ink to the fire-glow,
and sat erect.

"Where have I been?" he exclaimed in French.

"Sir," said I, speaking with the utmost difficulty, "I do not understand
your language. I am English. You speak my tongue. Will you address me in
it?"

"English!" he exclaimed in English, dropping his head on one side, and
peering at me with an incredible air of amazement. "How came you here?
You are not of our company? Let me see..." Here he struggled with
recollection, continuing to stare at me from under his shaggy eyebrows
as if I was some frightful vision.

"I am a shipwrecked British mariner," said I, "and have been cast away
upon this ice, where I found your schooner."

"Ha!" he interrupted with prodigious vehemence, "certainly; we are
frozen up--I remember. That sleep should serve my memory so!" He made as
if to rise, but sat again. "The cold is numbing; it would weaken a
lion. Give me a hot drink, sir."

I filled a pannikin with the melted wine, which he swallowed thirstily.

"More!" cried he. "I seem to want life."

Again I filled the pannikin.

"Good!" said he, fetching a sigh as he returned the vessel; "you are
very obliging, sir. If you have food there, we will eat together."

I give the substance of his speech, but not his delivery of it, nor is
it necessary that I should interpolate my rendering with the French
words he used.

The broth being boiled, I gave him a good bowl of it along with a plate
of bacon and tongue, some biscuit and a pannikin of hot brandy and
water, all which things I put upon his knees as he sat up on the
mattress, and to it he fell, making a rare meal. Yet all the while he
ate he acted like a man bewitched, as well he might, staring at me and
looking round and round him, and then dropping his knife to strike his
brow, as if by that kind of blow he would quicken the activity of memory
there.

"There is something wrong," said he presently. "What is it, sir? This is
the cook-room. How does it happen that I am lying here?"

I told him exactly how it was, adding that if it had not been for his
posture, which obliged me to thaw in order to carry him, he would now be
on deck with the others, awaiting the best funeral I could give him.

"Who are the others?" asked he.

"I know not," said I. "There were four in all, counting yourself; one
sits frozen to death on the rocks. I met him first, and took this watch
from his pocket that I might tell the time."

He took the watch in his hands, a