The Frozen Pirate | Page 5

hour," he answered. "If this goes on I shall look to
make some discoveries. The Antarctic circle won't be far off presently,
and since you're a scholar, Rodney, I'll leave you to describe what's
inside of it, though boil me if I don't have the naming of the tallest land;
for, d'ye see, I've a mind to be known after I'm dead, and there's nothing
like your signature on a mountain to be remembered by."
He grinned and put his hand out for the bottle, and after a pull passed it
to the carpenter. I guessed by his jocosity that he had already been
making somewhat free; for although I love a bold face put upon a
difficulty, ours was a situation in which only a tipsy man could find
food for merriment.
At this instant we were startled by a wild and fearful shout on deck. It
sounded high above the sweeping and seething of the wind and the
hissing of the lashed waters, and it penetrated the planks with a note
that gave it an inexpressible character of anguish.
"A man washed overboard!" bawled the carpenter, springing to his feet.
"No!" cried I, for my younger and shrewder ear had caught a note in the
cry that persuaded me it was not as the carpenter said; and in an instant
the three of us jumped up the ladder and gained the deck.
The moment I was in the gale the same affrighted cry rang down along
the wind from some man forward: "For God's sake tumble up before
we are upon it!"
"What do you see?" I roared, sending my voice, trumpet-fashion,
through my hands; for as to my own and the sight of Captain Rosy and
the carpenter, why, it was like being struck blind to come on a sudden

out of the lighted cabin into the black night.
Any reply that might have been attempted was choked out by the dive
of the brig's head into a sea, which furiously flooded her forecastle and
came washing aft like milk in the darkness till it was up to our knees.
"See there!" suddenly roared the carpenter.
"Where, man, where?" bawled the captain.
But in this brief time my sight had grown used to the night, and I saw
the object before the carpenter could answer. It lay on our lee beam, but
how far off no man could have told in that black thickness. It stood
against the darkness and hung out a dim complexion of light, or rather
of pallidness, that was not light--not to be described by the pen. It was
like a small hill of snow, and looked as snow does or the foam of the
sea in darkness, and it came and went with our soaring and sinking.
"Ice!" I shouted to the captain.
"I see it!" he answered, in a voice that satisfied me the consternation he
was under had settled the fumes of the spirits out of his head. "We must
drive her clear at all risks."
There was no need to call the men. To the second cry that had been
raised by one among them who had come out of the forecastle and seen
the berg, they had tumbled up as sailors will when they jump for their
lives; and now they came staggering, splashing, crawling aft to us, for
the lamp in the cabin made a sheen in the companion hatch, and they
could see us as we stood there.
"Men," cried Captain Rosy, "yonder's a gravestone for our carcases if
we are not lively! Cast the helm adrift!" (we steered by a tiller). "Two
hands stand by it. Forward, some of ye, and loose the stay-foresail, and
show the head of it."
The fellows hung in the wind. I could not wonder. The bowsprit had
been sprung when the jibboom was wrenched from the cap by the fall

of the top-gallant-mast; it still had to bear the weight of the heavy
spritsail yard, and the drag of the staysail might carry the spar
overboard with the men upon it. Yet it was our best chance; the one sail
most speedily released and hoisted, the one that would pay the brig's
head off quickest, and the only fragment that promised to stand.
"Jump!" roared the captain, in a passion of hurry. "Great thunder! 'tis
close aboard! You'll leave me no sea room for veering if you delay an
instant."
"Follow me who will!" I cried out; "and others stand by ready to hoist
away."
Thus speaking--for there seemed to my mind a surer promise of death
in hesitation at this supreme moment than in twenty such risks as laying
out on the bowsprit signified--I made for the lee of the weather
bulwarks, and blindly hauled myself forward by such pins