第67章 LETTER XI(7)

As soon as we had thoroughly taken in the strange features of the scene around us,we all turned in for a night's rest.I was dog tired,as much with anxiety as want of sleep;for in continuing to push on to the northward in spite of the ice,I naturally could not help feeling that if any accident occurred,the responsibility would rest with me;and although I do not believe that we were at any time in any real danger,yet from our inexperience in the peculiarities of arctic navigation,I think the coolest judgment would have been liable to occasional misgivings as to what might arise from possible contingencies.Now,however,all was right;the result had justified our anticipations;we had reached the so longed-for goal;and as I stowed myself snugly away in the hollow of my cot,I could not help heartily congratulating myself that--for that night at all events--there was no danger of the ship knocking a hole in her bottom against some hummock which the lookout had been too sleepy to observe;and that Wilson could not come in the next morning and announce "ice all round,a-all ro-ound!"In a quarter of an hour afterwards,all was still on board the "Foam;"and the lonely little ship lay floating on the glassy bosom of the sea,apparently as inanimate as the landscape.

My feelings on awakening next morning were very pleasant;something like what one used to feel the first morning after one's return from school,on seeing pink curtains glistening round one's head,instead of the dirty-white boards of a turned-up bedstead.When Wilson came in with my hot water,I could not help triumphantly remarking to him,--"Well,Wilson,you see we've got to Spitzbergen,after all!"But Wilson was not a man to be driven from his convictions by facts;he only smiled grimly,with a look which meant--"Would we were safe back again!"Poor Wilson!he would have gone only half way with Bacon in his famous Apothegm;he would willingly "commit the Beginnings of all actions to Argus with his hundred eyes,and the Ends"--to Centipede,with his hundred legs.

"First to watch,and then to speed"--away!would have been his pithy emendation.

Immediately after breakfast we pulled to the shore,carrying in the gig with us the photographic apparatus,tents,guns,ammunition,and the goat.Poor old thing!

she had suffered dreadfully from sea-sickness,and Ithought a run ashore might do her good.On the left-hand side of the bay,between the foot of the mountain and the sea,there ran a low flat belt of black moss,about half a mile broad;and as this appeared the only point in the neighbourhood likely to offer any attraction to reindeer,it was on this side that I determined to land.

My chief reason for having run into English Bay rather than Magdalena Bay was because we had been told at Hammerfest that it was the more likely place of the two for deer;and as we were sadly in want of fresh meat this advantage quite decided us in our choice.As soon,therefore,as we had superintended the erection of the tent,and set Wilson hard at work cleaning the glasses for the photographs,we slung our rifles on our backs,and set off in search of deer.But in vain did I peer through my telescope across the dingy flat in front;not a vestige of a horn was to be seen,although in several places we came upon impressions of their track.At last our confidence in the reports of their great plenty became considerably diminished.Still the walk was very refreshing after our confinement on board;and although the thermometer was below freezing,the cold only made the exercise more pleasant.A little to the northward I observed,lying on the sea-shore,innumerable logs of driftwood.This wood is floated all the way from America by the Gulf Stream,and as I walked from one huge bole to another,I could not help wondering in what primeval forest each had grown,what chance had originally cast them on the waters,and piloted them to this desert shore.Mingled with this fringe of unhewn timber that lined the beach lay waifs and strays of a more sinister kind;pieces of broken spars,an oar,a boat's flagstaff,and a few shattered fragments of some long-lost vessel's planking.Here and there,too,we would come upon skulls of walrus,ribs and shoulder-blades of bears,brought possibly by the ice in winter.Turning again from the sea,we resumed our search for deer;but two or three hours'more very stiff walking produced no better luck.Suddenly a cry from Fitz,who had wandered a little to the right,brought us helter-skelter to the spot where was standing.But it was not a stag he had called us to come and look upon.

Half imbedded in the black moss at his feet,there lay a grey deal coffin falling almost to pieces with age;the lid was gone--blown off probably by the wind--and within were stretched the bleaching bones of a human skeleton.A rude cross at the head of the grave still stood partially upright,and a half obliterated Dutch inscription preserved a record of the dead man's name and age.

.....VANDER SCHELLING....

COMMAN....JACOB MOOR....

OB 2JUNE 1758AET 44.

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It was evidently some poor whaler of the last century to whom his companions had given the only burial possible in this frost-hardened earth,which even the summer sun has no force to penetrate beyond a couple of inches,and which will not afford to man the shallowest grave.Ableak resting-place for that hundred years'slumber,Ithought,as I gazed on the dead mariner's remains!--"I was snowed over with snow,And beaten with rains,And drenched with the dews;Dead have I long been,"--

--murmured the Vala to Odin in Nifelheim,--and whispers of a similar import seemed to rise up from the lidless coffin before us.It was no brother mortal that lay at our feet,softly folded in the embraces of "Mother Earth,"but a poor scarecrow,gibbeted for ages on this bare rock,like a dead Prometheus;the vulture,frost,gnawing for ever on his bleaching relics,and yet eternally preserving them!