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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Cast Away in the Cold, by Isaac I. Hayes
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Cast Away in the Cold
+       An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures, as Related by Captain John Hardy, Mariner
+
+
+Author: Isaac I. Hayes
+
+
+
+Release Date: December 23, 2007  [eBook #23986]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK CAST AWAY IN THE COLD***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Roger Frank and the Project Gutenberg Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (https://www.pgdp.net)
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+Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
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+      See 23986-h.htm or 23986-h.zip:
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+
+
+
+
+
+CAST AWAY IN THE COLD:
+
+An Old Man's Story of a Young Man's Adventures,
+as Related by
+Captain John Hardy, Mariner.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+by DR. ISAAC I. HAYES,
+Author of "An Arctic Boat Journey," "The Open Polar Sea," Etc.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Boston:
+Lothrop, Lee & Shepard Co.
+
+Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868, by
+Ticknor and Fields,
+in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of
+Massachusetts.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+                                                                    PAGE
+Relates how an Ancient Mariner met three Little People and
+promised them a Little Story                                           1
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Captain John Hardy, otherwise Ancient Mariner,
+otherwise Old Man                                                      8
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Which shows the Old Man to be a Man of his Word                       11
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+The Old Man, having related to the Little People how the
+Young Man went to Sea, now proceeds to tell what the
+Young Man did there                                                   24
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+In which the Ancient Mariner, continuing his Story, borrows
+an Illustration from the "Ancient Mariner" of Song, and
+then proceeds to tell how they went into the Cold, and
+were cast away there                                                  34
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+The Old Man meets the Little People under Peculiar
+Circumstances, and relates to them how the Young Man, being
+cast away in the Cold, rescued a Shipmate, and also other
+Matters, which, if put into this Title, would spoil
+the Story altogether                                                  50
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+In which the Reader will discover, as the Little People did,
+how a Life was saved, and a Life was begun                            68
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+In which the Mariner's Rest and the Ancient Mariner himself
+receive Particular Attention                                          85
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Contains a Recovery, a Discovery, and a Disappointment                90
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Shows how Some Things may be done as well as Others, with
+God's Help and with much Perseverance                                100
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+In which the Little People are convinced of the Goodness of
+Providence, as the Reader ought to be,--seeing that to be
+cast away is not to be forsaken                                      114
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+Relates how a Desert Island became a Rock of Good Hope,
+and other Hopeful Matters which to be understood must
+be read of                                                           131
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+The Ancient Mariner takes the Little People on a Little Voyage;
+and the Little People become convinced that an Arctic
+Winter, and Aurora Borealis, and an Ancient Mariner,
+are very Wonderful Things                                            144
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+Proves the Ingenuity of Seals, and shows that the Great
+Polar Bear is no Respecter of Persons                                162
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Shows, among other Curious Matters, that two Boys are better
+than one, and that Pluck is a Good Thing, especially
+when Polar Bears are around                                          177
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+Covers a Long Period of Time, and shows, among other Things,
+how a Race may be lost at Both Ends                                  191
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+A very Peculiar Person appears and disappears, and the Castaways
+are filled alternately with Hope and Fear                            207
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+A Number of Peculiar People appear, and the Castaways disappear
+from the Rock of Good Hope                                           222
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+The Peculiar People proving to be Savages, the Castaways
+seize the First Opportunity to leave them, not relishing
+their Company                                                        238
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+Brings the Holidays of the Little People and the Story of
+the Old Man to an End                                                254
+
+
+
+
+
+
+CAST AWAY IN THE COLD.
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+Relates how an Ancient Mariner met three Little People
+and promised them a Little Story.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+A bright sun shone on the little village of Rockdale; a bright glare was
+on the little bay close by, as on a silver mirror. Three bright children
+were descending by a winding path towards the little village; a bright
+old man was coming up from the little village by the same path, meeting
+them.
+
+The three children were named William Earnest, Fred Frazer, and Alice.
+Alice was William Earnest's sister, while Fred Frazer was his cousin.
+William Earnest was the eldest, and he was something more than eleven
+and something less than twelve years old. His cousin Fred Frazer was
+nearly a year younger, while his sister Alice was a little more than two
+years younger still. Fred Frazer was on a holiday visit to his
+relatives, it being vacation time from school; and the three children
+were ready for any kind of adventure, and for every sort of fun.
+
+The children saw the old man before the old man saw the children; for
+the children were looking down the hill, while the old man, coming up
+the hill, was looking at his footsteps.
+
+As soon as the children saw the old man, the eldest recognized him as a
+friend; and no sooner had his eyes lighted on him than, much excited, he
+shouted loudly, "Hurrah, there comes the ancient mariner!"
+
+His cousin, much surprised, asked quickly, "Who's the ancient mariner?"
+And his sister, more surprised, asked timidly, "What's the ancient
+mariner?"
+
+Then the eldest, much elated, asked derisively, "Why, don't you know?"
+And then he said, instructively: "He's been about here for ever so long
+a time; but he went away last year, and I haven't seen him for a great
+while. He's the most wonderful man you ever saw,--tells such splendid
+stories,--all about shipwrecks, pirates, savages, Chinamen, bear-hunts,
+bull-fights, and everything else that you can think of. I call him the
+'Ancient Mariner,' but that isn't his right name. He's Captain Hardy;
+but he looks like an ancient mariner, as he is, and I got the name out
+of a book. Some of the fellows call him 'Old Father Neptune.'"
+
+"What a funny name!" cried Fred.
+
+"What do they call him Father Neptune for?" inquired Alice.
+
+"Because," answered William, looking very wise,--"because, you know,
+Neptune, he's god of the sea, and Captain Hardy looks just like the
+pictures of him in the story-books. That's why they call him Old Father
+Neptune."
+
+By this time the old man had come quite near, and William, suddenly
+leaving his companions, dashed ahead to meet him.
+
+"O Captain Hardy, I'm so glad to see you!" exclaimed the little fellow,
+as he rushed upon him. "Where did you come from? Where have you been so
+long? How are you? Quite well, I hope,"--and he grasped the old man's
+hand with both his own, and shook it heartily.
+
+"Well, my lad," replied the old man, kindly, "I'm right glad to see you,
+and will be right glad to answer all your questions, if you'll let them
+off easy like, and not all in a broadside"; and as they walked on up the
+path together, William's questions were answered to his entire
+satisfaction.
+
+Then they came presently to Fred and Alice, who were introduced by
+William, very much to the delight of Fred; but Alice was inclined to be
+a little frightened, until the strange old man spoke to her in such a
+gentle way that it banished all timidity; and then, taking the hand
+which he held out to her, she trudged on beside him, happy and pleased
+as she could be.
+
+The party were not long in reaching the gate leading up to the house of
+William's father. A large old-fashioned country-house it was, standing
+among great tall trees, a good way up from the high-road; and William
+asked his friend to come up with them and see his father, "he will be so
+delighted"; but the old man said he "would call and see Mr. Earnest some
+other time; now he must be hurrying home."
+
+"But this isn't your way home, Captain Hardy,--is it?" exclaimed
+William, much surprised. "Why, I thought you lived away down below the
+village."
+
+"So I did once," replied the old man; "that is, when I lived anywhere
+at all; but you see I've got a new home now, and a snug one too. Look
+down there where the smoke curls up among the trees,--that's from my
+kitchen."
+
+"But," said William, "that's Mother Podger's house where the smoke is."
+
+"So it was once, my lad," answered the old man; "but it's mine now; for
+I've bought it, and paid for it too; and now I mean to quit roaming
+about the world, and to settle down there for the remainder of my days.
+You must all come down and see me; and, if you do, I'll give you a sail
+in my boat."
+
+"O, won't that be grand!" exclaimed William; and Fred and Alice both
+said it would be "grand"; and then they all put a bold front on, and
+asked the old man if he wouldn't take them to see the boat now, they
+would like _so_ much to see it.
+
+"Certainly I will," answered the old man. "Come along,"--and he led the
+way over the slope down to the little bay where the boat was lying.
+
+"There she is!" exclaimed he, when the boat came in view. "Isn't she a
+snug craft? She rides the water just like a duck,"--whereupon the
+children all declared that they had never, in all their lives, seen
+anything so pretty, and that "a duck could not ride the water half so
+well."
+
+It was, indeed, a very beautiful little boat, or rather yacht, with a
+cosey little cabin in the centre, and space enough behind and outside of
+it for four persons to sit quite comfortably. The yacht had but one
+mast, and was painted white, both inside and out, with only the faintest
+red streak running all the way around its sides, just a little way above
+the water-line.
+
+Captain Hardy (for that was the old man's proper name and title, and
+therefore we will give it to him) now drew his little yacht close in to
+a little wharf that he had made, and the children stepped into it, and
+ran through the cosey cabin, which was but very little higher than their
+heads, and had crimson cushions all along its sides to sit down upon.
+These crimson cushions were the lids of what the Captain called his
+"lockers,"--boxes where he kept his little "traps." In this little cabin
+there was the daintiest little stove, on which the Captain said they
+might cook something when they went out sailing.
+
+When they had finished looking at the yacht, they jumped ashore again,
+and then, after securing the craft of which he was so proud, the Captain
+took the children to his house. It was a cunning little house, this
+house of the Captain's. It was only one story high, and it was as white
+and clean as a new table-cloth, while the window-shutters were as green
+as the grass that grew around it. Tall trees surrounded it on every
+side, making shade for the Captain when the sun shone, and music for the
+Captain when the wind blew. In front there was a quaint porch, all
+covered over with honeysuckles, smelling sweet, and near by, in a
+cluster of trees, there was a rustic arbor, completely covered up with
+vines and flowers. Starting from the front of the house, a path wound
+among the trees down to the little bay where lay the yacht; and on the
+left-hand side of this path, as you went down, a spring of pure water
+gurgled up into the bright air, underneath a rich canopy of ferns and
+wild-flowers.
+
+William was much surprised to find that this house, which everybody knew
+as "Mother Podger's house," should now really belong to Captain Hardy;
+and he said so.
+
+"You'd hardly know it, would you, since I've fixed it up, and made it
+ship-shape like?" said the Captain. "I've done it nearly all myself too.
+And now what do you think I've called it?"
+
+The children said they could never guess,--to save their lives, they
+never could.
+
+"I call it 'Mariner's Rest,'" said the Captain.
+
+"O, how beautiful! and so appropriate!" exclaimed William; and Fred and
+Alice chimed in and said the same.
+
+"And now," went on the Captain, "You must steer your course for the
+'Mariner's Rest' again,--right soon, too, and the old man will be glad
+to see you."
+
+"Thank you, Captain Hardy," answered William, with a bow. "If we get our
+parents' leave, we'll come to-morrow, if that will not too much trouble
+you."
+
+"It will not trouble me at all," replied the Captain. "Let it be four
+o'clock, then,--come at four o'clock. That will suit me perfectly; and
+it may be that I'll have," continued he, "a bit of a story or two to
+tell you. Besides, I think I promised something of the kind before to
+William, when I came home this time twelvemonth ago. Do you remember it,
+my lad?"
+
+William said he remembered it well, and his eyes opened wide with
+pleasure and surprise.
+
+"Now what is it?" inquired the Captain, thoughtfully. "Was it a story
+about the hot regions, or the cold regions? for you see things don't
+stick in my memory now as they used to."
+
+"It was about the cold regions, that I'm sure of," replied William; "for
+you said you would tell me the story you told Bob Benton and Dick
+Savery,--something, you know, about your being _'cast away in the
+cold,'_ as Dick Savery said you called it."
+
+"Ah, yes, that's it, that's it," exclaimed the old man, as if recalling
+the occasion when he had made the promise with much pleasure. "I
+remember it very well. I promised to tell you how I first came to go to
+sea, and what happened to me when I got there. Eh? That was it, I
+think."
+
+"That was exactly it, only you said you were 'cast away in the cold,'"
+said William.
+
+"No matter for that, my lad," replied the Captain, with a knowing
+look,--"no matter for that. If you know how a story's going to end, it
+spoils the telling of it, don't you see? Consider that I didn't get cast
+away, in short, that you know nothing of what happened to me, only that
+I went to sea, and leave the rest to turn up as we go along. And now,
+good-day to all of you, my dears. Come down to-morrow, and we'll have
+the story, and maybe a sail, if the wind's fair and weather fine,--at
+any rate, the story."
+
+The children were probably the happiest children that were ever seen, as
+they turned about for home, showering thanks upon the Captain with such
+tremendous earnestness that he was forced in self-defence to cry,
+"Enough, enough! run home, and say no more."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+Captain John Hardy, Otherwise Ancient Mariner,
+Otherwise Old Man.
+
+
+CAPTAIN HARDY, or Captain John Hardy, or Captain Jack Hardy, or plain
+Captain Jack, or simple Captain, as his neighbors pleased to name him,
+was a famous character in the village. Everybody knew the captain, and
+everybody liked him. He was a mysterious sort of person,--here to-day
+and there to-morrow,--coming and going all the time, until he fairly
+tired out the public curiosity and people's patience altogether, so that
+even the greatest gossips in the town had to confess at length that
+there was no use trying to make anything of Captain Jack, and they
+prudently gave up inquiring and bothering their heads about him; but
+they were glad to see him always, none the less.
+
+The Captain was known as a great talker, and was always, in former
+years, brimful of stories of adventure to tell to any one he met during
+his short visits to the village,--any one, indeed, who would listen to
+him; and, in truth, everybody was glad to listen, he talked so well.
+Many and many a summer evening he spent seated on an old bench in front
+of the village inn, reciting tales of shipwrecks, and stories of the sea
+and land, to the wondering people. Of late years, however, he was not
+disposed to talk so much, and was not so often seen at his favorite
+haunt. "I'm getting too old," he would say, "to tarry from home after
+nightfall."
+
+He had now grown to be fifty-nine years old, although he really looked
+much more aged, for he bore about him the marks of much hardship and
+privation. His hair was quite white, and fell in long silvery locks over
+his shoulders, while a heavy snow-white beard covered his breast. There
+was always something in his appearance denoting the sailor. Perhaps it
+was that he always wore loose pantaloons,--white in summer, and blue in
+winter,--and a sort of tarpaulin hat, with long blue ribbons tied around
+it, the ends flowing off behind like the pennant of a man-of-war.
+
+Captain Hardy was known to everybody as a generous, warm-hearted, and
+harmless man; but he was thought to be equally improvident. The poor had
+a constant friend in him. No beggar ever asked the Captain for a
+shilling without getting it, if the Captain had a shilling anywhere
+about him. Sometimes he had plenty of money, yet when at home he always
+lived in a frugal, homely way. Great was the rejoicing therefore, among
+his friends (and they were many), when it was known that he had fallen
+in with a streak of good fortune. Having been instrumental in saving the
+British bark _Dauntless_ from shipwreck, the insurance companies had
+awarded him a liberal salvage, and it was to secure this that he had
+gone away on his last voyage. As soon as he came home he went right off
+and bought the house which we have before described, with the money he
+brought back; and for once got the credit of doing a prudent thing.
+
+The old man's happiness seemed now complete. "Here," exclaimed he,
+"Heaven willing, I will bring the old craft to an anchor, and end my
+days in peace." But after the excitement of fitting up his house and
+grounds, and getting his little yacht in order, had passed over, he
+began to feel a little lonely. He was so far away from the village that
+he could not meet his old friends as often as he wished to. We have seen
+that he was a great talker; and he liked so much to talk, and thus to
+"fight his battles over again," as it were, and he had so much to talk
+about, that an audience was quite necessary to him. It is not
+improbable, therefore, that he looked upon his meeting with William and
+Fred and Alice as a fortunate event for him; and if the children were
+delighted, so was he. He was very fond of children, and these were
+children after his own heart. To them the coming story was a great
+event,--how great the reader could scarcely understand, unless he knew
+how much every boy in Rockdale was envied by all the other boys, big and
+little, when he was known to have been especially picked out by Captain
+Hardy to be the listener to some tale of adventure on the sea.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+Which Shows the Old Man To Be a Man of His Word.
+
+
+As we may well suppose, the Captain's little friends did not tarry at
+home next day beyond the appointed time; but true as the hands of the
+clock to mark the hour and minute on the dial-plate, they set out for
+Captain Hardy's house as fast as they could go,--as if their very lives
+depended on their speed. They found the Captain seated in the shady
+arbor, smoking a long clay pipe. "I'm glad to see you, children," was
+his greeting to them; and glad enough he was too,--much more glad,
+maybe, than he would care to own,--as glad, perhaps, as the children
+were themselves.
+
+"And now, my dears," continued he, "shall we have the story? There is no
+wind, you see, so we cannot have a sail."
+
+"O, the story! yes, yes, the story," cried the children, all at once.
+
+"Then the story it shall be," replied the old man; "but first you must
+sit down,"--and the children sat down upon the rustic seat, and closed
+their mouths, and opened wide their ears, prepared to listen; while the
+Captain knocked the ashes from his long clay pipe, and stuck it in the
+rafter overhead, and clearing up his throat, prepared to talk.
+
+"Now you must know," began the Captain, "that I cannot finish the story
+I'm going to tell you all in one day,--indeed, I can only just begin it.
+It's a very long one, so you must come down to-morrow, and next day,
+and every bright day after that until we've done. Does that please you?"
+
+"Yes, yes," was the ready answer, and little Alice laughed loud with
+joy.
+
+"Will you be sure to remember the name of the place you come to? Will
+you remember that its name is 'Mariner's Rest'? Will you remember that?"
+
+"Yes, indeed we will."
+
+"And now for the boat we're to have a sail in by and by; what do you
+think I've called that?" asked the Captain.
+
+"Sea-Gull?" guessed William.
+
+"Water-Witch?" guessed Fred.
+
+"White Dove?" guessed Alice.
+
+"All wrong," said the Captain, smiling a smile of the greatest
+satisfaction. "I've painted the name on her in bright golden letters,
+and when you go down again to look at her, you'll see _Alice_ there, and
+the letters are just the color of some little girl's hair I know of."
+
+"Is that really her name?" shouted both the boys at once, glad as they
+could be; "how jolly!" But little Alice said never a word, but crept
+close to the old man's side, and the old man put his great, big arm
+around the child's small body, and as the soft sunlight came stealing in
+through the openings in the foliage of the trees, flinging patches of
+brightness here and there upon the grass around, the Captain began his
+story.
+
+"Now, my little listeners," spoke the Captain, "you must know that what
+I am going to tell you occurred to me at a very early period of my life,
+when I was a mere boy; in fact, the adventures which I shall now relate
+to you were the first I ever had.
+
+"To begin, then, at the very beginning, I must tell you that I was born
+quite near Rockdale. So you see I have good reason for always liking to
+come back here. It is like coming home, you know. The place of my birth
+is only eleven miles from Rockdale by the public road, which runs off
+there in a west-nor'westerly direction.
+
+"My mother died when I was six years old, but I remember her as a good
+and gentle woman. She was taken away, however, too early to have left
+any distinct impression upon my mind or character. I was thus left to
+grow up with three brothers and two sisters, all but one of whom were
+older than myself, without a mother's kindly care and instruction; and I
+must here own, that I grew to be a self-willed and obstinate boy; and
+this disposition led me into a course of disobedience which, but for the
+protecting care of a merciful Providence, would have brought my life to
+a speedy end.
+
+"My father being poor, neither myself nor my brothers and sisters
+received any other education than what was afforded by the common
+country school. It was, indeed, as much as my father could do at any
+time to support so large a family, and, at the end of the year, make
+both ends meet.
+
+"As for myself, I was altogether a very ungrateful fellow, and
+appreciated neither the goodness of my father nor any of the other
+blessings which I had. Of the advantages of a moderate education which
+were offered to me I did not avail myself,--preferring mischief and
+idleness to my studies; and I manifested so little desire to learn, and
+was so troublesome to the master, that I was at length sent home, and
+forbidden to come back any more; whereupon my father, very naturally,
+grew angry with me, and no doubt thinking it hopeless to try further to
+make anything of me, he regularly bound me over, or hired me out, for a
+period of years, to a neighboring farmer, who compelled me to work very
+hard; so I thought myself ill used, whereas, in truth, I did not receive
+half my deserts.
+
+"With this farmer I lived three years and a half before he made the
+discovery that I was wholly useless to him, and that I did not do work
+enough to pay for the food I ate; so the farmer complained to my father,
+and threatened to send me home. This made me very indignant, as I
+foolishly thought myself a greatly abused and injured person, and, in an
+evil hour, I resolved to stand it no longer. I would spite the old
+farmer, and punish my father for listening to him, by running away.
+
+"I was now in my eighteenth year,--old enough, as one would have
+thought, to have more manliness and self-respect; but about this I had
+not reflected much.
+
+"I set out on my ridiculous journey without one pang of regret,--so
+hardened was I in heart and conscience,--carrying with me only a change
+of clothing, and having in my pocket only one small piece of bread, and
+two small pieces of silver. It was rather a bold adventure, but I
+thought I should have no difficulty in reaching New Bedford, where I was
+fully resolved to take ship and go to sea.
+
+"The journey to New Bedford was a much more difficult undertaking than I
+had counted upon, and, I believe, but for the wound which it would have
+caused to my pride, I should have gone back at the end of the first five
+miles. I held on, however, and reached my destination on the second day,
+having stopped overnight at a public house or inn, where my two pieces
+of silver disappeared in paying for my supper and lodging and
+breakfast.
+
+"I arrived at New Bedford near the middle of the afternoon of the second
+day, very hot and dusty, for I had walked all the way through the
+broiling sun along the high-road; and I was very tired and hungry, too,
+for I had tasted no food since morning, having no more money to buy any
+with, and not liking to beg. So I wandered on through the town towards
+the place where the masts of ships were to be seen as I looked down the
+street,--feeling miserable enough, I can assure you.
+
+"Up to this period of my life, I had never been ten miles from home, and
+had never seen a city, so of course everything was new to me. By this
+time, however, I had come to reflect seriously on my folly, and this,
+coupled with hunger and fatigue, so far banished curiosity from my mind
+that I was not in the least impressed by what I saw. In truth, I very
+heartily wished myself back on the farm; for if the labor there was not
+to my liking, it was at least not so hard as what I had performed these
+past two days, in walking along the dusty road,--and then I was, when on
+the farm, never without the means to satisfy my hunger.
+
+"What I should have done at this critical stage, had not some one come
+to my assistance, I cannot imagine. I was afraid to ask any questions of
+the passers-by, for I did not really know what to ask them, or how to
+explain my situation; and, seeing that everybody was gaping at me with
+wonder and curiosity (and many of them were clearly laughing at my
+absurd appearance), I hurried on, not having the least idea of where I
+should go or what I should do.
+
+"At length I saw a man with a very red face approaching on the opposite
+side of the street, and from his general appearance I guessed him to be
+a sailor; so, driven almost to desperation, I crossed over to him,
+looking, I am sure, the very picture of despair, and I thus accosted
+him: 'If you please, sir, can you tell me where I can go and ship for a
+voyage?'
+
+"'A voyage!' shouted he, in reply, 'a voyage! A pretty looking fellow
+you for a voyage!'--which observation very much confused me. Then he
+asked me a great many questions, using a great many hard names, the
+meaning of which I did not at all understand, and the necessity for
+which I could not exactly see. I noticed that he called me 'landlubber'
+very frequently, but I had no idea whether he meant to compliment or
+abuse me, though it seemed more likely to me that it was the latter.
+After a while, however, he seemed to have grown tired of talking, or had
+exhausted all his strange words, for he turned short round and bade me
+follow him, which I did, with very much the feelings a culprit must have
+when he is going to prison.
+
+"We went down a steep hill, and arrived presently at a low, dingy place,
+the only peculiar feature of which was that it smelled of tar and had a
+great many people lounging about in it. It was, as I soon found out, a
+'shipping office,'--that is, a place where sailors engage themselves for
+a voyage. No sooner had we entered than my conductor led me up to a tall
+desk, and then, addressing himself to a sharp-faced man on the other
+side of it, he said something which I did not clearly comprehend. Then I
+was told to sign a paper, which I did without even reading a word of it,
+and then the red-faced man cried out in a very loud and startling tone
+of voice, 'Bill!' when somebody at once rolled off a bench, and
+scrambled to his feet. This was evidently the 'Bill' alluded to.
+
+"When Bill had got upon his feet, he surveyed me for an instant, as I
+thought, with a very needlessly firm expression of countenance, and then
+started towards the door, saying to me as he set off, 'This way, you
+lubber.' I followed after him with much the same feelings which I had
+before when I followed the man with the red face, until we came down to
+where the ships were, and then we descended a sort of ladder, or stairs,
+at the foot of which I stumbled into a boat, and had like to have gone
+overboard into the water. At this, the people in the boat set up a great
+laugh at my clumsiness,--just as if I had ever been in a boat before,
+and could help being clumsy. To make the matter worse, I sat down in the
+wrong place, where one of the men was to pull an oar; and when, after
+being told to 'get out of that,' with no end of hard names, I asked what
+bench I should sit on, they all laughed louder than before, which still
+further overwhelmed me with confusion. I did not then know that what I
+called a 'bench,' they called a 'thwart,' or more commonly 'thawt.'
+
+"At length, after much abuse and more laughter, I managed to get into
+the forward part of the boat, which was called, as I found out, 'the
+bows,' where there was barely room to coil myself up, and the boat being
+soon pushed off from the wharf, the oars were put out, and then I heard
+an order to 'give way,' and then the oars splashed in the water, and I
+felt the boat moving; and now, as I realized that I was in truth leaving
+my home and native land, perhaps to see them no more forever, my heart
+sank heavy in my breast; and it was as much as I could do to keep the
+tears from pouring out of my eyes, as we glided on over the harbor.
+Indeed, my eyes were so bedimmed that I scarcely saw anything at all
+until we came around under the stern of a ship, when I heard the order
+'lay in your oars.' Then one of the men caught hold of the end of a
+rope, which was thrown from the ship; and, the boat being made fast, we
+all scrambled up the ship's side; and then I was hustled along to a hole
+in the forward part of the deck (having what looked like a box turned
+upside down over it), through which, now utterly bewildered, I
+descended, by means of a ladder, to a dark, damp, mouldy place, which
+was filled with the foul smells of tar and bilge-water, and thick with
+tobacco-smoke. This, they told me, was the 'fo'casle,' that is,
+forecastle, where lived the 'crew,' of which I became now painfully
+conscious that I was one. If there had been the slightest chance, I
+should have run away; but running away from a ship is a very different
+thing from running away from a farm.
+
+[Illustration: The Romance of the Sea.]
+
+"If I had wished myself back on the farm before, how much more did I
+wish it now! But too late, too late, for we were all ordered up out of
+the forecastle even before I had tasted a mouthful of food. In truth,
+however, it is very likely that I was too sick with the foul odors,
+tobacco-smoke, and heart-burnings to have eaten anything, even had it
+been set before me.
+
+"Upon reaching the deck, I was immediately ordered to lay hold of a
+wooden shaft, about six feet long, which ran through the end of an iron
+lever; and being joined by some more of the crew, we pushed down and
+lifted up this lever, just like firemen working an old-fashioned
+fire-engine. Opposite to us was another party pushing down when we were
+lifting up, and lifting up when we were pushing down. I soon found out
+that by this operation we were turning over and over what seemed to be a
+great log of wood, with iron bands at the ends of it, and having a great
+chain winding up around it. The chain came in through a round hole in
+the ship's side, with a loud 'click, click,' and I learned that they
+called it a 'cable,' while the machine we were working was called a
+'windlass.' The cable was of course fast to the anchor, and it was very
+evident to me that we were going to put to sea immediately. The idea of
+it was now as dreadful to me as it had before been agreeable, when I had
+contemplated it from the stand-point of a quiet farm, a good many miles
+away from the sea. But I could not help myself. No matter what might
+happen, my fate was sealed, so far as concerned this ship.
+
+"We had not been long engaged at this work of turning the windlass,
+before my companions set up a song, keeping time with the lever which we
+were pushing up and down, one of them leading off by reciting a single
+line, in which something was said about Sallie coming, or having come,
+or going to come to 'New York town'; after which they all united in a
+dismal chorus, that had not a particle of sense in it, so far as I could
+see, from beginning to end. When they had finished off with the chorus,
+the leader set to screaming again about 'Sallie' and 'New York town,'
+and then as before came the chorus. Having completely exhausted himself
+on the subject of Sallie, he began to invent, and his inventive genius
+was rewarded with a laugh which interfered with the chorus through about
+two turns of the windlass. What he invented I will recite, that you may
+see how senseless it was; and I will drawl it out very slow to imitate
+them. But first let me say, when they were through with this chorus, the
+leader put in his tongue again, inventing a sentiment to rhyme with the
+first, howling it out as if he would split his throat in the endeavor.
+This is what it all was:--
+
+'We've picked up a lubber in New Bedford town,--
+Come away, away, sto-r-m along, John,
+Get a-long, storm a-long, storm's g-one along,'
+
+'Our lubber's lugger-rigged, and we'll do him brown,--
+Come away, away, sto-r-m along, John,
+Get a-long, storm a-long, storm's g-one along.'
+
+"The last sentiment about lugger-rigged lubber being done brown made them
+all laugh even more than the other, and caused an interruption of the
+chorus to the extent of at least four revolutions of the windlass; but
+when the laugh was over, they went at the dismal chorus with double the
+energy they had shown before, repeating all they had then said about
+'John's getting along,' and 'storming along,' as if they rather liked
+John for doing these things. Thus they went on without much variety,
+until I was sick and tired enough of it. The 'lubber' part of it was too
+clearly aimed at me to be mistaken; but I could not discover in it
+anything but nonsense all the way through to the end.
+
+"After a while I heard some one cry out, 'The anchor's away,' which as I
+afterwards learned, meant the anchor had been lifted from the bottom;
+and then the sailors all scattered to obey an order to do something,
+which I had not the least idea of, with a sail, and with some ropes,
+which appeared to me to be so mixed up that nobody could tell one from
+the other, nor make head nor tail of them. In the twinkling of an eye,
+however, in spite of the mixed-up ropes, there was a great flapping of
+white canvas, and a creaking and rattling of pulleys. Then the huge
+white sail was fully spread, the wind was bulging it out in the middle
+like a balloon, the ship's head was turned away from the town, and we
+were moving off. Next came an order to 'lay aloft and shake out the
+topsail'; but happily in this order I was not included, but was,
+instead, directed to 'lend a hand to get the anchor aboard,' which
+operation was quickly accomplished, and the heavy mass of crooked iron
+which had held the ship firmly in the harbor was soon fastened in its
+proper place on the bow, to what is called a 'cat-head.' By the time
+this was done, every sail was set, and we were flying before the wind
+out into the great ocean.
+
+"And now you see my wish was gratified. I was in a ship and off on the
+'world of waters,' with the career of a sailor before me,--a career to
+my imagination when on the farm full of romance, and presenting
+everything that was desirable in life. But was it so in reality when I
+was brought face to face with it,--when I had exchanged the farm for the
+forecastle? By no means. Indeed, I was filled with nothing but disgust
+first, and terror afterwards. The first sight which I had of the ocean
+was much less satisfactory to me than would have been my father's
+duck-pond. I soon got miserably sick; night came on, dark and fearful;
+the winds rose; the waves dashed with great force against the ship's
+sides, often breaking over the deck, and wetting me to the skin. I was
+shivering with cold; I was afraid that I should be washed overboard; I
+was afraid that I should be killed by something tumbling on me from
+aloft, for there was such a great rattling up there in the darkness that
+I thought everything was broken loose. I could not stand on the deck
+without support, and was knocked about when I attempted to move; every
+time the ship went down into the trough of a sea I thought all my
+insides were coming up. So, altogether, you see I was in a very bad way.
+How, indeed, should it be otherwise? for can you imagine any ills so
+great as these?
+
+    1st, To have all your clothes wet;
+    2d, To have a sick stomach; and,
+    3d, To be in a dreadful fright.
+
+"Now that was precisely my condition; and I was already reaping the
+fruits of my folly in running away from home and exchanging a farm for a
+forecastle."
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Captain here paused and laughed heartily at the picture he had drawn
+of himself in his ridiculous _rôle_ of "the young sailor-boy," and,
+after clearing his throat again, was about to proceed with the story,
+when he perceived that the shades of evening had already begun to fall
+upon the arbor. Looking out among the trees, he saw the leaves and
+branches standing sharply out against the golden sky, which showed him
+that the day was ended and the sun was set. So he told his little
+friends to hasten home before the dews began to fall upon the grass, and
+come again next day. This they promised thankfully, and told the Captain
+that they "never, never, never would forget it."
+
+But the head of William was filled with a bright idea, and he was bound
+to discharge it before he left the place. "O Captain Hardy," cried the
+little fellow, "do you know what I was thinking of?"
+
+"How should I, before you tell me?" was the Captain's very natural
+answer.
+
+"Why, I was thinking how nice it would be to write all this down on
+paper. It would read just like a printed book."
+
+The Captain said he "liked the idea," but he doubted if William could
+remember it. But William thought he could remember every word of it, and
+declared that it was splendid; and Fred and Alice, following after, said
+that it was splendid too. But whether the story that the Captain told
+was splendid, or the idea of writing it down was splendid, or exactly
+what was splendid, was not then and there settled; yet it was fully
+settled that William was to write the story down the best he could, and
+ask his father to correct the worst mistakes. And now, when this was
+done, the happy children said "Good evening" to the Captain, and set out
+merrily for home, little Alice holding to her brother's hand, as she
+tripped lightly over the green field, turning every dozen steps to throw
+back through the tender evening air, from her dainty little fingertips,
+a laughing kiss to the ancient mariner, whose face beamed kindly on her
+from the arbor door.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+The Old Man, having related to the Little People how
+the Young Man went to Sea, now proceeds to tell
+what the Young Man did there.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The two days which the old man and his young friends had passed together
+had so completely broken down all restraint between them, that the
+children almost felt as if they had known the old man all their lives.
+It was therefore quite natural, that, when they went down next day, they
+should feel inclined to give him a surprise. So they concerted a plan of
+sneaking quietly around the house that they might come upon him
+suddenly, for they saw him working in his garden, hoeing up the weeds.
+
+"Now let's astonish him," said William.
+
+"That's a jolly idea," said Fred, while Alice said nothing at all, but
+was as pleased as she could be.
+
+The little party crawled noiselessly along the fence, through the open
+gate, and sprang upon the Captain with a yell, like a parcel of wild
+Indians; and sure enough they did surprise him, for he jumped behind his
+hoe, as if preparing to defend himself against an attack of enemies.
+
+"Heyday, my hearties!" exclaimed the Captain, when he saw who was there.
+"Ain't you ashamed of yourselves to scare the old man that way?" and he
+joined the laugh that the children raised at his own expense,--enjoying
+it as much as they did.
+
+"That's a trick of William's, I'll be bound," said he; "but no matter,
+I'll forgive you; and I'm right glad you've come, too, for it's precious
+hot, and I'm tired hoeing up the weeds; so now, let us get out of the
+sun, into the crow's nest."
+
+"The crow's nest!" cried William. "What's that?"
+
+"Why, the arbor, to be sure," said the Captain. "Don't you like the
+name?"
+
+"Of course I do," answered William. "It's such a cunning name."
+
+It was but a few steps to the "crow's nest," and the happy party once
+seated, the Captain was ready in an instant to pick up the thread where
+he had broken it short off when they had parted in the golden evening of
+the day before, and then to spin on the yarn.
+
+"And now, my lively trickster and genius of the quill," said he to
+William, "how is it about writing down the story? What does your father
+say?"
+
+"O," answered William, "I've written down almost every word of what you
+said, and papa has examined it, and says he likes it. There it is";--and
+he pulled a roll of paper from his pocket and handed it to the Captain.
+
+The old man took it from William's hand, looking all the while much
+gratified; and after pulling out a pair of curious-looking,
+old-fashioned spectacles from a curious-looking, old-fashioned
+red-morocco case, which was much the worse for wear, he fixed them on
+his nose very carefully, and then, after unfolding the sheets of paper,
+he glanced knowingly over them.
+
+"That's good," said he; "that's ship-shape, and as it ought to be. Why,
+lad, you're a regular genius, and sure to turn out a second Scott, or
+Cooper, or some such writing chap."
+
+"I am glad you like it, Captain Hardy," said William, pleased that he
+had pleased his friend.
+
+"Like it!" exclaimed the Captain. "Like it!! that's just _what_ I do;
+and now, since I'm to be made famous in this way, I'll be more careful
+with my speech. And no bad spelling either," ran on the Captain, while
+he kept turning back the leaves, "as there would have been if you had
+put it down just as I spoke it. But never mind that now; take back the
+papers, lad, and keep them safe; we'll go on now, if we can only find
+where the yarn was broken yesterday. Do any of you remember?"
+
+"I do," said William, laughing. "You had just got out into the great
+ocean, and were frightened half to death."
+
+"O yes, that's it," went on the Captain,--"frightened half to death;
+that's sure enough, and no mistake; and so would you have been, my lad,
+if you had been in my place. But I don't think I'll tell you anything
+more about my miserable life on board that ship. Hadn't we better skip
+that?"
+
+"O no, no!" cried the children all together, "don't skip anything."
+
+"Well, then," said the obliging Captain, glad enough to see how much his
+young friends were interested, "if you _will_ know what sort of a
+miserable time young sailors have of it, I'll tell you; and let me tell
+you, too, there's many a one of them has just as bad a time as I had.
+
+"In the first place, you see, they gave me such wretched food to eat,
+all out of a rusty old tin plate, and I was all the time so sick from
+the motion of the vessel as we went tossing up and down on the rough
+sea, and from the tobacco-smoke of the forecastle, and all the other bad
+smells, that I could hardly eat a mouthful, so that I was half ready to
+die of starvation; and, as if this was not misery enough, the sailors
+were all the time, when in the forecastle, quarrelling like so many wild
+beasts in a cage; and as two of them had pistols, and all of them had
+knives, I was every minute in dread lest they should take it into their
+heads to murder each other, and kill me by mistake. So, I can tell you,
+being a young sailor-boy isn't what it's cracked up to be."
+
+"O, wasn't it dreadful!" said Alice, "to be sick all the time, and
+nobody there to take care of you."
+
+"Well, I wasn't so sick, maybe, after all," answered the Captain,
+smiling,--"only _sea-sick_, you know; and then, for the credit of the
+ship, I'll say that, if you had nice plum-pudding every day for dinner,
+you would think it horrid stuff if you were sea-sick."
+
+"But don't people die when they are sea-sick?" inquired Alice.
+
+"Not often, child," answered the Captain, playfully; "but they feel all
+the time as if they were going to, and when they don't feel that way,
+they feel as if they'd like to.
+
+"However, I was miserable enough in more ways than one; for to these
+troubles was added a great distress of mind, caused by the sport the
+sailors made of me, and also by remorse of conscience for having run
+away from home, and thus got myself into this great scrape. Then, to
+make the matter worse,--as if it was not bad enough already,--a violent
+storm set upon us in the dark night. You could never imagine how the
+ship rolled about over the waves. Sometimes they swept clear across the
+ship, as if threatening our lives; and all the time the creaking of the
+masts, the roaring of the wind through the rigging, and the lashing of
+the seas, filled my ears with such awful sounds that I was in the
+greatest terror, and I thought that every moment would certainly be my
+last. Then, as if still further to add to my fears, one of the sailors
+told me, right in the midst of the storm, that we were bound for the
+Northern seas, to catch whales and seals. So now, what little scrap of
+courage I had left took instant flight, and I fell at once to praying
+(which I am ashamed to say I had never in my life done before), fully
+satisfied as I was that, if this course did not save me, nothing would.
+In truth, I believe I should actually have died of fright had not the
+storm come soon to an end; and indeed it was many days before I got over
+thinking that I should, in one way or another, have a speedy passage
+into the next world, and therefore I did not much concern myself with
+where we were going in this. Hence I grew to be very unpopular with the
+people in the ship, and learned next to nothing. I was always in
+somebody's way, was always getting hold of the wrong rope, and was in
+truth all the time doing mischief rather than good. So I was set down as
+a hopeless idiot, and was considered proper game for everybody. The
+sailors tormented me in every possible way.
+
+"One day (knowing how green I was) they set to talking about fixing up a
+table in the forecastle, and one of them said, 'What a fine thing it
+would be if the mate (who turned out to be the red-faced man I had met
+in the street, and who took me to the shipping-office) would only let us
+have the keelson.' So this being agreed to in a very serious manner
+(which I hadn't wit enough to see was all put on), I was sent to carry
+their petition. Seeing the mate on the quarter-deck, I approached, and
+in a very respectful manner thus addressed him: 'If you please, sir, I
+come to ask if you will let us have the keelson for a table?' Whereupon
+the mate turned fiercely upon me, and, to my great astonishment, roared
+out at the very top of his voice, 'What! what's that you say? Say that
+again, will you?' So I repeated the question as he had told me
+to,--feeling all the while as if I should like the deck to open and
+swallow me up. I had scarcely finished before I perceived that the mate
+was growing more and more angry; if, indeed, anything could possibly
+exceed the passion he was in already. His face was many shades redder
+than it was before,--and, indeed, it was so very red that it looked as
+if it might shine in the dark. His hat fell off, as it seemed to me, in
+consequence of his stiff red hair rising up on end, and he raised his
+voice so loud that it sounded more like the howl of a wild beast than
+anything I could compare it to. 'You lubber!' he shouted. 'You villain!'
+he shrieked; 'you, you!'--and here it seemed as if he was choking with
+hard words which he couldn't get rid of,--'you come here to play tricks
+on me! You try to fool me! I'll teach you!'--and, seizing hold of the
+first thing he could lay his hands on (I did not stop to see what it
+was, but wheeled about greatly terrified), he let fly at me with such
+violence that I am sure I must have been finished off for certain had I
+not quickly dodged my head. When I returned to the forecastle, the
+sailors had a great laugh at me, and they called me ever afterwards
+'Jack Keelson.' The keelson, you must know, is a great mass of wood
+down in the very bottom of the ship, running the whole length of it; but
+how should I have learned that?
+
+"At another time I was told to go and 'grease the saddle.' Not knowing
+that this was a block of wood spiked to the mainmast to support the main
+boom, and thinking this a trick too, I refused to go, and came again
+near getting my head broken by the red-faced mate. I did not believe
+there was anything like a 'saddle' in the ship.
+
+"And thus the sailors continued to worry me. Once, when I was very weak
+with sea-sickness and wanted to keep down a dinner which I had just
+eaten, they insisted upon it, that, if I would only put into my mouth a
+piece of fat pork, and _keep it there_, my dinner would stay in its
+place. The sailors were right enough, for as soon as my dinner began to
+start up, of course away went the fat pork out ahead of it.
+
+"But by and by I came to my senses, and, upon discovering that the bad
+usage I received was partly my own fault, I stopped lamenting over my
+unhappy condition, and began to show more spirit. Would you believe it?
+I had actually been in the vessel five days before I had curiosity
+enough to inquire her name. They told me that it was called the
+_Blackbird_; but what ever possessed anybody to give it such a
+ridiculous name I never could imagine. If they had called it Black Duck,
+or Black Diver, there would have been some sense in it, for the ship was
+driving head foremost into the water pretty much all the time. But I
+found out that the vessel was not exactly a ship after all, but a sort
+of half schooner, half brig,--what they call a brigantine, having two
+masts, a mainmast and a foremast. On the former there was a sail running
+fore and aft, just like the sail of the little yacht _Alice_, and on
+the latter there was a foresail, a foretop-sail, a foretop-gallant-sail,
+and a fore-royal-sail,--all of course square sails, that is, running
+across the vessel, and fastened to what are called yards. The vessel was
+painted jet-black on the outside, but inside the bulwarks the color was
+a dirty sort of green.
+
+"Such, as nearly I can remember, was the brigantine _Blackbird_, three
+hundred and forty-two tons register. Brigantine is, however, too large a
+word; so when we pay the _Blackbird_ the compliment of mentioning her,
+we will call her a ship.
+
+"Having picked up the name of the ship, I was tempted to pursue my
+inquiries further, and it was not long before I had got quite a
+respectable stock of seaman's knowledge, and hence I grew in favor. I
+learned to distinguish between a 'halyard,' which is rope for pulling
+the yards up and letting them down, from a 'brace,' which is used to
+pull them around so as to 'trim the sails,' and a 'sheet,' which is a
+rope for keeping the sails in their proper places. I found out that what
+I called a floor the sailors called a 'deck'; a kitchen they called a
+'galley'; a pot, a 'copper'; a pulley was a 'block'; a post was a
+'stancheon'; to fall down was to 'heel over'; to climb up was to 'go
+aloft'; and to walk straight, and keep one's balance when the ship was
+pitching over the waves, was to 'get your sea legs on.' I found out,
+too, that everything behind you was 'abaft,' and everything ahead was
+'forwards,' or for'ad as the sailors say; that a large rope was a
+'hawser,' and that every other rope was a 'line'; to make anything
+temporarily secure was to 'belay' it; to make one thing fast to another
+was to 'bend it on'; and when two things were close together, they were
+'chock-a-block.' I learned, also, that the right-hand side of the vessel
+was the 'starboard' side, while the left-hand side was the 'port' or
+'larboard' side; that the lever which moves the rudder that steers the
+ship was called the 'helm,' and that to steer the ship was to take 'a
+trick at the wheel'; that to 'put the helm up' was to turn it in the
+direction from which the wind was coming (windward), and to 'put the
+helm down' was to turn it in the direction the wind was going (leeward).
+I found out still further, that a ship has a 'waist,' like a woman, a
+'forefoot,' like a beast, besides 'bull's eyes' (which are small holes
+with glass in them to admit light), and 'cat-heads,' and 'monkey-rails,'
+and 'cross-trees,' as well as 'saddles' and 'bridles' and 'harness,' and
+many other things which I thought I should never hear anything more of
+after I left the farm. I might go on and tell you a great many more
+things that I learned, but I should only tire your patience without
+doing any good. I only want to show you how John Hardy began his marine
+education.
+
+"When it was discovered how much I had improved, they proposed
+immediately to turn it to their own account; for I was at once sent to
+take 'a trick at the wheel,' from which I came away, after two hours'
+hard work, with my hands dreadfully blistered, and my legs bruised, and
+with the recollection of much abusive language from the red-faced mate,
+who could never see anything right in what I did. I gave him, however,
+some good reason this time to abuse me, and I was glad of it afterwards,
+though I was badly enough scared at the time. I steered the ship so
+badly that a wave which I ought to have avoided by a skilful turn of the
+wheel, came breaking in right over the quarter-deck, wetting the mate
+from head to foot. He thought I did it on purpose (which you may be sure
+I did not do). Again his face grew red enough to shine of a dark night,
+and his mind invented hard words faster than his tongue would let them
+out of his ugly throat.
+
+"I tell you all this, that you may have some idea of what a ship is, and
+how sailors live, and what they have to do. You can easily see that they
+have no easy time of it, and, let me tell you, there isn't a bit of
+romance about it, except the stories that are cut out of whole cloth to
+make books and songs of. However, I never could have much sympathy for
+my shipmates in the _Blackbird_; for if they did treat me a little
+better when they found that I could do something, especially when I
+could take a trick at the wheel, I still continued to look upon them as
+little better than a set of pirates, and I felt satisfied that, if they
+were not born to be hanged, they would certainly drown."
+
+"I don't think I'll be a sailor," said Fred.
+
+"Nor I either," said William. "But, Captain," continued the cunning
+fellow, "if a sailor's life is so miserable, what do you go to sea so
+much for?"
+
+"Well, now, my lad," replied the Captain, evidently at first a little
+puzzled, "that's a question that would require more time to explain than
+we have to devote to it to-day. Besides" (he was fully recovered now),
+"you know that going to sea in the cabin is as different from going to
+sea in the forecastle as you are from a Yahoo Indian. But never mind
+that, I must get on with my story, or it will never come to an end. I've
+hardly begun it yet."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+In which the Ancient Mariner, continuing his Story,
+borrows an Illustration from the "Ancient Mariner"
+of Song, and then proceeds to tell how they
+went into the Cold, and were cast away there.
+
+
+"'And now there came both mist and snow,
+And it grew wondrous cold:
+And ice mast-high came floating by,
+As green as emerald.'
+
+"I recite this from a famous poem because it suits so well what came of
+us, for you must understand that, while all I have been telling you was
+going on, we were approaching the northern regions, and were getting
+into the sea where ice was to be expected. A man was accordingly kept
+aloft all the time to look out for it: for you will remember that we
+were going after seals, and it is on the ice that the seals are found.
+The weather now became very cold, it being the month of April.
+
+"At length the man aloft cried out that he saw ice. 'Where away?'
+shouted the red-faced mate. 'Off the larboard bow,' was the answer. So
+the course of the ship was changed, and we bore right down upon the ice,
+and very soon it was in sight from the deck, and gradually became more
+and more distinct. It was a very imposing sight. The sea was covered all
+over with it, as far as the eye could reach,--a great plain of
+whiteness, against the edge of which the waves were breaking and sending
+the spray flying high in the air and sending to our ears that same
+dull, heavy roar which the breakers make when beating on the land.
+
+"As we neared this novel scene, I observed that it consisted mostly of
+flat masses of ice, of various sizes (called by the sealers 'floes');
+some were miles in extent, and others only a few feet. The surface of
+these ice floes or fields rose only about a foot or so above the surface
+of the water. Between them there were in many places very broad
+openings, and when I went aloft and looked ahead, these ice-fields
+appeared like a great collection of large and small flat white islands,
+dotted about in the midst of the ocean. Through these openings between
+the fields the ship was immediately steered, and we were soon surrounded
+by ice on every side. To the south, whence we had come, there was in an
+hour or so apparently just as much ice as there was before us to the
+north, or to the right and left of us,--a vast immeasurable waste of ice
+it was, looking dreary and frightful enough, I can assure you.
+
+"I have said that the pieces of ice now about us were called 'floes,' or
+ice-fields; the whole together was called 'the pack.' We were now in
+perfectly smooth water, for you will easily understand that the ice
+which we had passed broke the swell of the sea. But the crew of the ship
+did not give themselves much concern about the ice itself; for it was
+soon discovered that the floes were covered in many places with seals.
+
+"Now you must understand that seals are not fish, but are air-breathing,
+warm-blooded animals, like horses and cows, and therefore they must
+always have their heads, or at least their noses, out of water when they
+breathe. When the weather is cold, they remain in the water all the
+time, merely putting up their noses now and then (for they can remain a
+long time under water without breathing) to sniff a little fresh air,
+and then going quickly down again. In the warm weather, however, they
+come up bodily out of the sea, and bask and go to sleep in the sun,
+either on the land or on the ice. Many thousands of them are often seen
+together.
+
+"As we came farther and farther into the 'pack,' the seals on the ice
+were observed to be more and more numerous. Most of them appeared to be
+sound asleep; some of them were wriggling about, or rolling themselves
+over and over, while none of them seemed to have the least idea that we
+had come all the way from New Bedford to rob them of their sleek coats
+and their nice fat blubber.
+
+"We were now fairly into our 'harvest-field,' and when a suitable place
+was discovered the ship was brought up into the wind, that is, the helm
+was so turned as to bring the ship's head towards the wind, when of
+course the sails got 'aback,' and the ship stopped. Then a boat was
+lowered, and a crew, of which I was one, got into it, with the end of a
+very long rope, and we pulled away towards the edge of a large
+ice-field, hauling out the rope after us, of course, from the coil on
+shipboard. As we approached the ice, the seals near by all became
+frightened, and floundered into the sea as quickly as they could, with a
+tremendous splash. In a few minutes they all came up again, putting
+their cunning-looking heads out of the water, all around the boat, no
+doubt as curious to see what these singular-looking beings were that had
+come amongst them, as the Indians were about Columbus and his Spaniards,
+when they first came to America.
+
+"As soon as we had reached the ice, we sprang out of the boat on to it,
+and, after digging a hole into it with a long, sharp bar of iron, called
+an ice-chisel, we put therein one end of a large, heavy, crooked hook,
+called an ice-anchor, and then to a ring in the other end of this
+ice-anchor we made fast the end of the rope that we had brought with us.
+This done, we signalled to the people on board to 'haul in,' which they
+did on their end of the rope, and in a little while the ship was drawn
+close up to the ice. Then another rope was run out over the stern of the
+ship, and, this being made fast to an ice-anchor in the same way as the
+other, the ship was soon drawn up with her whole broadside close to the
+ice, as snug as if she were lying alongside of a dock in New Bedford.
+
+"And now began the seal-hunt. It would not interest you to hear all
+about the preparations we made, first to catch the seals, and then to
+preserve the skins and try out the oil from the blubber, and put it away
+in barrels. For this latter duty some of the crew were selected, while
+others were sent off to kill and bring in the seals. These latter were
+chosen with a view to their activity, and I, being supposed to be of
+that sort, was one of the party. I was glad enough, I can assure you, to
+get off the vessel for once on to something firm and solid, even if it
+was only ice, and at least for a little while to have done with rocking
+and rolling about over the waves.
+
+"Each one of the seal-catchers was armed with a short club for killing
+the seals, and a rope to drag them over the ice to the ship. We
+scattered in every direction, our object being each by himself to
+approach a group of seals, and, coming upon them as noiselessly as
+possible, to kill as many of them as we could before they should all
+take fright and rush into the sea. In order to do this, we were obliged
+to steal up between the seals and the water as far as possible.
+
+"My first essay at this novel business was ridiculous enough, and,
+besides nearly causing my death, overwhelmed me with mortification. It
+happened thus. I made at a large herd of seals, nearly all of which
+were lying some distance from the edge of the ice, and before they could
+get into the water I had managed to intercept about a dozen of them.
+Thus far I thought myself very lucky; but, as the poet Burns says,
+
+    'The best laid schemes o' mice and men
+      Gang aft a-gley,
+    And leave us naught but grief and pain
+      For promised joy,'--
+
+so it fell out with me. The seals, of course, all rushed towards the
+water as fast as they could go, the moment they saw me coming. But I got
+up with them in time, and struck one on the nose, killing it, and was in
+the act of striking another, when a huge fellow that was big enough to
+have been the father of the whole flock, too badly frightened to mind
+where he was going, ran his head between my legs, and, whipping up my
+heels in an instant, landed me on his back, in which absurd position I
+was carried into the sea before I could recover myself. Of course I sunk
+immediately, and dreadfully cold was the water; but, rising to the
+surface in a moment, I was preparing to make a vigorous effort to swim
+back to the ice, when another badly frightened and ill-mannered seal, as
+I am sure you will all think, plunged into the sea without once looking
+to see what he was doing, and hit me with the point of his nose fairly
+in the stomach.
+
+"I thought now for certain that my misfortunes were all over, and that
+my end was surely come. However, I got my head above the surface once
+more, and did my best to keep it there; but my hopes vanished when I
+perceived that I was at least twenty feet from the edge of the ice. It
+was as much as I could do to keep my head above water, without swimming
+forward, so much embarrassed was I by my heavy clothing, the great
+cold, and the terrible pains (worse than those of colic) caused by the
+seal hitting me in the stomach. I am quite certain that this would have
+been the last of John Hardy's adventures, had not one of my companions,
+seeing me going overboard on the back of the seal, rushed to my rescue.
+He threw me his line for dragging seals (the end of which I had barely
+strength to catch and hold on to), and then he drew me out as one would
+haul up a large fish.
+
+[Illustration: John Hardy takes a Ride without meaning it.]
+
+"I came from the sea in a most sorry condition, as you can well imagine.
+My mouth was full of salt water. I was so prostrated with the cold that
+I could scarcely stand, and my pains were so great that I should
+certainly have screamed had I not been so full of water that I could
+not utter a single word. But I managed, after a while, to get all the
+water spit out, and then, after drawing into my lungs a few good long
+breaths of air, I felt greatly refreshed. I could still, however, hardly
+stand, and was shivering with the cold. But I found that I had strength
+enough to stagger back to the ship, where I was greeted in a manner far
+from pleasant.
+
+"The sailors looked upon my adventure as a great joke, never once
+seeming to think how near I was to death's door, and the mate simply
+cried out 'Overboard, eh? Pity the sharks didn't catch him!' It was
+clear enough that this red-faced tyrant would show me no mercy; and
+when, pale and cold and panting for breath, I asked him for leave to go
+below for a while, he cried out, 'Yes, for just five minutes. Be lively,
+or I'll warm your back for you with a rope's end.'
+
+"The prospect of a 'back warming' of this description had the effect to
+make me lively, sure enough, although I was shivering as if I would
+shake all my teeth out, and tumble all my bones down into a heap. As
+soon as I reached the deck, the mate cried out again for me to 'be
+lively,' and when he set after me with an uplifted rope's end, his face
+glaring at me all the while like a red-hot furnace, you may be sure I
+was quite as lively as it was possible for me to be, and was over the
+ship's side in next to no time at all, and off after seals again. After
+a while I got warmed up with exercise, and this time, being more
+cautious, I met with no similar misadventure, and soon came in dragging
+three seals after me. The mate now complimented me by exclaiming, 'Why,
+look at the lubber!'
+
+"We continued at this seal-hunting for a good many days, during which we
+shifted our position frequently, and made what the sealers called a good
+'catch.' But still the barrels in the hold of the ship were not much
+more than half of them filled with oil, when a great storm set in, and,
+the ice threatening to close in upon us, we were forced to get
+everything aboard, to cast loose from the ice-field, and work our way
+south into clear water again, which we were fortunate enough to do
+without accident. But some other vessels which had come up while we were
+fishing, and were very near to us, were not so lucky. Two of them were
+caught by the moving ice-fields before they could make their escape, and
+were crushed all to pieces. The crews, however, saved themselves by
+jumping out on the ice, and were all successful in reaching other
+vessels, having managed to save their boats before their ships actually
+went down. It was a very fearful sight, the crushing up of these
+vessels,--as if they were nothing more than eggshells in the hand.
+
+"This storm lasted, with occasional interruptions, thirteen days, but
+the breaks in it were of such short duration that we had little
+opportunity to 'fish' (as seal-catching is called) any more. We
+approached the ice several times, only to be driven off again before we
+had fairly succeeded in getting to work, and hence we caught very few
+seals.
+
+"By the time the storm was over the season for seal-fishing was nearly
+over too; so we had no alternative, if we would get a good cargo of oil,
+but to go in search of whales, which would take us still farther north,
+and into much heavier ice, and therefore, necessarily, into even greater
+danger than we had hitherto encountered. Accordingly, the course of the
+vessel was changed, and I found that we were steering almost due north,
+avoiding the ice as much as possible, but passing a great deal of it
+every day. The wind being mostly fair, and the ice not thick enough at
+any time to obstruct our passage, we hauled in our latitude very fast."
+
+"Excuse me, Captain Hardy," here interrupted William, "what is hauling
+in latitude?"
+
+"That's for going farther north," answered the Captain. "Latitude is
+distance from the equator, either north or south, and what a sailor
+makes in northing or southing he calls 'hauling in his latitude,' just
+as making easting or westing is 'hauling in his longitude.'"
+
+"Thank you, Captain," said William, politely, when he had finished.
+
+"Is it all clear now?" inquired the Captain.
+
+"Yes," said William, "clear as mud."
+
+"Clear as mud, eh! Well, that isn't as clear as the pea-soup was they
+used to give us on board the _Blackbird_, for that was so clear that, if
+the ocean had been made of it, you might have seen through it all the
+way down to the bottom; indeed, one of the old sailors said that it
+wasn't soup at all. 'If dat is soup,' growled he, 'den I's sailed forty
+tousand mile trough soup,'--which is the number of miles he was supposed
+to have sailed in his various voyages.
+
+"But no matter for the soup. The days wore on none the less that the
+soup was thin, and still we kept going on and on,--getting farther and
+farther north, and into more and more ice. Sometimes our course was much
+interrupted, and we had to wait several days for the ice to open; then
+we would get under way again, and push on. At length it seemed to me
+that we must be very near the North Pole. It was a strange world we had
+come into. The sun was shining all the time. There was no night at
+all,--broad daylight constantly. This, of course, favored us; indeed,
+had there been any darkness, we could not have sailed among the ice at
+all. As it was, we were obliged to be very cautious, for the ice often
+closed upon us without giving us a chance to escape, obliging us to get
+out great long saws, and cut out and float away great blocks of the ice,
+until we had made a dock for the ship, where she could ride with safety.
+We had many narrow escapes from being crushed.
+
+"At first, when we concluded to go after whales, there were several
+vessels in company with us. At one time I counted nine, all in sight at
+one time; but we had become separated in thick weather; and whether they
+had gone ahead of us, or had fallen behind, we could not tell. However,
+we kept on and on and on; where we were, or where we were going, I, of
+course, had not the least idea; but I became aware, from day to day,
+that greater dangers were threatening us, for _icebergs_ came in great
+numbers to add their terrors to those which we had already in the
+ice-fields. They became at length (and suddenly too) very numerous, and
+not being able to go around them on account of the field-ice, which was
+on either side, we entered right amongst them. The atmosphere was
+somewhat foggy at the time, and it seemed as if the icebergs chilled the
+very air we breathed. I fairly shuddered as we passed the first opening.
+The ice was now at least three times as high as our masts, and very
+likely more than that, and it appeared to cover the sea in every
+direction. It seemed to me that we were going to certain destruction,
+and indeed I thought I read a warning written as it were on the bergs
+themselves. Upon the corner of an iceberg to the left of us there stood
+a white figure, as plain as anything could possibly be. One hand of this
+strange, weird-looking figure was resting on the ice beside it, while
+the other was pointing partly upwards toward heaven, and backwards
+toward the south whence we had come. I thought I saw the figure move,
+and, much excited, I called the attention of one of the sailors to it.
+'Why, you lubber,' said he, 'don't you know that the sun melts the ice
+into all sorts of shapes. Look overhead, if there isn't a man's face!' I
+looked up as the sailor had directed me, and, sure enough, there was a
+man's face plainly to be seen in the lines of an immense tongue of ice
+which was projecting from the side of a berg on the right, and under
+which we were about to pass.
+
+"I became now really terrified. In addition to these strange spectral
+objects, the air was filled with loud reports, and deep, rumbling
+noises, caused by the icebergs breaking to pieces, or masses splitting
+off from their sides and falling into the sea. These noises came at
+first from the icebergs in front of us; but when we had got fairly into
+the wilderness of ice which covered the sea, they came from every side.
+It struck me that we had passed deliberately into the very jaws of
+death, and that from the frightful situation there was no escape.
+
+"I merely mention this as the feeling which oppressed me, and which I
+could not shake off. Indeed, the feeling grew upon me rather than
+decreased. The fog came on very thick, settling over us as if it were
+our funeral shroud. Some snow also fell, which made the air still more
+gloomy. The noises were multiplying, and we could no longer tell whence
+they came, so thick was the air. We were groping about like a traveller
+who has lost his way in a vast forest, and has been overtaken by the
+dark night.
+
+"It seemed to me now that our doom was sealed,--that all our hope was
+left behind us when we passed the opening to this vast wilderness of
+icebergs; and the more I thought of it, the more it seemed to me that
+the figure standing on the corner of the iceberg where we entered,
+whether it was ice or whatever it was, had been put there as a warning.
+How far my fears were right you shall see presently.
+
+"The fog, as I have said, kept on thickening more and more, until we
+could scarcely see anything at all. I have never, I think, seen so thick
+a fog, and it was with the greatest difficulty that the ship was kept
+from striking the icebergs. Then, after a while, the wind fell away
+steadily, and finally grew entirely calm. The current was moving us
+about upon the dead waters; and in order to prevent this current from
+setting us against the ice, we had to lower the boats, and, making lines
+fast to the ship and to the boats, pull away with our oars to keep
+headway on the ship, that she might be steered clear of the dangerous
+places. Thus was made a slow progress, but it was very hard work. At
+length the second mate, who was steering the foremost boat, which I was
+in, cried out, 'Fast ice ahead.' Now 'fast ice' is a belt of ice which
+is attached firmly to the land, not yet having been broken up or
+dissolved by the warmth of the summer. This announcement created great
+joy to everybody in the boats, as we knew that land must be near, and we
+all supposed that we would be ordered to make a line fast to the ice,
+that we might hold on there until the fog cleared up and the wind came
+again. But instead of this we were ordered by the mate to pull away from
+it. And then, after having got the vessel, as was supposed, into a good,
+clear, open space of water,--at least, there was not a particle of ice
+in sight,--we were all ordered, very imprudently, as it appeared to
+every one of us, to come on board to breakfast.
+
+"We had just finished our breakfast, and were preparing to go on deck,
+and then into the boats again, when there was a loud cry raised. 'Ice
+close aboard! Hurry up! Man the boats!' were the orders which I heard
+among a great many other confusing sounds; and when I got on deck, I
+saw, standing away up in the fog, its top completely obscured in the
+thick cloud, an enormous iceberg. The side nearest to us hung over from
+a perpendicular, as the projecting tongue on which I had before seen the
+man's face. It was very evident that we were slowly drifting upon this
+frightful object,--directly under this overhanging tongue. It was a
+fearful sight to behold, for it looked as if it was just ready to
+crumble to pieces; and indeed, at every instant, small fragments were
+breaking off from it, with loud reports, and falling into the sea.
+
+"We were but a moment getting into the boats. The boat which I was in
+had something the start of the other two. Just as we were pulling away,
+the master of the ship came on deck, and ordered us to do what, had the
+red-faced mate done an hour before, would have made it impossible that
+this danger should have come upon us. 'Carry your line out to the fast
+ice,' was the order we received from the master; and every one of us,
+realizing the great danger, pulled as hard as he could. The 'fast ice'
+was dimly in sight when we started, for we had drifted while at
+breakfast towards it, as well as towards the berg. Only a few minutes
+were needed to reach it. We jumped out and dug a hole, and planted the
+ice-anchor. The ship was out of sight, buried in the fog. A faint voice
+came from the ship. It was, 'Hurry up! we have struck.' They evidently
+could not see us. The line was fastened to the anchor in an instant, and
+the second mate shouted, 'Haul in! haul in!' There was no answer but
+'Hurry up! we have struck.' 'Haul in! haul in!' shouted the second mate,
+but still there was no answer. 'They can't hear nor see,' said he,
+hurriedly; and then, turning to me, said, 'Hardy, you watch the anchor
+that it don't give way. Boys, jump in the boat, and we'll go nearer the
+ship so they can hear.' The boat was gone quickly into the fog, and I
+was then alone on the ice by the anchor,--how much and truly alone you
+shall hear.
+
+"Quick as the lightning flash, sudden as the change of one second to
+another, there broke upon me a sound that will never leave my ears. It
+was as if a volcano had burst forth, or an earthquake had instantly
+tumbled a whole city into ruins. A fearful shock, like a sudden
+explosion, filled the air. I saw faintly through the thick mists the
+masts of the ship reeling over, and I saw no more;--vessel and iceberg
+and the disappearing boat were buried in chaos. The whole side of the
+berg nearest the vessel had split off, hurling thousands and hundreds of
+thousands of tons of ice, and thousands of fragments, crashing down upon
+the doomed ship. Escape the vessel could not, nor her crew, the shock
+came so suddenly. The spray thrown up into the air completely hid
+everything from view; but the noise which came from out the gloom told
+the tale.
+
+"Presently there was a loud rush. Great waves, set in motion by the
+crumbling iceberg, with white crests that were frightful to look upon,
+came tearing out of the obscurity, and, perceiving the danger of my
+situation, I ran from it as fast as I could run. And I was just in time;
+for the waves broke up the ice where I had been standing into a hundred
+fragments, and crack after crack opened close behind me.
+
+"I had not, however, far to run before I had reached a place of safety,
+for the force of the waves was soon spent. And when I saw what had
+happened, I fell down flat upon the ice, crying, 'Saved, but for what?
+to freeze or starve! O that I had perished with the rest of them!'
+
+"So now you see that I was really and truly _cast away in the cold_. In
+almost a single instant the ship which had borne me through what had
+seemed great perils was, so far as appeared to me, swallowed up in the
+sea,--crushed and broken into fragments by the falling ice, and every
+one of my companions was swallowed up with it. And there I was on an
+ice-raft, in the middle of the Arctic Sea, without food or shelter,
+wrapped in a great black, impenetrable fog, with the prospect of a
+lingering death staring me in the face."
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Captain here paused as if to take breath, for he had been talking
+very fast, and had grown somewhat excited as he recalled this terrible
+scene. The eyes of the children were riveted upon him, so deeply were
+they interested in the tale of the shipwreck; and it was some time
+before any one spoke.
+
+"Well!" exclaimed William at last, "that was being cast away in the cold
+for certain, Captain Hardy. I had no idea it was so frightful."
+
+"Nor I," said Fred, evidently doubting if Captain Hardy was really the
+shipwrecked boy; but Alice said not a word, for she was lost in wonder.
+
+"I should not have believed it was you, Captain Hardy," continued
+William, "if you had not been telling the story yourself, this very
+minute; for I cannot see how you should ever have got out of that
+scrape. It's ever so much worse than going into the sea on the seal's
+back."
+
+The Captain smiled at these observations of the boys, and said: "It was
+a pretty bad scrape to get into, and no mistake; but through the mercy
+of Providence I got out of it in the end, as you see; otherwise I
+shouldn't have been here to tell the tale; but how I saved myself, and
+what became of the rest of the crew, you shall hear to-morrow, for it is
+now too late to begin the story. The evening is coming on, and your
+parents will be looking for you home; so good by, my dears. To-morrow
+you must come down earlier,--the earlier the better, and if there's any
+wind we'll have a sail." And now the children once more took leave of
+the ancient mariner, with hearts filled with thanks, which they could
+never get done speaking, and with heads filled with astonishment that
+the Captain should be alive to tell the tale which they had heard.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+The Old Man meets the Little People under Peculiar
+Circumstances, and relates to them how the Young Man,
+being cast away in the Cold, rescued a Shipmate, and
+also other Matters, which, if put into this Title, would
+spoil the Story altogether.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+This time Captain Hardy was not to be caught napping, as on the previous
+day. Indeed, he was out looking for his young friends even before the
+time. "If they don't come soon," said he to himself, "I'll go after
+them";--and they did not come soon, at least the Captain thought they
+were a long time in coming, and he started off, if not after them, at
+least to look after them. When he had reached the brow of the hill from
+which both the Captain's and Mr. Earnest's houses could be seen, the old
+man discovered the children coming down one of the winding paths which
+led through Mr. Earnest's grounds. It was some moments before they saw
+the Captain, and when they did see him there was much wondering what had
+happened to bring him up so far on the hill.
+
+"Why, what's the matter with him?" exclaimed William. "Look, he's
+flinging up his hat!"--and the little people set off upon a rapid run.
+
+Meanwhile the Captain stood on the brow of the hill, whirling round his
+tarpaulin hat with the long blue ribbons flying wildly in the wind. When
+the children came nearer, they heard the old man calling loudly to them,
+"Come, my hearties, you are slow to-day. Be lively, or we'll lose the
+chance."
+
+"What chance?" asked William, when they had come up with him.
+
+"The wind, the wind,--why, don't you see there's a spankin' breeze? I
+was afraid we'd lose our sail, so I came to hurry you up."
+
+"Hurrah! hurrah!" shouted both the boys together; and without further
+ado the Captain hurried the little people along with him down through
+the woods to the water.
+
+The old man had been down there before, and had everything in readiness.
+The little yacht was lying close beside the little wharf. "Look sharp
+now, and be lively," exclaimed the Captain as he helped them one by one
+aboard; and then he got in himself, and shoved the yacht off from the
+landing, and with the assistance of a singular-looking boy, whom the
+Captain called "Main Brace," he spread the sails, and the lively craft
+was soon skimming over the waters, carrying as lively a party as ever
+set out on an afternoon frolic. "Jolly" was the only word which seemed
+at all to express the children's pleasure, and if the boys said "it's
+jolly" once, they must have said it fifty times at least; while little
+Alice exhibited her excitement by jumping from one side of the boat to
+the other, stopping now and then to lean over the side and watch the
+little waves gurgling past them, sometimes dipping her delicate hands
+into the water, and screaming with delight when the spray flew over her.
+
+The party were seated (when seated at all) in what is called the "stern
+sheets," that is, on the seat in the open space behind the cabin
+heretofore described,--the good-natured and kindly Captain in the midst
+of them, firmly holding the helm or tiller of his boat, and guiding it
+with steady hand wherever he wished it to go, cracking a pleasant joke
+now and then, and enjoying in all the fulness of his big, warm heart the
+joyous delight of his young guests. And he was in no hurry to stop the
+sport, for he ran on clear across the harbor, and then said he would
+"'bout ship," and put back again.
+
+"What's 'bout ship?" inquired William.
+
+"That's going about on the other tack," replied the Captain.
+
+"What's going about on the other tack?" asked William, as wise as he was
+before.
+
+"I'll show you," said the Captain. "Now see here: first I give the
+proper order, as if somebody else was giving it to me, and I was the man
+at the wheel: 'Hard-a-lee,' do you observe;--now look, I put the helm
+down as far as I can jam it,--there;--look now, how that turns the boat
+and brings her up into the wind,--you see the sails begin to
+shiver,--the wind is blowing right in your faces now;--now we have
+turned nearly round; the boat, you see, has come up on an even
+keel,--level, you know;--now look out sharp for your heads there,--the
+boom is going to jibe over to the other side;--there, don't you see
+we've turned round,--that house over there near the beach that was
+almost ahead of us is now behind us. There goes the boom,--bang! There
+fills the sail, see it bulging out,--the jib, you see, shakes a little
+yet,--but there she goes now filled out like the other; and now you see
+I've got the helm back where I had it before, in the middle, 'steady,'
+you know, and there goes the _Alice_ off on the starboard tack, and an
+easy bowline back towards the Mariner's Rest again. Wasn't that nicely
+done?"
+
+"Splendid! splendid!" cried William; "I wish I could do it."
+
+"I'll teach you,--it's easy learned," answered the Captain; "but look
+out there, or you'll go overboard; get up to windward, and trim the
+boat; you see we are leaning over to the other side now."
+
+And thus the Captain kept on "tacking" across the harbor, going to and
+fro, for more than an hour, enjoying every minute of it just as much as
+the children did. When at length, however, the children began to quiet
+down a little (the sharp edge of novelty being worn off), the Captain
+ran into shoal water, and brought his boat's head once more up into the
+wind; but this time, instead of letting her head "pay" off to starboard,
+he steered her right into the wind's eye, with the sails shivering all
+the time, until the boat stopped, when he cried out to Main Brace to
+"let go the anchor," which Main Brace did promptly, with an "Ay, ay,
+sir!" and then he "clewed" up the sails, and spread a white and red
+striped and red-fringed awning over the place where they were seated,
+and said he was now going on with the story. "Isn't this a tip-top
+place," said he, "for story-telling?" And the children all said it was
+"tip-top," and "jolly," and "grand," and made many little speeches about
+it, which to put down here would make this account so long that
+everybody would get tired before getting to the end of it.
+
+"Now I call this a much better place than the 'Crow's Nest,'" went on
+the Captain; "for, don't you see, when we knocked off yesterday I was
+standing in the middle of the sea, on a great ice-raft. To be sure we
+are not exactly in the middle of the sea here, nor on an ice-raft
+either, but we are on salt water, and that's where I like to be. The air
+is better for the wits, and the tongue too, for that matter, than on the
+land there, which is a good enough place to be when there is no wind;
+but I like to be on the water, and have plenty of sea-room, when the
+wind blows, especially when it blows a gale,--for on land, at such
+times, I'm always afraid that the trees will blow over on me, or the
+house will blow down on my head, or some dreadful accident will happen,
+whereas on the sea one has no fears at all; and besides, at sea one is
+always at home,--come rain or shine, he's always his house with him, and
+never has to go groping about for shelter."
+
+"Only you mustn't be in the forecastle," put in cunning William, who
+remembered the Captain's fright when he first found himself at sea in
+the _Blackbird_.
+
+"Never mind that, lad," replied the Captain, "I was only a boy then, and
+hadn't come to years of discretion. I've made better friends with the
+sea since that day. But let us go on, or we'll never get through with
+this story, any more than the Flying Dutchman will get into port, though
+he keeps on beating up and down forever; and as for to-day, why, we'll
+leave off just where we began, like thieves in a treadmill, if we don't
+get started pretty soon.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, you see, as I was saying, you left me standing on an ice-raft in
+the middle of the Arctic Sea, cast away in a cold and forbidding place,
+and all alone. My shipmates were all either drowned or killed outright
+by the falling ice, so far at least as I knew. The prospect ahead was
+not a pleasing one, for of course, as I think I have said before, the
+first thought which crossed my mind was, that I should starve or freeze
+to death very soon. I was greatly astonished by what had happened, and
+indeed it was hard for me to believe my senses, so suddenly had this
+great disaster come upon me. I stood staring into the mist, and
+listening to the terrible sounds which came out of it, as one petrified;
+yet after a little time I recovered myself sufficiently to realize my
+situation. The instinct of life is strong in every living thing, and
+young sailor-boys are no exception to the rule; so, after I had stood in
+the presence of this frightful chaos for I have not the least idea how
+long, I began to think what I should do to save myself.
+
+"The waves which had been raised after a while began steadily to
+subside, and, as the sea became more calm, I found that I could approach
+nearer to where the wreck had happened by jumping over some of the
+cracks which had been made in the ice, and walking across piece after
+piece of it. These pieces were all in motion, rolling on the swell of
+the sea, and, the farther I went, of course the greater the motion
+became. I had to proceed cautiously, and when I jumped from one fragment
+of ice to another, I was obliged to look carefully what I was about, for
+if I missed my footing I should fall into the sea, and be either drowned
+or ground up by the moving ice.
+
+"Had the iceberg all gone to pieces at once, the sea would soon have
+become quiet; but it was evident from the noises which reached me that a
+considerable part of the berg was still holding together, and was
+wallowing in the sea in consequence of its equilibrium being disturbed
+by the first crash, and was still keeping the waters moving. I could
+indeed vaguely see this remaining fragment, swaying to right and left,
+and I could also perceive that, with every roll, fresh masses were
+breaking off, with loud reports, like the crash of artillery. I could,
+however, discover nothing of the ship nor either of the boats. I was
+able to detect, even at a considerable distance, some fragments of ice
+floating and rolling about, when the fog would clear up a little; and,
+as I peered into the gloom, I thought at one time that I saw a man
+standing upon one of them. It was but a moment, for the fog closed upon
+the object, whatever it may have been, and it vanished as a spectral
+figure.
+
+"My eyes were strained to catch a further glimpse of this object, but
+nothing more was to be seen of it. From this my attention was soon
+attracted by a dark mass which had drifted upon the edge of the broken
+ice, not far to the right of the place where I had been standing when
+the boat left me. I soon made this out to be some part of the wreck of
+the ship. In a few moments I could clearly see that it was a piece of a
+mast; then I could plainly distinguish the 'foretop.' Each succeeding
+wave was forcing it higher and higher out of the water, and I
+discovered, after a few moments, that other timbers were attached to it,
+and that beside these were sails and ropes, making of the whole a
+considerable mass.
+
+"After observing this fragment of the wreck attentively for some time, I
+thought I perceived a man moving among the tangled collection of timbers
+and ropes and sails, endeavoring to extricate himself. Whatever it might
+be, it was some distance above the sea,--so high, indeed, that the waves
+no longer washed it fairly,--only the spray.
+
+"It soon became clear to me that my suspicions that this was a man were
+correct; and being more convinced that one of my shipmates at least was
+yet alive, I rushed forward to rescue him if possible, without once
+stopping to give a thought to the risks I would encounter. It was clear
+that he could not liberate himself.
+
+"You will remember that I was now standing on a fragment of ice which
+had been broken off from the solid ice-field by the waves. It was one of
+a number of similar fragments, all lying more or less close together,
+and between me and the place where I had been standing when the waves
+began to subside, and the ice ceased to break up. Before me the ice was
+in the same broken condition as behind me, only, being nearer the open
+water, the pieces were rolling more, so that there was much greater
+danger in springing from piece to piece. Without, however, pausing to
+reflect upon this circumstance, I rushed forward as fast as I could go,
+jumping with ease over every obstacle in my way, until I was on the
+piece of ice that held up the end of the tangled wreck. I had evidently
+arrived in the very nick of time, for the wreck was, instead of coming
+farther up, now beginning to sink back into the sea.
+
+[Illustration: Rescued from the Wreck.]
+
+"What I had taken for a man proved to be one, or, as I soon found out, a
+boy,--the cabin-boy of the ship, a light, pale-faced lad, and only
+fourteen years old. The boy was evidently fast in some way among the
+rigging, and had been trying to free himself. As I came closer, I
+observed that he was entirely quiet, and had sunk out of view. Quick as
+thought I mounted up into the wreck, and then I saw the boy with a rope
+tangled round his leg, and lying quite insensible. Underneath him
+another man was lying, much mutilated, and evidently quite dead. As I
+was mounting up, a wave washed in under the wreck, but I escaped with
+only a little spray flying over me, which, however, did not wet me
+much. It was but the work of a moment to whip out my knife, which I
+carried in a belt, like every other sailor, and cut the rope which bound
+the boy down, and which he had tried in vain to loosen. After this I had
+no further difficulty, and, seizing the boy around the waist with one
+arm (he was very light even for his years), I clambered out of the wreck
+to the ice without getting much more water upon me, and, hurrying off,
+did not stop until I had jumped with my burden across several cracks,
+and ran across several pieces of ice, reaching a place of present safety
+on the unbroken or fast ice. Here I laid down my insensible burden, all
+dripping with the cold water, and in a state of great anxiety I bent
+over the boy. At first I thought that he was dead, but it was soon clear
+that this was not the case, for he was breathing, although slowly, yet
+freely. Out from his wet hair a little blood was oozing, and upon
+examining the spot I found that there was a bad bruise there, and that
+the skin was broken, though there was not a serious cut. This was
+clearly the cause of his present unconsciousness, as his breathing
+seemed conclusively to show that he had managed to keep his head above
+water, and had not been brought to his present state by drowning. It
+occurred to me that the blow had simply stunned him, and that it had
+come almost at the moment I arrived to rescue him. I could not perceive
+that the skull was fractured, and I felt convinced that, if the boy
+could be warmed and allowed to lie at rest, he would after a while come
+to his senses. To this conclusion I arrived while leaning over the poor
+fellow, examining his hurt, while he lay on the chilly ice, never once
+thinking where I was, and all the while calling frantically to him; but
+I might as well have called to a stone. When I rose up, fully impressed
+with the necessity of securing for the lad rest and warmth, and fully
+realized, for the first time, my powerless situation (that I was even
+apparently unable to save myself, still less the boy), my heart seemed
+to give way entirely, and I sank down once more beside him. A prayer to
+Heaven for succor, which I had no thought could ever come to me, rose to
+my lips, and at that very moment a ray of hope dawned upon me. The great
+fog was breaking away, the bright sun was scattering the mists, and land
+was bursting through it near at hand. Light, fleecy clouds were rolling
+up above the sea, and, as they floated off before a gentle wind, a blaze
+of sunshine burst through an opening in them and fell upon myself and
+the boy whose life I had, at least for the present, saved.
+
+"I could now look out over the sea for a considerable distance. Although
+there was still much confusion, yet the ice was steadily quieting down,
+and the waves caused by it were subsiding rapidly. But a change not less
+marked had taken place in the space between where I stood and the open
+water. The wreck from which I had rescued the boy had settled back into
+the sea, and the fragments of ice were separating and floating off. Had
+I delayed a few minutes longer, I should never have reached the fast
+ice, but should have drifted off upon the dark waters, as the man had
+done whom I saw standing in the fog that I have told you of before.
+
+"As the fog cleared up more and more, the land which first appeared
+stood out boldly, and the sea was visible over a range of many miles. It
+was dotted all over with fragments of ice and numerous icebergs, many of
+which reached up into the disappearing mists, looking like white
+mountains in miniature, with clouds drifting across their summits. The
+land did not appear to be more than a mile distant from me, and it was
+evident that I stood upon ice which was fast to it. Indeed, when I was
+first cast upon this ice, I might have known, had I paused to reflect,
+that land must be very near, as the name 'fast ice' indicates clearly of
+itself that simple fact.
+
+"With this lighting up of the air, various thoughts came into my mind.
+First, could I get to the land and save the boy as well as myself;
+secondly, could I aid anybody else; and thirdly, could I save anything
+of the wreck out of the sea. These last two reflections were quickly
+disposed of, for although I could see many fragments of the wreck, none
+were within reach, and no other person was in sight,--ship and boats and
+men were all gone down before the crushing avalanche, and nothing was
+left but myself and a senseless boy.
+
+"I must here pause to tell you that, although we were in the Arctic
+regions, and on the ice, the weather was not cold, the time being the
+middle of the summer. Of course the dense fog made the air damp and
+chilly, but, as I have said, not exactly cold. My shipmates, before the
+wreck happened, never dressed in anything warmer than the usual woollen
+clothing, and seldom wore coats. For some reason, I do not exactly
+remember why, I had, upon going on deck from breakfast that fatal
+morning, in addition to my ordinary coat, put on a heavy pilot-cloth
+overcoat, which had been furnished me by the master of the ship,--the
+price of it to be deducted from my wages. And it was most fortunate that
+I had put this coat on, for it now served a good purpose in wrapping up
+the boy.
+
+"Seeing that there was now nothing to be gained by longer delay on the
+ice, I picked up the boy in my arms and started for the land. It may
+strike you as somewhat strange that I should have gone about it so
+calmly, or indeed that I did not fall down in despair, and at once give
+up the hope of saving myself when there was so little, or rather no,
+apparent prospect of it before me. But for this there were some very
+natural reasons. In the first place, the thought of saving the boy's
+life kept my mind from dwelling too much upon my own misfortunes; and
+then, the hope of finding the land which had come in sight out of the
+fog inhabited, stimulated my courage, and inspired exertion.
+
+"Although the boy was not heavy, yet I found that in the distance I had
+to carry him I grew much fatigued; but the necessity for haste made me
+strong, and to save the boy's life seemed now much more desirable than
+to save my own, inasmuch as if the boy died, and I survived him, and
+could in any way manage to live on, I should be in a worse condition
+than if dead, as it appeared to me,--being all alone.
+
+"As I approached very near the land, I became much alarmed by
+discovering that a considerable space of water, partly filled with
+fragments of ice, intervened between me and the shore; but, after
+holding to the right for a little distance, I came at length to a spot
+where the ice was firmly in contact with the land, and, after climbing
+over some very rough masses which had been squeezed up along the shore,
+I got at last upon the rocks, and then on a patch of green grass, where
+I laid down the insensible boy in the blazing sun.
+
+"What was I now to do? The boy was yet in very much the same condition
+that he was when I set out with him for the shore. Meanwhile more than
+half an hour must have elapsed, during which time the boy was wrapped in
+his wet clothes, which, to a man in the full possession of his senses,
+would have been prostrating enough. It seemed to me that he was sinking
+under the effects of the blow which he had received, and the wet clothes
+which were on his body. I had, however, the gratification of knowing
+that I was on firm land, and away from the cold ice. The grass was warm,
+and the air, as I have said, was scarcely chilly. Under these improved
+conditions it was clearly better to expose the boy's body wholly to the
+air than to allow him to remain in his wet clothes. The first thing,
+therefore, which I did was to divest myself of my own clothing, in order
+that I might give my warm underclothing to the boy. This left for
+myself only my pantaloons and my coat. After buttoning the coat tightly
+round me, I undressed the boy, and rubbed his body with such parts of
+the tail of my overcoat as his clothes had not wetted while carrying
+him, and, this done, I drew on to him my shirt and drawers, and then,
+pulling up the grass, I heaped that about him, and over this threw my
+damp overcoat,--the grass preventing it from touching him. All this
+occupied but a few minutes, for I worked with the energy of despair. I
+then set to rubbing and pounding his feet and hands which were very
+cold, to get some circulation back into them.
+
+"I had now done all that it was possible for me to do for the present
+towards the restoration of my poor companion, who still remained in
+precisely the same insensible state as before, and I now determined to
+look about me and ascertain if there were any evidences of human beings
+living near at hand.
+
+"The scene around me was dreary enough to strike terror into a stouter
+heart than mine; and, when I had fully viewed it, I had to confess that
+it did not seem probable that any living thing, not to mention human
+beings, could possibly be there. The first thought I had was to shout
+and halloo again and again at the very top of my voice; but no answer
+reached me except the echo of my own words in a deep and dark gorge
+close by. This echo startled me and made me afraid, though I never could
+tell why. My loud calling had failed to produce any impression upon the
+boy whatever, and I felt sure that he was going to die. Without exactly
+knowing what I did, or what I was doing it for, I now ran to the right
+over the green grass, and then over rough stones up to a considerable
+elevation, and commenced hallooing again, when, much to my astonishment,
+I heard a great fluttering and loud sounds right below and within
+thirty feet of me. I sprang back as if some terrible enemy had attacked
+me; but I recovered myself in an instant, when I observed that the
+fluttering came from a number of birds which rose from among the rocks.
+The birds were brown and quite large, and I knew at once that they were
+eider-ducks, for I had seen them frequently before, while in the ship,
+and the sailors had told me their name.
+
+"Without having any distinct motive in doing so, I went down to where
+the birds had risen, when still others rose before me in great numbers.
+The rapidity of their flight, and the loud noise which they made,
+startled others still farther away, and thus flock after flock kept on
+rising from among the rocks, screaming, and flapping their wings in a
+very loud manner. Several hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, must have
+thus got upon their wings and commenced sailing overhead.
+
+"You must know that the eider-duck, in order to protect its eggs from
+the air when it goes off to get for food the little fish that it catches
+in the sea, plucks from its breast the fine feathers called _down_, in
+which it buries its eggs very carefully. In each of the nests I found
+there was a good handful of this down, and the thought at once occurred
+to me to gather a quantity of it, and cover the boy with it. I went to
+work immediately, and collected a great armful of it, and, hastening to
+where the boy was, I deposited it, and then hurried back for more. In a
+very short time I had accumulated a great pile, and, spreading a thick
+layer of it out close beside the boy, I drew him over upon it, and then
+covered him completely, and spread my overcoat as I had done before.
+
+"The value of putting this discovery to prompt use was soon seen. The
+boy, from being cold almost as a corpse, began to show some symptoms of
+returning warmth. His breathing seemed to be more rapid and free, and
+his eyelids began to move a little, though they did not fully open for
+some time; but it was then only for an instant, and I was not certain
+whether he recognized me or not. I called to him loudly by name, I
+rubbed his forehead, I pounded his hands, but he gave no further
+recognition; yet he was getting more and more warm, and in this
+circumstance I rested my hope.
+
+"Having accomplished this much, and feeling pretty sure that the boy
+would recover in the end, my mind very naturally fell back upon the
+contemplation of my own unhappy condition. I moved a few steps from the
+boy, and sat down upon a rock overlooking the sea. There was nothing
+there to inspire me with courage, when this question came uppermost in
+my mind: 'Suppose the boy does recover from his present stupor, how are
+we going to live?' Could anybody indeed be in a more sorry state? Let me
+enumerate:--
+
+"1st. I had been shipwrecked,--a fortune usually considered bad enough
+under any circumstances.
+
+"2d. I had lost all of my companions except a feeble boy whom I had
+rescued from death, and who was now helpless on my hands.
+
+"3d. I was cast away on a desert land, I knew not where, but very far
+towards the North Pole, as was clear enough from the immense quantities
+of ice which whitened the sea before me.
+
+"4th. I was chilly, and had no fire nor means of making any. Nor had I
+sufficient clothing to cover me.
+
+"5th. I was hungry, and had no food nor means of obtaining any.
+
+"6th. I was thirsty, and had nothing to drink, nor could I discover
+anything.
+
+"7th. I was without house or hut to shelter me.
+
+"8th. I was without weapons to defend myself against the attacks of wild
+beasts, if any there should be to molest me.
+
+"To counteract these evils I had four things, namely:--
+
+"1st. Life.
+
+"2d. The clothes on my back.
+
+"3d. A jack-knife.
+
+"4th. The mercy of Providence.
+
+"And this was all! What chance was there for me?
+
+"Little enough, one would think. And, in truth, there did not seem to be
+any at all. When I thought of all this, I buried my face in my hands,
+and moaned aloud, and the big tears began to gather in my eyes."
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+"O, wasn't it awful!" exclaimed William.
+
+"I don't see what you _could_ do, Captain Hardy," exclaimed Fred.
+
+"The poor boy," exclaimed Alice,--"I hope he didn't die. Did he, Captain
+Hardy?"--and the child began to imitate the example set by John Hardy,
+when he rested on the rock and looked out upon the icy sea and
+speculated upon the chances of his ever seeing again the home from which
+he had so foolishly run away.
+
+"Well, I'll tell you about that some other time," answered the Captain.
+"You may be sure I didn't die, at any rate, whatever may have happened
+to the boy; but just now I can tell you no more, for look there at that
+cloud coming up out of the sea, appearing, for all the world, as if it
+meant to pipe a squall after us, by and by; and now, with your leave,
+we'll slip home while the play's good. So here goes. Up anchor."
+
+"Ay, ay, sir," answered William, as he jumped forward very unnecessarily
+to help Main Brace, to whom the order to "up anchor" was given.
+
+"Halloo!" cried the Captain. "Turned sailor already, eh?"
+
+While Main Brace and William were getting in the anchor, the Captain was
+stowing away the awning, and then, the yacht being free, he spread the
+sails, and with his helm brought her to the wind; and there being now a
+lively breeze, the party were not long in crossing over to the Captain's
+anchoring-ground, where he turned so as to stop her as he had done
+before, and then cried out, "Stand by to let go the anchor," to which
+William answered, "Ay, ay, sir!" and when the boat had stopped, the
+Captain cried out again, "Let go," and William answered, "Ay, ay!"
+again, and let it go. Then, as soon as the Captain had secured his yacht
+and stowed away the sails, the whole party hurried ashore, and up the
+path to the Captain's cottage, for already great drops of rain were
+beginning to patter on the leaves, and the roaring wind was heard among
+the forest trees, giving the first warning cry of a coming shower.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+In which the Reader will discover, as the Little People
+did, how a Life was saved, and a Life was Begun.
+
+
+The Captain and his little friends had barely reached the cottage when
+the storm came down in earnest. The tall trees bowed their heads beneath
+the heavy blasts of wind, which shook them to their very roots, and the
+music of the rustling and sighing leaves was heard until the sounds were
+drowned by the fierce, dashing rain.
+
+"Now this is a regular blow-hard, and no mistake," exclaimed the
+Captain, as the party stood in the doorway watching the bending trees
+and the clouds that rushed so wildly overhead. "Good thing we picked up
+our anchor when we did, or just as like as not we should have had to lie
+there all night."
+
+"Why, we couldn't have stayed there in such a storm, could we, Captain
+Hardy?" said Fred, inquiringly.
+
+"To be sure we could," replied the Captain, "and snug enough too. Yes,
+indeed, the little _Alice_ would have ridden out the gale handsomely.
+Then we might have stowed ourselves away in the cabin as nice as could
+be, and have been just as dry as we are here."
+
+"And gone without supper," put in William, with a practical eye to the
+creature comforts.
+
+"Easy there, my lad," answered the Captain. "Do you think you catch an
+ancient mariner on the water without 'a shot in his locker'?"
+
+"Wouldn't it have been jolly,--eating supper in the cabin," exclaimed
+William; "and then, Captain Hardy, would you have gone on with the
+story?"
+
+"To be sure I would," answered the Captain.
+
+"Then I'm sorry we didn't stay there," replied William.
+
+"Good," said the Captain. "But what says little Alice?"
+
+"I'd rather hear the story where we are," was the reply. And as the
+lightning flashed and the thunder rattled more and more, the little girl
+crept closer to the old man's side.
+
+"Then I'm glad we came away," replied the captain; "and we'll go right
+on too, for I see you don't like listening to the storm."
+
+"O, I'm dreadfully afraid!" said Alice.
+
+"Go on, go on! Captain Hardy," exclaimed both the boys together.
+
+"But where was I when we left off to run away, in such a lubberly
+manner, from the storm?" inquired the Captain. "Let me see," and he put
+his finger to his nose, looking thoughtful.
+
+"You were just beginning to cry," put in William.
+
+"To be sure I was, that's it; and so would you cry, too, my boy, if you
+had an empty stomach under your belt, and nothing but a jack-knife in
+it," answered the Captain.
+
+"That I would," exclaimed William, "I should have cried my eyes out.
+But, Captain Hardy,--if you'll excuse me,--was the jack-knife in the
+empty stomach or in the belt?"
+
+"Ah, you little rogue! I'll not mind _you_ any more," said the Captain,
+laughing; "what would Fred have done?"
+
+"I think I should have broke my heart," said Fred, promptly.
+
+"That's not so easy done as crying," exclaimed the Captain. "But what
+says little Alice; what would she have done?"
+
+"I don't know," replied Alice, gently; "but I think I should have gone
+and tried to get the poor boy to speak to me, and then I would have
+tried to comfort him."
+
+"That's it, my charming little girl; that's just exactly what I did. But
+it wasn't so easy either, I can tell you; for the boy was still as dull
+as ever. I tried to rouse him in every way I could think of; but he
+would not arouse. I spoke to him, I called to him, I shouted to him; but
+he would not answer me a single word."
+
+"What was his name, Captain Hardy? Won't you tell us his name?" asked
+Fred.
+
+"Ah! that I should have done before; but I forgot it. His name was
+Richard Dean. The sailors always called him 'the Dean.' He was a bright,
+lively boy, and everybody liked him. To see him in such a state made my
+very heart ache. But he was growing warm under his great load of
+eider-down, and that I was glad to see; and at last he showed some
+feeble signs of consciousness. His eyes opened wide, his lips moved. I
+thought he was saying something, though I could not understand for some
+time what it was. Then I could make out, after a while, that he was
+murmuring, 'Mother, mother!' Then he looked at me, wildly like, and then
+he turned his head away, and then he turned it back and looked at me
+again. 'Hardy,' said he, in a very low voice, 'is that you?' 'Yes,' I
+said; 'and I'm glad you know me,'--which you may be very sure I was.
+
+"But the poor fellow's mind soon wandered away from me again; and I
+could see that it was disturbed by visions of something dreadful.
+'There! there!' he cried, 'it's tumbling on me!--the ice! the ice! it's
+tumbling on me!' and he tried to spring up from where he lay. 'There's
+nothing there at all, Dean,' said I, as I pressed him down. 'Come, look
+up; don't you see me?' He was quiet in an instant; and then, looking up
+into my face, he said, 'Yes, it's Hardy, I know; but what has happened
+to us,--anything?' Without pausing to give me time to answer, he closed
+his eyes and went on,--'O, I've had an awful dream! I thought an iceberg
+was falling on the ship. I saw it coming, and sprang away! As it fell,
+the ship went down, and I went down with it,--down, down, down; then I
+came up, clinging to some pieces of the wreck. Another man was with me;
+we were drifted with the waves to the land. I kept above the water until
+I saw somebody running towards me. When he had nearly reached me, I
+drowned. O, it was an awful dream!--Did you come to call me,
+Hardy?'--and he opened wide his eyes. 'Is it four bells? Did you come to
+call me?'--'No, no, I haven't come to call you, it isn't four bells
+yet,' I answered, scarcely knowing what I said; 'sleep on, Dean.'--'I'm
+glad you didn't come to call me, Hardy. I want to sleep. The dream
+haunts me. I dreamed that I was fast to something that hurt me, when I
+tried to get away. It was an awful dream,--awful, awful, awful!'--and
+his voice died away into the faintest whisper, and then it ceased
+entirely. 'Sleep, sleep on, poor Dean!' murmured I; and I prayed with
+all my heart that his reason might not be gone.
+
+"'What could I do?' 'What should I do?' were the questions which soon
+crossed my mind respecting the Dean. There was, however, one very
+obvious answer,--'Let him alone'; so I rose up from his side, and saw,
+as I did so, that he was now sleeping soundly,--a genuine, quiet sleep.
+He had become quite warm; and, after some minutes' watching, it appeared
+to me very likely that he would, after a while, wake up all right,--a
+conclusion which made me very happy; that is, as happy as one so
+situated could be.
+
+"After leaving the Dean I once more considered my condition. It seemed
+to me that I had grown many years older in these few hours, and I
+commenced reasoning with myself. Instead of sitting down on the rock,
+and beginning to cry, as I had done before, I sat down to reflect. And
+this is the way I reflected:--
+
+"'1st,' I said, 'while there is life there is hope'; and,
+
+"'2d. So long as the land remains unexplored, I have a right to conclude
+that it is inhabited'; and,
+
+"'3d. Being inhabited, there is a good chance of our being saved; for
+even the worst savages cannot refuse two such helpless creatures food
+and clothing.'
+
+"Having thus reflected, I arrived at these conclusions respecting what I
+should do; namely,--
+
+"'1st. I will go at once in search of these inhabitants, and when I find
+them, I will beg them to come and help me with a sick companion.'
+
+"'2d. On my way I will make my dinner off raw eggs, of which there are
+so many hereabout, for I am so frightfully hungry that I can no longer
+resist the repulsive food.'
+
+"'3d. I will also hunt on my way for some water, as I am so thirsty that
+I scarcely know what to do.'
+
+"'4th. For the rest I will trust to Providence.'
+
+"Having thus resolved, I immediately set out, and in a very few minutes
+I had eaten a whole dozen raw eggs,--and that, too, without any disgust
+at all. Then, as I walked on a little farther, I discovered that there
+were a multitude of small streams dashing over the rocks, the water
+being quite pure and clear,--coming from great snow-banks on the
+hill-tops, which were melting away before the sun.
+
+"Being thus refreshed with meat and drink, it occurred to me to climb up
+to an elevation, and see what more I could discover. The ice was very
+thick and closely packed together all along the shore; but beyond where
+the wreck had happened the sea was quite open, only a few straggling
+bits of field-ice mixed up with a great many icebergs,--indeed, the
+icebergs were too thick to be counted. I thought I saw a boat turned
+upside down; but it was so far away that I could not make out distinctly
+what it was. It was clear enough to me that nobody had been saved from
+the wreck except the Dean and myself.
+
+"As I looked around, it appeared very evident to me that the land on
+which I stood was an island.
+
+"After hallooing several times, without any other result than to startle
+a great number of birds, as I had done before, I set out again, briskly
+jumping from rock to rock, the birds all the while springing up before
+me and fluttering away in great flocks. There seemed to be no end to
+them.
+
+"As I went along, I soon found that I was turning rapidly to the left,
+and that I was not only on an island, but on a very small one at that. I
+could not have been more than two hours in going all the way around it,
+although I had to clamber most of the way over very stony places,
+stopping frequently to shout at the top of my voice, with the hope of
+being heard by some human beings; but not a soul was there to answer me,
+nor could I discover the least sign of anybody ever having been there.
+
+"This failure greatly discouraged me, but still I was not so much cast
+down as you might think. Perhaps it was because I had eaten so many
+eggs, and was no longer hungry; for, let me tell you, when one's stomach
+gets empty, the courage has pretty much all gone out of him.
+
+"Besides this, I had made some discoveries which seemed in some way to
+forebode good, though I could not exactly say why. I found the birds
+thicker and thicker as I proceeded. Their nests were in some places so
+close together that I could hardly walk without treading on their eggs.
+I also saw several foxes, some of which were white and others were dark
+gray. As I walked on, they scampered away over the stones ahead of me,
+and then perched themselves on a tall rock near by, apparently very much
+astonished to see me. They seemed to look upon me as an intruder, and I
+thought they would ask, 'What business have you coming here?' They had
+little idea how glad I should have been to be almost anywhere else,--on
+the farm from which I had run away, for instance,--and leave them in
+undisputed possession of their miserable island. They seemed to be very
+sleek and well-contented foxes; for they were gorging themselves with
+raw eggs, just as I had been doing, and they were evidently the terror
+of the birds. I saw one who had managed in some way to capture a duck
+nearly as large as himself, and was bouncing up the hill--to his den, no
+doubt--with the poor thing's neck in his mouth, and its body across his
+shoulder.
+
+"Then, too, I discovered, from the east side of the island, where the
+ice was solid, a great number of seals lying in the sun, as if asleep,
+on the ice; and when I came around on the west side, where the sea was
+open, great schools of walruses, with their long tusks and ugly heads,
+were sporting about in the water as if at play, and an equally large
+number of the narwhal, with their long horns, were also playing there.
+Only that they are larger, and have these hideous-looking tusks,
+walruses are much like seals. The narwhal is a small species of whale,
+being about twenty feet long, and spotted something like an iron-gray
+horse. Its great peculiarity is the horn, which grows, like that of a
+sword-fish, straight out of the nose, and is nearly half as long as the
+body. Like all the other whales, it must come up to the surface of the
+water to breathe; and its breathing is done through a hole in the top of
+the head, like any other whale's. You know the breathing of a whale is
+called 'spouting,' or 'blowing,'--that is, when he breathes out it is so
+called, and when he does this he makes the spray fly up into the air.
+
+"This breathing of the largest whales can be seen several miles; that
+is, I should say, the spray thrown up by their breath. So you see the
+common expression of the whale-fishers, 'There she blows!' is a very
+good one; for sometimes, when the whale is very large, the spray looks
+like a small waterspout in the sea.
+
+"Besides the narwhal, which I have told you about, I saw another kind of
+whale, even smaller still. This is called the white whale, though it
+isn't exactly white, but a sort of cream-color. They had no horns,
+however, like the narwhal; and they skimmed along through the water in
+great numbers, and very close together, and when they come to the
+surface they breathe so quickly that the noise they make is like a sharp
+hiss.
+
+[Illustration: John Hardy making Discoveries.]
+
+"Considering the numbers of these animals,--the seals and walruses and
+narwhals and white whales,--I was not surprised, when I went close down
+to the beach, to find a great quantity of their bones there, evidently
+of animals that had died in the sea and been washed ashore. Indeed, as
+I went along a little farther, and had reached nearly to the place where
+I had left the Dean, I found the whole carcass of a narwhal lying among
+the rocks, where it had been thrown by the waves, and very near it I
+discovered also a dead seal. About these there were several foxes, which
+went scampering away as soon as they saw me. They had evidently come
+there to get their dinner; for they had torn a great hole in the side of
+the dead narwhal, and two of them had begun on the seal. I thought if I
+could get some of the skins of these pretty foxes, they would be nice
+warm things to wrap the Dean's hands and feet in, so I began flinging
+stones at them as hard as I could; but the cunning beasts dodged every
+one of them, and, running away up the hillside, chattered in such a
+lively manner that it seemed as if they were laughing at me, which
+provoked me so much that I went on vowing to get the better of them in
+one way or another.
+
+"All this time, you must remember, I had left the poor Dean by himself,
+and you may be sure I was very anxious to get back to him; but before I
+tell you anything more about him, I must stop a minute longer to
+describe more particularly this island on which I had been cast away.
+You must understand there were no trees on it at all; and, indeed, there
+were scarcely any signs of vegetation whatever. On the south side, where
+we landed after the wreck, the hillside was covered for a short distance
+with thick grass, and above this green slope there were great tall
+cliffs like the palisades of the Hudson River,--which you must all see
+some time; but all the rest of the way around the island I saw scarcely
+anything but rough rocks, very sharp and hard to walk over. In some
+places, however, where the streams of melted snow had spread out in the
+level places, patches of moss had grown, making a sort of marsh. Here I
+discovered some flowers in full bloom, and among them were the buttercup
+and dandelion, just like what we find in the meadows here, only not a
+quarter so large; but my head was too much filled with more serious
+thoughts at that time to care about flowers.
+
+"You can hardly imagine anything so dreary as this island was. Indeed,
+nothing could be worse except the prospect of living on it all alone,
+without any shelter, or fire, or proper clothing, and without any
+apparent chance of ever escaping from it.
+
+"I found, however, a sort of apology for a tree growing among the moss
+beds. I have learned since that it is called a 'dwarf willow.' The stem
+of the tree, if such it might be called, was not larger than my little
+finger; and its branches, which lay flat on the ground, were in no case
+more than a foot long.
+
+"Besides these willows, I discovered also, growing about the rocks, a
+trailing plant, with very small stem, and thick, dry leaves. It had a
+pretty little purple blossom on it, and was the only thing I saw that
+looked as if it would burn. I can assure you that I wished hard enough
+that I had some way of proving whether it would burn or not. However,
+since I had discovered so many other things on this my first journey
+around the island, I was not without hope that I should light upon some
+way of starting a fire. So I named the plant at once 'the fire plant;'
+but I have since been told by a wise doctor that I met down in Boston,
+that its right name is 'Andromeda.' It is a sort of heather, like the
+Scotch heather that you have all heard about, only it is as much smaller
+than the Scotch heather as the dwarf willow I told you of is smaller
+than the tall willow-tree that grows out there in front of the door.
+
+"Although I had not, as I have said, discovered any natives living on
+the island, yet I came back from my journey feeling less disappointed
+than I would have thought. No doubt my anxiety to see how the Dean was
+so occupied my mind that I did not dwell as much upon my own unhappy
+condition as I otherwise would have done. In truth, I think the Dean
+must have saved me from despair and death; for, if I had not felt
+obliged to exert myself in his behalf, I must have sunk under the heavy
+load of my misfortunes.
+
+"When I came back to the Dean, I found that the poor boy was still
+sleeping soundly,--a sort of dead, heavy sleep. At first, I thought to
+arouse him; but then, again, since I found he was quite warm, I
+concluded the best thing was not to disturb him. Some color had come
+into his face; indeed, there was quite a flush there, and he seemed to
+be a little feverish. The only thing I now feared was that his reason
+might have left him; and this thought filled me with a kind of dread of
+seeing him rouse up, just as every one, when he fears some great
+calamity, tries to postpone the realization of it as long as possible.
+So I suffered him to remain sleeping, and satisfied myself with watching
+his now somewhat heavy breathing for a little while, when, growing
+chilly (for the sun had by this time gone behind the island, thus
+leaving us in the shadow of the tall cliffs), I began to move about
+again. I set to work collecting more of the eider-down, so that, when I
+should be freed from my anxiety about the Dean, I might roll myself up
+under this warm covering and get some sleep; for, although my mind was
+much excited, yet I was growing sleepy, besides being chilly. I also
+collected a number of eggs, and ate some more of them; and, using
+several of the shells for cups, I brought some water, setting the cups
+up carefully in the grass, knowing that when the Dean opened his eyes he
+must needs be thirsty as well as hungry.
+
+"All this being done, I fell to reflecting again, and, as was most
+natural, my thoughts first ran upon what I should do to make a fire. I
+had found--or at least I thought I had found--something that would burn,
+as I have said before; but what should I do for _the first spark_? True,
+with my jack-knife for a steel, and a flint-stone, of which there were
+plenty, I could strike a spark without any difficulty; but what was
+there to strike it into, so that it would catch and make a blaze? I knew
+that in some countries people make a blaze by rubbing two pieces of dry
+wood together; but this I could not do, as I had not a particle of wood.
+In other countries, I knew, they have punk, into which they strike a
+spark, and the spark will not go out until the punk is all burned up, so
+that they have only to blow it on some inflammable substance until a
+blaze comes; but where was I to get the punk from? I had also heard that
+fire had been made with lenses of glass, which, being held up to the
+sun, concentrate the rays and make a great heat, sufficient to set wood
+and like combustible things on fire; but I had no lens. Of course, I
+have no need to tell you that I had no matches, such as we have
+now-a-days here.
+
+"Thus the night wore on. I say _night_, but you must bear in mind, as I
+told you before, that there was really no night at all,--the sun being
+above the horizon all the time; and the only difference now in the
+different periods of the day was, that when the sun was in the south it
+shone upon us, while when it was at the north we were under the shadow
+of the cliffs. The sun, you must observe, in the Arctic regions, circles
+around during the summer, only a little way above the horizon, never
+rising overhead, as it does here, but being always quite low down; and
+hence it never gives a very strong heat, although the air is sometimes
+warm enough to be very comfortable.
+
+"I was glad when the shadow of the cliff passed from over me, and the
+sun was once more in view.
+
+"I now grew quite warm, though my great fatigue did not vanish; but I
+was so anxious about the Dean that I would not sleep, and kept myself
+awake by moving about all the time, staying always near the Dean. At
+length, soon after the sun appeared, the boy began to show some
+restlessness; and as I approached him, I found that his eyes were wide
+open. He raised himself a little on one arm, and turned towards me as I
+came up to him, and looked straight at me, so calmly and intelligently
+that I saw at once he had come to his senses entirely; and so rejoiced
+was I, that, without thinking at all about what I was doing, I fell down
+beside him, and clasped him in my arms, and cried out, 'O Dean, Dean!'
+over and over a great many times. You cannot imagine how glad I was!
+
+"'Why, Hardy,' said he, in a very feeble voice, 'where are we? What's
+the matter? What has happened to us?' Seeing that it was useless for me
+to attempt to evade the question, I told him all the circumstances of
+the shipwreck, and how I had carried him there, and what I had been
+doing. I thought at first this would disturb him, but it did not seem to
+in the least. After I had finished, he simply said: 'I thought it was
+all a dream. It comes back to me now. I remember a frightful crash, of
+being in the water on the wreck, of seeing some one approaching me, of
+being held down first by a drowning man and then by a rope, of trying to
+free myself, and then I must have swooned, for I remember nothing more.
+I have now a vague remembrance of some one talking to me about a dream I
+had, but nothing distinct.'
+
+"'But,' said I, 'Dean, don't talk any more about it just now, it will
+fatigue you; tell me how you feel.' 'No,' answered he, 'it does not
+fatigue me, and I want to collect myself. Things are getting clearer to
+me. My memory returns to me gradually. I see the terrified crew. It was
+but an instant. I heard the crash. The great body of the ice fell right
+amidships,--right upon the galley. Poor cook! he must have been killed
+instantly. Some of the crew jumped overboard; I tried to, but got no
+farther than the bulwarks, and then was in the water; I don't know how I
+got there. When I came up there was a man under me, and I was tangled
+among some rigging, but was lifted up out of the water on some large
+mass of wreck. The man I told you of tried to get up too; but his feet
+were caught, and I saw him drowning. I saw another man holding on to the
+wreck, but a piece of ice struck him, and he must have fallen off
+immediately.'
+
+"'Dean, Dean!' said I, 'do stop! you are feverish; quiet yourself, and
+we'll talk of these things by and by';--and the boy fell back quite
+exhausted. His skin was very hot, and his face flushed. 'O my head, my
+head!' exclaimed he; 'it pains me dreadfully! Am I hurt?' and he put his
+hand to the side of his head where he had been struck, and, finding that
+he was wounded, said: 'I remember it now perfectly. A heavy wave came,
+and was tossing a piece of timber over me, and I tried to avoid being
+struck by it. After that I remember nothing. It must have struck me. I'm
+not much hurt,--am I?'
+
+"'No, Dean,' I answered, 'not much hurt, only a little bruised.'
+
+"'Have you any water, Hardy?' he asked, 'I am so thirsty!'
+
+"It was fortunate that I had brought some in the eggshells, and in a
+moment I had given him a drink. It did me good to see him smile, as I
+handed him the water, and ask where I got such odd cups from. 'Thanks,
+thanks!' said he; 'I'm better now.' Then after a moment's pause he
+added, 'I want to get up and see where we are. I'm very weak; won't you
+help me?' But I told him that I would not do it now, for the present he
+must lie quiet. 'Then raise me up and let me look about.' So I raised
+him up, and he took first a look at the strange pile of eider-down that
+was upon him, and then at the ice-covered sea, but he spoke not a word.
+Then he lay down, and after a short time said calmly: 'I see it all now.
+Hard,--isn't it? But we must do the best we can. I feel that I'll soon
+be well, and will not be a trouble to you long. Do you know that until
+this moment I could hardly get it out of my head that I had been
+dreaming? We must trust in Heaven, Hardy, and do the best we can.'
+
+"Being now fully satisfied as to the complete recovery of the Dean, I
+gave myself no further concern about watching him; but at once, after he
+had, in his quiet way, asked me if I was not very tired, I buried myself
+up in the heap of eider-down close beside him, and was soon as deeply
+buried in a sound sleep."
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Captain, evidently thinking that he had gone far enough for one day,
+now broke off suddenly. The children had listened to the recital more
+eagerly than on any previous occasion,--so much so, indeed, that they
+had wholly disregarded the storm; and little Alice was so absorbed in
+learning the fate of the poor shipwrecked Dean, that her fears about the
+thunder and lightning had been quite forgotten. When the Captain paused,
+the storm had passed over, the sun had burst through the scattering
+clouds, and in the last lingering drops his silver rays were melted into
+gorgeous hues; for
+
+    "A rainbow--thrown brightly
+        Across the dark sky--
+    (Soft curving, proud arching
+        In beauty on high)
+
+    "Had circled the even,--
+        A bridal ring, given
+    To wed earth with heaven,
+        As it smiled 'neath the veil of the glittering rain."
+
+The little birds had come out of their hiding-places, and were merrily
+singing,
+
+"Farewell to the rain, the beautiful rain";
+
+and the party of little folks that had been hidden away in the
+"Mariner's Rest," following their example, were soon gayly hastening
+across the fresh fields,--the old man carrying laughing Alice in his
+arms, to keep her tender feet from the wet grass.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+In which the Mariner's Rest and the Ancient Mariner
+himself receive particular Attention.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+The next day being Sunday, the Captain's little friends did not go down
+to see him, and the day after being stormy, they could not. So, when
+Tuesday came, they were all the more eager for the visit that it had
+been delayed; and accordingly they hurried off at a very early hour.
+Indeed, the old man was only too glad to have them come down at any
+time, for he had during these past few days become so used to their
+being with him, and he had taken such a fancy to them, that he felt
+himself quite lost and lonely when a day passed by without seeing them.
+He was, as we have already seen, rather afraid they might disturb him if
+he said, "Come at any hour you please," instead of "Come at four
+o'clock, or three, or two o'clock," as the case might be; but he had
+discovered them to be such well-behaved and gentle children, that he
+made up his mind they could never trouble or annoy him. So when last
+they parted, he said to them, "Come in the morning, if you like, and
+play all day about the grounds, and if I have work to do you must not
+mind. Nobody will disturb you";--and, in truth, there was nobody there
+to disturb them, for besides the old man and his boy, Main Brace, there
+was no living thing about the house, if we except two fine old
+Newfoundland dogs which the Captain had brought home with him from his
+last voyage, and which he called "Port" and "Starboard." He had also a
+flock of handsome chickens, and some foreign ducks. "And now," said he,
+"when you have seen all these, and Main Brace, and me, you have seen my
+family, for this is all the family that I have, unless I count the
+pretty little birds that hop and skip and sing among the trees."
+
+Main Brace did all the work about the house, except what the Captain did
+himself. He cooked, and set the Captain's table, and kept the Captain's
+house in order generally. As for the house itself, there was not much of
+it to keep in order. We have already seen that it was very small and but
+one story high. There was no hall in it, and only five rooms upon the
+floor. Let us look into it more particularly.
+
+Entering it from the front through the little porch covered over with
+honeysuckle vines that are smelling sweet all the summer through, we
+come at once into the largest of the rooms, where the Captain takes his
+meals and does many other things. But he never calls it his dining-room.
+Nothing can induce him to call it anything but his "quarter-deck." On
+the right-hand side there are two doors, and there are two more on the
+left-hand side, and directly before us there are two windows, looking
+out into the Captain's garden, where there are fruits and vegetables of
+every kind growing in abundance. The first door on the right opens into
+a little room where Main Brace sleeps. This the Captain calls the
+"forecastle." The other door on the right opens into the kitchen, which
+the Captain calls his "galley." The first door on the left is closed,
+but the second opens into what the Captain calls his "cabin," and this
+connects with a little room behind the door that is closed, which he
+calls his "state-room,"--and, in truth, it looks more like a state-room
+of a ship than a chamber. It has no bed in it, but a narrow berth on one
+side, just like a state-room berth. All sorts of odd-fashioned clothes
+are hanging on the walls, which the Captain says he has worn in the
+different countries where he has travelled. Odd though this state-room
+is, it is not half so odd as the Captain's cabin.
+
+Let us examine this cabin of the Captain. There is an old table in the
+centre of it. There are a few old books in an old-fashioned bookcase.
+There is no carpet to be seen, but the floor is almost covered over with
+skins of different kinds of animals, among which are a Bengal tiger, a
+Polar bear, a South American ocelot, a Rocky Mountain wolf, and a
+Siberian fox. In a great glass case, standing against the wall, there is
+a variety of stuffed birds. On the very top of this case there is a huge
+white-headed eagle, with his large wings spread out, and at the bottom
+of it there is a pelican with no wings at all. On the right-hand side
+there is an enormous albatross, and on the left-hand side there is a
+tall red flamingo; while in the very centre a snowy owl stands straight
+up and looks straight at you out of his great glass eyes. And then there
+are still other birds,--birds little and birds big, birds bright and
+birds dingy, all scattered about wherever there is room, each sitting or
+standing on its separate perch, and looking, for all the world, as if
+it were alive and would fly away only for the glass.
+
+On the walls of this singular room are hanging all sorts of singular
+weapons, and many other things which the Captain has picked up in his
+travels. There is a Turkish scimitar, a Moorish gun, an Italian
+stiletto, a Japanese "happy despatch," a Norman battle-axe, besides
+spears and lances and swords of shapes and kinds too numerous to
+mention. In one corner, on a bracket, there is a model of a ship, in
+another a Chinese junk, in a third an old Dutch clock, and in the fourth
+there is a stone idol of the Incas, while above the door there is the
+figure-head of a small vessel, probably a schooner.
+
+When the children came down, running all the way at a very lively rate,
+the Captain was in his cabin overhauling all these treasures, and
+dusting and placing them so that they would show to the very best
+advantage. Indeed, there were so many "traps," as he called them,
+hanging and lying about, that the place might well have been called a
+"curiosity shop" rather than a cabin. In truth, it had nothing of the
+look of a cabin about it.
+
+When the Captain heard the children coming, he said to himself, "I'll
+give them a surprise to-day," and he looked out through the open window,
+and called to them. They answered with a merry laugh, and, running
+around to the door, rushed into the "quarter-deck," and were with the
+Captain in a twinkling.
+
+"O, what a jolly place!" exclaimed William; "such a jolly lot of things!
+Why didn't you show them to us before, Captain Hardy?"
+
+"One thing at a time, my lad; I can't show you everything at once,"
+answered the old man.
+
+"But where did you get them all, Captain Hardy?"
+
+"As for that, I picked them up all about the world, and I could tell a
+story about every one of them."
+
+"O, isn't that splendid?--won't you tell us now?" inquired William.
+
+"And knock off telling you what the Dean and I were doing up there by
+the North Pole, on that island without a name?"
+
+William was a little puzzled to know what reply he should make to that,
+for he thought the Captain looked as if he did not half like what he had
+said; so he satisfied himself with exclaiming, "No, no, no," a great
+number of times, and then asked, "But won't you tell us all about them
+when you get out of the North Pole scrape?"
+
+"Maybe so, my lad, maybe so; we'll see about that; one thing at a time
+is a good rule in story-telling as well as in other matters. And now you
+may look at all these things, and when you are satisfied, and I have got
+done putting them to rights, we'll go on with the story again."
+
+The children were greatly delighted with everything they saw, and they
+passed a very happy hour, helping the Captain to put his cabin in
+"ship-shape order," as he said. Then they all crowded up into one
+corner, and the Captain, seated on an old camp-stool, which had
+evidently seen much service in a great number of places, did as he had
+promised.
+
+What he said, however, deserves a chapter by itself; and so we'll turn
+another leaf and start fresh again.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+Contains a Recovery, a Discovery, and a Disappointment.
+
+
+"And now," said the Captain, "what was the young man doing, when we
+knocked off the other day, after the storm?"
+
+William, whose memory was always as good as his words were ready, said
+he was "just going to sleep."
+
+"True, that's the thing; and I went to sleep and slept soundly, I can
+tell you. And this you may well enough believe when you bear in mind how
+much I had passed through since the last sleep I had on board the
+ship,--for since then had come the shipwreck, the saving of the Dean and
+carrying him ashore, the walk around the island, besides all the anxiety
+and worriment of mind in consequence of my own unhappy situation and the
+Dean's uncertain fate.
+
+"More than twenty-four hours had elapsed since the shipwreck, and if I
+tell you that I slept full twelve hours, without once waking up, you
+must not be at all surprised.
+
+"When I opened my eyes again, we were in the shadow of the cliffs once
+more; that is, the sun had gone around to the north again. The Dean was
+already wide awake. When I asked him how he was, he said he felt much
+better, only his head still pained him greatly, and he was very thirsty
+and hungry.
+
+"I got up immediately, and assisted the Dean to rise. He was a little
+dizzy at first, but after sitting down for a few minutes on a rock he
+recovered himself. Then I brought him some water in an egg-shell to
+drink. And then I gave him a raw egg, which he swallowed as if it had
+been the daintiest morsel in the world. 'It's lucky, isn't it,' said he,
+'that there are so many eggs about?' After a moment I observed that he
+was laughing, which very much surprised me, as that would have been
+about the last thing that ever would have entered into my head to do.
+'Do you know,' he asked, 'what a very ridiculous figure we are cutting?
+Look, we are all covered over with feathers. I have heard of people
+being tarred and feathered, but never heard of anything like this. Let's
+pick each other.'
+
+"Sure enough we were literally covered over with the down in which we
+had been sleeping, and when I saw what a jest the poor Dean, with his
+sore head, made of the plight we were in, I forgot all my own troubles
+and joined in the laugh with him.
+
+"We now fell to work picking each other, as the Dean had suggested, and
+were soon as clean of feathers as any other well-plucked geese.
+
+"By this time the Dean's clothes had become entirely dry; so each
+dressed himself in the clothes that belonged to him, and then we started
+over to the nearest brook, where we bathed our hands and faces, drying
+them on an old bandanna handkerchief which I was lucky enough to have in
+my pocket. I had to support the Dean a little as we went along, for he
+was very weak; but in spite of this his spirits were excellent, and when
+he saw, for the first time, the ducks fly up, he said, 'What a great
+pair of silly dunces they must take us for,--coming into such a place as
+this.'
+
+"After we had refreshed ourselves at the brook, and eaten some more
+eggs, we very naturally began to talk. I related to the Dean, more
+particularly than I had done before, the events of the shipwreck and our
+escape, and what I had discovered on the island, and then made some
+allusion to the prospect ahead of us. To my great surprise, the Dean was
+not apparently in the least cast down about it. In truth, he took it
+much more resignedly, and had a more hopeful eye to the future, than I
+had. 'If,' said he, 'it is God's will that we shall live, he will
+furnish us the means; if not, we can but die. I wouldn't mind it half so
+much, if my poor mother only knew what was become of me.' This
+reflection seemed to sadden him for a moment, and I thought I saw a tear
+in his eye; but he brightened up instantly as a great flock of ducks
+went whizzing overhead. 'Well,' exclaimed he, 'there seems to be no lack
+of something to eat here anyway, and we ought to manage to catch it
+somehow, and live until a ship comes along and takes us off.'
+
+"The Dean took such a hopeful view of the future that we were soon
+chatting in a very lively way about everything that concerned our
+escape, and here I must have dwelt largely upon the satisfaction which I
+took in rescuing the Dean, for the little fellow said: 'Well, I suppose
+I ought to thank you very much for saving me; but the truth is, all the
+agony of death being over with me when you pulled me out, the chief
+benefit falls on you, as you seem so much rejoiced about it; but I'll be
+grateful as I can, and show it by not troubling you any more. See, I'm
+almost well. I feel better and better every minute,--only I'm sore here
+on the head where I got the crack.'
+
+"To tell the truth, in thinking of other things, I had neglected, or
+rather quite forgotten, the Dean's wounded head; so now, my attention
+being called to it, I examined it very carefully, and found that it was
+nothing more than a bad bruise, with a cut near the centre of it about
+half an inch long. Having washed it carefully, I bound my bandanna
+handkerchief about it, and we once more came back to consider what we
+should do.
+
+"Of course, the first thing we thought of and talked about was how we
+should go about starting a fire; next in importance to this was that we
+should have a place to shelter us. So far as concerned our food and
+drink, our immediate necessities were provided for, as we had the little
+rivulet close at hand, and any quantity of eggs to be had for the
+gathering, and we set about collecting a great number of them at once;
+for in a few days we thought it very likely that most of them would have
+little ducks in them, as, indeed, many of them had already. Another
+thing we settled upon was, that we would never both go to sleep at the
+same time, nor quit our present side of the island together; but one of
+us would be always on the lookout for a ship, as we both thought that,
+since our ship had come that way, others would be very likely to, though
+neither of us had the remotest idea in the world as to where we were,
+any more than that we were on an island somewhere in the northern sea.
+
+"But the fire which we wanted so much to warm ourselves and cook our
+food,--what should we do for that? Here was the great question; and
+fire, fire, fire, was the one leading idea running through both our
+heads;--we thought of fire when we were gathering eggs, we talked of
+fire when, later in the day, we sat upon the rocks, resting ourselves,
+and we dreamed of fire when we fell asleep again,--not this time,
+however, under the eider-down where we had slept before, but on the
+green grass of the hillside, in the warm sunshine, under my overcoat,
+for we had turned night into day, and were determined to sleep when the
+sun was shining on us at the south, and do what work we had to do when
+we were in the shade.
+
+"Every method that either of us had ever heard of for making a fire was
+remembered and talked over; but there was nothing that appeared to suit
+our case. I found a hard flint, and by striking it on the back of my
+knife-blade I saw that there was no difficulty in getting any number of
+sparks, but we had nothing that would catch the sparks when struck; so
+that we did not seem to be any better off than we were before; and, as I
+have stated already, we fell asleep again, each in his turn,--'watch and
+watch,' as the Dean playfully called it, and as they have it on
+shipboard,--without having arrived at any other result than that of
+being much discouraged.
+
+"When we had been again refreshed with sleep, we determined to make a
+still further exploration of the island; so, after once more eating our
+fill of raw eggs, we set out. The Dean, being still weak and his head
+still paining him very much from the hurt, remained at the lookout. He
+could, however, walk up and down for a few hundred yards without losing
+sight of the only part of the sea that was free enough of ice to allow a
+ship to approach the island. After a while he came to where I had
+discovered the dead seal and narwhal lying on the beach, when upon my
+first journey round the island. I had told him about them, as indeed I
+had of everything I had seen, and he was curious to try if he could not
+catch a fox; but his fortune in that particular was not better than
+mine.
+
+"For myself, I had a very profitable journey, as I found a place among
+the rocks which might, with some labor in fixing it up, give us shelter.
+I was searching for a cave, but nothing of the sort could I come across;
+but at the head of a little valley, very near to where I left the Dean,
+I discovered a place that would, in some measure at least, answer the
+same purpose. Its situation gave it the still further advantage, that we
+commanded a perfect view of the sea from the front of it.
+
+"I have said that it was not exactly a cave. It was rather a natural
+tent, as it were, of solid rocks. At the foot of a very steep slope
+there were several large masses of rough rocks heaped together,
+evidently having one day slid down from the cliffs above, and afterwards
+smaller rocks, being broken off, had piled up behind them. Two of these
+large rocks had come together in such a manner as to leave an open space
+between them. I should say this space was ten or twelve feet across at
+the bottom, and, rising up about ten feet high, joined at the top like
+the roof of a house. The rocks were pressed against them behind, so as
+completely to close the outlet in that direction. I climbed into this
+place, and was convinced that if we had strength to close up the front
+entrance with a wall, we should have a complete protection from the
+weather. But then, when I reflected how, if we did seek shelter there,
+we should keep ourselves warm, I had great misgivings; for then came up
+the question of all questions, 'What should we do for a fire?'
+
+"Although this place was not a cave, yet I spoke to the Dean about it as
+such, and by that name we came to know it; so I will now use the term,
+inappropriate though it is. I also told the Dean about some other birds
+that I had discovered in great numbers. They were very small, and seemed
+to have their nests among the rocks all along the opposite side of the
+island, where they were swarming on the hillside, and flying overhead in
+even greater flocks than the ducks. I knew they were called 'little
+auks,' from descriptions the sailors had given me of them.
+
+[Illustration: The Dean makes provision for a change of diet.]
+
+"'But look here what I've got,' exclaimed the Dean, with an air of
+triumph, as soon as I came up with him. 'See this big duck!'
+
+"The fellow had actually caught a duck, and in a most ingenious manner.
+Seeing the ducks fly off their nests, the happy idea struck him that, if
+he could only contrive a trap, or 'dead-fall,' he might catch them when
+they came back. So he selected a nest favorable to his purpose, and
+then piled up some stones about it, making a solid wall on one side of
+it; then he put a thin narrow stone on the other side, and on this he
+supported still another stone that was very heavy. Then he took from his
+pocket a piece of twine which he was fortunate enough to have, and tied
+one end of it to the thin narrow stone, and, holding on to the other
+end, hid himself behind some rocks near by. When the duck came back to
+her nest, he jerked the thin narrow stone away by a strong pull on the
+twine string, and down came the heavy stone upon the duck's back. 'You
+should have heard the old thing quacking,' said he, evidently forgetting
+everything else but the sport of catching the bird: 'but I soon gave her
+neck a twist, and here we are ready for a dinner, when we only find a
+way to cook it. Have you discovered any way to make a fire yet?'
+
+"I had to confess that on the subject of fire I was yet as ignorant as
+ever.
+
+"'Do you know,' continued he, 'that I have got an idea?'
+
+"'What is it?' said I.
+
+"'Why,' replied he, 'you told me something about people making fire with
+a lens made of glass. Now, as I was down on the beach and looked at the
+ice there, I thought, why not make a lens out of ice,--it is as clear as
+glass?'
+
+"'How ridiculous!' said I; 'but suppose you could, what will you set on
+fire with it?'
+
+"'In the first place,' he answered, 'the pockets of my coat are made of
+some sort of cotton stuff, and if we could only set fire to that,
+couldn't we blow a blaze into the fire plant, as you call it? See, I've
+gathered a great heap of it.' And sure enough he had, for there was a
+pile of it nearly as high as his head, looking like a great heap of dry
+and green leaves.
+
+"The idea did not seem to me to be worth much, but still, as it was the
+only one that had been suggested by either of us, it was at least worthy
+of trial; so we went down to the beach, and, finding a lump of ice about
+twice as big as my two fists, we began chipping it with my knife into
+the shape we wanted it, and then we ground it off with a stone, and then
+rubbed it over with our warm hands until we had worn it down perfectly
+smooth, and into the shape of a lens. This done, we held it up to the
+sun, relieving each other as our hands grew cold; but without any
+success whatever. We tried for a long time, and with much patience,
+until the ice became so much melted, that we could do nothing more with
+it, when we threw it away, and the experiment was abandoned as hopeless.
+
+"Our disappointment at this failure was as great as the Dean's hopes had
+been high. The Dean felt it most, for he was, at the very outset,
+perfectly confident of success. Neither of us, however, wished to own
+how much we felt the failure, so we spoke very little more together, but
+made, almost in silence, another meal off the raw eggs, and, being now
+quite worn out and weary with the labors and anxieties of the day, we
+passed the next twelve hours in watching and sleeping alternately in the
+bright sunshine, lying as before on the green grass, covered with the
+overcoat. We did not even dare hope for better fortune on the morrow. We
+had, however, made up our minds to struggle in the best manner we could
+against the difficulties which surrounded us, and mutually to sustain
+each other in the hard battle before us. Whether we should live or die
+was known but to God alone, and to his gracious protection we once more
+commended ourselves; the Dean repeating a prayer which he had learned
+from a pious and careful mother, who had brought him up in the fear of
+Heaven, and taught him, at a very early age, to have faith in God's
+endless watchfulness.
+
+"And now, my children," concluded the Captain, "I have some work to do
+in my garden, to-day, so we must cut our story short this time. When you
+come to-morrow, I will tell you what next we did towards raising a fire,
+besides many other things for our safety and comfort."
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+So the party scattered from the "cabin,"--the Captain to his work, and
+the children to play for a while with the Captain's dogs, Port and
+Starboard, out among the trees; and to talk with Main Brace, whom they
+found to be the most singular boy they had ever seen; after which they
+went to the Captain to say "Good evening" to him, and then ran briskly
+home,--William eager to write down what he had heard, while it was yet
+fresh upon his memory, and all of them to relate to their parents, over
+and over again, what this wonderful old man had been telling them, and
+what a dear old soul he was.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+Shows how Some Things may be done as well as Others,
+with God's Help and with much Perseverance.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+When the children next went to the "Mariner's Rest," it was unanimously
+agreed that they should go back again to the Captain's "cabin,"--there
+were so many things that they had not seen, and which they wished to
+look at. Alice wanted to see the birds,--the owl with the great, big
+eyes, and the pelican that had no wings, at least only little stumps
+that were hardly an apology for wings. Fred wanted to see the Chinese
+junks and the little ship, while William was bent on having the Moorish
+gun, the Turkish sword, the Japanese "happy despatch," and all the other
+weapons, offensive and defensive, taken down, that he might have a
+better view of them. The old man, at all times very ready and willing to
+gratify his little friends, was never more so than when he found them so
+much interested in the contents of his cabin; for every little curiosity
+or treasure there had an association with some period of his eventful
+life, and he was never happier than when any one admired what he admired
+so much, and thus gave him a chance to talk about it.
+
+"Heyday!" said he, when all the children had spoken and made known their
+wishes, "I'm glad you take so kindly to the old man's den; you shall
+come down there and look at it whenever you like, only you mustn't toss
+the things about too much. Run in now, and make yourselves at home.
+I'll be with you in a little while."
+
+So the children set off without another word, and were quickly diving
+among the old man's treasures, while the Captain went back to his garden
+to finish the hoeing of his cabbages.
+
+When the Captain had completed what he was about, he rejoined the
+children; and after a great deal of conversation which there is no need
+that we should here repeat, the party at length sobered down as if they
+were bent on business, and the Captain, once more drawing his little
+friends about him by the open window, again took up the tale.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Now I told you yesterday," said he, "that the Dean and I had gone
+asleep again after all our work and trouble and anxiety, without having
+come any nearer to getting up a fire. You have seen that we had enough
+to eat and drink, and that I had found a place to shelter us if a storm
+came on; but nothing could either of us think of to catch a spark. As
+soon as the Dean had opened his eyes, he said: 'Why, this is too bad!
+indeed it is,--I thought I had been making a fire.'
+
+"'What with?' I asked.
+
+"'With matches, to be sure,' answered the Dean. 'I thought I had a great
+load of them in my pocket.'
+
+"'Then,' said I, 'I'm sure I pity you, to wake up out of such a pleasant
+dream; for you'll find no matches here, nor any fire either, nor do I
+think we shall ever have any.'
+
+"'O, don't say that, Hardy,' replied the Dean, sadly, 'I don't think we
+are so bad off as to say we never will have any fire. Do you really
+think we are?'
+
+"'I can't say,' I replied; 'but what can we do?'
+
+"'Try again,' answered the Dean;--and we were soon once more upon our
+feet, both very determined to do something, but neither of us knowing
+exactly what it should be.
+
+"So we set off to inspect the cave which I told you of yesterday. The
+Dean was much pleased with it, and, seeing nothing better to do, we both
+went to work at once to build up a wall in front of it, feeling very sad
+and sorrowful as we worked in silence. But in spite of our gloomy
+thoughts we made good progress, and had soon a solid foundation laid;
+but as we went on, it was plain enough to see that our wall was likely
+to be of very little account, since we had no way of filling up the
+cracks between the stones.
+
+"This set us once more to thinking. Down below us in the valley there
+was plenty of moss, or rather turf; but when we tried to pull it up with
+our hands, we discovered that we could do nothing with it, and we wished
+for something to dig with. Then I remembered the bones I had found on
+the beach; so I told the Dean about them, and we both agreed that they
+might be of use to us. The thing which I first thought of was the dead
+narwhal with the great long horn; and I imagined that, if we could only
+get that out of his head, we should have all we wanted.
+
+"When the Dean and I went down to the narwhal, we foresaw that our task
+would be even greater than we had supposed; for the horn which we were
+after was so firmly embedded in the skull and flesh that it promised to
+be a very serious work to get it out.
+
+"First, we had to cut away the flesh and fat from the thick nose, until
+we exposed the skull, and then we had to break the horn loose by
+dropping heavy stones upon the socket. At length we were successful. But
+we had consumed almost the whole day about it, and we found ourselves
+very much fatigued; so we sat down upon the green grass, and rested and
+talked for a while, before going back to work upon the wall again. The
+horn was very heavy, but it answered our purpose; and we were soon
+digging up the moss with it, and then we carried the moss up to help
+make out the wall. This moss was very soft, being full of water; and it
+fitted with the stones as nicely as any mason's mortar, so that we had
+no more trouble in making the wall perfectly tight and solid. Nor did we
+have any trouble in building up a little fireplace and chimney along
+with it.
+
+"We had some discussion as to what use there was in taking all this
+pains, since we had no fire to put in our fireplace. But then, if we
+should in the end find that we could make a fire, we saw that we would
+have to tear the wall down again if we did not build the fireplace and
+chimney up at once; therefore it was clearly better to take a little
+extra trouble now, and save it possibly in the end,--an observation that
+might apply to people who were never cast away in the cold, and did not
+have to build chimneys without knowing what use to put them to.
+
+"We labored very hard, and were well satisfied with the progress we had
+made, when we found it necessary to knock off, and eat some more raw
+eggs, and sleep away our fatigue again.
+
+"By this time we had grown tired enough of these raw eggs, and, in
+truth, were very sick of them. But we had nothing else to eat unless we
+should devour the duck which the Dean had caught; and this we could
+never, as we thought, bring ourselves to do, uncooked as it was.
+
+"The Dean had by this time grown pretty strong again, but still he was
+so weak that I should not have allowed him to work had he not insisted
+upon it; so, when his turn came to go to sleep, I was glad to be at work
+by myself, and I much surprised the Dean, when he got up again, with
+what I had done.
+
+"'Do you know what I was thinking of?' said the Dean, as we paused to
+rest, after we had again worked awhile together.
+
+"'What's that?' said I; 'for I dare say it's something clever, as you
+have a wise head on your young shoulders, Dean.'
+
+"'Thank you,' said the Dean; 'being cast away in the cold don't stop us
+from paying compliments, anyway; but I was thinking that we ought to
+save all the blubber of that old narwhal down there; we'll want the oil
+by and by.'
+
+"'What for?' said I.
+
+"'To burn,' said he.
+
+"'Nonsense!' said I; 'how are you going to burn it?'
+
+"'That's just what we're going to find out,' said the Dean; 'we'll get a
+fire somehow, of that I'm sure.'
+
+"'I should like to know how,' said I. 'Perhaps you have another bright
+idea.'
+
+"'To be sure I have,' answered the Dean.
+
+"'What is it this time?' said I.
+
+"'Well, I don't know,' said he, 'as there's much in it, but I'm going to
+try the lens again.'
+
+"'That's of no use,' said I.
+
+"'I'm not so sure,' said he; 'you know we made a great deal of heat with
+our lens the other time,--so much that it almost burned my hand. I think
+the trouble was in my old pocket, which, having once been in salt water,
+wouldn't burn; now I think I've found out something that is better.'
+
+"'What's that?' said I.
+
+"'Why, some cotton stuff,' said he, 'that I found blowing about among
+the stones.'
+
+"'Cotton!' I exclaimed, in great surprise; 'there's no cotton growing
+here.'
+
+"'Well, it looks like cotton for all that,' answered the Dean, 'and I'm
+sure it will burn. Let me get some of it, and I'll try it.'
+
+"So the Dean ran off, and soon came back again with a little wad of
+white stuff, that looked very much like cotton, only much finer in its
+texture. I remembered it perfectly, for I had seen it, everywhere I
+went, about the little willow-bushes; and I had even plucked a
+willow-blossom to find it covered all over with this tender cotton-like
+substance, which I blew from it with my breath. But the idea had never
+once come into my head that it would be of any use.
+
+"'What are you going to do with this?' said I to the Dean, when he had
+showed it to me.
+
+"'Why,' said he, with much confidence, 'I'm going to make another lens
+of ice, and set fire to it.'
+
+[Illustration: "Striking fire under difficulties."]
+
+"To set fire to it was something easier said than done, yet the idea
+seemed to take root in my mind; and how or why it ever came about I can
+no more tell than I can fly, but somehow or other, it matters not what
+was my impulse or idea or expectation, the truth is, without saying a
+single word, I pulled out my knife and the bit of flint which I had
+found and carefully preserved the day before, and then struck one upon
+the other (as if it were quite mechanical) above the Dean's little bit
+of cotton stuff, which lay upon the grass. A great shower of sparks was
+thrown off with each fresh stroke, and these told of the fineness of the
+steel and the hardness of the flint. I went on pounding and pounding
+away, as if resolved on something. And if I was resolved, my resolution
+was rewarded; for at length the Dean threw up his hands as suddenly as
+if a shot had struck him in the heart, and he shouted out, 'A spark, a
+spark!'
+
+"The Dean's little bit of cotton stuff had taken fire, and the
+daintiest little streak of smoke was curling upward from it.
+
+"Without pausing an instant, quick as the hawk to swoop down upon its
+prey, quick as the lightning-flash, quick as thought itself, I threw
+away my knife and flint, and caught up the spark. The Dean drew
+instantly from his pocket the bit of cotton cloth which we had tried to
+light with the lens the day before, and thrust it in my hand. I put the
+spark upon it, and then blew.
+
+"The first breath drove all the Dean's light cotton stuff away, and the
+spark was gone.
+
+"But we were now no longer where we were before. The Spark had been made
+once, and it could be made again; and our hearts were bounding with
+delight. 'Hurrah! hurrah!' shouted the Dean, 'we're all right now!'
+
+"But our troubles about the fire were very far from ended. We had no
+difficulty in getting another spark to catch in another piece of this
+strange sort of tinder, of which we found great plenty near at hand. But
+it would not blaze. With the slightest breath it vanished almost as a
+flash of powder; and it was long before we hit upon anything that would
+do us any further good. We tried all the pieces of cotton cloth that we
+had about our clothes, picking it into shreds, and, putting the lighted
+tinder among these shreds, tried to make them blaze. But no blaze could
+we get. Once only did we raise a little flash, but it was gone in a
+single instant. We tried the dry leaves of the fire-plant (Andromeda),
+the dry grass,--everything, indeed, we could think of that was within
+our reach,--but still no blaze, no blaze.
+
+"With sore fingers and wearied patience, and with wits as well as bodies
+quite exhausted, we fell once more asleep, with mingling thoughts of
+triumph and disappointment, and with prayerful hopes for what the morrow
+might bring forth running through our minds.
+
+"When the morrow came, a chance seemed to open for us; and we resolved
+to go about our work with caution, determined, since we had gone thus
+far, that we would in the end succeed. I don't know whether it was the
+Dean or I that first suggested it, but we made up our minds that the
+moss which we had turned up with the narwhal horn, when we were
+building at the hut, some of which had dried, would burn. We picked to
+pieces some of the long fibres of this moss, and laid upon them,
+loosely, some fragments of the tinder. A spark was struck as before, and
+upon blowing this a bright blaze flashed up, and then died out again as
+quickly as it had come.
+
+"'I have it now!' shouted the Dean, 'we're sure of it next time!' and
+without saying another word he darted off towards the beach. When he
+came back again, he held in one hand a chunk of blubber from the
+narwhal, out of which we squeezed some drops of oil, and soaked in them
+some fibres of the moss.
+
+"Another piece of tinder and another piece of moss were placed as they
+had been before; another spark was struck, another blaze was blown, and
+when this came, the Dean was holding in it his fibres of oil-soaked
+moss, and we soon had a lighted torch. 'Hurrah, hurrah!' we might well
+shout now, for the thing was done. 'Praised be Heaven! we have got a
+fire at last!'
+
+"Then we added fresh moss to the flaming torch, which was scarcely
+larger than a match, and then a few more drops of oil were added, and so
+on, oil and moss, and moss and oil, little by little, gently, gently all
+the time, until we had secured at length a good and solid flame.
+
+"Then we laid the burning moss upon a flat stone, and then, as before,
+moss and oil, and oil and moss, were added, each time in larger and
+larger quantities,--no longer gently, gently, but with a careless hand,
+and in less, perhaps, than half an hour we had a great, smoking,
+fluttering blaze; and then we threw on some of the driest leaves and
+twigs of the Andromeda, and some dead willow-stems and dry grass, and
+then we had a roaring, sputtering, red-hot fire.
+
+"And how we danced, and skipped, and shouted round the fire, like happy
+children round some new-found toy!
+
+"The next thing was, of course, to turn the fire to some account. On two
+sides of the blaze we placed large square stones, and over these we put
+another that was thin and flat; and then we skinned the duck which the
+Dean had caught, and cut the rich flesh into little pieces and placed
+them on the flat stone above the blaze; and then, to keep the smoke and
+ashes from the cooking food, we put another light, thin stone upon the
+flesh, and then we watched and waited for the coming meal. To help the
+fire along, and make it burn more quickly, we threw into it some little
+chunks of blubber, and then, in a little while, the duck was cooked.
+
+"O what a royal meal we had!--we half-famished, shipwrecked boys,--the
+first hot food we had tasted during all these long, weary, dreary days;
+and, not satisfied with the duck, we next broiled some eggs upon the
+heated stone, and ate and ate away until we were as full as we could
+hold.
+
+"All this had consumed many hours, and all the time we had been so much
+excited that we found ourselves quite exhausted when the meal was over,
+and we could do no more work that day; so we lay down again upon the
+grass, to talk and rest and sleep. When we came to sleep, however, we
+had now another motive, besides watching for a ship, to make us sleep
+one only at a time; for we must keep this fire going, which we had got
+with so much trouble. This was easily done, since we only had to add,
+from time to time, some branches of the Andromeda, and these kept up a
+smouldering fire.
+
+"Before either of us went to sleep, we had seen that the first thing now
+was to catch more ducks; and this we could either of us do, besides
+watching the sea for ships, and the fire that it did not go out.
+Accordingly, as soon as the Dean had fallen asleep, I went about this
+work, fully resolved upon a plan as to how I should proceed. The
+knowledge of seals which I had acquired when in the _Blackbird_ had
+perhaps something to do with it.
+
+"I knew, from the thickness of the seal's skin, that lines could be made
+out of it very well. You will remember the dead seal that I told you of
+the other day, lying down on the beach, where it had been thrown up out
+of the sea by the waves. I forgot to mention, in addition, that we found
+several other seals, or rather, I should say, parts of them, for most of
+them had been eaten up by the foxes, or had gone to pieces by decay. So
+I at once went down, as I was going to say, to the seal that I had first
+discovered, and, taking out my knife, I made a cut around his neck,
+close behind the ears. It was a very large seal, and I found it not an
+easy matter to lift him up so that I could get my knife all the way
+around him; but I managed to do it notwithstanding, and made not only
+one cut but a great many of them,--or rather, I should say, one
+continuous cut around and around the body of the dead animal; so you
+will easily understand that, in this way, by keeping my knife about an
+eighth of an inch from where it had gone before when it passed around,
+I obtained at last a long string, or rather one might say a thong, very
+strong and very pliable. It must have been at least a hundred feet in
+length when I stopped cutting it, and I divided it into three parts.
+Having done this, I next went back to where the ducks were thickest,
+when, of course, the birds flew off their nests. Then I fixed four
+traps, just as the Dean had done, tying to three of them the seal-skin
+strings which I had made, and to the fourth I tied the Dean's bit of
+twine; then I hid myself among the rocks, and waited for the birds to
+come back.
+
+"I had not long to wait, for in a few minutes two of them returned, and,
+without appearing to mind at all the trap that I had set for them,
+crawled upon their nests so quickly that it seemed as if they were
+mightily afraid their eggs would get cold. Seeing a third one coming, I
+waited for her too, and the fourth one came soon afterwards; and indeed,
+by this time, nearly all the birds that had their nests near by had come
+back to them. As soon as all was quiet, I pulled my strings one after
+another as quickly as I could, and three of the birds were caught; but
+the last one was too smart for me, as the noise made by the others had
+startled her, and the heavy stone only struck her tail as she went
+squalling and fluttering away, frightening off all the other ducks that
+were anywhere near.
+
+"I was not long, as you may be sure, in securing my three prizes; and I
+carried them at once up to the fire near which the Dean was lying under
+my overcoat in the sun. Soon after this the Dean awoke, and, when he saw
+what I had done, seemed to be much amused, as he declared that I had
+stolen his patent; but when he saw what kind of a line I had made, he
+was filled with admiration, saying: 'Well, who would ever have thought
+of that? I'm sure I never should.'
+
+"Being now very tired, I lay down while the Dean took his 'turn'; and by
+the time my eyes were opened again he had caught seven birds, so that we
+had now in all ten,--enough, probably, to last us as many days. This, of
+course, gave us a great deal of satisfaction, especially as we soon had
+one of them nicely cooked, and thus got a good breakfast.
+
+"We had now been, you see, several days on the island, and we felt that
+we had done pretty well already towards providing for ourselves. The
+Dean, as I ought to have mentioned before, had grown in strength very
+rapidly during the last forty-eight hours; and except that his head was
+still sore from the cut and bruise, he was entirely well.
+
+"We felt now that, whatever else might happen to us, we could not want
+for food, as, besides the eggs, we could have as many ducks as we
+pleased to catch. We had succeeded in making a fire, and had abundant
+means to keep it burning. There were only two things that seriously
+troubled us. One was our lack of shelter, if a storm should come; and
+the other, our lack of proper clothing, if the weather should grow cold.
+But, having succeeded so well thus far, we were very hopeful for the
+future. Heaven had kindly favored us. The temperature had been very mild
+all the time. There had been no wind, and scarcely a cloud to obscure
+the sky. As for shelter, we felt that we could manage in two days to
+enclose the cave; and as to the other trouble, although we were not very
+clear in our minds about it, yet we did not lose confidence that a ship
+would come along and take us off before winter should set in. So we
+resolved not to abandon our vigilance, but to keep up a constant watch,
+as we had done before. Now that we had made a fire, we knew the smoke
+would be a great help to us in drawing the attention of the people on
+board any ship that might come near.
+
+"With these agreeable reflections we went to work much more cheerfully
+than we had done before."
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+The captain here "hove to," as he said, observing, that, the day being
+far spent, he would drop the story for the present. "To-morrow, when you
+come, I will tell you how we fixed up the cave, and made ourselves more
+comfortable in many ways. Meanwhile you can reflect upon what I have
+told you, and you can answer me then whether you think John Hardy and
+Richard Dean were an enviable pair of boys."
+
+"I can answer that now," said William.
+
+"Well, what is the answer?" asked the Captain, in great good-humor.
+
+"Why, their pluck and courage everybody would envy, or at least they
+ought to; but, for the rest, I would rather stay at home."
+
+"Well, well," said the Captain, smiling pleasantly, "each to his taste.
+I rather think I should prefer being in the 'Mariner's Rest'
+myself";--saying which he led the way into the grounds in front of the
+cottage which he loved so well, where he took leave of his little
+friends once more, making them promise over and over again (for which
+there was no need at all) that they would come next day and hear about
+the cave, and how they there built themselves a shelter from the Arctic
+storms.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+In which the little People are convinced of the Goodness
+of Providence, as the Reader ought to be,--seeing that
+to be cast away is not to be forsaken.
+
+
+[Illustration]
+
+We have now for some time followed the old man through the recital of
+the wonderful adventures which befell himself and the Dean on the lonely
+little island in the Arctic Sea; and we have watched the children going
+and coming from day to day. And we have seen, too, how happy the
+children were when listening to the story, and how delighted they were
+with every little scrap they got of it, and how they remembered every
+word of it, and how William wrote it down in black and white, and had it
+safe and sound for future use,--little dreaming, at the time of doing
+it, that the record he was keeping would find its way at last into a
+book, and thus give other children than himself and Fred and Alice a
+chance to make the acquaintance of the good old Captain and the brave
+and handsome little Dean.
+
+And William Earnest kept his record regularly, and he kept it well, as
+we have seen before; and up to this point of time everything was set
+down with day and date. But now a change had clearly come over the
+habits of our little party. At first, as has been hitherto related, the
+old Captain was a little shy of the children, though he so much liked
+them; but now all formality was gone between them, and so down the
+children came to the Captain's cottage whenever they had a mind. The
+Captain was always glad to see them, be it morning, noon, or evening;
+and never were the children, in all their lives before, so happy as when
+romping through the Captain's grounds, or cooling themselves upon the
+grass beneath the Captain's trees, or looking at the Captain's "traps"
+or joking with that oddest boy that was ever seen, Main Brace, or
+playing with the Captain's dogs,--the biggest dogs that ever bore the
+odd names of Port and Starboard.
+
+The Captain now said, "Make yourselves at home, my dears,--quite at
+home"; and the children did it; and the Captain always went about
+whatever he had to do until he was ready once more to begin his
+story-telling; and then they would all rush off to the yacht, or to the
+"Crow's Nest," or the "cabin," or the "quarter-deck," or some other
+pleasant place; and as the Captain related something more and more
+extraordinary, as it seemed to them, each time,
+
+"the wonder grew
+That one small head should carry all he knew";
+
+while, as for the old man himself, he might well exclaim, with the lover
+in the play, "I were but little happy if I could say how much."
+
+Thus it came about, as we have good reason to suppose, that days and
+dates were lost in William's journal; and thus it was that the young
+and truthful chronicler of this veritable history simply wrote down,
+from time to time, what the Captain said, without mentioning much about
+when it was that the Captain said it. Sometimes he wrote with lead
+pencil, sometimes with pen and ink, and often, as is plain to see from
+the manuscript itself, at considerable intervals of time; but always, as
+there is no doubt, with accuracy; for William's mind, touching the
+Captain's adventures, was like the susceptible heart of the Count in the
+Venetian story, "wax to receive and marble to retain."
+
+So now, after this long explanation, the reader will perceive that we
+can do nothing else than report the Captain's story, without always
+saying where the little party were seated at the time the Captain told
+it. And, in truth, it matters little; at least so William thought, for
+he wrote one day upon the page,--
+
+"Where's the use, I'd like to know, putting in what Fred and me and
+Alice did, and where we went with the 'ancient mariner'; I haven't time
+to write so much, and I'll only write what the Captain said"; and so
+right away he set down what follows.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Now you see," resumed the Captain, "when we had done all I told you of
+before,--having slept, you know, and got well rested,--we went about our
+work very hopefully. But as we were going along, meditating on our
+plans, the Dean stopped suddenly, and said he to me: 'Hardy, do you know
+what day it is?'
+
+"'No,' said I, 'upon my word I don't, and never once thought about it!'
+
+"The Dean looked very sad all at once, and, not being able to see why
+that should be, I asked what difference it made to us what day it was.
+
+"'Why, a great deal of difference,' said the Dean.
+
+"'How?' said I.
+
+"'Why,' said the Dean, 'when shall we know when Sunday comes?'
+
+"To be sure, how should we know when Sunday came! I had not thought of
+that before; but the Dean was differently brought up from me; for, while
+I had not been taught to care much about such matters, the Dean had, and
+he looked upon Sunday as a day when nobody should do any sort of work. I
+believe the Dean had an idea in his head, that, if it was Sunday, and he
+was frozen half to death already, or starved about as badly, and should
+refuse to work to save himself from death outright, he would do a
+virtuous thing in sacrificing himself, and would go straight up to
+heaven for certain. So I became anxious too, and for the Dean's sake, if
+not for my own, I tried hard to recall what day it was."
+
+"How very queer," said William, "to forget what day it was! How did it
+happen? Won't you tell us that, Captain Hardy?"
+
+"To be sure," said the obliging Captain,--"as well as I can, that is.
+Now, do you remember what I told you the other day about the sun shining
+all the time,--do you remember that, my lad?"
+
+"Yes," answered William, "of course I do. Goes round and round, that
+way," and he whirled his hat about his head.
+
+"Just so," went on the Captain,--"just so, exactly. Goes round and
+round, and never sets until the winter comes, and then it goes down, and
+there it stays all the winter through, and there is constant darkness
+where the daylight always was before."
+
+"What, all the time?" asked William.
+
+"Yes," replied the Captain; "dark all the time."
+
+"How dark?" asked Fred.
+
+"Dark as dark can be. Dark at morning and at evening. Dark at noon, and
+dark at midnight. Dark all the time, as I have said. Dark all the winter
+through. Dark for months and months."
+
+"How dreadful!" exclaimed Fred.
+
+"Dreadful enough, as I can assure you, with no light, all the whole
+winter-time, except the moon and stars. A dreadful thing to live along
+for days and days, and weeks and weeks, and months and months, without
+the blessed light of day,--without once seeing the sun come up and
+brighten everything and make us glad, and the pretty flowers to unfold
+themselves, and all the living world praise the Lord for remembering it.
+That's what you never see in all the Arctic winter,--no sunshine ever
+streaming up above the hills and making all the rainbow colors in the
+clouds. That's what you never see at all, no more than if you were blind
+and couldn't see.
+
+"But never mind just now about the winter. We haven't done with the
+summer yet, nor with Sunday either, for that matter.
+
+"As I have said before, the loss of Sunday much grieved the Dean. So,
+you see, we had nothing else to do but make one on our own account."
+
+"What, make a Sunday!" exclaimed William. "I've heard of people making
+almost everything, even building castles in the air; but I never heard
+before of anybody putting up a Sunday."
+
+"Well, you see, we did the best we could. It is not at all surprising
+that we should have lost our reckoning in this way, seeing that the sun
+was shining, as I have told you, all the time; and we worked and slept
+without much regard to whether the hours of night or day were on us. So
+we had good reason for a little mixing up of dates. In fact we could
+neither of us very well recall the day of the month that we were cast
+away. It was somewhere near the end of June, that we knew; but the exact
+day we could not tell for certain. We remembered the day of the week
+well enough, and it was Tuesday; but more than this we could not get
+into our heads; and so it seemed that there was nothing for us but to
+sink all days into the one long day of the Arctic summer, and nevermore
+know whether it was Sunday, or Monday, or Friday, or what day it was of
+any month; and if it should be Heaven's will that we should live on upon
+the island until the New Year came round, and still other years should
+come and go, we should never know New Year's day.
+
+"But, as I was saying, about making a Sunday for ourselves. I did
+everything I could to refresh my memory about it. I counted up the
+number of times we had slept, and the number of times we had worked, and
+recalled the day when I first walked around the island; and I tried my
+best to connect all those events together in such a way as to prove how
+often the sun had passed behind the cliffs, and how often it had shone
+upon us; and thus I made out that the very day I am telling you about
+proved to be Sunday,--at least I so convinced the Dean, and he was
+satisfied. And that's the way we made a Sunday for ourselves.
+
+"So we resolved to do no work that day; and this was well, for we were
+very weary and needed rest.
+
+"I need not tell you that we passed the time in talking over our plans
+for the future, and in discussing the prospects ahead of us, and
+arranging what we should do. You see we had settled about Sunday, so
+that was off our minds; and after recalling many things which had
+happened to us, and things which had been done on the _Blackbird_, we
+finally concluded that we had found out the day of the month, and so we
+called the day 'Sunday, the second of July,' and this we marked, as I
+will show you, thus: On the top of a large flat rock near by I placed a
+small white stone, and this we called our 'Sunday stone'; and then, in a
+row with this stone, we placed six other stones, which we called by the
+other days of the week. Then I moved the white stone out of line a
+little, which was to show that Sunday had passed, and afterwards, when
+the next day had gone, we did the same with the Monday stone, and so on
+until the stones were all on a line again, when we knew that it was once
+more Sunday. Of course we knew when the day was gone, by the sun being
+around on the north side of the island, throwing the shadow of the
+cliffs upon us.
+
+"For noting the days of the month we made a similar arrangement to that
+which we had made for the days of the week; and thus you see we had now
+got an almanac among other things.
+
+"'And now,' said the Dean, 'let us put all this down for fear we forget
+it.' So away the little fellow ran and gathered a great quantity of
+small pebbles, and these we arranged on the top of the rock so as to
+form letters; and the letters that we thus made spelled out
+
+                  'JOHN HARDY AND RICHARD DEAN,
+                     CAST AWAY IN THE COLD,
+                    TUESDAY, JUNE 27, 1824.'
+
+"Now, when we came to look ahead, and to speculate upon what was likely
+to befall us, we saw that we had two months of summer still remaining;
+and, as midsummer had hardly come yet, we knew that we were likely to
+have it warmer than before, and we had now no further fears about being
+able to live through that period. In these two months it was plain that
+one of two things must happen,--a ship must come along and take us off,
+or we must be prepared for the dark time that must follow after the sun
+should go down for the winter; otherwise a third thing would certainly
+happen, that is, we should both die,--an event which did not, in any
+case, seem at all unlikely; so we pledged ourselves to stand by each
+other through every fortune, each helping the other all he could. At any
+rate, we would not lose hope, and never despair of being saved, through
+the mercy of Providence, somehow or other.
+
+"Having reached this resigned state of mind, we were ready to consider
+rationally what we had to do. It was clear enough that, if we only
+looked out for a ship to save us, and that chance should in the end
+fail, we would be ill prepared for the winter if we were left on the
+island to encounter its perils. Therefore it was necessary to be ready
+for the worst, and accordingly, after a little deliberation, we
+concluded to proceed as follows:--
+
+"1st. We would construct a place to shelter ourselves from the cold and
+storms. (In this we had made some satisfactory progress already.)
+
+"2d. We would collect all the food we could while there was opportunity.
+
+"3d. We would gather fuel, of which, as had been already proved, there
+was Andromeda (or fire-plant) and moss and blubber to depend upon. Of
+this latter the dead narwhal and seal would furnish us a moderate
+supply; but for the rest we must rely upon our own skill to capture some
+other animals from the sea; though, as to how this was to be done, we
+had to own ourselves completely at fault.
+
+"4th. We would in some manner secure for ourselves warmer clothing,
+otherwise we would certainly freeze; and here we were completely at
+fault too.
+
+"5th. We would contrive in some way to make for ourselves a lamp, as we
+could never live in our cave in darkness; and here was a difficulty
+apparently even more insurmountable than the others,--as much so as
+appeared the making of a fire in the first instance,--for while we had a
+general idea that we might capture some seals, and get thus a good
+supply of oil, and that we might also get plenty of fox-skins for
+clothing, yet neither of us could think of any way to make a lamp.
+
+"When we came thus to bring ourselves to view the situation, the
+prospect might have caused stouter hearts than ours to fear; but, as we
+had seen before, nothing was to be gained by lamentation, so we put a
+bold front on, firmly resolved to make the best fight we could."
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+"A poor chance for you, I should think," said Fred, "and I don't see how
+you ever lived through so many troubles,"--while little Alice declared
+her opinion that "the poor Dean must have died anyway."
+
+"A very bad prospect, indeed, my dears," continued the Captain,--"very
+bad, I can assure you; but as it is a poor rule to read the last page of
+a book before you read the rest of it, so we will go right on to the end
+with our story, and then you will find out what became of the Dean, as
+well as what happened to myself.
+
+"Well, as I was going to say, when Monday came, we set about our work,
+not exactly in the order which I have named, but as we found most
+convenient; and as day after day followed each other through the week,
+and as one week followed after another week, we found ourselves at one
+time building up the wall in front of the cave, then catching ducks and
+gathering eggs, then collecting the fire-plant, and then throwing moss
+up on the rocks to dry, and then cutting off the blubber and skins of
+the dead seal and narwhal.
+
+"All of these things were carefully secured; and in a sort of cave, much
+like the one we were preparing for our abode, only larger, we stowed
+away all the fire-plant and dried moss that we could get. Then we looked
+about us to see what we should do for a place to put our blubber
+in,--that is, you know, the fat we got off the dead narwhal and the
+seal, and also any other blubber that we might get afterwards.
+
+"When we had cut all the blubber off the seal and narwhal, we found that
+we had an enormous heap of it,--as much, at least, in quantity, as five
+good barrels full,--and, since the sun was very warm, there was great
+danger, not only that it would spoil, but that much of it would melt and
+run away. Fortunately, very near our hut there was a small glacier
+hanging on the hillside, coming down a narrow valley from a greater mass
+of ice which lay above. From the face of this glacier a great many lumps
+of ice had broken off, and there were also deep banks of snow which the
+summer's sun had not melted.
+
+"In the midst of this accumulation of ice and snow we had little
+difficulty in making, partly by excavating and partly by building up, a
+sort of cave, large enough to hold twice as much blubber as we had to
+put into it. Here we deposited our treasure, which was our only reliance
+for light in case we invented a lamp, and our chief reliance for fire
+if the winter should come and find us still upon the island.
+
+"After we had thus secured, in this snow-and-ice cave, our stock of
+blubber, we constructed another much like it near by for our food, and
+into this we had soon gathered a pretty large stock of ducks and eggs.
+
+[Illustration: John Hardy and the Dean provide for the Future.]
+
+"When we contemplated all that we had done in this particular, you may
+be sure our spirits rose very much."
+
+"Odd, wasn't it?" said Fred, "having a storehouse made of ice and snow.
+But, Captain Hardy, if you'll excuse me for interrupting you, what did
+this glacier that you spoke about look like? and what was it anyway?"
+
+"A glacier is nothing more," replied the Captain, "than a stream of ice
+made out of snow partly melted and then frozen again, and which,
+forming, as I have said before, high up on the tops of the hills, runs
+down a valley and breaks off at its end and melts away. Sometimes it is
+very large,--miles across,--and goes all the way down to the sea; and
+the pieces that break off from it are of immense size, and are called
+_icebergs_. Sometimes the glaciers are very small, especially on small
+islands such as ours was. This little glacier I tell you of lay in a
+narrow valley, as I said before; and, as the cliffs were very high on
+either side, it was almost always in shadow, and the air was very cold
+there; so you see how fortunate it was that we thought of fixing upon
+that place for our storehouses. Then another great advantage to us was,
+that it was so near our hut,--being within sight, and only a few steps
+across some rough rocks; but among these rocks we contrived, in course
+of time, to make, by filling in with small stones, a pretty smooth walk.
+
+"As we caught and put away the ducks in our storehouse, we began at
+length to preserve their skins. At first we could see no value in them,
+and threw them away; but we imagined at length that, in case we could
+not catch the foxes, they would serve to make us some sort of clothing,
+while out of the seal-skin which I mentioned before we could make boots,
+if we only had anything to sew with.
+
+"Thus one difficulty after another continued to beset us; but this last
+one was soon partly overcome, for the Dean, on the very first day of
+our landing, discovered that he had in his pocket his palm and needle,
+carrying it always about him when on shipboard, like any other good
+sailor; but we lacked thread."
+
+"What is a palm and needle, Captain Hardy?" inquired William.
+
+"A palm," answered the Captain, "is a band of leather going around the
+hand, with a thimble fitted into it where it comes across the root of
+the thumb. The sailor's needle differs only from the common one in being
+longer and three-cornered, instead of round. It is used for sewing sails
+and other coarse work on shipboard. The needle is held between the thumb
+and forefinger, and is pushed through with the thimble in the palm of
+the hand, and hence the name.
+
+"To come back to our story (having, as I hope, made the palm and needle
+question clear to you), let me ask you to remember that I told you, when
+I landed on the island, I had four things,--that is:--
+
+"1st. My life;
+
+"2d. The clothes on my back;
+
+"3d. A jack-knife; and
+
+"4th. The mercy of Providence.
+
+"But now, you see, I had added a fifth article to that list, in the
+Dean's needle; and I might also say that I had a sixth one, too, in the
+Dean himself, which I did not dare enumerate in the list at first, as I
+felt pretty sure that the Dean was going to die, or at least wake up
+crazy.
+
+"But you see a sailor's palm and needle could be of very little use
+unless we had some thread, of which we did not possess a single
+particle, except the small piece that was in the needle, and by which it
+was tied to the palm. It was a good while before we obtained anything
+to make thread of, so we will pass that subject by for the present, and
+come back to what we had more immediately in hand. This was the
+preparation of our cave, or rather, as we had better say, hut,--that
+being more nearly what it was.
+
+"The building of our hut, then, was indeed a very difficult task, as the
+solid wall we had to construct in front was much higher than our heads,
+and in this wall we had, of course, to leave a doorway and a window,
+besides a sort of chimney, or outlet, for the smoke from the fireplace,
+which was beside the door.
+
+"We must have been at least two weeks making this wall, for we had not
+only to construct the wall itself, but when it got so high that we could
+no longer reach up to the top, we had to build steps, that we might
+climb there. We left a window above the doorway, not thinking, of
+course, to find any glass to put in it, but leaving it rather as a
+ventilator than a window. It was very small, not more than a foot
+square, and was easily shut up at any time, if we should not need it.
+For a door, we used a piece of the narwhal skin. This skin was fastened
+above the doorway with pegs, which we made of bones, driving them into
+the cracks between the stones, thus letting the skin fall down over the
+doorway like a curtain.
+
+"In making the wall, we were greatly helped by the bones which I had
+found down on the beach, as they were much lighter than the stones, and
+aided in holding the moss in its place, so that we were able to use much
+more of that material than we otherwise should have been. When the wall
+was completed, we were gratified to see how tight it was, and how
+perfectly we had made it fit the rocks by means of the moss.
+
+"Having completed the wall, our next concern was to arrange the
+interior; but about this we had no need to be in so great a hurry as
+with the wall, for we had now a place to shelter us from any storm that
+might come, and we could hope to make ourselves somewhat comfortable
+there, even although the inside was not well fitted up; for we had a
+fireplace, and could do our cooking without going outside. When we found
+how perfect was the draft through the outlet, or chimney, you may be
+very sure we were greatly delighted.
+
+"As it fell out, we had secured this shelter in the very nick of time,
+for in two days afterwards a violent storm arose,--a heavy wind with
+hail and gusts of snow,--a strange kind of weather, you will think, for
+the middle of July. This storm made havoc with the ice on the east side
+of the island, breaking it up, and driving it out over the sea to the
+westward, filling the sea up so much in that direction, that there was
+no use, for the present at least, in looking for ships, as none could
+come near us. The storm made a very wild and fearful spectacle of the
+sea, as the waves went dashing over the pieces of ice and against the
+icebergs. When I looked out upon this scene, and listened to the noises
+made by the waves and the crushing ice, and heard the roaring wind, I
+wondered more than ever what could possess anybody to go to such a sea
+in a ship, for it seemed to me that the largest possible gains would not
+be a sufficient reward for the dangers to be encountered.
+
+"But so it always was, and always will be, I suppose. Whenever there is
+a little money to be made, men will encounter any kind of hazard in
+order to get it. Thus the risks in going after whales and seals for
+their blubber, which is very valuable, are great; but then, if the ship
+makes a good voyage, the profits are very large, and when the sailors
+receive their 'lay,' that is, their share of the profits on the oil and
+whalebone which have been taken, it sometimes amounts to quite a
+handsome sum of money to each, and they consider themselves well
+rewarded for all their privations and hardships. And it must be owned
+that the whalers and sealers are a very brave sort of men, especially
+the whalers who go among the ice; for besides the dangers to the vessel,
+and the danger always encountered in approaching a whale to harpoon him
+(for, as you must know, he sometimes knocks the boat to pieces with his
+monstrous tail, and spills all the crew out in the water), he may, while
+swimming off with the harpoon in him, and dragging the boat by the line
+which is fast to it, take it into his head to rush beneath the ice, and
+thus destroy the boat and drown the people.
+
+"But this is too long a falling to 'leeward' of our story, as the
+sailors would call it; so we will come right back into the wind again.
+
+"When the weather cleared off after the storm, we went to work as
+before. But everything about looked gloomy enough. The cliffs were
+besprinkled with snow, and about the rocks the snow had drifted, and it
+lay in streaks where it had been carried by the wind. The sea was still
+very rough, and, as there were many immense pieces of ice upon the
+water, when the waves rose and fell, the pounding of it on the rocks
+made a most fearful sound.
+
+"The sun coming out warm, however, soon melted the snow, and, getting
+heated up with work, we got on bravely. Indeed, we soon became not less
+surprised at the rapid progress we were making than at the facility with
+which we accommodated ourselves to our strange condition of life, and
+even grew cheerful under what would seem a state of the greatest
+possible distress. Thus you observe how perfectly we may reconcile
+ourselves to any fate, if we have but a resolute will, and the fear of
+God in our hearts. I do not mean to boast about the Dean and myself: but
+I think it must be owned that we kept up our courage pretty well, all
+things considered,--now, don't _you_ think so, my dears?"
+
+"To be sure we do," replied William. "And if anybody dares to doubt it,
+I will go, like Count Robert, to the crossroad, and give battle for a
+week to all comers, just as he did."
+
+"Poking fun at the ancient mariner again,--are you?" said the Captain,
+trying hard to look serious. "And so I'll punish you, my boy, by
+knocking off just where we are, and saying not another word this blessed
+day."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+Relates how a Desert Island became a Rock of Good Hope,
+and other Hopeful Matters which to be understood
+must be read of.
+
+
+"You now see," went on the Captain, when the story was again resumed,
+"that the Dean and myself had by this time fallen into a regular course
+of life. 'What cannot be helped,' said the Dean, 'we must make the best
+of.'
+
+"Being thus obliged to make the best of it, we became resigned; and here
+let me say that even now I feel much surprised at the ease with which we
+dropped into ways suitable to our new life. You have seen already how
+one difficulty after another vanished before our patient efforts; and
+now that we had a fire to warm us, and a hut to shelter us, we felt as
+if we could overcome almost anything. So we gained great courage, and
+were fast settling down to business, like any other people, feeling that
+our lives were at least in no present danger.
+
+"The Dean and I had a conversation about this time, which I will try to
+repeat as nearly as I can. We were seated on the hillside overlooking
+the sea to the west, attracted by what we at first took for a ship under
+full sail, steering right in towards the island; but you can imagine how
+great was our disappointment when we found that what we had taken for a
+ship was nothing more than an iceberg looming up above the sea in a
+misty atmosphere. This was the third time we had been deceived in that
+manner. Once the Dean had come rushing towards me, shouting at the top
+of his voice, 'The fleet! the fleet!' meaning the whale-ships; but he
+might just as well have saved himself all that trouble, for 'the fleet'
+proved to be only a great group of icebergs; but when I told him so he
+would hardly believe it, until he became at last convinced that they
+were not moving.
+
+"You must know that these icebergs assume all sorts of shapes, and it
+was very natural, since we were always on the lookout for ships, that
+our imaginations should be excited and disturbed, and ready to see at
+any time what we most wanted to see; nor were we at all peculiar in
+this, as many people might tell you who were never cast away in the
+cold.
+
+"So it is not surprising that we should cry out very frequently 'A sail,
+a sail!' when there was not a sail perhaps within many hundred miles of
+us.
+
+"Well, as I was going to say, the Dean and I sat upon the hillside
+overlooking the sea, thinking the icebergs were ships, or hoping so at
+least, until hope died away, and then it was that we fell to talking.
+
+"'Do you think, Hardy,' asked the Dean, 'that any other ship than ours
+ever did come this way or ever will?'
+
+"'I'm afraid not,' said I; and I must have looked very despondent about
+it, as in truth I was,--much more so than I would have liked to own.
+
+"I had not considered what the Dean was about, for he was despondent
+enough himself, and no doubt wished very hard that I might say something
+to cheer him up a bit; but, instead of doing that, I only made him
+worse, whereupon he seemed to grow angry, and in a rather snappish way
+he inquired of me if I knew what I was.
+
+"'No,' said I, quite taken aback. 'What do you mean?'
+
+"'Mean!' exclaimed the Dean. 'Why, I mean to say,'--and he spoke in a
+positive way that was not usual with him,--'I mean to say,' said he,
+'that you are a regular Job's comforter, and no mistake.'
+
+"I had not the least idea at that period of my life as to what kind of a
+thing a Job's comforter was. I had a vague notion that it was something
+to go round the neck, and I protested that I was nothing of the sort.
+
+"'Yes, you are, and you know you are,' went on the Dean,--'a regular
+Job's comforter,--croaking all the time, and never seeing any way out of
+our troubles at all.'
+
+"'I should like to know,' said I,--and I thought I had him there,--'how
+I can see any way out of our troubles when there isn't any!'
+
+"'Well, you can think there is, if there isn't,--can't you?' and the
+Dean was ten times more snappish than he was before; and, having thus
+delivered himself, he snapped himself up and snapped himself off in a
+great hurry; but, as the little fellow turned to go away, I thought I
+saw great big tears stealing down his cheeks. I thought that his voice
+trembled over the last words; and when he went behind a rock and hid
+himself, I knew that he had gone away to cry, and that he had been
+ashamed to cry where I could see him.
+
+"After a while I went to him. He was lying on his side, with his head
+upon his arm. His cap had fallen off, and the light wind was playing
+gently with his curly hair. The sun was shining brightly in his face,
+and, sunburnt and weather-beaten though it was, his rosy cheeks were the
+same as ever. But bitter, scalding tears had left their traces there,
+for the poor boy had cried himself to sleep.
+
+"His sleep was troubled, for he was calling out, and his hands and feet
+were twitching now and then, and cruel dreams were weighing on his
+sleeping, even more heavily, perhaps, than they had been upon his waking
+thoughts. So I awoke him. He sprang up instantly, looking very wild, and
+sat upon the rock. 'Where am I? What's the matter? Is that you, Hardy?'
+were the questions with which he greeted me so quickly that I could not
+answer one of them. Then he smiled in his natural way, and said, 'After
+all, it was only a dream.'
+
+"'What was it?' I asked. 'Tell me, Dean, what it was.'
+
+"'O, it was not much, but you see it put me in a dreadful fright. I
+thought a ship was steering close in by the land; I thought I saw you
+spring upon the deck and sail away; and as you sailed away upon the
+silvery sea, I thought you turned and mocked me, and I cursed you as I
+stood upon the beach, until some foul fiend, in punishment for my wicked
+words, caught me by the neck, and dragged me through the sea, and tied
+me fast to the vessel's keel, and there I was with his last words
+ringing in my ears, with the gurgling waters, "Follow him to your doom,"
+when you awoke me. "Follow him to your doom!" I seem to hear the demon
+shrieking even now, though I'm wide enough awake.'
+
+"'I don't wonder at your fright, and I'm glad I woke you!' said I, not
+knowing what else to say.
+
+"'It all comes,' went on the little fellow, 'of my being angry with you,
+Hardy'; and so he asked me to forgive him, and not think badly of him,
+and said he would not be so ungrateful any more, and many such things,
+which it pained me very much to have him say; and so I made him stop,
+and then somehow or other we got our arms around each other's neck, and
+we kissed each other's cheeks, and great cataracts of tears came tearing
+from each other's eyes; and the first and last unkindness that had come
+between us was passed and gone forever.
+
+"'But do you really think,' said the Dean, when he got his voice
+again,--'do you really think that, if a ship don't come along and take
+us off, we can live here on this wretched little island,--that is, when
+the summer goes, and all the birds have flown away, and the darkness and
+the cold are on us all the time?'"
+
+"'To be sure we can,' I answered; but, to tell the truth, I had very
+great doubts about it, only I thought that this would strengthen up the
+Dean; and as I had, by this time, made for myself a better definition to
+Job's comforter than a something to go around the neck, I had no idea of
+being called by that name any more.
+
+"'I'm glad to hear you say that!' exclaimed the Dean. 'Indeed I am!'
+
+"There was no need to give me such very strong assurance that he was
+'glad to hear it,' for his face showed as plain as could be that he was
+glad to hear me say anything that had the least hope in it.
+
+"After this the Dean grew quite cheerful. Suddenly he asked, 'Do you
+know, Hardy, if this island has a name?'
+
+"Of course I did not know, and told him so.
+
+"'Then I'll give it one right off,' said he; 'I'll call it from this
+minute the Rock of Good Hope, and here we'll make our start in life.
+It's as good a place, perhaps, to make a start in life as any other; for
+nobody is likely to dispute our title to our lands, or molest us in our
+fortune-making, which is more than could be said if our lot were cast in
+any other place.'
+
+"This vein of conversation brightened me up a little. Indeed, it was
+hard to be very long despondent in the presence of the Dean's hopeful
+disposition. There was much more said of the same nature, which it is
+not necessary to repeat. It is enough for me to tell you that the upshot
+of the whole matter was that we came in the end to regard ourselves as
+settled on the island, if not for the remainder of our lives, at least
+for an indefinite time, and we made up our minds that there was no use
+in being gloomy and cast down about it. So from that time forward we
+were mostly cheerful, and, though you may think it very strange, were
+generally contented.
+
+"This was a great step gained, and when we now came to make an inventory
+of our possessions, we did it just as a farmer or merchant would do.
+Being the undisputed owners of this Rock of Good Hope, we considered
+ourselves none the less owners of all the foxes, ducks, eggs,
+eider-down, dead beasts, dry bones, and whatsoever else there might be
+upon it; and, besides this, we had a lien upon all the seals and
+walruses and whales of every kind that lived in the sea,--that is, if we
+could catch them.
+
+"We now worked with even a better spirit than we had done before, for
+the idea of being settled on the island for life seemed to imply that we
+had need to look ahead farther than when our hopes of rescue had been
+strong.
+
+"And first we finished the hut in which we were to live,--doing it not
+as if we were putting up a tent for temporary use, but as a man who has
+just come into possession of a large property puts up a fine house on
+it, that he may be comfortable for the remainder of his days.
+
+"I have told you our hut was about twelve feet square, and that we had,
+after much hard labor, succeeded in closing it up perfectly, and in
+making it tight. Along the peak of it, where the two rocks came
+together, there was a crack which gave us much trouble; but at length
+we succeeded in pounding down into it, with the but-end of our narwhal
+horn, a great quantity of moss or turf, and thus closed it tight.
+
+"I must tell you here, while we are on the subject of moss, and since I
+have spoken about it so often, that the moss grew on our island, as it
+does in all Arctic countries, with a richness that you never see
+here,--moss being, in truth, the characteristic vegetation of the Arctic
+regions. In the valley fronting us there was a bed of it several feet
+thick. Its fibres were very long,--as much, in some places, as four
+inches,--all of a single year's growth; and as it had gone on growing
+year after year, you will understand that there was layer after layer of
+it. In one place, at the side of the valley to the right as we went down
+towards the beach, it seemed to have died out after growing for many
+years; and when we discovered this, we were more rejoiced than we had
+been at any time since starting the fire; for the moss, being dead, had
+become dry and hard, and burned almost like peat, as we found when we
+came to try it in our fireplace; and when we added to it a little of our
+blubber, it made such a heat that we could not have desired anything
+better. Indeed, it made our hut so warm that we could leave the door and
+window both open until the weather became colder.
+
+"One thing which gave us great satisfaction was the immense quantity of
+the dead moss which was in this bed,--so much, indeed, that, no matter
+how long we should live there, we could never burn up the hundredth part
+of it. At first there had not appeared to be much of it, but it
+developed more and more, like a coal mine, as we dug farther and farther
+into it.
+
+"Our fireplace was therefore, as you see, a great success; but we were,
+after a few days, most unexpectedly troubled with it. Thus far the wind
+had been blowing only in one direction; but afterwards it shifted to the
+opposite quarter, driving the smoke all down into the hut, and
+smothering us out. Neither of us being a skilful mason, we could not
+imagine what was the matter; but finally it occurred to us, after much
+useless labor had been spent in tearing part of it down and building it
+up again, that it was too low, being just on a level with the top of the
+hut; so we ran it up as much higher as we could lift the stones, which
+was about four feet, and after that we had no more trouble with it.
+
+"Having succeeded so well with our arrangements towards keeping up a
+fire, we next fitted up a bed, as the storms now began to trouble us,
+and we found, when we were driven away from the grass, and were obliged
+to sleep inside of the hut, that it was a very hard place to sleep,
+being nothing but rough stones, which made us very sore, and made our
+bones ache.
+
+"The first thing we did now was to build a wall about as high as our
+knees right across the middle of the hut, from side to side; then,
+across the space thus enclosed in the back part of the hut, we built up
+another wall about three feet high,--thus, you see, making two divisions
+of it.
+
+"One of these divisions we used as a sort of store-room or closet,
+levelling the bottom of it with flat stone, of which we had no
+difficulty in getting all we wanted. We also covered the front part of
+the hut with stones of the same description, thus making quite a smooth
+floor. It was not large enough, as you will see, to give us much trouble
+in keeping it clean. Of the second division, in the back part, we made
+our bed, by first filling it up with moss, then covering the moss over
+with dry grass.
+
+"Having given up all hope of a ship coming after us, we now gave up
+watching for one; and we went to sleep together on our new bed, lying on
+the dry grass, and, as before, covering ourselves over with my large
+overcoat. We found it to be more comfortable than you would think, and
+altogether better than anything we had yet had to sleep on. But we came
+near losing our fire by it, as the last embers were just dying out when
+we awoke from this our first sleep in the hut.
+
+"But this bed did not exactly suit our fancy, and, seeing the necessity
+for some better kind of bedclothes, our wits were once more set to
+working, in order to discover something with which to fasten together
+the duck-skins that we had been saving and drying, and of which we had
+now almost a hundred. We had spread them out upon the rocks, and dried
+them in the sun; for we had seen that, if we could only find something
+with which to sew them together, we might make all the clothing that we
+wanted.
+
+"The eider-duck skin is very warm, having, besides its thick coat of
+feathers, a heavy underlayer of soft warm down, which, as I told you
+before, the ducks pick off to line their nests with. The skins are also
+very strong, as well as warm.
+
+"Now, however, as at other times since we had been cast away, good
+fortune came to us; and we had scarcely begun seriously to feel the need
+of sewing materials before they were thrown in our way, as if
+providentially. It happened thus:--
+
+"In cutting the blubber from the dead narwhal, we had quite exposed the
+strong sinews of the tail, without, however, for a moment imagining that
+we were preparing the way to a most important and useful discovery.
+After a while this sinew had become partially dried in the sun, and one
+day, while busy with some one of our now quite numerous occupations, I
+was much surprised to see the Dean running towards me from the beach,
+and was still more surprised when I heard him crying out, 'I have it, I
+have it!'
+
+"It seemed to me that the Dean was always having something, and I was
+more than ever curious to know what it was this time.
+
+"He had been down to the beach, and, observing some of the dried sinew,
+had begun to tear it to pieces; and in this way he found out that he
+could make threads of it, and he immediately set off to tell me about
+it. We at once went together down to the beach, and, cutting off all
+that we could get of this strong sinew, we spread it upon the rocks,
+that it might dry more thoroughly.
+
+"In a few days the sun had completely dried and hardened a great
+quantity of this stuff; and we found that, when we came to pick it to
+pieces, we could make, if we chose, very fine threads of it,--as fine
+and as strong as ordinary silk. This was a great discovery truly, as it
+was the only thing now wanting, except some cooking utensils, to
+complete our domestic furniture. As for the latter, it was some time
+before we invented anything; but thus far we had been occupied with what
+seemed to be more important concerns. Over on the opposite side of the
+island I found some stones of very soft texture; and, upon trying them
+with my knife, I discovered that they were precisely the same kind of
+stones that I had often found at home, and which we there called
+soapstone. Upon making further search there proved to be quite an
+extensive vein of it; and since I knew that in civilized countries
+griddles are made out of soapstone, I concluded at once that other kinds
+of cooking utensils might be made as well. Accordingly I carried to our
+hut several pieces of it, and there they lay for a good while, until I
+could find leisure to carve some pots and other things out of them.
+
+"Thus you see we were getting along very well, steadily collecting those
+things which were necessary as well for our comfort as our safety. If
+the island on which we had been cast away was barren and inhospitable,
+it was none the less capable, like almost every other land, in whatever
+region of the earth, of furnishing subsistence to men.
+
+"When we saw what we could do with the sinew of the narwhal, we
+immediately set about preparing some bedclothes for ourselves. This we
+did by squaring off the duck-skins with my knife, and then sewing them
+tightly together. Thus we obtained, not only a soft bed to lie upon, but
+a good warm quilt to cover us.
+
+"This done, we went back to the cooking utensils, which you may be sure
+we were very much in need of. Out of a good large block of soapstone, by
+careful digging with the knife, we soon made quite a good-sized pot,
+which was found to answer perfectly. We could now change our diet a
+little,--at least, I should say, the manner of cooking it; for while we
+could before only fry our ducks and eggs on flat stones, when we got the
+pot we could boil them. This gave us great pleasure, as we were getting
+very tired of having but one style of food; still I cannot say that
+there was so very much occasion for being over-glad, as at best it was
+only ducks and eggs, and eggs and ducks, like the boy you have heard of
+in the story, who had first mush and milk, and then, for variety, milk
+and mush.
+
+"So one day the Dean said to me, 'Hardy, can't we catch some of these
+little birds,--auks you call them?' 'How?' said I. 'I don't know,' said
+he; so we were just as well off as we had been before. But this set us
+to thinking again; and the birds being very tame, and flying low, it
+occurred to us that we might make a net, and fasten it to the end of our
+narwhal horn, which we had thus far only used while making our hut.
+Luckily for us, the Dean--who, I need hardly say, was a very clever boy
+in every sense--had learned from one of the sailors the art of
+net-making; and out of some of the narwhal sinew he contrived, in two
+days, to construct quite a good-sized net. And now the difficulty was to
+stretch it; but by this time our inventive faculties had been pretty
+well sharpened, and we were not long in finding that we could make a
+perfect hoop by lashing together three seal ribs which we picked up on
+the beach; and, having fastened this hoop securely to the narwhal horn,
+we sallied forth to the north side of the island, where the auks were
+most abundant.
+
+[Illustration: Changing the Diet again.]
+
+"Hiding ourselves away among the rocks, we waited until a flock of the
+birds flew over us. They flew very low,--not more than five feet above
+our heads. When they were least expecting it, I threw up the net, and
+three of them flew bang into it. They were so much stunned by the blow,
+that only one of them could flutter out before I had drawn in the net;
+and the Dean was quick enough to seize the remaining two before they
+could escape. This, being the first experiment, gave us great
+encouragement, as it was more successful than we had ventured to hope.
+We went on with the work, without pausing, for several hours, looking
+upon it as great sport, as indeed it was; and since it was the first
+thing we had done on the island that seemed like sport, the day was
+always remembered by us with delight.
+
+"So now you see we had begun to mingle a little pleasure with our life;
+and this was a very important matter, for you know the old saying, 'All
+work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+The Ancient Mariner takes the Little People on a Little
+Voyage; and the Little People become convinced that an
+Arctic Winter, an Aurora Borealis, and an Ancient
+Mariner, are very Wonderful Things.
+
+
+A lively breeze was blowing over the little village of Rockdale, and in
+a lively way the tall trees were bending down their heads, and swinging
+to and fro as if they liked it; for the leaves were beating time, and
+were singing joyously, and appeared to be saying all the while how glad
+they would be to keep beating time and singing on forever, if the wind
+would only please to be so good as to help them on in the joyous
+business; and the tall grass and grain were shining in the sun, and
+rolling round in a very reckless manner, as if they meant to show off
+their great billows of green and gold, and make the staid and sober
+little waves that were ruffling up the surface of the bright blue waters
+of the bay quite ashamed.
+
+"Ha, ha!" laughed our ancient friend, the Captain, when he saw what a
+day it was. "Ha, ha! what a day indeed!" and right away he began to call
+loudly for his boy, Main Brace,--
+
+"Main Brace, Main Brace, come here! Come, bear a hand, and be lively
+there, you plum-duff, chuckle-headed young landlubber, and waddle along
+aft here on your sausage legs."
+
+A feeble voice is heard to answer from the galley,--"Ay, ay, sir;
+comin', sir, comin'"; and the plum-duff head and the sausage legs follow
+feebly in after the voice, looking surprised.
+
+"Main Brace,"--begins the Captain.
+
+"Ay, ay, sir," responds Main Brace; and the plum-duff head lets fall its
+lower jaw, and looks amazed, the Captain is so much in earnest.
+
+"Some bait, Main Brace! Do you hear, my lad? Be lively, boy, and get
+some bait; and then overhaul the _Alice_, and stand by to be ready when
+I come down. We'll go a-fishing to-day,--do you hear, my boy? And we'll
+have a jolly time,--do you hear that? So be lively now, and be off with
+your plum-duff head and your sausage legs. I tell you, away, away! for
+we'll go a-sailin'. Away, away! for we'll go a-sailin', a-sailin',
+a-sailin'. Away, away! for we'll go a-sailin',--a-sailin' on the sea."
+
+Without another word the sausage legs made off with the plum-duff head,
+which had no sooner got outside the door than it began to let out in
+dislocated fragments, from a mouth that gradually expanded until it
+reached from ear to ear, "Away, away! we'll go a-fishin', a-fishin',
+a-fishin'; away, away! we'll go a-sailin', a-sailin', a-sailin'; away,
+away! we'll all be jolly, jolly, jolly,--we'll all be jolly"; and so on
+until the sausage legs had carried the plum-duff head and the refrain
+together so far down among the trees, towards the water, that all the
+other "jollys" and the sailin's and the "fishin's," and the rest of it,
+were blown clean away by the wind.
+
+And off went the Captain, too, hurrying up to the top of the hill behind
+the cottage, as if the cosey little thing was all afire, and the dear
+old soul was running up for help; and when he reached the top of the
+hill, he began swinging round his old tarpaulin hat, making the long
+blue ribbons fairly whistle and speak, as if they would say, "Old man,
+old man, stop a bit, and take breath!--can't you now? and say, what's
+this all about, for goodness' sake!"
+
+[Illustration: The Ancient Mariner becomes excited, and Main Brace makes
+an effort.]
+
+But the old man knew well enough himself what it was all about; for he
+was signalling his little friends; and every circle of his big arm, and
+every shake of his long gray beard, and every swing of his old tarpaulin
+hat, seemed to sing out, "Hurrah, hurrah, for a jolly day! hurrah,
+hurrah, my children gay! hurrah, hurrah, let's up and away, upon the
+bright blue waters!"
+
+By and by the children caught sight of the old tarpaulin hat and the
+blue ribbons and the Captain himself, all in this state of violent
+excitement; and down they bore at once upon the ancient mariner, as if
+he were a regular bluff-bowed old East Indiaman, full of golden ingots,
+and they were clipper-built, copper-fastened, rakish fore-and-afters of
+the piratical pattern.
+
+"Heyday!" (the old man never thought he had begun until he had thrown
+off a heyday or so), "heyday, my hearties!" said the ancient mariner, as
+the children came up to him,--"heyday, my dears! keep on that same
+course before the wind, and you'll fetch up in the right port"; and so,
+without further ado, he hurried "my hearties" down to the beach, and
+aboard the yacht; and then very soon Main Brace (whose mouth had never
+left off expanding at the prospect of "a fishin'" and "a sailin'" and "a
+jolly day" generally) had the anchor away; and then the Captain spread
+the white sails to the lively breeze; and there never was, since the
+world began, a merrier little party, in a merrier little craft, afloat
+upon blue water on a merrier day. Indeed, the day was so merry, and the
+craft was so merry, and the waves were so merry as they came leaping
+round the yacht, and the wind was so merry as it bulged out the sail and
+went whistling through the rigging, and the little party in the yacht
+were so merry, and everything and everybody was so merry, that it would
+be strange indeed if the fish were not merry too; and the finny
+creatures played round the pretty hooks, too merry by half to touch
+them; and then they came merrily up, and poked their heads out close to
+the top of the water, and stared at the merry-makers in the yacht, and
+they seemed to be whispering to one another, "O, what a jolly lot of
+coves they are, to be sure! O, don't they wish they may catch
+us?--don't they though?" and then they dropped down again to look at the
+pretty hooks; but only the sober-sided ones that had no idea of being
+merry went near enough to bite, and these were surely bitten in return;
+for, if the hook once got into their red gills, they found themselves
+jerked up before they could say Lobster, and heard merry voices shouting
+round them, to their great astonishment.
+
+And of these sober-sided fishes who were so unfortunate as to have no
+idea of being merry, the Captain and his little friends caught as many
+as they wanted; and then the Captain said to his little friends, "Put
+away your fishing-tackle now, and come down below into the little cabin,
+and I'll surprise you." And, sure enough, he did surprise them,--quite
+as much, perhaps, as if some fairy queen had come, and called them to a
+fairy banquet; as much indeed, perhaps, as if they had themselves
+suddenly been turned to fairies, and were doing something that was never
+even dreamed of by mortal child before; for, while they had been
+fishing, Main Brace had, by direction of the Captain, been building up a
+fire in the little stove, and in the very centre of the cabin he had set
+out a little table, and upon the little table there was spread the
+whitest little cloth, and on the cloth were set all round the daintiest
+little plates and knives and forks, and the neatest little napkins, and
+the cunningest little cups, that were ever seen.
+
+"And now," spoke up the Captain, laughing all the while to see his
+little friends so much surprised, "fall to, fall to! for we're going to
+have a jolly feast, or my name isn't Ancient Mariner, nor John Hardy
+either." And the Captain poured out some fresh foaming milk into the
+cunning little cups, from a big stone jug; and he brought some fresh
+white rolls and some golden butter from a little locker; and soon
+afterward he drew from the little stove some dainty little fish, and
+dropped one, all crisp and hissing hot, upon each dainty little plate;
+and now for half an hour there was busy work enough for the dainty
+little knives and forks. The Captain's little stove proved to be
+everything that one could wish for in that line; and the Captain's style
+of cooking showed plainly enough, as William said, that "the Captain had
+not travelled round the world, and been an ancient mariner, for
+nothing."
+
+When the meal was over, and everything was cleared away, and the little
+cabin was once more in ship-shape order, William proposed the Captain's
+health,--tossing back his head, and drinking a great quantity of
+imaginary wine from an imaginary glass. "Here's to the health of Captain
+Hardy, ancient mariner, and other things too numerous to mention,--the
+jolliest Jack Tar that ever reefed a sail, or walked on the windward
+side of a quarter-deck! May Davy Jones be a long while waiting for him;
+and when he does go into Davy's locker, may he go an Admiral!" And then
+the children all together "Hip, hip, hurrahed" the Captain, until the
+old man had nearly split himself with laughing at their childish
+merriment.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+"And now for the story," said the Captain, when the laugh was ended.
+"What do you say to that?"
+
+"The story,--yes, yes, the story," shouted all the children, merrier
+than ever.
+
+"Down here, or up on deck?"
+
+"Down here, just where we are; it's such a splendid place!"
+
+"Then down here it shall be," went on the Captain, right well pleased.
+"Down here it shall be, my dears, if I can only pick up the yarn again
+where I broke it off. Let me see"; and the old man put a finger to his
+nose, as he always did when he was thoughtful.
+
+"Aha!" cried he, at length, "I've got my bearings now, as neat as a
+light-house in a fog. You know, my dears, when we left off last time, we
+had gone so far along with the story that you could see the Dean and I
+had got ourselves in soundings, as it were. We had seen the light-ship
+off the harbor, and were steering for it, so to speak. We had, by
+working very hard, and by persevering very much, and by using our wits
+as best we could, gathered about us everything that was needed to insure
+our present safety, and some things to make us comfortable. We had a hut
+to shelter us, and clothes to keep us warm, and fire to cook our food.
+
+"But the winter was now coming on very fast, and we knew well enough
+what that was likely to be. The grass and moss and flowers were dead or
+dying; the ice was forming on the little pools, and here and there upon
+the sea; little spurts of snow were coming now and then; the winds were
+getting to be more fierce and angry, and every day was growing colder
+and more dark. We knew that the long winter was close upon us, and that
+the shadow of the night would soon be resting on us all the time. The
+birds had hatched their young, and quitted their nests, and were flying
+off to the sunny south, where we so longed to go, and so longed to send
+a message by them to the loved ones far away. It made us sad--O, how
+very, very sad!--to see the birds so happy on the wing, and sailing off
+and leaving us upon the island all alone. Alone,--all, all alone! Alone
+upon a desert island in the Frozen Sea! Alone in cold and darkness! All,
+all alone!
+
+"We made ourselves warm coats and stockings out of the skins of the
+birds that we had caught; and we made caps, too, out of them,--plucking
+off the feathers, and leaving only the soft, warm, mouse-colored down
+upon the skin. And out of the seal's skin we made mittens and nice soft
+boots, or rather, as I might call them, moccasins.
+
+"The birds began to go away about the middle of August, as nearly as we
+could tell, but it was more than a month after that before they had all
+left the island. Meanwhile we had caught a great number of them,--two
+hundred and sixty-six in all; and we had collected, besides, ninety
+dozen of their eggs. These birds and eggs were all carefully stowed away
+in our storehouses of ice and rocks near the glacier.
+
+"In the matter of food, we had, therefore, done very well; but we felt
+the need of some more blubber for our fire, and some warmer clothing
+than the birds' skins. To supply this latter want, we tried very hard to
+catch some foxes; but it was a long time before we were successful; for
+not until all the ducks had gone away would the foxes trouble themselves
+to go inside our traps. These traps were made of stones, and in building
+them I had derived the only benefit which had ever resulted to me from
+my indolent life on the farm. I was always fond of shirking away from my
+duties, and going into the woods to set rabbit-traps; and, remembering
+how I made them of wood, I easily contrived a stone one of the same
+pattern, and it was found afterwards to answer perfectly; for when there
+were no longer eggs and ducks for them to eat, the foxes went into our
+traps, which we baited with flesh from the dead narwhal. The pelts of
+these foxes were thick and warm; and, by the time the weather got very
+cold, we had obtained a good number, and of them we made suits of
+clothes at our leisure. There were two kinds of foxes; one was a sort
+of blue gray, and the other was quite white.
+
+"As the weather grew colder, the little streams which had thus far
+supplied us with water all froze up; and we had now nothing to depend
+upon but the freshly fallen snow, which we had, of course, to melt. Thus
+you see how important it was that I should have found the soapstone in
+season, and made a pot of it, else we should not only have been obliged
+to go without boiled food, but likewise without water. As for fuel, we
+were for the present relieved from all anxiety by a dead walrus and a
+small white whale which drifted in upon the beach during a westerly
+gale. The waves being very strong, they were landed so high up on the
+beach that there was little fear of their being washed away again.
+
+"It was no easy matter to cut these animals up with our one jack-knife,
+since, before we could get it done, they had frozen quite hard. The
+temperature had gone down until it was already below freezing all the
+time; and very soon a great deal of snow fell, and was drifted into
+heaps by the wind. The sea, soon after this, became frozen over quite
+solid all about the island, although we could still see plenty of clear,
+open water in the distance. There was one satisfaction, at least, in
+this freezing up of the sea: we could walk out upon it, and go all
+around the island without having to clamber over the rough rocks.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+"You have now seen pretty much what our life was on the island, and how
+we were prepared for the winter. Well, the winter came by and by in good
+earnest, I can tell you. The sunlight all went away, and then, soon
+afterward, the autumn twilight went away; and then came the darkness
+that I told you is constant, in the winter, up towards the North Pole,
+for the winter there is but one long night, you know."
+
+Here William, who was, as we have seen, of an inquiring turn of mind,
+interrupted the Captain to ask if he would not be so good as to mention
+again how dark it was in this polar winter.
+
+"Dark as midnight," replied the Captain, promptly.
+
+"Dark all the time, did you say, Captain Hardy?"
+
+"Yes, dark all the time, my lad,--dark in the morning, dark in the
+evening, dark at midnight, dark at noon, dark, all the time, as any
+night you ever saw; only, everything being white with snow, of course
+makes the night lighter than it does here, where the trees and the
+houses, and other dark objects, help along the blackness and make it
+more gloomy,--absorbing the light, you see, while the snow reflects it."
+
+"But what," asked William, "did you do for light in this dark time,
+since you did not have a lamp?"
+
+"Easy there, my lad," replied the Captain; "I'm just coming to that, you
+see. Somebody has said that 'necessity is the mother of invention,' or
+words to that effect; and darkness, I think, may be considered a
+'mother' of that description. First we made an open dish of soapstone,
+and put some oil in it; and then we made a wick out of the dry moss, and
+set fire to it; but this was found to make so much smoke that it drove
+us out of the hut, and it was given up. But we did not throw away the
+dish, and after a while it occurred to us to powder the dry moss by
+rubbing it between the hands, and with this powdered moss we lined our
+soapstone dish all over on the inside with a layer a quarter of an inch
+thick. After smoothing this down all around the edge (this dish, which
+we called a lamp, was much like a saucer, only rougher and much
+larger), we filled it half full of oil, and again set fire to it all
+around the edge; and this time it worked beautifully,--smoking very
+little, and giving us plenty of light."
+
+"How cunning!" exclaimed the children, all at once.
+
+"Rather so," replied the Captain, "but hardly more so than the two
+little drinking-cups we carved out of the same kind of soapstone that we
+made the lamp and pot of."
+
+"It must have felt very queer, Captain Hardy," said Fred, inquiringly,
+"to be in darkness all the time. I can't imagine such a thing as the
+winter being all the time dark,--can you, Will?"
+
+"No, I can't," replied William,--"can you, Sister Alice?"
+
+"Yes, I think I can," said Alice, quickly.
+
+"Why, how's that, my little dear?" asked the Captain, greatly
+interested.
+
+"O," said Alice, in her gentle way, "I've only to think of poor blind Jo
+going round with his little dog, begging from door to door, and never
+seeing anything in all the world,--no sun, no moon, no stars, no any
+light to him at all. Poor Jo's bright summer went out long ago; and both
+light and warmth were gone, never to come back again, when old Martha
+died! and all's night to Jo,--and that's how I know what it is to be in
+darkness all the time"; and as little Alice made this little speech
+about poor blind Jo, the beggar-man, her lovely face looked thoughtful
+beyond its years; and, as she finished, the Captain saw a tear stealing
+from her soft blue eye for poor Jo's sake; and he caught her in his arms
+right off, without stopping to think at all what he was doing, and he
+kissed away the tear; and, as he did it, a much bigger one came tearing
+out of his own great hazel eye, and hurried down into his shaggy beard
+to hide, as if it were quite frightened at what it had been doing with
+itself.
+
+"Spoken like the little lady that you are, my dear," broke out the
+Captain; "always thinking of the unfortunate. And you are very right, my
+child. Poor blind Jo's darkness is much worse than ours ever was, up in
+the Frozen Sea, upon the lonely island,--far worse indeed, poor man! for
+you must know that the stars were shining brightly there upon us all the
+time; and then the moon came every month; and when it came, it came for
+good and all, and never set for several days; and then sometimes the
+aurora borealis would flash across the heavens, and clear away the
+darkness for a little while, as if it were a huge broom sweeping cobwebs
+from the skies, and letting in the light of day beneath the stars. O,
+what a splendid sight it was!"
+
+"O, tell us all about it, Captain Hardy, won't you?" asked all the
+children, with one voice.
+
+"Of course, I will," replied the Captain, "only I can do no sort of
+justice to that species of natural scenery, don't you see? That's a
+touch beyond John Hardy's powers of description, as I can well assure
+you."
+
+The children all declared that they never could think anything beyond
+John Hardy's powers, and they believed it too.
+
+"Well, well! Now let me see, my dears, what I can do for you. First, you
+know the scientific chaps, especially my friend the Doctor, down in
+Boston, say that the aurora borealis is electricity broke loose, and
+tearing through the air, from pole to pole, for some purpose of its own.
+It can't be caught, nor bottled up, as Franklin bottled up the
+lightning, nor analyzed;--in short, nothing can be done with it; and so
+it goes tearing through the skies, as I have said before, from pole to
+pole, just where it likes.
+
+"Now this is what it is, so far as one can see. When you go away beyond
+the Arctic Circle, you see great fiery streams start up from a fiery
+arch that stretches right across the sky before you; and from this fiery
+arch the fiery streams of light shoot up, and then fall back
+again,--sometimes lasting for a little while, and waving in the sky, to
+and fro, like a silken curtain of many colors fluttering in the wind;
+and then again seeming to be phantom things playing hide-and-seek among
+the stars; sometimes like wicked spirits of the night, bent on mischief;
+sometimes like tongues of flame from some great fire in some great world
+beyond the earth, making one almost afraid that the heavens will break
+out presently in a roaring blaze, and rain a shower of living coals and
+ashes on his head.
+
+"And O, how grand the colors are sometimes! The great arch of light that
+spans the sky is often bright with all the colors of the
+rainbow,--changing every instant. And from these flickering belts of
+light the fiery streams fly up with lightning speed,--green, and orange,
+and blue, and purple, and bright crimson,--all mingling here and there
+and everywhere above, while down beneath comes out in bold relief before
+the eye the broad, white plain of ice and snow upon the ocean, the great
+icebergs that lie here and there upon it, the tall white mountains of
+the land, and the dark islands in the sea; and then the flood of light
+dies away, and the dark islands in the sea, and the tall white
+mountains, and the icebergs, and the white plain around, all vanish from
+the sight, and the mind retains only an impression that the icebergs,
+with all these bright hues reflected on them from above, had come from
+space and darkness, like the meteors, then to vanish, and leave the
+darkness more profound.
+
+"And thus the auroral light and color keep pulsating in the air, up and
+down, up and down; and thus the icebergs seem to come and go; and the
+very stars above seem to be rushing out with a bold bright glare, and
+going back again as quickly, singed and withered, as it were, into puny
+sparks, and, utterly disheartened with the effort to keep their places
+in the face of such a flood of brightness, are at length resolved no
+more to try to twinkle, twinkle through the night.
+
+"And that is all I can tell you about the aurora borealis, for that is
+all I know about it."
+
+"O, isn't he a great one?" whispered William to Fred, who sat close
+beside him on the locker,--"isn't he, indeed?--to say he can't describe
+an aurora borealis, when he has blood, thunder, fire, and all creation
+on his tongue."
+
+"But," went on the Captain, "in spite of this auroral light and the
+moonlight, the winter was dreary enough. At first we wanted to sleep all
+the time; and we had much trouble to keep ourselves from giving way to
+this desire. If we had done so, it would have made us very unhealthy and
+altogether miserable. We had to keep up our spirits, whatever else we
+did; and after a while, to help us with this, we got into regular
+habits; and we set a great clock up in the sky to tell us the time of
+day."
+
+"A clock up in the sky!" exclaimed both the boys; "why, Captain Hardy,
+how was that?"
+
+"Why, don't you see, my lads, the 'Great Bear' and all the other
+constellations of the north go round and round the Pole-star, which is
+right above your head; and it so happened that I knew the 'Great Bear,'
+and the two stars in its side called 'the Pointers' because they point
+to the Pole-star. Now these two 'Pointers,' going around once in the
+four-and-twenty hours, pointed up from the south at one time, and up
+from the north at another time, and up from the east and from the west
+in the same way; and thus you see we had a clock up in the sky to tell
+us the time of day, for we had an iceberg picked out all around for
+every hour, and when 'the Pointers' stood over that particular berg we
+knew what time it was.
+
+"We should have got along through the winter much more comfortably if we
+had had some books, or some paper to write on, and pen and ink to write
+with; but these things were quite beyond the reach of our ingenuity. So
+our life was very monotonous; doing our daily duties,--that is, whatever
+we might find to do,--and, after wading through the deep snow in doing
+it, we came back again to our little hut to get warm, and to eat and
+talk and sleep.
+
+"And much talking we did, as I can assure you, about each other, and
+each other's life, and what great things we would do when we got away
+from the island, hopeless though that seemed. Thus we came gradually to
+know each other's history, and thus there came to be greater sympathy
+between us, and more indulgence of each other's whims and fancies, as we
+got better and better acquainted.
+
+"The Dean had quite a story to relate of himself. He told me that he was
+born in the great city of New York. His father died before he could
+remember, and his mother was very poor; but so long as she kept her
+health she managed, in one way or another, to live along from day to day
+by sewing; and she managed, too, to send the Dean to school. She loved
+her bright-haired little boy so very, very much that she would have
+spent the last cent she could ever earn, could she only give her darling
+Dean a little knowledge that might help him on in the world when he grew
+to be a man. And so she stinted herself and saved, all unknown to her
+darling Dean; and she had not clothing or fire enough to keep her warm
+in the bleak winter, when the Dean was out, though she had a fine fire
+when the Dean came back. All would have been well enough if the poor
+woman had not, with her hard work and her efforts to save, become thin
+and weak, and then grown sick with fever; and now there was nothing for
+her but the hospital, for there was no money to pay for medicines, or
+doctor's bills, to say nothing of rent and fire and clothes.
+
+"And now for the first time the Dean began to realize the situation; and
+a vague impression crossed his mind, that the poor, pale woman, now
+restless with pain on a narrow bed in a great long ward of a dreary
+hospital,--his own dear mother, suffering here with strange hands only
+to comfort her,--had been brought to this for his sake; and when she
+grew better, after a long, long time, but was still far from well, he
+thought and thought, and cried and cried, and prayed and prayed, and
+wished that he might do something to show his gratitude, and make
+amends.
+
+"By and by he got into a factory, and worked there early and late, until
+he too grew sick, and was carried to the hospital, and was laid beside
+his poor sick mother, on a narrow bed. But he soon got well again,
+though his mother did not, and then (he could do nothing else) he went
+to sea as cabin-boy of a ship sailing to Havana; and he came back too;
+and, with a proud heart beating in his little breast, he carried a
+little purse of gold and silver coins that the captain gave him to his
+poor sick mother; and then he went away again on the same ship, and came
+back once more with another purse of money, twice as big as the first;
+but the good captain that had been so kind to him, and rewarded him so
+well, fell sick, and died of yellow fever on the passage home, and the
+mate, who got command of the ship, being a different sort of man,
+disliked the Dean, and told him not to come back any more. And so the
+poor Dean didn't know what to do; until one of his old shipmates met him
+in the street, and took him off to New Bedford, and shipped him as
+cabin-boy of the _Blackbird_. 'And now here I am,' said the poor little
+Dean, 'and all the rest you know,--cast away in the cold, in this awful
+place, while my poor sick mother has no money and no friends in all the
+world, and is thinking all the time what a wretch I am to run away and
+desert her, when, God knows, I meant to do nothing of the sort!' and so
+the Dean burst out crying, and, to tell you the truth, I could not help
+crying a little too.
+
+"But the Dean was a right plucky little fellow, I can tell you; and so
+full of hope and ambition was he, that nothing could keep him down very
+long; and nothing, I believe, could ever make him despond for a single
+minute but thinking of his mother, sick and far away, without friends or
+money, lying on a narrow bed, all through the weary, dreary days and
+nights, in the dreary ward of a crowded hospital. Poor Dean! he had
+something to make him cry, and something always to make him sad, if he
+had a mind to be; but what had I in comparison?--I who had gone away
+from home with no good motive like the Dean's.
+
+"After the recital of this story of the Dean's, we were both very sad,
+until the Dean suddenly roused himself, and said, 'Let's go and look at
+our traps, Hardy'; and so we sallied out into the moonlight, and waded
+through the snow, to see if there were any foxes for us. To get outside
+our hut was not so easy a matter now as it was when we first built it;
+for, in order to keep the cold winds away, we had made a long, low,
+narrow passage, with a crook in it, through which we crawled on our
+hands and knees, before we reached the door.
+
+"We walked all the way around the island, and visited all our traps, of
+which we had seventeen, but only two of them had foxes in them; the
+others were either filled with snow, or were completely covered over
+with it, for the wind had been blowing very hard the day before.
+
+"As we got farther and farther into the winter, we met with some very
+strange adventures,--altogether different from anything I have told you
+of before; but you see the sun will soon be going down behind the trees,
+and we are a good long way from the 'Mariner's Rest,' so 'up anchor' 's
+the word now, my dears, and 'under way' again."
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+The merry little yacht was not long in carrying the merry little party
+over to the Captain's favorite anchorage; and then they were all soon
+ashore, and after many merry and many pleasant speeches, our little
+friends parted from the ancient mariner once more, leaving him standing
+in the shadow of the great tall trees, with a string of fish in one
+hand; while Fred and William, with Main Brace to help them, and with
+merry Alice running on ahead, each carried off a string for their next
+day's breakfast,--a trophy to be proud of, as they thought.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+Proves the Ingenuity of Seals, and Shows That the Great
+Polar Bear Is No Respecter of Persons.
+
+
+"When we were last time cruising in the _Alice_, I think I told you all
+about the Arctic winter,--did I not?" said the ancient mariner to his
+little friends, when they were met once more.
+
+"Yes," answered William (who was always ready to act as spokesman for
+the party),--"yes, Captain Hardy, all about the Arctic winter, and the
+aurora borealis, and the wonderful moonlight, and the darkness, and how
+you and the handsome little Dean lived through it, and what you talked
+about, and how you passed the time, and what a doleful life you led, and
+what a dreadful thing it was, and how it made you shiver now to think of
+it; and--all that, and a great deal more."
+
+"Certainly," replied the Captain, "certainly, that's it,--all told off
+nicely, my lad, just as if you were boxing the compass or repeating the
+multiplication table;--all about how we protected ourselves from cold,
+and kept ourselves from hunger, and prepared a home for ourselves on the
+Rock of Good Hope. And this seemed likely to be our home for life
+too,--so far, at least, as we could see; for it appeared clear enough to
+us that our condition would never change except with death, which we,
+like everybody else, whether they have ever been cast away or not,
+wanted to put off as long as possible, having no wish at all to die, and
+not liking either to freeze or starve: so you see we had good motives
+for energy and patience."
+
+Here little Alice, in her quiet way, interrupted the Captain to say that
+the aurora borealis had troubled her dreams all night, and that she
+would like to know, if the Captain pleased, why anything should have
+such a strange name.
+
+"That I will tell you with pleasure, my dear," answered the Captain;
+"I'll tell you all about it,--of course I will. Aurora borealis,--that
+means northern light; and the name comes from a pagan goddess called
+Aurora, who was supposed to have rosy fingers, and to ride in a rosy
+chariot, and who opened the gates of the East every morning, and brought
+in the light of day; and thus, in course of time, any great flush of
+light in the heavens got to be called Aurora. And then there was a pagan
+god called Boreas, who was the North Wind, and had long wings and white
+hair, and made himself generally disagreeable. So you see Boreas, from
+being the pagan name for north wind, got to mean the north; and
+Borealis, from that, became Northern, and Aurora Borealis became
+Northern Light."
+
+"Thank you, Captain Hardy," said little Alice; and Fred and William said
+"Thank you" too; while, as for the Captain, he looked very wise and
+solemn, like other great philosophers, appearing as if he would say,
+"Don't be surprised, for that's nothing to what I could do if I had a
+mind," every word of which the children would have believed, you may
+well be sure. However, the Captain hastened on with the story (which is
+more to our present purpose) without giving any further proof of his
+learning.
+
+"When the winter had fairly set in," said he, "our field of operations
+was much enlarged; and, although the birds had all flown away, we were
+hardly worse off than before, as you shall see; for all through the
+summer we had been kept close prisoners on the island; but now, when
+the ice was solid all over the sea, we could walk out upon it, and this
+we did as soon as it would bear. Once the Dean broke through, being a
+little careless of where he was stepping; but I got him out, with no
+more harm coming to him than a cold bath and a fright.
+
+"Soon after this we made a valuable discovery. Some of the seals have a
+habit, when the sea is frozen over, of cutting holes through the ice
+with their sharp claws, in order that they may get their heads above the
+water to breathe,--the seals not being able, as I have told you before,
+to breathe under water, like fish. They can keep their heads under water
+about an hour, by closing up their nostrils, so that not a drop can get
+in; and, during that time, they do not breathe at all; but at last they
+must find the open sea, or a crack in the ice, or else dig a hole
+through the ice from below, and thus get their heads to the surface in
+some way, or they would drown.
+
+"As we did not then know anything about the habits of the seals in this
+respect, I was very much surprised one day, while walking over ice that
+was everywhere apparently very solid, to find one of my feet suddenly
+break through. I was carrying, at the time, our great narwhal horn,
+which had already been used for so many purposes; and when I had got my
+foot, as quickly as possible, out of the water, I pounded with the heavy
+horn all about the place, and found that there was a large round hole
+there that had evidently been made by some animal; and I could think of
+nothing else as likely to have made it but a seal. The reason why I had
+not seen it was because the snow had drifted over it in a hard crust,
+and through this crust the seal kept open with his nose a small orifice
+for breathing, that was not larger round than a silver dollar.
+
+"This discovery made us very glad and very curious,--for, having
+concluded what it was, we concluded also that there must be more like
+it, and we went in search of them immediately. Our search was soon
+rewarded, for these seal-holes were very numerous.
+
+"How to catch a seal was the question which now most occupied our
+thoughts. The difficulty was very great, for we had no weapons of any
+sort for such a purpose. Once more, however, we fell back upon our
+narwhal horn. To this horn we had already become much attached, and, as
+if to express our gratitude, we had bestowed upon it several names,--as,
+for instance, 'Life-preserver,' 'Crumply Crowbar,' 'The Castaway's
+Friend,' and the like of that; but the title which finally stuck to it
+was 'Old Crumply,'--not that it was exactly a crumply horn, like the one
+that grew on the head of the cow that tossed the dog, that worried the
+cat, that killed the rat, that ate the malt, that lay in the house that
+Jack built,--for it was not crumply at all in that sense, but, on the
+contrary, was as straight as an arrow, and was no further crumply than
+crumply means wrinkled and twisted; and, indeed, the old horn looked as
+if it might have been once red-hot, and had been twisted several times
+around before it had cooled off.
+
+"Besides this 'Old Crumply,' we made another weapon, in quite an
+ingenious way, as we thought, though at a great expense of time and
+labor. This was called by several names, like the other; but generally I
+called it the 'Dean's Delight,' for it was made after the Dean's idea,
+and he used to flourish it about at a great rate, and was very proud of
+it. It was simply a kind of spear made by lashing together (after
+carefully cutting with our knife, and fitting and overlapping) a great
+many pieces of bones. The lashing was the same string or thong we had
+before used for the duck-traps. It was very strong, though not half so
+heavy as 'Old Crumply.'
+
+"But though we had 'Old Crumply,' and the 'Dean's Delight,' we were
+apparently just as far off as ever from catching a seal. The 'Delight'
+was tipped with hard ivory (a piece of walrus tusk carved into proper
+shape with the jack-knife), and 'Crumply' was of the very best kind of
+ivory throughout, yet we could not sharpen either of them so as to be of
+much use. But, remembering the general shape of the harpoon-heads used
+in whale-ships, I managed to cut one of that pattern out of walrus
+ivory, and this I set on the end of the 'Dean's Delight,' and then,
+making a hole in the centre of it, I fastened it to the end of one of
+our long lines. And thus I had obtained all that was needed, in name at
+least, for catching a seal; but only in name, as was soon proved; for
+the Dean and I set out at once to try our fortunes in this new line of
+adventure, and, discovering a seal-hole, we stood near it (on the
+leeward side, that the seal might not scent us) until the animal
+appeared, which was not for a long time, and not until we had grown very
+cold. The seal had evidently been off breathing in another hole. When he
+did come up, we knew it by a little puff he gave, which threw some spray
+up through the little orifice in the snow-crust. Quick as thought I
+plunged the 'Dean's Delight' down into the very centre of the hole, and
+struck the animal; but the ivory harpoon-head that was on the end of it
+only glanced off, without penetrating the skin; and the seal, no doubt
+very much astonished, got off as quickly as he could, more frightened,
+probably, than hurt; at least, we heard of him no more. He never came
+back to the hole, for it was all frozen over next day, and so it
+remained. We afterwards discovered that when a seal-hole has been once
+touched, the seal will never go back to it.
+
+"I was now more puzzled than ever to know what to do; but I did not give
+up trying, determined to succeed, one way or another. Presently it
+occurred to me that almost anything that was hard would answer to
+sharpen the edge and point of the ivory harpoon-head, and, since I could
+not get any kind of metal to make a whole harpoon-head out of, I had to
+try some other plan. As good luck would have it, I now thought of the
+brass buttons on my coat. Some of these I quickly tore off. Then I
+hacked my knife with a sharp flint stone until I had made a saw of it,
+and with this saw I cut a little groove along the tapering point of the
+ivory harpoon-head; and into this groove, which was about a quarter of
+an inch deep, I set the buttons, which I had squared with the knife, and
+then wedged them firmly. I had now only to grind all these bits of brass
+down even, and to sharpen the whole with a stone, and my work was done.
+And a most tedious work it had been too. The next thing was to put it to
+the test, which we quickly did. A seal-hole being soon found, we had not
+long to wait before the seal came into it, with a little puff, as
+before; and, as soon as the noise was heard, I let fly with my harpoon,
+and, striking through the snow-crust, hit the seal fairly in the neck,
+and drove the harpoon into him.
+
+"Down sank the seal through the hole, taking the harpoon along with him,
+and spinning out the line which was attached to it at a furious rate.
+Before the seal was struck, and while I was watching for him, the Dean
+had quietly tied the end of the line that was not fast to the harpoon
+around the middle of 'Old Crumply,' and when the seal descended into
+the sea, 'Old Crumply' was whipped along over the snow until it lodged
+right across the hole, and there the seal was,--'brought up with a round
+turn,' as the sailors say.
+
+"And now was anybody ever so rejoiced as we? The Dean fairly shouted
+with delight, and danced around the hole as if he were crazy, crying
+'Bravo, bravo!' and 'Hurrah for Crumply' and 'Hurrah for Old Crumply!'
+and hurrah for this, and hurrah for that, until he was fairly hoarse.
+Meanwhile the seal was trying his best to get away. He darted from side
+to side, and up and down, without any other result than to tire himself
+out; for the harpoon held firmly in his body, and the line held firmly
+to 'Old Crumply,' and 'Old Crumply' lay squarely across the hole.
+
+"By and by the seal was forced to come up to breathe; and, since there
+was no other place for him, he had to return to the hole where he had
+been struck. But he did not stay more than a second or so, going down as
+quickly as he had done before. As soon as the line was loosened,
+however, we drew in the slack, and wound it around 'Old Crumply,' so
+that the seal did not have so much of it now to play with. Nor did he
+remain under so long the second time. When he came up again, we got in
+all the slack of the line that we could, as before.
+
+"It was now clear enough that we should be sure of the seal, if we could
+only get something to kill him with; and so the quick-witted Dean ran
+off at once to the hut, and brought a walrus tusk that we had saved.
+This was driven into the hard snow not far from the hole, and, while the
+Dean held it there firmly, I got the line made fast around it. As soon
+as I saw that this was secure, and that the Dean was holding on
+bravely, I unfastened the line from 'Old Crumply,' and, when the seal
+came next time, I gave him a heavy thrust with the sharp end of it. But
+this did not kill him by any means, nor did he give me another chance
+for some time. Then, however, he was almost dead with bleeding, and
+fright, and hard struggling to get away, to say nothing of holding his
+breath so long; but I wanted him too badly to have any mercy on him, so
+I worked away as hard as I could to get in all the line, so that the
+seal could not sink down through the hole any more.
+
+[Illustration: Ingenuity is rewarded, and "Old Crumply" distinguished.]
+
+"At last I was successful, and the seal was fast in the hole, and with
+all his struggling he could not get away. With the aid of 'Old Crumply,'
+I now quickly made an end of him. As soon as he was dead, we drew him
+out on the ice, and rejoiced over him. Such shouting never was before
+known, at least in that part of the world. If anybody could have heard
+and seen us, we should have surely been taken up for insane people,
+especially the Dean, whose joy knew no bounds.
+
+"Having no sledge, we had to drag the dead seal over the ice and snow,
+for which purpose we made the line fast through his nose. It was no easy
+task to get him to the hut; and, when we did at last succeed, we found
+that the seal was partly frozen, so that we were obliged to draw it
+inside the hut, and then thaw it, before we could get the skin off,
+which made the hut very disagreeable. After the skin and blubber were
+removed, we cut off some of the flesh, and made for ourselves a good hot
+supper,--first cooking a stew in our soapstone pot, and then frying some
+steaks on a flat stone; and if anything was before wanting to make us
+perfectly happy over the capture of so great a prize, we had it now,
+when we discovered what excellent food it was, and what a quantity there
+was of it.
+
+"When we had finished butchering the seal, we prepared the skin for
+making boots; and we put the blubber and flesh away in our storehouses
+for future use,--the flesh for food, and the blubber for our fire and
+lamp. Then we slept, and the very next day we set out to catch more
+seals, without, however, the same success, for we were unfortunate in
+every attempt; and it was, indeed, almost a week, I think, before we
+made a second capture. Some time afterward we caught a third, and then a
+fourth, and by great good fortune on the very same day a fifth; and not
+long after that we caught another, which made the sixth.
+
+"But it would have been well had we been content with five, without
+coveting a sixth, as this last had like to have been the ruin of us; for
+as we were going slowly back to the hut, dragging the seal after us, and
+all unsuspicious of harm, we were set upon by a great white beast, the
+like of which we had never seen before, but which we knew must be one of
+those savage animals called polar bears. He was not coming rapidly, but
+was rather crawling along cautiously, with mouth wide open, looking very
+fierce. As soon as we discovered him, we dropped the line with which we
+were dragging the seal, and ran as fast as our legs would carry us,
+never stopping until we had reached the hut and crawled into it,--not
+once having had the courage to look back, for at every step we expected
+that the bear would be atop of us.
+
+"We had left 'Old Crumply' and 'Dean's Delight' where we captured the
+seal, intending to go for them the next day; and, having no weapon of
+any kind, we were in the greatest terror, expecting every moment to hear
+the bear coming to tear the hut down, and drag us out, and eat us up.
+
+"But, finding that we were not disturbed, we at length fell asleep. Upon
+awaking the next day, and finding that we had been suffered to go
+undisturbed thus long, we began to wonder whether we had not been
+needlessly alarmed, and finally we set to wondering whether we had
+really seen a bear after all, and at length we grew to feel quite
+ashamed of ourselves. So we put on a little bravado, like the boy that
+whistled in the dark to keep his courage up, and went out, cautiously
+approaching the spot where we had left the seal. Arriving there, we had
+positive proof enough, if any were wanting, that we had certainly seen a
+bear. The bones of the seal were all strewn about over the snow, picked
+as clean as could be. Some foxes were gnawing at them, as we came up;
+but they all scampered off when they saw us coming.
+
+"Hurrying on, we picked up 'Old Crumply' and 'Dean's Delight,' and then
+hastened back to the hut, which we reached without any further
+adventure; but on the day following, upon going out to visit our
+fox-traps, we came across the bear's tracks, from which it was evident
+to us that the wild beast was prowling round the island, where he had
+already obtained one good meal, and was in hopes, no doubt, of getting
+another; and, as we did not know how soon he might feel disposed to
+begin upon us, we ran back to the hut with all speed, imagining, as we
+went along, that every rock and snow-drift that we passed was a bear.
+
+"We had now even greater fears than before that we should be attacked
+and eaten up by the wild beast. It did not once occur to us that the
+bear would be much more likely to prefer the contents of our storehouses
+to ourselves, if he came that way, but we thought only of our own
+safety; and this was perhaps not unnatural, for boys and men alike are
+everywhere liable to magnify their own importance, even in the eyes of a
+bear.
+
+"We had not been in the hut more than a couple of hours, I should say,
+before we heard the tramp of our enemy. We knew it must be the footsteps
+of the bear, because it could be nothing else. Our fears were now even
+greater than ever.
+
+"The bear appeared from the sound of his footsteps, crunching in the
+snow, to be making directly for us, sniffing the air as he came along,
+apparently enjoying in advance a supper that he felt quite sure of. He
+seemed to halt at every step or so, as if greatly relishing the
+prospect.
+
+"At last he came very near, and we expected at every instant to see his
+head appear at the window. Resolved to sell our lives as dearly as
+possible, we grasped our weapons firmly, the Dean his 'Delight' and I
+'Old Crumply,' to the end of which I had firmly lashed the jack-knife,
+after grinding it very sharp on a stone, and giving it a good point. As
+the knife-blade was quite long, I had strong hopes of giving the bear
+such a wound, when he appeared at the window, as might be the death of
+him, or, at any rate, frighten him so badly that he would be glad to run
+away, and not come back any more.
+
+"Nearer and nearer came the bear, and greater grew our alarm. Our hearts
+beat violently in our breasts; our faces were pale as death; we held our
+breath, as if fearful of making the least noise to give the bear
+encouragement. At length our enemy gave a sudden start. It seemed to us
+as if he had now made a dash at the window, so we both rose to our feet,
+with our weapons ready to meet him; but, to our great joy and relief,
+the sound of his footsteps showed that the beast was retreating, rather
+than advancing, and was moving more rapidly. A moment afterward we heard
+the rattle of stones, and now, from fear for ourselves, we passed
+instantly to fear for our stores; for we knew that it was our stores,
+and not us, that he was after, and that he must be tearing down one of
+our principal storehouses. And now, what if he should tear them all
+down, and eat up all our food and fuel? It was a fearful thought.
+
+"How often do we pass almost insensibly from the greatest terror to the
+greatest courage! Relieved now from all immediate personal
+apprehension, we felt at once inspired to protect our property, on the
+safety of which our lives depended. We ceased at once to feel like
+standing passively on the defensive, but immediately crawled out of the
+hut to do something,--exactly what, we did not know. Our thoughts had,
+indeed, hardly time to take shape in our minds, so quickly had the
+change come in the situation and in our feelings.
+
+"The bear was plainly in sight as soon as we got outside, tearing down
+our storehouse; but he appeared not to be thinking of us at all. Without
+reflecting in the least what I was about, but filled only with alarm at
+the prospect of losing our food and fuel, I set up a loud shout, in
+which the Dean joined; and, to our great surprise, the huge beast, that
+had caused us so much terror, took fright himself, and without looking
+round, or stopping a moment, he made a great bound, and tore away over
+the rocks, plunging through the snowdrifts, and rolling down the hill
+into the valley, where we had dug the turf, in a most ridiculous manner.
+
+"We passed now from a state of terror to a feeling of perfect safety,
+and in such an unexpected manner, too, that we laughed outright, and we
+thought that we had been very foolish to be so frightened, and looked
+upon our enemy as a great coward. So we concluded that an animal who was
+so easily scared as that would never attack us, and therefore, getting
+our weapons, we followed after him, hoping to drive him from the island.
+The jumps that he had made were quite immense, showing clearly the state
+of his mind.
+
+"Following the tracks of the bear, we came very soon in full view of the
+beach where the carcass of the narwhal was lying, half buried in ice and
+snow. The tracks led in that direction, and finally pointed straight to
+the spot. He had in his flight evidently smelled the old narwhal, and,
+remembering only that he was hungry, had stopped there; for presently we
+caught sight of him, tearing away at the narwhal with as much energy as
+he had before wasted upon our storehouse.
+
+"We had come quite near to the bear before we saw him; and now our
+spirits underwent another sudden change, and our minds were once more
+filled with such feelings of respect for the bear, that we turned about
+immediately, and beat a hasty retreat; and, when once more under the
+shelter of the hut, prepared again to stand on the defensive.
+
+"All we could now do was to watch the bear closely. So long as the old
+narwhal lasted, we felt that we were safe enough, even after he had
+apparently satisfied himself with a good meal, and had gone away, as
+seemed likely, to sleep. He would certainly, however, come back to the
+narwhal again when he got hungry; but now, worse than ever, when he did
+come back, there were two other bears with him, and all three of them
+were making a meal off the carcass of the dead narwhal. These last two
+were quite small ones,--the smaller not being larger than a big
+Newfoundland dog.
+
+"With this discovery all our newly found courage took rapid flight, and
+we were overtaken with even greater alarm than before. That the narwhal
+would soon all be gone seemed plain enough, with three bears feeding
+upon it; and then, when this feeding was over, this first bear, knowing
+where our storehouse was, and forgetting his fright, and having two
+bears, and perhaps by that time even more, to help him, we were sure he
+would soon come back again. It seemed as if a great crisis had now come
+in our fortunes, and what to do we did not know, and what was to become
+of us we could not imagine. We were in great trouble."
+
+"I don't wonder," exclaimed William,--"the horrid brutes!"
+
+"I should have been scared to death," cried Fred; while little Alice
+thought it was too dreadful to think of; but, "The poor bears, how cold
+and hungry they must have been!" said she.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+Shows, Among Other Curious Matters, That Two Boys Are
+Better Than One, and That Pluck Is a Good Thing,
+Especially When Polar Bears Are Around.
+
+
+The next record we have of the doings of the ancient mariner and his
+little friends reads thus:--
+
+"You will tell us to-day what you did with the bears,--won't you,
+Captain Hardy?" inquired William.
+
+"Well," replied the Captain, laughing in his free-and-easy way, like a
+jolly old sailor as he was, taking his long pipe out of his mouth that
+he might do it all the better, "I think it was pretty near being what
+the bears did with us, my hearties! yes, that would be quite as near the
+mark, I'm thinking."
+
+"No matter, then," said William,--"no matter, Captain Hardy; we ain't
+particular,--any way you like. I'll put the question t' other way,
+then,--what did the bears do with you?"
+
+The Captain was in great good-humor to-day, and he kept on laughing till
+his pipe went out; and, while he laughed, he said, "Why, to be sure,
+they frightened us!"
+
+"Tit for tat," exclaimed William; "you frightened them,--that's fair."
+
+"That's so," replied the Captain,--"that's so, sure enough; only they
+wouldn't stay frightened, while we did, you see."
+
+"What! did they find you out?"
+
+"That they did, my lad, just as soon as they had finished the old
+narwhal. We were sound asleep when they came; and they soon woke us up
+with the great noise they made close to the hut.
+
+"But stop a bit!" exclaimed the Captain, reflectively; "my story's got
+ahead of me, or I've got ahead of the story,--one or the other; so I
+must go back a little,"--and he paused, not with his finger to his nose
+this time, as usual, but to his forehead, as if feeling in his brain for
+the end of the "yarn," as he always called the story.
+
+In a moment the old man appeared to have quite satisfied himself about
+the matter, for he started off as fast as he could go:--
+
+"I didn't tell you anything about the fort we built, nor the time we had
+provisioning it,--did I?" said he.
+
+"No," answered William, "nothing about a fort."
+
+"Then there's the broken end of the yarn at last," and the old man took
+his finger from his forehead and stopped feeling for it.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, it was a good long time," continued the Captain, "before the
+bears finished the old narwhal; but, finding how much they were occupied
+in that quarter, we went to our storehouses, and brought all our stores
+away, and stowed them close to the mouth of the hut, thinking that, if
+they were discovered, we should there be better able to protect them.
+
+"First of all, however, we built up two solid snow-walls, about three
+feet apart, and as high as our heads, directly on a line with the
+entrance to our hut, so that when we went outside we walked right
+between them. Then, behind these walls, we piled all the birds,
+seal-flesh and eggs that we had for food, and all the blubber (now
+frozen quite hard) that we had for fuel,--the former on the right-hand
+side (going out), and the latter on the left. Having done this, we
+covered the whole over with snow several feet deep; and, as a still
+further protection against our enemies the bears, we built up a great
+wall all around in front of the hut where there were no high rocks.
+Through this wall we left only one small hole to crawl through when we
+went out; and, when we came inside, we carefully closed it up with some
+large blocks of snow. But we did not go outside much, being afraid; and
+at length, when one of the bears was discovered prowling about very near
+the hut, we drew within our fortification, closed the opening in the
+wall as tightly as possible, and were prepared for a siege.
+
+"At first we did not sleep much, being all the time fearful of attack;
+but gaining courage as we found, day after day, that the bears did not
+come to molest us, we at length fell asleep both together; and it was
+while we were thus asleep that the bears discovered us. Before either of
+us awoke, they had actually scaled the wall of our snow-fort, and
+advanced to where our food and fuel were stowed, close to the mouth of
+the hut, and were tearing through the snow to get at it.
+
+"We were, naturally enough, much alarmed, not so much on our own
+immediate account, as on account of our stores, for the bears would, we
+knew very well, not be likely to trouble us so long as there was
+anything else to eat; but then they might just as well eat us first, and
+the stores afterward, as to eat the stores first; for then we must
+surely starve and freeze, which would be quite as bad.
+
+"Fully sensible of our unhappy condition, and the first feeling of alarm
+having passed over, we began seriously to speculate upon what we should
+do; for something had to be done, and that very quickly.
+
+"I looked out through the window, and there were the bears all crowded
+together in the narrow passage; and one of them had already got among
+the frozen ducks, which were tumbling in the snow about his feet, and he
+had one in his mouth, crunching away at it in such a manner as to leave
+no doubt that he was either very hungry or was in a violent hurry;
+growling all the while,--'Ung, ung, ung,'--with each crunch he gave, to
+keep away the other two bears. This bear was much the largest of the
+three; the smallest one was not, as I said before, larger than a
+Newfoundland dog,--not larger than Port or Starboard. Thus you see not
+only what a destructive, but what a selfish, beast he was.
+
+"From alarm we now got to be angry, as we observed the liberties these
+bears were taking with our food, and the little ceremony they made of
+eating up, in this wholesale manner, what had cost us so much hard labor
+to get, and upon which our very lives now depended.
+
+"I seized 'Old Crumply' in very desperation, and asked the Dean if he
+would follow me. 'What!' exclaimed he, 'you don't mean to attack them?'
+'That's just what I am going to do,' said I; 'and, if you can do
+anything with "The Delight," now's your chance.' 'I'll stand by you,'
+said the Dean, grasping his weapon; 'better to be killed outright by the
+bears than to let them starve us to death, and then very likely kill us
+afterwards.'
+
+"Desperate as was our condition, I could not help being amused by the
+Dean's way of putting the matter,--'first starved to death, and then
+killed'; and I think this little speech, turned in that happy way, did a
+great deal to stiffen up my courage.
+
+"I crawled out through the doorway of the hut (which I have told you
+was not high enough for us to stand upright in), and, upon coming near
+the end of it, there was the bear within three feet of me. His head was
+turned away, and his nose was all buried up in the snow; for he had just
+swallowed a duck, and was getting a fresh one, so that he did not see
+me. My heart seemed to be in my mouth,--so close to the dreadful
+monster,--so ferocious and fearful did he appear as I looked up at him.
+Had I been alone, I think I should have retreated; but here was the Dean
+behind me, and I was ashamed to back out, having gone thus far.
+Summoning all my courage, therefore, I brought forward my spear, grasped
+it with both hands, and plunged it with all my force into the animal's
+neck, just behind the lower jaw and below the ear.
+
+"It was a fortunate stroke. I had evidently, by chance, cut some great
+blood-vessel, for the blood spouted from the wound in a regular stream.
+The bear dropped his duck very quickly, I can tell you. He was probably
+never so much astonished in all his life before. I had come upon him so
+stealthily, and he was so absorbed in what he was about, that he had
+never once suspected the presence of an enemy, but thought himself, no
+doubt, a very lucky bear to find such a dinner ready caught for him, and
+was quite as little concerned about who the owner might be as most
+people would be if they found a bag of gold.
+
+"But I caused him to sing another tune than to be constantly going 'Ung,
+ung, ung,' to frighten off the little bears, for he roared with terror,
+so that you might have heard him half a mile; and, finding that he could
+not wheel around as quickly as he wanted to, he roared again, louder
+than before, which sounded so dreadful that I drew back into the hut
+quite instinctively, and thus lost the opportunity to give him another
+thrust, which I might very well have done, in the side. When he had got
+wheeled round, he rolled over the other two bears, and the three
+together, all roaring in a dreadful way, rolled against the snow-wall of
+our fort, and broke it down; and now, as soon as they could scramble to
+their legs again, they hurried away through the snow down into the
+valley,--the smallest one trying hard to keep up, and whining piteously
+all the while, as if he were afraid something terrible was coming to
+catch him; and now, just as we had done before, when we had, with our
+shouts, frightened the bears away when they had first come to disturb
+us, we ran after them, little thinking of danger, in the excitement of
+the moment.
+
+"We found that the bear I had wounded held straight down the valley, as
+was easily told by the red streak he left behind him on the snow. The
+other two turned to the right, and ran over in the direction of the old
+narwhal.
+
+"Following the red streak, we came soon down to the beach; and then
+climbing over the rough ice which the tide had piled up, we were quickly
+upon the frozen sea, hurrying on as fast as we could go. Indeed, no
+feeling of fear ever crossed our minds; for the great quantity of blood
+that the bear left behind him somehow or other went to convince us,
+without much reflection, that the bear must be dead, and that we should
+presently come upon him.
+
+"While hurrying on at this rate, our spirits received as sudden a check
+as they had on a previous occasion; for we did at length come upon the
+bear, sure enough, and, forgetting all our courage immediately, we
+wheeled about in great alarm, and ran back towards the hut as fast as we
+could go.
+
+"Finding, however, that we were not pursued, we turned about again; and,
+proceeding more cautiously this time, we came, in a little while, in
+sight of the bear again, very near where he was before; but now he was
+clearly by no means a formidable enemy; for he was going along very
+slowly, and making a crooked track, as if he was drunk. Directly he fell
+over; and, in a little while afterwards, we went up to him, and found
+him dead,--having bled to death from the wound I had given him.
+
+"You may easily imagine how rejoiced we were; for now we had an enormous
+supply of food, and a fine bear-skin besides; so I lost no time in
+unlashing the knife-blade from the end of 'Old Crumply,' and with this
+we began to butcher him. It was a very cold and tedious operation; but
+we got through with it at last, and then, burying all of the flesh in
+the snow except a small piece that we wanted for supper, we returned to
+the hut, dragging the skin after us, the Dean whistling, all the way,
+'Bonaparte crossing the Alps,' which he had picked up, as he told me,
+from a Frenchman in Havana.
+
+"While we were coming up the valley towards the hut, in this lively
+state of mind, the Dean stopped suddenly, and said: 'Suppose, Hardy, the
+other two bears have taken a notion to come back'; and he was right; for
+we came presently in sight of one of them, very near the hut, and making
+directly for it. As soon as he saw us, however, he ran away. So we took
+a good laugh at his expense, and, thinking the other one must be near
+him, though not in sight, we proceeded on our way. Fortunately, however,
+before seeing the bear, we halted long enough to secure the knife-blade
+again on the end of 'Old Crumply'; and it was well that we did this,
+for, when we arrived at the broken wall where the bears had made their
+way out, much to our surprise, we came right upon the other bear, close
+up to the mouth of the hut, busy swallowing a duck. This was the
+smallest of the three bears, and he could not have been more than a
+year or so old. No sooner did he hear us than he, like the other one,
+became alarmed; but, seeing us in the road by which he had entered, he
+did not try to escape in that way, nor did he appear to have the least
+idea that he had only to charge upon us to see how quickly he would
+clear the passage; for, instead of doing this, he instantly rushed
+forward, and plunged into our hut, no doubt thinking that would lead to
+a place of safety.
+
+"I do not exactly know by what motive I was impelled, but I suppose the
+same that governed me on several other occasions; that is, a general one
+belonging to almost all human beings, and, indeed, to most animals, that
+is, to chase whatever runs away, and to run away from whatever chases.
+
+"At any rate, I rushed up to the doorway of the hut, I believe without
+any idea at all in my head, and without giving much thought about it,
+and had like to have got into a great scrape; for the bear, having found
+that the hut gave him no chance of escape, had turned about, and was
+coming out again. I was wholly unprepared for him, so hasty had I been.
+I could not run, and therefore, quite mechanically, I hit him in the
+face with the sharp point of 'Old Crumply,' which sent him back into the
+hut again, and made him roar in an awful manner, as if he were half
+killed. I knew I must have hit him on some tender spot,--the eye, it
+proved to be afterwards, so he was half blind as well as half dead.
+
+"It was very unfortunate that I had not let him go, or killed him
+outright; for we could now hear him tearing everything to pieces in our
+hut, trying to find a place of escape. The wall between our
+sleeping-place and our closet was first knocked over, as he scrambled
+about; and there was no doubt that our pots and lamps were all broken to
+pieces. It was like a great roaring bull in a china shop, and we wished
+many times that he was only out and off; and, if he had only known, our
+minds upon the subject, a compromise would have been speedily made, and
+the beast might have gone scot-free on condition of his doing no further
+mischief.
+
+"The bear was not long in discovering the window. Now, the window being
+very small, it was evident that, if he attempted it, he would do us a
+great damage, for he could only pass through by knocking down some part
+of the wall. No sooner, therefore, had his head appeared in that
+quarter, than the Dean charged him most gallantly with the 'Delight,'
+and gave him such a tremendous blow on the nose that he was glad enough
+to draw his head in again, which he did with a great cry. Then he became
+quiet for a while, as if meditating what course it was best for him now
+to pursue.
+
+"Availing myself of this little pause, I exchanged weapons with the
+Dean, and, fixing the harpoon-head on the end of the 'Delight,' I tied
+the other end of the line which was fast to it around a large stone that
+lay across the doorway of the hut. This I did because I thought there
+might be a possible chance of catching the bear; and that, if we could
+only get him to run out, I might harpoon him as he passed, and the stone
+would hold him until we could find some way of despatching him.
+
+"No sooner had these preparations been made than the bear was again in
+motion; and now he gave a roar that seemed loud enough to have rattled
+the whole hut down about his ears. This time he had clearly tried the
+chimney, and had not only scattered the burning moss and fat all about
+the hut, but had set himself on fire into the bargain; for a great
+volume of smoke came out through the window, which smelled of burning
+hair.
+
+"The screams of the bear were now pitiful to hear, and in very
+desperation he once more tried the window, when the Dean quickly gave
+him a crack with 'Old Crumply,' which sent him back again.
+
+"Grown now utterly reckless, he bolted right through the door. I was
+ready for him, standing on the top of the passageway and on the stone to
+which the harpoon line was made fast. As the bear came under me, I let
+drive with the harpoon, and stuck him in the back. And then away he
+dashed like a fiery demon, plunging through the snow, smoking and
+blazing all over. He had evidently rolled all about in our burning fat
+and moss, as bits of burning moss were sticking to him, setting his hair
+all on fire, and no doubt scorching his skin to a degree that must have
+made a dive into the snow very comfortable indeed.
+
+"As soon as he had run out all the line, the stone under my feet,
+instead of holding fast, gave way, pitching me after the bear, and
+turning me quite upside down. I landed head-foremost in a snow-bank. The
+burning bear went rushing and roaring away, dragging the big stone after
+him; but not far, however, for he fell over and died directly,--no doubt
+partly from fright, but chiefly, perhaps, from his wounds and his severe
+burns.
+
+"Having got rid of the bear, we gave him no further thought for the
+present, but rushed into the hut to see what mischief he had done there.
+The smoke was at first so thick that we were almost smothered by it. Our
+cloth coats and part of our fur bedding were all mixed up with the
+burning moss upon the floor, and were being rapidly destroyed. As we had
+feared, the pots and lamps were all broken; and, in short, the inside of
+the hut was in a most sorry state.
+
+"It was a long time before we fully repaired all the damage the bear had
+done, and we suffered much inconvenience and discomfort before we
+replaced our pots, cups, and lamps. When we had, however, at last done
+all this, we were not sorry that the bears had come to disturb us, but
+on the other hand were rather rejoiced; for we were now in all respects
+just as comfortable as ever, and had besides a great warm bear-skin to
+sleep on, and one more variety of food added to our list, and that, too,
+in such large quantity that there was no fear of our coming to want very
+soon."
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+Seeing that the ancient mariner showed signs of breaking off at this
+stage of the story, Fred spoke up, and wanted to know more about the
+bear that had set fire to himself.
+
+"O, it don't much matter about him," replied the Captain. "When we had
+looked after the hut, and had got the fire put out, and found leisure
+then to go after the bear, he was dead enough, as I said before; but
+much of the hair was singed off him as nicely almost, in some places, as
+if he had been shaved, so that the skin was of little use to us, and we
+only used the flesh, which we soon grew very fond of; for this bear, as
+I have said before, was a young one, and his flesh was tender."
+
+"What became of the other bear?" asked William, curious to reach the end
+of the bear story.
+
+"We never saw anything more of him, nor heard anything more of him
+either," answered the Captain; "and indeed we were never troubled any
+more with bears at all in that way, but thereafter lived in peace.
+
+"That is to say, we lived in peace so far as the bears were concerned;
+but the cold and the darkness were now at their greatest, and the winds
+blew sometimes with such violence that we were often greatly terrified.
+Indeed, the storms at one time were so constant and so fearful that we
+could scarcely stir out of doors. Up to this period the weather had been
+mostly calm and very favorable to our course of life; but, as the winter
+began to turn towards the spring, all this was changed.
+
+"Yet we could not but feel thankful for the great privilege of good
+weather with which Providence had so far blessed us. Had the storms
+raged in the autumn and early winter as they did now, we should have
+been quite unable to provide for our wants, and we must have starved.
+But now our needs were abundantly supplied, and we had little occasion
+for going abroad unless we wanted to and the weather was favorable. Once
+only did we experience any serious danger from the weather; and this,
+like most evils that befall all human beings, was due to our own
+imprudence.
+
+"There being a bright moon, and the air being nearly calm and not
+unusually cold, we were tempted to take a long walk; and, attracted by
+one object after another that was upon the frozen sea over which we were
+walking,--here an iceberg of peculiar formation or remarkable size,
+there a snow-drift of singular form,--we found ourselves at last several
+miles away from our hut.
+
+"When we turned about at length to retrace our steps, we discovered that
+the northern sky, which we now faced (for we had walked out in a
+southerly direction), showed stormy symptoms, and very quickly afterward
+a severe gale of wind broke over the island and the desolate sea, and we
+found ourselves overwhelmed with drifting snow.
+
+"The sky was for the most part cloudless, and no snow fell from the
+heavens, but the light snow that lay upon the ice was picked up, as it
+were, by the wind, and whirled through the air in a manner as beautiful
+as it was terrible; for the drift coming in streams, with the rushing
+wind, lashed our faces, torturing us in a terrible manner, chilling us
+through and through, and almost overpowering us. Then an aurora borealis
+burst out before us, as if the heavens were on fire,--and from the top
+of our little island the snow came whirling above our heads in constant
+streams, that went circling about in a most fantastic way.
+
+"You cannot imagine how grand this storm scene was,--the wind howling
+around us, the snowdrifts whirling about and spinning over the icy
+plain, the moon gleaming brightly upon the snow and the icebergs and the
+island, and every now and then a great blaze of many colors that were
+reflected on everything about us, would start up from the auroral arch,
+until the light became almost as great for a few moments as if it were
+broad day. It was very fearful, and you may be sure that we hastened on
+to the hut as fast as we could, though we were not in such a great hurry
+as to be wholly insensible to the magnificence of the scene.
+
+"After we had reached the hut, the Dean repeated some verses which he
+had picked up somewhere; and when I recite them for you, you will see
+how appropriate they were to what I have been describing, and how
+strange seemed to us our situation when we found ourselves in the very
+place where the poet had imagined the Northwest wind to have a
+beginning.
+
+    "The Nor'west wind is a spirit brave,
+      And he cometh from afar;
+    He is cradled far down in the depths that yawn
+      Beneath the polar star.
+
+    "Where no mortal foot hath been, he maketh
+      His track o'er the snowy plain;
+    And listens the tread of phantoms dread,
+      With banner and spear and flame.
+
+    "Where the billows are booming on frozen shore,
+      O there right kingly is he!
+    His pinnacled throne the iceberg lone,
+      His empire the boundless sea.
+
+    "He rideth aloft on the mountain-tops,--
+      Rare sport doth he meet with there;
+    He spinneth the snow in lightning flow,
+      Till it gleams like a witch's hair."
+
+    "O the Nor'west wind is a spirit brave,
+      A conquering hero is he;
+    And his fierce battle song, as he marcheth along,
+      Is the shout of victory."
+
+"O, how beautiful and appropriate!" exclaimed the children.
+
+"But," said William, "how did you get to the island?"
+
+"Without any other accident," replied the Captain, "than with two frozen
+noses, which were sore for a long time afterwards. But, after it was all
+over, we would not have missed the sight for anything, it was so grand;
+yet, had we been caught out on the sea a little farther from the hut, we
+should never have got back, but both of us must have perished.
+
+"Thus you see how Providence continued to watch over the two poor
+castaways."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+Covers a Long Period of Time, and shows, among other
+Things, how a Race may be lost at Both Ends.
+
+
+"I must now tell you," continued the Captain, "that, while all these
+adventures were happening, the winter was passing steadily away; and,
+from what I have before told you about the Arctic seasons, you will know
+that when the winter came finally to an end the darkness came to an end
+too,--that is, to be more particular, first there was a little flush of
+light at noon, to see which made us very glad, you may be sure; after
+this, from day to day, the light grew brighter and brighter, until it
+was almost broad daylight, as it is here just before the sun has risen
+in the morning; then the sun came up a few days afterward only a little
+way above the horizon (of course right in the south); and then, next
+day, it was a little higher, and the next day a little higher still; and
+then, by and by, it was (as it had been in the summer-time before)
+circling round and round us, shining all the while; and now our hut was
+at midnight in the shadow of the cliff; at noon the sun was blazing down
+upon us, softening the snow, and making our hearts, O, how happy and
+thankful!--more so than I can tell you.
+
+"I thought that never in all my life had I seen anything so splendid as
+the sun's bright face when he appeared for the first time after this
+long dark winter. For you must know we were about one hundred and twenty
+days without once setting eyes upon the sun at all; and now, when he did
+rise, after this long interval, what could we do but take off our caps
+and whirl them round and round our heads, in very joy and gladness? and
+this I can assure you we did with many a good round cheer.
+
+"The summer now came on steadily, and the temperature became warmer
+every day. The spring glided into summer, and early in the month of June
+the snow began to melt in good earnest, and by July great streams were
+dashing and roaring over the cliffs, and through the gorges, to the sea.
+Then the sea soon began to show the influence of the summer heat. The
+ice grew rotten, and, from being white, it got to be quite dark; and we
+could no longer go out upon it with any safety, except in one particular
+direction, towards the east, where it was much thicker than in any other
+place. Then strong winds came, and the rotten ice was broken up, and
+after that it went drifting here and there to right and left, up and
+down upon the sea, whichever way the winds were blowing.
+
+"And now once more we kept a sharp lookout for ships, hoping all the
+time that 'this day will be the day of our deliverance.' But we lived on
+as we had done before,--every day adding one more disappointment to the
+list,--for no ship came. Thus watching, waiting, hoping on, we grew
+restless with anxiety, and were more unhappy than we had ever been in
+the gloomy winter that had passed away.
+
+"But the summer brought some pleasure to us. As soon as the snow had
+gone, the grass grew green upon the hillside, and the tiny little plants
+put out their leaves, and then the tiny little flowers were blooming
+brightly, and turning up their pleasant faces to the ever-smiling sun.
+
+"And then the birds came back,--the eider-ducks, and the little auks,
+that I have told you of, and great flocks of geese and gulls, all
+looking out for places in which to make their nests; and they fairly
+kept the air alive with the flutter of their wings, and their 'quack,
+quack, quack,' and their gladsome screams, as they hurried to and fro.
+
+"And then bright yellow butterflies and little bees came fluttering and
+buzzing about the little flowers, and all was life and happiness and
+brightness in the air about us; but there was no one there to look at us
+and see how heavy were our hearts at times,--no one but God.
+
+"But not on our desert island alone was nature full of life and gayety.
+The seals, as if glad that summer had once more returned, crawled out
+upon the ice, and lay there on it, where it floated in the water,
+basking in the sun. There were hundreds and hundreds of them to be seen
+almost every day; and, besides the seals, the walruses, with their great
+long hideous-looking tusks and ugly and ungraceful bodies, came up too;
+and the narwhals, also, with their long ivory horns, and the white
+whales, were to be seen at almost any time, 'spouting' round about us in
+the sea. And besides all this life in the sea, and in the air, and on
+the land, we now and then saw a great white bear prowling about upon the
+floating ice-fields, seeking seals to feed upon; and, when tired of one
+ice-field, he would jump into the water, and swim away and crawl up on
+another.
+
+"Thus you observe that, if we were upon a desert island in the Arctic
+Sea, it was not so barren as one would think who had never seen anything
+of such a place.
+
+"It is not worth while for me to tell you how we lived through this
+second summer. Of course we had a much easier time of it than we had had
+the summer previous, for there was no hut to build, and we had now
+leisure to make ourselves more comfortable; and indeed we used our time
+so well that we accumulated, in good season, everything we needed in the
+way of food and fuel,--catching the birds and other animals as before,
+which we stowed away in so many different places that we felt quite sure
+the bears would not be likely to discover all of them; and then we made
+fresh suits of fine fur clothes, and fresh fur bedding, and carved new
+lamps and pots and cups out of soapstone, that we might be safe against
+all accidents.
+
+"While we were thus working, and watching all the time for ships,
+without the hoped-for ship ever coming, the summer passed away, the
+birds flew off once more with the setting sun, the sea froze up all
+around the island, and we were left again alone,--all, all alone, in the
+cold and snow and darkness of another winter.
+
+"O how heavy were our hearts now! Bright had been our hopes of rescue;
+great was our disappointment, and unhappy the prospect before us. For a
+time we were very despondent; but the darkest hour, you know, is just
+before the break of day, and we were experiencing now only one more of
+our many periods of gloom with daybreak following; for when the winter
+fairly sealed up the sea around us, and covered everything with snow, we
+felt the same spirit of resignation in our lives that had before carried
+us through so many trials and difficulties. And in this we were a great
+support to each other. If our hearts were more than commonly heavy at
+any time, we tried all we could to disguise it from each other, and
+tried always to be as cheerful as possible. If we had each always
+carried a gloomy face about with him, I am sure both of us must have
+died. Thus you see how important is the spirit of cheerfulness; and, to
+tell the truth, I haven't much opinion of long-faced people anyway,
+whether they live on rocky islands or in big houses or in little
+huts,--whether they are old or young, rich or poor, civilized or savage,
+Christian or pagan. That's my opinion.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, this winter passed over just as the other had done;--the same
+routine of work and hunting, the same cold and darkness, the same
+constant bearing up against our unhappy fortunes. It did not in any
+particular differ from the other in a manner worthy of mention, except
+that no bears came this time to disturb us. But there was the same
+aurora borealis, the same bright starlight and brighter moonlight, the
+same fierce snows and howling gales. We caught foxes and seals as we had
+done before, and wanted not for food or fuel. Our health was still
+always good.
+
+"So you see there is no occasion for our halting over this period. I can
+tell you nothing new about it. The winter came to an end, as everything
+must, in time; the sun came back; the summer followed the winter; and
+this, our third summer on the Rock of Good Hope, passed away like the
+others, with its bright sunshine, and its pretty butterflies and
+flowers, and myriads of birds, but still no ship, and still no rescue."
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+After the Captain had thus spoken, he paused as if to consider whether
+he had omitted anything, in connection with the long period they had
+passed on the island, that would make it worth his while to dwell
+longer upon any portion of his story up to this time. Satisfied always
+of the deep interest and close attention of his young auditors, he
+thought only of selecting such points of the narrative as seemed to him
+likely to convey most pleasure and instruction to the little people,
+who, ever eager to listen, were yet always curious to have something
+cleared up which the Captain had hastily passed over, thinking little of
+it. But still they had the good sense to see (to say nothing of the
+requirements of politeness) that they were not likely to be much
+benefited by interrupting the Captain; for if they asked questions in
+the midst of his story he would, in all probability, be put out, and
+lose the even thread of his narration. But a question, or perhaps a
+volley of them, was always sure to come if the Captain made a pause, or
+as he, in mariner phrase, expressed it, lay "hove to," for a little
+while.
+
+So it was now. No sooner had the Captain stopped his speech, and got
+into the reflective mood, than William's tongue was loosened.
+
+"O Captain Hardy!" said he, "don't go on until you have told us
+something more about those curious little flowers you have been speaking
+of. It is so odd to think of flowers growing in such a desert place!"
+
+"O, do!" exclaimed little Alice, "O, do, do, Captain Hardy! they must be
+such pretty little things! But I don't see how they ever get any chance
+to grow, when it is so cold and dreary. How do they?"
+
+"Pretty they are indeed, my dear," replied the kind-hearted Captain,
+pleased to have the question asked, as was evident, "and very wonderful.
+How they managed to grow is more than I can tell, and is just as
+astonishing to me as to yourselves. The snow, however, in the spring
+went pretty quickly; and as soon as the earth was free in any place,
+then we saw the tiniest flowers you ever saw coming up, seemingly right
+out of the frozen earth, and almost underneath the very snow,--at least
+within a few inches of it. The Dean and I one day came across one of
+these little flowers, looking just like a buttercup, only the whole
+plant was--well, the littlest thing you ever did see. Why, it was so
+little that little Alice's little thimble, with which she is learning to
+sew so prettily, would have been quite large enough for a flower-pot to
+put the whole of it in! and it would have grown there, too,--and glad
+enough, no doubt. There was a great snow-bank hanging right over it, and
+there was ice all around it. But still it looked spunky, and happy, and
+well contented, and seemed quite able to take care of itself.
+
+"As we walked on towards the hut, I noticed that the Dean grew very
+thoughtful.
+
+"'What's the matter, Dean?' said I; 'what are you thinking about?'
+
+"'About that little flower,' replied the Dean.
+
+"At this I laughed, asking the Dean what there was in the little flower
+to think about.
+
+"'A great deal,' said he.
+
+"I laughed again, and asked him what it was.
+
+"'Why,' said he, very soberly, 'it is a lesson to us not to get the
+blues any more. If that poor flower can live and fight its way against
+such odds, I think we ought to!'
+
+"Now there was more in that observation of the thoughtful little Dean
+than you would think for; and we talked a great deal about the little
+flower,--indeed, it came up between us very often; we went back many
+times to it, and watched it closely. Once there came a snow-storm and
+buried it up; but next day the snow was all melted, and the leaves came
+out as green, and the flower as yellow, and the whole plant as plucky,
+as ever. I should say the flower was about as large round as a very
+small pea, and it was just as yellow as gold; and the whole wee thing
+was not taller than a common-sized pin.
+
+"We talked so much about this little flower that we got to making rhymes
+about it; and, every time we made a new rhyme, we were much delighted,
+you may be sure. How we wished we had some way to write down what we
+thought! It would have been much easier, and a great satisfaction. But,
+for all that, we finally got quite a song of it, which I have not
+forgotten, even to this time. To be sure we did not know much about
+making verses, and nothing at all about what they call 'feet' in poetry;
+yet we got some pretty good rhymes for all, though they might be called
+a little worm-fency, or like as if they hadn't got their sea-legs on,
+you know. Now, would you like to hear this little song that the Dean and
+I made about the little Arctic flower?"
+
+"O yes, yes, dear Captain Hardy!--yes, yes, indeed!" said the children,
+in such a loud and universal chorus that nobody could have told who
+"deared" the Captain, or who said "O," or who, "indeed"; but you may be
+sure they all said "yes!" and so the Captain, being thus encouraged,
+cleared his throat, and said he would repeat it.
+
+"My impression is," he continued, "that it isn't exactly a song; in
+fact, I don't know what it is. I should hardly venture on calling it a
+'poem,' you see; but still, for all that, we must give it a name, you
+know, and 'song,' 'poem,' or what not, its right title anyhow is:--
+
+           THE ARCTIC FLOWER.
+
+    O tiny, tiny Arctic flower
+      Where have you kept yourself so long?
+    Deep buried in a snowy bower?
+      And did the winter treat you wrong?
+      You little, smiling, gladsome thing!
+      You pretty, pretty flower of spring!
+      You little, little, wee, wee thing!
+    So bright, so cheery in the sun,
+    So everything that every one
+      Would wish a flower to bring.
+      You tiny, tiny little thing!
+    I'm so afraid the frosts will nip
+      Your little feet, you tenderling,
+      You crazy, crazy little thing!
+    What e'er possessed you to come up
+      And nestle there beside the snow,
+      As if you'd warm it with a glow
+    Of golden light from your bright face,
+    On which there is no single trace
+      Of anything like sorrow?
+    Cheery, cheery, always cheery,
+    Always cheery, never weary,
+      E'en with frozen sod close bound,
+      E'en with snow all piled around,
+      E'en with the frosts upon the ground,
+    Your little tender roots to chill!
+    O, what a royal little will
+      You have, you little gladsome thing,
+      You pretty, pretty flower of spring,
+    You little, little weesome mite,
+    You tiny, tiny little sprite!
+      E'en now the snows are at your feet,
+    And piled a hundred times your height,
+      Close, close beside your face so sweet!
+    And yet you smile, you pretty thing,
+    You pretty, pretty flower of spring,
+    You little, little, wee, wee thing!
+      And do not seem to care a bit,
+      And look as happy, every whit,
+    As any other flower of spring.
+    And what a lesson, too, you bring
+    To all of us, you little thing!
+      You show us how to persevere,
+      You show us how a happy cheer
+      May always on the face appear,
+      If God we trust and God we fear;
+      For God is every, every where,
+      And this the flower doth declare,--
+    The tiny, tiny little flower,
+    The weesome, weesome little flower,
+      The little, smiling, gladsome thing,
+      The pretty, pretty flower of spring,
+      The little, little, wee, wee thing.
+
+"There, now you have it!" exclaimed the Captain, drawing a very long
+breath, and looking around, no doubt to see the impression he had
+produced,--"there you have it, my dears!"
+
+The children all expressed themselves highly delighted with this effort
+of the Captain's in the poetical way, and they all declared if that
+wasn't a song they "would like to see one."
+
+Thus greatly flattered by the pleasure the children received from his
+recitation of what had become old to him, and deeply rooted in his
+memory, the Captain resumed once more the thread of his narrative, or,
+rather, "once more picked up the broken yarn, and spun away," as he
+would have more graphically expressed it.
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Well, well," continued the Captain, "you see our little flower died
+after a while, and all the other little flowers died; and this brought
+us to the end of our third summer on the island and into the third
+winter.
+
+"This winter passed away as the previous ones had done, and we felt
+still greater resignation.
+
+"'Here we are forever,' said the Dean, 'and that we must make up our
+minds to. It is God's will, and we must bow before it and be
+reconciled.'
+
+"'I fear, Dean, that is so,' I answered, solemnly.
+
+"This was in the month of February, and the sunlight was coming back,
+and, to see if we could not catch a glimpse of the god of day, we had
+gone out together, wading through the snow.
+
+"The Dean felt it when he said 'we must be reconciled'; but he had
+hardly spoken when our attention was quickly called away from such
+reflections (and from the sun too) by seeing something dark upon the
+frozen sea, not far away from us. It was moving.
+
+"We were not long in doubt as to what it was, for we had seen too many
+polar bears to be cheated this time,--a bear, without any doubt at all.
+
+"He was running very fast, and was making directly towards the island.
+He soon ran behind a large iceberg, and for a little while was out of
+sight; but he appeared again soon afterwards, and held on in the same
+course. Then we lost him once more among rough ice, and then again he
+came in view. He appeared so dark at first, that less-experienced
+persons might have been uncertain about what it was; for although the
+polar bear is usually called the white bear, yet in truth he has a
+yellowish hue, and is quite dark, at least in comparison with the pure
+white snow.
+
+"'It's another bear, I do believe!' exclaimed the Dean, and at once we
+made for the hut. But the bear was running much faster than we were, and
+was moreover coming in right towards the place for which we were bound.
+So we grew much alarmed, and quickened our speed, not however without
+difficulty; for the snow was, in places, very deep.
+
+"By and by the bear, which proved to be a very large one, caught sight
+of us; and, as you know already that the polar bear is rather a cowardly
+beast than otherwise, you will not be much surprised to learn that, when
+he saw us, he altered his course, and turned off from the island as fast
+as he could go. Seeing him do this (as you may be sure to our great
+delight), we halted to watch him; and now we perceived, for the first
+time, that the animal was pursued. By what we could not imagine, but,
+clearly enough, by something; for in the distance, and from the quarter
+whence the bear had come, there was plainly to be seen, winding among
+the bergs and rough masses of ice, something dark following on the very
+track which the bear had taken, sometimes lost to sight and sometimes in
+full view, and growing larger every moment, just as the bear had done.
+
+"Nearer and nearer came this object, and our wonder increased. Presently
+we heard a cry.
+
+"'Hark!' said the Dean.
+
+"The cry was repeated.
+
+"'A dog!' exclaimed the Dean.
+
+"'A dog!' said I, in answer, for I heard it distinctly.
+
+"'Hark!' said the Dean again, for there was another sound.
+
+"'A man,' said I.
+
+"'A man!' repeated the Dean, excitedly.
+
+"And a man it was.
+
+"Dogs and men! what could they be doing there? was the question that ran
+through both our minds at once.
+
+"But dogs and a man (not men) there were, and whatever they might be
+doing there, or whence they might have come, it was certain that dogs
+and a man made the dark spot which we saw upon the white sea; and it
+was, moreover, clear that they were pursuing the bear which had passed
+us and was now pretty far away.
+
+"Nearer and nearer came the dogs and man, and the sounds became more and
+more distinct; the dogs were upon the bear's tracks, the man was upon a
+sledge to which the dogs were fastened. At length they came so near that
+the dogs could be easily counted. They were seven, and all of different
+colors, and were fastened with long lines to the sledge, so that they
+were a great way in front of it, and they were running all abreast. They
+were straining and pressing into their collars, all the while crying
+impatiently, as they bounded over the snow at a rapid gallop. The man
+was encouraging them along all he could with a long whip, which he threw
+out with a lively snap, exclaiming, 'Ka-ka! ka-ka!' over and over again;
+and then, 'Nen-ook, nen-ook, nen-ook!'--many times repeated; for he was
+now so near that we could distinguish every word he said.
+
+"It was a wild chase, and the Dean and I became much excited over it,
+running all the time to get nearer to the passing sledge and man and
+dogs.
+
+"Very soon we should have met, but suddenly the bear came in full view
+of the dogs, evidently for the first time. Up to this moment the dogs
+had only been following the track.
+
+"The dogs, now leaving the track, gave a wild, concerted howl, and
+dashed off after the bear in a straight line. Man, sledge, dogs, and all
+passed us quickly by,--the man shouting more excitedly than ever to his
+dogs, sometimes calling them by name, as it seemed to us, and sometimes
+crying 'Nen-ook, nen-ook!' and sometimes, 'Ka-ka! ka-ka!' and so away
+they went, rushing like the wind,--the whole scene more strange than
+strangest dream,--the dogs and man like spectral things, so quickly had
+they come and so unexpectedly; or, at the least, the dogs seemed like
+howling wolves, and the man a wild man of the frozen ocean, clothed in
+wild beasts' skins.
+
+[Illustration: A Race for Life.]
+
+"We called to the man to stop; we shouted, 'Come here, come here!' and
+then again, 'Come back, come back!' as loud as we could shout, waving
+our caps, and throwing up our arms, and running in a frantic way; but
+not the slightest notice would he take of us, not one instant would he
+stop, but upon his course and purpose he kept right on, pushing after
+the running bear, without appearing to give us even a single thought. We
+could not doubt that he had seen us, we were so near to him.
+
+"On went the bear, on after him went the dogs and sledge and man. More
+impatient grew the dogs, louder called the man to his excited team, and
+the Dean and I ran after, shouting still, as we had done in the
+beginning. We came soon upon the sledge track, and followed it at our
+greatest speed.
+
+"At length the cries of the dogs grew indistinct, and then died away at
+last entirely, and the man's voice was no longer heard; and that which
+had come so suddenly soon became but a dark moving speck upon the great
+white frozen sea, as it had first appeared; but after it we still
+followed on.
+
+"Then the moving speck faded out of sight, and everything around was
+still and cold and solemn and desolate as before. Yet still we ran and
+ran.
+
+"I said as desolate as before. But O, it was a thousand times more
+desolate now than ever,--as the night is darker for the lightning flash
+that has died away, or a cloudy noon is colder for a single ray of
+sunshine that has broken through the vapors.
+
+"Yet on and on we ran and ran, until we could run no more.
+
+"And then we laid us down upon the snow and wept, and bemoaned our hard,
+hard fate; but no word was spoken. The disappointment was too great for
+words; and, after a short rest in the chilly air upon the frozen sea, we
+wandered slowly back to our poor hut; and after many weary hours we
+reached it, not so much alive as dead,--for through miles and miles of
+heavy snow we had run after the sledge, and through these same miles we
+had trudged back again, with the cruel disappointment rankling in our
+hearts, and with no hope to buoy us up.
+
+"Strange--was it not?--that at no period of our life upon the desert
+island were we so unhappy as we were that day,--never so utterly cast
+down, never so broken-spirited, never looking on the future with such
+hopelessness.
+
+"And in this state of mind we crawled beneath our furs, feeling too
+lonely and forsaken to have a thought to cook a meal, and so very, very
+weary with the labor we had done, in running and wading through the
+heavy snow, that we did not care for food; and in deep sleep we buried
+up the heaviest sorrow that we had ever known,--the grievous sorrow of a
+dead, dead hope,--the hope of rescue that had come and gone from us, as
+the cloud-shadow flies across the summer field."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+A very Peculiar Person appears and disappears, and the
+Castaways are filled alternately with Hope and Fear.
+
+
+"How long we slept I have not the least idea. It may have been a whole
+day, or it may have been two days. It was not a twenty years' sleep,
+(how we wished it was!) like that of Rip Van Winkle, yet it was a very
+long sleep; and, indeed, neither of us cared how long it lasted, we were
+so heartbroken about what seemed to be the greatest misfortune that had
+yet happened to us. If we woke up at any time, we went to sleep again as
+quickly as possible, not caring at all to come back any sooner than was
+necessary to the contemplation of our miserable situation,--never
+reflecting for a moment that the situation had not been changed in the
+least by the unknown man who had appeared and disappeared in such a
+mysterious way. But the sight of him had brought our thoughts freshly
+back to the world from which we had been cut off,--a world with human
+beings in it like ourselves; and it was not unnatural, therefore, that
+we should be made miserable by the event. And so we slept on and on, and
+thus we drowned everything but our dreams, which are everywhere very apt
+to be most bright and cheering in the most gloomy and despondent times.
+Such, at least, was the case with me; and if I could have kept dreaming
+and dreaming on forever, about pleasant things to eat, and pleasant
+people talking to me, I should have been quite well satisfied.
+
+"Thus you see what a great number of ups and downs we had,--sometimes
+being cheerful and fully resigned, then again buried in the very depths
+of despair. Sometimes we felt real pleasure in the life to which we had
+become so well accustomed; and it seemed to us, as we chatted together
+in our warm and well-lighted hut, that, since every necessary want was
+well supplied, and we were entirely free from care, we should be well
+satisfied to continue in that situation all our lives. We had, in truth,
+few troubles and few anxieties. Food, fuel, and clothing we possessed in
+abundance, and no fears crossed our minds that they would ever fail us.
+
+"But this satisfactory state of mind, so natural at times, was apt to be
+broken up by a very slight occurrence,--unusual fatigue, a restless
+sleep, a severe storm confining us to the hut for many days together, or
+by the disappointment we so often experienced when an object which we
+had confidently believed to be a ship proved to be but an iceberg. Nor
+was this more unnatural than that we should at times be perfectly happy
+and well contented. Thus are we all made, and thus are we all, at times,
+inconsistent; being often unhappy when there is no assignable cause, and
+often experiencing the sense of great happiness, under circumstances
+apparently the most distressing.
+
+"You will see, therefore, that there is but one way for any of us to
+preserve an even temper and uniform disposition; that is, I mean, always
+to be cheerful, never despondent, ever hopeful; and this can only be
+attained by always feeling the real presence of God with us; when we
+meet with disappointment, to say in our hearts, 'Well, it was not the
+will of God,' or, if we meet with what seems great good fortune, 'It is
+the will of God that we do some good work, and therefore he has thus
+blessed us.' Thus only can we be truly happy. With this feeling there is
+always consolation in distress. It begets charity, and love, and
+confidence, and gentleness; it makes the heart light and the face
+cheerful, and the life like a sunbeam gladdening where it goes. That's
+what the love of God does.
+
+"These thoughts are suggested to me by the experiences that the Dean and
+I were having at the time I speak of. How much more happy we should have
+been, had we felt always as I have last described! we should then never
+have been cast down, but should have been always hopeful,--never wishing
+to sleep on and on, and thus drown sorrow. We should not have felt as we
+did now when the strange man had come from the frozen sea and
+disappeared again.
+
+"Well, to come back to the story, we were not allowed to sleep as long
+as we wanted to. Our sleep was indeed brought to an end very suddenly. I
+was first startled by a great noise, and then, springing up, much
+alarmed, I aroused the Dean, who was a sounder sleeper even than myself.
+
+"'What's the matter?' cried he.
+
+"'Didn't you hear a noise?' I asked.
+
+"'No!' answered the Dean; 'nothing more, at least, than a church-bell,
+and that was in my sleep,'--which was clear enough.
+
+"Presently I heard the noise again, and this time it seemed to proceed
+from something not far off. It was now the Dean's turn to be amazed.
+
+"'Did you hear?' I asked again.
+
+"'Yes,' said the Dean, holding his breath to listen.
+
+"Again the strange sound was repeated.
+
+"'Is it the wind?'
+
+"'How can it be? the wind does not make a noise like that!'
+
+"'Can it be a bear?'
+
+"'No! it cannot be a bear!'
+
+"'A fox? perhaps it is a fox!'
+
+"'No, listen! there it is again.'
+
+"The sound was louder now, and nearer to the hut. Again and again it was
+repeated,--nearer now and more constant; then a footfall on the crusted
+snow.
+
+"'It is a man! the bear-hunter has come back again!' spoke the Dean,
+throwing up his hands.
+
+"Again the noise was heard; again the footfall creaked upon the snow.
+
+"'The bear-hunter, it must be!' cried the Dean, again.
+
+"'O, I pray that it is so!' I added, earnestly.
+
+"Again the voice was heard. I answered it. The answer was returned, and
+with the answer came a heavier and more rapid creaking of the footfalls
+on the snow.
+
+"We rushed from the hut into the open air without another moment's loss
+of time, and without saying another word; and there, not ten yards away,
+stood the very man who had passed us on the sledge,--the bear-hunter of
+the frozen sea.
+
+"And a strange-looking creature he was, to be sure. There was not the
+least sign of alarm or fear about him; but, on the contrary, he was
+looking mightily pleased, and was talking very fast in a language of
+which the Dean and I could neither of us understand a single word. When
+he was not talking he was laughing, and his enormous mouth was stretched
+almost from ear to ear. '_Yeh, yeh!_' he went, and I went that way too,
+by way of answer, which seemed greatly to delight him. He was dressed
+all over in furs, and looked very wild; but, as he kept _yeh-yeh_-ing
+all the time, we were not afraid. As he came up to us, we greeted him
+very cordially; but he could no more understand what we said than we
+could understand him. He talked very much, and gesticulated a great
+deal, pointing very often in one particular direction with his right
+hand. Then he cried, 'Mick-ee, mick-ee!' and pointed to the beach below,
+towards which we followed him. There we found a sledge and seven dogs;
+and now we understood very certainly, if we had any doubts before, that
+this was the man and these were the dogs that had passed us, following
+the bear.
+
+"The man tried his best to explain to us the whole affair, talking very
+rapidly; but we could not gather from what he said more than our eyes
+told us already, for on the sledge we soon discovered a large bear-skin,
+all bloody and folded up, and some large pieces of bear's meat. The dogs
+were tied some distance from the sledge, and were securely fastened by
+their traces to a heavy stone, which I was very glad of, for the
+wolfish-looking beasts were snarling at each other, and fighting, and
+howling at us continually,--seeming all the while to wish themselves
+loose, that they might fly upon us, and tear us to pieces.
+
+"If we could not understand the hunter's words, we made out by his
+signs, after a while, that he had seen us when he passed in pursuit of
+the bear. After overtaking and capturing the animal, he turned about
+upon his track to look for us, and, finding our footmarks at last, he
+had followed us to the hut, calling loudly, as he neared us, to attract
+our attention, for he could not find us easily,--our hut was so buried
+up in snow.
+
+"After being fully satisfied with the inspection of the dogs and sledge,
+and what there was upon it, we all three went up to the hut.
+
+"It would be difficult to describe our visitor. I have said that he was
+wholly dressed in furs. His pantaloons were made of bear-skins reaching
+to the knees, where they met the boots, which were made of the same
+materials. His underclothing was made of birds' skins, like our own, and
+he wore a coat of fox-skins, with a heavy hood covering up the head
+completely. On his hands he wore mittens made of seal-skins, with warm
+dog-skin for an inside lining, and his stockings were of the same. So
+you see no part of him was exposed but his face, which was quite dark,
+or, rather, copper-colored (something darker than a North American
+Indian), and it was very broad and very round. The nose was very small
+and very flat, and the eyes were small and narrow. His hair was jet
+black, long and tangled, and was cut straight across the forehead. He
+had but little beard,--only a few black, wiry-looking bristles growing
+on his upper lip and on the tip of his chin. You would hardly suppose
+that such a creature could be anything but savage and repulsive; yet
+this he did not seem to be at all; on the contrary he appeared like the
+most amiable fellow that ever was seen.
+
+"He sat down before the fire on one of the big stones we used for
+stools, and the Dean and I sat one on either side of him; and I can
+never tell you how strange it seemed to be sitting there with another
+human being besides ourselves, after all that time spent without ever
+seeing anybody but each other. It was like a dream. We could hardly
+realize that it was true, as there we sat, staring at the strange man in
+wonder and astonishment.
+
+"And all this time we were speculating about him,--where he came from,
+where he was going to, what relation did he hold to the world from which
+we had come in the _Blackbird_, could he tell us where we were, would he
+take us from the island, would he rescue us from this dreary life.
+
+"O, how much we would have given for a few words from him that we could
+understand! How rejoiced we would have been to have these questions
+answered! Answering them, however, he might be even then, for anything
+we knew to the contrary; for he scarcely left off talking a single
+instant, but away he rattled as lively as a magpie and just as
+intelligibly. We could make nothing at all out of what he said, any more
+than I could of the hieroglyphics I have since seen on the stones of
+Egypt, until he put his hand to his mouth, at the same time throwing his
+head back a little, and repeating, several times, '_Me drinkum, Me
+drinkum._'
+
+"This very much surprised us, as we knew that he was asking for water,
+which having been given him, he then said, '_Me eatum_', signifying that
+he was hungry. We lost no time, therefore, in preparing him a hearty
+meal of ducks and bear's meat, which he appeared to think very fine.
+Then he had a great deal to tell us about something that he called
+'_Oomeaksuak_', the meaning of which we could not make out; but, as he
+pointed in a particular direction, we thought he meant the place where
+he lived. We could not understand from him what his name was; so, as we
+had to speak of him to each other constantly, we called him at once
+'Eatum,' as that was the word he used most. He amused us very much with
+his frequent repetition of it, and with the enormous quantities of food
+he took into his stomach after he did repeat it; for he only had to say,
+'_Me eatum_' to get as much food as he wanted. It soon got to be quite a
+joke with us, and when he said, '_Me eatum_' we all three fell, not only
+to feeding, but to laughing besides.
+
+"Finding himself in such good quarters, Eatum manifested no disposition
+to leave them; but, after he had taken a sound sleep, he had a great
+deal to say about '_mickee_', as before; and since he made a great many
+motions, as if using a whip (pointing all the while towards the beach),
+we concluded that he must mean something about his dogs, which we found
+to be true, for '_mickee_' in his language means dog, as we afterwards
+discovered. As soon as we had settled this, we all went out of the hut
+again, and went down and brought the bear's meat and skin on the sledge
+up to the hut, and then we fastened the dogs near by. After being fed,
+they all lay down and went to sleep on the snow. These dogs were very
+large and strong animals; and the seven could draw a very heavy load,--I
+should think that the whole seven could draw as much as a small horse.
+
+"Eatum seemed to have been quite exhausted with long hunting when he
+came to us, and he did very little but eat and sleep for several days.
+His nose had been a little touched by the frost, but he scorched some
+oil, and rubbed it on as we would ointment, and cured it very quickly.
+
+"After he had eaten and slept to his entire satisfaction, he appeared to
+grow more lively, and showed a great deal of curiosity about our hut and
+furniture, and hunting implements, being highly pleased with every new
+thing he saw. It was very surprising to see how nearly like his own many
+of our things were,--our lamp and pot and cups, for instance, and also
+our clothing. Our harpoon (the 'Dean's Delight') was almost exactly a
+match for his.
+
+"It was a great drawback to our satisfaction that we could not
+understand him or he us, but little by little we got over part of this
+difficulty; for, upon discovering that he used one particular word very
+often, I guessed that he must be asking a question. The word was
+'_Kina_'; so once when he used it he was pointing to our lamp, and I
+said 'lamp' at a venture, whereupon, after repeating it several times,
+he appeared to be much gratified, and then said, '_Kolipsut_', and this
+I repeated after him, which pleased him again. Then I knew that
+'_Kina?_' meant 'What is it?' or 'What's this?' so after that we
+_kina_-ed everything, and got on finely. We, of course, learned more
+rapidly than Eatum, picking up a great many words from him; and, having
+both of us good memories, we got to be able to make him understand us a
+little in the course of time; and as fast as we learned we taught him,
+and he got to know some of our language, in which we encouraged him. 'Me
+speakum much bad,' he would say sometimes, which was very true; but so
+long as we understood him it made little matter.
+
+"And now it was that we got to find out how he had picked up the few
+words such as _me drinkum_, _me eatum_, and so on, that he had used at
+first; for he gave us to know that we were not a long way from where
+ships came every year, and that some of his people saw the ships when
+they passed, and sometimes went aboard of them. 'Ship' was what he meant
+by '_Oomeaksuak_', which word he had at first used so often. He had
+frequently been aboard of an _Oomeaksuak_, he said.
+
+"Now this was great news for us, and we began at once to devise means of
+escape from the island. We made Eatum understand as much of what we
+wanted as possible. All this time I must not neglect to mention,
+however, that Eatum was of the greatest service to us; for when the
+weather was good he would fasten his dogs to the sledge, and all three
+of us would go out together on the sea to hunt,--Eatum driving. It was
+very lively sport; and sometimes, when the ice was very smooth and the
+snow hard, we went very fast, almost as fast as a horse would run, even
+with the three of us upon the sledge. The sledge, by the way, I must
+tell you, was made out of bits of bones, all cunningly lashed together
+with seal-skin thongs. Once we were caught in a severe gale a good way
+from home, and had to make a little house to shelter ourselves from it
+out of snow; and in this, with our furs on, we managed to sleep quite
+comfortably, and remained there about twenty-four hours before the
+weather would permit us to go on again.
+
+"While in the snow hut we had a lamp to give us light and warmth; and
+this lamp (which was Eatum's) was made like ours, and Eatum made a
+spark, and started a flame, and kept it burning just as we had
+done,--the tinder being the down of the willow blossom (which he carried
+wrapped up in several layers of seal-skin), with moss for wick and the
+blubber for fuel. The pot in which he melted snow for water, and cooked
+our supper, was made, like ours, of soapstone.
+
+"When the storm broke, we left the snow hut, and set out for the island;
+catching two seals by the way, and in the very same manner, too, that
+the Dean and I had done long before we ever knew there was such a person
+as Eatum in the world. We were much disappointed at not discovering any
+bears, and so were the dogs.
+
+"But not many days afterward, the weather being fine, we went out upon
+the sea a great way, and were rejoiced to come across a bear's track,
+which Eatum said was very fresh. No sooner had the dogs seen it than
+away they started upon it; and over the ice and snow--rough and smooth,
+right upon the track--they ran as fast as they could go.
+
+"The bear had been sleeping behind an iceberg, and we had come upon him
+so suddenly that he had not time even to get out of sight, and we saw
+him almost as soon as we had discovered the track. '_Nen-ook,
+nen-ook!_' cried Eatum, pointing towards the bear; and there he was,
+sure enough, running as fast as he could. But, no matter how fast he
+ran, we went still faster; and it could not have been an hour before we
+overtook him. Then Eatum leaned forward and untied his dogs, letting
+them run ahead while the sledge stopped. In a few minutes the dogs had
+brought the bear to bay,--surrounding the huge wild beast, and flying at
+his sides, and tormenting him in a very fierce manner. But I always
+observed that they took good care to keep away from his head, for if he
+should get a chance at one of them, and hit him with his huge paws, he
+would mash him flat enough, or knock him all into little bits.
+
+"While the dogs were worrying the bear we got out our weapons,--the Dean
+his 'Delight,' I 'Old Crumply,' and Eatum a spear made of a narwhal
+horn, and looking, for all the world, just like 'Old Crumply's' twin
+brother. Then we rushed up to the bear, Eatum leading; and fierce though
+the animal looked, and awfully as he roared, we closed right in upon
+him, and quickly made an end of him. Then we drove off the dogs, and
+tied them to a hummock of ice, while we butchered the dead animal and
+secured the skin and what meat we wanted, after which we allowed the
+dogs to gorge themselves. Being now too full to haul, we had to let them
+lie down and sleep, while we built a snow hut, and, crawling into it,
+got a good rest. Then we returned to the island, mighty well satisfied
+with ourselves.
+
+"After this we fell again into conversation about the _Oomeaksuaks_, or
+ships, as I have explained before; and, having learned more and more of
+the language which Eatum spoke, we got to comprehend him better, so we
+fixed clearly in our minds where the place was that the ships came to,
+and were fully satisfied that Eatum told the truth about it. We now
+offered to give him everything we had if he would take us there, and
+stay with us until the ships should come along and take us off his
+hands. About this we had several conversations; but just when we thought
+the treaty was complete, and Eatum was going to carry out the plan we
+had fixed upon, this singular savage disappeared very suddenly,--dogs,
+sledge, and all,--without saying a single word to us about it.
+
+"When we made the discovery that he was gone, we were filled with
+astonishment and dismay. We hoped, at first, that he had gone off
+hunting; but, finding that he did not return, we tried to follow the
+tracks of his sledge, but the wind had drifted snow over them, and we
+could not.
+
+"We now made up our minds that Eatum was nothing more than a treacherous
+savage; and we were afraid that he would come back with more savages and
+murder us, in order that he might get the furs and other things that we
+had; so for a while we were much alarmed, and were more heartbroken I
+believe, than ever before, for our hopes of rescue had been raised very
+high by hearing of Eatum's people and the ships. The suddenness with
+which all our expectations were thus dashed to the ground quite overcame
+us, and we passed the next five days very miserably, hardly stirring out
+of the hut during all that time. But at length we saw the folly of
+giving way to despair.
+
+"One thing we quickly determined upon, and that was to leave the island,
+one way or another; for now we were so afraid of the savages coming to
+murder us, that we would suffer any risk and hardship rather than remain
+there longer. So once more we began to devise means for our safety.
+
+"It was no longer what we should do for food and fuel, or clothing, but
+how we should escape. The ships we had given up long ago, and with the
+ships had vanished every hope of rescue. But now a wild man had come to
+us out of the ice-desert, and had told us that ships came in the summer
+not far from where we were, and through this intelligence we had
+obtained a glimpse of home and our native country, as it were; and this
+too at the very time when we had become most reconciled to our
+condition, and had made up our minds to live as best we could on the
+Rock of Good Hope for the remainder of our days.
+
+"But now our minds were wholly changed. 'We are worse off than ever,'
+said the Dean, 'for this little hope the savage gave us, and the fear,
+besides, that he has put into us,'--which was true enough.
+
+"Stimulated now by the memory of that hope and the presence of that
+fear, we prepared to undertake the bold task of rescuing ourselves. The
+savage had pointed out to us the direction of the place where the ships
+passed, 'And now,' we thought, 'if we can only reach the land there
+before the summer comes we shall be all right.' But if we should not get
+to the proper place, or if the ships did not come along, then the
+chances were that we might starve or freeze to death. Nothing daunted,
+however, by the contemplation of that gloomy side of the picture, we
+went earnestly to work, and very soon had contrived a plan.
+
+"Of course we must have a sledge, as we were obliged to travel a long
+distance, and must carry not only food to eat by the way, but blubber
+for a lamp with which to melt water from the snow, and furs to keep us
+warm while we slept. Eatum had taught us how to construct a snow hut, so
+that we felt sure of being able to shelter ourselves from the storms.
+
+"But the sledge was the great difficulty. How should we make a sledge?
+was the question which most occupied our thoughts, and taxed our
+ingenuity. Apparently we had nothing to make it of, nor tools to make it
+with. To fasten together pieces of bone in the manner that Eatum had
+done, and thus construct a runner, was not possible, as we had no drill
+to make holes with,--and besides, if we had, the work would have
+required too long a time for our present necessities. Our purpose was to
+get away from the island with all possible haste.
+
+"We made a sledge, however, at last, and in a very ingenious way as we
+thought, though not a particularly good way as we afterwards discovered.
+First we cut two strips of seal-skin, and sewed them into tubes. Then we
+filled the tubes with hair, and pieces of meat chopped very fine, and
+also bits of moss. Then we poured water into the tubes, and flattened
+them down by stamping upon them. Very soon the whole froze together,
+solid as a board, and these we soon fashioned into the proper shape for
+runners. We found no difficulty in fastening the two together with
+cross-ties of bone, which we lashed firmly to the runners. Thus, in
+seven days from the time of beginning to work upon it, our sledge was
+complete.
+
+"Very much rejoiced over this triumph, we put a load on the sledge, and
+set out to give it a trial. But one runner gave way before we had gone a
+dozen fathoms, and we were in a state of great perplexity. We resolved
+now to bundle up everything we needed in a bear-skin, and drag that over
+the snow after us, so great was our haste to get away. We would drag the
+bear-skin head-foremost, so that the fur would slip more easily over the
+snow. But when we had done this, we discovered that, to say nothing of
+dragging the load, we could not even start it. Our united efforts were
+wholly unequal to the task of moving it even so much as an inch; and,
+like Robinson Crusoe with his boat, we had wholly miscalculated the
+means, thinking only of the end. And so it is sometimes, even with wiser
+heads than ours.
+
+"We were now in even greater trouble than ever; but being at length
+fully satisfied of the utter hopelessness of proceeding in this manner,
+we went back next day to the sledge, and began to work upon it again;
+all the while looking out for the savages, and expecting them every
+minute to come and murder us."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+A Number of Peculiar People appear, and the Castaways
+disappear from the Rock of Good Hope.
+
+
+"We worked away at the sledge as fast as possible, being bent upon
+having it finished and getting off from the island as quickly as we
+could.
+
+"At last it was completed, and we dragged it down to the beach and out
+upon the ice. Finding that it went better than we had dared to expect,
+we returned to our hut, and, bundling together such of our furs and
+other things as we thought we should require on the long journey before
+us, carried them down and stowed them on the sledge. Among them were
+included one lamp, one pot, and one cup. We could not drag a very heavy
+load, even if the sledge would bear up under it, so we had to limit
+ourselves to the least possible allowance of everything. Food was, of
+course, more important to us than anything else, and of this we
+determined to take all that we could put upon the sledge with safety.
+
+"All this time we felt very sad, and we worked in a very gloomy spirit.
+Everything appeared so uncertain before us; the journey we were about to
+undertake, at first seeming to promise so hopefully, had become a very
+doubtful undertaking; and, since day after day passed by without
+bringing the savages upon us, we got to be less afraid of them, and in
+this same proportion was reduced our confidence in the propriety of
+leaving the island in this manner for an unknown place, and in utter
+ignorance as to whether the savage had told us truth about the ships.
+
+"However, as you have seen before, when the Dean and I got an idea in
+our heads we did not easily abandon it. Once determined to make the
+trial, we had persevered until we had obtained a sledge; and now, as I
+have told you, it was already half loaded.
+
+"But we might have saved ourselves all this trouble, as you will soon
+see.
+
+"While in the very midst of our packing, we were suddenly startled by a
+loud noise. Looking up from our work, and turning in the direction
+whence the sound proceeded, there, to our horror and dismay, were the
+very savages we had been for so long a time expecting. They were just
+rounding a point of the island, and were nearing us at a rapid pace.
+
+"We soon discovered them to be five in number, each riding upon a
+sledge, drawn by wild and fierce-looking dogs, that made a great outcry
+as soon as they saw us, as did also the savages on the sledges.
+
+"'At last,' thought I, 'our time has come. We shall be murdered now for
+certain, and then be given to the dogs for food.'
+
+"'Oh!' exclaimed the Dean, 'if our poor mothers only knew where we
+were!'
+
+"Dangerous as appeared to be our situation, I could still not help
+asking the Dean whether he did not think it would be quite as much to
+the purpose if we only knew where we were ourselves,--to which, however,
+he made no reply, for the savages were almost upon us. Seizing our
+weapons, we prepared to defend ourselves, since there was no use trying
+to run away, as the dogs would be atop of us before we could reach the
+hut.
+
+"But there was not the least use of our being so much alarmed, for the
+savages soon convinced us that they meant no harm. They would not let
+their dogs come near us, but kept them off, and, stopping, tied them
+fast. Then, without any weapons in their hands, they came up to us in a
+most friendly manner, all _yeh-yeh_-ing at a wonderful rate. So we took
+the five of them right off up to the hut, and now our fears were turned
+into rejoicing and our sorrow into joy. One of them was Eatum, and they
+all proved to be just as singular-looking people, and were as curious
+about us and about everything we had as Eatum had been. Their faces were
+on a broad grin all the while.
+
+"Having learned something of their language from Eatum, as I told you
+before, we contrived to make them understand, with the aid of a great
+many signs, how the ship had been wrecked, and how we got first to the
+ice and then to the land,--for this they were most curious about,--and
+they were greatly puzzled to know how we came to be there at all. After
+this they treated us quite affectionately, patting us on the back, and
+exclaiming, _Tyma, tyma_, which we knew to mean 'Good, good,' as Eatum
+had told us. Then Eatum wanted to show himself off in our language, and,
+pointing to us, he said, 'Hunter plenty good, plenty eat get. All same,'
+(pointing to himself by way of illustration, and thus finishing it,)
+'_tyma? yeh-yeh, yeh!_' which was the way he had of laughing, as I told
+you before, and all the rest _yeh, yeh_-ed just like him. One of them we
+called at once 'Old Grim,' because he _yeh-yeh_-ed with his insides;
+but no laugh ever showed itself in his face.
+
+"After their curiosity was satisfied, they imitated Eatum, and began to
+call loudly, _drinkum_ and then _eatum_,--_yeh-yeh_-ing as before in a
+very lively manner; so that, what with their _yeh-yeh_-ing and _eatum_
+and _drinkum_, there was quite a merry time of it. Meanwhile, however,
+we were busying ourselves to satisfy their wants, and it was not long
+before the savages were as full as they could hold. It was a curious
+sight to see them eat. They would put one end of a great chunk of meat
+in the mouth, and, holding tight to the other end, they would cut it off
+close up to the lips. Our seal-blubber they treated in the same way. To
+this blubber they seemed to be very partial; and, indeed, all people
+living in cold climates soon grow fond of fat of every kind. It is such
+strong food, which people require there as much as they do warm
+clothing, and in great quantities too. The people living in the Arctic
+regions have little desire for vegetable food; and the savages there eat
+nothing but meat, fish, and fat.
+
+"Our guests did not leave off eating until each had consumed a quantity
+of food equal at least to the size of his head; and then they grew
+drowsy, and wanted to _singikpok_, which we knew from Eatum meant sleep;
+and in _singikpok_ we were glad enough to indulge them, although greatly
+to our inconvenience, for they nearly filled our hut.
+
+"But before this we went down to the sledge and brought up the furs and
+other things we had stowed upon it for our journey, as we needed them
+for the accommodation of our visitors. The savages went with us, and
+when they saw what a sledge we had made, and understood what sort of
+journey we were going upon, they laughed.
+
+"You must understand, however, that we did not give up the journey; but,
+on the contrary, were more than ever disposed to make it. For, although
+we could see no harm in the savages, yet we put no trust in them,--they
+appeared to have no serious side to them at all, but treated everything
+with such levity that we could not tell what to make of them. Sometimes
+we wished they would go away; and then again we wished they would stay;
+and then we wished they would take us with them, and then again we were
+afraid to trust them. Thus did our hopes and fears alternately get the
+better of us.
+
+"The savages slept very soundly for a while; but one by one they woke
+up, and, as soon as their eyes were open, they fell to eating again
+until they were satisfied, and then in a minute afterwards they were
+fast asleep. This they kept up for about two days, and you may be sure
+they made way with a great deal of our provisions before they had
+finished.
+
+"When they had thoroughly gorged themselves, and slept all they could,
+they were ready to start off again; and now we found that they had come
+to take us away,--a discovery which was both agreeable and disagreeable;
+for we could not tell what to make of the savages at all, we could
+understand so little of what they meant, or of what they said, or of
+what their designs might be respecting us.
+
+"'However,' we thought, 'after all here is a possible chance of escape
+and rescue,' and, like a drowning man catching at a straw, we could not
+seriously think of allowing the opportunity to slip; besides, there
+proved in the end to be little chance of our having our own will in the
+matter, since the savages never once asked us if we would go with them,
+but began to bundle up our furs, food, and blubber, and everything else
+we had, as if resolved to take us whether or no.
+
+"At first we felt a little alarm,--without expressing it, however; but,
+seeing how good-natured they were about it, and how considerate they
+appeared to be for us, we had no further fear, but trusted them
+entirely.
+
+"The savages went to work with a hearty good-will to get us off. Not a
+thing escaped them,--not a piece of fur of any kind; fox-skins,
+bird-skins, bear-skins, pots, lamps, and everything else, were picked up
+and carried off just as if we had no right to them at all; and although
+there were, as I have said, five sledges, yet these were all quite
+heavily laden.
+
+"As we passed down by our sledge, the savages set up another laugh at
+it. It seemed to amuse them very much, but they showed no disposition to
+take it along.
+
+"At last we were all ready. The sledges were all stowed, everything was
+tightly lashed down, and off we started,--I riding on the sledge with
+Eatum, while the Dean was on the sledge of 'Old Grim.'
+
+"The Dean carried his 'Delight,' of course, while I held on to 'Old
+Crumply.' Nor were our 'palm and needle,' and jack-knife, that had done
+such good service, forgotten. Indeed, we brought away everything.
+
+"Of course we were very much rejoiced to get away from the Rock of Good
+Hope, even although our fortunes were yet very uncertain; still, it had
+been our rock of refuge and safety, and, in our thankfulness, we could
+not fail to cast upon it a look of tender regret at parting from it.
+Together there the Dean and I had achieved many triumphs which were to
+us a source of great pride, and would always continue to be as long as
+we lived; while, on the other hand, if we had suffered many discomforts
+and sorrows, these would not, we knew, linger long in the memory.
+Besides, on the Rock of Good Hope, and in the hut we were leaving, we
+had learned to know each other, and to love each other, and to be bound
+together by a strong bond of friendship, which, as it was formed in
+adversity, was not likely to be broken.
+
+"But then, on the other hand, the prospect that loomed up ahead of us
+was not of a very encouraging description. 'Where were the savages
+taking us? what would they do with us?' were questions which kept
+haunting us all the time. We could see nothing clearly; and no matter
+what might happen in the end for our advantage, we must, in any case,
+live among these wild people for an indefinite time, subject to their
+savage caprices and savage and lawless ways of life.
+
+"But we soon had to give up speculating about the prospect ahead, and
+had to let the Rock of Good Hope, and the hut, and the life we had led
+there, with its struggles and trials and triumphs, pass away as some
+vaguely remembered dream; for on we sped, with our caravan of sledges,
+over the frozen sea,--the dogs all lively, and galloping away with their
+bushy tails curled over their backs, and their heads up; their savage
+drivers crying to them, now and then, '_Ka-ka! ka-ka!_' and snapping
+their whips to keep them at a brisker run, and all the while talking to
+each other in a loud voice,--sometimes, as we could clearly understand,
+about ourselves, sometimes whether they should go off on a bear-hunt.
+Occasionally one of the teams would scent a seal-hole, and away the dogs
+would rush towards it as hard as they could go, all the other teams
+following after, pell-mell; and, when they reached the hole, it was all
+the hunters could do, by whipping and shouting and scolding, to keep the
+teams from coming atop of each other, and getting into a snarl. Once
+this happened with two of the teams. The dogs all became tangled in each
+other's traces, the sledges got locked together, and the animals fell to
+fighting, one team against the other, in a most vicious manner.
+
+"This was such a novel mode of travelling that we enjoyed it immensely,
+even although it was pretty cold and the journey was very long. It
+seemed strange to us to be thus wandering, without chart or compass,
+over the great ice-desert on the sea; for all around us was nothing but
+a great plain of whiteness, only broken here and there by an iceberg,
+which glittered like a great diamond in the bright sunshine.
+
+[Illustration: The Children of the Frozen Sea.]
+
+"We must have gone at least sixty or seventy miles before we made a
+single halt; and then we came to the village where these savages lived.
+It was not on the land, but out on the frozen sea over which we had
+travelled. As we approached, the dogs ran very fast. '_Igloo, igloo!_'
+exclaimed the savages, pointing, when we neared the village. As we had
+already learned that _igloo_ meant hut, in their language, we were much
+rejoiced; for we were very tired with the long journey, and cold
+besides. But still we fell to wondering what sort of place this was we
+were coming to, and what strange sight we were next going to see.
+
+"Old Grim drove his sledge close up along side of Eatum's, trying to
+pass; and we went into the village with a perfect rush,--the men
+shouting, the dogs barking, and everything in an uproar generally.
+
+"While this race between Old Grim and Eatum was going on, the Dean and I
+were for a few moments side by side, and near together. The Dean called
+out to me, 'Hardy, this don't seem real, does it? These ain't dogs, they
+are wolves; these ain't men, they're devils'; and, as I looked over at
+Old Grim, and saw him throwing his long whip to right and left, and
+heard him calling out to his dogs in a language which seemed like
+nothing human, and all the while preserving the same immovable
+expression of countenance, I must confess that there seemed to be a
+great deal of truth in what the Dean said.
+
+"Thus it was we went rushing into the village. And a strange village,
+indeed, it proved to be,--nothing but a collection of huts made of
+frost-hardened snow. There were in all six of them.
+
+"Many more savages were there, who came out to meet us; and their dogs
+rushed out too, making a great noise; and when we had halted, a number
+of women joined them, all dressed in furs just like the men, and also
+children dressed in the same way, and all very curious about us, and all
+_yeh-yeh_-ing a great deal. Indeed, we made such a commotion in the
+village as never was seen before.
+
+"But everybody appeared to be kindly disposed towards us, and into one
+of the huts we were both taken immediately, and down we sat on the floor
+of the hut, which was covered all over with bear-skins. There were two
+lamps in it, almost exactly like ours, and two pots were hanging over
+them. We had soon a good meal, and very quickly after that were sound
+asleep; and even although it was a snow hut, and among savages, we were
+thankful in our very heart of hearts. And our thankfulness was because
+we were among human beings once more, and felt no longer as if we were
+wholly cast away from the world; and we now felt hopeful that through
+these savages would come means of escape to our homes. We felt thankful,
+too, that they treated us so kindly,--the women especially; for, savages
+though they were, they were possessed of much feeling and sympathy. One
+of the women made the Dean go to sleep with his head in her lap, which
+it was easy to see he did not like a bit; and, before this, she had fed
+him with her own fingers, and, while he was sleeping, she stroked his
+bright hair away from his handsome face. Another of the women treated me
+very much in the same way; but being older, and not handsome, like the
+Dean, I did not come in for so many favors.
+
+"Then, besides that, the women took off our damp fur stockings, and gave
+us dry ones before we went to sleep; and they seemed to want to do
+everything they could for us, so that we soon became convinced they
+meant us no harm. The woman who was particularly kind to me was the wife
+of Eatum; and the Dean and I at once called her Mrs. Eatum, which made
+them all _yeh-yeh_ very much; and they got to calling her that too,--as
+near, at least, as they could pronounce it which was, _Impsuseatum_. Her
+right name was _Serkut_, which means 'little nose'; Eatum's right name
+was _Tuk-tuk_, that is, reindeer, because he could run very fast. There
+were two young Eatums; and when I began to play with them, I grew in
+great favor with the Eatum family.
+
+"The Dean was quite as well off for patrons as I, being specially taken
+care of by a woman whose husband had been one of our party. Her name I
+forget now, but it meant 'big toes.' So what with nursing by 'Mrs.
+Little-nose' and 'Mrs. Big-toes,' and with plenty of seal meat to eat,
+the Dean and I got on famously. The name of Mrs. Big-toes' husband was
+_Awak_, which means walrus. He was a fine hunter, and had plenty of
+dogs. These dogs, I should mention, were always allowed to run loose
+about the village; and, no matter how cold it was, they slept on the
+snow. But their harness had to be taken off, else they would eat it; and
+everything eatable was buried out of sight in the snow, or brought
+inside the hut.
+
+"After we had been eating, and sleeping, and enjoying the hospitality of
+these savages about three days, a young hunter whose name was _Kossuit_,
+which meant that he was a little dark-skinned fellow, came driving into
+the village (he had been out prospecting for a hunt), proclaiming, in a
+very loud voice, that there was a great crack in the ice, and that it
+was alive with walrus and seal. There was immediately a great stir, and
+a great harnessing of dogs, and hunting up of whips, and getting
+together of harpoons and spears and lines. Everybody was going on the
+hunt, that is, all the men and boys. When all was ready, Eatum came to
+me, and said, 'Ketchum _awak_, ketchum _pussay_, you go?' meaning, would
+we go with them, and catch walrus and seals. Of course we said 'yes,'
+and off we started at a wild pace; the Dean riding with Kossuit, while I
+rode with Eatum. We had to go I should think four miles before we came
+to the crack; and, when we reached it, we found it to be as Kossuit had
+described it. As soon as the savages saw the crack, they stopped their
+dogs, which was done by crying, _Eigh, eigh, eigh!_ to them, and
+whipping then:, fiercely if they did not mind soon enough. The dogs
+being now fastened by running the points of the runners into the snow,
+the hunters went forward with their lines and spears and harpoons; and,
+by approaching the side of the crack very cautiously, they managed at
+length to get near enough to throw their harpoons into the animals when
+they came up to the surface to breathe. Their mode of capturing them was
+almost the same as that which we employed in catching seals, after
+finding it out for ourselves. Thus you see how all people in the same
+conditions of life will naturally be led to the same way of providing
+for their wants,--our senses being given to us all, whether savage or
+civilized, for the same purpose. I have showed you already how, in our
+mode of starting a fire, in our lamp, pot, and other domestic
+implements; our clothing, harpoon, and the like,--we had imitated these
+savages unconsciously; and the more I was with them, the more I saw how
+much we were like them.
+
+"Knowing how we killed the seals, it is not necessary to tell you how
+the savages managed; and catching the walrus was just the same, only
+more difficult, for a walrus is several times larger than a seal. You
+know the walrus are those huge marine animals, living in the Arctic
+seas, that have long white tusks, and look so fierce. They make a very
+loud and very hideous noise; and in the summer, like the seals, they
+come up on the ice, or on the rocks along the shore, in great numbers,
+to bask and sleep in the sun.
+
+"It is enough to say there was a great deal of sport, and a great deal
+of excitement, not unmixed with danger. One of the hunters got a line
+tangled about his legs, and was whipped over into the water, where he
+was not noticed, except to be laughed at, while all the hunters went on
+with what they were about, letting him shift for himself,--little
+caring, as it appeared, whether he drowned or not; and I really believe
+he would have drowned, had it not been for the assistance of the Dean
+and myself. This was the first time I had observed how reckless these
+people were of their lives.
+
+"There were in the party altogether nine sledges, with one good hunter
+to each sledge. Five of them were old men and four were young men,
+besides which there were six boys of various ages; and these, with the
+Dean and myself, made seventeen. By helping each other all round, we
+caught seven seals and three walruses,--all of which we skinned and
+quartered, and put on the sledges; and then we returned to the
+village,--walking back, however, as the load on the sledges was too
+heavy to allow us to ride.
+
+"When we reached the village, the women came out to meet us, talking
+very much, and _yeh, yeh_-ing louder than ever; and now I observed that
+they took all the game we had captured, and butchered it, the men doing
+nothing at all but look after their dogs. It was thought to be a
+disgrace for a man to do any work about his hut.
+
+"The Dean and I had taken our full share in the hunt, and won much
+admiration. Before, they had treated us with a kind of pity, but now
+they had great respect for us. Eatum said, 'Much good hunter you.'
+
+"Seeing that we were good hunters, they were now going to marry us right
+off, that we might have wives to cut up our seals when we brought them
+home, which proposition put us in a great embarrassment. If we refused,
+they might be offended, as was very natural; so I accepted their offer
+at once without a moment's hesitation, appearing as if I was very glad,
+and thought it a great compliment indeed; but at the same time I told
+them, with a very grave face, that all our relations lived in a far-off
+country, to which we were obliged to go as soon as a ship came that way;
+and, of course, when we did go, the wives they gave us would go along.
+As none of the young women were willing to take us on these conditions,
+although not very flattering to us, we got out of the difficulty without
+offending anybody. At first the Dean was quite indignant, but afterwards
+he laughed, and said, 'Why, just think of it! Mrs. Hardy and Mrs. Dean
+in seal-skin breeches and long boots,--a jolly idea indeed!' But one of
+the girls was fond enough of the Dean for all, only she mustn't show it;
+for these people are mighty particular about that. When all is arranged
+by the parents, the girl is obliged, even then, to say she won't have
+her lover. So the lover has to steal up, and take her unawares, and run
+off with her bodily. Of coarse, if she really likes the fellow, and
+wants to get married to him, he has an easy time enough of it; but if,
+on the other hand, she dislikes him, she can readily get away from him.
+
+"Old Grim (whose right name was Metak, meaning eider-duck) had an
+adventure of this sort, as they told me, which resulted very differently
+from what usually happens. He was then quite a young man, but, having
+caught a seal, he thought it was time he had a wife. Meanwhile a wife
+had been provided for him by his father, who had made the bargain with
+the girl's father. The girl was told who her husband was to be, but it
+would have been against all rules to tell her when he was coming after
+her. Well, as I have said, having caught his first seal, Metak made up
+his mind to have a wife to butcher it for him; so he set out for the
+snow hut of his lady-love's father, where the dusky-faced girl was lying
+fast asleep, all rolled up in furs.
+
+"As it was contrary to custom for any girl to be captured in a hut, but
+must be taken on the wing, as it were, Metak had to wait for her to come
+out, which she finally did, and passed very near a deep bank of snow,
+behind which her lover was lying, shivering with cold, and crying with
+impatience. Quick as a fox to pounce upon an unsuspecting rabbit was
+Metak to pounce upon the unsuspecting girl. He seized her, and started
+for his sledge. She screamed, she pulled his hair, she tore his fur, she
+bit his fingers; but the valiant Metak held manfully to his purpose, and
+would not let her go. He reached the sledge, and put her on it; he tied
+her there, and, springing on himself, he whipped up his dogs, and
+started for his home. But the refractory damsel would not stay tied. She
+cut the lashings with her teeth, she seized the whip out of Metak's
+hands, she pushed Metak off the sledge, and sent him sprawling on the
+snow; and then she wheeled the dogs around, and fairly made them fly
+again on the backward track to her father's hut, where she crawled once
+more into her nest of furs, and where the luckless Metak was ever
+afterwards content to let her stay, satisfied that he was no match for
+her.
+
+"This story was told by Eatum one evening in the snow hut, while Old
+Grim was present, and it was evidently a standing joke against him. He
+did not seem to relish it at all, for he went out of the hut as if
+driven away by their shouts of laughter. I could not understand the
+language well enough to fully appreciate the story at the time, but
+afterward I got Eatum to repeat it to me.
+
+"It proved that the name Old Grim, that the Dean and I had given Metak,
+was even more appropriate than we thought; for it seemed that he was
+generally known as the man who laughed with his insides without the help
+of his face.
+
+"Altogether these savages were a most singular people. They seemed to be
+happy and cheerful all the time, never caring for anything, so long as
+they had enough to eat, and plenty of time to tell stories about each
+other and make each other laugh. But what struck the Dean and I most
+strangely was that they should be living in this happy state away out
+there on the sea, a long distance from land, really burrowing in the
+snow for shelter, and roaming about for food like beasts of prey, and
+yet enjoying themselves and amusing themselves after the fashion of
+civilized human beings, so far as their relations to one another were
+concerned.
+
+"'Well, I do declare,' said the Dean, 'this is an odd party, to be sure.
+I'm going to christen them, Hardy.'
+
+"'Christen them, or Christian them'? I asked.
+
+"'Both, perhaps,' answered the Dean; 'but for the present I mean
+christen,--that is, give them a name.'
+
+"'That I understand; but what's the name?'
+
+"'The Children of the Frozen Sea.'
+
+"'Very good,' I said, 'capital! Children of the frozen sea! Sounds good,
+at any rate; and all the world is agreed that whatever sounds good must
+be good.'"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+The Peculiar People proving to be Savages, the Castaways
+seize the First Opportunity to leave them, not relishing
+their Company.
+
+
+"I have not latterly said much about the Dean; but you may be very sure
+that such a fine fellow could not fail to be greatly delighted with the
+change that had come about, as it not only led us away from our desolate
+life on the desert island, but gave us a promise at least of the rescue
+which we had so earnestly prayed for. 'We ought to be very thankful,'
+said the Dean to me one day, 'very thankful indeed for this
+deliverance.' But as I did not much relish the habits and customs of the
+savages, I did not find myself of the same thankful disposition; so I
+replied to the Dean, that the change looked much like that of the fish
+who fell out of the frying-pan into the fire. 'You should not say so,'
+replied the Dean. 'I see the hand of God in it; and he who has
+mercifully preserved us through so many trials and dangers will not
+desert us now.'
+
+"The Dean said no more at that time, but he became very thoughtful,
+while, as for myself, I felt quite ashamed that I had spoken so
+slightingly of the savages, and had shown so much impatience with their
+rather disagreeable company; for, to tell the truth, their ways were
+somewhat offensive, as they never washed their faces, and were
+altogether rather a filthy set.
+
+"The Dean, however, did not stop with preaching about them, but, on the
+contrary, did everything he could for them. One of the hunters had gone
+to catch seals, and, the ice breaking up, he was drifted out to sea,
+where he took refuge on an iceberg, upon which he managed to drag his
+dogs and sledge. Here he lived through terrible storms and cold for a
+whole moon (that being the way they reckon time), and he only escaped
+finally by the iceberg drifting in near the land, when the sea froze
+around it. After great trouble he got ashore, with both of his feet
+dreadfully frozen, which is easily accounted for when you know that the
+poor fellow had no shelter at all while on the iceberg, and had nothing
+to eat but his dogs, all of which died of starvation. This savage had no
+wife, and the Dean took care of him, and dressed his frost-bites, and
+was so good to him that the savages all called him '_Paw-weit_', which
+means 'Little Good-heart.' So the Dean got on famously; but the poor
+frozen savage that he had been so kind to died at last, and was buried
+in the snow.
+
+"A child fell on the ice, and broke its arm, and the Dean set it, and
+made it all right; and to other people he did many things to show his
+sympathy for them; but, when he began to tell them about our religion,
+they did not understand him, and had no mind to listen. This very much
+grieved the Dean; for he wanted to convert the whole of them, and
+thought, if he only knew their language better, he could persuade them
+all to be Christians,--which I think very likely, for nobody could
+resist him.
+
+"We remained at the snow village three weeks, but we did not do much
+more hunting, as the savages seemed to think they had enough for their
+present wants; and since they are almost constantly moving about from
+place to place in search of food, they never store up much for the
+future. Having enough to eat for the present, they let the future take
+care of itself; and, sure of a good meal, they amuse themselves mostly
+with telling stories, usually about each other,--that is, when they are
+not eating or sleeping, which I must say occupies most of their time.
+
+"They had a singular custom in their story-telling which I have never
+seen among any other people. One person recites the story, and the
+listeners break in, every now and then, with a laughing chorus that is
+nothing more than a repetition of the meaningless words, '_amna aya_',
+which are sung over and over to any extent. The women generally enjoy it
+the most, and sing the loudest, especially when a man is concerned. I
+will give you a specimen of this kind of song,--translated, of course,
+as I have long ago forgotten how to speak their language.
+
+"Eatum is telling the story of a bear-hunt, and as you will see that it
+is a kind of song, I will sing it for you, and you can join in the
+chorus just as well as if you were all little savages yourselves. We
+will call it
+
+       "THE SONG OF KARSUK'S BEAR-HUNT.
+
+    "A bear is seen upon the ice,
+      _Amna aya_;
+    Karsuk goes out to hunt the bear,
+      _Amna, amna aya_,
+
+    "The dogs get quick upon the trail,
+      _Amna aya_;
+    The dogs are pulling all they can,
+      _Amna, amna, aya_.
+
+    "The bear is running all he can,
+      _Amna aya_;
+    The bear gets tired and cannot run,
+      _Amna, amna aya_.
+
+    "He turns around to charge Karsuk,
+      _Amna aya_;
+    Karsuk jumps off and runs away,
+      _Amna, amna aya_,
+
+    "He runs away all full of fright,
+      _Amna aya_;
+    So full of fright he tumbles down,
+      _Amna, amna aya_,
+
+    "Bear kills the dogs and breaks the sledge,
+      _Amna aya_;
+    What girl will marry such a man?
+      _Amna, amna aya_."
+
+and so on, after that, they keep _aya_-ing, _aya_-ing, and
+_amna-aya_-ing uproariously, until they are entirely broken down with
+shouting and laughing, in the midst of which Karsuk is pretty sure to
+run away.
+
+"In the same manner I have heard the story of Metak's love adventure
+sung, or rather recited, or _amna-aya_-ed as one might say.
+
+"They use the same _amna-aya_ chorus when they sing over the dead, or
+sing praises of the dead, only instead of being lively, then it is sung
+in a solemn tone. I will repeat one called
+
+       "THE GRAVE-SONG OF MERAKUT.
+
+    "Merakut, Merakut, Merakut dead!
+      _Amna aya_;
+
+    Merakut dead, her lamp is smoking,
+      _Amna, amna aya_.
+
+    Her children are crying, her baby is freezing,
+      _Amna aya_;
+
+    O, her hut and our hearts are all cold!
+      _Amna, amna aya_."
+
+and after that, as in the other song, they keep on _amna-aya_-ing for a
+long while, but with a very doleful voice and manner. Indeed, it is
+quite as distressing to hear them _amna-aya_ the dead as it is amusing
+to hear them _amna-aya_ the living.
+
+"The Dean and I very much wanted to go on another bear-hunt, but the
+savages said it was too late in the season for that, as the ice had many
+cracks in it, and there was no use chasing a bear, as he would jump into
+the first crack he came to, and swim over it to the other side, and
+there he would be safe enough. And, indeed, when I climbed one day to
+the top of a tall iceberg, and looked out in the direction of our
+solitary island, I could see several cracks from a yard to a hundred
+yards wide, so that it was very fortunate we escaped from the island
+when we did.
+
+"The savages now said it was time to be moving, or a crack might come
+between us and the shore. Indeed, the season was getting well advanced;
+the snow was melting a little, and in places it was quite sloppy; so
+everything in and about the snow huts was packed upon the sledges, and
+we went then to the main-land, which was not more than ten miles
+distant. Here we came upon a village of three huts, built in the
+hillside very near the sea, and were in many respects fitted up as our
+own had been; only they had regularly constructed walls of stones and
+turf, which, tapering in from either side, joined at the top, making a
+space large enough to accommodate two or three families in each hut.
+Into these three huts were crowded all the men, women, and children that
+had been in the snow village.
+
+"There we lived five days, after which we took up our march again,
+keeping along near the shore, where the ice was most solid and safe.
+Then we came to a deep, broad bay where the hillside, which was exposed
+to the south, was quite free of snow,--the snow having melted and run
+down to the sea. Here we halted, and the savages went to some great
+piles of stones, and brought out from under them a number of seal-skins,
+which were spread over some narwhal horns that were just like 'Old
+Crumply,' and in a few hours they had pitched two tents, under which we
+all slept soundly, being very tired. The next day they got more
+seal-skins, and pitched three more tents, and a few days afterward other
+people came along, and put up two other tents, making in all
+seven,--quite a little seal-skin village, and a much more comfortable
+looking one than the snow village had been.
+
+"Here it seemed to be the intention of the savages to remain for some
+time, as they went regularly to work to prepare for hunting various
+kinds of game, chiefly walruses and seals, and besides these, among
+others, an animal I had not seen before,--a beautiful rabbit, or hare
+rather, very large, and pure white. These were quite numerous, and fed
+upon the buds and bark of the willow-bushes, and were caught by
+stretching a very long line across the tops of a great number of stones,
+or piles of stones rather, which were placed about six feet apart, the
+line itself being about a foot from the ground. To this line they tied a
+great number of loops, and then all the people, going out, surrounded
+the rabbits and drove them under the line, and several of them found
+themselves noosed when they least expected it. I saw there also a
+beautiful white bird called a ptarmigan, which is a grouse, but it could
+not be caught.
+
+"By this time we had become quite domesticated among the savages. They
+called me _Annorak_, which meant that I resembled the wind when I
+talked,--that is, I talked when I liked and where I liked, and nothing
+could stop me, while the Dean was much more sober. Him they finally
+called _Aupadleit_, which means 'Little Red-head,' though the Dean's
+hair was not exactly red, but very bright, and the savages admired it
+very much; so the Dean, to humor them, cut off great locks of it, and
+gave it to them all round.
+
+"I took a great interest in Eatum's children, and this further inclined
+Mr. and Mrs. Eatum to have a good opinion of me. As they were people of
+much consequence in their tribe, this was a matter of great importance;
+and, in truth, the juvenile Eatums were quite an interesting pair of
+savages, and were fond of play like any other children. One was a boy
+and the other a girl. I cannot remember their right names, but the Dean
+and I christened the boy _Mop-head_, because of the great quantity of
+dirty black hair he had, and the girl we called _Gimlet-eyes_. Mop-head
+had a little sledge made of bones, just like his father's; and with this
+the two children used to play at travelling and other games. Gimlet-eyes
+had little dolls carved out of bones, which she used to dress up in furs
+and put on the sledge for Mop-head to drag when they went on their
+journeys; and he had little spears, and she had little pots and lamps,
+and they used to make excursions over the snow that you could hardly
+throw a stone to the end of; and then they would build little snow
+houses and put the dolls in them, and, while Mop-head went off to hunt,
+Gimlet-eyes would _amna-aya_ them to sleep. Thus you see little children
+are much alike all the world over.
+
+"In these playful exercises we used to amuse ourselves with the
+children; and when we were travelling about in earnest, the Dean and I
+sometimes pulled Mop-head's little sledge for him, when we were going
+slow: and he thought it great fun to have the white-faced strangers
+drag his sister's lamps and pots and dolls along.
+
+"And now the summer was fairly come. The snow was melting very rapidly,
+and first in small and then in large streams the water came rushing and
+roaring down into the sea. The birds soon afterward came back from the
+south,--the eider-ducks and the little auks, which we had caught in the
+summer time when upon the island; and then, as soon as the snow was all
+gone, the moss and stunted grass grew green, and plants sprouted up here
+and there, and the butterflies with bright yellow wings went gathering
+the honey from flower to flower, and you cannot imagine how glad we were
+once more to come out of the dreary winter into this bright sunshine and
+this pleasant summer.
+
+"It was apparent now why the savages had gone to this place. The little
+auks came in great numbers, and these birds I was told formed their
+principal subsistence in the summer season; indeed sometimes this is
+their only kind of food. There must have been millions on millions of
+them, swarming there like bees, and they made their nests among the
+stones on the hillside. The savages caught them as we had done, in nets.
+There were some reindeer, but these were not often caught. The reindeer
+here run wild, and are not as in Lapland tamed and taught to draw
+sledges. When the savages went on this kind of hunting, two always went
+together, walking so close, one behind the other, as to appear like one
+man. As soon as the deer saw the hunters, the latter would turn round
+and go back the other way, and the deer, being very curious, would
+follow them. Thus a deer may sometimes be enticed a long distance, and
+if through a narrow defile, there is then a chance of catching him; for
+one of the hunters drops down suddenly behind a rock, while the other
+goes on as if nothing had happened. The deer, thus cheated, keeps
+following the single hunter, where he had before followed a double one
+all unknown to himself, and at length approaches very near to the hunter
+lying behind the rock. As soon as the deer comes within a few yards of
+him, this concealed hunter rises, and throws his harpoon, the line of
+which he has previously made fast to a heavy stone. If fortunate enough
+to hit the deer, and the harpoon to hold, the animal is easily killed by
+the two hunters, who attack it with their spears.
+
+"Besides the birds that I have told you of, there came a great many
+snipes, and different varieties of sea-gulls, and ducks of various
+species, and gerfalcons, and ravens,--also some little sparrows.
+
+"I was very desirous to know how they managed to make their harpoon and
+spear heads, as I observed that they were all tipped with iron. So one
+day they took us over to a place they call _Savisavick_, which means
+'The Iron Place,'--the name being derived from a large block of meteoric
+iron, from which the savages chipped small scales; and these were set in
+the edges and tips of their harpoon and spear heads, just as I had done
+with my brass buttons. They also made knives in the same way. Many of
+their spear-handles were nothing more than narwhal horns, just like 'Old
+Crumply'; and so you see how the Lord provides for all his creatures,
+endowing them all, whether white or black or copper-colored, with the
+same instinct of self-preservation, which leads them to seek and obtain
+for the security of their lives the materials that He places within
+their reach. How beautiful are all His works! and how constantly He
+watches over the rich and the poor, the savage and the Christian, the
+just and the unjust alike!
+
+"Thus occupied, we drifted on into the final week of July. There was
+scarcely any snow left on the hillsides by this time; the air was filled
+with the incessant cry of birds and the constant plash of falling
+waters. We could sleep well enough once more on the green grass in the
+open air; and another period of watching now began, for here it was that
+the vessels passed every year, as the savages told us. Sometimes,
+however, they did not stop; but, when the ships appeared, the savages
+always went to a valley facing the sea, from one side of which the snow
+never melted, and, running to and fro over the white snow, endeavored to
+attract the attention of the people on the ships.
+
+"We were much alarmed to find the ice holding firmly along the shore;
+and, as far away as the eye could reach, there was not much water to be
+seen. At last, however, a strong wind came, and started the ice. Some
+cracks were soon opened, and then a long lead or lane of water was seen
+stretching away to the south, and running close in by the land.
+
+"The savages said that the _Oomeaksuaks_ (big ships) would come very
+soon now, if at all; so we watched very carefully for them. The Dean and
+I did not hunt any more, as the savages, seeing how anxious we were, and
+how our hearts yearned for our own homes and kindred, provided us with
+food in abundance; and, besides this, they sent some of their women and
+young lads to aid us in looking out for the ships.
+
+"Thus the time wore on, and we were becoming very fearful that the ships
+would not come at all. This was a dreadful thought to us, for, although
+the savages were very obliging, yet we looked forward with great dread
+to living long with them. Besides this and our longing to get home, we
+had had quite enough of this cold, desolate part of the world, where the
+sun never sets in summer nor rises in winter.
+
+"While reflecting in this way, we heard one of the savages cry out
+'_Oomeaksuak, Oomeaksuak!_' several times; and, running a little higher
+up the hillside whence the cry proceeded, our eyes were gladdened by
+seeing far off, with the hull yet hidden below the horizon, a ship under
+full sail, steering northward. At first the Dean, who had been so often
+cheated, thought it might be an iceberg; but it was clearly a ship that
+we saw this time. From fear that it might be an iceberg, we passed now
+to fear that it might hold off from the land, and not discover us, which
+would be even harder to bear.
+
+"By and by the hull of the ship was plainly to be seen, and after a
+while we discovered that the ship was not alone, but that another was
+following only a few miles behind it; and directly two more were seen,
+making four, and then a fifth hove in sight some hours afterward. We
+knew this must be part of a whaling fleet that annually visits the
+Arctic seas, and we rejoiced greatly at the prospect of our deliverance.
+
+"You will see how fortunate it was for us that there were so many of
+these ships; for, as we had feared, the first ship held so far away from
+the land that it was hopeless to think of being seen from her. But the
+lead through which this first ship had sailed off from the land was
+closed up before the others could enter it; and now these other ships
+were forced to come nearer to us. Seeing this, we hastened to the white
+hillside I have spoken of before, all the savages accompanying us, and
+we all began running up and down; but the next ship was still too far
+away to discover us. And the same with another and still another. Thus
+had four ships gone by without any soul on board being aware that two
+poor shipwrecked boys were so near, calling to them, and praying with
+all their might that they might see or hear.
+
+"But there was yet a fifth ship, a long way behind all the others, and
+we still had hope. If this failed us, all was over, and we must be
+content to live with the savages. We had observed one thing which gave
+us great encouragement. Each ship that had passed us came a little
+nearer to the land; and this we saw was in consequence of the ice
+drifting steadily in before the wind. Indeed, by the time the last ship
+came along, the ice had pushed in ahead of her, and had touched the
+land, while the other ships had run through just in time.
+
+"When the people on board saw what was ahead of them, and that they
+could not pass, they tacked ship, and stood away from us; but we saw
+clearly enough, from our elevated position on the hill, that they were
+not likely to get through in that direction,--which was, no doubt, a
+much more pleasant thing for us than for the people on board. This
+proved true; for presently they tacked again, and stood straight in
+towards where we were standing. Coming very near the shore, we did
+everything we could to attract their attention. We shouted as loud as we
+could, we threw up our caps and waved them round our heads, and we ran
+to and fro, all the savages doing the same.
+
+"O how excited we became! almost frantic, indeed. A ship so near and yet
+so far away! Four ships gone by and out of sight! Those on board the
+fifth and last unconscious of our presence on the desolate shore; and
+how could we make the people see us? I cannot tell you what anxious
+moments these were during which we watched the ship as she came nearer
+and nearer to where we stood.
+
+"At length she is so near that we can see the people on the deck; why
+can they not see us?
+
+"The sails are shivering; the ship is coming to the wind! Have they
+seen us? are they heaving the vessel to? will they send a boat ashore to
+fetch us off?
+
+"We hear the creaking of the blocks; the yards are swinging round; the
+braces are hauled taut; the other tack is aboard; they are _not_ heaving
+to!
+
+"The vessel fills away again; the sails are bulging out; the vessel
+drives ahead; they have not seen us!
+
+"Shout again! Up and down, up and down, once more across the
+snow,--shout! shout all in chorus! but it is of no use.
+
+"The bows fall off; the vessel turns back upon her course. Where is she
+going now? is she homeward bound?
+
+"O no! she steers for the land; she nears it; she passes beyond a point
+below us, and is out of sight! Where has she gone?
+
+"We follow after her, hurrying all we can. Miles of rough travelling
+over rocks and through deep gorges,--climbing down one side and up the
+other. The savages are with us.
+
+"What is our hope? It is that the vessel, failing to get through the
+ice, has sought the land for shelter, and will find an anchorage and
+there remain until the ice opens ahead, and gives the ship once more a
+chance to go upon her course.
+
+"Soon we round a lofty cliff that rises almost squarely from the sea,
+with only a narrow, rugged track between it and the water, and we come
+upon a narrow bay. A little farther, and there the vessel lies before
+us,--quietly at anchor, with her sails all furled.
+
+"Again we see the men upon the deck,--faintly, but still we see them.
+
+"Again we shout.
+
+"We see a man halting by the bulwarks; something glitters in his hand.
+Is it a spyglass?
+
+"No; he moves away.
+
+"Is that a man mounting to the mizen cross-trees?
+
+"Yes, it is a man.
+
+"Is that a spyglass glittering in his hand? Yes, surely it must be.
+
+"He waves his cap; he shouts to the people on deck; he descends; all is
+bustle in the ship; a boat is lowered to the water; men spring into it;
+the oars are dipped; the men give way; the boat heads for the spot where
+we are standing; we are discovered! O, God be praised! at last, at last!
+
+"The boat cuts through the water quickly; it nears us; again we see
+white human faces; again we hear human speech in a familiar tongue.
+
+"'In oars!'--the boat touches the rocks, and we are there to take the
+painter, and to make her fast.
+
+"Two of the men spring out; a man rises in the stern; he shades his eyes
+with his hands, as if to protect them from the glaring sun, and stares
+at us, and then at the savages, who--of both sexes, and of every age and
+size--surround us. Then he calls out, 'Is there a white man in that
+crowd?'
+
+"'Yes, sir; two of them.'
+
+"'I thought so from the motions,' says the man. Then he stared at me
+again, and cried: 'Is that the lubber Hardy, of the _Blackbird_?'
+
+"'Yes, sir; it is,' I answered.
+
+"'Is that other chap the cabin-boy?--him they called the Dean?'
+
+"'Yes, sir,' spoke up the Dean.
+
+"In an instant the man was out upon the rocks, and he grasped us warmly
+by the hands. He had recognized us, now we recognized _him_. He was the
+master of a ship that lay alongside the _Blackbird_ when we first went
+among the ice, catching seals. His ship was the _Rob Roy_, of Aberdeen.
+
+"This much he said to quiet us, for he saw the state of agitation we
+were in. Then he went on to tell us that the _Blackbird_, not having
+been heard from in all this time, it was thought that she must have gone
+down somewhere among the ice, with all on board; and he told us further,
+that he was on a whaling voyage now, and then he said, 'The _Rob Roy_
+will give you a bonny welcome, lads.'
+
+"Afterward he told us that the vessels were, as we had supposed, a part
+of the whaling fleet, and he said it was fortunate that he had
+discovered us, as this was our only chance, for all the other vessels
+that were following him would be very likely, on account of the state of
+the ice, to hold to the westward, and not come near the land.
+
+"All this time the savages were _yeh-yeh_-ing round us, greatly to the
+amusement of the captain of the _Rob Roy_ and his boat's crew. Then,
+when I told the captain how good they had been to us, he sent his boat
+back to the ship, and had fetched for them wood and knives and iron and
+needles, in such great abundance that they set up a _yeh, yeh_, in
+consequence, which, for anything I know to the contrary, may be going on
+even to this present time.
+
+"But what was the happiness of the savages compared to ours? Our
+feelings cannot be described. It seemed almost as if we had come from
+death to life. We could hardly believe our eyes,--that this was the ship
+we had so long hoped for, this the rescue we had so often despaired of.
+We cried with very joy, and behaved like two crazy people. The captain
+of the _Rob Roy_ laughed good-naturedly at us, and proposed at once to
+hurry us off aboard his ship.
+
+"We kept our promise to give Eatum all our property; but the captain of
+the _Rob Roy_ wanted 'Old Crumply' and 'The Dean's Delight,' and our pot
+and lamp, and some other things; so he gave Eatum other valuables in
+place of them. Then we took leave of our savage friends, which we of
+course did not do without some feelings of sorrow and regret at parting
+from them, remembering as we did how kind they had been to us, and how
+they had rescued us from our unhappy situation; and the savages seemed a
+little sorry too. First came Eatum and Mrs. Eatum, and then the two
+little Eatums (Mop-head and Gimlet-eyes) that I had so often played
+with; then Old Grim and Big-toes and Little-nose; and Awak, the walrus,
+and Kossuit; and the two young ladies who might have been our wives: and
+then all the rest of them, big and little, old and young.
+
+"Then off we went to the _Rob Roy_; and a fair wind coming soon, the ice
+began to move away from the land, the Rob Roy's sails were unfurled to
+the fresh breeze, and now, with hearts turned thankfully to Heaven for
+our deliverance, we were again afloat upon the blue water,--whither
+bound we did not know, but _homeward_ in the end."
+
+"O, how glad you must have been!" said Fred.
+
+"How splendidly the rescue and all that comes round," said William;
+"just like it does in all the printed books. Why, Captain Hardy, it
+couldn't have been better if you'd made the story up, it looks so
+_real_!"
+
+While, as for little Alice, she never said a word, but only looked upon
+the old man wonderingly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+Brings the Holidays of the Little People and the Story
+of the Old Man to an End.
+
+
+Again the Mariner's Rest receives the little people; again the Ancient
+Mariner is there to welcome them. But a shade of sadness is upon the old
+man's face, and the children are not so gay as is their wont; for all
+things must have an end, and holidays are no exception to the rule.
+
+"Isn't it too bad," said William, looking very sober,--"isn't it too bad
+that this is to be the last of it?"
+
+"Not so bad for you as for me," replied the Ancient Mariner; and the old
+man looked as gloomy and forsaken as if he had been cast away in the
+cold again. But he soon cheered up, and in a much livelier way he said,
+"Well now, my hearties, since this is to be the last of it, suppose we
+close the story in the 'Crow's Nest,' where we first began it; for you
+see, if the Dean and I were rescued from the desolate island and the
+savages, we were not home yet. Now, what do you say to that, my dears?"
+
+"The Crow's Nest! Yes, yes, the Crow's Nest!" cried the children all at
+once; and away they scampered to it, as light and merry as if they had
+never for an instant been sad at thought of the parting that was so soon
+to come.
+
+And now once more our little party are together in the dear old rustic
+vine-clad arbor, and, as on the first day of meeting there, the old man
+takes his long clay pipe out of his mouth, and sticks it in a rafter
+overhead; then around little Alice he puts his great, big arm, and he
+draws the fair-haired, bright-eyed child close to his side, and thus
+"ballasted," as he says, he "bears away for port."
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Now, to bring our story to an end," ran on the Captain, "I must say
+first that the _Rob Roy_ was a good, stout ship; the master a bluff,
+good-hearted Scotchman; the mate a kindly man, and altogether different
+from the red-faced mate that was on the _Blackbird_; and the people were
+all just as good and kind to us as the savages had been. But they gave
+us right away so much coffee and ship's biscuit and other things to eat
+and drink (none of which had we tasted for three years and more), that
+we got a dreadful colic, and had like to have died. But the next day we
+were quite well again, and then we related to the Captain and everybody
+on board the story of our adventures. The worst was, they would make us
+tell our story over and over again, as I have been telling it to you,
+until we almost wished we had never been rescued at all. It is, indeed,
+a fearful thing in anybody's life ever to have met with any adventure
+that is at all peculiar; for to the end of his days people will never
+get done asking him about it; and most likely their questions are of the
+most ridiculous kind, like, 'Hardy, wasn't it cold there?' just as if
+anybody could be cast away in the cold, and find it anything else; or,
+'How did you feel, Hardy?' as if _feeling_ has anything at all to do
+with you when you are trying to save your life.
+
+"The captain of the _Rob Roy_ took a great fancy to our odd-looking fur
+clothes, especially our underclothing, which was made of birds' skins;
+and he gave us civilized garments out of the ship's stores. You may be
+sure that we were glad enough to get these nasty fur clothes off, and
+be rid of them forever. The captain offered to keep them for us, but we
+said 'No, no,' for we had had quite enough of them.
+
+"So we went after whales, and made a 'good catch,' as the whale-fishers
+call a good shipload of oil, and then we bore away for Aberdeen, only
+stopping on the way at two or three half-savage places.
+
+"When we reached Aberdeen, which occurred on the 29th of October, there
+was a great talk made about us, and, when we walked through the streets,
+people stuck out their fingers, and said, 'There they go! look!' so we
+were great lions there, and had to tell our story so often that we found
+out what they liked most to hear, and this we repeated over and over
+again; and by this method we saved much time and talk.
+
+"The very first thing the Dean did, after landing, was to write a letter
+to his mother, sending it off right away by post. It was just like the
+little fellow to do it, and what he wrote was like him too. It began
+thus: 'Through the mercy of Providence I have been saved, and am coming
+back to you, mother dear.'
+
+"Then we were shipped on board an American vessel, by the American
+Consul, for New York, where we arrived after a prosperous voyage, in
+good health, and without anything happening to us worth mentioning. This
+was on the 22d day of December, which made just three years, nine
+months, and nineteen days since we sailed from New Bedford.
+
+"As soon as we had landed, we set out for the hospital to find the
+Dean's mother. The Dean had directed his letter there, thinking that if
+she had got well and gone away, they would know where; and this they
+did, so we took down the address and hurried on. It was in a little
+by-street, and we had much trouble to find it; but by and by we came
+upon a tumble-down old house, and were shown into a little tumble-down
+old room, with a tumble-down old bed in it, and a tumble-down box for a
+chair, and a small tumble-down table, and right in the middle of the
+floor stood a little woman that was more tumble-down than all. It was
+the Dean's poor mother. She stood beside a tub in which she had been
+washing clothes, and she held a scrap of paper in both her hands, which,
+bony and hard with work, work, work, and scrub, scrub, scrub, were
+trembling violently, while she tried to puzzle out the contents of the
+Dean's letter (for this it was), that she held up before a face the deep
+wrinkles on which told of many sorrows and much suffering. The letter
+had arrived only a few minutes before we did, and she had only just made
+out that it was from the Dean, and we could see that this had started
+great tears rolling down her cheeks.
+
+[Illustration: The Dean's Mother.]
+
+"But there was no use to puzzle more now. There was her darling,
+bright-haired boy, whom she 'always felt sure,' she said, 'would come
+back again,'--never losing hope; and now you can imagine how she was not
+long in recognizing him, and how she greeted him, and cried over him,
+and called him pretty names, and all that,--or, rather, I mean to say,
+you can't imagine it at all, for I never saw the like of it. It seemed
+to me as if she would never let him go out of her arms again, for fear
+she should lose him; and, seeing how matters stood, I went outside,
+where after a while the Dean joined me, and having some money in our
+pockets, that we had earned on board the _Rob Roy_ and the American
+packet-ship, we went right off and bought the best supper we could get,
+and had it brought into the tumble-down room and spread out upon the
+tumble-down table; and never was any poor woman so glad in all the world
+as the Dean's mother, and never were any two boys so happy as the Dean
+and I. The Dean's mother would sometimes laugh for joy, and sometimes
+cry for the same excellent reason; and, when neither of these would do,
+nor both together even, she would fly at the Dean with open arms, and
+hug and kiss him until she was quite exhausted, and temporarily quieted
+down. Meanwhile the Dean, besides eating his supper, was trying to tell
+his mother what he had been doing all the time,--to neither of which
+purposes were these maternal interruptions peculiarly favorable.
+
+"So now you see we were at home at last, safe in body and thankful in
+spirit. Transported with delight, we could hardly believe our senses.
+After so many years' absence, and such hardships and dangers as we had
+passed through, New York seemed like another world. So accustomed had we
+been to exposure that we could hardly sleep in-doors. The confined air
+of the house greatly troubled us. Everything we saw seemed new, and we
+were in a constant state of wonder. We did not, however, forget the
+obligation we owed to our Heavenly Father for our deliverance; and we
+lost no time in going to a church, and there, in secret, we poured out
+our hearts to Him who rules the winds and the waves, and never forgets
+any of the creatures he has made.
+
+"'And now,' said the Dean, 'I am going to further show my gratitude by
+making my mother comfortable for the rest of her days,'--which he did by
+getting her into a better house, where she did not have to work any
+more,--the Dean declaring that he would hereafter make all the money
+that was necessary for her support; and he kept his word, too.
+
+"As for the money the Dean had when we came home, that was soon all
+gone, and mine too, for that matter, since I helped the Dean, of course.
+Then we looked about us for a good ship to go to sea in, as we felt that
+we should make better sailors now than anything else; indeed, neither of
+us knew what else to do.
+
+"The story of our remarkable adventures getting abroad, we found many
+friends, so you may be sure, when we shipped again, it was not in such a
+crazy old hulk as the _Blackbird_, nor did we go any more whale or seal
+fishing, having got enough of that to last us during the remainder of
+our lives. Still, I have been back to the Arctic regions once since
+then; but it was not with a red-faced mate to torment me.
+
+"I did not feel like coming up to Rockdale yet, being very much ashamed,
+not having made anything, as I could see, by running away. Besides, I
+learned that my father had given me up for dead long ago, and had moved
+with all my brothers and sisters to Ohio, where I wrote to him, telling
+all about my voyage and shipwreck,--the best I could, that is; for,
+having neglected my studies when at school, I could not write very well.
+
+"So now I came to be a regular sailor, going away first with the Dean on
+a voyage to the Mediterranean in a fine bark, where we got moderately
+good wages, and, being both rather ambitious, we grew in favor and saved
+our money. When we returned, I proposed to the Dean that we should make
+a common stock of our earnings, and get ourselves a nice little home,
+which we did; and remembering the Rock of Good Hope, we called it Good
+Hope Cottage, of which the Dean's mother took possession, of course,
+while off we went to sea again, this time to Rio de Janeiro, in the same
+bark; then afterwards we went to the Mediterranean twice more, and on
+the last voyage I got to be mate; and, afterward, when we stopped at
+Barcelona, the Dean was made second mate. Then, in course of time, the
+Dean got to be a Captain, and prospered greatly, while his mother lived
+at Good Hope Cottage, and the Dean and I were always happy to come back
+and have a home like that to go to. After a while we were separated, for
+I was a Captain as well as the Dean, and we could no longer be together
+in the same ship; but still we both had a home together, and a place
+always to hail from, you see.
+
+"But I go too fast and too far. I must stop now, for I have given you
+the story that I promised, of how I was _cast away in the cold_,--and it
+is high time too; for, as you have said, the holidays are at an end, and
+see there! the sun is sinking down behind the trees, and once more, as
+on the first day we met and parted in this pleasant little arbor, the
+shadows trail their ghostly length across the fields. But to me the
+shadows have another meaning now. They will lie there heavy on the
+ground until you come to lift them, and I shall be very, very sad and
+lonely now without my little friends. The night is closing in, my dears,
+as if it were a curtain dropped purposely to hide what we would gladly
+see again; and the dew is falling heavy on the grass, my dears, and so
+'good by' is the word."
+
+                 *       *       *       *       *
+
+The Captain paused and bent his eyes upon the golden light that lay
+far-off behind the trees, as if he would divine something of the future
+that was before himself and the little children by his side, and which
+he thought the golden sunlight held; but, while he looked, it seemed as
+if some tender chord within his gentle heart had snapped asunder and had
+been badly tied again, for he said quite hurriedly, "Well, well, my
+hearties, we must pass the word, and get it over. Good by,--there it is!
+God bless you, and good by!"
+
+"Good by, dear Captain Hardy," said William, putting out his hand,--a
+hand that promised to be a very manly one indeed some day,--"good by,
+and thank you for all your goodness to us," and the little fellow could
+not keep a tear from coming out upon his plump and rosy cheek.
+
+"Good by," said Fred, and, as he said it, there were two tears at the
+very least on his.
+
+"Good by," dear little Alice would have said, though she didn't; but
+instead she threw her arms about the old man's neck and kissed his
+sunburnt cheek.
+
+"Good by," the Captain was about to say again, but (he was always good
+at getting out of scrapes) at that very moment he contracted a suspicion
+that something moist was getting up into his own big hazel eyes; and so
+he began to whistle briskly, and then to cry out, loud enough to call
+all hands to close reef the topsails in a gale of wind: "Port and
+Starboard! Port and Starboard! come here, old curs and landlubbers that
+you are,--come, bear a hand and be lively there, and say 'good by.'"
+
+And along Port and Starboard came, bounding at a tremendous rate,
+barking "good by" at every bound, and with their great bushy tails
+wagging "good by" besides.
+
+The foreign ducks stopped shovelling and spattering mud, and quacked
+"good by."
+
+The chickens stopped stuffing themselves with grasshoppers, and, while
+the hens cackled "good by," the roosters crowed it.
+
+And, lastly, Main Brace came waddling along on his sausage legs, and
+from his plum-duff head let off "good by" at intervals, as a revolving
+gun lets off its balls, without appearing to have any more idea of what
+it was all about than the gun itself, until he reached the arbor, when
+he broke out into a loud "boo-hoo," which was the only "good by" he was
+now equal to; and as the first "boo-hoo" let loose a second, and the
+second a third, and the third a deluge and an earthquake all in one,
+there is no knowing what might have happened, had not the children
+scampered off and stopped the outburst,--Fred running on ahead, and
+William following after, leading his sister Alice by the hand, while
+the gentle little girl turned every dozen steps to throw back through
+the tender evening air, from her dainty little fingertips, a loving
+kiss (there was no laughing now) to the Ancient Mariner, whose face
+beamed brightly on her from the arbor door, and whose lips were saying
+plainly, "Good by, and God bless you till you come again!"
+
+
+
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