"Do you, still, eh?" replied Captain Dinks. "I don't quite agree with you. I thought it best to keep the ship before the wind, not only because it eases her but on account of the gale being bound to slacken down soon; and if we run down to a lower latitude, as I have frequently done in this part of the ocean before, we will probably get fine weather and be able to tinker up the old craft and make her look all a taunto again."
"Ah!" said Mr Meldrum, "you are just as likely to run on to something else, not quite so pleasant as fine weather! Mark my words, Captain Dinks, I am as certain, and more so now than I was three days ago, as I told you then, that we are far down in the Forties; and what with the easting we have made since passing the meridian of the Cape and the leeway we have drifted, we must be pretty close to the Crozet Islands or Kerguelen Land."
"Kerguelen Land!" ejaculated the captain; "nonsense, man; why we are hundreds of miles to the westward of it."
"Are we?" replied Mr Meldrum. "Well, just wait till twelve o'clock and we'll see who is right, you or I!"
Hardly, however, had the words escaped his lips than the look-out man in the maintop--who had been replaced as soon as day broke, when the prospect around the ship became more extended, thus rendering his services useful--shouted out a cry that had almost been forgotten, and which made every heart on board leap with mingled feelings of overpowering joy, consternation, surprise, dismay! Every pulse stopped for a second spellbound! The cry was--"Land ho!"
CHAPTER FOURTEEN.
SCYLLA AND CHARYBDIS.
"Land!" called out the captain. "Where away?"
"On the weather-beam," answered the man aloft, who still spoke in a voice which sounded as if he had been greatly startled. "It's rising rapidly every moment, sir, out of the water."
"The fellow must be blind!" exclaimed Captain Dinks. "There is no land there in that direction, if I know it. He must be taking one of those big icebergs for an island; that's about the matter. Hanged if I don't go up and see for myself!"
Running down the poop ladder, the captain soon started up the shrouds on the port side towards the maintop where the lookout man was stationed.
It was not Karl Ericksen this time, whose word he would have implicitly taken, but Bill Moody, one of the worst of the crew, and who, it may be remembered, had already evinced an unsailorlike spirit by his insubordination on an occasion when the pluck and endurance of everyone required to be tested. From this fact alone, Captain Dinks was the less inclined to trust him.
The captain, however, found mounting the ratlines not so easy a task as he might have imagined, for the rigging was all frozen hard and as unbending as iron; but he persevered unflinchingly, and disdaining to creep through the "lubber's hole," climbed over the top in the usual sailor's way, although he puffed and panted a good deal when he got there, which proved to him that the flesh he had gained on his plump little person, since he had been a youngster and first shinned up the rigging, had not improved his climbing powers.
"Now, where's this wonderful land of your's!" he asked, as soon as he got alongside of Bill Moody, taking his glass out of his pocket and adjusting the focus ready for action.
"There," answered the man surlily, pointing towards the north-east, where a faint blue bank seemed to rise out of the ocean above and beyond the ice-fields. It could be seen with the naked eye to be of a different colour to even the most distant bergs, the distinction being quite marked.
"By Jove, the man's right!" ejaculated Captain Dinks with surprise.
"I knew I were," said Bill Moody in a bragging sort of way. "I think I can see a hole in a ladder as well as most people; and if that ain't land, why, I'll eat it."
"There, that will do," interposed the captain to stop any further remarks, while he proceeded to inspect the hazy object with keen attention for some minutes, after which he replaced his glass in his pocket and prepared to descend to the deck again.
"Keep a sharp look-out," he said to Moody as he disappeared over the side of the top, "and sing out, as soon as we get any nearer, whether you can see a line of breakers at the foot of the island; for island it is, sure enough!"
"Aye, aye," grunted out the man; and Captain Dinks went down the rigging even more carefully than he had ascended, finding great difficulty in preventing his unaccustomed feet from slipping off the ratlines, which were like rungs of the smoothest and most polished ice.
"You were right, and I was wrong," he said to Mr Meldrum, as soon as he had regained the poop. "There is land in sight, sure enough, although I can at present only see it faintly towards the north-east. It must be, as you say, either the Crozet Islands or Kerguelen Land, for there's nothing else between us and the Australian continent, as we haven't yet got quite so far south as the Antarctic regions."
"It's probably Kerguelen Land," observed Mr Meldrum, "for you couldn't see the Crozets nearly so far off; but I hope there's not going to be another change of the weather. It seems clouding over again."
"Not before we get an observation, I trust," replied the captain; "I don't like knocking about any longer without knowing where I am."
"Nor I, sorr," put in the first mate heartily. "Sure it's like goin' in the dark to Bandon Fair, for all the worruld over."
"It's not what we like," interposed Mr Meldrum somewhat dryly. "We have got to put up with what we can get."
"True for you, sorr," said Mr McCarthy, not to be beaten; "sure, but isn't it best to make the best on it."
"That's incontestable," replied Mr Meldrum with a laugh; and there the conversation ended, Kate and her father going below to breakfast.
The weather got thicker, with the wind coming in gusts and now and then shifting a bit, so that the solitary mizzen-topsail of the _Nancy Bell_ had now again to be close reefed, and her course directed more towards the land, which they did not seem to near so rapidly as they had thought they would--owing probably to some current that was all the time carrying them southwards while they were steering towards the east.
They were actuated, however, by no vulgar curiosity to inspect this ocean land in thus seeking to approach it.
On an ordinary occasion they would most certainly have given it a pretty wide berth; but now, should the sky cloud over so much as to prevent their getting an observation of the sun by which to correct their latitude and longitude, the identification of the land would at once prove their position on the chart without further trouble. This was why they wanted to near it.
After breakfast, when Mr Meldrum came on deck again, the wind had freshened considerably, although still blowing from the north-west, while the outlook was generally squally; but the sky above still kept clear, with the sun shining down at intervals, when the scud, which was beginning to fly about again, did not interpose to hide its beams. The land, the while, was steadily rising to the northward and eastward.
"It's Kerguelen Land, sure enough," said Mr Meldrum, when, after imitating Captain Dinks and paying a visit to the maintop to reconnoitre, he returned to the poop. "I can see the outlying rocks towards its north-west extremity called 'The Cloudy Isles,' and away to the east I noticed the snow-white peak of Mount Ross, which stands in the centre of the island and is over six thousand feet high."
"Well, you've good eyesight to see that at the distance," observed Captain Dinks in a chaffing way. "I wish my optics were as clear."
"I can see pretty well," replied the other; "and if you had had to look out as sharply as I've had to do for pirate junks up the Gulf of Tonquin, I fancy you would have had your eyesight improved!"
"All right, Mr Meldrum," said Captain Dinks frankly. "I'm sure I did not doubt your word for a moment. I've never been so far south before, and feel a little out in my reckoning. However, it will soon be time to take the sun, and that will decide the point."
A few stray snowflakes came fluttering down on the deck just then, and both he and Mr Meldrum looked aloft. No cloud was to be seen exactly overhead, but a heavy bank of haze was creeping up from the south towards the zenith that looked ominous.
"We shall have a repetition of yesterday again, I'm afraid," said Mr Meldrum presently with much concern, after a long interval of silence between the two.
"I'm afraid so," was Captain Dinks' reply; "but I hope it won't come for another hour at least." He then hailed the steward down the companion- way, telling him to bring up his sextant from the cabin.
Fortunately, it just kept clear enough for an observation to be taken; and when Captain Dinks had worked it out, both he and Mr Meldrum acting independently so as to test the accuracy of the reckoning, it was found that the ship was in 48 degrees 50 minutes south latitude, and 68 degrees 40 minutes east longitude. Consequently, the land they were approaching could be none other than Kerguelen Land.
"As we now know where we are," said Mr Meldrum, when the fact was established, "we must give the island as wide a berth as we can, for the coast is most dangerous; and in winter-time, as it is now, July being the December of the antipodes, the most fearful storms are said to spring up at a moment's notice in its vicinity. As the wind is still from the north-west, and we are well up to the northward, I should try to weather it if possible; and, if we can't do that, we must pass to the south of the land."
"Very good," replied the captain. "Only, you know the poor old _Nancy_ cannot sail as well now, as she could when in full trim. I don't at all like the look of the weather, though, Mr Meldrum. It seems to me that ono of those coast storms you were speaking of is brewing up. The ice, too, is getting thick round us again; and if a fog comes on again we'll be in a worse position than yesterday, for then we'd plenty of sea-room at any rate, while now, we have that blessed island almost dead to leeward."
"We must trust in Providence," said Mr Meldrum, "and keep a sharp look- out if the fog thickens; but try to beat to windward we must, if possible!"
During the bright morning, the hands, working diligently under the supervision and help of the first mate and Adams, the second, had been trying to make the _Nancy Bell_ a little more shipshape, and, although they had been greatly hampered through the ropes and running gear being frozen so stiff that it was almost impossible to unbend or run them, they succeeded finally in trussing the mainyard again and splicing the braces, so that they now were able to set the mainsail reefed, a welcome addition to the limited sailing power of the ship in working to windward.
All things were proceeding very satisfactorily in the afternoon, by which time they had got the land to bear well on the lee-beam, and it looked as if they could weather it; when, suddenly, there came on a thick snowstorm, mingled with showers of hail, and the same kind of mist which had risen almost at a precisely similar hour on the previous day again enveloped them in its folds, shutting out all view of the water at even a short distance from the vessel's side.
The _Nancy Bell_ was then steering nor'-nor'-east and some ten miles off the land, with the wind coming from the northward and westward in squalls. Presently, it blew so fresh that the lately set mainsail had to be taken in again, and next the mizzen, for the ship heeled over so much that it was thought at one time she would not recover her stability; but, even under the reefed fore staysail, which was still retained to enable her to weather the land, she tore through the water at such a rate, that, in spite of the continual watch, it was most difficult to avoid the heavy masses of floating ice that seemed to spring up on all sides again, and which she had appeared to have been leaving behind her in the morning.
"Sure and it's a worse look-out than last night, sorr," said the first mate to Mr Meldrum, who was peering out anxiously to windward, the gale veering round just at the most critical time to the northward. "Faix, and I don't think we can weather them islands now, with all this ice about too."
"Nor do I," replied Mr Meldrum. "Captain Dinks, we'll have to run for it. Do you think you can wear her?"
"If your rudder holds out," said the captain.
"I'll guarantee the rudder," answered Mr Meldrum. "The only thing is, I fear the spars will go."
"We must risk those, my friend. It's a case of neck or nothing now.