The Old Man meets the Little People under Peculiar Circumstances, and relates to them how the Young Man, being cast away in the Cold, rescued a Shipmate, and also other Matters, which, if put into this Title, would spoil the Story altogether.

This time Captain Hardy was not to be caught napping, as on the previous day. Indeed, he was out looking for his young friends even before the time. “If they don’t come soon,” said he to himself, “I’ll go after them"; and they did not come soon, at least the Captain thought they were a long time in coming, and he started off, if not after them, at least to look after them. When he had reached the brow of the hill from which both the Captain’s and Mr. Earnest’s houses could be seen, the old man discovered the children coming down one of the winding paths which led through Mr. Earnest’s grounds. It was some moments before they saw the Captain, and when they did see him there was much wondering what had happened to bring him up so far on the hill.

“Why, what’s the matter with him?” exclaimed William. “Look, he’s flinging up his hat!” and the little people set off upon a rapid run.

Meanwhile the Captain stood on the brow of the hill, whirling round his tarpaulin hat with the long blue ribbons flying wildly in the wind. When the children came nearer, they heard the old man calling loudly to them, “Come, my hearties, you are slow to-day. Be lively, or we’ll lose the chance.”

“What chance?” asked William, when they had come up with him.

“The wind, the wind, why, don’t you see there’s a spankin’ breeze? I was afraid we’d lose our sail, so I came to hurry you up.”

“Hurrah! hurrah!” shouted both the boys together; and without further ado the Captain hurried the little people along with him down through the woods to the water.

The old man had been down there before, and had everything in readiness. The little yacht was lying close beside the little wharf. “Look sharp now, and be lively,” exclaimed the Captain as he helped them one by one aboard; and then he got in himself, and shoved the yacht off from the landing, and with the assistance of a singular-looking boy, whom the Captain called “Main Brace,” he spread the sails, and the lively craft was soon skimming over the waters, carrying as lively a party as ever set out on an afternoon frolic. “Jolly” was the only word which seemed at all to express the children’s pleasure, and if the boys said “it’s jolly” once, they must have said it fifty times at least; while little Alice exhibited her excitement by jumping from one side of the boat to the other, stopping now and then to lean over the side and watch the little waves gurgling past them, sometimes dipping her delicate hands into the water, and screaming with delight when the spray flew over her.

The party were seated (when seated at all) in what is called the “stern sheets,” that is, on the seat in the open space behind the cabin heretofore described, the good-natured and kindly Captain in the midst of them, firmly holding the helm or tiller of his boat, and guiding it with steady hand wherever he wished it to go, cracking a pleasant joke now and then, and enjoying in all the fulness of his big, warm heart the joyous delight of his young guests. And he was in no hurry to stop the sport, for he ran on clear across the harbor, and then said he would “’bout ship,” and put back again.

“What’s ’bout ship?” inquired William.

“That’s going about on the other tack,” replied the Captain.

“What’s going about on the other tack?” asked William, as wise as he was before.

“I’ll show you,” said the Captain. “Now see here: first I give the proper order, as if somebody else was giving it to me, and I was the man at the wheel: ‘Hard-a-lee,’ do you observe; now look, I put the helm down as far as I can jam it, there; look now, how that turns the boat and brings her up into the wind, you see the sails begin to shiver, the wind is blowing right in your faces now; now we have turned nearly round; the boat, you see, has come up on an even keel, level, you know; now look out sharp for your heads there, the boom is going to jibe over to the other side; there, don’t you see we’ve turned round, that house over there near the beach that was almost ahead of us is now behind us. There goes the boom, bang! There fills the sail, see it bulging out, the jib, you see, shakes a little yet, but there she goes now filled out like the other; and now you see I’ve got the helm back where I had it before, in the middle, ‘steady,’ you know, and there goes the Alice off on the starboard tack, and an easy bowline back towards the Mariner’s Rest again. Wasn’t that nicely done?”

“Splendid! splendid!” cried William; “I wish I could do it.”

“I’ll teach you, it’s easy learned,” answered the Captain; “but look out there, or you’ll go overboard; get up to windward, and trim the boat; you see we are leaning over to the other side now.”

And thus the Captain kept on “tacking” across the harbor, going to and fro, for more than an hour, enjoying every minute of it just as much as the children did. When at length, however, the children began to quiet down a little (the sharp edge of novelty being worn off), the Captain ran into shoal water, and brought his boat’s head once more up into the wind; but this time, instead of letting her head “pay” off to starboard, he steered her right into the wind’s eye, with the sails shivering all the time, until the boat stopped, when he cried out to Main Brace to “let go the anchor,” which Main Brace did promptly, with an “Ay, ay, sir!” and then he “clewed” up the sails, and spread a white and red striped and red-fringed awning over the place where they were seated, and said he was now going on with the story. “Isn’t this a tip-top place,” said he, “for story-telling?” And the children all said it was “tip-top,” and “jolly,” and “grand,” and made many little speeches about it, which to put down here would make this account so long that everybody would get tired before getting to the end of it.

“Now I call this a much better place than the ‘Crow’s Nest,’” went on the Captain; “for, don’t you see, when we knocked off yesterday I was standing in the middle of the sea, on a great ice-raft. To be sure we are not exactly in the middle of the sea here, nor on an ice-raft either, but we are on salt water, and that’s where I like to be. The air is better for the wits, and the tongue too, for that matter, than on the land there, which is a good enough place to be when there is no wind; but I like to be on the water, and have plenty of sea-room, when the wind blows, especially when it blows a gale, for on land, at such times, I’m always afraid that the trees will blow over on me, or the house will blow down on my head, or some dreadful accident will happen, whereas on the sea one has no fears at all; and besides, at sea one is always at home, come rain or shine, he’s always his house with him, and never has to go groping about for shelter.”

“Only you mustn’t be in the forecastle,” put in cunning William, who remembered the Captain’s fright when he first found himself at sea in the Blackbird.

“Never mind that, lad,” replied the Captain, “I was only a boy then, and hadn’t come to years of discretion. I’ve made better friends with the sea since that day. But let us go on, or we’ll never get through with this story, any more than the Flying Dutchman will get into port, though he keeps on beating up and down forever; and as for to-day, why, we’ll leave off just where we began, like thieves in a treadmill, if we don’t get started pretty soon.

“Well, you see, as I was saying, you left me standing on an ice-raft in the middle of the Arctic Sea, cast away in a cold and forbidding place, and all alone. My shipmates were all either drowned or killed outright by the falling ice, so far at least as I knew. The prospect ahead was not a pleasing one, for of course, as I think I have said before, the first thought which crossed my mind was, that I should starve or freeze to death very soon. I was greatly astonished by what had happened, and indeed it was hard for me to believe my senses, so suddenly had this great disaster come upon me. I stood staring into the mist, and listening to the terrible sounds which came out of it, as one petrified; yet after a little time I recovered myself sufficiently to realize my situation. The instinct of life is strong in every living thing, and young sailor-boys are no exception to the rule; so, after I had stood in the presence of this frightful chaos for I have not the least idea how long, I began to think what I should do to save myself.

“The waves which had been raised after a while began steadily to subside, and, as the sea became more calm, I found that I could approach nearer to where the wreck had happened by jumping over some of the cracks which had been made in the ice, and walking across piece after piece of it. These pieces were all in motion, rolling on the swell of the sea, and, the farther I went, of course the greater the motion became. I had to proceed cautiously, and when I jumped from one fragment of ice to another, I was obliged to look carefully what I was about, for if I missed my footing I should fall into the sea, and be either drowned or ground up by the moving ice.

“Had the iceberg all gone to pieces at once, the sea would soon have become quiet; but it was evident from the noises which reached me that a considerable part of the berg was still holding together, and was wallowing in the sea in consequence of its equilibrium being disturbed by the first crash, and was still keeping the waters moving. I could indeed vaguely see this remaining fragment, swaying to right and left, and I could also perceive that, with every roll, fresh masses were breaking off, with loud reports, like the crash of artillery. I could, however, discover nothing of the ship nor either of the boats. I was able to detect, even at a considerable distance, some fragments of ice floating and rolling about, when the fog would clear up a little; and, as I peered into the gloom, I thought at one time that I saw a man standing upon one of them. It was but a moment, for the fog closed upon the object, whatever it may have been, and it vanished as a spectral figure.

“My eyes were strained to catch a further glimpse of this object, but nothing more was to be seen of it. From this my attention was soon attracted by a dark mass which had drifted upon the edge of the broken ice, not far to the right of the place where I had been standing when the boat left me. I soon made this out to be some part of the wreck of the ship. In a few moments I could clearly see that it was a piece of a mast; then I could plainly distinguish the ‘foretop.’ Each succeeding wave was forcing it higher and higher out of the water, and I discovered, after a few moments, that other timbers were attached to it, and that beside these were sails and ropes, making of the whole a considerable mass.

“After observing this fragment of the wreck attentively for some time, I thought I perceived a man moving among the tangled collection of timbers and ropes and sails, endeavoring to extricate himself. Whatever it might be, it was some distance above the sea, so high, indeed, that the waves no longer washed it fairly, only the spray.

“It soon became clear to me that my suspicions that this was a man were correct; and being more convinced that one of my shipmates at least was yet alive, I rushed forward to rescue him if possible, without once stopping to give a thought to the risks I would encounter. It was clear that he could not liberate himself.

“You will remember that I was now standing on a fragment of ice which had been broken off from the solid ice-field by the waves. It was one of a number of similar fragments, all lying more or less close together, and between me and the place where I had been standing when the waves began to subside, and the ice ceased to break up. Before me the ice was in the same broken condition as behind me, only, being nearer the open water, the pieces were rolling more, so that there was much greater danger in springing from piece to piece. Without, however, pausing to reflect upon this circumstance, I rushed forward as fast as I could go, jumping with ease over every obstacle in my way, until I was on the piece of ice that held up the end of the tangled wreck. I had evidently arrived in the very nick of time, for the wreck was, instead of coming farther up, now beginning to sink back into the sea.

“What I had taken for a man proved to be one, or, as I soon found out, a boy, the cabin-boy of the ship, a light, pale-faced lad, and only fourteen years old. The boy was evidently fast in some way among the rigging, and had been trying to free himself. As I came closer, I observed that he was entirely quiet, and had sunk out of view. Quick as thought I mounted up into the wreck, and then I saw the boy with a rope tangled round his leg, and lying quite insensible. Underneath him another man was lying, much mutilated, and evidently quite dead. As I was mounting up, a wave washed in under the wreck, but I escaped with only a little spray flying over me, which, however, did not wet me much. It was but the work of a moment to whip out my knife, which I carried in a belt, like every other sailor, and cut the rope which bound the boy down, and which he had tried in vain to loosen. After this I had no further difficulty, and, seizing the boy around the waist with one arm (he was very light even for his years), I clambered out of the wreck to the ice without getting much more water upon me, and, hurrying off, did not stop until I had jumped with my burden across several cracks, and ran across several pieces of ice, reaching a place of present safety on the unbroken or fast ice. Here I laid down my insensible burden, all dripping with the cold water, and in a state of great anxiety I bent over the boy. At first I thought that he was dead, but it was soon clear that this was not the case, for he was breathing, although slowly, yet freely. Out from his wet hair a little blood was oozing, and upon examining the spot I found that there was a bad bruise there, and that the skin was broken, though there was not a serious cut. This was clearly the cause of his present unconsciousness, as his breathing seemed conclusively to show that he had managed to keep his head above water, and had not been brought to his present state by drowning. It occurred to me that the blow had simply stunned him, and that it had come almost at the moment I arrived to rescue him. I could not perceive that the skull was fractured, and I felt convinced that, if the boy could be warmed and allowed to lie at rest, he would after a while come to his senses. To this conclusion I arrived while leaning over the poor fellow, examining his hurt, while he lay on the chilly ice, never once thinking where I was, and all the while calling frantically to him; but I might as well have called to a stone. When I rose up, fully impressed with the necessity of securing for the lad rest and warmth, and fully realized, for the first time, my powerless situation (that I was even apparently unable to save myself, still less the boy), my heart seemed to give way entirely, and I sank down once more beside him. A prayer to Heaven for succor, which I had no thought could ever come to me, rose to my lips, and at that very moment a ray of hope dawned upon me. The great fog was breaking away, the bright sun was scattering the mists, and land was bursting through it near at hand. Light, fleecy clouds were rolling up above the sea, and, as they floated off before a gentle wind, a blaze of sunshine burst through an opening in them and fell upon myself and the boy whose life I had, at least for the present, saved.

“I could now look out over the sea for a considerable distance. Although there was still much confusion, yet the ice was steadily quieting down, and the waves caused by it were subsiding rapidly. But a change not less marked had taken place in the space between where I stood and the open water. The wreck from which I had rescued the boy had settled back into the sea, and the fragments of ice were separating and floating off. Had I delayed a few minutes longer, I should never have reached the fast ice, but should have drifted off upon the dark waters, as the man had done whom I saw standing in the fog that I have told you of before.

“As the fog cleared up more and more, the land which first appeared stood out boldly, and the sea was visible over a range of many miles. It was dotted all over with fragments of ice and numerous icebergs, many of which reached up into the disappearing mists, looking like white mountains in miniature, with clouds drifting across their summits. The land did not appear to be more than a mile distant from me, and it was evident that I stood upon ice which was fast to it. Indeed, when I was first cast upon this ice, I might have known, had I paused to reflect, that land must be very near, as the name ‘fast ice’ indicates clearly of itself that simple fact.

“With this lighting up of the air, various thoughts came into my mind. First, could I get to the land and save the boy as well as myself; secondly, could I aid anybody else; and thirdly, could I save anything of the wreck out of the sea. These last two reflections were quickly disposed of, for although I could see many fragments of the wreck, none were within reach, and no other person was in sight, ship and boats and men were all gone down before the crushing avalanche, and nothing was left but myself and a senseless boy.

“I must here pause to tell you that, although we were in the Arctic regions, and on the ice, the weather was not cold, the time being the middle of the summer. Of course the dense fog made the air damp and chilly, but, as I have said, not exactly cold. My shipmates, before the wreck happened, never dressed in anything warmer than the usual woollen clothing, and seldom wore coats. For some reason, I do not exactly remember why, I had, upon going on deck from breakfast that fatal morning, in addition to my ordinary coat, put on a heavy pilot-cloth overcoat, which had been furnished me by the master of the ship, the price of it to be deducted from my wages. And it was most fortunate that I had put this coat on, for it now served a good purpose in wrapping up the boy.

“Seeing that there was now nothing to be gained by longer delay on the ice, I picked up the boy in my arms and started for the land. It may strike you as somewhat strange that I should have gone about it so calmly, or indeed that I did not fall down in despair, and at once give up the hope of saving myself when there was so little, or rather no, apparent prospect of it before me. But for this there were some very natural reasons. In the first place, the thought of saving the boy’s life kept my mind from dwelling too much upon my own misfortunes; and then, the hope of finding the land which had come in sight out of the fog inhabited, stimulated my courage, and inspired exertion.

“Although the boy was not heavy, yet I found that in the distance I had to carry him I grew much fatigued; but the necessity for haste made me strong, and to save the boy’s life seemed now much more desirable than to save my own, inasmuch as if the boy died, and I survived him, and could in any way manage to live on, I should be in a worse condition than if dead, as it appeared to me, being all alone.

“As I approached very near the land, I became much alarmed by discovering that a considerable space of water, partly filled with fragments of ice, intervened between me and the shore; but, after holding to the right for a little distance, I came at length to a spot where the ice was firmly in contact with the land, and, after climbing over some very rough masses which had been squeezed up along the shore, I got at last upon the rocks, and then on a patch of green grass, where I laid down the insensible boy in the blazing sun.

“What was I now to do? The boy was yet in very much the same condition that he was when I set out with him for the shore. Meanwhile more than half an hour must have elapsed, during which time the boy was wrapped in his wet clothes, which, to a man in the full possession of his senses, would have been prostrating enough. It seemed to me that he was sinking under the effects of the blow which he had received, and the wet clothes which were on his body. I had, however, the gratification of knowing that I was on firm land, and away from the cold ice. The grass was warm, and the air, as I have said, was scarcely chilly. Under these improved conditions it was clearly better to expose the boy’s body wholly to the air than to allow him to remain in his wet clothes. The first thing, therefore, which I did was to divest myself of my own clothing, in order that I might give my warm underclothing to the boy. This left for myself only my pantaloons and my coat. After buttoning the coat tightly round me, I undressed the boy, and rubbed his body with such parts of the tail of my overcoat as his clothes had not wetted while carrying him, and, this done, I drew on to him my shirt and drawers, and then, pulling up the grass, I heaped that about him, and over this threw my damp overcoat, the grass preventing it from touching him. All this occupied but a few minutes, for I worked with the energy of despair. I then set to rubbing and pounding his feet and hands which were very cold, to get some circulation back into them.

“I had now done all that it was possible for me to do for the present towards the restoration of my poor companion, who still remained in precisely the same insensible state as before, and I now determined to look about me and ascertain if there were any evidences of human beings living near at hand.

“The scene around me was dreary enough to strike terror into a stouter heart than mine; and, when I had fully viewed it, I had to confess that it did not seem probable that any living thing, not to mention human beings, could possibly be there. The first thought I had was to shout and halloo again and again at the very top of my voice; but no answer reached me except the echo of my own words in a deep and dark gorge close by. This echo startled me and made me afraid, though I never could tell why. My loud calling had failed to produce any impression upon the boy whatever, and I felt sure that he was going to die. Without exactly knowing what I did, or what I was doing it for, I now ran to the right over the green grass, and then over rough stones up to a considerable elevation, and commenced hallooing again, when, much to my astonishment, I heard a great fluttering and loud sounds right below and within thirty feet of me. I sprang back as if some terrible enemy had attacked me; but I recovered myself in an instant, when I observed that the fluttering came from a number of birds which rose from among the rocks. The birds were brown and quite large, and I knew at once that they were eider-ducks, for I had seen them frequently before, while in the ship, and the sailors had told me their name.

“Without having any distinct motive in doing so, I went down to where the birds had risen, when still others rose before me in great numbers. The rapidity of their flight, and the loud noise which they made, startled others still farther away, and thus flock after flock kept on rising from among the rocks, screaming, and flapping their wings in a very loud manner. Several hundreds, perhaps thousands of them, must have thus got upon their wings and commenced sailing overhead.

“You must know that the eider-duck, in order to protect its eggs from the air when it goes off to get for food the little fish that it catches in the sea, plucks from its breast the fine feathers called down, in which it buries its eggs very carefully. In each of the nests I found there was a good handful of this down, and the thought at once occurred to me to gather a quantity of it, and cover the boy with it. I went to work immediately, and collected a great armful of it, and, hastening to where the boy was, I deposited it, and then hurried back for more. In a very short time I had accumulated a great pile, and, spreading a thick layer of it out close beside the boy, I drew him over upon it, and then covered him completely, and spread my overcoat as I had done before.

“The value of putting this discovery to prompt use was soon seen. The boy, from being cold almost as a corpse, began to show some symptoms of returning warmth. His breathing seemed to be more rapid and free, and his eyelids began to move a little, though they did not fully open for some time; but it was then only for an instant, and I was not certain whether he recognized me or not. I called to him loudly by name, I rubbed his forehead, I pounded his hands, but he gave no further recognition; yet he was getting more and more warm, and in this circumstance I rested my hope.

Having accomplished this much, and feeling pretty sure that the boy would recover in the end, my mind very naturally fell back upon the contemplation of my own unhappy condition. I moved a few steps from the boy, and sat down upon a rock overlooking the sea. There was nothing there to inspire me with courage, when this question came uppermost in my mind: Suppose the boy does recover from his present stupor, how are we going to live? Could anybody indeed be in a more sorry state? Let me enumerate:

“1st. I had been shipwrecked, a fortune usually considered bad enough under any circumstances.

“2d. I had lost all of my companions except a feeble boy whom I had rescued from death, and who was now helpless on my hands.

“3d. I was cast away on a desert land, I knew not where, but very far towards the North Pole, as was clear enough from the immense quantities of ice which whitened the sea before me.

“4th. I was chilly, and had no fire nor means of making any. Nor had I sufficient clothing to cover me.

“5th. I was hungry, and had no food nor means of obtaining any.

“6th. I was thirsty, and had nothing to drink, nor could I discover anything.

“7th. I was without house or hut to shelter me.

“8th. I was without weapons to defend myself against the attacks of wild beasts, if any there should be to molest me.

To counteract these evils I had four things, namely:

“1st. Life.

“2d. The clothes on my back.

“3d. A jack-knife.

“4th. The mercy of Providence.

“And this was all! What chance was there for me?

“Little enough, one would think. And, in truth, there did not seem to be any at all. When I thought of all this, I buried my face in my hands, and moaned aloud, and the big tears began to gather in my eyes.”

“O, wasn’t it awful!” exclaimed William.

“I don’t see what you could do, Captain Hardy,” exclaimed Fred.

“The poor boy,” exclaimed Alice, “I hope he didn’t die. Did he, Captain Hardy?” and the child began to imitate the example set by John Hardy, when he rested on the rock and looked out upon the icy sea and speculated upon the chances of his ever seeing again the home from which he had so foolishly run away.

“Well, I’ll tell you about that some other time,” answered the Captain. “You may be sure I didn’t die, at any rate, whatever may have happened to the boy; but just now I can tell you no more, for look there at that cloud coming up out of the sea, appearing, for all the world, as if it meant to pipe a squall after us, by and by; and now, with your leave, we’ll slip home while the play’s good. So here goes. Up anchor.”

“Ay, ay, sir,” answered William, as he jumped forward very unnecessarily to help Main Brace, to whom the order to “up anchor” was given.

“Halloo!” cried the Captain. “Turned sailor already, eh?”

While Main Brace and William were getting in the anchor, the Captain was stowing away the awning, and then, the yacht being free, he spread the sails, and with his helm brought her to the wind; and there being now a lively breeze, the party were not long in crossing over to the Captain’s anchoring-ground, where he turned so as to stop her as he had done before, and then cried out, “Stand by to let go the anchor,” to which William answered, “Ay, ay, sir!” and when the boat had stopped, the Captain cried out again, “Let go,” and William answered, “Ay, ay!” again, and let it go. Then, as soon as the Captain had secured his yacht and stowed away the sails, the whole party hurried ashore, and up the path to the Captain’s cottage, for already great drops of rain were beginning to patter on the leaves, and the roaring wind was heard among the forest trees, giving the first warning cry of a coming shower.