Heart of Oak: A Three-Stranded Yarn, vol. 3

by William Clark Russell

CHAPTER XXIII THE SHIP SEEN ON THE ICE

I was advised against the two or three bad hotels in Cape Town, and whilst in the ship had obtained the address of a boarding-house. It was a comfortable big Dutch-built house, low, without chimneys; it stood in a garden full of moon-lilies, and many lovely flowers, the fairest of them scentless. Here I found a colonel from India for his health, a Dutch couple, and one or two others. From the stoep of this house you saw the grand mass of Table Mountain, seemingly close to; the shadow of its noble bulk seemed to fill the heavens and swell with sensible, usurping presence into the far reaches of the country. I had travelled in mountainous parts in Europe, but never before witnessed such a tyrannous domination as this. The colossal ramparts caught up the whole prospect whilst you looked in a swinging sweep of their length, till 'twas all mountain with the steam-like vapour shredding away from the boiling whiteness atop, and the houses clustering into the base like things of life shuddering back into the giant refuge.

Such were the fantastic notions I got of the thing as I sat, cigar in mouth, on the stoep of the boarding-house on the first night of my arrival. The full moon was shining over the bay. I saw through the trees a space of the silvered waters, with the black figures and lines of ships anchored in the trembling glow, spotting it with their riding lights. The breeze was falling in sighs down the steep and troubling the vegetation into the shedding of some perfume upon the night air; the tinkling of the crickets spread low, like a noise of fairy bells, over the land, surging up in the warm, damp breeze and dying. I heard a band of music in the distance, but the mountain shone upon by the moon and now radiant at the summit with snow-white mist, looked the tranquility of its great face into the night, and the peace of its sublime silence dwelt like a spirit everywhere, to the very height of the stars, down to the waters trembling under the moon.

This rest was grateful and exquisitely refreshing after the ceaseless motions of the ship and the senseless chatter of the engine-room. And yet, though I was but just arrived, I now, after my first meal ashore for many days, sat alone, considering what I should do.

I had learnt at table there were ships in the bay homeward bound, also I was aware and had been long aware that I must wait a month for the next Union steamer to England. I could not, however, bring myself to endure the prospect of sailing home. The voyage by steam had already proved unendurably long; and now I might take shipping under a topsail, make a passage of two months to the line, lie in a month-long trance upon the burnished swathes of the molten silver swell of the Doldrums, then wish myself dead in six weeks of tempest to the Scillies, with a long flounder up Channel to round off all.

Therefore, on this the first night of my arrival at Cape Town, I resolved to return by steam, taking anything in that way which might come from the Indies, or, failing that, then the monthly Union steamer.

The colonel came out of the house with a long cheroot in his mouth, and sat down by my side. He was a man with bland manners, and a sarcastic voice. He talked contemptuously of Cape Town and its people, and cursed the indisposition that had driven him into such a barbarous hole, where you were distempered by bad cooks, poisoned by dreadful smells, maddened by the horns of the coloured costermongers. I was in no temper to hear him and was glad when he got up and strolled off.

Here was I, thousands of miles from home—for what purpose? I was no nearer to Marie! Would she ever be heard of? Was she alive? I looked up at the full moon and asked of God if its splendour rested anywhere upon her.