hat gave the
ocean the extraordinarily rich dye I found in it. The expanse went in
flowing folds of violet into the nethermost heavens, and though God
knows what extent of horizon I surveyed, the line of it, as clear as
glass, ran without the faintest flaw to amuse my heart with even an
instant's hope.

There was more weight, however, in the wind than I had supposed. It blew
from the west of north, and was an exquisitely frosty wind, despite the
quarter whence it came. It swept in moans among the rocks, and there
were tones in it that recalled the stormy mutterings we had heard in the
blasts which came upon the brig before the storm boiled down upon her.
But my imagination was now so tight-strung as to be unwholesomely and
unnaturally responsive to impulses and influences which at another time
I had not noticed. There were a few heavy clouds in the north-east, so
steam-like that methought they borrowed their complexion from the snow
on the island's cape there. I was pretty sure, however, that there was
wind behind them, for if the roll of the ocean did not signify heavy
weather near to, then what else it betokened I could not imagine.

I cannot express to you how the very soul within me shrank from putting
to sea in the little boat. There was no longer the support of the
excitement and terror of escaping from a sinking vessel. I stood upon an
island as solid as land, and the very sense of security it imparted
rendered the boat an object of terror, and the obligation upon me to
launch into yonder mighty space as frightful as a sentence of death. Yet
I could not but consider that it would be equally shocking to me to be
locked up in this slowly crumbling body of ice--nay, tenfold more
shocking, and that, if I had to choose between the boat and this hideous
solitude and sure starvation, I would cheerfully accept fifty times over
again the perils of a navigation in my tiny ark.

This reflection comforted me somewhat, and whilst I thus mused I
remained standing with my eyes upon the little group of fanciful fanes
and spires of ice on the edge of the abrupt hollow. I had been too
preoccupied to take close notice; on a sudden I started, amazed by an
appearance too exquisitely perfect to be credible. The sun shone with a
fine white frosty brilliance in the north-east; some of these spikes and
figures of ice reflected the radiance in several colours. In places
where they were wind-swept of their snow and showed the naked ice,