It was too late to keep away for the entrance of the passage, the ice being too close at hand to leeward; but, most fortunately, there was room to tack. A call to Roswell soon caused the schooner to be close on a wind; down went her helm, and round she came like a top. Sail was shortened in stays, and by the time the little craft was ready to fall off for the passage, she had nothing on her but a foretopsail, jib, and a close-reefed mainsail. Under this canvass she glided along, almost brushing the rocks of the islet, but without touching. In twenty minutes more she was clear of the group altogether, and in open water!
That night some embarrassment was encountered from broken field-ice, of which the ocean was pretty full; but by exercising great vigilance, no serious thump occurred. Fortunately the period of darkness was quite short, the twilight being of great length both mornings and evenings; and the re-appearance of the sun cast a cheerful glow on the face of the troubled waters.
The wind held at south-west for three days, blowing heavily the whole time. By the second night-fall the sea was clear of ice, and everything was carried on the schooner that she could bear. About nine o'clock on the morning of the fourth day out, a speck was seen rising above the ragged outline of the rolling waves; and each minute it became higher and more distinct. An hour or two later, the Sea Lion was staggering along before a westerly gale, with the Hermit of Cape Horn on her larboard beam distant three leagues. How many trying scenes and bitter moments crowded on the mind of young Roswell Gardiner, as he recalled all that had passed in the ten months which intervened since he had come out from behind the shelter of those wild rocks! Stormy as was that sea, and terrible as was its name among mariners, coming, as he did, from one still more stormy and terrible, he now regarded it as a sort of place of refuge. A winter there, he well knew, would be no trifling undertaking, but he had just passed a winter in a region where even fuel was not to be found, unless carried there. Twenty days later the Sea Lion sailed again from Rio, having sold all the sea-elephant oil that remained, and bought stores; of which, by this time, the vessel was much in want. Most of the portions of the provisions that were left had been damaged by the thawing process; and food was getting to be absolutely necessary to her people, when the schooner went again into the noble harbour of the capital of Brazil. Then succeeded the lassitude and calms that reign about the imaginary line that marks the circuit of the earth, at that point which is ever central as regards the sun, and where the days and nights are always equal. No inclination of the earth's axis to the plane of its orbit affected the climate there, which knew not the distinctions of summer and winter; or which, if they did exist at all, were so faintly marked as to be nearly imperceptible.
Twenty days later the schooner was standing among some low sandy keys, under short canvass, and in the south-east trades. By her movements an anchorage was sought; and one was found at last, where the craft was brought up, boats were hoisted out, and Roswell Gardiner landed.
Chapter XXIX.
If every ducat in six thousand ducats
Were in six parts, and every part a ducat,
I would not draw them; I would have my bond.Shakspeare.
The earth had not stopped in its swift face round the sun at Oyster Pond, while all these events were in the course of occurrence in the antarctic seas. The summer had passed, that summer which was to have brought back the sealers; and autumn had come to chill the hopes as as the body. Winter did not bring any change. Nothing was heard of Roswell and his companions, nor could anything have been heard of them short of the intervention of a miracle.
Mary Pratt no longer mentioned Roswell in her prayers. She fully believed him to be dead; and her puritanical creed taught her that this, the sweetest and most endearing of all the rites of Christianity, was allied to a belief that it was sacrilege to entertain. We pretend not to any distinct impressions on this subject ourselves, beyond a sturdy protestant disinclination to put any faith in the abuses of purgatory at least; but, most devoutly do we wish that such petitions could have the efficacy that so large a portion of the Christian world impute to them. But Mary Pratt, so much better than we can lay any claim to be in all essentials, was less liberal than ourselves on this great point of doctrine. Roswell Gardiner's name now never passed her lips in prayer, therefore; though scarce a minute went by without his manly person being present to her imagination. He still lived in her heart, a shrine from which she made no effort to expel him.
As for the deacon, age, disease, and distress of mind, had brought him to his last hours. The passions which had so engrossed him when in health, now turned upon his nature, and preyed upon his vitals, like an ill-omened bird. It is more than probable that he would have lived some months, possibly some years longer, had not the evil spirit of covetousness conspired to heighten the malady that wasted his physical frame. As it was, the sands of life were running low; and the skilful Dr. Sage, himself, had admitted to Mary the improbability that her uncle and protector could long survive.
It is wonderful how the interest in a rich man suddenly revives among his relatives and possible heirs, as his last hour draws near. Deacon Pratt was known to be wealthy in a small way; was thought to possess his thirty or forty thousand dollars, which was regarded as wealth among the east-enders thirty years since; and every human being in Old Suffolk, whether of its overwhelming majority or of its more select and wiser minority, who could by legal possibility claim any right to be remembered by the dying man, crowded around his bed-side. At that moment, Mary Pratt, who had so long nursed his diseases and mitigated his sufferings, was compelled to appear as a very insignificant and secondary person. Others who stood in the same degree of consanguinity to the dying man, and two, a brother and sister, who were even one degree closer, had their claims, and were by no means disposed to suffer them to be forgotten. Gladly would poor Mary have prayed by her uncle's bed-side; but Parson Whittle had assumed this solemn duty, it being deemed proper that one who had so long tilled the office of deacon, should depart with a proper attention to the usages of his meeting. Some of the relatives who had lately appeared, and who were not so conversant with the state of things between the deacon and his divine, complained among themselves that the latter made too many ill-timed allusions to the pecuniary wants of the congregation; and that he had, in particular, almost as much as asked the deacon to make a legacy that would enable those who were to stay behind, to paint the meeting-house, erect a new horse-shed, purchase some improved stoves, and reseat the body of the building. These modest requests, it was whispered--for all passed in whispers then--would consume not less than a thousand dollars of the deacon's hard earnings; and the thing was mentioned as a wrong done him who was about to descend into the grave, where nought of earth could avail him in any way.