Cast Away in the Cold Part 10

"Before either of us went to sleep, we had seen that the first thing now was to catch more ducks; and this we could either of us do, besides watching the sea for s.h.i.+ps, and the fire that it did not go out.

Accordingly, as soon as the Dean had fallen asleep, I went about this work, fully resolved upon a plan as to how I should proceed. The knowledge of seals which I had acquired when in the _Blackbird_ had perhaps something to do with it.

"I knew, from the thickness of the seal's skin, that lines could be made out of it very well. You will remember the dead seal that I told you of the other day, lying down on the beach, where it had been thrown up out of the sea by the waves. I forgot to mention, in addition, that we found several other seals, or rather, I should say, parts of them, for most of them had been eaten up by the foxes, or had gone to pieces by decay. So I at once went down, as I was going to say, to the seal that I had first discovered, and, taking out my knife, I made a cut around his neck, close behind the ears. It was a very large seal, and I found it not an easy matter to lift him up so that I could get my knife all the way around him; but I managed to do it notwithstanding, and made not only one cut but a great many of them,--or rather, I should say, one continuous cut around and around the body of the dead animal; so you will easily understand that, in this way, by keeping my knife about an eighth of an inch from where it had gone before when it pa.s.sed around, I obtained at last a long string, or rather one might say a thong, very strong and very pliable. It must have been at least a hundred feet in length when I stopped cutting it, and I divided it into three parts.

Having done this, I next went back to where the ducks were thickest, when, of course, the birds flew off their nests. Then I fixed four traps, just as the Dean had done, tying to three of them the seal-skin strings which I had made, and to the fourth I tied the Dean's bit of twine; then I hid myself among the rocks, and waited for the birds to come back.

"I had not long to wait, for in a few minutes two of them returned, and, without appearing to mind at all the trap that I had set for them, crawled upon their nests so quickly that it seemed as if they were mightily afraid their eggs would get cold. Seeing a third one coming, I waited for her too, and the fourth one came soon afterwards; and indeed, by this time, nearly all the birds that had their nests near by had come back to them. As soon as all was quiet, I pulled my strings one after another as quickly as I could, and three of the birds were caught; but the last one was too smart for me, as the noise made by the others had startled her, and the heavy stone only struck her tail as she went squalling and fluttering away, frightening off all the other ducks that were anywhere near.

"I was not long, as you may be sure, in securing my three prizes; and I carried them at once up to the fire near which the Dean was lying under my overcoat in the sun. Soon after this the Dean awoke, and, when he saw what I had done, seemed to be much amused, as he declared that I had stolen his patent; but when he saw what kind of a line I had made, he was filled with admiration, saying: 'Well, who would ever have thought of that? I'm sure I never should.'

"Being now very tired, I lay down while the Dean took his 'turn'; and by the time my eyes were opened again he had caught seven birds, so that we had now in all ten,--enough, probably, to last us as many days. This, of course, gave us a great deal of satisfaction, especially as we soon had one of them nicely cooked, and thus got a good breakfast.

"We had now been, you see, several days on the island, and we felt that we had done pretty well already towards providing for ourselves. The Dean, as I ought to have mentioned before, had grown in strength very rapidly during the last forty-eight hours; and except that his head was still sore from the cut and bruise, he was entirely well.

"We felt now that, whatever else might happen to us, we could not want for food, as, besides the eggs, we could have as many ducks as we pleased to catch. We had succeeded in making a fire, and had abundant means to keep it burning. There were only two things that seriously troubled us. One was our lack of shelter, if a storm should come; and the other, our lack of proper clothing, if the weather should grow cold.

But, having succeeded so well thus far, we were very hopeful for the future. Heaven had kindly favored us. The temperature had been very mild all the time. There had been no wind, and scarcely a cloud to obscure the sky. As for shelter, we felt that we could manage in two days to enclose the cave; and as to the other trouble, although we were not very clear in our minds about it, yet we did not lose confidence that a s.h.i.+p would come along and take us off before winter should set in. So we resolved not to abandon our vigilance, but to keep up a constant watch, as we had done before. Now that we had made a fire, we knew the smoke would be a great help to us in drawing the attention of the people on board any s.h.i.+p that might come near.

"With these agreeable reflections we went to work much more cheerfully than we had done before."

The captain here "hove to," as he said, observing, that, the day being far spent, he would drop the story for the present. "To-morrow, when you come, I will tell you how we fixed up the cave, and made ourselves more comfortable in many ways. Meanwhile you can reflect upon what I have told you, and you can answer me then whether you think John Hardy and Richard Dean were an enviable pair of boys."

"I can answer that now," said William.

"Well, what is the answer?" asked the Captain, in great good-humor.

"Why, their pluck and courage everybody would envy, or at least they ought to; but, for the rest, I would rather stay at home."

"Well, well," said the Captain, smiling pleasantly, "each to his taste.

I rather think I should prefer being in the 'Mariner's Rest'

myself";--saying which he led the way into the grounds in front of the cottage which he loved so well, where he took leave of his little friends once more, making them promise over and over again (for which there was no need at all) that they would come next day and hear about the cave, and how they there built themselves a shelter from the Arctic storms.

CHAPTER XI.

In which the little People are convinced of the Goodness of Providence, as the Reader ought to be,--seeing that to be cast away is not to be forsaken.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

We have now for some time followed the old man through the recital of the wonderful adventures which befell himself and the Dean on the lonely little island in the Arctic Sea; and we have watched the children going and coming from day to day. And we have seen, too, how happy the children were when listening to the story, and how delighted they were with every little sc.r.a.p they got of it, and how they remembered every word of it, and how William wrote it down in black and white, and had it safe and sound for future use,--little dreaming, at the time of doing it, that the record he was keeping would find its way at last into a book, and thus give other children than himself and Fred and Alice a chance to make the acquaintance of the good old Captain and the brave and handsome little Dean.

And William Earnest kept his record regularly, and he kept it well, as we have seen before; and up to this point of time everything was set down with day and date. But now a change had clearly come over the habits of our little party. At first, as has been hitherto related, the old Captain was a little shy of the children, though he so much liked them; but now all formality was gone between them, and so down the children came to the Captain's cottage whenever they had a mind. The Captain was always glad to see them, be it morning, noon, or evening; and never were the children, in all their lives before, so happy as when romping through the Captain's grounds, or cooling themselves upon the gra.s.s beneath the Captain's trees, or looking at the Captain's "traps"

or joking with that oddest boy that was ever seen, Main Brace, or playing with the Captain's dogs,--the biggest dogs that ever bore the odd names of Port and Starboard.

The Captain now said, "Make yourselves at home, my dears,--quite at home"; and the children did it; and the Captain always went about whatever he had to do until he was ready once more to begin his story-telling; and then they would all rush off to the yacht, or to the "Crow's Nest," or the "cabin," or the "quarter-deck," or some other pleasant place; and as the Captain related something more and more extraordinary, as it seemed to them, each time,

"the wonder grew That one small head should carry all he knew";

while, as for the old man himself, he might well exclaim, with the lover in the play, "I were but little happy if I could say how much."

Thus it came about, as we have good reason to suppose, that days and dates were lost in William's journal; and thus it was that the young and truthful chronicler of this veritable history simply wrote down, from time to time, what the Captain said, without mentioning much about when it was that the Captain said it. Sometimes he wrote with lead pencil, sometimes with pen and ink, and often, as is plain to see from the ma.n.u.script itself, at considerable intervals of time; but always, as there is no doubt, with accuracy; for William's mind, touching the Captain's adventures, was like the susceptible heart of the Count in the Venetian story, "wax to receive and marble to retain."

So now, after this long explanation, the reader will perceive that we can do nothing else than report the Captain's story, without always saying where the little party were seated at the time the Captain told it. And, in truth, it matters little; at least so William thought, for he wrote one day upon the page,--

"Where's the use, I'd like to know, putting in what Fred and me and Alice did, and where we went with the 'ancient mariner'; I haven't time to write so much, and I'll only write what the Captain said"; and so right away he set down what follows.

"Now you see," resumed the Captain, "when we had done all I told you of before,--having slept, you know, and got well rested,--we went about our work very hopefully. But as we were going along, meditating on our plans, the Dean stopped suddenly, and said he to me: 'Hardy, do you know what day it is?'

"'No,' said I, 'upon my word I don't, and never once thought about it!'

"The Dean looked very sad all at once, and, not being able to see why that should be, I asked what difference it made to us what day it was.

"'Why, a great deal of difference,' said the Dean.

"'How?' said I.

"'Why,' said the Dean, 'when shall we know when Sunday comes?'

"To be sure, how should we know when Sunday came! I had not thought of that before; but the Dean was differently brought up from me; for, while I had not been taught to care much about such matters, the Dean had, and he looked upon Sunday as a day when n.o.body should do any sort of work. I believe the Dean had an idea in his head, that, if it was Sunday, and he was frozen half to death already, or starved about as badly, and should refuse to work to save himself from death outright, he would do a virtuous thing in sacrificing himself, and would go straight up to heaven for certain. So I became anxious too, and for the Dean's sake, if not for my own, I tried hard to recall what day it was."

"How very queer," said William, "to forget what day it was! How did it happen? Won't you tell us that, Captain Hardy?"

"To be sure," said the obliging Captain,--"as well as I can, that is.

Now, do you remember what I told you the other day about the sun s.h.i.+ning all the time,--do you remember that, my lad?"

"Yes," answered William, "of course I do. Goes round and round, that way," and he whirled his hat about his head.

"Just so," went on the Captain,--"just so, exactly. Goes round and round, and never sets until the winter comes, and then it goes down, and there it stays all the winter through, and there is constant darkness where the daylight always was before."

"What, all the time?" asked William.

"Yes," replied the Captain; "dark all the time."

"How dark?" asked Fred.

"Dark as dark can be. Dark at morning and at evening. Dark at noon, and dark at midnight. Dark all the time, as I have said. Dark all the winter through. Dark for months and months."

"How dreadful!" exclaimed Fred.

"Dreadful enough, as I can a.s.sure you, with no light, all the whole winter-time, except the moon and stars. A dreadful thing to live along for days and days, and weeks and weeks, and months and months, without the blessed light of day,--without once seeing the sun come up and brighten everything and make us glad, and the pretty flowers to unfold themselves, and all the living world praise the Lord for remembering it.

That's what you never see in all the Arctic winter,--no suns.h.i.+ne ever streaming up above the hills and making all the rainbow colors in the clouds. That's what you never see at all, no more than if you were blind and couldn't see.

"But never mind just now about the winter. We haven't done with the summer yet, nor with Sunday either, for that matter.