shoulder; but in the hurry of my feelings I exerted more strength
than I was sensible of. I pushed him with the violence of sudden
trepidation; my hand slipped off his shoulder, and he fell on his side,
exactly as a statue would, preserving his posture as though, like a
statue, he had been chiselled out of marble or stone.

I started back frightened by his fall, in which my fears found a sort of
life; but it was soon clear to me his rigidity was that of a man frozen
to death. His very hair and beard stood stiff, as before, as though they
were some exquisite counterfeit in ebony. Perfectly satisfied that he
was dead, I stepped round to the other side of him, and set him up as I
had found him. He was as heavy as if he had been alive, and when I put
his back to the rock his posture was exactly as it had been, that of one
deeply meditating.

Who had this man been in life? How had he fallen into this pass? How
long had he been dead there, seated as I saw him?

These were speculations not to be resolved by conjecture. On looking at
the rock against which he leaned and observing its curvature, it seemed
to me that it had formed part of a cave, or of some large, deep hole of
ice; and this I was sure must have been the case, for it is certain
that, had this body remained long unsheltered, it must have been hidden
by the snow.

I concluded then that the unhappy man had been cast away upon this ice
whilst it was under bleaker heights than these parallels, and that he
had crawled into a hollow, and perished in that melancholic sitting
posture. But in what year had his fate come upon him? I had made
several voyages into distant places in my time and seen a great variety
of people; but I had never met any man habited as that body. He had the
appearance of a Spanish or French cut-throat of the middle of last
century, and of earlier times yet; for it may be known to you that the
buccaneers of the Spanish Main and the South Sea were great lovers of
finery; they had a strange theatric taste in their choice of costumes,
which, as you will suppose, they had abundant opportunities for
gratifying out of the many rich and glittering wardrobes that fell into
their hands; and this man, I say, with his large fine hat, handsome
cloak and boots, coupled with the villainous cast of his countenance and
the frightful appearance his long hair gave him, rendered him to my
notions the completest figure that could be imagined of one of those
rogues