The Cruise of the Snowbird: A Story of Arctic Adventure
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house were only close to the seait would seem like living nearer to the loved one. So the captain builta house on the slope of a hill, and planted pine-trees thereon toshelter it from the cutting winds, that in winter and spring sweptdownwards from the north and north-east. And the windows of the houselooked away over the broad Atlantic. In his outward voyages thecaptain's ship, after leaving the port of embarkation, passed within twomiles of his cottage door, and his wife and children used to watch thetrim-built brig as she glided away from the land, lessening andlessening, until she looked but like a bird on the horizon, and finallydisappeared. On stormy nights, when the wind howled around the cottage,and the angry waves lashed themselves into foam against the dark cliffsthat bounded the sea-beach, the little lonely family would assemble inthe parlour to pray for poor father, far at sea, to Him who can quietthe raging of the winds, and say to the troubled ocean, `Peace, bestill!'
"But the Danish captain was not only a fortunate sailor but a veryambitious man as well, and ever after each successful voyage his wifewould entreat him to remain on shore now for the rest of his life.Several times indeed the husband had acceded to her wishes, and settleddown on shore. But only for a time, for woe is me! the heart of a truesailor is often as restless as the great sea itself.
"The pet of the captain's household was his only daughter, abright-faced, lovely girl of sweet seventeen. With her fair flowinghair, her laughing blue eyes, her cheerful voice, and her winsome ways,no wonder Nanette was a favourite. But why did she so love to roam downby the rocks where the seagulls screamed, and why, when her father wasabroad, did her eyes so often fill with tears as she gazed across thesea? She was her father's darling, it is true; but she was somethingelse--she was brave Jan Jansen's promised bride. And his thoughts werealways on shore with Nanette, and hers were on the little barque withJan. When he was at sea the months seemed to her like long gloomyyears, and the few weeks he was at home like bright short hours ofsunshine and joy.
"And they were going to be married after the very next voyage; then Janwas to have a ship of his own, and take her away with him to the sunnylands he was so fond of describing to her, and about which she so lovedto hear, as they walked arm in arm on the breezy cliff-tops.
"If previous voyages had seemed long to Nanette, this last appeared anage in itself. But one summer's morning when Nanette, awoke and openedher window to admit the sweet sea air and the song of the lark, oh! joy,there was the dear old brig with her sea-washed sides, standing close intowards the land, and she was sure--yes, there was no mistake about it--those were her father and Jan waving their handkerchiefs to attract herattention. How quickly did Nanette dress that morning and hurry out;and how speedily did she bend on and hoist the red flag on the gardenstaff, to tell her anxious father and lover that all was well at home!
"Then away stood the brig on the starboard tack, and next day Nanettehad beside her all that she loved on earth--father, mother, herbrothers, and Jan.
"There seemed to be a cloud on the captain's brow, which his wife wasnot slow to notice, and even honest Jan appeared to be possessed of somegloomy secret, that sat but uneasily on his mind. Yet each when askedhad only replied,--
"`'Tis nothing, you will hear it all in good time.'
"But that evening, after supper was cleared away, and Jan with thecaptain sat beside the fire in the cosy parlour,--
"`Wife,' said the mariner, `I have news for you that is both good andbad. Tell them, Jan, I can't.'
"Jan dared not meet the loving eyes of poor Nanette, but gazed dreamilyinto the fire as he told them the news that some shipwrecked sailors hadbrought to the port of Katrinesand, from which they had last sailed, ofwealth immeasurable to be made on an island far away in the frozenocean, and of mines of ivory to be had for the gathering, and of thecaptain's resolve to make one last--certainly the last--Jan little knewhow prophetically he spoke--voyage in the brig, and that this voyage wasto be to the Arctic regions; and that neither he nor the captain doubtedthat this single voyage would make wealthy men of them both.
"The wife was the first to reply, for poor Nanette was sobbing as if herheart would break.
"`Oh!' cried the captain's wife, `it is ever, ever thus. Do not go, Ibeseech you, oh! my husband. Do not rashly brave the terrors of thatdreadful sea of ice. There has been a cloud on my heart for weeks thatI could not understand till now, and both Nanette and myself havedreamed dreams that bode no good to us or ours. Husband, husband, stayat home!'
"But a determined man will have his way, and the captain's mind was sobent on the new project that nothing would induce him to give it up.What his wife must suffer, but Nanette even more, for wherever herfather went Jan was bound to follow, and the danger would be the same toboth!
"On the twenty-first day of April, in seventeen hundred and ninety-six,there sailed away from Shetland the sturdy brig _Danish Queen_, wellmanned, mated, found and commanded, and with it went the hearts of thegentle Nanette and her mother.
"The day was mild and balmy. A soft south wind blew over the sea andfilled the sails, and wafted the brig--oh! how fast she seemed to fly--away and away and away, till she disappeared on the northern horizon,and the poor bereaved ones, clasped in each other's arms, wept insilence now, for neither could find a word of comfort for the other;hope itself had fled from their hearts.
"And the _Danish Queen_ returned again no more to Shetland shores.
"Two years and a half had barely passed since she sailed away, and theautumn leaves were mingling with the long green grass in the littlechurchyard of Dergen, when two new-made graves might have been seenthere, side by side. One was that of little Nanette, the other thegrave of her heartbroken mother.
"And the time flew by, and the _Danish Queen_ was soon forgotten, andpeople had ceased to speak of her, and the friends of her brave sailorshad doffed the garb of mourning for five long years.
"But one day there arrived in Shetland the whaling barque _Clotho_,direct from the Greenland Ocean, and one passenger, the sole survivor,by his own account, of the ill-fated _Danish Queen_. If it were indeedas he said, there must be some strange mystery about his existence forso many years on the sea of ice, which even Jan Jansen himself--for itwas he--could not, or rather would not, then explain. He was founddressed in bear-skins, a young man, but with snow-white hair and beard,wandering purposelessly on the ice, and taken on board. All that hewould tell was that his unfortunate vessel had been dashed to piecesagainst the ice just three months after he had left Shetland, and thathe alone of all on board had been saved from a watery grave.
"Jan Jansen never shed a tear when he heard of the death of the twobeings he had loved far better than any one else on earth, but he neversmiled again. He built himself a small cottage and tilled a little farmquite close to the graveyard of Dergen, and in sight of the sea. Yearssoftened the poor man's grief, and to many an earnest child-listener,not a few of whom have long ago gone grey and passed away from earth, heused to tell the tale of his strange adventures in the far-off sea ofice.
"It was on winter evenings, when the snow was sifting in beneath JanJansen's cottage door, and the roar of the wind mingling with the dashof the waves on the cliffs beneath, that Jan would draw closer to thefire, and rake the blazing peat together till the shadows danced andflickered on the walls: then his little friends felt sure that he wasgoing to repeat to them his strange, strange story.
"`But I never told you, did I,' old Jan would say, `of the lonely islandof Alba, in the frozen ocean?'
"He had told them scores of times, but the tale never palled upon them.
"`Yes, yes, Father Jan,' they would cry, `but we have quite forgotten agreat deal that you told us. Do tell us once again of that wonderfulisland, and all the strange things you saw there.'
"And Jan would begin, keeping his eyes on the fire, as if the curlingsmoke and the blazing peat aided his recollections.
"`It was almost summer when the good brig _Danish Queen_ left Shetland.A favouring breeze filled our sails,
and in less than fourteen days wemade the ice, and the ripple left the water, but still the wind blewfair. Onward we ploughed our way in the sturdy brig, now through fieldsof floating slush and snow, now through streams of small bergs, butlittle larger than sheep or swans. Farther north still, and the bergsgrew as large as oxen, then as big as elephants, then bigger thanhouses, then bigger than churches; and as they rose and fell on thesmooth dark billows they threatened us every moment with destruction.Then we knew we had at last reached the sea of perpetual ice; 'twas theseason of the year when the sun never sets, but goes on day and night,round and round in the cold blue sky, where never a cloud is seen. Wesaw strange birds and beasts in the water and on the ice, beasts thatglared at us with a stony fearless stare, and birds that floated soclose we could have captured them by hand.