AN UNMERRY CHRISTMAS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1008, 24 December 1910, Page 13

AN UNMERRY CHRISTMAS.

* (By F. T. Bullen.)

On December 21, 1880, having obtained a job as the navigator of a 24-ton schooner which her owner (and master) was taking to Antigua to soil, I went aboard, and between us we managed to get the little craft' free of tho ice which crowded up the little tidal river of Parrsboro', Nova Scotia. After a series of hairbreadth escapes, our journey being more like trusting to luck than any seafaring I have ever been engaged in before or since, we were swept by tlio furious ebb out of the Basin of Minas, and in ■' some mysterious way; which is 'now to 1110 like a hideous nightmare :of suffering, we succeeded in getting out of the Bay of Fund}-. ' Wo. had a deck load of spruce spars,-, so that we could only clamber 'about, not wqlk; our cabin was eight feet square and six feet high, our 'focd was almost putrid salt herrings, potatoes, and lumps of half-baked dough, and our ship's company consisted of the owner, myself, then a, youngster of 23, and two small boys axed' l -and- 12- respectively. ; TWh-at' we endured before getting- outof 7 tli"e Bay"of' Fundy was about'as bad seafaring as could- well bo dreaded, but when; wo jemerged upon the wider waters south of the Urand Manan'lsland there came an added horror.' The wind freshened to a gale, the temperature fell' far below zero, and, the spray that incessantly broko over us froze upon everything it touched, until every rope and spar was heavily coated with ice, and tho little craft looked liko some small fantastic iceberg—ho one would have known her for a vessel even at close range.

111 this parlous plight, then, wo drove on through tho;blinding frozen spray, relieving one another at the wheel every quarter of an hour, while the'two lads kept poking wood into' the stovo in the cabin—wo had . nearly filled the little place with .birch billets at our last anchorage—and steering on a course which wo fondly hoped would take us clear out. to 1 sea.

But presently it was borne in upon us that if we would survive the day, to say-nothing of the night, we must get in somewhere. So we kept away at right angles to our then .course, and about .4 p.ni. by what I shall always consider a miracle, ran into Yarmouth Harbour. The owner brought her up to the wind, while I crawled forward over the icc-heaps under a shower of massive ice fragments brought down by the shaking of the sail and, managed by the aid of a -top-maul to let go the anchor, .which. was treble its usual size with- ice.

We only had' fifty fathoms of chain, unci it ran out to" tho, €iid, which was clinched around the foremast, but it brought her up. . We. couldn't lower the sail, for the ropes wore all frozen in the blocks, so we .let it stand and crawled below to thaw; our half-congealed blood and melt the ice off ourselves. Some hot liquid ma'do from burned bread, and sweetened with filthy molasses somewhat revived us, and as we sat drinking it and munching tho before-mentioned lumps of soggy bread—heaven that eldest boy—he called them' "sody biscuits"—l thought bitterly that it was Christinas Eve. No one spoke a word; we just sat down and communed with our thoughts— at least I know I did, and after an hour or two of this brooding silence all turned in but the cook-boy, who stayed up to feed the fire. I lay on my back with water dripping upon me and listening to the grinding of the cables as she jumped at it, and the mournful howling of the bitter gale, i - In those days I could sleep under any circumstances, and so it was about two on Christmas morning when I suddenly awoke, tho past six hours having been a blank. There was a strange caso about her motion that alarmed me, and I struggled out of my bunk almost frozen stiff, for the poor wretch of a boy had let the firo out. I heard tho gruff voice of the owner say, "Seems s'if she's aweigh." I did not answer, but shuffled on deck to find that it was even so. She was drifting through tho blackness broadside on to the gale, and wo could only guess whither.' What it meant to get the anchor hove in, a bit of sail shortened, and some kind of a course set, I cannot tell, I have no words for it, for. the gale howled, every drop of water that came aboard froze as it fell, and it scorned as if we should never have done. Yet although we had uo bearings to steer by, could only guess at our position, I felt but little t>onse of danger; -that was swallowed up in misery of body. And by another amusing miracle, without seeing anything and amid those perilous tides, we fetched in back of Capo Sable Island about mid-day, and anchored within a cable's length of the shore, certain that she would not drag again becauso for many hours she would bo'high and dry. Then, itfter another meal of garbage and dirty water, wo turned in and slept until Christmas Day was over.