The Ship Seen On The Ice.

The Ship seen on the Ice .

By W . CLARK RUSSELL , Author of " The Golden Hope , " " 7 % B U'VecZ ; o / the Grosrenor , " c ] -C . L ^ fl foKf . ; lN tlie middle of April , in the year 1855 , the thrccrtH ' rat ' masted schooner Lightning sailed from the Mersey for trass ' EMS' Boston with a small general cargo of English manuf- >^ J [ 1 ^ 4 ¦ 1 factured goods . She was commanded by a man named felSJggg ^ jla'l Thomas Funnel . The mate , Salanion Sweers , was of

Dutch extraction , and his broad-beamed face was as Dutch to the eye as was the sound of his name to the ear . Yet he spoke English with as good an accent as ever one could hear in the mouth of an Englishman : and , indeed I pay Salanion Sweers no compliment

by saying this , for he employed his Ji ' s correctly , and the grammar of his sentences was fairly good , albeit salt : and how many Englishmen are there who correctly employ the letter h , and whose grammai is fsii ' i-W good , salt or no salt ?

We carried four forecastle hands and three apprentices . There was Charles Petersen , a Swede , who had once been "fancy man" in a toy shop ; there was David Burton , who had been a hairdresser

and proved unfortunate as a gold-digger in Australia ; there was James Lussoni , an Italian , who claimed to be a descendant of the old Genoese merchants ; and there was John Jones , a runaway man-ofwavsman , pretty nearl y worn out , and subject to apoplexy .

Four sailors and three apprentices make seven men , a eoolc and a boy are nine , and a mate and a captain make eleven ; and eleven of a crew were we , all told , men and boy , aboard the three-masted schooner Lightning , when we sailed away one April morning out of the river Mersey , bound to Boston , North America .

My name was then as it still is—for during the many years I have used the sea , never had I occasion to ship witli a " purser ' s name "—my name , I say , is David Kerry , and in that year of God , lB 55 , I was a strapping young fellow , seventeen years old , making a second voyage with Captain Funnel , having been bound apprentice

to that most excellent but long-departed mariner by my parents , who , finding me resolved to go to sea , had determined that approbation should be thorough : no half-laughs and pursers' grins would satisfy them ; my arm was to plunge dee ]) into the far-bucket

straightaway ; and certainl y there was no man then hailing from the port of Liverpool better able to qualify a young chap for the profession of the sea—but a young chap , mind yon , who liked his calling , who meant to be a 111 : 111 and not a " sojer" in if—than Captain Funnel ] , of the schooner Lightning .

The four sailors slept in a bit of a forecastle forward ; we three apprentices slung our hammocks in a bulk-headed part of the run or steerage , a gloomy hole , the obscurity of which was defined rather than illuminated by the dim twilight sifting down aslant from the hatch . Hero we stowed our chests , and Iiere we took our meals , and

here we slept and smoked and yarned in our watch below . I very well remember my two fellow-apprentices . One was named Corben and the other Halsted . They were both of them smart , honest , bright lads , coming well equipped and well educated from respectable homes , in love with the calling of the sea , and resolved in time not only to command ships , but to own them .

Well , nothing 111 any way noteworthy happened lor many days . Though the schooner was called the Lightning , she was by no means n clipper . She was built on lines which were fashionable forty years before , when the shipwright held that a ship ' s stability must be risked if she was one inch longer than five times her beam . She

was an old vessel , but dry us a stale cheese ; wallowed rather than rolled , yet was stiff ; would sit upright with erect spars , like the cocked cars of a horse , in breezes which bowed passing vessels down

to their wash-streaks . Her round bows bruised the sea , and when it entered her head to take to her heels , she would wash through it J ike a " gal lied " whale , all smotlier to ( he hawse-pipes , and a big round polished hump of brine on either quarter .

We ambled and wallowed , and blew , and in divers fashions drove along till we were deep in the heart of the North Atlantic . It was then a morning that brought the first of May within a biscuit-toss of our reckoning of time ; a very cold morning , the sea Hat , green , and

greasy , with a streaking of white about it , as though it were a flooring of marble ; tliere was wind , hut no lift in tlie water ; and Salanion Sweers , in whose watch I was , said to me when day broke and showed us the look of the

ocean" Blowed , " said he , " if a man mightn ' t swear that we were under the lee of a range of high land . " It was very cold , the wind about north-west , the sky a pale grey , with patches of weak , hazy blue in it here and there : and here and there again lay some darker shallow of cloud curled clean as though

punted . There was nothing in sight saving the topmost cloths of a little barque heading eastwards away down to leeward . Quiet as the morning was , not once during ( he passage had I i ' ound the temperature so cold . J was glad when the job of washing down was over , and not a little grateful for the hook-pot of steaming tea which I took from the galley to my quarters in the steerage . I breakfasted in true ocean fashion , off ship ' s biscuit , a piece of pork , the remains of yesterday ' s dinner , and a put fill of black liquor

The Ship Seen On The Ice.

called ten ., sweetened b y molasses and thickened with soddened leaves and fragments of twigs ; and then , cutting- a pipeful of tobacco from a stick of cavendish , I climbed into my hammock , and lay there smoking and trying to read in Noric ' s Epitome until my pipe went out , 011 which I fell asleep .

I was awakened byj' -ouug Halsted , whose hand was upon the edge of my hammock .

" Not time to turn out yet , I hope , " I exclaimed . " I don't feel to have been below ten minutes . " " There ' s the finest sight to sec on deck , " said he , " that you ' re likely to turn up this side of Boston . Tumble up and have a look if only for Jive minutes ; " and without another word he hastened up the ladder .

I dropped out of my hammock , pulled on my boots and monkey jacket , and went on deck , noting the hour by the cabin clock to be twenty minutes before eleven . " The captain stood at the mizzenri gging with a telescope at his eye , and beside him stood Mr . Sweers ,

likewise holding a glass , and both men pointed their telescopes towards the sea on the lee bow , where—never having before beheld an iceberg—I perceived what I imagined to be an " island covered with snow .

An iceberg it was ; not a very large one . It was about five miles distant ; it had a ragged sky line which made it resemble a piece of cliff gone adrift—such a fragment of cliff as , let me say , a quarter of a mile of the chalk of the South Foreland would make , if you can imagine a mass of the stuff detaching itself from under the verdure at the top and floating off ' , jagged and precipitous . There

was nothing to be seen but that iceberg . No others . The sea ran smooth and oily , and of a hard green , piebald with foam lines as in the earlier morning , with but a light swell out of the west , which came lifting stealthily to the side of the schooner . There was a small breeze ; the sky had a somewhat gloomy look ; the schooner was at this hour crawling along at the rate of about four and a half knots .

1 said to Halsted , " There was nothing in si ght when I went below at ei ght bells . Where ' s that berg come from ? " " From behind tbe horizon , " he answered . " The breeze freshened soon after you left the deck , and only slackened a little while since . "

" What can they see to keep thcni staring so hard ? " said I , referring to the captain and Mr . Sweers , who kept their glasses steadfastl y levelled at the iceberg . "They ' ve made out a ship upon the ice , " he answered ; " a ship high and dry upon aslope of foreshore . I believe I can see her now —the gleam of the snow is confusing ; there ' s a black spot at the base almost amidships of the berg . "

J had ii good sight in those days . 1 peered awhile and made out the object , but with the naked eye 1 could never have distinguished it , sis a shi p at that distance . "She ' s a . barque , " 1 heard Mr . Sweers say . " 1 see that , " said the captain .

" She s got a pretty strong list , " continued the mate , talking with the glass at his eye ; "lici- top-gallant masts are struck , but lier topmasts are standing . " "J tell yon what it is , " said the captain , after a pause , likewise speaking whilst lie gazed tlirougli his telescope ; "that ship ' s come down somewhere from out of the North Pole . She never could have

struck the ice and gone ashore as we see her there . She ' s been locked up ; then the p iece she ' s on broke away and made sail to the south . I ' ve fallen in with bergs with live polar bears on them in my time . " " What is she—a whaler ? " said Mr . Sweers . " She ' s got a luiubersomc look about the bulwarks , as though she wasn ' t short of cranes ; but I can't make out any boats , and there ' s no appearance of life aboard her . "

" Let her go off a point , " said the captain to the fellow at the wheel . "Mr . Sweers , she'll be worth looking at , " he continued , slowl y directing his gaze round the sea-line , as though considering the weather . " You ' ve heard of Sir John Franklin ? "

" Have I heard ? said the mate with a Dutch shrug . "It ' s the duty of every English sailor , " said the captain , " to keep his weather eye lifting whenever he smells ice north of the equator ; for who ' s to tell what relies of the Franklin expedition ho

may not li ght on ? And how are we to know , " continued he , again directing his glass at the berg , " that yonder vessel may not have taken part in that expedition ? " "There ' s a reward going , " said Mr . Sweers , "for the man who

can discover anything about Sir John Franklin and his party . " The captain grinned and quickly grew grave . We drew slowly towards the iceberg , at which I gazed with some degree of disappointment , for , never before having beheld ice in a great

mass like the heap that was yonder , 1 had expected to see something admirable and magnificent , an island of glass , full of fiery sparkling * and ruby and emerald beams , a shape of crystal cut b y the hand of King Frost into a hundred inimitable devices . Instead of which the island of ice , 011 which lay the hull of the shin , was of a dead ,

unpolished whiteness , abrupt at the extremities , about a hundred and twenty feet tall at its loftiest point , not more picturesque than a rock covered with snow , and interesting only to my mind because of ( he distance it had measured , and because of the fancies in raised in one of the white , silent , and stirless principalities from which it had floated into these parts .