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Page 48
It was true enough that when Mr. Quail, the brother of the captain of
the "McLellan," whom the "Resolute" had befriended, the mate of the
George Henry, whaler, whose master, Captain Buddington, had discovered
the "Resolute" in the ice, came to her after a hard day's journey with
his men, the men faltered with a little superstitious feeling, and
hesitated for a minute about going on board. But the poor lonely ship
wooed them too lovingly, and they climbed over the broken ice and came
on deck. She was lying over on her larboard side, with a heavy weight of
ice holding her down. Hatches and companion were made fast, as Captain
Kellett had left them. But, knocking open the companion, groping down
stairs to the after cabin they found their way to the captain's table;
somebody put his hand on a box of lucifers, struck a light, and
revealed--books scattered in confusion, a candle standing, which he
lighted at once, the glasses and the decanters from which Kellett and
his officers had drunk good by to the vessel. The whalemen filled them
again, and undoubtedly felt less discouraged. Meanwhile night came on,
and a gale arose. So hard did it blow, that for two days these four were
the whole crew of the "Resolute," and it was not till the 19th of
September that they returned to their own ship, and reported what their
prize was.
All these ten days, since Captain Buddington had first seen her, the
vessels had been nearing each other. On the 19th he boarded her himself;
found that in her hold, on the larboard side, was a good deal of ice; on
the starboard side there seemed to be water. In fact, her tanks had
burst from the extreme cold; and she was full of water, nearly to her
lower deck. Everything that could move from its place had moved;
everything was wet; everything that would mould was mouldy. "A sort of
perspiration" settled on the beams above. Clothes were wringing wet. The
captain's party made a fire in Captain Kellett's stove, and soon started
a sort of shower from the vapor with which it filled the air. The
"Resolute" has, however, four fine force-pumps. For three days the
captain and six men worked fourteen hours a day on one of these, and had
the pleasure of finding that they freed her of water,--that she was
tight still. They cut away upon the masses of ice; and on the 23d of
September, in the evening, she freed herself from her encumbrances, and
took an even keel. This was off the west shore of Baffin's Bay, in
latitude 67�. On the shortest tack she was twelve hundred miles from
where Captain Kellett left her.
There was work enough still to be done. The rudder was to be shipped,
the rigging to be made taut, sail to be set; and it proved, by the way,
that the sail on the yards was much of it still serviceable, while a
suit of new linen sails below were greatly injured by moisture. In a
week more they had her ready to make sail. The pack of ice still drifted
with both ships; but on the 21st of October, after a long northwest
gale, the "Resolute" was free,--more free than she had been for more
than two years.
Her "last voyage" is almost told. Captain Buddington had resolved to
bring her home. He had picked ten men from the "George Henry," leaving
her fifteen, and with a rough tracing of the American coast drawn on a
sheet of foolscap, with his lever watch and a quadrant for his
instruments, he squared off for New London. A rough, hard passage they
had of it. The ship's ballast was gone, by the bursting of the tanks;
she was top-heavy and under manned. He spoke a British whaling bark, and
by her sent to Captain Kellett his epaulettes, and to his own owners
news that he was coming. They had heavy gales and head winds, were
driven as far down as the Bermudas; the water left in the ship's tanks
was brackish, and it needed all the seasoning which the ship's chocolate
would give to make it drinkable. "For sixty hours at a time," says the
spirited captain, "I frequently had no sleep"; but his perseverance was
crowned with success at last, and on the night of the 23d-24th of
December he made the light off the magnificent harbor from which he
sailed; and on Sunday morning, the 24th, dropped anchor in the Thames,
opposite _New_ London, ran up the royal ensign on the shorn masts of the
"Resolute," and the good people of the town knew that he and his were
safe, and that one of the victories of peace was won.
As the fine ship lies opposite the piers of that beautiful town, she
attracts visitors from everywhere, and is, indeed, a very remarkable
curiosity. Seals were at once placed, and very properly, on the
captain's book-cases, lockers, and drawers, and wherever private
property might be injured by wanton curiosity, and two keepers are on
duty on the vessel, till her destination is decided. But nothing is
changed from what she was when she came into harbor. And, from stem to
stern, every detail of her equipment is a curiosity, to the sailor or to
the landsman. The candlestick in the cabin is not like a Yankee
candlestick. The hawse hole for the chain cable is fitted as has not
been seen before. And so of everything between. There is the aspect of
wet over everything now, after months of ventilation;--the rifles, which
were last fired at musk-oxen in Melville Island, are red with rust, as
if they had lain in the bottom of the sea; the volume of Shakespeare,
which you find in an officer's berth, has a damp feel, as if you had
been reading it in the open air in a March north-easter. The old seamen
look with most amazement, perhaps, on the preparations for
amusement,--the juggler's cups and balls, or Harlequin's spangled dress;
the quiet landsman wonders at the gigantic ice-saws, at the cast-off
canvas boots, the long thick Arctic stockings. It seems almost wrong to
go into Mr. Hamilton's wardroom, and see how he arranged his soap-cup
and his tooth-brush; and one does not tell of it, if he finds on a blank
leaf the secret prayer a sister wrote down for the brother to whom she
gave a prayer-book. There is a good deal of disorder now,--thanks to her
sudden abandonment, and perhaps to her three months' voyage home. A
little union-jack lies over a heap of unmended and unwashed
underclothes; when Kellett left the ship, he left his country's flag
over his arm-chair as if to keep possession. Two officers' swords and a
pair of epaulettes were on the cabin table. Indeed, what is there not
there,--which should make an Arctic winter endurable,--make a long night
into day,--or while long days away?
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