The Frozen Pirate | Page 6

and gear as
came to my hands. A man might spend his life on the ocean and never
have to deal with such a passage as this. It was not the bitter cold only,
though perhaps of its full fierceness the wildness of my feelings did not
suffer me to be sensible; it was the pouring of volumes of water upon
me from over the rail, often tumbling upon my head with such weight
as nearly to beat the breath out of my body and sink me to the deck; it
was the frenzy excited in me by the tremendous obligation of despatch
and my retardment by the washing seas, the violent motions of the brig,
the encumbrance of gear and deck furniture adrift and sweeping here
and there, and the sense that the vessel might be grinding her bows
against the iceberg before I should be able to reach the bowsprit. All
this it was that filled me with a kind of madness, by the sheer force of
which alone I was enabled to reach the forecastle, for had I gone to my
duty coldly, without agitation of spirits, my heart must have failed me
before I had measured half the length of the brig.
I got on to the bowsprit nearly stifled by the showering of the seas,
holding an open knife between my teeth, half dazed by the prodigious
motion of the light brig, which, at this extreme end of her, was to be
felt to the full height of its extravagance. At every plunge I expected to
be buried, and every moment I was prepared to be torn from my hold. It

was a fearful time; the falling off of the brig into the trough--and never
was I in a hollower and more swelling sea--her falling off, I say, in the
act of veering might end us out of hand by the rolling of a surge over us
big enough to crush the vessel down fathoms out of sight; and then
there was that horrible heap of faint whiteness leaping out of the dense
blackness of the sky, gathering a more visible sharpness of outline with
every liquid heave that forked us high into the flying night with
shrieking rigging and boiling decks.
Commending myself to God, for I was now to let go with my hands, I
pulled the knife from my teeth, and feeling for the gaskets or lines
which bound the sail to the spar, I cut and hacked as fast as I could ply
my arms. In a flash the gale, whipping into a liberated fold of the
canvas, blew the whole sail out; the bowsprit reeled and quivered under
me; I danced off it with incredible despatch, shouting to the men to
hoist away. The head of the staysail mounted in thunder, and the
slatting of its folds and the thrashing of its sheet was like the rattling of
heavy field-pieces whisked at full gallop over a stony road.
"High enough!" I bawled, guessing enough was shown, for I could not
see. "Get a drag upon the sheet, lads, and then aft with you for your
lives!"
Scarce had I let forth my breath in this cry when I heard the blast as of
a gun, and knew by that the sail was gone; an instant after wash came a
mountainous sea sheer over the weather bulwarks fair betwixt the fore
and main rigging; but happily, standing near the fore shrouds, I was
holding on with both hands to the topsail halliards whilst calling to the
men, so that being under the rail, which broke the blow of the sea, and
holding on too, no mischief befell me, only that for about twenty
seconds I stood in a horrible fury and smother of frothing water,
hearing nothing, seeing nothing, with every faculty in me so numbed
and dulled by the wet, cold, and horror of our situation, that I knew not
whether in that space of time I was in the least degree sensible of what
had happened or what might befall.
The water leaving the deck, I rallied, though half-drowned, and
staggered aft, and found the helm deserted, nor could I see any signs of

my companions. I rushed to the tiller, and putting my whole weight and
force to it, drove it up to windward and secured it by a turn of its own
rope; for ice or no ice--and for the moment I was so blinded by the wet
that I could not see the berg--my madness now was to get the brig
before the sea and out of the trough, advised by every instinct in me
that such another surge as that which had rolled over her must send her
to the bottom in less time than it would