The Frozen Pirate

by William Clark Russell

He then shook me by the hand, and, calling a farewell to Wilkinson and the negroes, scrambled into the chains and dropped into his boat, very highly satisfied, I make no doubt, with the business he had done that day.

A boat's crew were left behind to help us to make sail. But the weather looking somewhat wild in the west with the red light of the sun among the clouds there, and the dark heave of the swell running into a sickly crimson under the sun and then glowing out dusky again, I got them to treble-reef the mainsail and hoist it, and then thanking them, advised them to be off. Then, putting Cromwell to the tiller, I went forward with the others and set the topsail and forestaysail (the spritsail lying furled), which would be show enough of canvas till I saw what the weather was to be like. I kept the topsail aback, waiting for a boat to arrive with my chart, and in a few minutes the boat we had cheered returned with what I wanted.

Meanwhile they were shortening sail on the whaler, and though she was no beauty, yet, I tell you, I found her as picturesque as any ship I had ever beheld as she lay with her main-topgallant-sail clewed up, her topsail yards on the caps, and the heads of men knotting the reef-points showing black over the white cloths, her hull floating up out of the hollow and flinging a wet orange gleam to the west, a tumble of creamy foam about her to her rolling, shadows like the passage of phantom hands hurrying over her sails to the swaying of her masts, and the swelling sea darkling from her into the east.

I hollowed my hands, and, hailing the captain, who was on the quarter-deck, asked him for the time by his chronometer. He flourished his arm and disappeared and, presently returning, shouted to know if I was ready. I put the key in my watch and answered yes, and then he gave me the time. My watch, though antique, was a noble piece of mechanism, and I have little doubt, as trustworthy as his chronometer. But I was careful to let it lie snug in my hand. I did not want the negro at the tiller nor the others to see it. They would wonder that so fine a jewelled piece as this should be in the possession of the second mate of a little brig, and it was my business to manage that they never should have cause to wonder at anything in that way.

The dusk of the evening came quick out of the east, and the wind freshened with a long cry in our rigging as if the eastern darkness was a foe it was rushing out of the west to meet. I brought the schooner north-north-east by my compass and watched her behaviour anxiously. The swell was on the quarter, and the wind and sea a trifle abaft the larboard beam; she leaned a little to the weight of her clothes, but was surprisingly stiff considering how light she was. Wilkinson and the negro came and stood by my side. The sea broke heavily from the weather bow, and the water roared white under the lee bends and spread astern in a broad wake of foam. The whaler did not brace his yards up till after we had started, and now hung a pale faint mass in the windy darkness on the quarter. A tincture of rusty red hovered like smoke coloured by the furnace that produces it, in the west, but the night had drawn down quick and dark; the washing noise of the water was sharp, the wind piercingly cold; each sweep of the schooner's masts to windward was followed by a dull roaring of the blast rushing out of the hollows of the canvas, and she swung to the seas with wild yaws, but with regularity sufficient to prove the strict government of the helm.

But it was being at sea! homeward bound too! There was no wish of mine, engendered by my hideous loneliness on the ice, by my abhorred association with the Frenchman, that I could not refer to as, down to this moment, gratified. My heart bounded; my spirits could not have been higher had this ocean been the Thames, and yonder dark flowing hills of water the banks of Erith and the Gravesend shore.

I turned to the three men: "My lads," said I, "you prove yourselves fine bold fellows by thus volunteering. Do not fear: if God guides us home—to my home, I mean—you shall find a handsome account in this business."

"Six more chaps would have jined had th'ole man bin willin'," said Wilkinson. "But best as it is, master, though she's a trifle short-handed."

"Why, yes," said I; "but being fore and aft, you know! It isn't as if we'd got courses to hand and topsails to reef."

"Ay, ay, dat's de troof," cried Billy Pitt. "I tort o' dat. Fore an' aft makes de difference. Don't guess I should hab volunteer had she been a brig."