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Page 15
You remember I had had only verbal orders to take command, and after we
got outside the bay I opened my sealed despatches. The gist of them was
in these words:--
"You will understand that the honor of this government is pledged for
the _safe_ delivery of the Florida to the government of Brazil. You will
therefore hazard nothing to gain speed. The quantity of your coal has
been adjusted with the view to give your vessel her best trim, and the
supply is not large. You will husband it with care,--taking every
precaution to arrive in Bahia _safely_ with your charge, in such time as
_your best discretion_ may suggest to you."
"_Your best discretion_" was underscored.
I called Prendergast, and showed him the letter. Then we called the
engineer and asked about the coal. He had not been into the bunkers, but
went and returned with his face white, through the black grime, to
report "not four days' consumption." By some cursed accident, he said,
the bunkers had been filled with barrels of salt-pork and flour!
On this, I ordered a light and went below. There had been some fatal
misunderstanding somewhere. The vessel was fitted out as for an arctic
voyage. Everywhere hard-bread, flour, pork, beef, vinegar, sour-krout;
but, clearly enough, not, at the very best, five days of coal!
And I was to get to Brazil with this old pirate transformed into a
provision ship, "at my best discretion."
"Prendergast," said I, "we will take it easy. Were you ever in Bahia?"
"Took flour there in '55, and lay waiting for India-rubber from July to
October. Lost six men by yellow-jack."
Prendergast was from the merchant marine. I had known him since we were
children. "Ethan," said I, "in my best discretion it would be bad to
arrive there before the end of October. Where would you go?"
I cannot say he took the responsibility. He would not take it. You know,
my dear, of course, that it was I who suggested Upernavik. From the days
of the old marbled paper Northern Regions,--through the quarto Ross and
Parry and Back and the nephew Ross and Kane and McClure and McClintock,
you know, my dear, what my one passion has been,--to see those floes
and icebergs for myself. Surely you forgive me, or at least excuse me.
Do not you? Here was this fast steamer under me. I ought not to be in
Bahia before October 25. It was June 1. Of course we went to Upernavik.
I will not say I regret it now. Yet I will say that on that decision,
cautiously made, though it was "on my discretion," all our subsequent
misfortunes hang. The Danes were kind to us,--the Governor especially,
though I had to carry the poor fellow bad news about the Duchies and the
Danish war, which was all fresh then. He got up a dance for us, I
remember, and there I wrote No. 1 to you. I could not of course
help--when we left him--running her up a few degrees to the north, just
to see whether there is or is not that passage between Igloolik and
Prince Rupert's Headland (and by the way there _is_). After we passed
Igloolik, there was such splendid weather, that I just used up a little
coal to drive her along the coast of King William's Land; and there, as
we waited for little duck-shooting on the edge of a floe one day, as our
luck ordered, a party of natives came on board, and we treated them with
hard-tack crumbs and whale-oil. They fell to dancing, and we to
laughing,--they danced more and we laughed more, till the oldest woman
tumbled in her bear-skin bloomers, and came with a smash right on the
little cast-iron frame by the wheel, which screened binnacle and
compass. My dear child, there was such a hullalu and such a mess
together as I remember now. We had to apologize, the doctor set her
head as well as he could. We gave them gingerbread from the cabin, to
console them, and got them off without a fight. But the next morning
when I cast off from the floe, it proved the beggars had stolen the
compass card, needle and all.
My dear Mary, there was not another bit of magnetized iron in the ship.
The government had been very shy of providing instruments of any kind
for Confederate cruisers. Poor Ethan had traded off two compasses only
the day before for whalebone spears and skin breeches, neither of which
knew the north star from the ace of spades. And this thing proved of
more importance than you will think; it really made me feel that the
stuff in the books and the sermons about the mariners' needle was not
quite poetry.
As you shall see, if I ever get through. (Since I began, I have seen the
Consul,--and heard the glorious news from home,--and am to be presented
to the port authorities to-morrow.) It was the most open summer, Mary,
ever known there. If I had not had to be here in October, I would have
driven right through Lancaster Sound, by Baring's Island, and come out
into the Pacific. But here was the honor of the country, and we merely
stole back through the Straits. It was well enough there,--all daylight,
you know. But after we passed Cape Farewell, we worked her into such
fogs, child, as you never saw out of Hyde Park. Did not I long for that
compass-card! We sailed, and we sailed, and we sailed. For thirty-seven
days I did not get an observation, nor speak a ship! October! It was
October before we were warm. At noon we used to sail where we thought it
was lightest. At night I used to keep two men up for a lookout, lash the
wheel, and let her drift like a Dutchman. One way as good as another.
Mary, when I saw the sun at last, enough to get any kind of observation,
we were wellnigh three hundred miles northeast of Iceland! Talk of fogs
to me!
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