’Twas night when we put into Topmast Harbor; but my uncle and the fool and I awoke the place without regard for its way-harbor importance or number of houses. There was no maid there, said they; there had been a maid, come at dawn, but she was fortunately shipped, as she wished to be. What maid was that? They did not know. Was she a slender, tawny-haired, blue-eyed, most beauteous maid? They did but sleepily stare. I found a man, awakened from sound slumber, who remembered: ay, there was a maid of that description, who had shipped for cook on the Likely Lass. And whence the Likely Lass? Bonavist’ Bay, says he, put in for rest: a seventy-tonner, put out on the favoring wind. And was there another woman aboard? Ecod! he did not know: ’twas a craft likely enough for any maid, other woman aboard or not. And so we set out again, in the night, dodging the rocks of that tickle, by my uncle’s recollection, and presently found ourselves bound north, in search of the Likely Lass, towards a sea that was bitter with cold and dark and wind, aboard a schooner that was far past the labor of dealing with gusts and great waves.
And in the night it came on to blow very hard from the east, with a freezing sleet, which yet grew colder, until snow mixed with it, and at last came in stifling 315 clouds. It blew harder: we drove on, submerged in racing froth to the hatches, sheathed in ice, riding on a beam, but my uncle, at the wheel, standing a-drip, in cloth of ice, as long ago he had stood, in the first of the cruise of the Shining Light, would have no sail off the craft, but humored her northward in chase of the Likely Lass. ’Twas a reeling, plunging, smothered progress through the breaking sea, in a ghostly mist of snow swirling in the timid yellow of our lights, shrouding us as if for death in the rush and seethe of that place. There was a rain of freezing spray upon us––a whipping rain of spray: it broke from the bows and swept past, stinging as it went. ’Twas as though the very night––the passion of it––congealed upon us. There was no reducing sail––not now, in this cold rage of weather. We were frozen stiff and white: ’twas on the course, with a clever, indulgent hand to lift us through, or ’twas founder in the crested waves that reached for us.
“Dannie!” my uncle shouted.
I sprang aft: but in the roar of wind and swish and thud of sea could not hear him.
“Put your ear close,” he roared.
I heard that; and I put my anxious ear close.
“I’m gettin’ kind o’ cold,” says he. “Is ye got a fire in the cabin?”
I had not.
“Get one,” says he.
I got a fire alight in the cabin. ’Twas a red, roaring fire. I called my uncle from the cabin door. The old 316 man gave the wheel to the fool and came below in a humor the most genial: he was grinning, indeed, under the crust of ice upon his beard; and he was rubbing his stiff hands in delight. He was fair happy to be abroad in the wind and sea with the Shining Light underfoot.