The cabin-boy and the Jap cook crouched behind the galley, pale and shaking with fright. Father’s face was set grimly. A frozen death awaited us. Things at sea seem to take on human qualities. The perversity of the wind was the curse of some dead sea captain, and baffling calms were from the souls of lost sailors. That nearest iceberg was like a sea beast gloating over us as its prey.
“All hands on deck!” went the cry from Father, and it was repeated down the fo’c’s’le. The men came scrambling up, buttoning their oilskins and sou’westers around themselves closely. When they were all ready Father turned to them:
“You’ve got one chance in a thousand to get out of here with your lives. Throw overboard the cargo.”
In a flash the crew were tearing away the battens off the hatches. If the heavy cargo was thrown overboard, the ship would ride lighter and higher on the waves, and the impact from a smash would be lessened. The curses of the men in the hold as they chucked up sacks of salt beat a staccato on the still air.
“Joan, you and the cook and cabin-boy load up the lifeboat. Put tins of hardtack, a keg of water and a tarpaulin in it.” With those instructions he took his post at the fo’c’s’le head and watched our ship go nearer the bergs. Two frigate birds with long spiked tails hovered above. A frantic little mother-carries-her-chicken bird flew around and around in a dizzy circle near the stern. And Father just waited! With each roll of the ship we came nearer. The crew worked throwing out the sacks of salt like men possessed, and the ship lightened.
Father ordered the rope bumpers put out, and two cork buoys lowered over the bowsprit to break the crash if we hit the iceberg. The ship wouldn’t answer to the rudder, for the currents were more powerful. Just as we braced ourselves for the destroying collision we were caught in an eddy that lifted us high on the water and sent our ship dizzily about one hundred yards past the iceberg. Our relief was so great that we didn’t mind the loss of cargo.
All night long we drifted in the ice floes, miraculously avoiding being crushed by them.
The following morning we found ourselves afloat in a world of white icebergs and thick mist. It seemed as though we were at the end of the world. It was difficult for Father to figure out our position, as there was no sun, and to navigate by dead reckoning was useless as the log line couldn’t register how much we had drifted in the cross currents. For a week that continued—breathless days and nights that were ghostly in those white canyons of frozen water.
Sometimes in the night we could hear the screech of sea birds leaving the ice, and then silence again.
Whenever any real danger was upon us my father used to whistle or sing, or play his old water-soaked violin. I asked him how he could be so gay when death was staring us all in the face, and he said: