ion of a twenty-four
pounder. The schooner swayed to a level keel with so sharp a rise that I
lost my balance and staggered. I recovered myself, trembling and greatly
agitated by the noise and the movement coming together, without the
least hint having been given me, and grasping a backstay, waited, not
knowing what was to happen next. Unless it be the heave of an
earthquake, I can imagine no motion capable of giving one such a
swooning, nauseating, terrifying sensation as the rending of ice under a
fixed ship. In a few moments there were several sharp cracks, all on the
starboard side, like a snapping of musketry, and I felt the schooner
very faintly heave, but this might have been a deception of the senses,
for though I set a star against the masthead and watched it, there was
no movement. I looked over the side and observed that the split I had
noticed on the face of the cliff had by this new rupture been extended
transversely right across the schooner's starboard bow, the thither
side being several feet higher than on this. It was plain that the bed
on which the vessel rested had dropped so as to bring her upright, and I
was convinced by this circumstance alone, that if I used good judgment
in disposing of the powder the weight of the mass would complete its own
dislocation.

I stepped a little way forward to obtain a clearer sight of the splits
about the schooner, and on putting my head over, I was inexpressibly
dismayed and confounded by the apparition of a man with his arms
stretched out before him, his face upturned, and his posture that of
starting back as though terrified at beholding me. I had met with
several frights whilst I had been on this island, but none worse than
this, none that so completely paralyzed me as to very nearly deprive me
of the power of breathing. I stared at him, and he seemed to stare at
me, and I know not which of the two was the more motionless. The
whiteness made a light of its own, and he was perfectly plain. I blinked
and puffed, conceiving it might be some illusion of the wine I had
drunk, and finding him still there, and acting as though he warded me
off in terror, as if my showing myself unawares had led him to think me
the devil--I say finding him perfectly real, I was seized with an agony
of fear, and should have rushed to my cabin had my legs been equal to
the task of transporting me there. _Then_, thought I, idiot that you
are, what think you, you fool, is it but the body of