The Frozen Pirate

ow; but unhappily I had left my knife in the boat, and was without any instrument that would serve me to scrape with. I thought of breaking the beer-b

ow was on his beard and mustaches and on his hair; but these features were merged and compacted into the snow on his coat, and as his cap came low and was covered with snow too, he, with the little fragment of countenance that remained, the flesh whereof had the colour and toughness of the skin of a drum that h

n to the hardness of steel. His coat-if I may call that a coat which resembled a robe of snow-fell to within a few inches of the deck. Steadying the body with one hand, I heartily tweaked the coat with the other, hoping thus to rupture the ice upon it; in doing which I slipp

ch better than my hands could have compassed; for the snow shroud was cracked and crumpled, slabs of it had broken away leaving t

were indeed like a suit of mail. I never could have believed that frost served cloth so. At last I managed to pull the coat clear

t of masquerading attire, as though the fashions of more than one country, and perhaps of more than one age, had gone to the habiting of him. He looked a burly, immense creature, as he lay upon the deck in the same bent attitude in which he had stood at the rail, and so dreadful wa

een bricks. But I worked hard, and presently, with the point of the hanger, felt the crevice 'twixt the do

I could not see the ocean, but I heard it thundering with a hollow roaring note; and the sharp rep

s to do. Here was a vessel assuredly not less than fifty or sixty years old, and even supposing she was almost new when she fell in with the ice, the date of her disaster would still carry her

ne-driven stomach could deal with, was I likely to find in her? Would not her cr

hat bound it, I prized it apart with the hanger and then dragged at it; but the snow on the deck would not le

o let something of this smell exhale before I ventured into an atmosphere that had been hermetically bottled by the ice in that cabin since the hour when this little door was last closed. Superstitio

lous fright as though at any moment I should be seized by the leg; being in too much confusion of mind to consider that it was impossible anything living cou

nd of blindness charged with fires of several colours, and I could not obtain the faintest glimpse of any part of this interior outside the sphere of the little square of hazy light which lay upon the de

till, having gone five or six paces from the ladder, my fingers touched something cold, and feeling it, I passed my han

n this direction, and was therefore not prepared; and the horrible thrill of that black

t then I had gone to it in a fright, and was exactly in the state of mind to be terrified out of my senses. My soul had been rendered sick and weak within me by mental and corporeal suffering; my loneliness, too, was dreadful, and the wilder and more scaring too for this my unhappy associati

schooner and search her, and so stand to come across the means to prolong my

ort-holes were. So I went to work with the hanger again, insensibly obtaining a little stock of courage from the mere brandishing of it. In half an hour I had chipped and cut away the ice round the companion, and then found it to be one of those old

er a few moments the bewildering dazzle of the snow

f the bulkhead there. In the centre of this cabin was a small square table supported by iron pins, that pierced through sta

posture of a person about to start up, both hands upon the rim of the table, and his countenance raised as if, in a sudden terror and agony of death, he had darted a look to God. So inimitably expressive of life was his attitude, that though I knew him to be a frozen body as p

e gave him an uncommon shaggy appearance. The other had on a round fur cap with lappets for the ears. His body was muffled in a thick ash-coloured coat; his hair was also abundant, curling long and black down his back; his cheeks

though he slept; but the other mocked the view with a spectrum of the fever and passion of life. You would have sworn he had beheld the skeleton hand of the

all lanthorn of an old pattern dangled over the table, and I noticed that it contained two or three inches of candle. Abaft the hatchway was a door on the starboard side which I opened, and found a narrow dark passage. I could not pierce it with my eye beyond a few feet; but perceiving within

e of those figures may ha

, though I was not a little astonished to discover in the pockets of the occupants of so small and humble a ship as this schooner a fine gold watch as rich as the one I had brought away from the man on the rocks, and more elegant in shape, a gold snuff-box set with diamonds, several rings of be

the body on deck, and went to it, and to my great satisfaction discovered what I wanted in the first p

smelt so intolerably stale and fusty that I had to come into the passage again and fetch a few breaths to humour my nose to the odour. As in the cabin, however, so here I found this noxiousness of air was not caused

stood in a corner; near it lay a large coarse sack in which was a quantity of biscuit, a piece of which I bit and found it as hard as flint and tasteless, but not in the least degree mouldy. There were four shelves running athwartships full of glass, knives and forks, dishes, and so forth, some of the glass ve

nd I could not tell. I took a stout sharp knife from one of the shelves, and pulling down one of the hams tried to cut it, but I might as well have striven to slice a piece of marble. I attempted next to cut a cheese, but this was frozen as hard as the ham. The lemons, candles, and tobacco had the same astonishing quality of stoniness, and nothing yielded t

hape. It was the very irony of abundance-substantial g

y, that this petrifaction by freezing had kept the victuals sweet. I was sure there was little here that might not be thawed into relishable and nourishing food and drink by a good fire. The sight of these stores