ow; it looked
like claret but was somewhat sweet, and was the most generous wine I
ever tasted, spite of my having to drink it warm, for if I let the cup
out of my hand to cool, lo! when I looked it was ice!

Whilst I sat smoking my pipe it entered my head to presently turn those
two silent gentlemen in the cabin out of it. It was a task from which I
shrank, but it must be done. To be candid, I dreaded the effects of
their dismal companionship on my spirits. I had been in the schooner two
days only; I had been heartened by the plenty I had met with, a sound
night's rest, the fire, and my escape from the fate that had certainly
overtaken me had I gone away in the boat. But being of a superstitious
nature and never a lover of solitude, I easily guessed that in a few
days the weight of my loneliness would come to press very heavily upon
me, and that if I suffered those figures to keep the cabin I should find
myself lying under a kind of horror which might end in breaking down my
manhood and perhaps in unsettling my reason.

But how was I to dispose of them? I meditated this matter whilst I
smoked. First I thought I would drag them to the fissure or rent in the
ice just beyond the stern of the schooner and tumble them into it. But
even then they would still be with me, so to speak--I mean, they would
be neighbours though out of sight; and my eagerness was to get them away
from this island altogether, which was only to be done by casting them
into the sea. Why, though I did not mention the matter in its place, I
was as much haunted last night by the man on deck and the meditating
figure on the rocks as by the fellows in the cabin; and, laugh as you
may at my weakness, I do candidly own my feeling was, if I did not
contrive that the sea should carry those bodies away, I should come
before long to think of them as alive, no matter in what part of the
island I might bear them to, and at night-time start at every sound,
hear their voices in the wind, see their shapes in the darkness, and
even by day dread to step upon the cliffs.

That such fancies should possess me already shows how necessary it was I
should lose no time to provide against their growth; so I settled my
scheme thus: first I was to haul the figures as best I could on to the
deck; then, there being three, to get them over the side, and afterwards
by degrees to transport the four of them to some steep whence they would
slide of themselves into the ocean. Yet so m