The Sea Lions; Or, The Lost Sealers

by James Fenimore Cooper

Roswell took six or eight swallows of the coffee, which was smoking hot, and instantly felt the genial influence diffused over his whole frame. Sending Stephen to the other berths with this timely beverage, he now sat up in his berth, and rubbed his feet and legs with his hands. The exercise, friction, and hot coffee, soon brought him round; and he sprang out of his berth, and was quickly dressed. Stimson had lighted a fire in the camboose, using the very last of the wood, and the warmth was beginning to diffuse itself through the building. But the change in the wind, and the consequent melioration of the temperature, probably alone saved the whole of the Oyster Pond crew from experiencing the dire fate of that of the Vineyard craft.

Stephen got man after man out of his berth, by doses of the steaming coffee; and the blood being thus stimulated, by the aid of friction, everybody was soon up and stirring. It was found, on inquiry, that all three of the blacks had toes or ears frozen, and with them the usual application of snow became necessary; but the temperature of the house soon got to be so high as to render the place quite comfortable. Warm food being deemed very essential, Stephen had put a supply of beans and pork into his coppers; and the frost having been extracted from a quantity of the bread by soaking it in cold water, a hearty meal of good, hot, and most nourishing food, was made by all hands. This set our sealers up, no more complaints of the frost being heard.

It was, indeed, no longer very cold. The thermometer was up to twenty-six above zero in the house when Roswell turned out; and the cooking process, together with Stephen's fires and the shift of wind, soon brought the mercury up to forty. This was a cheering temperature for those who had been breathing the polar air; and the influence of the north-east gale continued to increase. The rain and thaw produced another deluge; and the cliffs presented, for several hours, a sight that might have caused Niagara to hide her head in mortification. These sublime scenes are of frequent occurrence amid the solitudes of the earth; the occasional phenomena of nature often surpassing in sublimity and beauty her rarest continued efforts.

The succeeding day the rain ceased, and summer appeared to have come in reality. It is true that at mid-day the thermometer in the shade stood at only forty-eight; but in the sun it actually rose to seventy. Let those who have ever experienced the extremes of heat and cold imagine the delight with which our sealers moved about under such a sun! All excess of clothing was thrown aside; and many of the men actually pursued their work in their shirt-sleeves.

As the snow had vanished quite as suddenly as it came, everything and everybody was now in active motion. Not a man of the crew was disposed to run the risk of encountering any more cold on Sealer's Land. Roswell himself was of opinion that the late severe weather was the dying effort of the winter, and that no more cold was to be expected; and Stimson agreed with him in this notion. The sails were taken down from around the house, and those articles it was intended to carry away were transferred to the schooner as fast as the difficulties of the road would allow. While his mates were carrying on this duty, our young master took an early occasion to examine the state of matters generally on the island. With this view he ascended to the plain, and went half-way up the mountain, desiring to get a good look into the offing.

It was soon ascertained that the recent deluge had swept all the ice and every trace of the dead into the sea. The body of Daggett had disappeared, with the snow-bank in which it had been buried; and all the carcases of the seals had been washed away. In a word, the rocks were as naked and as clean as if man's foot had never passed over them. From the facts that skeletons of seals had been found strewed along the north shore, and the present void, Roswell was led to infer that the late storm had been one of unusual intensity, and most probably of a character to occur only at long intervals.

But the state of the ice was the point of greatest interest. The schooner could now be got ready for sea in a week, and that easily; but there she lay, imbedded in a field of ice that still covered nearly the whole of the waters within the group. As Roswell stood on the cliffs which overlooked the cove, he calculated the distance it would be necessary to take the schooner through the ice by sawing and cutting, and that through a field known to be some four feet thick, at five good miles at least. So Herculean did this task appear to be, that he even thought of abandoning his vessel altogether, and of setting out in the boats, as soon as the summer was fairly commenced. On reflection, however, this last plan was reserved as a dernier ressort, the danger of encountering the tempests of those seas in a whale-boat, without covering or fire, being much too great to be thought of, so long as any reasonable alternative offered.

The bergs to the southward were in motion, and a large fleet of them was putting to sea, as it might be, coming in from those remote and then unknown regions in which they were formed. From the mountain, our hero counted at least a hundred, all regularly shaped, with tops like that of table-land, and with even, regular sides, and upright attitudes. It was very desirable to get ahead of these new maritime Alps, for the ocean to the northward was unusually clear of ice of all kinds, that lodged between the islands excepted.

So long as it was safe to calculate on the regular changes of the seasons, Roswell knew that patience and vigilance would serve his turn, by bringing everything round in its proper time and place. But it was by no means certain that it was a usual occurrence for the Great Bay to be crammed with field-ice, as had happened the past winter; if the actual state of the surrounding waters were an exception instead of the rule. On examining the shores, however, it was found that the rain and melted snow had created a sort of margin, and that the strong winds which had been blowing, and which in fact were still blowing, had produced a gradually increasing attrition, until a space existed between the weather-side of the field and the rocks that was some thirty fathoms wide. This was an important discovery, and brought up a most grave question for decision.

Owing to the shape of the surrounding land, it would not be possible for the ice to float out in a body, for two or three months to come; or until so much had melted as to leave room for the field to pass the capes and head-lands. It never could have entered the bay for the same reason, but for the resistless power of a field that extended leagues out into the ocean, where, acted on jointly by wind and tide, it came down with a momentum that was resistless, ripping and tearing the edges of the field as if they had been so much freshly turned up mould. It was, then, a question how to get the schooner out of her present bed, and into clear water.