The flight of the two ravens eastward indicated that land could not be far off. Hans Peterkin, a hardy Orcadian, who was suffering from scurvy, proposed that if matters grew more desperate, we should travel over the field, taking with us the longboat upon sledge-runners. Some urged that we should bore through the ice with canvas set, while gangs went ahead blasting it up with gunpowder.
"Bore and blast through ice twenty feet thick, for a hundred miles, perhaps!" said Hartly, with sorrowful irony.
But scurvy continued to increase among us; and on the eighth day after our visit to the ship one of our crew died, and was buried in the ice; while the brig was thrown in mourning, her colours half-mast, her running-gear cast in loose bights, and her yards topped up variously.
After his funeral, which had a most depressing effect upon us all, I remarked to Hartly, that either by a strange coincidence or by an irresistible fatality, we had interred him half a mile distant on the starboard bow, exactly as the crew of the old whaler had interred their dead!
CHAPTER XIX.
THE GRAVES ON THE STARBOARD BOW.
The last of our stone ballast had long since been thrown overboard on the ice, and was replaced by seal skins. We had now a valuable cargo, over which the hatches were barred and battened; but Hartly's hopes for an honest profit on his adventurous expedition were forgotten, or merged in the overwhelming desire for freedom and the safety of our lives and of the brig.
Already five deaths were recorded in her log; and Hartly vowed that if ever again her bows cut blue water, he would never more tempt Dame Fortune in the region of ice.
By this time our monotonous detention had so far exceeded every expectation and contingency; that our beer, rum, and other spirits, our salted beef, preserved meats, and lime-juice were consumed; and though our biscuits were doled out in very small rations indeed, grim starvation was before us, or food composed of seal and blubber alone; so scurvy in its worst forms assailed us all more or less. Our strongest seamen were the first who sank under it: their complexions became yellow, with swollen gums, loosened teeth, and fetid breath. These symptoms were accompanied by a difficulty in respiring, which, on the least exertion being made, amounted almost to suffocation.
Two of our gunners died one evening within an hour of each other. We wrapped them in blankets, and buried them quickly, under cloud of night, lest the survivors might be affected by the scene.