ant. The dismalness
of the prospect was of course vastly exaggerated by the feeble light of
the candle, which, swaying in my hand, flung a swarming of shadows upon
the scene, through which the hammocks glimmered wan and melancholy.

I came away in a fright, sliding the door to in my hurry with a bang
that fetched a groaning echo out of the hold. If this ship were haunted,
the forecastle would be the abode of the spirits!

Before I could make a fire the chimney must be cleared. Among the
furniture in the arms-room were a number of spade-headed spears; the
spade as wide as the length of a man's thumb, and about a foot long,
mounted on light thin wood. Armed with one of these weapons, the like of
which is to be met with among certain South American tribes, I passed
into the cabin to proceed on deck; but though I knew the two figures
were there, the coming upon them afresh struck me with as much
astonishment and alarm as if I had not before seen them. The man
starting from the table confronted me on this entrance, and I stopped
dead to that astounding living posture of terror, even recoiling, as
though he were alive indeed, and was jumping up from the table in his
amazement at my apparition.

The brilliance of the snow was very striking after the dusk of the
interiors I had been penetrating. The glare seemed like a blaze of white
sunshine; yet it was the dazzle of the ice and nothing more for the sun
was hidden; the fairness of the morning was passed; the sky was
lead-coloured down to the ocean line, with a quantity of smoke-brown
scud flying along it. The change had been rapid, as it always is
hereabouts. The wind screamed with a piercing whistling sound through
the frozen rigging, splitting in wails and bounding in a roar upon the
adamantine peaks and rocks; the cracking of the ice was loud,
continuous, and mighty startling; and these sounds, combined with the
thundering of the sea and the fierce hissing of its rushing yeast, gave
the weather the character of a storm, though as yet it was no more than
a fresh gale.

However, though it was frightful to be alone in this frozen vault, with
no other society than that of the dead, not even a seafowl to put life
into the scene, I could not but feel that, be my prospects what they
might, for the moment I was safe--that is to say, I was immeasurably
securer than ever I could have been in the boat, which, when I had
emerged into this stormy sound and realized the sea that was