The ship now, in a few hours, rounded the Cape, which before had seemed an impossible obstruction to her, and made her way unhindered to the north; but the feelings engendered by the events immediately preceding this change had taken too strong a hold upon the men to pass lightly away, and in many a long first or middle watch the subject of the disappearance of the lost shipmate and its immediate effect upon the elements was discussed with bated breath, and many an ominous shake of the head was given as the opinion was moodily expressed that ‘We’d not done with him yet.’ And when, a few days afterwards, on a Sunday morning during divine service, the quartermaster of the watch came creeping and tiptoeing down the ladder to report something to the commander, who at once followed him silently up the after-hatchway, but a few minutes afterwards returned and whispered mysteriously to the captain, who in his turn mounted on deck and did not come down again, we all felt that perhaps something more might be in store for us, and was even now perchance at hand. How impatiently we sat as the sermon dragged out its seemingly interminable length, and then, when at last the blessing had been given and the quick sharp voice of the first-lieutenant had issued the order, ‘Boatswain’s mate, pipe down!’ we literally tumbled up on deck, to learn what it was that had disturbed the calm of that Sabbath forenoon. It needed but a glance. ‘Icebergs!’ There they were, a long array of cold, filmy, shadowy giants, looming huge in the mist with which each surrounded himself—ghostly, ghastly, clammy spectres from the very land of Death itself. Not that we thought of them then as such; no, we were glad, we youngsters; we liked them; we said they were ‘jolly,’ though any object less gifted with an aspect of joviality one can hardly imagine. Each, as we neared it, wrapped us in its clammy shroud of death-cold fog, and chilled us to the very marrow, and, towering far above our main-royal-mast head, seemed to threaten us with instant and appalling destruction.
So we sped on, iceberg after iceberg rising above the horizon as we held our course; and, if sources of anxiety and alarm by day, how much more so by night! Often we entered a vast bank of impenetrable fog, conscious that somewhere, in its inmost recesses, lay concealed, as if waiting for its prey, a gigantic berg, but never knowing from moment to moment when or where exactly to expect it. This was a splendid chance for the croakers. Many a great solemn head was shaken, and many a jaw wagged with gloomy forebodings over that unusual and unexpected appearance of ice in the Southern Sea. By-and-by, the wind began to freshen, and signs of another gale appeared, though this time from a quarter fairly favourable to us; and with her canvas snugged down and a bright lookout forward, the old ship began to shake her sides as she hurried away from those inhospitable seas with their spectral occupants towards the inviting warmth of the tropics and the steady blast of the trade-winds.
Anxious for a breath of fresh air before turning in to my half-sodden hammock, I went on deck to take a turn with a chum, and enjoy, as we often did together, a few anticipations of the delights of home once more. It was a wild—a very wild night. There was a small moon; but the clouds were hurrying over her face in ragged streamers, and in such constant succession, that her light was seldom visible; and when she did show it for a fleeting moment, it fell upon a black, tossing, angry sea, whose waves broke into clouds of icy foam as they fell baffled off the bow of the great ship, or tried to leap savagely over her quarter. It was a hard steady gale, the wind shrieking and humming through the rigging, and the old ship herself pounding ponderously but irresistibly at the great mountains of water before her, and creaking, groaning, and complaining as she did so, masts, yards, hull, all in one strident concert together, as if remonstrating at the labour which she was forced to undergo. In spite of the moon, the night was as black as Erebus, and from the quarter-deck on which we paced, the bow of the ship was barely visible. We were just turning our faces aft, my chum and I, in our quarter-deck walk, when a voice rang out sudden, clear, and loud forward—the voice of the starboard lookout man: ‘A bright light on the starboard bow!’ Instantly we, and indeed every soul on deck, turned and peered hard in that direction. Not a vestige of a light was to be seen! Then the voice of the officer of the watch was heard from the bridge, ordering the midshipman of the watch to go forward and find out if the man was dreaming, or if any one else had seen the light which he reported. No one else had seen it; but the man stuck to his text. He had seen for a second of time a bright light on the starboard bow—a very bright light, quite different from anything which was usually seen at sea.
‘No, sir! I beg your pardon, sir! I wasn’t asleep—not I, sir! broad awake as I am now, sir! and able to swear to it.’
By this time all hands were on the alert, and many officers, old and young, had tumbled up from below at the hail.
‘But, my good man, if it was really a light which you saw, some one else must have noticed it too.’
‘Don’t know nothin’ about that, sir; but I can swear to it. What I seen were’——
‘A bright light on the starboard beam!’ sang out the starboard waist lookout at this moment, and ‘I saw it!’ and ‘I saw it!’ echoed several voices; but before the officer of the watch could turn round towards the direction indicated, it was gone, and the starboard beam presented one uniform sheet of impenetrable blackness.
‘Waist there! What was it like?’
‘Somethin’ of a flash-light, I should say, sir,’ replied the lookout. ‘Very bright and very short—gone in a moment-like.’