ARCTIC HEROES.

A FRAGMENT OF NAVAL HISTORY.

Scene, a stupendous region of icebergs and snow. The bare mast of a half-buried ship stands among the rifts and ridges. The figures of two men, covered closely with furs and skins, slowly emerge from beneath the winter-housing of the deck, and descend upon the snow by an upper ladder, and steps cut below in the frozen wall of snow. They advance.

1st Man. We are out of hearing now. Give thy heart words.

[They walk on in silence some steps further, and then pause.

2nd Man. Here ‘midst the sea’s unfathomable ice,

Life-piercing cold, and the remorseless night

Which never ends, nor changes its dead face,

Save in the ’ghast smile of the hopeless moon,

Must slowly close our sum of wasted hours;

And with them all the enterprising dreams,

Efforts, endurance, and resolve, which make

The power and glory of us Englishmen.

1st Man. It may be so.

2nd Man. Oh, doubt not but it must.

Day after day, week crawling after week,

So slowly that they scarcely seem to move,

Nor we to know it, till our calendar

Shows us that months have lapsed away, and left

Our drifting time, while here our bodies lie

Like melancholy blots upon the snow.

Thus have we lived, and gradually seen,

By calculations which appear to mock

Our hearts with their false figures, that ’tis now

Three years since we were cut off from the world

By these impregnable walls of solid ocean!

1st Man. All this is true: the physical elements

We thought to conquer, are too strong for man.

2nd Man. We have felt the crush of battle side by side;

Seen our best friends, with victory in their eyes,

Suddenly smitten down, a mangled heap,

And thought our own turn might be next; yet never

Drooped we in spirit, or such horror felt

As in the voiceless tortures of this place,

Which freezes up the mind.

1st Man. Not yet.

2nd Man. I feel it.

Death, flying red-eyed from the cannon’s mouth,

109Were child’s play to confront, compared with this.

Inch by inch famine in the silent frost—

The cold anatomies of our dear friends,

One by one carried in their rigid sheets

To lay beneath the snow—till he that’s last,

Creeps to the lonely horror of his berth

Within the vacant ship, and while the bears

Grope round and round, thinks of his distant home—

Those dearest to him—glancing rapidly

Through his past life—then with a wailful sigh

And a brief prayer, his soul becomes a blank.

1st Man. This is despair—I’ll hear no more of it.

We have provisions still.

2nd Man. And for how long?

1st Man. A flock of wild birds may pass over us,

And some our shots may reach.

2nd Man. And by this chance

Find food for one day more.

1st Man. Yes, and thank God;

For the next day may preservation come,

And rescue from old England.

2nd Man. All our fuel

Is nearly gone; and as the last log burns

And falls in ashes, so may we foresee

The frozen circle sitting round.

1st Man. Nay, nay—

Our boats, loose spars, our masts, and half our decks

Must serve us ere that pass. But, if indeed

Nothing avail, and no help penetrate

To this remote place, inaccessible

Perchance for years, except to some wild bird—

We came here knowing all this might befal,

And set our lives at stake. God’s will be done.

I, too, have felt the horrors of our fate:

Jammed in a moving field of solid ice,

Borne onward day and night we knew not where,

Till the loud cracking sounds reverberating

Far distant, were soon followed by the rending

Of the vast pack, whose heaving blocks and wedges,

Like crags broke loose, all rose to our destruction

As by some ghastly instinct. Then the hand

Of winter smote the all-congealing air,

And with its freezing tempest piled on high

These massy fragments which environ us:—

Cathedrals many-spired, by lightning riven—

Sharp-angled chaos-heaps of palaced cities,

With splintered pyramids, and broken towers

That yawn for ever at the bursting moon

And her four pallid flame-spouts. Now, appalled

By the long roar o’ the cloud-like avalanche—

Now, by the stealthy creeping of the glaciers

In silence tow’rds our frozen ships. So Death

Hath often whispered to me in the night;

And I have seen him in the Aurora-gleam

Smile as I rose and came upon the deck;

Or when the icicle’s prismatic glance—

Bright, flashing,—and then, colourless, unmoved ice—

Emblem’d our passing life, and its cold end.

Oh, friend in many perils, fail not now!

Am I not, e’en as thou art, utterly sick

Of my own heavy heart, and loading clothes?—

A mind—that in its firmest hour hath fits

Of madness for some change, that shoot across

Its steadfastness, and scarce are trampled down.

Yet, friend, I will not let my spirit sink,

Nor shall mine eyes, e’en with snow-blindness veiled,

Man’s great prerogative of inward sight

Forego, nor cease therein to speculate

On England’s feeling for her countrymen;

Whereof relief will some day surely come.

2nd Man. I well believe it; but perhaps too late.

1st Man. Then, if too late, one noble task remains,

And one consoling thought. We, to the last,

With firmness, order, and considerate care,

Will act as though our death-beds were at home,

Grey heads with honour sinking to the tomb;

So future times shall record bear that we,

Imprisoned in these frozen horrors, held

Our sense of duty, both to man and God.

The muffled beat of the ship’s bell sounds for evening prayers.

The two men return: they ascend the steps in the snow—then the ladder—and disappear beneath the snow-covered housing of the deck.