Now that it was daylight I was able to read the ship's name at her stern, though I had first to knock away a quantity of ice and snow from above the letters. I found that she was the Pilgrim of Bristol. I had before perceived that she was not a whaler, nor did she appear to have been fitted out for an Arctic voyage. I marvelled much what had brought her to these seas, and whither she had been bound, and what her cargo was.
More than all did I wonder what I was to do with her. Here was I, placed by strange circumstances in command of two vessels, a schooner and a barque, and without the power or skill to take either of them into port--not knowing, indeed, where a port could be found. Had Davie Flett, Peter, and Jerry still been with me on the Falcon, we might have taken the Pilgrim to Stromness; we might also have given to her crew, or what remained of them, the decent burial for which they had waited so long. But, as things stood, I should have been thankful if I could have simply foreseen the possibility of getting out of my position of difficulty, regardless of either vessel. The sight of those dead bodies on the Pilgrim had made me utterly downcast. Their terrible fate had suggested to me the uncertainty of my own.
When I had taken some breakfast, I again went aboard the Pilgrim. I discovered that her cargo consisted for the most part of sulphur. Now, sulphur I knew to be a product of Iceland, and I judged from this that the ship had touched at that northern island.
I went into the chart room. A couple of charts were spread out on a couch. One of them was a chart of the north of Scotland, including the Orkney and Shetland Islands; the second was a continuation of the first, and gave the whole coast of Iceland and the sea beyond as high as the seventy-seventh degree of north latitude. The ship's course was clearly traced upon the charts in lines of red ink, and, following it, I could see that the Pilgrim (sailing, I suppose, from Bristol or some other English port) had rounded Cape Wrath and gone in at Kirkwall, in the Orkneys; thence the course was continued in a regular zigzag northward to a port on the north of Iceland, and then due east, as though she had been making for Scandinavia. But here the line became broken and irregular, and swept round suddenly to the far northwest, as though the vessel had been carried away by some adverse current or contrary wind away into the Arctic seas.
Here, then, I had a rough sort of explanation of the Pilgrim's voyage.
I was leaving the captain's room, taking the charts with me, when, on giving a last look round, I noticed a sleeping berth curtained off by a plaid shawl. I drew the curtain aside, and saw something sparkling. It was a beautiful diamond ring that encircled one of the fingers of a man's thin white hand. The hand was clasped over some small object that I did not see. Turning down a heavy fur rug that covered the man's dead body I noticed that his clothing, his appearance generally, were not those of a seaman. He had a long, silky, brown beard, and a very handsome face, which, however, was marred by an ugly scar on the brow. I judged him to be about thirty-five years old. Lying on his breast was a thick notebook, which, on opening the pages, I found to be filled with writing in a foreign language.
Turning from the bed place I was again attracted by the man's sparkling ring. I gently opened the hand and drew the ring from the thin finger, and as I did so a small gold locket dropped from the hand. It contained the painted portrait of a very beautiful girl with fair hair and fine blue eyes. I looked in strange admiration at the face. It had probably been the last object the dead man had seen. With a feeling of reverence I put the locket back into his hand. But with feelings that were less reverent I placed the diamond ring on my own finger, and took possession of the notebook. These, with the charts and the log book of the man in the after cabin, I carried on board the Falcon.
That afternoon I chanced to look overboard at the Pilgrim's waterline. She had sunk at least three more inches. I felt that, whatever happened to myself and the schooner, the Pilgrim at least would never again reach port, and I determined to save from the vessel what articles might be of use to me in case I should be able to return to land. I therefore went on board again and took possession of the ship's papers, some firearms and cabin furniture, a number of English books, and a small chest that I found in the captain's room.
The wind had fallen almost to a dead calm very soon after I had come alongside the Pilgrim, and I had thus been able to keep the two vessels together without any difficulty. But that afternoon as I sat before my fire reading a book on navigation--that part of it relating to the art of taking an observation on the sun, moon, and stars--the schooner listed over to larboard, as though the wind had caught her sails. I rushed up on deck and found that a strong breeze was blowing from the northwest, and was filling the sails of both vessels. The Pilgrim, indeed, was sailing with considerable speed, dragging the schooner along with her.
I ran forward and cast off the rope that held us together. Not too soon, for the barque was leaning over on her port side and visibly settling down.