s of him. Was it possible, I asked myself,
that he could have lain in his frozen stupor for fifty years? But why
not? for suppose he had been on this ice but a year only, nay, six
months--an absurdity in the face of the manifest age of the ship and her
furniture--would not six months of lifelessness followed by a
resurrection be as marvellous as fifty years? Had he the same aspect
when the swoon of the ice seized him as he has now? I answered yes, for
the current of life having been frozen, his appearance would remain as
it was.

I lighted my pipe and sat smoking, thinking he would presently awake;
but his slumber was as deep as the stillness I had thawed him out of had
been, and he lay so motionless that, but for his snoring and harsh
breathing, I should have believed him lapsed into his former state.

At eight o'clock the fire was very low. Nature was working out her own
way with this Frenchman, and I determined to let him sleep where he was,
and take my chance of the night. At all events he could not alarm me by
stirring, for if I heard a movement I should know what it was. So,
loitering to see the last gleam of the fire extinguished, I took my
lanthorn and went to bed, but not to sleep.

The full meaning of the man awakening into life out of a condition into
which he had been plunged, for all I knew, before I was born, came upon
me very violently in the darkness. There being nothing to divert my
thoughts, I gave my mind wholly to it, and I tell you I found it an
amazing terrifying thing to happen. Indeed, I do not know that the like
of such an adventure was ever before heard of, and I well recollect
thinking to myself, "I would give my left hand to know of other cases of
the kind--to be assured that this recovery was strictly within the
bounds of nature," that I might feel I was not alone, so strongly did
the thoughts of a satanic influence operating in this business crowd
upon me--that is to say, as if I was involuntarily working out some plan
of the devil.

The gale made a great roaring. The ship's stern lay open to the gorge,
and but for her steadiness I might have supposed myself at sea. There
was indeed an incessant thunder about my ears often accompanied by the
shock of a mass of spray flung thirty feet high, and falling like
sacks of stones upon the deck. Once I felt the vessel rock; I cannot
tell the hour, but it was long past midnight, and by the noise of
the wind I guessed it was blowing a whole gale.