eable
and disconcerting to me to have to pass the ghastly occupants of the
cabin every time I went in and out; and I made up my mind to get them on
deck when I felt equal to the work, and cover them up there. The
slanting posture of the one was a sort of fierce rebuke; the sleeping
attitude of the other was a dark and sullen enjoinment of silence. I
never passed them without a quick beat of the heart and shortened
breathing; and the more I looked at them the keener became the
superstitious alarm they excited.

The fire burned brightly, and its ruddy glow was sweet as human
companionship. I put the ice into a saucepan and set it upon the fire,
and then pulling the cheese and ham out of the oven found them warm and
thawed. On smelling to the mouth of the jar I discovered its contents to
be brandy.[1] Only about an inch deep of it was melted. I poured this
into a pannikin and took a sup, and a finer drop of spirits I never
swallowed in all my life; its elegant perfume proved it amazingly choice
and old. I fetched a lemon and some sugar and speedily prepared a small
smoking bowl of punch. The ham cut readily; I fried a couple of stout
rashers, and fell to the heartiest and most delicious repast I ever sat
down to. At any time there is something fragrant and appetizing in the
smell of fried ham; conceive then the relish that the appetite of a
starved, half-frozen, shipwrecked man would find in it! The cheese was
extremely good, and was as sound as if it had been made a week ago.
Indeed, the preservative virtues of the cold struck me with
astonishment. Here was I making a fine meal off stores which in all
probability had lain in this ship fifty years, and they ate as choicely
as like food of a similar quality ashore. Possibly some of these days
science may devise a means for keeping the stores of a ship frozen,
which would be as great a blessing as could befall the mariner, and a
sure remedy for the scurvy, for then as much fresh meat might be carried
as salt, besides other articles of a perishable kind.

[Footnote 1: I can give the reader no better idea of the cold of the
latitudes in which this schooner had lain, than by speaking of the
brandy as being frozen. This may have happened through its having lost
twenty or thirty per cent. of its Strength.--P. R.]

CHAPTER XII.

A LONELY NIGHT

I had a pipe of my own in my pocket; I fetched a small block of the
black tobacco that was in the pantry, and, with some tro