The Frozen Pirate | Page 3

up with counting the minutes when we
should find ourselves bursting for want of breath under water.
Thus it continued till daybreak, all which time we strove to encourage
one another as best we could, sometimes with words, sometimes with
putting the bottle about. It was impossible for any of us at any moment
to show more than our noses above the companion; and even at that
you needed the utmost caution, for the decks being full of water, it was
necessary to await the lurch of the vessel before moving the slide or
cover to the companion, else you stood to drown the cabin.
Being exceedingly anxious, for the brig lay unwatched, I looked forth
on one occasion longer than the others chose to venture, and beheld the
most extravagant scene of raging commotion it could enter the brain of
man to imagine. The night was as black as the bottom of a well; but the
prodigious swelling and flinging of white waters hove a faintness upon
the air that was in its way a dim light, by which it was just possible to
distinguish the reeling masts to the height of the tops, and to observe
the figure of the brig springing black and trembling out of the head of a
surge that had broken over and smothered her as in a cauldron, and to
note the shapes of the nearer liquid acclivities as they bore down upon
our weather bow, catching the brig fair under the bluff, and so sloping
her that she seemed to stand end on, and so heeling her that the sea
would wash to the height of the main hatch. Indeed, had she been
loaded, and therefore deep, she could not have lived an hour in that
hollow and frightful ocean; but having nothing in her but ballast she
was like a bladder, and swung up the surges and blew away to leeward
like an empty cask.
When the dawn broke something of its midnight fury went out of the
gale. The carpenter made shift to sound the well, and to our great
satisfaction found but little water, only as much as we had a right to

suppose she would take in above. But it was impossible to stand at the
pumps, so we returned to the cabin and brewed some cold punch and
did what we could to keep our spirits hearty. By noon the wind had
weakened yet, but the sea still ran very heavily, and the sky was
uncommonly thick with piles of dusky, yellowish, hurrying clouds; and
though we could fairly reckon upon our position, the atmosphere was
so nipping it was difficult to persuade ourselves that Cape Horn was
not close aboard.
We could now work the pumps, and a short spell freed the brig. We got
up a new main-topsail and bent it, and, setting the reefed foresail, put
the vessel before the wind, and away she ran, chased by the swollen
seas. Thus we continued till by dead reckoning we calculated that we
were about thirty leagues south of the parallel of the Horn, and in
longitude eighty-seven degrees west. We then boarded our larboard
tacks and brought the brig as close to the wind as it was proper to lay
her for a progress that should not be wholly leeway; but four hours after
we had handled the braces the gale, that had not veered two points
since it first came on to blow, stormed up again into its first fury; and
the morning of the 1st of July, anno 1801, found the Laughing Mary
passionately labouring in the midst of an enraged Cape Horn sea, her
jibboom and fore top-gallant mast gone, her ballast shifted, so that her
posture even in a calm would have exhibited her with her starboard
channels under, and her decks swept by enormous surges, which,
fetching her larboard bilge dreadful blows, thundered in mighty green
masses over her.
CHAPTER II.
THE ICEBERG.
The loss of the spars I have named was no great matter, nor were we to
be intimidated by such weather as was to be expected off Cape Horn.
For what sailor entering this icy and tempestuous tract of waters but
knows that here he must expect to find Nature in her most violent
moods, crueller and more unreckonable than a mad woman, who one
moment looks with a silent sinister sullenness upon you, and the next is

shrieking with devilish laughter as she makes as if to spring upon you?
But there was an inveteracy in the gale which had driven us down to
this part that bore heavily upon our spirits. It was impossible to trim the
ballast. We dared not veer so as to bring the ship on the other tack. And
the slope of the