Altogether the Ajax was a happy ship. On one important point the widow’s prayers for her son were heard, and Ben was kept out of the temptations and the influence of bad example to which poor sailor boys are so often exposed.
Note 1. A blue flag so called; it gives notice that the ship is about to sail.
Chapter Seven.
Among the Icebergs.
Ben found the weather growing hotter and hotter as the ship approached the line, which Mr Martin told him was not really a line, but only a circle supposed to be drawn round the widest part of the globe, and where the sun at noon appears directly overhead. Still no one was much the worse for the heat; and gradually, as the ship sailed farther south, the weather became cooler and cooler, till it was as cold as it is in the winter in England; and Ben learned that the frigate was approaching the southern pole. She was then to sail round—not the pole, but a vast headland called Cape Horn; and on the other side, that is to say, to the west of it, to enter the wide Pacific Ocean. Ben had shown so much intelligence, and had made himself so generally useful, that Mr Charlton had placed him in a watch, that he might learn to do his duty by night as well as by day.
Scarcely had the ship’s head been turned to the west than heavy weather came on. The seas rolled in vast watery heights one after the other in quick succession, so that no sooner had the frigate risen to the foaming summit of one high wave, than she sank down into the other, surrounded by dark, watery precipices, which looked as if they must break on board and overwhelm her. Ben, as he stood on the deck of the big ship of which he had become so proud, and watched the succession of the mountainous seas on every side, felt how insignificant she was, how helpless were all on board, unless trusting in the protection of God. Now she would slowly climb up the top of a huge sea; there she would remain, other seas following and seeming to chase the one on which she rode; then down again she would glide into the valley, once more to rise to the crest of another sea. If the spectacle was grand and awful in the daytime, much more so was it at night, when the ship went rushing on into darkness, no one knowing what she was to encounter ahead. The danger was not only imaginary, but real, for she was already in the latitude of icebergs, which, at that season of the year, float far away north from their original positions.
The captain had charged all on deck to keep a very sharp look-out, and Mr Charlton had said to Ben, “You have as bright a pair of eyes as anybody on board. Keep them wide open, and if you see anything like a glimmer of light through the darkness, and feel the cold greater than before, sing out sharply, there will be an iceberg ahead.”