"By midday our new hand was so far recovered as to be able to tell us that he was by name Urbain Gautier, a French Canadian, and that he had been a seaman on board the Russian whaler; that he had resented some ill-usage, been flogged, and thrown overboard. In proof of this summary procedure he showed us his back, which was covered with livid marks, evidently produced by the hearty application of a cat or knotted rope's end, but Scotch Willy lessened the general sympathy by informing me and Tom Dacres, in a whisper, that when the Canadian's knife fell from its sheath as we dragged him on board there was blood on its blade.
"Blood!
"This circumstance was whispered among the crew from ear to ear, and gave rise to many suspicions in no way favourable to our new acquisition, whom, however, they cared not to question, as he was a man singularly repulsive and brutal in aspect, and having a something in his expression of eye which made all on board shrink from him.
"Urbain Gautier was Herculean in stature and proportion, and most saturnine and satanic in visage. His eyes were too near each other, and too deeply set on each side of his long hooked nose, over which his two eye-brows met in a straight and black unbroken line. His mouth, with its thin lips and serrated fangs, suggested cruelty, and altogether there was a general and terrible aspect of evil about him. He spoke English, but when excited resorted to Canadian-French oaths and interjections.
"If 'twas he brought us ill-luck we got our first instalment of it that very night.
"The morning broke cold, grey, and cheerless, amid a storm of snow and wind, through which, to reduce the ship's speed, for we could see but little ahead, we drove under our fore-course and topsails all close-reefed now, and bitterly did we all regret the impatience which made us leave our snug moorings in Harbour Grace.
"Now and then the black scud would lift a little, but only to show the ice-fields drawing nearer and nearer, so, lest we should be crushed or enclosed amid them hopelessly, and then, it might be, starved to death when the last of our beef, biscuits, and water were gone, we steered in for the land, with the wild Arctic tempest--for such it was--increasing every moment.
"We tried sounding to leeward, but the lead always slipped from my benumbed hands, and in the end we lost the frozen line, as it parted in the iron block which was seized to the rigging by a tail-rope. Ere long we struck soundings with the hand lead, for the water was beginning to shoal!
"The brig's tops and the bellies of the close-reefed topsails became filled with snow, and now we began to look gloomily at each other, fearing rather than doubting the end.
"For most of that weary day we held on thus, running alternately west and north--sea-room was all we wanted till a safe harbourage opened; but ere long we knew it would be hopeless to look for either if the gale continued, and the briskest exercise could scarcely keep us from being frozen.
"We had been driven nor'-west I know not how many miles--for, perhaps, more than six-and-thirty--when a heavier sea than usual struck the brig on her starboard side, throwing her over on her beam ends to port, carrying away the bulwarks, tearing the long-boat from its chocks and lashings amidships, and making a clean sweep of everything on deck, buckets, loose spars, and handspikes; and with these went one of our men, who was never seen again.
"The brig righted, for she was a brave little craft, but with the loss of her topmasts and jib-boom, all of which, with yards and gearing, were broken off at the caps, and with hatchets and knives we worked amid the blinding and benumbing haze of drift and spray, snow, and the darkness of the coming night, to clear the wreck away--and away it all went astern with a crash, leaving the _Favourite_ now under only her forecourse and staysail.
"I shall never forget that night, if I live for a thousand years.
"The pumps were frozen; the boxes a mass of ice; the brakes refused to work; but I knew there was more water in the hold than was healthy for us. We could get no tea, coffee, nor any warm food, for the cook's galley had been swept overboard, and the tots of grog, which I served out from time to time, conduced, I think, rather to stupefy than to comfort the poor fellows, who were beginning to lose all heart, and to huddle together for warmth in the forecastle.
"Lightning, green and ghastly, glared forth at times, revealing the weird aspect of the crippled and snow-covered brig; yet it had the effect of clearing the atmosphere and enabling us to see the stars; but still the wind blew fierce and biting over the vast ice-fields, and still the fated craft flew on--we scarcely knew whither--but as the event proved, between the headland of Buenovista and the enclosing ice.
"We had the utmost difficulty in keeping a lamp in the binnacle, and by its light, amid the storm, Urbain Gautier, the French-Canadian, who had the wheel, was steering; no other man on board but he could have handled it singly and kept the brig to her course, for he had the strength of three of us, and seemed alike impervious to cold and to suffering.
"I think I can see him now as he stood then, with his feet firmly planted on the quarterdeck grating, his hands on the spokes of the wheel, and the livid lightning seeming to play about him, as the brig flew on through the storm and the darkness, and with every varying flash his features changed in hue. Now they were green, and anon red or blue; now purple, and then ghastly white; ever and again, as the lightning flashed forth, this infernal face came out of the gloom with a diabolical grotesqueness, and a strange smile on it that appalled us all; and now another day began to break.
"'Mate, that fellow is more like a devil than a human being,' whispered Bob Jenner to me, echoing my own thoughts, as we clung together to the belaying pins abaft the mainmast.
"He spoke in a low whisper; but in an instant the eyes of Urbain were on him.
"'Ah!' said he, showing his serrated teeth, 'a _maladroit_ speech, messmate.'
"'No messmate of yours,' growled Bob, unwisely.
"'Shipmate, then,' suggested the other, with a strange glance, between a grin and a scowl, for his black, glittering eyes wore one expression, and his cruel mouth another.
"'Well, mayhap, for so it must be,' said Bob, bluntly.
"'Ah,' said Urbain, with his horrible smile, as he held the wheel with one hand, and--even at that terrible time--felt for his sheath-knife with the other; 'ah! you think me a _mauvais sujet_, do you?"
"'I doesn't know what "mavy suggey" may be, and I doesn't care if I never does,' replied Bob, sturdily; 'but once I catches you ashore, mounseer, I'll teach you not to grip your knife when speaking to me.'
"'No quarrelling, lads,' said I, while my teeth chattered in the cold of that awful morning atmosphere. 'I only wish we were ashore.'
"'Then have your wish. Land ho!' sung out Urbain; and at that moment the grey wrack around us parted like a curtain; there was a dreadful crash, which tumbled us all right and left; the breakers which he had seen ahead were now boiling around us; and the brig lay bulged and broken-backed upon a reef, close to a lofty line of rocky coast, a helpless wreck, with the ice closing round her; and with a sound between an oath and a laugh, Urbain quitted the now useless wheel, which oscillated, as if in mockery, to and fro.
"Captain Benson, who, worn out by toil, had been snatching a few minutes' repose under the hood of the companionway, now sprang on deck, to find the brig totally lost, and that for us there was no resource, if we would save our lives, but to abandon her and get on shore.
"Broken and bulged, she was too firmly wedged on the reef for us ever to have the slightest hope of getting her off, save to sink her in deep water. As yet she might hold together for some hours, if the fury of the storm abated, and there were evident signs of such being the case.
"As each successive blast grew less in fury, and as the force and sound of the sea went down, we heard the wild streaming of the Baccalieu birds; and now, ere the water, which was rising fast in hold and cabin, destroyed everything, we procured charts and telescopes, to discover on what part of that barren, bleak, and most desolate of all the American shores, our fate had cast us.
"On comparing the outline of the snow-clad coast with the diagrams on the chart, we found we were stranded somewhere between the Bloody Bay and the Bay of Fair and False, about one hundred and twenty miles to the north-westward of the point from whence we had sailed.
"Few or no settlers, even of the most hardy and desperate description, are to be found thereabout, as the inhabitants between that place and the Bay of Notre Dame, about one hundred and fifty in number, are poor wretches who fish for cod and salmon in what they call summer, and for seals and the walrus in winter, and usually retire for the latter purpose to St. John's, or bury themselves in the woods till the snow disappears, about the month of June.