CHAPTER XVIII.
LEAVES FROM THE LOG.
We repaired to our sledge alongside, and dragging it a little way from the deserted barque, took a ration of grog (of which we stood much in need), and then I proceeded to examine the volume we had brought away. It proved to be the mouldered fragments of a log-book or diary kept by the mate—doubtless the dead man, who was seated on the stern locker, and whose body was reclining on the snow-covered cabin table.
From this book we could glean that she was the Royal Bounty, a Peterhead whaler, which had been beset in the ice off Cape Desolation in 1801, and that one by one all her crew had perished of cold, hunger, and despair!
The thick and crystalline coat of ice which covered every portion of the ship, from her tops to her chain-plates—a coat that had never melted or been disturbed—had protected her rigging, spars, and hull from the natural progress of decay; so let none suppose it marvellous that in a region or atmosphere of eternal snow, bodies are also thus preserved; for frequently the remains of elephants and mammoths which lived before the flood, and of pre-Adamite monsters, are found buried in the Arctic ice, unchanged, undecayed, and entire.
At the mouth of the Lena, in Siberia—a river which traverses the vast and uninhabited plains of Asiatic Russia—there was discovered, in 1805, a mammoth entire, with the hair on its skin four inches long, and all of a reddish-black; and so frequently are similar discoveries made along the shores of the Frozen Sea, that the poor Russians believe that race of animals to be still extant in their country, but existing like moles which dwell underground, and cannot endure the light of day; and their exhumation from the ice is ever deemed a forerunner of calamity, as it is said that all who see them die soon after. But to resume.
The book was much mouldered and decayed; only a few entries here and there could be traced, as its leaves, now soft and pulpy, perished in our fingers when we attempted to turn them over. A few passages ran thus:—
"March 3rd, 1801; a brisk breeze from the S.W. The Faroe Isles bearing about twenty miles off on our starboard quarter.
"At 7 P.M., took in the topgallant sails, and all fore and aft canvas ........ set the ........
"April 4, 8 P.M. Set more canvas—out reefs—set foretopmast and maintopgallant studdingsails. Ice-floes a head. Compasses not working well. The captain ordered ........, and Cairns ........
"9 P.M. Land ahead—supposed to be Cape Farewell. Weather squally. Beset by an ice-field in a strong current running N. and by E. Took in everything fore and aft—sent down the topgallantyards, and brought the masts on deck ........"