Cæsar Cascabel/Part 2/Chapter IV

CHAPTER IV. FROM THE 16TH OF NOVEMBER TO THE 2D OF DECEMBER.
IT was with the help of a great deal of guessing that Mr. Sergius came to believe he had recognized this group of islands. As far as possible, when he took down his observations, he had made allowance for the drift, which he calculated at an average of some forty-five miles in twenty-four hours.

This archipelago, which indeed he was unable to see, lies, according to the maps, in long. 150 and lat. 75, say about three hundred miles from the continent.

Mr. Sergius was right: by the 16th of November the iceberg was to the south of this group of islands. But at what distance? Even by using the instruments habitually employed by navigators, that distance could not have been estimated in an approximate way. As the disk of the sun showed itself but for a few minutes through the mist of the horizon, the observation would have given no result. They had definitely entered the long night of the polar regions.

By this time the weather was horrible, although it had a tendency to get colder. The thermometer wavered a little below zero, centigrade. Now this temperature was not low enough yet to bring about the cohesion of the icebergs scattered on the surface of the Arctic basin; in consequence no obstacle could hinder the drifting of the floe.

Meanwhile, in the indentations along its margin could be noticed the formation of what polar navigators in winter quarters call bay-ice, when it occurs inside the narrow creeks of a coast. Mr. Sergius and John attentively watched these formations, which would, ere long, spread over the whole sea. The ice season would then be “full on,” and the situation of the wanderers would be changed for the better,—at least they hoped so.

During the first fortnight in November the snow did not cease falling in extraordinary abundance. Swept along horizontally by the blast, it accumulated in thick masses against the rampart erected around the Fair Rambler, and in a short time made it considerably higher.

On the whole, this accumulation of snow presented no danger; nay, it was an advantage in this way, that the Cascabels would be the better protected against the cold. Cornelia would thus be able to spare the paraffine oil and use it exclusively for kitchen purposes,—a question to be taken into serious consideration, for, when this oil became exhausted, how would they replace it?

Fortunately, besides, the temperature remained bearable inside the apartments,—three or four degrees above zero. It even went up when the Fair Rambler was buried in the snow; and now, it was not the heat that was likely to run short, but rather the air, to which all access was closed.

It then became necessary to remove the snow, and every one had his share in this toilsome task.

And first of all, Mr. Sergius had the little corridor cleared out that had been contrived inside the rampart. Then a passage was cut through, so as to make sure of a free exit, and due care was taken, of course, that this passage should face the west. Without this precaution, it would have been obstructed by the snow that the wind drove from the east.

All danger was not warded off, however, as will be seen presently.

Needless to say that they left their rooms neither night nor day. There they found a safe shelter against the storm as well as against the cold, which was increasing, as shown by the slow and steady fall of the thermometer. None the less, Mr. Sergius and John did not fail to make their daily observations whilst a vague glimmer of light tinted yonder horizon, beneath which the sun would continue to decline until the solstice of the 21st of December. And day by day they were disappointed in that faint hope of perceiving some whaler wintering in the vicinity, or endeavoring to make his way to some port on Behring Strait; always and ever disappointed in the hope of finding the block adhering to some ice-field adjacent, perchance, to the Siberian coast! Then both, returning to the encampment, would try to reproduce on the map the supposed course of the drift.

It has been mentioned already that fresh game had ceased to put in an appearance in the kitchen of the Fair Rambler since its departure from Port Clarence. As a fact, what could Cornelia have done with those sea-birds which it is so hard to rid of their oily taste? In spite of her culinary talents, ptarmigans, and petrels would have been ill-received by her guests. So John refrained from wasting his powder and shot on these birds of too Arctic an origin.

However, whenever he was on guard outside, he never went without his gun, and one afternoon, the 26th of November, he had an opportunity to make use of it.

Suddenly a shot was heard, and immediately after John called loudly for help.

The feeling of surprise caused by the unusual occurrence was not unmingled with a certain amount of anxiety. Out rushed Mr. Sergius, Cascabel, Sander, and Clovy, followed by the two dogs.

“Come here! Come here!” John cried.

And so saying, he ran backward and forward, as though he tried to cut off the retreat of some animal.

“What is it?” inquired Mr. Cascabel.

“I have wounded a seal, and it will escape us if we let it reach the sea.”

It was a fine animal. It had been wounded in the chest, and a streak of blood reddened the snow; still it would have managed to escape, had not Mr. Sergius and his companions come to the spot.

With a first blow of its tail, it knocked young Sander to the ground, but Clovy threw himself bravely on it, kept it down not without difficulty, and John finished it with a shot in the head.

If this was not a very dainty bit of venison for Cornelia's daily boarders, it was no trifling stock of meat for Wagram and Marengo. No doubt, had they been able to speak, they would have thanked John heartily for this lucky windfall.

“And, by the way, why don't animals talk?” said Mr. Cascabel, when they were all seated in front of the stove in the kitchen.

“For the very simple reason that they are not intelligent enough to talk,” replied Mr. Sergius.

“Are you of opinion, then,” asked John, “that the absence of speech is due to a lack of intelligence?”

“Most assuredly, my dear John, at least among the superior animals. Thus, the larynx of the dog is identical with that of man. A dog could talk, then; and if it does not do so, it is because its intelligence is not sufficiently developed to enable it to communicate its impressions by speech.”

This theory was, to say the least, open to discussion, but modern physiologists admit it.

It is worth nothing that a change was gradually taking place in Mr. Cascabel's mind. Although he still continued to hold himself responsible for the present situation, his philosophy was reassuming its former sway. With his life-long habit of weathering all storms, he could not believe that his good star had set. No, its light had been clouded; that was all. Hitherto, indeed, the family had not been too severely tried with physical suffering. True, if dangers increased, as there was reason to fear they would, the moral power of endurance of the troupe might be severely taxed.

Hence, with an eye to the future, Mr. Sergius did not cease encouraging all the little world around him. During the long idle hours, seated at the table by the light of the lamp, he would chat with them, would tell them the various adventures of his travels through Europe and America. John and Kayette, sitting near each other, listened to him with great profit, and to their questions he always gave some instructive reply. Then, availing himself of his experience, he ended by saying:

“Do you see, my friends, there is no reason to despair. The block we are on is sound and hard, and now that the cold weather is set, it will not come to pieces. Notice, moreover, that it is drifting in the very direction we wished to go, and that we are going on without fatigue, as if we were on a ship. A little patience and we shall get into port safe and sound.”

“And which of us is despairing, if you please?” said Mr. Cascabel to him, one day. “Who takes the liberty to despair, Mr. Sergius? Whoever despairs without my permission shall be put on bread and water!”

“There is no bread!” cried young Sander, with a grin.

“Well then, on dry biscuit, and he shall be kept indoors!”

“We can't go outside!” remarked Clovy.

“That's enough!.... Those are my orders!”

During the last week in November, the snowfall took extraordinary proportions. The flakes fell so thick that they had to give up all thought of walking one step out of doors, and a veritable catastrophe well-nigh ensued.

On the 30th, at break of day, as he awoke, Clovy was surprised at the difficulty he experienced in breathing, as though the air hindered the proper action of the lungs.

The others were sleeping still in their “apartments” with a heavy, painful sleep that gave one the idea that they were undergoing gradual asphyxia.

Clovy tried to open the door in the forepart of the wagon, to renew the air. He was unable to do so.

“Hallo, boss!” he called out in so powerful a tone of voice that he awoke all the guests of the Fair Rambler.

Mr. Sergius, Cascabel, and his two sons were up in a moment, and John exclaimed:

“Why, we are smothering here! We must open the door!”

“Just what I can't do!” replied Clovy:

“The windows, then?”

But as the windows opened outward, it was found equally impossible to open them.

In a few minutes the door was unscrewed down, and they understood why they had not been able to slide it as usual.

The corridor, left inside the rampart all round the vehicle, was filled up with a quantity of snow driven into it by the squall, nor was the corridor alone thus crammed up, but likewise the passage outward through the ice wall.

“Could the wind have changed?” suggested Mr. Cascabel.

“That is not likely,” answered Mr. Sergius. “So much snow would not have fallen if the wind had shifted westward.”

“Our iceberg must have turned round on itself,” observed John.

“Yes, that must be so,” replied Mr. Sergius. “But, let us see, first, to what is most urgent. We must not let ourselves be stifled for want of breathable air.”

And immediately, John and Clovy, with pickaxe and shovel, set about clearing the corridor. A laborious task in truth; the hardened snow filled it to its highest, and there was reason to believe it even covered up the wagon.

To get on the quicker, they had to relieve each other in turn. Naturally it was impossible to shovel the snow out; so they had to throw it into the first compartment of the wagon, where, under the action of the internal temperature it resolved itself into water almost immediately, and flowed out.

At the end of one hour, the pickaxe had not yet pierced its way through the compact mass jammed in the corridor. It was impossible to get out, impossible to renew the air inside the Fair Rambler, and respiration became more and more difficult through lack of oxygen and excess of carbonic acid.

All were panting, and sought in vain for a little pure air in this vitiated atmosphere. Kayette and Napoleona experienced a sensation of choking. There was no concealing the fact that Mrs. Cascabel was most affected by this state of things. Kayette, overcoming her own sufferings, endeavored to give her some relief. What would have been needed was to open the windows so as to renew the air, and we have seen that they were externally blocked up with the snow, as the door had been.

“Let's work with a will!” Mr. Sergius would go on repeating. “Here we have dug six feet through this block. It cannot be much thicker now!”

No, it should not be much thicker, if the snow had ceased falling. But perhaps it was falling still, even now.

John, at this time, hit on the idea of making a hole through the layer of snow that formed the roof of the corridor,—a layer that should be thinner than the rest presumably, and probably less hard.

Sure enough, this task was performed successfully and under more favorable conditions; and half an hour later,—it was not one minute too soon,—the hole gave access to the outer air.

This proved an immediate relief for all the occupants of the Fair Rambler.

“Oh, how good that is!” exclaimed little Napoleona, opening her mouth wide, the better to fill her lungs.

“Fine!” added Sander, as he passed his tongue over his lips. “I'd rather have it than jam, just now.”

It was some time before Cornelia quite recovered from that fit of incipient asphyxia, under which she had become almost unconscious.

The hole having now been made wider, the men hoisted themselves up to the crest of the ice rampart. Everything was white to the utmost limits that the eye could reach. The wagon had entirely disappeared under an accumulation of snow which formed a huge mound in the center of the floating block.

By consulting the compass, Mr. Sergius was able to ascertain that the wind still blew from the east, and that the iceberg had wheeled round half a turn on itself,—which had made its aspect exactly the reverse of what it originally was,—and by turning the opening of the passage to the windward had caused the latter to be blocked up with snow.

In the open air, the thermometer recorded only six degrees below zero, and the sea was free, so far as could be judged in the midst of almost complete darkness. It must be observed, moreover, that in spite of the rotatory movement which the berg had made upon itself,—owing, no doubt, to its being temporarily caught in some whirlpool,—it had none the less continued to drift toward the west.

With a view to anticipate the recurrence of a similar accident, which might be attended with such deplorable consequences, Mr, Sergius thought it wise to take an additional measure of precaution. On his recommendation they dug through the rampart a second passage opposite to the first; and now, whatever might be the aspect of the berg, they would always be sure of some means of communication with the outside. Henceforth, no more fear of a deficiency of pure air inside the wagon.

“All the same,” said Mr. Cascabel, “for a God-forsaken spot, this is a God-forsaken spot, and no mistake! I am not quite sure that it is good enough for seals, and it's nothing to the climate of old Normandy!”

“I quite agree with you,” replied Mr. Sergius. “Still, we must take it as it is.”

“Don't I take it? by Jove! Of course I take it, Mr. Sergius,—in abomination, I do!”

No, good Cascabel, this is not the climate of Normandy, not even that of Sweden, Norway, or Finland during their winter season! It is the climate of the North pole, with its four months of darkness, its roaring squalls, its continual fall of dust-like snow, and the thick veil of mist which does away with the possibility of what we Southerners call a horizon.

And what a gloomy mental perspective loomed in the distance! When this helpless drifting had come to an end, when the berg lay stranded and still, and the sea was no longer but an immense ice-field, what course would they adopt? Abandoning the wagon, journeying without it, a distance of several hundred leagues to the coast of Siberia,—the mere thought of it was truly frightful. Hence, Mr. Sergius would ask himself whether it might not be best to winter at the very spot where the floating berg would stop and to enjoy, until the fine season returned, the hospitality of that Fair Rambler whose rambles were all over, no doubt! Yes, at the worst, spending the period of intense cold in these conditions would not have been an impossibility. But, before the temperature would rise, before the Arctic Sea would break up, they should have left their winter-quarters and crossed the ice-field, which would dissolve very quickly when it once began to do so.

As to that, the wanderers were in no hurry yet, and it would be time enough to consider this question when winter was over. They should then have to take into account the distance; that would separate them from the continent of Asia, always under the supposition of their having some means of calculating it. Mr. Sergius was in hopes that the distance would not be considerable, seeing that the iceberg had been floating uniformly toward the west after doubling Capes Kekournoi, Chelagskoi, and Baranov, and cleared Long Strait and Kolima Bay.

Why had it not stopped at the mouth of this latter bay? From there, it would have been relatively easy to reach the province of the Ioukaghirs, in which Kabatchkova, Nijneikolymsk, and other villages, would have offered them safe winter quarters. A team of reindeer might have been sent to the ice-field for the Fair Rambler and would have brought it on to the continent. But Mr. Sergius felt convinced that this bay must have been left behind, as well as the mouths of the Tchukotski and Alazeia rivers, being given the speed of the drift. To check this drift, nothing now appeared on the map, save the line of those archipelagoes known by the names of Anjou Islands, Liakhov, and Long Islands, and on these islands, uninhabited for the most part, how would they find the resources necessary to the home-journey of the staff and material? Still, even this would be better than a helpless, aimless drifting about the furthest limits of the polar regions!

The month of November had just ended. Thirty-nine days had come and gone since the Cascabels had left Port Clarence to venture across Behring Strait. But for the loosening of the ice-field, they would have landed at Numana quite five weeks ago; and now, having pushed their way to the southern provinces of Siberia and settled down in some village, they would have nothing more to dread from the Arctic winter.

Now, the drift could not keep on much longer. The cold was gradually increasing and the thermometer steadily falling. On examining his ice island, Mr. Sergius found that its area was enlarging daily, owing to the various blocks it “annexed,” as it shifted its way among them; indeed, it had grown, superficially, one-third larger than it was at first.

During the night from the 30th of November to the 1st of December, an enormous block came and adhered to the aft portion of the float; and, as the base of this block went down rather deep into the water and it was thereby drawn with greater speed by the current, it soon whirled the islet half a turn round and dragged it on ahead just like a steam tug towing a barge along.

At the same time, as the cold had grown more intense and drier, the sky had quite brightened up again. The wind now blew from the northeast,—a fortunate circumstance, since it bore to the Siberian coast. The sparkling Stars of the Arctic firmament lit up the long polar nights, and frequently an aurora borealis would flood the space with its luminous jets, springing up from the horizon like the leaflets of a fan. Away, away the eye could travel, until, yonder on the very utmost limits of its range, it discerned the first bank of the polar ice. On the background of the now clearer horizon, this chain of eternal icebergs came out in relief with its sharp crests, its rounded-off ridges, its forest of peaks and offshoots. It was a marvelous sight, and our friends would temporarily forget their sad situation, gazing in admiration at those cosmic phenomena, peculiar to hyperborean regions.

The speed of the drift had slackened since the wind had changed, the current being now the sole cause of it. It was therefore probable that the iceberg would not be carried much farther westward, for the sea was beginning to freeze in the interstices between the slowly gliding blocks. Up to the present, it is true, this “young ice,” as whalers call it, yielded to the least shock. The blocks, scattered about on the open, being separated but by narrow channels, the iceberg would sometimes knock against considerable masses; it would remain still for a few hours, and eventually would resume its course. Nevertheless, there was every reason to look forward to an imminent halt, and this time it would be for the whole duration of winter.

On the 3d of December, about noon, Mr. Sergius and John had gone right to the bow of their disabled ship. Kayette, Napoleona, and Sander had followed them, well wrapped up in furs, for it was bitter cold. Away to the south, the faintest glimmer of light showed that the sun was crossing the meridian. The doubtful whiteness that pervaded the space was doubtless due to some distant aurora borealis.

All their attention was drawn to the various motions of the icebergs, their strange shapes, the shocks they gave each other, the “somersaults” executed by those whose equilibrium would happen to be displaced by the wearing out or the breaking off of their submerged base.

Suddenly, the block that had towed the raft for the past few days seemed to shiver all over, toppled into the sea, and in its fall broke off the edge of the iceberg, a huge wave flooding the latter at the same time.

All rushed back with all possible speed, but almost immediately cries were heard:

“Help! Help! John!”

It was Kayette's voice. The portion of the berg on which she stood had been snapped off by the shock and was drifting away with her.

“Kayette!” cried John. “Kayette!”

But, caught by a side current, the broken block was being carried away from the berg, which then happened to be held back by a whirlpool. Yet a little while, and Kayette would have disappeared in the middle of the drifting ice.

“Kayette! Kayette!” John called.

“John! John!” repeated the young girl, one last time.

On hearing the cries, Mr. Cascabel and Cornelia had come running to the spot. There they stood, horror-stricken, near Mr. Sergius, who was at utter loss to know what to do to save the unfortunate child.

Just then, the broken block having come within five or six feet of where they were, John sprang off with one bound before they could hold him back and fell by the side of Kayette.

“My son! My son!” sobbed Mrs. Cascabel.

Saving them was now out of the question. By the impulse of his fall, John had pushed the block far away. Both were soon out of sight among the icebergs, and even their cries, lost through the space, ceased to be heard.

After two hours' anxious watching, night came: Mr. Sergius, Cascabel, Cornelia, all were compelled to return to the encampment.

What a night the poor people spent pacing to and fro around the Fair Rambler amid the piteous howlings of the dogs! John and Kayette carried away! Without shelter, without food,—lost! Cornelia wept; Sander and Napoleona mingled their tears with hers. Cascabel, utterly crushed by this new blow, no longer uttered but incoherent words, the general purport of which was that all the misfortunes that had befallen his home were his own doing. As to Mr. Sergius, what consolation could he have offered them, when he, himself, was inconsolable?

The next day, the 4th of December, about eight o'clock in the morning, the iceberg had begun to move forward again, having at last cleared the whirlpool by which it had been detained all night. Its course was the same as that followed by John and Kayette, but as they were eighteen hours ahead, all hope of overtaking them or finding them again should be given up. They were beset by too many dangers, besides, to escape them safe and sound, what with the cold, which was becoming excessively keen, with the pangs of hunger that they would be unable to appease, and the incessant collisions with icebergs, the smallest of which could have crushed them on its way!

Better not attempt to depict the grief of the Cascabels! In spite of the fall in the temperature, not one of them would consent to go indoors, and they kept on calling John, calling Kayette, neither of whom could hear their heart-rending cries.

The day wore itself out, and the situation was still unchanged. Night came, and Mr. Sergius ordered father mother, and children, to seek the shelter of the Fair Rambler, although nobody could sleep for one single moment.

Suddenly, about three in the morning, a frightful shock was felt, and so violent was it that the wagon was well-nigh upset. Whence came this shock? Had some enormous iceberg collided with the raft, and perchance broken it?

Out rushed Mr. Sergius.

An aurora borealis cast its reflection through the space; it was possible to discern objects within a radius of half a league around the encampment.

Mr. Sergius's first thought was to cast his searching eye in every direction.

No sign of John or Kayette.

As to the shock, it had been caused by the knocking of the berg against the ice-field. Thanks to a further fall in the temperature,—which had gone down to twenty degrees below zero, centigrade,—the surface of the sea was now completely solidified. There, where all was unrest yesterday, everything was now still and steady. All drifting was permanently at an end.

Mr. Sergius hastened back and announced to his friends the final halt of their floating berg.

“So, the sea is all set ahead of us?” inquired the bereaved father.

“Ahead of us, and behind, and all around us,” replied Mr. Sergius.

“Well, let us go look for John and Kayette! There is not one minute to lose.”

“Let us be off!”

Cornelia and Napoleona would not remain with the Fair Rambler; it was accordingly left in Clovy's charge and all started off, the two dogs scouting ahead, and scenting all over the ice-field as they went.

They walked at a good speed on the ice, which was as hard as granite, and naturally they made for the west, where, if Wagram and Marengo ever fell on the track of their young master, they would soon recognize it. At the end of half an hour, however, they had found nothing yet, and they had to halt, for one quickly got out of breath with a temperature so low that the air seemed frozen.

The ice-field, which spread out of sight, north, south and east, seemed bounded on the west by certain heights which did not present the usual appearance of icebergs. They might be the outline of a continent or of an island.

Just at this moment, the dogs, with loud barks, made a rush for a whitish mound on which a certain number of black specks could be perceived.

They at once resumed their tramp onward, and presently Sander remarked that two of those black specks were making signs to them.

“John!—Kayette!” he cried, rushing on ahead after Wagram and Marengo.

They were, indeed, Kayette and John, safe and sound.

But they were not alone. A group of natives surrounded them; and these were the inhabitants of Liakhov Islands.

César Cascabel/Deuxième partie/Chapitre IV