Seven Frozen Sailors Part 20

That's my yarn. There's nothing very grand about it; but, at least, it's true. As true, I mean, as old sailors' yarns usually are.

"Gone!" cried the doctor, as the Dutchman, a minute before solid in appearance, suddenly collapsed into air and moisture, which directly became ice. "If I hadn't been so polite I might have stopped him. I suppose the effort of telling their histories exhausts them."

"Well, sir, it's jolly interesting!" said Bostock.

"Yes, my man," said the doctor; "but there's no science in it. What is there in his talk about how he came here, or for me to report to the learned societies?"

"Can't say, I'm sure, sir," I said; "only, the discoveries."

"Yes, that will do, Captain. But come, let's find another?"

We all set to eagerly, for the men now thoroughly enjoyed the task. The stories we heard enlivened the tedium, and the men, far from being afraid now, went heartily into the search.

"Shouldn't wonder if we found a n.i.g.g.e.r friz-up here, mates," said Binny Scudds.

"Or a Chine-hee," said one of the men.

"Well, all I can say," exclaimed Bostock, "is this here, _I_ don't want to be made into a scientific speciment."

"Here y'are!" shouted one of the men. "Here's one on 'em!"

"Get out!" said Binny Scudds, who had run to the face of a perpendicular ma.s.s of ice, where the man stood with his pick. "That ain't one!"

"Tell yer it is," said the man. "That's the 'airs of his 'ead sticking out;" and he pointed to what appeared to be dark threads in the white, opaque ice.

"Tell you, he wouldn't be standing up," said Binny Scudds.

"Why not, if he was frozen so, my men?" said the doctor. "Yes; that's a specimen. This ice has been heaved up."

"Shall we fetch him out with powder," said Bostock.

"Dear me, no!" said the doctor. "Look! that ice is laminated. Try driving in wedges."

Three of the men climbed onto the top, and began driving in wedges, when the ice split open evenly, leaving the figure of what appeared to be a swarthy-looking Frenchman, exposed as to the face; but he was held in tightly to the lower half of the icy case, by his long hair.

"Blest if he don't look jest like a walnut with one sh.e.l.l off!" growled Scudds; but he was silent directly, for the Frenchman opened his eyes, stared at us, smiled, and opened his lips.

"Yes; thank you much, comrades. You have saved me. I did not thus expect, when we went drift, drift, drift north, in the little vessel, with the rats; but listen, you shall hear. I am a man of wonderful adventure. You take me for a ghost?"

Bostock nodded.

"Brave lads! brave lads!" said the Frenchman; "but it is not that I am.

I have been taken for a ghost before, and prove to my good friends that I am not. I prove to you I am not; but a good, sound, safe, French _matelot_!--sailor, you call it."

"I should like to hear you," said Binny Scudds, in a hoa.r.s.e growl.

"You shall, my friend, who has helped to save me."

"Let it be scientific, my friend," said the doctor.

"It shall, sir--it shall," said the Frenchman.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

THE FRENCH SAILOR'S YARN.

I am master of the yacht _Zephire_; at least I was her master. A hundred fathoms of green water roll over her masts now. Fishes of monstrous shape feed on our good stores. For anything I know, a brood of young sea-serpents is at this moment in possession of my hammock.

Let be, I will tell the story of the _Zephire_. Ten years ago an American vessel lay off the little port of Benevent, in the south of France. The time was high noon; the month, August. The day was bright.

The sunbeams danced over the white spray and green waves. A boat put off for the sh.o.r.e. I, Pierre Crepin, sat in the stern and held the rudder-lines. My heart was full of joy. I had been born in Benevent; my friends were there--if they were alive. My mother, with good Aunt Lisette, in the little cottage by the hill-side. My old companions drinking white wine at "The Three Magpies." All the old faces I knew-- had known from childhood--loved better than anything else in the world.

I could throw a stone to where they sat. I could almost hear them talk.

"Pull, my comrades, pull!" I grow impatient; I, the lost found; I, the dead returned to life; I, Pierre Crepin, back in Benevent. Who will believe it? For some time I must seem the ghost of myself. My old companions will put down their gla.s.ses and stare. Then they will till them to the brim and drink the health of Pierre Crepin, till the roof-tree of "The Three Magpies" echoes with "Pierre--Pierre Crepin, welcome back!" And my mother, she will know the footsteps of her son on the pebbles. She will rush out to fold me to her heart. And good Aunt Lisette! She is feeble--it will be almost too much for her. And--

The boat's keel grates harshly on the s.h.i.+ngle. "Steady!" say the seamen. I make my adieux tenderly, for they have been too kind to me.

I wring their hands; I leap ash.o.r.e. They go back to their s.h.i.+p. I turn my steps first to the little whitewashed cottage on the hill-side.

Is it necessary for me to tell how my mother embraces me. Poor Aunt Lisette! She knows I am back; but she is not here to welcome me. She is at rest. At last I have told all. It is night now, and I am free to go to the kitchen of "The Three Magpies."

There it is. "Mon Dieu!" "Impossible; it is his ghost!" I soon convince them that it is, indeed, I myself. The news spreads over the market place. "Pierre Crepin is come back to Benevent. After all, he is not drowned; he is alive and well." The kitchen of "The Three Magpies" will not hold the crowd. Antoine, the drawer, cannot pull the corks fast enough. My eyes fill with tears. The brave fellows are too good to me. I must tell them my story. Pouches are drawn out; pipes and cigars are lighted; gla.s.ses are tilled for the twentieth time. I begin my yarn.

You see me, my good friends, safely back in Benevent. It is four years since I parted from you. The s.h.i.+p in which I sailed from Ma.r.s.eilles was wrecked on a coral reef. All hands were lost. The last I saw alive was Marc Debois. He had seized a spar, and was struggling manfully for life. There are sharks in those seas. The waves ran high, and the foam of the breakers blinded me. I was safe on the land. I could not help Marc, but I watched him. A great wave came. It rolled on toward my feet.

There was a patch of blood on the water, mingling with the white foam of the breakers, then disappearing. Poor Marc had met his fate. All was over. I saw him no more. The spar to which he had clung was washed ash.o.r.e at my feet. I was alone, wet, cold, wretched. I envied Marc.

Shaking myself, I ran along the sh.o.r.e, to restore to my drenched limbs heat and life. Then I climbed a precipitous crag--one of a line that stretched along the sh.o.r.e as far as the eye could see. But I must not become tedious with my tale.

"Go on, Pierre Crepin!" they all cried.

Well, then, I continued, the island was desolate, uninhabited. There were fruits and berries, turtles, young birds in nests. Long times of dry weather under a tropical sun. In this I made a fire day after day by rubbing sticks together till I could kindle the dry leaves. Then came seasons of wet of weeks together. In these I had no fire, and had to subsist on berries and fruits, and the eggs of sea-fowl. I was there, as it seemed, an age. It was three years. I had long given up all hope of seeing Benevent or men again. My island was about nine leagues round. On the highest hill, by the sh.o.r.e, I raised a mast. In a cleft in it I struck a piece of plank. On the plank I wrote, with white chalk--

"Au Secours! Pierre Crepin!"

This I renewed as the rains washed out my characters. At last help came. Unshaven, ragged, unkempt, I was taken on board an American vessel that had been driven by stress of weather far out of her course.

And I am here.

My narrative ended, I was plied with a thousand questions, and it was not until mine host closed his doors for the night, and thrust us good-humouredly into the street, that I was able to bid my friends good-night, and turn my steps toward my mother's cottage--that cottage where the dear soul awaited me with the anxiety of a mother who has mourned her only son as lost. That cottage where the soft bed of my boyish days, spread for me, with snowy linen, by the kindest of hands, had been ready for me these three hours. But I was not unattended. My friends, some dozen of them, would see me home to my mother's door-- would wring her hand in hearty congratulation at my return.

In the morning you may be sure I had plenty of callers. It was like a _levee_. They began to come before I was up, but my mother would not suffer that I should be waked. And I, who had not slept in a Christian bed for years, slept like a top, and slept it out.

I was sitting at my breakfast of cutlets, omelette, and white wine, when Cecile knocked at the door of the cottage.

"Enter!" said my mother.

"Ah, Cecile!" I cried; "but not the Cecile I left at Benevent when I went away."

For she was altered. She had grown more matronly. The loveliness of her girlhood had gone. It had given place to the more mature beauty of womanhood. What a difference four years makes to a girl!

"Pierre," she cries, "we are _so_ glad to see you back! You bring us news--the news we all want that I want."