The Frozen Pirate

miles before I could satisfy my mind of

a measure gatherable, floating upon the dark blue

I expected it should prove, seeing that this ocean had been plentifully navigated since Cook's time and no land discovered where I was; and I called myself a fool and cursed the hope that had cheated me, and, in short, gave way to a violen

and a particular fullness of mellow whiteness to its lustrous parts, softening the dazzle into an airy tenderness of brightness, so that the whole mass shone out with the blandness visible in a glorious star. But its main beauty lay in those features by which I knew it to be ice-I mean in a vast surprising variety of forms, such as steeples, towers, columns, pyramids, ruins as it might be of temples, grote

some miles it was like the face of a cliff, a sheer abrupt, with scarce a scar upon its front, staring with a wild bald look over the frosty beautiful blue of that afternoon sea. Here and there it projected a forefoot, some white and massive rock, upon which the swell of the ocean burst in

d a noble and magnificent spectacle to a mind at ease; but to my eyes its enchantments were killed by the horror I felt. It was a lonely, hideous waste, rendered the more shocking by the consideration that the whole vast range was formed of blocks of frozen water which warmth would dissolve; that it w

the character of the swell that its limits in the north-east extended only to the sensible horizon; in other words, that its ex

clear horizon the immensity of the deep was in a measure limited to the vision by its cincture. But this ice-line gave the eye something to measure with, and when I

sleep, but there was no repose to be had in the boat. I durst not lie down in her; if nature overcame me and I fell asleep in a sitting posture, I might wake to find the boat capsized and myself

with hummocks of ice upon it at irregular intervals, to where it died out in the north-east. I now saw that this part had a broken appearance as if it had been violently rent from a mainland of ice; also, to my approach, many ledges projecting into the sea stole into

ven a tolerable portraiture of the ruggedness, the fairy grouping, the shelves, hollows, crags, terraces, precipices, and beach of this kingdom of i

ove, towards which I sailed in full confidence that the water there would be smooth. Nor was I deceived, for I saw that the rock acted as a breakwater, whose stilling influence was felt a good way beyond it. I thereupon steered for the

r from it as in the boat. There is a quality in snow which it would be ridiculous to speak of as warmth; yet, as you may observe after a heavy fall ashore on top of a black frost, it seems to have a power of blunting the sharp edge of the cold, and th

ntle slope behind me to the height of about thirty feet; the ground was greatly broken with rocks and boulders and sharp points, whence I suspected many fissures in which the snow might not be so hard but that I might

haven in which the boat lay was sheltered and the water almost still, and this I reckoned would hold whilst the breeze hung northerly and the swell rolled from the north-east. I spread the sail over the seats, which served as beams for the support of this little ceiling of can

haps behold a ship; but I wanted the courage to climb, chiefly because I was afraid of tumbling into a hole and miserably perishing, and likewise because I shr

white and silent range. The low thunder of far-off hills of water bursting against the projections rolled sulkily down upon the weak wind. Just beyond the edge of the slope, about a third of a mile to the north of my little haven, stood an assemblage of exquisitely airy outlines-configurations such as I have described; their crystalline nature stole out to the lustrous colouring of the glowing west, and they had the appearance of tinted gl

om the centre of the firmament, and were gazing down the spangled slopes of infinity-oh, then it was that the full spirit of the solitude of this pale and silent seat of ice took possession of me. I found a meaning I had not before caught in the complaining murmur of the night breeze blowing in small gusts along the rocky shore, and in the deep organ-like tremulous hum of the swell thundering miles distant on the northward-pointing cliffs. This was a note I had missed whilst the sun shone. Perhaps my senses were s

isting and snaking glimmer, and you followed it into an extraordinarily elusive faintness that was neither light nor colour in the liquid gloom, long after the sight had outrun the visibility of the range. At intervals I was startled by sounds, sometimes sullen, like a muffled subterranean explosion, sometimes sharp, like a quick splintering of an iron-hard substance. These noises, I presently gathered, were made by the ice stretching and cracking in fifty different directions. The mass was so vast and substantial

fashion out of the darkness) kneeling up there and peering at the human intruder who was pacing his narrow floor of ice for warmth. The deceit of the shadows proportioned the blanched ruggedness of the cliff's face on the north side into heads and bodies of monsters. I beheld a giant, from his waist up, leaning his cheek upon his arm; a great cross with a burlesque figure, as of a friar, kneelin

ig were calculated to last me, but I am sure I had not a week's supply. This, then, made it plain that my business was not to linger here, but to push into the ocean afresh as speedily as possible, for to my mind nothing in life was clearer than that my only chance lay in my falling in with a ship. Yet how did my heart sink when I reflected upon the m

eawards and at the heavens to satisfy myself on the subject of the weather, and after a careful inspection of the moorings of the boat, I entered her, feeling very sure that, if a sea set in from the west or south and tumbled her, the mot