Page:ONCE A WEEK JUL TO DEC 1860.pdf/419

. 6, 1860.] ‘What’s to be done now?’

‘Done!’ says Sands, quite savage. ‘Why the devil didn’t you keep your feet, you young fool?’ and he picked him up, and we might almost have done it, when I sung out,

‘Hold hard, Sands! she’s adrift again!’

“She was, too; the floe piece had parted from the main, and was going on before us; and it swung us round right into the stream again.

‘There now,’ says he, ‘that’s your damned clumsiness has done that job; we should have done it if it hadn’t been for you, and I could do it now if I was by myself.’

“And I think he could, for the end of the piece was still touching the pack about a quarter of a mile off.

‘Well,’ says I, ‘it’s no use growling; he didn’t mean to fall, I suppose.’

’Cause, you see, I never could see the good of blaming a fellow when he’d got to suffer for himself.

‘All right!’ says Sands, ‘I was a little out, but it’s all over. Let’s make ourselves comfortable for the night—it’s no use grumbling, Stevens, as you say.’

“So we got the grub and ate it. Of course we had no fire, and felt precious cold as the wind fell. We all went to sleep, and in the morning I woke first.

‘Sands,’ says I, ‘here’s a go.’

‘We’ve got in the north current,’ says he.

“So we had. There was not a bit of ice within a hundred yards of us; we could just see the blink in the distance.

‘No getting back to the ship now, Sands.’

‘No,’ says he; ‘ship must come to us—we’re in for it—it’s infernally cold, tho’, let’s get round to the wind’ard.’

“We took the youngster’s arm, for he could walk a little now, and got round to wind’ard. Here it was better—not quite so cold. We had breakfast; no fire again tho’, and sucking a bit of ice is a poor make-up for a cup of hot coffee, let alone the flavour, even.

‘Now,’ says I, ‘look here, boys; we’re likely to be here a goodish bit, we may as well see what we’ve got. ”

Here Ben took the note-book from the table, and turned over the pages, muttering “Lost fore-topsail sheet-block,” “Monk sprained his ankle,” “spoke the Mary Anne,” “ice seen,” “left ship,” “adrift,” “Oh! here, that’s it.”

“You see,” said Ben, addressing me, “I always had to keep the log, and I used to keep a log of my own at the same time, till at last it got such a way with me that I felt as if I hadn’t done my duty if there was no log kept—got to be a regular thing with me. Lord, sir! there’s in that bottom cupboard the logs—‘diaries’ is printed on the back: I call ’em logs—of all I’ve done since I left the sea. I do it every day after tea, and can’t quite be happy without it. I heard the minister say some poetry about that kind of thing—

“I think it was.

“Now this here, as I said, is the log of my voyage in ‘the floating island,’ as I called it in joke once to the missus. She said it was so good a name that it’s always been called so since.”

“Well,” said I, “what had you got when you came to count up?”

“Three guns—one was rifled—that was the boy’s—fine handsome stock it had, too, very light, tho’; but, Lord! they let these only sons have anything. Two hatchets—short handles—the boy hadn’t got one. Then there was three blankets and our clothes we’d got on. There was in the three bags about twelve pounds of fat pork, cooked, and about the same of biscuit. Sands had some tea, but Sleepy Sam had got all the coffee in his bag, so we’d none with us. I’d got a bit of lanyard in my jacket pocket. One large fish-hook—that was the queerest thing. Sands says to the boy:

‘What’s that in the corner of your bag?’

‘Oh! it’s a hook to catch shark with. Aunt Nelly gave it me.’

“Sure enough it was a big barbed hook with a cork on the end—he was a careful boy that—and a bit of chain to it, about two feet.

‘And what did you bring it here for?‘says I. ‘Expect to catch sharks?’

“Lord! how Sands laughed.

‘No,’ says the boy; ‘only the captain said you’d most likely shoot some seals, so I thought that would stick into them to drag them along over the ice.’

“It wasn’t such a bad notion, you see; so Sands gave over laughing. I think that was about all we’d got with us, and a poor lookout it was, too. There was food enough, on short allowance, to last us about five days. By that time, we thought, if we had got into what they call the Arctic cold-current, we should get down to about 61° or so, and fall in with some whalers. So we made up our minds to it, and set about getting a little to rights. The first point was to get warm, because the cold is not only unpleasant, but makes you eat more, if you’ve got it, and want more if you haven’t.

“The wind still kept south, and soon we could see nothing but our own bit of ice all round. When we got to wind’ard it felt warm, so we took all the things round to wind’ard, and cut a hole in the ice to put them in, with a small gutter leading from it so as to keep ’em from the wet. Then we cut a sort of platform level to stand on, but it was dreadfully sloppy; the ice was melting as fast as it could—running down in streams from the top, as the sun shone on it, and making the air quite damp.

“Next morning, we resolved on a search of “the island,” as we called it. Sands and I, with the two guns, went; the boy stayed on the platform to look out.”

“How large was it, Stevens, altogether?”

“I should say about three times as big as a thousand-ton vessel—of course, of a different shape. Here’s the sketch I made of it; it’s as near as I could remember. You see there were two peaks and a bit of floe at the bottom. It wasn’t so big, by a long chalk, as some I’ve seen, you know.

“Let’s see—where was I? O, I know. Sands