Grant County herald. [volume] (Lancaster, Wis.) 1850-1968, 1888-07-05
&c E 30 N D.
BY w. CLARK RUSSELL,
Author of "The Wrecl; of the Grosuenor,n
Jacks Conrtship," MY Watch Be-
totc, +" The Lady Maud Etc.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE ICE BREAKS AWAY.

| fire to think If ever | had suspected the
accuracy of my conjecture that the French
mans sudden astonishing indisposition was
the effect of his extreme age coming upon
him and breaking down the artificial vitality
with which he had bristled into life under
my hands, l must have found fifty signs to
set my misgiyings at rest in his drowsiness,
nodding, bowed form, weakness, his tottering
and trembling, and other features of his
latest behavior If was right, then had
reason to BE- thankful to Almighty God for
this unparalleled and most happy dispense
| ton; for now should have nothing to fear
from the old rogue's vindictiSeness and hor.
rid greed.
| Thus | sat for an hour smoking and wet
| ting my lips with the punch, while the fire
| burned low, so exulting in the thought of my
| escape from the treacherous villain had re-
| covered from the grave, and in the feeling
| that | might now be able to 60 to rest, to
move here and there, to act as / pleased
| without being haunted and terrified by the
| shadow OF his foul intent that / hardly gave
my mind for moment to the situation of
| the schooner nor to the barren consequences
| of my fine scheme of mines
The wind blew strong. | could hear the
| humming of it in every fiber of the vessel.
The bed on which she rested trembled to the
blows of the seas upon the rocks. From
! time to time, in the midst of my musing, !
| started to the sharp claps of parted ice. Still
| feeling sleepless threw few Goals on the
| fire, and, catching sight Of the pirate flag,
| opened it on the deck as wide as the space
| would permit, and sat down to contemplate
| the hideous insignia embroidered ON it. My
mind filled with q hundred fancies as my
gaze went from the skull on tho black field
| to the deaths head pipe that had fallen from
the grasp of Tassard and lay ON the deck;
and | was sitting lost in a deep dream like
contemplation, when | was startled and
shocked into instantaneous activity by a
| blast of noise, louder than any thunder clap
that ever / heard ringing and booming
through the schooner. This was followed by
a second and then third, at intervals dur.
ing which you might have counted ten, and
! became sensible of q strange, sickening
motion, which lasted about twenty or thirty
moments, such as might be experienced by
one swiftly descending in balloon, or in
falling from height while pent up in q
coach.
For little while the schooner heeled over
so violently that the benches and all things
movable Ia kbe cook room slid as far as they
could go, trd I heard q great clatter and
commotion among tho freight in the hold
She then came upright again, and simultane-
ously with this q vast mass of water tum-
bled on to tho deck and washed over my
head, and then fell another and then am
other, all in such q way as to make me know
that the leo had broken and slipped the
schooner close to the ocean, where she lay ex-
posed to its surges-but not free of the ice,
for she did not toss or roll.
l seized the lantern and sprang to the
cabin, where | hung it up, and mounted the
companion steps. But as put my hand to
the door to thrust it open sea broke over
the side and filled the decks, buhbling and
laundering past the companion hatch in such
a way as to advise me that need but open
the door to drown the cabin. / waited, my
heart beating very hard, mad to see what
had happened, but not daring to trust myself
on deck lest l should be Immediately swept
into the sea.
Half an hour must have passed, during
which time the decks were necessarily swept
by the seas, insomuch that l never once
burst open the door, even to look out. But
nothing having happened TO increase my
CONSERVATION in this half hour, though the
movement in the schooner was that of O very
ponderous and majestical rolling and heav-
ing, showing her bed to be afloat, began to
find my spirits, and to listen and wait with
some buildings of hope and confidence at
the expiration of this time the seas began to
fall less heavily and regularly on TO the deck,
and presently | could only hear them break
ing forward, but without a quarter of their
former weight, and nothing worse came aft
than large, brisk showers of spray.
l armed myself with additional clothing
for the encounter OF the wet, cold and wind,
and then pushed open the door and stepped
forth. The sky was dark with rolling clouds,
but the ice put its own light into the air, and
l could see as plain as if the first of the dawn
had broken. 1t was as | had supposed; the
mass of the valley in which the schooner had
been sepulchred for eight and forty years
had come away from the main, and lay float
ing within a cables length of the coast. A
stranger, more wonderful picture human eye
never beheld. The island shore ran ram
part of faintness along the darkness to where
it died out in liquid dust to right and left
The schooner sat :upon a bed of ice that
showed Il surface Of about half an acre; her
stern was close to the sea, and about six feet
above it. On her larboard quarter the slope
or shoulder of the activity had been broken
by the rupture, and you looked over the side
into the clear sea beyond the limit of the ice
there; but abreast of the foreshrouds the ice
rose in kind of wall, a great splinter it
looked Of what was before q small broad
proved hill, and the wind or the sea having
caused the body on which the schooner lay to
veer, this wall stood as shield betwixt the
vessel and the surges, and was now receiving
those blows which had heretofore struck
her storboad side amidships and filled her
decks.
The wind blew from the southwest, but the
trend of the island coast was northeast; and
as the mass of ice | was upon, in parting
from the main, had foated to a cables
length from tho cliffs there was not much
danger, while the wind and sea held. of the
berg if | may SO term it) being thrown upon
the island. That the ice under the schooner
was moving, and if so at wha& rate, it was
| too dark to enable me to know by observing
the marks ON the coast. There was to be no
sleep for me that night, and, knowing this,
stepped below and built up good fire, and
then went with the lantern to see how Tas-
| sard did, and to give him the news; but he
was in SO deep a sleep that after pulling him
a little without awakening him | let him lie,
nothing but the sound of his breathing per-
suading me that he had not lapsed into his
| old frozen state again.
OF all long nights this was the longest l
ever passed through. l did truly believe
| that the day was never to break again over
| the ocean.
All night kept the fire going, and on sew
| eral occasions visited the Frenchman, but
| found him motionless in sleep.
At last the day broke, l went on deck and
| found the dawn Frightening into morning.
| The wind had fallen, and with it the sea; but
| there still ran a middling strong surge. and
| the breeze was such as in sailors language,
| You would have shown your topgallantsails
| TO. / could now take measure of our situa-
| ton, and was not little astonished and de-
| lighted to observe the island to be at least a
mile distant from us, and the northeast end
| lying very plain, the ocean showing beyond
| it, though in the southwest the ice died out
upon the sea line. That we had been set
away from the main by some current was
very certain. There was westerly ten
dency in all the bergs which broke from the
! island the small ones moving more ouicE lv