frost seized him, he
would now be one hundred and three years old, having subsisted into this
great span of time in fact, though confronting me with the aspect of an
elderly man merely. Death ends time, but this man never had been dead,
or surely it would not have been in the power of brandy and chafing and
fire to arouse him; and though all the processes of nature had been
checked in him for near half a century, yet he must have been throughout
as much alive as a sleeping man, and consequently when he awoke he arose
with the weight of a hundred and three years upon his brain, which may
suffice to account for the preternatural peculiarities of his character.

After sitting a long while sullenly smoking in silence, he fetched his
mattress and some covers, lay down upon it, and fell fast asleep. I
admired and envied this display of confidence, and heartily wished
myself as safe in his hands as he was in mine. The afternoon passed. I
was on deck a half-dozen times, but never witnessed the least alteration
in the ice. My spirits sank very low. There was bitter remorseless
defiance in the white, fierce rigid stare of the ice, and I could not
but believe with the Frenchman that all our labour and expenditure of
powder was in vain. There was no more noticeable weight in the wind, but
the sea was beginning to beat with some strength upon the coast, and
the schooner sometimes trembled to the vibrations of the blows. There
was also a continuous crackling noise coming up out of the ice, and just
as I came on deck on my third visit, a block of ice, weighing I dare say
a couple of hundred tons, fell from the broken shoulder on the starboard
quarter, and plunged with a roar like a thunder-clap into the chasm that
had opened in the night.

I sat before the furnace extremely dejected, whilst the Frenchman snored
on his mattress. I could no longer flatter myself that the explosions
had made the impression I had expected on the ice, and my mind was
utterly at a loss. How to deliver myself from this horrible situation I
could not imagine. As to the treasure, why, if the chests had all been
filled with gold, they might have gone to the bottom there and then for
me, so utterly insignificant did their value seem as against the
pricelessness of liberty and the joy of deliverance. Had I been alone I
should have had a stouter heart, I dare say, for then I should have been
able to do as I pleased; but now I was associated with a bloody-minded