We have just passed a fragment of some one of the surrounding icebergs that has amused us. It bore the resemblance of a huge polar bear, reposing upon the base of an inverted cone with a twist of a sea-shell, and whirling slowly round and round. The ever-attending green water, with its aerial clearness, enabled us to see its spiral folds and horns as they hung suspended in the deep. The bear, a ten-foot mass in tolerable proportion, seemed to be regularly beset by a pack of hungry little swells. First, one would take him on the haunch, then whip back into the sea over his tail and between his legs. Presently a bolder swell would rise and pitch into his back with a ferocity that threatened instant destruction. It only washed his satin fleece the whiter. While Bruin was turning to look the daring assailant in the face, the rogue had pitched himself back into his cave. No sooner that, than a very bull-dog of a billow would attack him in the face. The serenity with which the impertinent assault was borne was complete. It was but a puff of silvery dust, powdering his mane with fresher brightness. Nothing would be left of bull but a little froth of all the foam displayed in the fierce onset. He too would turn and scud into his hiding-place. Persistent little waves! After a dash singly, all around, upon the common enemy, as if by some silent agreement under water, they would all rush on, at once, with their loudest roar and shaggiest foam, and overwhelm poor bear so completely, that nothing less might be expected than to behold him broken into his four quarters, and floating helplessly asunder. Mistaken spectators! Although, by his momentary rolling and plunging, he was evidently aroused, yet neither Bruin nor his burrow were at all the worse for all the wear and washing. The deep fluting, the wrinkled folds and cavities, over and through which the green and silvery water rushed back into the sea, rivalled the most exquisite sculpture. And nature not only gives her marbles, with the finest lines, the most perfect lights and shades, she colors them also. She is no monochromist, but polychroic, imparting such touches of dove-tints, emerald and azure, as she bestows upon her gems and her skies.
We are bearing up under the big berg as closely as we dare. To our delight, what we have been wishing, and watching for, is actually taking place: loud explosions with heavy falls of ice, followed by the cataract-like roar, and the high, thin seas, wheeling away beautifully crested with sparkling foam. If it is possible, imagine the effect upon the beholder: This precipice of ice, with tremendous cracking, is falling toward us with a majestic and awful motion. Down sinks the long water-line into the black deep; down go the porcelain crags, and galleries of glassy sculptures, a speechless and awful baptism. Now it pauses and returns: up rise sculptures and crags streaming with the shining, white brine; up comes the great, encircling line, followed by things new and strange, crags, niches, balconies and caves; up, up it rises, higher and higher still, crossing the very breast of the grand ice, and all bathed with rivulets of gleaming foam. Over goes the summit, ridge, pinnacles and all, standing off obliquely in the opposite air. Now it pauses in its upward roll: back it comes again, cracking, cracking, cracking, “groaning out harsh thunder” as it comes, and threatening to burst, like a mighty bomb, into millions of glittering fragments. The spectacle is terrific and magnificent. Emotion is irrepressible, and peals of wild hurra burst forth from all.
The effect of the sky-line of this berg is marvellously beautiful. An overhanging precipice on this side, and steep slopes on the other, give a thin and notched ridge, with an almost knife-like sharpness, and the transparency and tint of sapphire, a miracle of beauty along the heights of the dead white ice, over which the sight darts into the spotless ultramarine of the heavens. On the right and left shoulders of the berg, the slopes fall off steeply this way, having the folds and the strange purity peculiar to snow-drifts. One who has dwelt pleasantly upon draperies in marble,—upon those lovely swellings and depressions,—those sweet surfaces and lines of grace and beauty of the human form, perfected in the works of sculptors, will appreciate the sentiment of the ices to which I point.
At the risque of being thought over-sentimental and extravagant, I will say something more of the great iceberg of Cape St. John, now that we are retiring from it, and giving it our last look. Of all objects an iceberg is in the highest degree multiform in its effects. Changeable in its colors as the streamers of the northern sky, it will also pass from one shape to another with singular rapidity. As we recede, the upper portions of the solid ice have a light and aerial effect, a description of which is simply impossible. Peaks and spires rise out of the strong and apparently unchanging base with the light activity of flame. A mighty structure on fire, all in ice!
Cape St. John!—As we slowly glide away toward the north, and gaze back upon its everlasting cliffs, confronted by these wonderful icebergs, the glorious architecture of the polar night, I think of the apostle’s vision of permanent and shining walls, “the heavenly Jerusalem,” “the city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.”
“The good south wind” blows at last with strength, and we speed on our way over the great ocean, darkly shining in all its violet beauty. Pricking above the horizon, the peak of a berg sparkles in the glowing daylight of the west like a silvery star. C—— has painted with great effect, notwithstanding the difficulty of lines and touches from the motion of the vessel. If one is curious about the troubles of painting on a little coaster, lightly ballasted, dashing forward frequently under a press of sail, with a short sea, I would recommend him to a good, stout swing. While in the enjoyment of his smooth and sickening vibrations, let him spread his pallet, arrange his canvas, and paint a pair of colts at their gambols in some adjacent field.
The novelty and grandeur of these Newfoundland seas and shores have busied the pencil so completely as to exclude much interesting matter, especially such as Captain Knight is continually contributing in his conversation. As we have been, for some time past, crossing the fields of the sealer, and as the Captain himself has a large experience in that adventurous business, seals and sealing have legitimately a small place, at least, in this recital.
CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE SEAL FIELDS.—SEALS AND SEALING.—CAPTAIN KNIGHT’S SHIPWRECK.
The sealers from St. Johns, for example, start upon their northern voyage, early in March, falling in with both ice and seals very frequently off the Capes of Conception and Trinity Bays. The ice, a snowy white, lies in vast fields upon the ocean, cracked in all ways, and broken into cakes or “pans” of all shapes and sizes. At one time, it resembles a boundless pavement dappled with dark water, into which vessels work their way, and upon which the seals travel: at another time, without the displacement of a block, this grand pavement of the sea rolls with its billows, rising and falling with such perfect order, that the men run along the ridges and down the hollows of the swells in safety. But this order goes into confusion in a storm, presenting in the succeeding calm a waste of ruins, masses of ice thrown into a thousand forms. In the long, starry nights, or the moonlight, or in the magic brilliancy of the aurora-borealis, the splendor of the scene,—dark avenues and parks of sleeping water, the silent glittering of mimic palaces and temples, sparkling minarets and towers, is almost supernatural. As will be seen at once, both the beauties and the perils incident to the ice, in calm and tempest, enter largely into the experience of the sealers. To-night, their vessel may repose in a fairy land or fairy sea, of which poets and painters may dream without the least suspicion that any mortal ever beholds the reality, and to-morrow night, it may encounter the double dangers of ice and storm.