The barque was snug at last. Very little sail indeed was left on her; only just enough to steer by and a bit over, lest a sail or two should be carried away.
Of the four trustworthy men, one was Chips the carpenter, the other old Canvas the sailmaker. The latter kept a watch, the former had been placed in Tandy’s.
It was hard times now with all. Watch and watch is bad enough in temperate zones, but here, with the temperature far below freezing-point, and dropping lower and lower every hour, with darkness and storm coming down upon them, and the dangers of the ice to be encountered, it was doubly, trebly hard.
It takes a deal to damp the courage of a true British sailor, however, and strange as it may seem, that very courage seems to rise to the occasion, be that occasion what it may. But now, to quote the wondrous words of Coleridge’s “Ancient Mariner—”
... “The storm-blast came, and he
Was tyrannous and strong;
He struck with his o’ertaking wings,
And chased us south along.
“With sloping masts and dipping prow.
As who pursued with yell and blow
Still treads the shadow of his foe,
And forward bends his head.
The ship drove fast, loud roared the blast,
And southward ay we fled.
“And now there came both mist and snow,
And it grew wondrous cold;
And ice, mast-high, came floating by,
As green as emerald.
“And through the drifts the snowy clifts
Did send a dismal sheen:
* * * * *.
“The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around:
It cracked and growled, and roared and howled,
Like noises in a swound!”
Yes, the good barque Sea Flower was driven far, far to the southward, far, far from her course; but happily, before they reached the icy barrier, the wind had gone down, so that the terrible noises in the main pack which the poet so graphically describes had few terrors for them.
The wind fell, and went veering round, till it blew fair from the east. A very gentle wind, however, and hardly did the barque make five knots an hour on her backward track.
Others might be impatient, but there was no such thing as impatience about Nelda, and little about Ransey Tansey either. Everything they saw or passed was as fresh and new to them as if they were sailing through a sea of enchantment.
The cold affected neither. They were dressed to withstand it. The keen, frosty air was bracing rather than otherwise, and warm blood circulated more quickly through every vein as they trod the decks together. How strange, how weird-like at times were the snow-clad icebergs they often saw, their sides glittering and gleaming in the sunshine with every colour of the rainbow, and how black was the sea that lay between!
The smaller pieces through which the ship had often to steer were of every shape and size, all white, and some of them acting as rafts for seals asleep thereon—seals that were drifting, drifting away they knew not, cared not whither.