out his arms in
which his face was sunk. I touched his beard with a shuddering finger,
and noted that the frost had made every hair of it as stiff as wire. It
would not do to stand idly contemplating him, for already there was
slowly creeping into me a dread of seeing his face; so I took hold of
him and swayed him from the table, and he fell upon the deck sideways,
preserving his posture, so that his face remained hidden. I dragged him
a little way, but he was so heavy and his attitude rendered him as a
burthen so surprisingly cumbrous that I was sure I could never of my own
strength haul him up the ladder. Yet neither was it tolerable that he
should be there. I thought of contriving a tackle called a whip, and
making one end fast to him and taking the other end to the little
capstan on the main deck; but on inspecting the capstan I found that the
frost had rendered it immovable, added to which there was nothing
whatever to be done with the iron-hard gear, and therefore I had to give
that plan up.

Then, thought I, if I was to put him before the fire, he might presently
thaw into some sort of suppleness, and so prove not harder than the
other to get on deck. I liked the idea, and without more ado dragged him
laboriously into the cook-room and laid him close to the furnace,
throwing in a little pile of coal to make the fire roar.

I then went on deck, and easily enough, the deck being slippery, got my
first man to where the huge fellow was that had sentinelled the vessel
when I first looked down upon her; but when I viewed the slopes, broken
into rocks, which I, though unburdened, had found hard enough to ascend,
I was perfectly certain I should never be able to transport the bodies
to the top of the cliffs, I must either let them fall into the great
split astern of the ship, or lower them over the side and leave the
hollow in which the schooner lay to be their tomb.

I paced about, not greatly noticing the cold in the little valley, and
relishing the brisk exercise, scheming to convey the bodies to the sea,
for I was passionately in earnest in wishing the four of them away; but
to no purpose. I had but my arms, and scheme as I would, I could not
make them stronger than they were. It was still blowing a fresh bright
gale from the south; the sea, as might be known by the noise of it, beat
very heavily against the cliffs of ice; and the extremity of the hollow,
where it opened to the ocean but without showing it, was aga