The Wreck of the Golden Mary | Page 7

and that he had warped further and further out of the straight
with time. Not but what he was on his best behaviour with us, as
everybody was; for we had no bickering among us, for'ard or aft. I only
mean to say, he was not the man one would have chosen for a
messmate. If choice there had been, one might even have gone a few
points out of one's course, to say, "No! Not him!" But, there was one
curious inconsistency in Mr. Rarx. That was, that he took an
astonishing interest in the child. He looked, and I may add, he was, one
of the last of men to care at all for a child, or to care much for any
human creature. Still, he went so far as to be habitually uneasy, if the
child was long on deck, out of his sight. He was always afraid of her
falling overboard, or falling down a hatchway, or of a block or what not
coming down upon her from the rigging in the working of the ship, or
of her getting some hurt or other. He used to look at her and touch her,
as if she was something precious to him. He was always solicitous
about her not injuring her health, and constantly entreated her mother to
be careful of it. This was so much the more curious, because the child
did not like him, but used to shrink away from him, and would not even
put out her hand to him without coaxing from others. I believe that
every soul on board frequently noticed this, and not one of us
understood it. However, it was such a plain fact, that John Steadiman
said more than once when old Mr. Rarx was not within earshot, that if
the Golden Mary felt a tenderness for the dear old gentleman she
carried in her lap, she must be bitterly jealous of the Golden Lucy.
Before I go any further with this narrative, I will state that our ship was
a barque of three hundred tons, carrying a crew of eighteen men, a
second mate in addition to John, a carpenter, an armourer or smith, and
two apprentices (one a Scotch boy, poor little fellow). We had three
boats; the Long-boat, capable of carrying twenty-five men; the Cutter,
capable of carrying fifteen; and the Surf-boat, capable of carrying ten. I
put down the capacity of these boats according to the numbers they
were really meant to hold.
We had tastes of bad weather and head-winds, of course; but, on the

whole we had as fine a run as any reasonable man could expect, for
sixty days. I then began to enter two remarks in the ship's Log and in
my Journal; first, that there was an unusual and amazing quantity of ice;
second, that the nights were most wonderfully dark, in spite of the ice.
For five days and a half, it seemed quite useless and hopeless to alter
the ship's course so as to stand out of the way of this ice. I made what
southing I could; but, all that time, we were beset by it. Mrs. Atherfield
after standing by me on deck once, looking for some time in an awed
manner at the great bergs that surrounded us, said in a whisper, "O!
Captain Ravender, it looks as if the whole solid earth had changed into
ice, and broken up!" I said to her, laughing, "I don't wonder that it does,
to your inexperienced eyes, my dear." But I had never seen a twentieth
part of the quantity, and, in reality, I was pretty much of her opinion.
However, at two p.m. on the afternoon of the sixth day, that is to say,
when we were sixty-six days out, John Steadiman who had gone aloft,
sang out from the top, that the sea was clear ahead. Before four p.m. a
strong breeze springing up right astern, we were in open water at sunset.
The breeze then freshening into half a gale of wind, and the Golden
Mary being a very fast sailer, we went before the wind merrily, all
night.
I had thought it impossible that it could be darker than it had been, until
the sun, moon, and stars should fall out of the Heavens, and Time
should be destroyed; but, it had been next to light, in comparison with
what it was now. The darkness was so profound, that looking into it
was painful and oppressive--like looking, without a ray of light, into a
dense black bandage put as close before the eyes as it could be, without
touching them. I doubled the look-out, and John and I stood in the bow
side-by-side, never leaving it all night. Yet I should no more have