Heart of Oak: A Three-Stranded Yarn, vol. 2.

by William Clark Russell

'Several months.'

'Were their sufferings great?'

Not knowing, I had to invent, and to cheer her, said: 'Oh, no. They kept up good fires, had plenty of beef and tobacco, heartened themselves by singing songs, telling stories, playing at games of their own invention, and fashioning ornaments out of whale ivory. It came right with them. When things come right it's the same as if they never were wrong. Nothing counts but the loss of time whilst you're waiting for the settlement. How soon, when you get well, you forget that you were ill! How quickly you forget the weather! Who's it says it's always too hot or too cold, too wet or too dry, but that God so contrives it, at the end of the year it's all the same? Keep up your heart, Miss Otway, and reflect that when this is ended and you're safe ashore with your people it'll be no more than an experience to talk about.'

'Yes,' said she, with a faint smile, 'it will be all right when I am ashore; but who's that other person who says, philosophy triumphs over past and future ills, but present ills triumph over philosophy?'

This passed my plain understanding, and I let the subject go.

I went on deck for more ice to melt and boil, and found it blowing pretty strong. A high sea, ridged in lines of ebony against the light of their own foam, and melted in roaring snowdrifts under the hull that was topping them with a wonderful buoyancy. I looked for a star, but all was sweeping blackness aloft, save the point of light at the stump-head.

Knowing this hard heave of sea must certainly give us a steady trend southward, helped as the hull was by the blast every time she soared into the icy howl of it, I fetched a bull's-eye, and observing by the binnacle that the hulk's head pointed about east by north, I went to the starboard rail and overlay it, staring with desperate searching eyes into the hard gloom till I was almost frozen. But I could see nothing that looked like ice, no faintness, no spectral sheen, all that glared was foam running from the arched back of the surge; so I went below, where I boiled some coffee, and, shortly after eight, Miss Otway withdrew to her berth.

I took the bull's-eye to find me more clothes in the captain's cabin, and when I was wrapped up to the bigness of a Greenland's-man, I returned to the stove, dimming the lamp to a light that was just enough to see by, and lay down upon a couch. Presently I was startled out of a reverie by seeing a great rat come close to the fire, as though for the warmth. Very quietly putting my hand in my pocket, I pulled out my clasp knife, which I opened; the blade was dagger-shaped. Then, quick as lightning, I lanced the weapon at the beast and half severed its head. This pleased me, for in the course of our talks Miss Otway had said that in her time of loneliness, a huge rat had come into the cabin and looked at her till she was motionless with disgust and fear. I could not know, however, that this was the rat that had so served her; though it made one less aboard, and I dropped it into a coal-bucket to chuck over the side next day.