“With this lighting up of the air, various thoughts came into my mind. First, could I get to the land and save the boy as well as myself; secondly, could I aid anybody else; and thirdly, could I save anything of the wreck out of the sea. These last two reflections were quickly disposed of, for although I could see many fragments of the wreck, none were within reach, and no other person was in sight,—ship and boats and men were all gone down before the crushing avalanche, and nothing was left but myself and a senseless boy.
“I must here pause to tell you that, although we were in the Arctic regions, and on the ice, the weather was not cold, the time being the middle of the summer. Of course the dense fog made the air damp and chilly, but, as I have said, not exactly cold. My shipmates, before the wreck happened, never dressed in anything warmer than the usual woollen clothing, and seldom wore coats. For some reason, I do not exactly remember why, I had, upon going on deck from breakfast that fatal morning, in addition to my ordinary coat, put on a heavy pilot-cloth overcoat, which had been furnished me by the master of the ship,—the price of it to be deducted from my wages. And it was most fortunate that I had put this coat on, for it now served a good purpose in wrapping up the boy.
“Seeing that there was now nothing to be gained by longer delay on the ice, I picked up the boy in my arms and started for the land. It may strike you as somewhat strange that I should have gone about it so calmly, or indeed that I did not fall down in despair, and at once give up the hope of saving myself when there was so little, or rather no, apparent prospect of it before me. But for this there were some very natural reasons. In the first place, the thought of saving the boy’s life kept my mind from dwelling too much upon my own misfortunes; and then, the hope of finding the land which had come in sight out of the fog inhabited, stimulated my courage, and inspired exertion.
“Although the boy was not heavy, yet I found that in the distance I had to carry him I grew much fatigued; but the necessity for haste made me strong, and to save the boy’s life seemed now much more desirable than to save my own, inasmuch as if the boy died, and I survived him, and could in any way manage to live on, I should be in a worse condition than if dead, as it appeared to me,—being all alone.
“As I approached very near the land, I became much alarmed by discovering that a considerable space of water, partly filled with fragments of ice, intervened between me and the shore; but, after holding to the right for a little distance, I came at length to a spot where the ice was firmly in contact with the land, and, after climbing over some very rough masses which had been squeezed up along the shore, I got at last upon the rocks, and then on a patch of green grass, where I laid down the insensible boy in the blazing sun.
“What was I now to do? The boy was yet in very much the same condition that he was when I set out with him for the shore. Meanwhile more than half an hour must have elapsed, during which time the boy was wrapped in his wet clothes, which, to a man in the full possession of his senses, would have been prostrating enough. It seemed to me that he was sinking under the effects of the blow which he had received, and the wet clothes which were on his body. I had, however, the gratification of knowing that I was on firm land, and away from the cold ice. The grass was warm, and the air, as I have said, was scarcely chilly. Under these improved conditions it was clearly better to expose the boy’s body wholly to the air than to allow him to remain in his wet clothes. The first thing, therefore, which I did was to divest myself of my own clothing, in order that I might give my warm underclothing to the boy. This left for myself only my pantaloons and my coat. After buttoning the coat tightly round me, I undressed the boy, and rubbed his body with such parts of the tail of my overcoat as his clothes had not wetted while carrying him, and, this done, I drew on to him my shirt and drawers, and then, pulling up the grass, I heaped that about him, and over this threw my damp overcoat,—the grass preventing it from touching him. All this occupied but a few minutes, for I worked with the energy of despair. I then set to rubbing and pounding his feet and hands which were very cold, to get some circulation back into them.
“I had now done all that it was possible for me to do for the present towards the restoration of my poor companion, who still remained in precisely the same insensible state as before, and I now determined to look about me and ascertain if there were any evidences of human beings living near at hand.
“The scene around me was dreary enough to strike terror into a stouter heart than mine; and, when I had fully viewed it, I had to confess that it did not seem probable that any living thing, not to mention human beings, could possibly be there. The first thought I had was to shout and halloo again and again at the very top of my voice; but no answer reached me except the echo of my own words in a deep and dark gorge close by. This echo startled me and made me afraid, though I never could tell why. My loud calling had failed to produce any impression upon the boy whatever, and I felt sure that he was going to die. Without exactly knowing what I did, or what I was doing it for, I now ran to the right over the green grass, and then over rough stones up to a considerable elevation, and commenced hallooing again, when, much to my astonishment, I heard a great fluttering and loud sounds right below and within thirty feet of me. I sprang back as if some terrible enemy had attacked me; but I recovered myself in an instant, when I observed that the fluttering came from a number of birds which rose from among the rocks. The birds were brown and quite large, and I knew at once that they were eider-ducks, for I had seen them frequently before, while in the ship, and the sailors had told me their name.
“Without having any distinct motive in doing so, I went down to where the birds had risen, when still others rose before me in great numbers. The rapidity of their flight, and the loud noise which they made, startled others still farther away, and thus flock after flock kept on rising from among the rocks, screaming, and flapping their wings in a very loud manner. Several hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, must have thus got upon their wings and commenced sailing overhead.
“You must know that the eider-duck, in order to protect its eggs from the air when it goes off to get for food the little fish that it catches in the sea, plucks from its breast the fine feathers called down, in which it buries its eggs very carefully. In each of the nests I found there was a good handful of this down, and the thought at once occurred to me to gather a quantity of it, and cover the boy with it. I went to work immediately, and collected a great armful of it, and, hastening to where the boy was, I deposited it, and then hurried back for more. In a very short time I had accumulated a great pile, and, spreading a thick layer of it out close beside the boy, I drew him over upon it, and then covered him completely, and spread my overcoat as I had done before.