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Frozen Pirate, The

<h2>CHAPTER XIV.</h2> <h3>AN EXTRAORDINARY OCCURRENCE.</h3> After the many great mercies which had been vouchsafed me, such as my being the only one saved of all the crew of the Laughing Mary, my deliverance from the dangers of an open boat, my meeting with this schooner and discovering within her everything needful for the support of life, I should have been guilty of the basest ingratitude had I repined because there was no boat in the ship. Yet for all that I could not but see it was a matter that concerned me very closely. Should the vessel be crushed, what was to become of me? It was easy to propose to myself the making of a raft or the like of such a fabric; but everything was so hard frozen that, being single-handed, it was next to impossible I should be able to put together such a contrivance as would be fit to live in the smallest sea-way. However, I was resolved not to make myself melancholy with these considerations. The good fortune that had attended me so far might accompany me to the end, and maybe I was the fitter just then to take a hopeful view of my condition because of the cheerfulness awakened in me by the noble show of coal in the forepeak. At twelve o'clock by the watch in my pocket I got my dinner. I had a mind for a lighter drink than brandy, and went to the lazarette and cut out a block of the wine in the cask I had opened; I also knocked out the head of a tierce of beef, designing a hearty regale for supper. You smile, perhaps, that I should talk so much of my eating; but if on shore, amid the security of existence there, it is the one great business of life, that is to say, the one great business of life after love, what must it be to a poor shipwrecked wretch like me, who had nothing else to think of but his food? Yet I could not help smiling when I considered how I was carrying my drink about in my fingers. What the wine was I do not know; it looked like claret but was somewhat sweet, and was the most generous wine I ever tasted, spite of my having to drink it warm, for if I let the cup out of my hand to cool, lo! when I looked it was ice! Whilst I sat smoking my pipe it entered my head to presently turn those two silent gentlemen in the cabin out of it. It was a task from which I shrank, but it must be done. To be candid, I dreaded the effects of their dismal companionship on my spirits. I had been in the schooner two days only; I had been heartened by the plenty I had met with, a sound night's rest, the fire, and my escape from the fate that had certainly overtaken me had I gone away in the boat. But being of a superstitious nature and never a lover of solitude, I easily guessed that in a few days the weight of my loneliness would come to press very heavily upon me, and that if I suffered those figures to keep the cabin I should find myself lying under a kind of horror which might end in breaking down my manhood and perhaps in unsettling my reason. But how was I to dispose of them? I meditated this matter whilst I smoked. First I thought I would drag them to the fissure or rent in the ice just beyond the stern of the schooner and tumble them into it. But even then they would still be with me, so to speak—I mean, they would be neighbours though out of sight; and my eagerness was to get them away from this island altogether, which was only to be done by casting them into the sea. Why, though I did not mention the matter in its place, I was as much haunted last night by the man on deck and the meditating figure on the rocks as by the fellows in the cabin; and, laugh as you may at my weakness, I do candidly own my feeling was, if I did not contrive that the sea should carry those bodies away, I should come before long to think of them as alive, no matter in what part of the island I might bear them to, and at night-time start at every sound, hear their voices in the wind, see their shapes in the darkness, and even by day dread to step upon the cliffs. That such fancies should possess me already shows how necessary it was I should lose no time to provide against their growth; so I settled my scheme thus: first I was to haul the figures as best I could on to the deck; then, there being three, to get them over the side, and afterwards by degrees to transport the four of them to some steep whence they would slide of themselves into the ocean. Yet so much did I dread the undertaking, and abhor the thought of the tedious time I foresaw it would occupy me, that I cannot imagine any other sort of painful and distressing work that would not have seemed actually agreeable as compared with this. My pipe being smoked out, I stepped into the cabin, and ascending the ladder threw off the companion-cover and opened the doors, and then went to the man that had his back to the steps, but my courage failed me; he was so lifelike, there was so wild and fierce an earnestness in the expression of his face, so inimitable a picture of horror in his starting posture, that my hands fell to my side and I could not lay hold of him. I will not stop to analyse my fear or ask why, since I knew that this man was dead, he should have terrified me as surely no living man could; I can only repeat that the prospect of touching him, and laying him upon the deck and then dragging him up the ladder, was indescribably fearful to me, and I turned away, shaking as if I had the ague. But it had to be done, nevertheless; and after a great deal of reasoning and self-reproach I seized him on a sudden, and, kicking away the bench, let him fall to the deck. He was frozen as hard as stone and fell like stone, and I looked to see him break, as a statue might that falls lumpishly. His arms remaining raised put him into an attitude of entreaty to me to leave him in peace; but I had somewhat mastered myself, and the hurry and tumult of my spirits were a kind of hot temper; so catching him by the collar, I dragged him to the foot of the companion-steps, and then with infinite labour and a number of sickening pauses hauled him up the ladder to the deck. I let him lie and returned, weary and out of breath. He had been a very fine man in life, of beauty too, as was to be seen in the shape of his features and the particular elegance of his chin, despite the distortion of his last unspeakable dismay; and with his clothes I guessed his weight came hard upon two hundred pounds, no mean burden to haul up a ladder. I went to the cook-house for a dram and to rest myself, and then came back to the cabin and looked at the other man. His posture has been already described. He made a very burly figure in his coat, and if his weight did not exceed the other's it was not likely to be less. Nothing of his head was visible but the baldness on the top and the growth of hair that ringed it, and the fluffing up of his beard about his arms in which his face was sunk. I touched his beard with a shuddering finger, and noted that the frost had made every hair of it as stiff as wire. It would not do to stand idly contemplating him, for already there was slowly creeping into me a dread of seeing his face; so I took hold of him and swayed him from the table, and he fell upon the deck sideways, preserving his posture, so that his face remained hidden. I dragged him a little way, but he was so heavy and his attitude rendered him as a burthen so surprisingly cumbrous that I was sure I could never of my own strength haul him up the ladder. Yet neither was it tolerable that he should be there. I thought of contriving a tackle called a whip, and making one end fast to him and taking the other end to the little capstan on the main deck; but on inspecting the capstan I found that the frost had rendered it immovable, added to which there was nothing whatever to be done with the iron-hard gear, and therefore I had to give that plan up. Then, thought I, if I was to put him before the fire, he might presently thaw into some sort of suppleness, and so prove not harder than the other to get on deck. I liked the idea, and without more ado dragged him laboriously into the cook-room and laid him close to the furnace, throwing in a little pile of coal to make the fire roar. I then went on deck, and easily enough, the deck being slippery, got my first man to where the huge fellow was that had sentinelled the vessel when I first looked down upon her; but when I viewed the slopes, broken into rocks, which I, though unburdened, had found hard enough to ascend, I was perfectly certain I should never be able to transport the bodies to the top of the cliffs, I must either let them fall into the great split astern of the ship, or lower them over the side and leave the hollow in which the schooner lay to be their tomb. I paced about, not greatly noticing the cold in the little valley, and relishing the brisk exercise, scheming to convey the bodies to the sea, for I was passionately in earnest in wishing the four of them away; but to no purpose. I had but my arms, and scheme as I would, I could not make them stronger than they were. It was still blowing a fresh bright gale from the south; the sea, as might be known by the noise of it, beat very heavily against the cliffs of ice; and the extremity of the hollow, where it opened to the ocean but without showing it, was again and again veiled by a vast cloud of spray, the rain of which I could hear ringing like volleys of shot as the wind smote it and drove it with incredible force against the rocks past the brow of the north slope. I thought to myself there should be power in this wind to quicken the sliding of even so mighty a berg as this island northwards. Every day should steal it by something, however inconsiderable, nearer to warmer regions, and no gale, nay, no gentle swell even, but must help to crack and loosen it into pieces. "Oh," cried I, "for the power to rupture this bed, that the schooner might slip into the sea! Think of her running north before such a gale as this, steadily bearing me towards a more temperate clime, and into the road of ships!" I clenched my hands with a wild yearning in my heart. Should I ever behold my country again? should I ever meet a living man? The white and frozen steeps glared a bald reply; and I heard nothing but menace in the shrill noises of the wind and the deep and thunderous roaring of the ocean. It was mighty comforting, however, on returning to the cabin to find it vacant, to be freed from the scare of the sight of the two silent figures. I drew my breath more easily and stopped to glance around. It was the barest cabin I was ever in—uncarpeted, with no other seats than the little benches. I looked at the crucifix, and guessed from the sight of it that, whatever might be the vessel's nation, she had not been sailed by Englishmen. I peeped into poor Polly's cage—if a parrot it was—and the sight of the rich plumage carried my imagination to skies of brass, to the mysterious green solitude of tropic forests, to islands fringed with silver surf, in whose sunny flashing sported nude girls of faultless forms, showing their teeth of pearl in merry laughter, winding amorously with the blue billow, and filling the aromatic breeze with the melody of their language of the sun. Ha! thought I, sailors see some changes in their time; and with a hearty sigh I stepped into the cook-room. I started, stopped, and fell back a pace with a cry. When I had put the figure before the fire he was in the same posture in which he had sat at the table, that is, leaning forward with his face hid in his arms; I had laid him on his side, with his face to the furnace, and in that attitude you would have supposed him a man sound asleep with his arms over his face to shield it from the heat. But now, to my unspeakable astonishment, he lay on his back, with his arms sunk to his side and resting on the deck, and his face upturned. I stared at him from the door as if he was the Fiend himself. I could scarce credit my senses, and my consternation was so great that I cannot conceive of any man ever having laboured under a greater fright. I faintly ejaculated 'Good God!' several times, and could hardly prevent my legs from running away with me. You see, it was certain he must have moved of his own accord to get upon his back. I was prepared for the fire to thaw him into limberness, and had I found him straightened somewhat I should not have been surprised. But there was no power in fire to stretch him to his full length and turn him over on his back. What living or ghostly hand had done this thing? Did spirits walk this schooner after all? Had I missed of something more terrible than any number of dead men in searching the vessel? I had made a great fire and its light was strong, and there was also the light of the lanthorn; but the furnace flames played very lively, completely overmastering the steady illumination of the candle, and the man's figure was all a-twitch with moving shadows, and a hundred fantastic shades seemed to steal out of the side and bulkheads and disappear upon my terrified gaze. Then, thought I, suppose after all that the man should be alive, the vitality in him set flowing by the heat? I minded myself of my own simile of the current checked by frost, yet retaining unimpaired the principle of motion; and getting my agitation under some small control, I approached the body on tiptoe and held the lanthorn to its face. He looked a man of sixty years of age; his beard was grey and very long, and lay upon his breast like a cloud of smoke. His eyes were closed; the brows shaggy, and the dark scar of a sword-wound ran across his forehead from the corner of the left eye to the top of the right brow. His nose was long and hooked, but the repose in his countenance, backed by the vague character of the light in which I inspected him, left his face almost expressionless. I was too much alarmed to put my ear to his mouth to mark if he breathed, if indeed the noise of the burning fire would have permitted me to distinguish his respiration. I drew back from him, and put down the lanthorn and watched him. Thought I, it will not do to believe there is anything supernatural here. I can swear there is naught living in this ship, and am I to suppose, assuming she is haunted, that a ghost, which I have always read and heard of as an essence, has in its shadowy being such quality of muscle as would enable it to turn that heavy man over from his side on to his back? No, no, thought I! depend upon it, either he is alive and may presently come to himself, or else in some wonderful way the fire in thawing him has so wrought in his frozen fibres as to cause him to turn. Presently his left leg, that was slightly bent towards the furnace, stretched itself out to its full length, and my ear caught a faint sound, as of a weak and melancholy sigh. Gracious heaven, thought I, he is alive! and with less of terror than of profound awe, now that I saw there was nothing of a ghostly or preternatural character in this business, I approached and bent over him. His eyes were still shut, and I could not hear that he breathed; there was not the faintest motion of respiration in his breast nor stir in the hair, that was now soft, about his mouth. Yet, so far as the light would suffer me to judge, there was a complexion in his face such as could only come with flowing blood, however languid its circulation, and putting this and the sigh and the movement of the leg together, I felt convinced that the man was alive, and forthwith fell to work, very full of awe and amazement to be sure, to help nature that was struggling in him. My first step was to heat some brandy, and whilst this was doing I pulled open his coat and freed his neck, fetching a coat from the cabin to serve as a pillow for his head. I next removed his boots and laid bare his feet (which were encased in no less than four pairs of thick woollen stockings, so that I thought when I came to the third pair I should find his legs made of stockings), and after bathing his feet in hot water, of which there was a kettleful, I rubbed them with hot brandy as hard as I could chafe. I then dealt with his hands in the like manner, having once been shipmate with a seaman who told me he had seen a sailor brought to by severe rubbing of his extremities after he had been carried below supposed to be frozen to death, and continued this exercise till I could rub no longer. Next I opened his lips and, finding he wanted some of his front teeth, I very easily poured a dram of brandy into his mouth. Though I preserved my astonishment all this while, I soon discovered myself working with enthusiasm, with a most passionate longing indeed to recover the man, not only because it pleased me to think of my being an instrument under God of calling a human being, so to speak, out of his grave, but because I yearned for a companion, some one to address, to lighten the hideous solitude of my condition and to assist me in planning our deliverance. I built up a great fire, and with much trouble, for he was very heavy, disposed him in such a manner before it that the heat was reflected all over the front of him from his head to his feet. I likewise continued to chafe his extremities, remitting this work only to rest, and finding that the brandy had stolen down his throat, I poured another dram in and then another, till I think he had swallowed a pint. This went on for an hour, during which time he never exhibited the least signs of life; but on a sudden he sighed deep, a tremor ran through him, he sighed again and partly raised his right hand, which fell to the deck with a blow; his lips twitched, and a small convulsion of his face compelled the features into the similitude of a grin that instantly faded; then he fetched a succession of sighs and opened his eyes full upon me. I was warm enough with my work, but when I observed him looking at me I turned of a death-like cold, and felt the dew of an intolerable emotion wet in the palms of my hands. There was no speculation in his stare at first; his eyes lay as coldly upon me as those of a fish; but as life quickened in him so his understanding awoke; he slightly knitted his brows, and very slowly rolled his gaze off me to the furnace and so over as much of the cook-room as was before him. He then started as if to sit up, but fell back with a slight groan and looked at me again. "What is this?" said he in French, in a very hollow feeble voice. I knew enough of his language to enable me to know he spoke in French, but that was all. I could not speak a syllable of that tongue. "You'll be feeling better presently; you must not expect your strength to come in a minute," said I, taking my chance of his understanding me, and speaking that he might not think me a ghost, for I doubt not I was as white as one; since, to be plain, the mere talking to a figure that I had got to consider as sheerly dead as anybody in a graveyard was alarming enough, and then again there was the sound of my own voice, which I had not exerted in speech for ages, as it seemed to me. He faintly nodded his head, by which I perceived he understood me, and said very faintly in English, but with a true French accent, "This is a hard bed, sir." "I'll speedily mend that," said I, and at once fetched a mattress from the cabin next mine; this I placed beside him, and dragged him on to it, he very weakly assisting. I then brought clothes and rugs to cover him with, and made him a high pillow, and as he lay close to the furnace he could not have been snugger had he had a wife to tuck him up in his own bed. I was very much excited; my former terrors had vanished, but my awe continued great, for I felt as if I had wrought a miracle, and I trembled as a man would who surveys some prodigy of his own creation. It was yet to be learnt how long he had been in this condition; but I was perfectly sure he had formed one of the schooner's people, and as I had guessed her to have been here for upwards of fifty years, the notion of that man having lain torpid for half a century held me under a perpetual spell of astonishment; but there was no more horror in me nor fright. He followed me about with his eyes but did not offer to speak; perhaps he could not. I put a lump of ice into the kettle, and when the water boiled made him a pint of steaming brandy punch, which I held to his lips in a pannikin whilst I supported his back with my knee; he supped it slowly and painfully but with unmistakable relish, and fetched a sigh of contentment as he lay back. But he would need something more sustaining than brandy and water; and as I guessed his stomach, after so prodigious a fast, would be too weak to support such solids as beef or pork or bacon, I mused a little, turning over in my mind the contents of the larder (as I call it), all which time he eyed me with bewilderment growing in his face; and I then thought I could not do better than manufacture him a broth of oatmeal, wine, bruised biscuit, and a piece of tongue minced very small. This did not take me long in doing, the tongue being near the furnace and soft enough for the knife, and there was nothing to melt but the wine. When the broth was ready I kneeled as before and fed him. He ate greedily, and when the broth was gone looked as if he would have been glad for more. "Now, sir," says I, "sleep if you can;" with which he turned his head and in a few minutes was sound asleep, breathing regularly and deeply. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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