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The Floating Press - Clark Russell William

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184 pages

English

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Description

Sailor Paul Rodney thinks he's cheated death when he barely escapes with his life from a disastrous storm that lays waste to his ship and its entire crew. The sole survivor of the crash, Rodney drifts helplessly on a huge iceberg. When he first spots another vessel in the distance, he's sure that his worries are over. But in truth, the true terror has just begun.

Sujets

Adventure

Adventure (Guyana)

Informations

Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 juillet 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776580798
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

THE FROZEN PIRATE
* * *
WILLIAM CLARK RUSSELL

*
The Frozen Pirate First published in 1877 Epub ISBN 978-1-77658-079-8 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77658-080-4 © 2014 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Chapter I - The Storm Chapter II - The Iceberg Chapter III - I Lose My Companions Chapter IV - I Quit the Wreck Chapter V - I Sight a White Coast Chapter VI - An Island of Ice Chapter VII - I Am Startled by a Discovery Chapter VIII - The Frozen Schooner Chapter IX - I Lose My Boat Chapter X - Another Startling Discovery Chapter XI - I Make Further Discoveries Chapter XII - A Lonely Night Chapter XIII - I Explore the Hold and Forecastle Chapter XIV - An Extraordinary Occurrence Chapter XV - The Pirate's Story Chapter XVI - I Hear of a Great Treasure Chapter XVII - The Treasure Chapter XVIII - We Talk over Our Situation Chapter XIX - We Take a View of the Ice Chapter XX - A Merry Evening Chapter XXI - We Explode the Mines Chapter XXII - A Change Comes over the Frenchman Chapter XXIII - The Ice Breaks Away Chapter XXIV - The Frenchman Dies Chapter XXV - The Schooner Frees Herself Chapter XXVI - I Am Troubled by Thoughts of the Treasure Chapter XXVII - I Encounter a Whaler Chapter XXVIII - I Strike a Bargain with the Yankee Chapter XXIX - I Value the Lading Chapter XXX - Our Progress to the Channel Chapter XXXI - The End Postscript Endnotes
Chapter I - The Storm
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The Laughing Mary was a light ship, as sailors term a vessel thatstands high upon the water, having discharged her cargo at Callao, fromwhich port we were proceeding in ballast to Cape Town, South Africa,there to call for orders. Our run to within a few parallels of thelatitude of the Horn had been extremely pleasant; the proverbialmildness of the Pacific Ocean was in the mellow sweetness of the windand in the gentle undulations of the silver-laced swell; but scarce hadwe passed the height of forty-nine degrees when the weather grew sullenand dark, a heavy bank of clouds of a livid hue rose in the north-east,and the wind came and went in small guns, the gusts venting themselvesin dreary moans, insomuch that our oldest hands confessed they had neverheard blasts more portentous.
The gale came on with some lightning and several claps of thunder andheavy rain. Though it was but two o'clock in the afternoon, the air wasso dusky that the men had to feel for the ropes; and when the first ofthe tempest stormed down upon us the appearance of the sea wasuncommonly terrible, being swept and mangled into boiling froth in thenorth-east quarter, whilst all about us and in the south-west it lay ina sort of swollen huddle of shadows, glooming into the darkness of thesky without offering the smallest glimpse of the horizon.
In a few minutes the hurricane struck us. We had bared the brig down tothe close-reefed main-topsail; yet, though we were dead before theoutfly, its first blow rent the fragment of sail as if it were formed ofsmoke, and in an instant it disappeared, flashing over the bows like ascattering of torn paper, leaving nothing but the bolt-ropes behind. Thebursting of the topsail was like the explosion of a large cannon. In abreath the brig was smothered with froth torn up in huge clouds, andhurled over and ahead of her in vast quivering bodies that filled thewind with a dismal twilight of their own, in which nothing was visiblebut their terrific speeding. Through these slinging, soft, and singingmasses of spume drove the rain in horizontal steel-like lines, whichgleamed in the lightning stroke as though indeed they were barbedweapons of bright metal, darted by armies of invisible spirits ravingout their war cries as they chased us.
The storm made a loud thunder in the sky, and this tremendous utterancedominated without subduing the many screaming, hissing, shrieking, andhooting noises raised in the rigging and about the decks, and the wild,seething, weltering sound of the sea, maddened by the gale andstruggling in its enormous passion under the first choking and iron gripof the hurricane's hand.
I had used the ocean for above ten years, but never had I encounteredanything suddener or fiercer in the form of weather than this. Thoughthe wind blew from the tropics it was as cruel in bitterness as frost.Yet there was neither snow nor hail, only rain that seemed to pass likea knife through the head if you showed your face to it for a second. Itwas necessary to bring the brig to the wind before the sea rose. Thehelm was put down, and without a rag of canvas on her she came round;but when she brought the hurricane fair abeam, I thought it was all overwith us. She lay down to it until her bulwarks were under water, and thesheer-poles in the rigging above the rail hidden.
In this posture she hung so long that Captain Rosy, the master, bawledto me to tell the carpenter to stand by to cut away the topmast rigging.But the Laughing Mary , as the brig was called, was a buoyant ship andlightly sparred, and presently bringing the sea on the bow, through ourseizing a small tarpaulin in the weather main shrouds, she erected hermasts afresh, like some sentient creature pricking its ears for theaffray, and with that showed herself game and made indifferently goodweather of it.
But though the first rage of the storm was terrible enough, itsfierceness did not come to its height till about one o'clock in themiddle watch. Long before then the sea had grown mountainous, and thedance of our eggshell of a brig upon it was sickening and affrighting.The heads of the Andean peaks of black water looked tall enough tobrush the lowering soot of the heavens with the blue and yellowphosphoric fires which sparkled ghastly amid the bursting froth. Bodiesof foam flew like the flashings of pale sheet-lightning through ourrigging and over us, and a dreadful roaring of mighty surges in madcareer, and battling as they ran, rose out of the sea to deepen yet thethunderous bellowing of the hurricane on high.
No man could show himself on deck and preserve his life. Between therails it was waist high, and this water, converted by the motions of thebrig into a wild torrent, had its volume perpetually maintained byton-loads of sea falling in dull and pounding crashes over the bows onto the forecastle. There was nothing to be done but secure the helm andawait the issue below, for, if we were to be drowned, it would make amore easy foundering to go down dry and warm in the cabin, than toperish half-frozen and already nearly strangled by the bitter cold andflooded tempest on deck.
There was Captain Rosy; there was myself, by name Paul Rodney, mate ofthe brig; and there were the remaining seven of a crew, including thecarpenter. We sat in the cabin, one of us from time to time clawing hisway up the ladder to peer through the companion, and we looked at oneanother with the melancholy of malefactors waiting to be called fromtheir cells for the last jaunt to Tyburn.
"May God have mercy upon us!" cries the carpenter. "There must be anearthquake inside this storm. Something more than wind is going to themaking of these seas. Hear that, now! naught less than a forty-footchuck-up could ha' ended in that souse, mates."
"A man can die but once," says Captain Rosy, "and he'll not perish thequicker for looking at his end with a stout heart;" and with that he puthis hand into the locker on which he had been sitting and pulled out ajar of whisky, which, after putting his lips to it and keeping themglued there whilst you could have counted twenty, he handed to me, andso it went round, coming back to him empty.
I often have the sight of that cabin in my mind's eye; and it was notlong afterwards that it would visit me as such a vision of comfort, Iwould with a grateful heart have accepted it with tenfold darkerconditions of danger, had it been possible to exchange my situation forit. A lantern hung from a beam, and swung violently to the rolling andpitching of the brig. The alternations of its light put twenty differentmeanings, one after another, into the settled dismal and ruefulexpressions in the faces of my companions. We were clad in warm clothes,and the steam rose from the damp in our coats and trousers like vapourfrom wet straw. The drink mottled some of our faces, but the spirituoustincture only imparted a quality of irony to the melancholy of ourvisages, as if our mournfulness were not wholly sincere, when, Godknows, our hearts were taken up with counting the minutes when we shouldfind ourselves bursting for want of breath under water.
Thus it continued till daybreak, all which time we strove to encourageone another as best we could, sometimes with words, sometimes withputting the bottle about. It was impossible for any of us at any momentto show more than our noses above the companion; and even at that youneeded the utmost caution, for the decks being full of water, it wasnecessary to await the lurch of the vessel before moving the slide orcover to the companion, else you stood to drown the cabin.
Being exceedingly anxious, for the brig lay unwatched, I looked forth onone occasion longer than the others chose to venture, and beheld themost extravagant scene of raging commotion it could enter the brain ofman to imagine. The night was as black as the bottom of a well; but theprodigious swelling and flinging of white waters hove a faintness uponthe air that was in its way a dim light, by which it was just possibleto distinguish the reelin