George Manville Fenn

“ I turn my steps first to the little whitewashed cottage on the hill-side.
Is it necessary for me to tell how my mother embraces me. Poor Aunt Lisette! She knows I am back; but she is not here to welcome me. She is at rest. At last I have told all. It is night now, and I am free to go to the kitchen of “The Three Magpies.”
There it is. “Mon Dieu!” “Impossible; it is his ghost!” I soon convince them that it is, indeed, I myself. The news spreads over the market place. “Pierre Crépin is come back to Bénévent. After all, he is not drowned; he is alive and well.” ”

“ But, Evan, there’s a pretty craft that wants to moor alongside of me, and her skipper won’t agree, because I haven’t got a shot in my locker. That’s it, indeed!”
Evan, he looks at me steady; then he holds out his fist with all the grace of a port-admiral, just as if he meant to serve double grog or give leave to go ashore.
“Hugh,” says he, “the day after to-morrow I sail again for the North Seas. For my mother, Hugh, she’s old and she’s sick, and this ’ere pocket-book, with its contents, is for her. Join our crew, my hearty, and I’ll promise ye fair play and a sailor’s greeting. ”

“ From the smoke-blackened oak beams hung hams and flitches of bacon more than one would take the trouble to count. Bunches of garlic and strings of onions were there in plenty; and the great black kettle hanging always over the pine-wood fire, sent forth savoury steams, that made your heart leap into your mouth. The Widow Crépin’s was a pot-au-feu worth eating, I can tell you. Nor did we fail to wash down our food with draughts of good wine on every day of the week. I gave a supper that night to some of my friends. I had not quite forgotten the impression Cécile had made upon me in the morning. ”

“ The first thing, under the circumstances, was to clear the snow away, bank it up round us, and set up the tent in the clear place under the shelter of the big mammoth block.
We all went at it heartily, and as we scraped the snow off, it was to find the ice beneath as clear as glass.
“Ah!” said the doctor, sitting down and looking on, after feeling the mammoth’s tail, knife in hand, as if longing to cut it off, “it’s a wonderful privilege, my lads, to come up here into a part of the earth where the foot of man has never trod before!—Eh! what is it?” ”

“ At the seaports, where there were big ships, I was as pleased as Punch; but, inland, the country seemed to me to be always the same—flat, marshy, and stupid, with the same canals, the same canal-boats, the same windmills, the same cows, the same farmhouses, the same church steeples, the same dykes, the same dams, and the same people smoking the same pipes, or sliding to market in winter time, when the canals were frozen, on the same skates. To make an end of it, a peddler’s life was to me only one degree above that of a beggar; for you had to be always asking somebody to buy your goods ”

“ Marc and Cécile!
In a few seconds I was safe on the deck of the Lépante.
M. André, the crew, the spectators, were horror-struck.
A man goes mad in an instant. Marc was again raving, as he had raved in the madhouse at Bénévent. But the sight of Cécile had given purpose to his language.
“Vengeance—vengeance! Fiend! The time has come! Fate—fate has brought us together! I could not escape you! I must kill you—kill you! We must be damned together! ”

“ But what does it matter where a fellow was born? The great thing is to be born at all, and to take care to keep your watch, and to turn cheerfully out of your bunk when the hands are turned up to reef topsails in a gale.
I know that, when I first began to remember anything, we were living in the city of Amsterdam, and in the very middle of the Jews’ quarter, which I shall always bear in mind as having five distinct and permanent smells—one of tobacco, one of Schiedam, one of red herrings, one of bilge-water, one of cheese, and one of Jews. ”

“ It is better to wait the course of events.
After the fearful peril of the last hour, I am astonished to find myself alive. I am alive, and thankful.
After the struggle in the defile I was unable to leave my bed for some days. I had been much tried both in mind and body; but I received the kindest attention from the good friends around me.
In these little places every trifle creates a mighty stir. All Bénévent came to inquire after my health. I had been killed. No; well, then, nearly done to death by a murderous assassin escaped from the galleys. The police knew him. ”

“ With the exception of the skipper, we six sailors, and Atlantic Jones, the rest were all Lascars—savage, sneaking, bloodthirsty wretches, that there was no trusting a moment out of your sight. I had never before made a voyage with that kind of company, and, if I can help it, never will again. However, we felt no particular uneasiness about them. Any one of us, we simply consoled ourselves by reflecting, could quite easily thrash half a dozen of the foreign beggars in a fair fight. ”

“ Shure whin I came on boord I weighed fourteen stone; and now, ten stone in the one scale would pitch me up to the ceiling out of the other!”
“That’s thrue enough,” says I; “but you must bear in mind I tuck you for somebody else’s ghost, and didn’t make any allowance for the starving you have had, which, particularly as a stowaway, they would be sure to do. But now you must get back to the hould. I’ll contrive to drop half my rations and a trifle of grog down every day—see Mary, and consult with her. Shure, one woman’s wit is worth a dozen men’s in a case like this.” ”

“ We could not even hit upon one of the old elephants: nothing but ice—ice—ice everywhere; and, now that the stimulus of making strange discoveries was over, the men began to grumble.
“I don’t like the state of affairs, doctor,” I said. “I fear there’s mutiny on the way.”
“Why?” he said.
“The men are growing so discontented with their provisions; but hush, here they are.”
The doctor’s nephew was standing by me as the crew came up, looking fierce and angry.
“What’s the matter, my lads?” I said, when they all came close to me, and thrust their tongues in their cheeks. ”

“ There wasn’t a bright lad in Glanwern that didn’t envy the luck of Hugh Anwyl; and, rightly enough, too; for I swear, though I’ve travelled north, south, east, and west, and have met with women of all nations, not once have I ever found the equal of Rhoda Howell. I almost shrink from speaking her name. It seems—well, sacred! Poor Rhoda! like a flower of spring, you died early! Yes, indeed, ours ain’t one of them love tales which comes all right at t’other end of the book. She’s in heaven; and Hugh Anwyl—he ain’t just exactly in the other place ”

“ But now that I am old, it is clear that I have a right to give good advice to the young: even to the warning them not to be guilty of the transgressions of which I may have been guilty ever so many years ago; because I have seen so much of the world, and have passed through so many dangers and trials, and have not been hanged. And this has always been my motto. When you are young, practise just as much or as little as you are able; but never forget to preach, whenever you can get anybody to listen to you. ”

“ We had set up our tent under the lee of a great rock of ice, on the edge of the crater, which looked so smooth and so easy of ascent, that it was with the greatest difficulty that we could keep the doctor’s nephew from trying a slide down. He had, in fact, got hold of a smooth piece of ice to use as a sledge, when the doctor stopped him, and put an end to his enthusiasm by pointing down and asking him what was below in the distance, where the hollow grew deep and dark, and a strange mist hung over it like a cloud.
“If you go down, Alfred, my boy, you will never get back. ”

“ I cried.
“It’s in the service of science,” said the doctor, blandly. “We shall make great discoveries. You won’t mind, Alfred?” he said, to his nephew.
“I should have been delighted, uncle, if I had only procured my skates,” said the young fellow.
“These here’s better than skates,” said Scudds, grinning; and, to my extreme horror, they bound the young man to a block of ice, carried it to the edge of the crater, gave it a slight push, and away it went down, and down, rapidly gliding till it entered the dark mist toward the bottom.
“He’ll discover it first,” said the doctor, calmly. ”

“ The kitchen of “The Three Magpies” will not hold the crowd. Antoine, the drawer, cannot pull the corks fast enough. My eyes fill with tears. The brave fellows are too good to me. I must tell them my story. Pouches are drawn out; pipes and cigars are lighted; glasses are tilled for the twentieth time. I begin my yarn.
You see me, my good friends, safely back in Bénévent. It is four years since I parted from you. The ship in which I sailed from Marseilles was wrecked on a coral reef. All hands were lost. The last I saw alive was Marc Debois. ”

“ It was because the Lépante had gone north.
The Zéphire was as fine a craft as ever seaman handled. She was perfect, from keel to mast, from bow to stern.
Those English know how to build ships.
I had under me a crew of six picked men. We had, besides, a cook, a real chef, for M. André was something of a gourmet, and would have the hand of an artist in his dishes, not the bungling of a scullion.
Monsieur and Madeline, with the little Cécile and their servants, came on board on Sunday morning, as the people were going to mass; for we would sail on a seaman’s lucky day. We weighed anchor. ”

“ I said, indignantly.
“Getting yourself frozen. Now, then, get on, my lads—we must go ahead!”
For the next nine days we trudged on, dragging our sledge through the wonderful wilderness of ice and snow. At night we camped in the broad sunshine, and somehow the air seemed to be much warmer. But on the tenth day, when we had reached the edge of a great, crater-like depression in the ice, which seemed to extend as far as the eye could reach, the intensity of the cold was frightful, and I spoke of it to the doctor, as soon as we had set up our little canvas and skin tent. ”

“ Why not Cécile?”
Hearing me say this, and marking some sternness in my tone, they all said, “Ay, ay! Why not? She is a fine woman, and is to make a good match that we all ought to be proud of! Poor Marc is dead!” And so forth.
We puffed our pipes some time in silence, those of us who smoked. The others counted my mother’s hams and flitches of bacon, and the strings of onions throwing flickering shadows in the lamplight. But old age will not be silent.
Father Lancrac said, for his part, he wished he was Merchant André. He would marry again. ”

“ Northward, into the ice.
Into the ice-bound, ice-bearing sea that is round the North Pole.
I know no more.
“Gone again, sir!” I said, for just as the doctor made a lurch at the Frenchman, he melted away like the others.
“I never knew anything so provoking,” cried the doctor. “But never mind, we must find another, and keep to my old plan—cut him out in a block, and take him home frozen, like a fly in amber. What a sensation!”
“What! being friz?” said Scudds.
“No, my man. What a sensation it will make at the Royal Society, when I uncover my specimen, pointing to it like a huge fly in amber. ”

“ I went and fetched the instrument, the men looking as much astounded as I was myself to see the doctor going coolly to work examining the structure of the ice, with its curious water-worn face. Then he seemed to be making measurements, and he ended by coming to us, rubbing his hands.
“Curious position, isn’t it!” he said, laughing. “By the way, captain, I should cast off those ice-anchors, in case the iceberg should make another turn. They might be the cause of mischief.”
“Cause of mischief! Hark at him!” said Abram. “When we’re perched two hundred foot up here in the air! Come on, lads.” ”

“ I presented my bit of writing at the counter, and the paymaster’s clerk—a chap with a copper shovel in his flipper, as if he kept gold and silver by the shovelful in the hold—he gives me back the pay-note, and he says, “Sign your name here, my man.” So I sign my name “Jan Daal, mariner.” So he takes it into a little caboose behind the counter; and by-and-by out comes a short fat man with big whiskers, dressed as fine as a supercargo going out to dinner with his owner, and with a great watch-chain and seals, and his fingers all over diamond rings. ”

“ I tried very hard to keep awake in case of danger; but it was of no use, for I was worn out with watching, and at last I went off soundly to sleep, dreaming that I was drowned, and living in an ice cave, fish fashion, at the bottom of the sea, when I was awakened by Scudds, who shook me, crying, “Wake up, skipper! she’s a-going to launch herself!”
I jumped to my feet, to find the doctor on deck, lecturing his nephew about the launching of ships, and pointing out the gradual slope down of the ice valley in which we lay. ”

“ The right way is to coil it the way the sun goes round. And then I learned that about the surest manner in which a young sailor can get a knowledge of his trade is to watch how his shipmates set about doing their work. He may be laughed at, grumbled at, or sworn at, but at last he’ll learn his duty, and that’s something.
If I were to tell you all the wonderful things that have happened to me, man and boy, as carpenter, bo’sun, third mate, second mate, and first mate—I never had the luck to rise to be a skipper—I am afraid that you wouldn’t believe half the yarns I could spin for you. ”