grinding, rising and falling motion as you see a craft alongside a quay. All the afternoon we heard and felt her grinding along the ice-edge. But the most had grown so desperate that they paid little heed to it.
In the middle of the night—and there was only one man with the chief mate on deck—there was a sudden knocking at the hatchways, and every soul was started broad awake with the cry: “All hands, make sail!” I tell you, I never heard before or since, such a call as that was. Men who had not turned out for days were on the yard-arms in a moment, and, I dare say, the Harmony was never got under canvas in such a space of time before. The men were on the top-gallant-yards in their stockings, and bare-headed, and in little time we had every stitch on her.
The ice had broken up; there was a gentle breeze sending us right out, and there were pools and canals of open water all round. Our rudder had been unshipped long ago, and was made fast outside the quarter; so, as we could not afford the precious time needful to ship it again, we kept her running, steering with the yards as well as might be. The wind kept freshening: by-and-by we had to take in the top-gallant-sails; next to haul up her courses. In a short time she was staggering under double-reefed topsails and foretopmast stay-sail, among the floating ice. Still we could not ship the rudder, and we trimmed her as well as possible with the yards and by hauling out or in the trysail. Every now and then she would strike the floating ice full with the lee-bow, sending her up to the wind, when a piece would catch her on the weather-bow, and knock her off again to leeward. Every instant we looked to be stove in. But we pushed and tore through the ice for two days and nights without getting any particular damage; and, on the 14th, we came to the end of the ice, and got the open sea before us. Then the biscuit-a-day allowance ceased, but not till we were fairly out of the ice—and every man got leave to eat what he liked; but the most of them had picked up wonderfully every hour after that “making sail.” We had a tough job getting the rudder shipped as soon as we cleared the ice: it took us nine hours to ship it, but we managed it. Then, with a gale of W. wind and the Atlantic before us, we felt we were all right. Well, we ran before it as hard as we could, every man getting stronger and heartier with every mile of easting we made. For ten days we never started tack or sheet, carrying on with every stitch we could crowd upon her: little grass grew under the Harmony’s heels for that time; and, at the close of the tenth day we sighted the Old Rock (as we Shetlanders call our land) once more. It perhaps isn’t quite a Paradise of a country. I have seen more splendid-looking places here and there over the globe; but you take my word for it, that it looked pretty good in our eyes, when we had the luck to sight it on the 24th December, 1836.
On Christmas morning we dropped anchor in Lerwick Harbour, and many a one was looking at us, and many a boat was alongside to hear the news. But we could tell them nothing of the William Torr, or of the Swan, and for many a day there were heavy hearts in Shetland looking and fearing for the news of husbands and fathers, brothers and sweethearts lying in that ice-prison. After Christmas, a ship with provisions was sent out to try and relieve them; but she never got within hundreds of miles of them.
The William Torr and all her crew, with a portion of another shipwrecked crew which she had on board, perished. Nothing was ever heard of her. Some years afterwards, some of her casks were found on the west coast of Shetland and about the Hebrides. It was supposed that after she had broken up, the current had carried the fragments into the Atlantic, and that the gulf-stream had taken them down to our shores. I recollect, some time afterwards, when I was out there again, that the Esquimaux wanted us to come into the interior, and they would show us the graves of white men, which we supposed to be those of the William Torr. A whale-ship, next summer found a boat with seven corpses in her, on the ice. No doubt these were some of them also.
The Swan was beset all winter. And next spring the whale-ships fell in with her. They gave them fresh provisions, and put ten hands on board to navigate her home, and when the ice broke up, she got away. But of her whole complement of between fifty and sixty men—including some men of a wrecked ship whom she had taken onboard in the previous summer—only seventeen men were alive when she reached Lerwick in the month of May. Some of them held out till they sighted land, and died then. I knew two men of her crew, very well—smart fellows they were and good seamen, and they both died just within sight of home. I have sometimes wondered at it; and I never could well make it out, why, after holding out so long, they gave in then. Perhaps hope kept them up, and then, when their desire was like to be fulfilled, it was too much for them—and they so weak.
That’s how I was frozen-in, and came home again.
ENDYMION ON LATMOS.
High on the Latmian hills, with the twilight deepening round him,
Couched in a mossy dell Endymion lay in his beauty,
Lulled into sleep by the sound of the pines, and the voice of the mountain
Streamlet that leaped down the vales and took all the echoes with laughter.
Silently, ’mid the reeds, his flocks were feeding around him,
Flocks of sheep, and dewy-eyed kine, and goats nimble-footed.
Beautiful as a dream, Endymion lay on the mountain,
Beautiful as a dream, in the purple glory of
evening.
Slowly, on all the hills, the broad-winged darkness descended,
Slowly the stars came out in the silent measureless heaven.
Solemn, in silvery beauty, one moonbeam stole on the woodland,
Deeply slumbered the shepherd alone on shadowy Latmos.
