteness past it, curled featherwise, and blew scattering against the face of the cliff. I levelled the glass again and saw the figure of a man walking toward the stump of the foremast; I watched him; in a few moments a square of colour rose to the summit of the mutilated spar, where it blew steadily; it was a large English ensign, Jack down.

Bland let fly a fourth gun.

'Stop it!' roared Cliffe, 'we are seen! Hoist the ensign and dip it thrice.'

The colour soared to the trysail gaff end; it blew out large on the bight of the halliards when it was dipped, and was easily within the observation of the man on the hull. When I looked through the glass once more I saw a second figure; it was upon the hull's quarter, where the rail or bulwarks rose to a height that hindered me from perceiving how it was clad. I asked Cliffe to look; he steadied the glass, and answered with a snap of his whole face, and a voice high-pitched with delight:

'As God's my hope, Mr. Moore, it's a woman!'

The glass so shook in my hands that I could not use it; I took a few turns, then looked again. The figure watched us from the same place, but I could not tell whether it was a man or a woman. If it was a woman, then it might be Mrs. Burke. I wanted three figures to make sure of Marie; I saw but two; where was the third?

I strained my sight at the telescope with a heart of fever, half strangled by conflicting passions.

The figure that had hoisted the colour went to the side of the other, and they both stood watching, nothing visible of them above their waists. It was blowing a fresh breeze, and before this time Cliffe had taken in certain canvas; I think the brig was under topsails only, the foresail hauled up and hanging in its gear; the vessel drove slowly with an occasional crackling noise of ice along her sides when she sheared through some thin sludge stuff you could not see till you were in it; fortunately the drift ice that had threatened a thick surface just now had loosened here and tossed scattered; as we advanced moreover, we found that the icebergs which had looked to sit close in with the coast rode with a good offing; the sea was covered with these floating islands off that part of the island marked Foul Point; the eastern horizon was also like a terrace of ice, but the face of the cliffs from Foul Point down to where the land rounded into Lewthwaite Strait was fairly open.

All this while the sun shone brightly and with warmth. The sea streamed in a glorious dye of violet; we rolled slowly onwards till we were within about three-quarters of a mile of the coast and right abreast of the wreck. The helm was then put down; the main topsail laid aback; the gun again fired, and the ensign dipped. It was now about noon.

By this time I had made out that one of the figures was a woman; I saw but two persons. Who the woman was I could not tell, fierce as had been the struggle of my vision to resolve the glimmer of her face into lineaments.

When the brig had been brought to a stand, Cliffe called a council. We had ample sea room. The nearest floating ice lay about a quarter of a mile distant on the port quarter; the smaller blocks were not numerous, nor was there weight of sea to make them dangerous. All along the base of the ice-clad cliffs the water was pouring in a thunder of boiling surf; it was not the breakers but the great breathing swell of this mighty ocean which worked all that noise and fury along the cliffs' foot. The white brine sometimes shot twenty feet high, though it blew but a moderate fresh breeze, and the surge ran small.

Cliffe, myself, Bland, and the boatswain Bodkin came together at the companion hatch to consider. We had swept with the glass the line of coast from the beach under the hull to as far as we could see on the right, and beheld nothing but lofty coils of frothing combers raging in surf; there was no chance for a boat anywhere that way. The left presented a like scene, saving that there was a point in Palmer's Bay that, cruising eastwards, shut out the view of perhaps a quarter of a mile of the water it enclosed. Upon that point our eyes were fastened.

'We must lower a boat,' said Cliffe, 'and find out how the land lies past that arm of land.'

'It's the only sheltered bit along the whole boiling, I allow,' said Bland.

Bodkin, putting down the telescope, exclaimed:

'She lies about forty feet high above the wash. The ice is broke and irregular from the water to where she sits, and I reckon a man might walk upon it if there's a landing-place round the point. But I won't swear to it till I'm close in. Ice is deceitful stuff. Capt'n, there'll be nothen to say till we've taken a look round. 'Tis certain there's to be no getting at the hull from the bottom of the height she rests on, even if the boat could land there.'

'Then lower away, Mr. Bland, as quickly as possible, and be off and back with a report, that we may make up our minds what to do before it falls dark.'

Whilst some hands were getting one of the whale-boats over, others were busy with the deep-sea lead: but we were away, pulling for the shore, before they sounded. I went in the boat, taking the telescope with me. She was a five-oared boat; Bodkin pulled stroke; one of our smartest seamen was in the bows. The fellows bent their backs, and the buoyant little craft, swift of model with the whale-hunter's lines, flashed over the blue ridges; often I sought to bring the glass to bear upon the two figures watching us; to no purpose. The mate would not let me stand up, and I put down the telescope in despair.

'That vessel,' said the mate, 'never berthed herself like that. She's been chucked right up by the ice, and 'twas sudden too, bet yer heart, Bodkin.'

The picture grew amazing as we advanced. The cliffs behind the hull rose to about two hundred feet; I call them cliffs, they were a solid, precipitous, rugged face of ice, how deeply sheathing the black rock of the island no man could tell: the whole stretch of land resembled a gigantic iceberg. The hull lay upon a huge block, the top about forty feet high; it projected in a wide ledge, then fell sheer. You might know it had been snapped from some parent monster by the smooth side it showed to the sea, so clean cut to the eye, it might have been done by the chisel and hammer of a giant big as the blue shadow of mountains beyond.

My eyes were fixed on the wreck, and on the figures standing at her bulwark rail. Now again I tried to bring the telescope to bear: the jumping of the boat made the effort useless. All in a minute one of the figures sprang on to the bulwark; flourished his arms, and then motioned frantically towards the part of the bay concealed by the curve of the ice.

'Hail him, in God's name!' I cried. 'Try him with your voice, Mr. Bland.'

The mate stood up and roared, the full volume of his lungs trumpeting into the inshore wind like a soldier's call, the sweep and lift of the whale-boat to the summit of a large swell helping.

'How many are there of you?'

'Two,' came back the answer, dull through the roar of the surf but distinguishable.

'Who is the other?'

The men were now resting on their oars, the boat sinking and lifting in the sea that was great and hollow for so small a fabric; we were within a pistol-shot of the base of the cliff on which the hull sat, but so high perched was the craft, so bewrapped the two people, I could not make out their faces. The man held up his hand as though he had not heard.

The mate roared again, 'Who is the other?'

'A young lady.'

'Is it Miss Otway?'

He brandished an assent, and his figure stiffened in a posture of amazement.

'Is that her alongside of you?'

Again the figure flourished an affirmative.

'Then here's Mr. Moore come to take her home,' thundered the mate.

When he said that, Marie—for it was she—leaned forward: she was motionless whilst you might have counted twenty; she then stretched out her arms. I pulled off my hat and flourished it, that she might know me among the crowd we made in that boat, then lifted up my hands to her. But even had my voice possessed Bland's carrying power I could not have called. There, high above, upon the rail of the wreck, flanked by towering walls of ice, stood, with arms outstretched in appeal to me, the figure of my beloved. I had thought to find her dead—she was there; I had thought to find her lying in an African grave—and there, on that high-poised wreck she stood in silent appeal. For weeks and weeks I had been mourning for her, asking of God that I might behold her, seeing her in my dreams, a frozen corpse upon the deck of that hull there: and now she stood up yonder, alive, full in sight.

The boiling of the surf ran a maddening noise of thunder round the bay. But one saw what the man, whoever he might be, had frantically pointed to. The water was smooth from the end of the point to away round for some hundreds of paces. The sea could not get at the frozen beach there: it flashed at the point, and recoiled in clouds.

'Put me ashore,' I exclaimed, 'I can climb those crags. Look how they wind to the ledge: Bodkin will help me. I must go on board that wreck.'

'Sit down, I beg, sir,' exclaimed the mate, catching me by the arm as I toppled half-delirious. 'Tumbling overboard's an easy job. Your eyes deceive you; you could no more climb those rocks than jump ashore from where you sit. What d'ye say, Bodkin?'

The man had already and quickly made up his mind. He glanced at the fall of crags of headlong abruptness in places, huge and nodding, yet so blending in their whiteness with the whiteness they stood out on as to cheat the unpractised eye with an appearance of easy road-way, and answered firmly, 'There's no mortal legs and arms as is a-going to carry a man to the wreck by them rocks.'

'Why did the man motion to that landing-place?' I said.

The mate turned his sheep-eyed face round the bay, and answered, 'He didn't know who we were. He was afraid that boiling,' said he, pointing to the surf, 'would drive us away.'

'How is the wreck to be entered?' I asked, looking up and waving my hat, and then again stretching forth my arms.

'It's a sailor's job. Have no fear. We'll get 'em out of that,' answered the mate, and standing up he hailed the man. The other flourished his arm. 'We're here to take you off,' bellowed Bland, 'and we'll do it. Don't take any notice of our leaving you. It won't be for long. D'ye hear me?'

'Ay, ay!' came the answer, feebly through the ceaseless thunder.

It tore my heart to look up at the wreck, as we pulled away, and see Marie there, sundered from me by that curse of roaring foam, inaccessible, to be come at only by patience, naval skill, efforts which might have to be again and again repeated, always perilous. I cannot express how marvellously strange this ice-ramparted bay looked, with that wreck cradled on high, like a huge model in glass, tinted black, smoke lifting still cloudily from her deck, and the red inverted flag streaming like a square of fire against the marble white beyond. Many large pieces of ice floated in this sweep of water: but they showed plain, and the boat went securely. One piece was almost a berg: a miniature island. Here and there the sea broke over it. It was almost in the middle of the bay, and exactly abreast of the wreck. I observed that Mr. Bland ran his eye curiously over it as we pulled past.

Who was the man on the hull that had answered us? He was not Captain Burke. My sight had not distinguished his face, yet I should have known him by his voice had he been Burke. Three had been left, so Wall the boatswain reported: Burke and his wife, and Miss Otway; I saw but two. The man had said there were two only: one was Marie: where were the others, and who was that stranger?

We arrived alongside the brig, and with little difficulty I got aboard. The pull had occupied so short a while there had been scarce time to talk: but in any case the hurry and wildness of my spirits, my deep agitation, amazement and delight, mingled with dark wonder and jealous alarm, must have held me mute.

Cliffe impatiently awaited us: Bland and Bodkin came on board, leaving the men in the boat. Bland immediately said:

'We must get them out with a cradle. There's no other way.'

'No landing, then, round that point there?' said Cliffe.

'Ay, sir, but the rocks are not to be climbed by anything wanting hoofs and horns.'

'Who are they?'

'One's the young lady,' said the mate.

Cliffe spun round and stretched his hand to me.

'I do congratulate you,' he cried, convulsing his countenance. 'It's a noble errand nobly rounded off. Hurrah!' and in a sudden ecstasy he pulled off his hat and whirled it three or four times over his head. He then cried, 'But two only? The third ain't dead, I hope?'

'Captain Burke and his wife are not there,' said I.

He grimaced at me, and said, 'Who's the man, then? But asking questions won't get them out of it. What d'ye propose?'

As he spoke he whipped out his watch: as it lay in his hand I saw the hour; the time was two, we had therefore a long afternoon of daylight before us.

'We must take the mortar in the boat and communicate with it,' answered Bland. 'There's a big piece of ice to anchor the boat to,' said he, pointing to the lump I had observed him look at. 'We shall want a cradle.'

'A cask 'll answer,' said Cliffe.

'Better have both boats in the water,' said Bland.

They exchanged further remarks to this effect, but I was no sailor and could not follow them. No time, however, was lost. In less than half-an-hour both boats were alongside, rising and falling singly under the lee of the brig. In one boat was the mortar, with a complete apparatus of gear and cradle for connection with the wreck. The cradle consisted of a large cask cleverly slung, and so contrived as to slide along a line when the rope attached to it was pulled. We were nobly favoured by the weather. The send of the swell was as steady as the tick of a clock: the seas ran short and small, with a rich sunny feathering of foam that made a wonder of the ice, so tropic was it with the blue overhead where floated a few large white clouds of a coppery effulgence of swollen breast.

We got away by a quarter to three, one boat in tow of the other; the wind and seas helped us, and we quickly entered the bay. We were of the same number as before, and the same people. We drove with lifted oars to the former talking place, and Bland hailed the man, and, with his loudest roar, told him we were going to fire the end of a line to the wreck and send him a tackle by it for a cradle. Did he understand?

The man responded with a peculiar flourish of his arm, and Bland instantly said to me, 'He is a sailor.'

I had no eyes save for Marie. She had showed on a sudden at the rail on the quarter as we entered the bay, and stood as still as a statue watching us. Before Bland hailed I kissed my hand and flourished my hat to her, and extended my arms; and she then stretched her hands, lifting them immediately afterwards.

The surf held us several hundreds of feet away from the beach: the hull stood about forty feet above; no cry I was capable of could have reached her through the noise of the trembling combers; but the wind, however, was brilliant, and Marie's form stood clear cut against the white background; nevertheless, I could not distinguish her features.

The boat, with the other in tow, now pulled for the lee of the large mass of ice that lay floating abreast of the wreck. The water swung foamless and quiet under the shelter of this block. A couple of men jumped out, and between them carried an anchor to some near crevice, in which they half sank it. Thus were the boats solidly secured.

The mortar was then loaded: I saw the man on the wreck turn as though addressing Marie, who immediately withdrew and disappeared. When all was ready, Bland with many wild gestures and flourishes signalled to the man to stand by. Our seamen were deeply interested and greatly excited, particularly Bodkin, who had the handling of the mortar.

'Fire!' roared Bland.

The uncouth piece exploded in flame and smoke. Coil after coil of the heap of small stuff of the thickness of lead-line standing beside it flew off into the air.

'He has it!' bawled a man.

'Pay out now, pay out!' cried Bland. 'Light out handsomely, my lads. It may come as too much dead weight for one man, which'll be a bad job if winch is froze.'

'It's for his life, and that's a three-manpower, aye, though yare should be just out of horspital too,' exclaimed a seaman.

'Pay out. Ease him all you can, lads,' shouted the mate.

The man had got hold of the end of the line, and was dragging it inboard hand over hand, bringing to him as he hauled the end of a stout rope, to which a little block was attached with a line rove through it. This was the gear the mate was calling upon the seamen to pay out handsomely. He was but one man to three, and the tackle and rope must needs grow heavier and heavier as its smoking steaming up-curving bight lengthened. I watched almost breathless; if the man's strength failed before his end of the rope came to his hand what should we do? We could not assist. Now indeed I saw it would be impossible for any one of us to scale those rugged crystal boulders and cavernous ruins of ice which yet from the level of the water painted a practicable ascent from the sheltered curve of the bay where the sea was silent.

Foot by foot the sailors veered out the gear, and hand over hand, with admirable endurance and patient courage, the man on the wreck hauled the stuff in: till on a sudden one of our men called out, 'The lady's helping,' and I caught a glimpse of Marie past the man, dragging as he dragged.

'It's all right!' after a long pause, exclaimed Bland, letting out his words in the note of a deep-chested sigh of relief, and a hearty cheer sprang from the lips of the seamen.

'He knows what to do. He's a sailor!' cried Bodkin.

He had vanished behind the bulwarks, but quickly reappeared signalling to us with a flourish, whilst Marie stood as before, motionless, watching.

'Now get it taut, for God's sake!' cried the mate. 'In with the slack.'

The men toiled on, and dragged till the bight of the rope was clear of the water: the gear then described a curve from the stump of fore-mast to the boat.

'Now clap on the watch tackle.'

A machinery of blocks and lines was applied to the rope, which tautened to the strain till the mate cried 'Belay! If we don't mind our eye we shall start the wreck!'

Then swiftly, but without hurry or confusion, the empty cask was got over the bow and slung to a bowling or traveller.

'Haul out!' cried the mate, and nimbly, with quick steady pulls, the cask was run up the rope. It travelled smoothly. The man sprang on to the bulwark rail and received it, and, putting his hand on the edge of it, jumped in.

'By thunder, no, then! The lady first, or you stop there!' groaned the mate, his face suddenly dark with disgust and temper, and the others looked along the rope to the cask with frowns eloquent of curses. But in a moment the man got out, and I said, 'He was testing it.'

We now saw him, in the sharp white light the air was brimful of, help Marie on to the rail: he put his hands under her arms, and carefully sank her into the cask; then, pulling off his cap, flourished a signal of 'all's ready' to us. Instantly, one end of the line was slackened away whilst the other end was hauled upon, and the cask travelled towards us.

'Stand by to lift the lady out,' bawled the mate, whilst the cask was still coming. 'Into the bows two of you. Mr. Moore, you'll keep your seat, I beg sir, till the lady's in the boat.'

The cask came sliding to the drag of the line down to the very stern of the boat: there it was water-borne, and began to roll and leap with the boat: but strong hands were ready, and in a minute Marie was lifted over the gunwale, brought right aft, and seated beside me.

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