CHAPTER II.
FREE FROM DANGER.
I was a passenger on board the Panther, and shared with my companions the emotions which the Land of Desolation first inspired.
Under ordinary circumstances, there can be no more comfortable situation on board a ship than that of passenger. You are not expected to know any thing, and, if wise, you will not want to know any thing. You are content to trust to the captain, who is presumed to be quite competent to look to the safety of his ship, and therefore to your own. So far as human ingenuity can possibly be exercised to escape danger, his, you are sure, will be, and you trust to him as to a superior being—at least you know he has all the interest at stake that you have, and something more; for the handling of a ship in a storm is like the manœuvring of troops on the field of battle; success brings glory to the commander, and the acquisition of it is perhaps all the more precious that it is not shared with any body.
In our case there was a still further motive to confidence. Our captain owned one-half the ship, which was a Newfoundland screw-steamer, and was built unusually strong. Besides this, we had confidence in his judgment, which was the next best thing to confidence in his caution; and then, to crown all, he was a thoroughly good fellow. To quote the gentleman who devoted himself to the duties of sagaman for the cruise, “A roaring, tearing, jolly tar was he, as ever boxed the compass on the sea.” During the eight days occupied in coming over from St. John’s, we had all conceived a high opinion of his qualities. He might be sometimes a little rash and venturesome, but rashness, as every body knows, is a safer quality than timidity; and we bore in recollection the old saying, “Nothing venture, nothing have.” We might, perhaps, have found a little fault with him at first for having run us in so close to the Land of Desolation without halting for daylight and better weather; but then we all knew that to “heave to” was something which the captain had a great horror of and he spoke of heaving to with such constant disrespect that the people generally had conceived the idea that it was a peculiarly terrible thing to indulge in. It seemed, therefore, that we were all right, and must necessarily escape shipwreck, even when the peril appeared greatest—when, for instance, we found ourselves threatened with an island rock on the one side and an island of ice on the other, in a sea white with foam, and breaking everywhere so wildly that the captain’s trumpet-voice could scarce be heard above the tumult.
The worst of it was, we did not know within fifty miles of where we were. “There,” said the captain, triumphantly, with his outspread hand upon the chart of Baffin’s Bay, covering at least ten thousand square miles of land and sea, “There’s where we are!” It was certain, at all events, that we had drifted within a line of skerries, for the waves broke on all sides, and where the rocks did not keep us from going, the ice did.
We had made the land with the intention of seeking a modern fishing-station of Danes and Esquimaux, which we knew to lie somewhere on that part of the coast; but where we could not even guess. As well seek charity in a bigot as hunt for a harbor in such weather, on a coast where there are neither light-houses nor pilots.
Yet we knew that human beings might be started somewhere if we only could free ourselves from our uncomfortable predicament, and the storm only would hold up. But it would not and did not until after we had, without exactly knowing how it came about, at length found ourselves in the open sea, and had given the Land of Desolation a wide berth.
The weather clearing finally, the Panther was pointed for a promising opening in the belt of ice which beset the shore; and now, without much risk or difficulty, we got behind a cluster of islands not far from the main-land and a good way to the south of where we had been so much troubled.
Here there was no ice at all, and we began to look up the fishing-town. First of all the signal-gun was fired, and the Panther whistled her loudest. This woke the echoes, and startled some sea-gulls, but nothing more. Then we crept cautiously along, passing island after island, the Panther whistling constantly and the guns firing occasionally.
Presently we saw something dark moving upon the water, which appeared to have the body of a beast, and the head and shoulders of a man. It might be a marine centaur! who could tell? In fact, we rather expected to see some such monsters long before; and if the sea had been alive with them, we would not have been, I think, much surprised.