en velvet, two or three
pairs of high-heeled shoes, a woman's yellow sacque, several frizzled
wigs, silk stockings, pumps--in fine the contents of the trunks of some
dandy passengers, long since gathered to their forefathers no doubt,
even if the gentlemen of this schooner had not then and there walked
them overboard or split their windpipes. But, to be honest, I cannot
remember a third of what lay tumbled upon the deck or hung against the
bulkhead. So far as my knowledge of costume went, every article pointed
to the date which I had fixed upon for this vessel.

I swept the huddle of things with my foot into a corner, and lifting the
lids of the boxes saw more clothes, some books, a collection of
small-arms, a couple of quadrants, and sundry rolls of paper which
proved to be charts of the islands of the Antilles and the western South
American coast, very ill-digested. There were no papers of any kind to
determine the vessel's character, nor journal to acquaint me with her
story.

I was tired in my limbs rather than sleepy, and went to the cook-room to
warm myself at the fire and get me some supper, meaning to sit there
till the fire died out and then go to rest; but when I put my knife to
the ham I found it as hard frozen as when I had first met with it; so
with the cheese; and this though there had been a fire burning for
hours! I put the things into the oven to thaw as before, and sitting
down fell very pensive over this severity of cold, which had power to
freeze within a yard or two of the furnace. To be sure the fire by my
absence had shrunk, and the sliding door being open admitted the cold of
the cabin; but the consideration was, how was I to resist the killing
enfoldment of this atmosphere? I had slept in the boat, it is true, and
was none the worse; and now I was under shelter, with the heat of a
plentiful bellyful of meat and liquor to warm me; but if wine and ham
and cheese froze in an air in which a fire had been burning, why not I
in my sleep, when there was no fire, and life beat weakly, as it does in
slumber? Those figures in the cabin were dismal warnings and assurances;
they had been men perhaps stouter and heartier in their day than ever I
was, but they had been frozen into stony images nevertheless, under
cover too, with the materials to make a fire, and as much strong waters
in their lazarette as would serve their schooner to float in.

Well, thought I, after a spell of melancholy thinking, if I _a