The Frozen Deep

“I want to know his name?”

“How in the world did you manage to hear what we said to each other?”

“His name? has the captain given you his name?”

“Don’t excite yourself, my dear. Look! you are positively alarming Miss Burnham. The new volunteer is a perfect stranger to us. There is his name—last on the ship’s list.”

Mrs. Crayford snatched the list out of her husband’s hand, and read the name:

“RICHARD WARDOUR.”

Second Scene.

The Hut of the Sea-mew.

Chapter 6.

Good-by to England! Good-by to inhabited and civilized regions of the earth!

Two years have passed since the voyagers sailed from their native shores. The enterprise has failed—the Arctic expedition is lost and ice-locked in the Polar wastes. The good ships Wanderer and Sea-mew, entombed in ice, will never ride the buoyant waters more. Stripped of their lighter timbers, both vessels have been used for the construction of huts, erected on the nearest land.

The largest of the two buildings which now shelter the lost men is occupied by the surviving officers and crew of the Sea-mew. On one side of the principal room are the sleeping berths and the fire- place. The other side discloses a broad doorway (closed by a canvas screen), which serves as a means of communication with an inner apartment, devoted to the superior officers. A hammock is slung to the rough raftered roof of the main room, as an extra bed. A man, completely hidden by his bedclothes, is sleeping in the hammock. By the fireside there is a second man—supposed to be on the watch—fast asleep, poor wretch! at the present moment. Behind the sleeper stands an old cask, which serves for a table. The objects at present on the table are, a pestle and mortar, and a saucepanful of the dry bones of animals—in plain words, the dinner for the day. By way of ornament to the dull brown walls, icicles appear in the crevices of the timber, gleaming at intervals in the red fire- light. No wind whistles outside the lonely dwelling—no cry of bird or beast is heard. Indoors, and out-of-doors, the awful silence of the Polar desert reigns, for the moment, undisturbed.

Chapter 7.

The first sound that broke the silence came from the inner apartment. An officer lifted the canvas screen in the hut of the Sea-mew and entered the main room. Cold and privation had badly thinned the ranks. The commander of the ship—Captain Ebsworth—was dangerously ill. The first lieutenant was dead. An officer of the Wanderer filled their places for the time, with Captain Helding’s permission. The officer so employed was—Lieutenant Crayford.

He approached the man at the fireside, and awakened him.

“Jump up, Bateson! It’s your turn to be relieved.”

The relief appeared, rising from a heap of old sails at the back of the hut. Bateson vanished, yawning, to his bed. Lieutenant Crayford walked backward and forward briskly, trying what exercise would do toward warming his blood.

The pestle and mortar on the cask attracted his attention. He stopped and looked up at the man in the hammock.

“I must rouse the cook,” he said to himself, with a smile. “That fellow little thinks how useful he is in keeping up my spirits. The most inveterate croaker and grumbler in the world—and yet, according to his own account, the only cheerful man in the whole ship’s company. John Want! John Want! Rouse up, there!”

A head rose slowly out of the bedclothes, covered with a red night-cap. A melancholy nose rested itself on the edge of the hammock. A voice, worthy of the nose, expressed its opinion of the Arctic climate, in these words:

“Lord! Lord! here’s all my breath on my blanket. Icicles, if you please, sir, all round my mouth and all over my blanket. Every time I have snored, I’ve frozen something. When a man gets the cold into him to that extent that he ices his own bed, it can’t last much longer. Never mind! I don’t grumble.”

Crayford tapped the saucepan of bones impatiently. John Want lowered himself to the floor—grumbling all the way—by a rope attached to the rafters at his bed head. Instead of approaching his superior officer and his saucepan, he hobbled, shivering, to the fire-place, and held his chin as close as he possibly could over the fire. Crayford looked after him.

“Halloo! what are you doing there?”

“Thawing my beard, sir.”

“Come here directly, and set to work on these bones.”

John Want remained immovably attached to the fire-place, holding something else over the fire. Crayford began to lose his temper.

“What the devil are you about now?”

“Thawing my watch, sir. It’s been under my pillow all night, and the cold has stopped it. Cheerful, wholesome, bracing sort of climate to live in; isn’t it, sir? Never mind! I don’t grumble.”

“No, we all know that. Look here! Are these bones pounded small enough?”

John Want suddenly approached the lieutenant, and looked at him with an appearance of the deepest interest.

“You’ll excuse me, sir,” he said; “how very hollow your voice sounds this morning!”

“Never mind my voice. The bones! the bones!”

“Yes, sir—the bones. They’ll take a trifle more pounding. I’ll do my best with them, sir, for your sake.”

“What do you mean?”

John Want shook his head, and looked at Crayford with a dreary smile.

“I don’t think I shall have the honor of making much more bone soup for you, sir. Do you think yourself you’ll last long, sir? I don’t, saving your presence. I think about another week or ten days will do for us all. Never mind! I don’t grumble.”