eagues long, and vanishes in the south; but it is wasting fast in the
north, and when this gale is done I shall expect to see twenty bergs
where it was before all compact."

As you may guess, our long conversations left us without plans, bitter
as was our need, and vigorous as were our efforts to strike upon some
likely scheme. However, if they achieved no more, they served to beguile
the time, and what was better yet, they took my companion's mind off his
nauseous and revolting recollections, so that it was only now and again
when he had drained a full bowl, and his little eyes danced in their
thick-shagged caves, that he regaled me with his memories of murder,
rapine, plank-walking, hanging, treacheries of all kinds, and cruelties
too barbarous for belief.

CHAPTER XIX.

WE TAKE A VIEW OF THE ICE.

For seven days the gale raged with uncommon violence: it then broke, and
this brought us into the first week of August. The wind fell in the
night, and I was awakened by the silence, which you will not think
strange if you consider how used were my ears to the fierce seething and
strong bellowing of the blast. I lay listening, believing that it had
only veered, and that it would come on again in gusts and guns; but the
stillness continued, and there was no sound whatever, saving the noises
of the ice, which broke upon the air like slow answers from batteries
near and distant, half whose cannons have been silenced.

I slept again, and when I awoke it was half-past nine o'clock in the
morning. The Frenchman was snoring lustily. I went on deck before
entering the cook-house, and had like to have been blinded by the
astonishing brilliance of the sunshine upon the ice and snow. All the
wind was gone. The air was exquisitely frosty and sharp. But there was a
heavy sound coming from the sea which gave me to expect the sight of a
strong swell. The sky was a clear blue, and there was no cloud on as
much of its face as showed betwixt the brows of the slopes.

The schooner was a most wonderful picture of drooping icicles. A more
beautiful and radiant sight you could not figure. From every rope, from
the yards forward, from the rails, from whatever water could run in a
stream, hung glorious ice-pendants of prismatic splendour. No snow had
fallen to frost the surfaces, and every pendant was as pure and polished
as cut-glass and reflected a hundred brilliant colours. The water hurled
over and on the schooner had frozen upon