Читать книгу Idylls of the Sea, and Other Marine Sketches онлайн

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For the first five hundred miles we groped our way through fantastic wreaths of frost-fog, its dense whiteness enclosing us like a wall, and its pitiless embrace threatening to freeze the creeping blood in our veins, while, invisible, the angry currents of the fiercest tideway in the world bubbled beneath us like a witch’s cauldron, whose steam was fluid ice, after whirling us top-wise in defiance of wind and helm. Strange noises assailed our ears, and a feeling of uncertain suspension as though sailing in the clouds possessed our benumbed faculties. But as if guided by an instinctive sense of direction, the skipper succeeded in fetching the New Brunswick shore, entering Musquash Harbour without hesitation, and anchoring a scant bowshot from the frozen strand. Wasting no time, very precious now, we landed, restoring our feeble circulation by felling a large number of beautiful young silver birches, which, like regular ranks of glittering ghosts, stood thickly everywhere. Our sea-stock of fuel provided, we broke up the armour-plated covering of ice over a swiftly-flowing streamlet and filled our solitary water-cask, an irksome task, since the water froze as we poured. With enormous difficulty we shipped these essentials, and in all haste weighed again, and stole seaward into the gathering gloom. Night brought a bitter gale, whose direction barely enabled us to creep under a tiny triangle of canvas towards the narrow portals of the Bay of Fundy. The flying spray clung to masts and rigging, clothing them with many layers of ice, till each slender spar and rope gleamed huge above our heads through the palpable dark. The scanty limits of the deck became undistinguishable from the levels of an iceberg, to which offspring of the sombre North our little craft was rapidly becoming akin. Below, in the stuffy, square den, the “cook” continually fed the ancient stove with crackling birchwood and made successive kettlesful of boiling burnt-bread coffee, while the half-frozen skipper and his mate relieved each other every half-hour for a brief thaw. In such wise we reached a sheltered nook behind Cape Sable, anchoring in a culminating blizzard of snow, and fleeing instantly to the steaming shelter below. Outside our frail shell the tempest howled unceasingly throughout the long, long night. When the bleak morning broke the little ship was perched precariously, like some crippled sea-bird, upon three pinnacles of rock. The sea had retreated from us for nearly a mile, and all the grim secrets of its iron bed lay revealed under the cold, grey dawn. Overhead hung gigantic icicles like sheaves of spears from the massive white pillars that concealed our identity with man’s handiwork, and at imminent risk we must needs break them down in order to move the vessel when the inrushing flood should again set her free. Presently it came, a roaring yellow mass of broken water, laden with all the varied débris of that awful coast. But we were ready for it, and by strenuous toil managed to get into a safe anchorage.