I knew him to be
dead. He was the only figure visible. The whole body of the vessel was
frosted by the snow into the glassy aspect of the spars and rigging, and
the sunshine striking down made a beautiful prismatic picture of the
silent ship.

She was a very old craft. The snow had moulded itself upon her and
enlarged without spoiling her form. I found her age in the structure of
her bows, the headboards of which curved very low round to the top of
the stem, forming a kind of well there, the after-part of which was
framed by the forecastle bulkhead, after the fashion of ship-building in
vogue in the reign of Anne and the first two Georges. Her topmasts were
standing, but her jibboom was rigged in. I could find no other evidence
of her people having snugged her for these winter quarters, in which she
had been manifestly lying for years and years. I traced the outlines of
six small cannons covered with snow, but resting with clean-sculptured
forms in their white coats; a considerable piece of ordnance aft, and
several petararoes or swivel-pieces upon the after-bulwark rails. Gaffs
and booms were in their places, and the sails furled upon them. The
figuration of the main hatch showed a small square, and there was a
companion or hatch-cover abaft the mainmast. There was no trace of a
boat. She had a flush or level deck from the well in the bows to a
fathom or so past the main-shrouds; it was then broken by a short
poop-deck, which went in a great spring or rise to the stern, that was
after the pink style, very narrow and tall.

Though I write this description coldly, let it not be supposed that I
was not violently agitated and astonished almost into the belief that
what I beheld was a mere vision, a phenomenon. The sight of the body I
examined did not nearly so greatly astound me as the spectacle of this
ice-locked schooner. It was easy to account for the presence of a dead
man. My own situation, indeed, sufficiently solved the riddle of that
corpse. But the ship, perfect in all respects, was like a stroke of
magic. She lay with a slight list or inclination to larboard, but on the
whole tolerably upright, owing to the corpulence of her bilge. The
hollow or ravine that formed her bed went with a sharp incline under
her stern to the sea, which was visible from the top of the cliffs here
through the split in the rocks. The shelving of the ice put the wash of
the ocean at a distance of a few hundred feet from the schooner; bu