The Frozen Pirate

The Frozen Pirate, by W. Clark Russell

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Title: The Frozen Pirate
Author: W. Clark Russell
Release Date: August 2, 2007 [EBook #22215]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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THE FROZEN PIRATE.
BY W. CLARK RUSSELL
AUTHOR OF "THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR," "THE LADY MAUD," "A SAILOR'S SWEETHEART," ETC., ETC.
PH[OE]NIX PUBLISHING CO., NEW YORK.

CONTENTS.
I. The Storm
II. The Iceberg
III. I Lose My Companions
IV. I Quit the Wreck
V. I Sight a White Coast
VI. An Island of Ice
VII. I am Startled by a Discovery
VIII. The Frozen Schooner
IX. I Lose my Boat
X. Another Startling Discovery
XI. I Make Further Discoveries
XII. A Lonely Night
XIII. I Explore the Hold and Forecastle
XIV. An Extraordinary Occurrence
XV. The Pirate's Story
XVI. I Hear of a Great Treasure
XVII. The Treasure
XVIII. We Talk over our Situation
XIX. We Take a View of the Ice
XX. A Merry Evening
XXI. We Explore the Mines
XXII. A Change Comes Over the Frenchman
XXIII. The Ice Breaks Away
XXIV. The Frenchman Dies
XXV. The Schooner Frees Herself
XXVI. I am Troubled by Thoughts of the Treasure
XXVII. I Encounter a Whaler
XXVIII. I Strike a Bargain with the Yankee
XXIX. I Value the Lading
XXX. Our Progress to the Channel
XXXI. The End
Postscript

THE FROZEN PIRATE.
CHAPTER I.
THE STORM.
The Laughing Mary was a light ship, as sailors term a vessel that stands high upon the water, having discharged her cargo at Callao, from which port we were proceeding in ballast to Cape Town, South Africa, there to call for orders. Our run to within a few parallels of the latitude of the Horn had been extremely pleasant; the proverbial mildness of the Pacific Ocean was in the mellow sweetness of the wind and in the gentle undulations of the silver-laced swell; but scarce had we passed the height of forty-nine degrees when the weather grew sullen and dark, a heavy bank of clouds of a livid hue rose in the north-east, and the wind came and went in small guns, the gusts venting themselves in dreary moans, insomuch that our oldest hands confessed they had never heard blasts more portentous.
The gale came on with some lightning and several claps of thunder and heavy rain. Though it was but two o'clock in the afternoon, the air was so dusky that the men had to feel for the ropes; and when the first of the tempest stormed down upon us the appearance of the sea was uncommonly terrible, being swept and mangled into boiling froth in the north-east quarter, whilst all about us and in the south-west it lay in a sort of swollen huddle of shadows, glooming into the darkness of the sky without offering the smallest glimpse of the horizon.
In a few minutes the hurricane struck us. We had bared the brig down to the close-reefed main-topsail; yet, though we were dead before the outfly, its first blow rent the fragment of sail as if it were formed of smoke, and in an instant it disappeared, flashing over the bows like a scattering of torn paper, leaving nothing but the bolt-ropes behind. The bursting of the topsail was like the explosion of a large cannon. In a breath the brig was smothered with froth torn up in huge clouds, and hurled over and ahead of her in vast quivering bodies that filled the wind with a dismal twilight of their own, in which nothing was visible but their terrific speeding. Through these slinging, soft, and singing masses of spume drove the rain in horizontal steel-like lines, which gleamed in the lightning stroke as though indeed they were barbed weapons of bright metal, darted by armies of invisible spirits raving out their war cries as they chased us.
The storm made a loud thunder in the sky, and this tremendous utterance dominated without subduing the many screaming, hissing, shrieking, and hooting noises raised in the rigging and about the decks, and the wild, seething, weltering sound of the sea, maddened by the gale and struggling in its enormous passion under the first choking and iron grip of the hurricane's hand.
I had used the ocean for above ten years, but never had I encountered anything suddener or fiercer in the form of weather than this. Though the wind blew from the tropics it was as cruel in bitterness as frost. Yet there was neither snow nor hail, only rain that seemed to pass like a knife through the head if you showed your face to it for a second. It was necessary to bring