Chapter XIV: A Little Stranger Comes on Board

'Somehow, husband,' said Mrs Paterson to her spouse next day when they were alone together in the cabin, 'I feel strangely drawn towards that child, Lotty.'

'She's a charming little thing, I must say. Glad we picked the mite up.'

'But,' continued his wife, 'with me there seems something more than mere interest, George.'

'What mean you, wife?'

'I wish I could explain to you, but I can't even to myself. But did you never think, dear, that the very expression of someone, a long time dead and gone, may be seen again in the face of the living?'

'I can't quite follow you.'

'Neither can I follow myself,' said the good woman, smiling somewhat sadly; 'but'----

* * * * *

This was going to be a real holiday for Lotty, and in her youthful capacity for pleasure she was going to make the best of it. She had not to beckon pleasure to come to her, it was coming, and would come without being asked. The very novelty of her situation and surroundings was enthralling. She had come or been brought into an entirely new world. It felt as if Providence or Chance had staged for her a fresh and startling drama--new scenery, new acting, new everything--and she had nothing to do but wait and look on and be glad.

The weather got wilder, the skies harder and clearer, each wave that passed, as it swirled and broke, sang to itself in the blue and frosty air. Even the spray that dashed inboard fell rattling on the skylights like hail, and sometimes quite a little snowstorm raged on the deck, the powdery snow forming into small, shapely drifts against the coiled ropes or the green-painted lower bulwarks.

For the first day or two Ben appeared shy and half-afraid of Lotty. To him she was a being from another world, such as he had only read of in fairy-story books. But he soon got over his timidity, and was bent apparently on becoming her slave, was pleased to explain things to her, and assist her in every way his somewhat slow nature might suggest. Then when she went off to stroll arm-in-arm with the mate, whom she liked much better, he would lean himself slantingly--as you might lean a garden-fork that you didn't want to fall--against the lee bulwarks amidships, and dreamily watch her every look and movement.

When she would come towards him at last he was all alive again, and as eager-eyed and sprightly as a sheep when she sees the lamb she has to protect. Perhaps the conversation was a trifle slow, because she had to pull him into it. Ben wasn't very suggestive. Nevertheless, his somewhat dull eyes sparkled with delight, and his face became transformed, in a manner of speaking, when he found that he could give Lotty information and interest her in things. Beauty has a wonderful power if it be beauty of the right sort, consisting not merely in a lovely complexion, eyes, hair, and features, and a nice figure, but all these etherealised--nay, but glorified--by refinement, intellect, and innocence. Such a child as Lotty, wholly insensible of the charm that surrounded her, was likely to, and did, make friends wherever she went. And it is better to make friends than conquests.

'You've been up this way before, Ben, haven't you?'

'Ah! lots o' times.'

Silence for some seconds.

'Have you a full name? Ben isn't surely all.'

'A fool name, little un?'

'I mean what more than Ben is it?'

'Ah, lots, but I doesn't trot 'em out every day.'

'Ben what, then?'

'No, not Ben Watten, but Benjamin Thorley Metcalfe Evans Bradley; only they's all melted down to Ben aboard ship.'

'Have you ever been farther north, Benjamin Thor'----

'Oh don't, little missie. Ben's the 'andle they allers lifts I by. Yes, been to Archangel an' Iceland an' Spitzbergen 'arf a dozen times.'

'Were you always second-mate?'

'Lo'd no! Dog-boy fust, then slush-boy, then dirty-devil all over the ship, then stooard's boy, then doctor'----

'Doctor?'

'Ay, missie, wot cooke the 'orse, an' fries the panhaggledy, an' biles the spuds an' the dollop o' duff.'

'How very interesting!'

More silence.

'It must be wild and dreary on the sea of ice and snow, and so cold I should freeze to death.'

'Bless yer little 'eart, I tells ye it's just skir-r-rumptious up near wot they calls the Pole, though I never did see un--nary a pole.'

As he spoke Ben hung himself up, as it were, on a belaying-pin against the bulwark, and Lotty stood looking at him. But he didn't look at her, only beyond her or over her, for if he had looked right into her face or eyes I'm certain the boy couldn't have spoken a sensible sentence.

'Just skir-r-rumptious! An' those hartist chaps wot 'drors pictures o' hicebergs in books knows nuffin' whatsomediver about it; no more nor they does about their Bibles. Goin' out north that way it's cold enough at fust, like to freeze yer face like heverythink, an' if yer didn't watch the barber 'e'd precious soon cut yer nose right clean hoff.'

'Do you carry a barber?'

‘’E comes an' carries 'isself--comes on board w'en the fermometer's worked away down zero-ways. 'E ain't no man this barber, honly a white mist wot rises off a calm an' frosty sea like the steam from a pot w'en she's beginnin' to boil; an', oh, 'e's a sneezer! 'E 'ardens the beef in the riggin', an' the sheets an' the stays as well, an' 'e 'eats the brass-work an' steel till they burns worse nor 'ot pokers if ye're grampus enough to touch 'em. An' 'e covers the decks an' the skylights an' the boats an' bulwarks, an' man an' beast as well, till the dog's like a Polar bear, an' all 'ands looks like Methuselahs, with white beards an' 'air an' heyelashes. That's wot the barber does, does 'e. But mebbe the sun shines after this. Then heverybody grows young again hall of a suddint, an' the barber flies north to the Pole.'

'Is the ice all like castles and steeples and pinnacled mountains?'

'Honly in pictur'-books, missie.'

'Plenty of skating, I suppose?'

'Lo'd love ye, no. 'Cause as 'ow the big flat or round-topped bergs is hall covered feet-deep in snow.'

'Beautiful white snow, Ben?'

She was looking at him eagerly, earnestly. Little though he knew it, this rough, illiterate sailor-boy was showing her glimpses of a new world, which to her young poetic imagination must be all a kind of fairyland.

He cast one glance at the sweet face beside him, then hitched himself more firmly on to the belaying-pin and swayed about for a moment in evident shyness.

'Beautiful white snow, Ben, boy. It must be like Elfinland.'

'Never been there myself, missie--to Helfinland I means, though I've 'eard speak o' it. Ye lands from a ship in a boat like, an' as ye gets nearer an' nearer to the pack-edge o' the big drearisome floes the sea hall around yer gets blacker an' blacker till it's just like ink w'en it laps an' laps ag'in' the rainbow ribbon o' icy shore.'

'But it isn't really black, Ben? Don't say it's really black, Ben--the water, I mean.'

'Oh no, missie, it is clear as dew on a rose-leaf, an' it trickles from the oar-blades like diamonds in the sun. Then there is the sky, as blue an' clear it is, just like the 'eaven th' ould pa'son speaks about, only brighter. An' there's the birds--they's beautiful too, 'specially the snow-birds that come so close ye can look into their clear, red eyes, an' could almost shake their cold feet.

'An' w'en ye does land an' goes wanderin' hall by yerself away over the 'ard, crisp snow, ye mebbe meets a bear; but the bright sun's in 'is black eyes, an' 'e just looks at ye an' goes on, for there be seals to catch, an' bladders an' wallies,[E] an' 'e don't want to eat no hooman bein' s'long's 'e can get wallies. But ye goes on an' on.'

'All by yourself, Ben, of course.'

'Well, if ye likes to put it that way. On an' on over sparklin' snow, with the black sea away somew'ere behind, ye don't seem to ken nor care 'ow far, 'cause hevery breath ye breathes is liquid life, an' ye'd raither not look back. There ye sits ye down on a 'ummock an' startles now to find the sea 'as gone. That's the wu'st o' walkin' on the hice, ye walk so far an' never gets tired. Ye doesn't min' bein' alone at fust, but after hours it begins to pall on ye, for the silence is fearsome, an', like the cold, creeps up about the 'eart; the sun won't speak to ye, the snow won't talk, an' the birds 'as flown away.'

'But the sea,' said Lotty, 'the sea, Ben?'

'Just like a whisper o' a far-away wind. But the sea is away, an' ye shades yer eyes to look for it. It's gone, an' yer ship. Only a white mist lies yonder, an' it rolls up an' creeps up slowly but sure, an' ye know the mist means death. At fust ye're frightened, an' wish to run to'ards it an' fling yerself at it as a man does at a ghost. Then ye screams an' wants to run, then ye sees snowflakes a-fallin' at the other side o' ye, an' ye know then ye're in it, an' 'elpless. But something is shuttin' down yer heyelids, an' a sleep an' a dream ye thinks would be very pleasant--especially the dream. It's the dream that does it, the dream that drags ye into death.'

'Into death, Ben? Death in your fairyland?'

'Ay, death, missie, as sure as hever it came to a barn-door fowl, unless they finds ye. Then, missie, the fust-mate brings ye up out o' the dream an' out o' the death with a bally rope's-endin' for leavin' the boat.'

* * * * *

The ship sailed northwards and north, and King Winter now met the _Nor'lan' Star_ in icy earnest, for they passed through great fields of half-melted snow that took the way quite out of her, and caused the sails to flap, despite the wind, which, however, was none too favourable. Then there was more blue-black polished sea, rendered blacker still when streams of icebergs, mostly snow-clad, met them and bombarded the ship on both sides with deafening noise as they sailed through. But there were bigger pieces, and one was a gigantic white berg with clear, icy sides glittering green and crimson, and on this lay a poor little lost sealkin.

Kind-hearted Paterson lowered the dingy after getting the mainsail aback, and Lotty jumped with joy when she was asked if she would like to go. How very large and dark the hull of the _Nor'lan' Star_ appeared as they pulled away from her quarter, and the waves now seemed higher than Lotty could have believed possible! They rose and fell, playing such queer capers, racing the dingy, pretending to poop her, changing their minds, and lifting her sky-high only to hurl her down again into the blackness between two seas! So Lotty had to keep her eyes fixed on the berg and the sleeping sealkin to make sure they were advancing. But when she looked about, the _Nor'lan' Star_ seemed miles away.

The mate was steering.

'She won't forget and sail away and leave us, will she?' said Lotty.

'I don't think so, my dear, else we'll have to do what four of us did once when we were cast away on an iceberg like that, only a trifle bigger. And there was a seal on it too, else we couldn't have lived for three long weeks as we did.'

'Did you kill it and eat it?'

'Oh dear no, Lotty. We found out a trick worth two o' that.

'We hauled up the boat after capturing that saddle-back, not that she was much use, but she would do as a kind of bedroom you know, although she wouldn't float. She would keep the cold wind off us, and it is warmer sleeping on planks than on snow.

'Well, Lotty, we hadn't much to eat the first day, and slept but badly after it. The second day we had less, and then we began to starve--ay, and would have starved, too, but for an idea that Nat Pringle got hold of. For the saddle-back had gone. "I have it, mates," he said. Then he got straight up and walked to the boat, and back he comes with a big net and a long rope. We lay and watched after sunset, for it was early in the Greenland year, and by-and-by up comes the seal, and Nat lays hold on it quick, and in two minutes it was dressed in the net, as you might dress a doll, nothing out 'cept the head, the flippers, and the tail. That was a weary night, but joy came in the morning. "I'm off," says the seal, turning head on to the water. "Oh, are ye?" says Nat. "Well, good-day, and pleasant voyage to you."

'Away goes the seal, but the long rope was fastened by one end to the net behind its shoulder, and Nat kept firm hold of the other. "Hallo!" says the seal to himself after he had swam about thirty yards, "I'm fast, it seems. Well," he says, "I may as well have my breakfast anyhow."

'So he dives like an eel, and up he comes with a fine big cod in the jaws of him, and Nat and another hand bent on to that rope, and before you could have said marling-spike they had landed seal and cod all complete.

'The saddler put down the cod, looking a kind of discomfited like. "Oh, ye can go back again, my birkie," says Nat, "and have your own breakfast. This will last us for the day."

'And sure enough we killed and cooked the cod, and the seal had fair enough play, for he was left to fill himself in the sea till we had picked the last bone. And every day we did the same, all the time we lay on that berg. And it wasn't cod every day either; oh no, as often as not 'twas salmon, or hal'but, or young sturgeon.

'But all the while that iceberg was getting smaller and beautifully less, but at long last a merciful Providence sent a steamer our way, and so you see---- Easy pulling, boys! Way enough. There we are!--Jump on shore, Ben, and hand up the little lady.'

The seal was a baby one, and as lovely as a young lamb, and looked for all the world like a pretty infant swathed up to the eyes in soft white flannel. Only, no baby in all the wide world ever had such large and melting eyes.

'You've pulled well, lads,' said the mate, 'and all against the current too. So you can have fifteen minutes of a rest, a smoke, and a tot of rum each, then we'll start for off again.'

Lotty was charmed. She wanted to play at a game of romance, so she lifted the baby seal in her arms and went away with it to a hummock of snow on this great berg, quite out of hearing of anybody, and sat down with nothing before her except the world-wide waste of ocean that went stretching away without break to the haze of the limitless northern horizon.

She was trying to fancy herself all alone on the sea of ice, with only her fairy godmother who had for the time being turned herself into a beautiful wee baby sealkin.