James Fenimore Cooper

“ Every face was grave, earnest, and determined; every arm strung to its utmost powers of exertion. The men rowed beautifully, being accustomed to the use of their long oars in rough water, and in ten minutes they were all fully a mile dead to windward of the two schooners.
Few things give a more exalted idea of the courage and ingenuity of the human race than to see adventurers set forth, in a mere shell, on the troubled waters of the open ocean, to contend with and capture an animal of the size of the whale. ”

“ Them islands, Gar'ner, may make your fortune, as well as mine. No matter how I know they are there--it is enough that I do know it, and that I wish you to carry the Sea Lion to that very spot, as straight as you can go; fill her up with elephant's oil, ivory, and skins, and bring her back again as fast as she can travel."
"Islands in that latitude and longitude!" said Roswell Gardiner, examining the chart as closely as if it were of very fine print indeed--"I never heard of any such land before!" ”

“ At this precise moment, the Sea Lion was less than a quarter of a mile to windward of the point she was struggling to weather, and towards which she was driving under a treble impetus; that of the wind, acting on her sails, and pressing her ahead at the rate of fully five knots, for the craft was kept a rap full; that of the eddy, or current, and that of the rolling waters. No man spoke, for each person felt that the crisis was one in which silence was a sort of homage to the Deity. ”

“ The moon was young, but the stars gave forth a brightness that is rarely seen, except in the clear cold nights of a high latitude. Each and all of these sublime emblems of the power of God were twinkling like bright torches glowing in space; and the mind had only to endow each with its probable or known dimensions, its conjectural and reasonable uses, to form a picture of the truest sublimity in which man is made to occupy his real position. In this world, where, in a certain sense, he is master, where all things are apparently under his influence, if not absolutely subject to his control ”

“ Does your schooner go out to-morrow, Captain Gar'ner?"
"Not till next day, I think," said Roswell Gardiner, with the frankness of his nature, utterly free from the slightest suspicion that he was communicating with one in the interests of rivals. "My mates have not yet joined me, and I am short of my complement by two good hands. Had that fellow Watson stuck by me, I would have given him a look at water that no lead ever sounded."
"Ay, ay; he's a whiffler, but a good man on a sea-elephant. Then you think you'll sail day a'ter to-morrow?" ”

“ This was done immediately; and while it was doing, the Vineyard Lion swept past the Oyster Pond schooner. Roswell announced his presence on deck just as the other vessel cleared his bows.
"There's no time to consult, Gar'ner," answered Daggett. "There's our road before us. Go through it we must, or stay where we are until that field-ice gives us a jam down yonder in the crescent. I will lead, and you can follow as soon as your eyes are open." ”

“ The Oyster Pond craft was the first clear of the ground. The breeze was little felt in that cove, where usually it did not seem to blow at all, but there was wind enough to serve to cast the schooner, and she went slowly out of the rocky basin, under her mainsail, foretopsail, and jib. The wind was at south-west,--the nor-wester of that hemisphere,--and it was fresh and howling enough, on the other side of the island. ”

“ Excitement and motion kept the blood of our two adventurers in a brisk circulation, and prevented their becoming immediately conscious of the chill intensity of the cold to which they were exposed.
"It is good to think of Almighty. God, and of his many marcies," said Stephen, when a short distance from the house, "as a body goes forth on an expedition as serious as this. We may not live to reach the wrack, for it seems to me to grow colder and colder!"
"I wonder we hear no more of the cries," remarked Roswell, who was thinking of the distress he was bent on relieving. ”

“ But human art had found the means to counteract even this imposing display of the power of nature. The little schooner rode over the billows like a duck, and when she sank between two of them, it was merely to rise again on a new summit, and breast the gale gallantly. It was the current that menaced the greatest danger; for that, unseen except in its fruits, was clearly setting the little craft to leeward, and bodily towards the rocks. By this time our adventurers were so near the land that they almost gave up hope itself. ”

“ Nothing but death can separate us for so long a time! While we meet, we shall at least be friends; and friends love to meet and to see each other often."
"It may seem unkind, at a moment like this, Roswell, but it is in truth the very reverse, if I say we ought not to meet each other here, if we are bent on following our own separate ways towards a future world. My God is not your God; and what can there be of peace in a family, when its two heads worship different deities? ”

“ Before the captain had descended from the summit of the northern barrier, the vessel came in under her jib, the wind being nearly aft, and she dropped two anchors in suitable spots, making another flying moor of it.
General joy now illuminated every face. It was, in itself, a great point gained to get the schooner into a perfectly safe haven, where her people could take their natural rest at night, or during their watches below, without feeling any apprehension of being crushed in the ice ”

“ It is just as dangerous to assault a whale that has its young to defend, as to assault most other animals. We know that the most delicate women become heroines in such straits; and nature seems to have given to the whole sex, whether endowed with reason or only with an instinct, the same disposition to die in defence of the helpless creatures that so much depend on their care. But, no one there now thought of the risk he ran, it being the Vineyard against Oyster Pond, one Sea Lion against the other, and, in many instances, pocket against pocket. ”

“ The men who make the charts are most to be trusted. For my part, I would not give a sixpence for a note made by a man who passes a shoal or a rock, in a squall or a gale."
"What would you say to the note of a sealer who should lay down an island where the seals lie about on the beach like pigs in a pen, sunning themselves? Would you not call a chart so noted a treasure?" ”

“ In an instant, the rocks at that point of the island were a scene of excitement and confusion. Hazard, who was near at hand, succeeded in restraining his own people, but it really seemed as if the Vineyard-men were mad. A great many seals were killed, it is true; but twenty were frightened to take refuge in the ocean, where one was slain. All animals have their alarm cries, or, if not absolutely cries, signals that are understood by themselves. ”

“ Thus it is with most of us, and thus was it with Roswell Gardiner. He could not wonder at Mary's rigid notions, considering her education; and, on the whole, he rather liked her the better for them, at the very moment that he felt they might endanger his own happiness. If women thoroughly understood how much of their real power and influence with men arises from their seeming dependence, there would be very little tolerance in their own circles for those among them who are for proclaiming their independence and their right to equality in all things. ”

“ I ask you, Roswell Gar'ner, to swear on this Holy Book that the secrets I shall now reveal to you shall not be told to any other, except in a manner prescribed by myself; that in no other man's employment will you profit by them and that you will in all things connected with them be true and faithful to your engagements to me and to my interests--so help you God! ”

“ To think of them Daggetts' fitting out a schooner to follow my craft about the 'arth in this unheard-of manner; just as if she was a pilot-boat, and young Gar'ner a pilot! I do hope the fellows will make a wrack of it, among the ice of the antarctic seas! That would be a fit punishment for their impudence and covetousness."
"I suppose, sir, they think that they have the same right to sail on the ocean that others have. Seals and whales are the gifts of God, and one person has no more right to them than another."
"You forget, Mary, that one man may have a secret that another doesn't know. ”

“ The idea of not having a Deity that he could not comprehend had long been one of Roswell Gardiner's favourite rules of faith. He did not understand by this pretending dogma, that he was, in any respect, of capacity equal to comprehend with that of the Divine Being, but simply that he was not to be expected or required to believe in any theory which manifestly conflicted with his knowledge and experience, as both were controlled by the powers of induction he had derived directly from his Creator. ”

“ Daggett, perhaps, was the coolest and most calculating at that moment, but Roswell was the most nervous, and the boldest. The boat of the last actually hit the side of the whale, as its young commander drove his lance through the blubber, into the vitals of the fish. At the same instant Daggett threw his lance with consummate skill, and went to the quick. It was now "stern all!" for life, each boat backing off from the danger as fast as hands could urge. ”

“ Roswell was exceedingly anxious, though he remained cool.
"The tides and eddies about these rocks, and in so high a latitude, sweep a vessel like chips," he said to his chief mate. "We have been set in here by an eddy, and a terrible place it is."
"All depends on our gears holding on, sir," was the answer, "with a little on Providence. Just watch the point ahead, Captain Gar'ner; though we are not actually to leeward of it, see with what a drift we have drawn upon it! The manner in which these seas roll in from the sow-west is terrific! No craft can go to windward against them." ”

“ Any one who has ever stood on a lake or river shore, and beheld the undeviating force with which a small cake of ice crumbles and advances before a breeze, or in a current, may form some idea of the majesty of the movement of a field of leagues in diameter, and which was borne upon by a gale of the ocean, as well as by currents, and by the weight of drifting ice-bergs from without. ”

“ The principal owners of the Sea Lion, of Holmes' Hole, were husbandmen also; folk who literally tilled the earth, cradled their own oats and rye, and mowed their own meadows. Notwithstanding, neither of these men, those of the Vineyard any more than he of Oyster Pond, had hesitated about investing of his means in a maritime expedition, just as if they were all regular ship-owners of the largest port in the Union. With such men, it is only necessary to exhibit an account with a fair prospect of large profits, and they are ever ready to enter, into the adventure, heart, hand, and pocket. ”

“ To think of sawing through ice as thick as that of the floe, for any material distance, would be like a project to tunnel the Alps.
Melancholy was the meeting between Roswell and Daggett that morning. The former was too manly and generous to indulge in reproaches, else might he well have told the last that all this was owing to him. There is a singular propensity in us all to throw the burthen of our own blunders on the shoulders of other folk. ”

“ For the first time in three months, she had raised the sash of that window; and the air that entered was bland, and savoured of the approaching season.
"I dare say, uncle"--the deacon was writing near a very low wood-fire, which was scarcely more than embers--"I dare say, uncle," said the sweet voice of Mary, which was a little tremulous with feeling, "that the ocean is calm enough to-day. It is very silly in us to tremble, when there is a storm, for those who must now be so many, many thousand miles away. What is the distance between the Antarctic Seas and Oyster Pond, I wonder?" ”

“ I have patients at the Harbour who must yet be visited this evening, and the wind goes down with the sun. Let the poor man take the draughts I have left for him--they will soothe him, and help his breathing--more than this my skill can do nothing for him. Deacon, you need say nothing of this visit--I am sufficiently repaid by the air, the sail, and Miss Mary's welcome. I perceive that she is glad to see me, and that is something, between so young a woman and so old a man. ”

“ Owing to the shape of the surrounding land, it would not be possible for the ice to float out in a body, for two or three months to come; or until so much had melted as to leave room for the field to pass the capes and head-lands. It never could have entered the bay for the same reason, but for the resistless power of a field that extended leagues out into the ocean, where, acted on jointly by wind and tide, it came down with a momentum that was resistless, ripping and tearing the edges of the field as if they had been so much freshly turned up mould. ”

“ Roswell Gardiner saw that the old man's hopes were too keenly excited to be easily cooled, and that his latent covetousness was thoroughly awakened. Of all the passions to which poor human nature is the slave, the love of gold is that which endures the longest, and is often literally carried with us to the verge of the grave. ”

“ As the schooners were moving on in company, about a cable's length asunder, Hazard saw a sudden and extraordinary movement on board the Vineyard Lion, as the men now named that vessel, to distinguish her from her consort.
"Look out for a spout!" shouted the mate to Stimson, who happened to be on the foretopsail-yard at work; when this unexpected interruption to the quiet of the passage occurred. "There is a man overboard from the other schooner, or they see a spout."
"A spout! a spout!" shouted Stimson, in return; "and a spalm (sperm, or spermaceti, was meant) whale, in the bargain! ”

“ The group visited by Gardiner on this occasion was quite near to this imaginary line; but we do not feel at liberty precisely to give its latitude and longitude. To this hour it remains a species of private property; and in this age of anti-rentism and other audacious innovations on long-received and venerable rules of conduct, we do not choose to be parties to any inroads on the rights of individuals when invaded by the cupidity and ruthless power of numbers. Those who wish to imitate Roswell must find the islands by bold adventure as he reached them; for we are tongue-tied on the subject. ”

“ Although there is no duty to which seamen are so averse as pumping--none, perhaps, that is actually so exhausting and laborious--it often happens that they have recourse to it with eagerness, as the only available means of saving their lives. Such was now the case, the harsh but familiar strokes of the pump-break being audible amid the more solemn and grand sounds of the grating of ice-bergs, the rushing of floes, and the occasional scuffling and howling of the winds. ”

“ He's a capital fellow, is that young Gar'ner, and will make an excellent husband, as I've always told you, child. A little wasteful, perhaps, but an excellent youth at the bottom. I dare say he lost his spars off Cape Hatteras in trying to outsail that Daggett; but I overlook all that now. He's a capital youth to work upon a whale or a sea-elephant! There isn't his equal, as I'll engage, in all Ameriky, if you'll only let him know where to find the creatur's. I knew his character before I engaged him; for no man but a real skinner shall ever command a craft of mine. ”

“ Still, the panorama was magnificent. The only part of the ocean that did not seem to be alive with ice-bergs, if one may use such an expression, was the space within the group, and that was as clear as an estuary in a mild climate. It really appeared as if nature had tabooed that privileged spot, in order that the communication between the different islands should remain open. ”

“ The masts were broken, the sails torn, rigging scattered, and sides stove. The Sea Lion of Martha's Vineyard was a worthless wreck--worthless as to all purposes but that of being converted into materials for a smaller craft, or to be used as fuel.
All this had been done in ten minutes! Then it was that the vast superiority of nature over the resources of man made itself apparent. The people of the two vessels stood aghast with this sad picture of their own insignificance before their eyes. The crew of the wreck, it is true, had escaped without difficulty ”

“ The weather-beaten seaman, the foot-worn soldier, the weary traveller, the adventurer in whatever lands interest or pleasure may lead, equally feels a throb at his heart as he hears the welcome sounds of "hey for home." Never were craft prepared for sea with greater rapidity than was the case now with our two Sea Lions. ”