'Go and give it something to eat and see that it don't jump overboard,' said Captain Cliffe; and whilst the boatswain walked forward handling the cat tenderly enough and talking to it, the little skipper with a snap of his eyes and a voice of conviction exclaimed: 'That cat's squared the yards, Mr. Moore. We shall find the wreck, sir, and do your business.'
CHAPTER XXVI THE ICE
On the morning of January 29, 1861, Captain Cliffe at dinner told me that our position by dead reckoning—he had not been able to obtain an observation for two days—was latitude 58° 30´ S., longitude 45° W. I pulled out my note-book on hearing this and started violently.
'Good God, Cliffe!' cried I, 'do you know that we are within a mile or two of the place where the "Lady Emma" was abandoned by her crew?'
'Is that so?' said the little man after a pause, closing his knife and fork. 'But it's true all the same: I'll back my runs for the last two days, log-reckoned as they are, right, longitude and latitude, within ten mile.'
It was bitterly cold, and when I had come below so dense a fog overhung the sea that the main-yard was out of sight from the wheel. The brig was lying hove to under small canvas, a large smooth Cape Horn swell was running out of the sallow thickness, and the little vessel was rolling horribly, falling into the hollows and swinging to the summits, now on her beam ends, now on a level keel, now with a dip forward that seemed to make her all stern, now with a drop aft that shook the cabin with a hollow roar, every motion being so abrupt, and exaggerated, that it was almost impossible to walk, to stand, even to eat, the plate flying from your hand, whilst the boy waited with a broken head through a fall down the companion ladder.
We had passed several icebergs on the previous day, during a very thick morning and afternoon, when the sky had been dark with driving cloud, and the strong wind white with snow, and throughout the night a sharp look-out had been kept for ice; but since daybreak it had been as dense as it was now with an awful silence all round: nothing had once broken the amazing, oppressive stillness upon that sea, sallow as the fog, labouring in volumes of brine soundlessly, saving a strange, fierce noise of blowing heard close upon the bow, though nothing was to be seen there. Cliffe said it was a whale, and I might have guessed that by the sight of the boatswain Bodkin springing with an amazing jump into the fore-shrouds, and leaning away from the ratline he grasped with pricked ears, staring as out of love for his old sport into the choking wool the breathless air was filled with.
I was as anxious and restless on account of the ice as any man aboard, though I was no sailor: Cliffe had said it didn't follow, though a hurricane blew, that the smother would clear. I knew that ice must be about: for still we had headed south after passing many bergs, and if wind came and gave us a drift without clearing the ocean for us, we might be foul of an ice mountain ere the mass of it was fairly shaped to the sight within toss of a man's cap.