Without exception we all jostled at his heels as he turned and fled up on deck again, even old Lady Delahay being carried away by the prevailing excitement, and when we all poured out of the companion-way, it was a strange sight and no mistake that met our gaze.
The moon shone bright as day, almost, and lit up a scene of cold splendor, the like of which I have never seen equalled. But the strangeness of the matter lay in this. There was not a breath stirring; indeed, a close, dense stillness lay heavy over the sea, but the waters were pouring past our bows like a river in spate. They seethed against our sides like the rush of a mill-stream, purring and rippling oilily.
On the bosom of the dark tide the floe-ice swirled along, crashing as it charged our stem, and butting at our timbers thunderously. Berg thrust at berg like the jostle round a street accident. The pack-ice split and worked in masses one against the other, lump grinding on lump. The crash of their striving was deafening. And at the tail of this turmoil came open water unflecked by the slightest ripple, and pouring past our stern in a steady, unfaltering swirl. Comparing great things with small, it was exactly like the opening of a lock-sluice, and for a moment, in my mind’s eye, the tangle of the bergs faded, and I thought of Cliveden Woods and the gay parasols upon the river.
Our hands shook upon the deck-rails as we gaped upon this icy chaos and the hurtle of the floe. The roar of the jostling ice, the ceaseless surge of the current against the bow, the black persistence of the tide flow—all these things seen under the glare—the scorching glare, I may almost call it—of this pitiless moonlight, had an appearance of horrible unreality. I pinched myself as it occurred to me that I might be dreaming, and felt the resultant pain with sorrow.
The whole crew had mustered on deck, and were staring upon this wonder with all their eyes. I strode to Waller’s side and fairly had to bawl into his ear to make myself heard above the din of the fighting floes.
“What is it?” I screamed. “What are we to do?”
“Can’t say, my lord. Never saw the like before. Nothing we can do as there’s no wind. Better get up anchor though,” and he beckoned to Janson.
The donkey-engine sent a white puff or two up into the still air, and the capstan began to complain as the chains crept through the hawse-pipes. Eccles’s head appeared to announce that one rivet was on the collar he had fixed to the riven shaft, and he could venture on twenty turns of the screw to the minute if virtually necessary. His offer was accepted by Waller with effusion, and the screw began to churn a slow, creamy wake upon the blackness. The last of the ice swung by and whirled seaward, the clamor of its striving melting into the sluggish beat of our lame propeller as we got way upon the boat. And thus we ran landward for a length or two to find speed before we turned with the heeling tide.
Suddenly—swift as the cap of a port-fire snaps—the white glare of the moonbeams reddened, died, then leaped again to a flame glow. It wrapped the whole expanse of rock and water in a flood of crimson. The sea became blood. We spun round to face astern and see what this might be. We saw—as it seemed—a preposterous, Titanic travesty of a Crystal Palace firework exhibition. So near did the similitude run, that we listened almost with confidence for the following yawn of applause. The islands behind us were aflame with pyrotechnic devices.
They were swathed in a cloak of fiery mist, wherein great streams of falling fire darted headlong to the sea. On the summit of the central peak rose a monstrous tower of spuming, flaring, heaven-smiting flame, vomited forth as by convulsions from an inner furnace, and this roared with thunderous echoes in the very heart of the hill—echoes that sprang and smote themselves in deafening chorus from crag to crag, booming across the smooth surface of the flood that bore down upon the isles devouringly.