第72章 LETTER XI(12)

It was a curious sensation with which we had gradually learnt to contemplate this inseparable companion:it had become a part of our daily existence,an element,a thing without which the general aspect of the universe would be irregular and incomplete.It was the first thing we thought of in the morning,the last thing we spoke of at night.It glittered and grinned maliciously at us in the sunshine;it winked mysteriously through the stifling fog;it stretched itself like a prostrate giant,with huge,portentous shoulders and shadowy limbs,right across our course;or danced gleefully in broken groups in the little schooner's wake.There was no getting rid of it,or forgetting it,and if at night we sometimes returned in dreams to the green summer world--to the fervent harvest fields of England,and heard "the murmurs of innumerous bees,"or the song of larks on thymy uplands--thump!bump!splash!gra-a-ate!--came the sudden reminder of our friend on the starboard bow;and then sometimes a scurry on deck,and a general "scrimmage"of the whole society,in endeavours to prevent more serious collisions.Moreover,I could not say,with your old French friend,that "Familiar'ty breeds despise."The more we saw of it,the less we liked it;its cold presence sent a chilly sense of discouragement to the heart,and I had daily to struggle with an ardent desire to throw a boot at Wilson's head,every time his sepulchral voice announced the "Ice ALL ROUND!"It was not until the 14th of August,five days after quitting Spitzbergen,that we lost sight of it altogether.

From that moment the temperature of the sea steadily rose,and we felt that we were sailing back again into the pleasant summer.

A sad event which occurred soon after,in some measure marred our enjoyment of the change.Ever since she had left Hammerfest,it had become too evident that a sea-going life did not agree with the goat.Even the run on shore at Spitzbergen had not sufficed to repair her shattered constitution,and the bad weather we had had ever since completed its ruin.It was certain that the butcher was the only doctor who could now cure her.In spite,therefore,of the distress it occasioned Maid Marian,I was compelled to issue orders for her execution.Sigurdr was the only person who regarded the TRAGICAL event with indifference,nay,almost with delight.Ever since we had commenced sailing in a southerly direction,we had been obliged to beat,but during the last four-and-twenty hours the wind kept dodging us every time we tacked,as a nervous pedestrian sets to you sometimes on a narrow trottoir.

This spell of ill-luck the Icelander heathenishly thought would only be removed by a sacrifice to Rhin,the goddess of the sea,in which light he trusted she would look upon the goat's body when it came to be thrown overboard.

Whether the change which followed upon the consignment of her remains to the deep really resulted from such an influence,I am not prepared to say.The weather immediately thereafter certainly DID change.First the wind dropped altogether,but though the calm lasted several hours,the sea strangely enough appeared to become all the rougher,tossing and tumbling restlessly UP AND DOWN--(not over and over as in a gale)--like a sick man on a fever bed;the impulse to the waves seeming to proceed from all four quarters of the world at once.Then,like jurymen with a verdict of death upon their lips,the heavy,ominous clouds slowly passed into the north-west.

A dead stillness followed--a breathless pause--until,at some mysterious signal,the solemn voice of the storm hurtled over the deep.Luckily we were quite ready for it;the gale came from the right quarter,and the fiercer it blew the better.For the next three days and three nights it was a scurry over the sea such as I never had before;nine or ten knots an hour was the very least we ever went,and 240miles was the average distance we made every four-and-twenty hours.

Anything grander and more exciting than the sight of the sea under these circumstances you cannot imagine.The vessel herself remains very steady;when you are below you scarcely know you are not in port.But on raising your head above the companion the first sight which meets your eye is an upright wall of black water,towering,you hardly know how many feet,into the air over the stern.Like a lion walking on its hind legs,it comes straight at you,roaring and shaking its white mane with fury-it overtakes the vessel--the upright shiny face curves inwards--the white mane seems to hang above your very head;but ere it topples over,the nimble little ship has already slipped from underneath.You hear the disappointed jaws of the sea-monster snap angrily together,--the schooner disdainfully kicks up her heel--and raging and bubbling up on either side the quarter,the unpausing wave sweeps on,and you see its round back far ahead,gradually swelling upwards,as it gathers strength and volume for a new effort.

We had now got considerably to the southward of North Cape.We had already seen several ships,and you would hardly imagine with what childish delight my people hailed these symptoms of having again reached more "Christian latitudes,"as they called them.