Gaffett was always brooding and brooding, and talking to himself; he was afraid he should never get away, and it preyed upon his mind. He thought when I got home I could interest the scientific men in his discovery: but theyre all taken up with their own notions; some didnt even take pains to answer the letters I wrote. You observe that I said this crippled man Gaffett had been shipped on a voyage of discovery. I now tell you that the ship was lost on its return, and only Gaffett and two officers were saved off the Greenland coast, and he had knowledge later that those men never got back to England; the brig they shipped on was run down in the night. So no other living soul had the facts, and he gave them to me. There is a strange sort of a country way up north beyond the ice, and strange folks living in it. Gaffett believed it was the next world to this. What do you mean, Captain Littlepage? I exclaimed. The old man was bending forward and whispering; he looked over his shoulder before he spoke the last sentence. To hear old Gaffett tell about it was something awful, he said, going on with his story quite steadily after the moment of excitement had passed. Twas first a tale of dogs and sledges, and cold and wind and snow. Then they begun to find the ice grow rotten; they had been frozen in, and got into a current flowing north, far up beyond Fox Channel, and they took to their boats when the ship got crushed, and this warm current took them out of sight of the ice, and into a great open sea; and they still followed it due north, just the very way they had planned to go. Then they struck a coast that wasnt laid down or charted, but the cliffs were such that no boat could land until they found a bay and struck across under sail to the other side where the shore looked lower; they were scant of provisions and out of water, but they got sight of something that looked like a great town. For Gods sake, Gaffett! said I, the first time he told me. You dont mean a town two degrees farther north than ships had ever been? for hed got their course marked on an old chart that hed pieced out at the top; but he insisted upon it, and told it over and over again, to be sure I had it straight to carry to those who would be interested. There was no snow and ice, he said, after they had sailed some days with that warm current, which seemed to come right from under the ice that theyd been pinched up in and had been crossing on foot for weeks. But what about the town? I asked. Did they get to the town? They did, said the captain, and found inhabitants; twas an awful condition of things. It appeared, as near as Gaffett could express it, like a place where there was neither living nor dead. They could see the place when they were approaching it by sea pretty near like any town, and thick with habitations; but all at once they lost sight of it altogether, and when they got close inshore they could see the shapes of folks, but they never could get near them, -- all blowing gray figures that would pass along alone, or sometimes gathered in companies as if they were watching. The men were frightened at first, but the shapes never came near them, -- it was as if they blew back; and at last they all got bold and went ashore, and found birds eggs and sea fowl, like any wild northern spot where creatures were tame and folks had never been, and there was good water. Gaffett said that he and another man came near one o the fog-shaped men that was going along slow with the look of a pack on his back, among the rocks, an they chased him; but, Lord! he flittered away out o sight like a leaf the wind takes with it, or a piece of cobweb. They would make as if they talked together, but there was no sound of voices, and they acted as if they didnt see us, but only felt us coming towards them, says Gaffett one day, trying to tell the particulars. They couldnt see the town when they were ashore. One day the captain and the doctor were gone till night up across the high land where the town had seemed to be, and they came back at night beat out and white as ashes, and wrote and wrote all next day in their notebooks, and whispered together full of excitement, and they were sharp-spoken with the men when they offered to ask any questions. Then there came a day, said Captain Littlepage, leaning toward me with a strange look in his eyes, and whispering quickly. The men all swore they wouldnt stay any longer; the man on watch early in the morning gave the alarm, and they all put off in the boat and got a little way out to sea. Those folks, or whatever they were, come about em like bats; all at once they raised incessant armies, and come as if to drive em back to sea. They stood thick at the edge o the water like the ridges o grim war; no thought o flight, none of retreat. Sometimes a standing fight, then soaring on main wing tormented all the air. And when theyd got the boat out o reach o danger, Gaffett said they looked back, and there was the town again, standing up just as theyd seen it first, comin on the coast. Say what you might, they all believed twas a kind of waiting-place between this world an the next. -- Sarah Orne Jewett, THE COUNTRY OF THE POINTED FIRS, Chapter VI. 1896.
Posted on: Sun, 12 Oct 2014 22:41:10 +0000
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