for years and years!

A wild and dreadful thing for one in my condition to light on and be
forced to think of.

My heart, as I have said, sank in me again at the sight of him, and
fear and awe and superstition so worked upon my spirits that I stood
irresolute, and would have gone back had there been any place to return
to. I plucked up after a little, and, rolling up the cloak into a
compact bundle, flung it with all my strength to the vessel, and it fell
cleverly just within the rail. Then gripping the oar I started on the
descent.

The depth was not great nor the declivity sharp; but the surface was
formed of blocks of ice, like the collections of big stones you
sometimes encounter on the sides of mountains near the base; and I had
again and again to fetch a compass so as to gain a smaller block down
which to drop, till I was close to the vessel, and here the snow had
piled and frozen into a smooth face.

The ship lay with a list or inclination to larboard. I had come down to
her on her starboard side. She had small channels with long plates, but
her list, on my side, hove them somewhat high, beyond my reach, and I
perceived that to get aboard I must seek an entrance on the larboard
hand. This was not hard to arrive at; indeed, I had but to walk round
her, under her bows. She was so coated with hard snow I could see
nothing of her timbers, and was therefore unable to guess at the
condition of the hull. She had a most absurd swelling bilge, and her
buttocks, viewed on a line with her rudder, doubtless presented the
exact appearance of an apple. She was sunk in snow to some planks above
the garboard-streak, but her lines forward were fine, making her almost
wedge-shaped, though the flair of her bows was great, so that she
swelled up like a balloon to the catheads. She had something of the look
of the barca-longas of half a century ago--that is, half a century ago
from the date of my adventure; but that which, in sober truth, a man
would have taken her to be was a vessel formed of snow, sparred and
rigged with glass-like frosted ice, the artistic caprice of the genius
or spirit of this white and melancholy scene, who, to complete the
mocking illusion, had fashioned the figure of a man to stand on deck
with a human face toughened into an idle eternal contemplation.

On the larboard hand the ice pressed close against the vessel's side,
some pieces rising to the height of her wash-streak. The face of the
hollow was p