CHAPTER X.
ANOTHER STARTLING DISCOVERY.
This hatch formed the entrance to the cabin, and there was no other roadto it that I could see. If I wanted to use it I must first scrape awaythe snow; but unhappily I had left my knife in the boat, and was withoutany instrument that would serve me to scrape with. I thought of breakingthe beer-bottle that was in my pocket and scratching with a piece of theglass; but before doing this it occurred to me to search the body on thestarboard side.
I approached him as if he were alive and murderously fierce, and I own Idid not like to touch him. He resembled the figure of a giant moulded insnow. In life he must have been six feet and a half tall. The snow hadbloated him, and though he leaned he stood as high as I, who was of atolerable stature. The snow was on his beard and mustaches and on hishair; but these features were merged and compacted into the snow on hiscoat, and as his cap came low and was covered with snow too, he, withthe little fragment of countenance that remained, the flesh whereof hadthe colour and toughness of the skin of a drum that has been wellbeaten, submitted as terrible an object as mortal sight ever rested on.I say I did not like to touch him, and one reason was I feared he wouldtumble; and though I know not why I should have dreaded this, yet theapprehension of it so worked in me that for some time it held me idlystaring at him.
But I could not enter the cabin without first scraping the snow from thecompanion door; and the cold, after I had stood a few moments inactive,was so bitter as to set me craving for shelter. So I put my hand uponthe body, and discovered it, as I might have foreseen, frozen to thehardness of steel. His coat--if I may call that a coat which resembled arobe of snow--fell to within a few inches of the deck. Steadying thebody with one hand, I heartily tweaked the coat with the other, hopingthus to rupture the ice upon it; in doing which I slipped and fell on myback, and in falling gave a convulsive kick which, striking the feet ofthe figure, dislodged them from their frozen hold of the deck, and downit fell with a mighty bang alongside of me, and with a loud cracklingnoise, like the rending of a sheet of silk.
I was not hurt, and sprang to my feet with the alacrity of fright, andlooking at the body saw that it had managed by its fall much better thanmy hands could have compassed; for the snow shroud was cracked andcrumpled, slabs of it had broken away leaving the cloth of the coatvisible, and what best pleased me was the sight of the end of a hangerforking out from the skirt of the coat.
Yet to come at it so as to draw the blade from its scabbard required anintolerable exertion of strength. The clothes on this body were indeedlike a suit of mail. I never could have believed that frost served clothso. At last I managed to pull the coat clear of the hilt of the hanger;the blade was stuck, but after I had tugged a bit it slipped out, and Ifound it a good piece of steel.
The corpse was habited in jackboots, a coat of coarse thick cloth linedwith flannel, under this a kind of blouse or doublet of red cloth,confined by a belt with leathern loops for pistols. His apparel gave meno clue to the age he belonged to; it was no better, indeed, than a sortof masquerading attire, as though the fashions of more than one country,and perhaps of more than one age, had gone to the habiting of him. Helooked a burly, immense creature, as he lay upon the deck in the samebent attitude in which he had stood at the rail, and so dreadful was hisface, with a singular diabolical expression of leering malice, caused bythe lids of his eyes being half closed, that having taken one peep I hadno mind to repeat it, though I was above ten minutes wrestling with hiscloak and hanger before I had the weapon fairly in my hand.
I walked to the companion and fell to scraping the snow away from it.'Twas like scratching at mortar between bricks. But I worked hard, andpresently, with the point of the hanger, felt the crevice 'twixt thedoor and its jamb, after which it was not long before I had carved thedoor out of its plate of ice and snow.
The wind was now blowing a fresh gale, and the howling aloft wasextremely melancholy and dismal. I could not see the ocean, but I heardit thundering with a hollow roaring note; and the sharp reports anddistant sullen crashing noises, with nearer convulsions within the ice,were very frequent.
My labour warmed me, but it also increased my hunger. While I hacked andscraped at the snow I was considering whether I should come acrossanything fit to eat in the ship, and if not what I was to do. Here wasa vessel assuredly not less than fifty or sixty years old, and evensupposing she was almost new when she fell in with the ice, the date ofher disaster would still carry her back half a century; so that--andcertainly there was much in the appearance of the body on the rocks towarrant the conjecture--she would have been thus sepulchred andfossilized for fifty years!
What, then, in the form of provisions proper for human food, such aseven a famine-driven stomach could deal with, was I likely to find inher? Would not her crew have eaten her bare, devoured the very heart outof her, before they perished?
These thoughts weighed heavily in me, but I toiled on nevertheless, andhaving cleared the door of the snow that bound it, I prized it apartwith the hanger and then dragged at it; but the snow on the deck wouldnot let it open far, and as there was room for me to squeeze through, Idid not stop to scrape the obstruction away.
A flight of steps sank into the darkness of the interior, and a coldstrange smell floated up, with something of a dry earthiness of flavourand a mingling of leather and timber. I fell back a pace to letsomething of this smell exhale before I ventured into an atmosphere thathad been hermetically bottled by the ice in that cabin since the hourwhen this little door was last closed. Superstition was active in meagain, and when I peered into the blackness at the bottom of the hatch Ifelt as might a schoolboy on the threshold of a haunted room in whichhe is to be locked up as a punishment.
I put my foot on the ladder and descended very slowly indeed, myinclination being strong the other way, and I kept on looking downwardsin a state of ridiculous fright as though at any moment I should beseized by the leg; being in too much confusion of mind to consider thatit was impossible anything living could be below, whilst a ghostlyshadow could not catch hold of me so as to cause me to feel its grasp.But then if fear could reason, it would cease to be fear.
On reaching the bottom I remained standing close against the ladder,striving to see into what manner of place I was arrived. The glare ofthe whiteness of the decks and rocks hung upon my eyes like a kind ofblindness charged with fires of several colours, and I could not obtainthe faintest glimpse of any part of this interior outside the sphere ofthe little square of hazy light which lay upon the deck at the foot ofthe steps. The darkness, indeed, was so deep that I concluded this wasno more than a narrow well formed of bulkheads, and that the cabin wasbeyond, and led to by a door in the bulkhead.
To test this conjecture I extended my arms in a groping posture andstepped a pace forward, feeling to right and left, till, having gonefive or six paces from the ladder, my fingers touched something cold,and feeling it, I passed my hand down what I instantly knew by theprojection of the nose and the roughness of hair on the upper lip to bea human face!
A little reflection might have prepared me for this, but I had notreflected, at least in this direction, and was therefore not prepared;and the horrible thrill of that black chill contact went in an agonythrough my nerves, and I burst into a violent perspiration.
I backed away with all my hair astir, and then shot up the ladder as ifthe devil had been behind me; and when I reached the deck I wastrembling so violently that I had to lean against the companion lest myknees should give way. Never in all my time had I received such a frightas this; but then I had gone to it in a fright, and was exactly in thestate of mind to be terrified out of my senses. My soul had beenrendered sick and weak within me by mental and corporeal suffering; myloneliness, too, was dreadful, and the wilder and more scaring too forthis my unhappy association with the dead; the shrieking in the riggingwas like the tongue given by endless packs of hunting phantom wolves,and the growling and cracking noises of the ice in all directions wouldhave made o
ne coming new to this desolate scene suppose that the islandof ice was full of fierce beasts.
But needs must when Old Nick drives; I had either to find courage toenter the schooner and search her, and so stand to come across the meansto prolong my life, and perhaps procure my deliverance, or perish offamine and frost on deck.
The companion door was small, and being scarce more than ajar I was notsurprised that only a very faint light entered by it. If the top wereremoved I doubted not I should be able to get a view of the cabin,enough to show me where the windows or port-holes were. So I went towork with the hanger again, insensibly obtaining a little stock ofcourage from the mere brandishing of it. In half an hour I had chippedand cut away the ice round the companion, and then found it to be one ofthose old-fashioned clumsy hatch-covers formerly used in certain kindsof Dutch ships--namely, a box with a shoulder-shaped lid. This lid,though heavy, and fitting with a tongue, I managed to unship, on whichthe full square of the hatch lay open to the sky.
The light gave me heart. Once more I descended. After a few moments thebewildering dazzle of the snow faded off my sight, and I could see verydistinctly.
The cabin was a small room. The forward part lay in shadow, but I coulddistinguish the outline of the mainmast amidships of the bulkhead there.In the centre of this cabin was a small square table supported by ironpins, that pierced through stanchions in such a manner that the tablecould at will be raised to the ceiling, and there left for theconveniency of space.
At this table, seated upon short quaintly-wrought benches, andimmediately facing each other, were two men. They were incomparably morelifelike than the frozen figures. The one whose back was upon thehatchway ladder, being the man whose face I had stroked, sat upright, inthe posture of a person about to start up, both hands upon the rim ofthe table, and his countenance raised as if, in a sudden terror andagony of death, he had darted a look to God. So inimitably expressive oflife was his attitude, that though I knew him to be a frozen body asperished as if he had died with Adam or Noah, I was sensible of abreathless wonder in me that the affrighted start with which he seemedto be rising from the table was not continued--that, in short, he didnot spring to his feet with the cry that you seemed to _hear_ in hisposture.
The other figure lay over the table with his face buried in his arms. Hewore no covering to his head, which was bald, yet his hair on eitherside was plentiful and lay upon his arms, and his beard fluffing upabout his buried face gave him an uncommon shaggy appearance. The otherhad on a round fur cap with lappets for the ears. His body was muffledin a thick ash-coloured coat; his hair was also abundant, curling longand black down his back; his cheeks were smooth manifestly throughnature rather than the razor, and the ends of a small black mustachewere twisted up to his eyes. These were the only occupants of the cabin,which their presence rendered terribly ghastly and strange.
There was perhaps something in keeping with the icy spell of death uponthis vessel in the figure of the man who was bowed over the table, forhe looked as though he slept; but the other mocked the view with a_spectrum_ of the fever and passion of life. You would have sworn hehad beheld the skeleton hand of the Shadow reaching out of the dimnessfor him; that he had started back with a curse and cry of horror, andexpired in the very agony of his affrighted recoil.
The interior was extremely plain: the bulkheads of a mahogany colour,the decks bare, and nothing in the form of an ornament saving a silvercrucifix hanging by a nail to the trunk of the mainmast, and a cage witha frozen bird of gorgeous plumage suspended to the bulkhead near thehatch. A small lanthorn of an old pattern dangled over the table, and Inoticed that it contained two or three inches of candle. Abaft thehatchway was a door on the starboard side which I opened, and found anarrow dark passage. I could not pierce it with my eye beyond a fewfeet; but perceiving within this range the outline of a little door, Iconcluded that here were the berths in which the master and his matesslept. There was nothing to be done in the dark, and I bitterly lamentedthat I had left my tinder-box and flint in the boat, for then I couldhave lighted the candle in the lanthorn.
"Perhaps," thought I, "one of those figures may have a tinder-box uponhim."
Custom was now somewhat hardening me; moreover I was spurred on bymortal anxiety to discover if there was any kind of food to be met within the vessel. So I stepped up to the figure whose face I had touched,and felt in his pockets; but neither on him nor on the other did I findwhat I wanted, though I was not a little astonished to discover in thepockets of the occupants of so small and humble a ship as this schoonera fine gold watch as rich as the one I had brought away from the man onthe rocks, and more elegant in shape, a gold snuff-box set withdiamonds, several rings of beauty and value lying loose in the breechespocket of the man whose face was hidden, a handful of Spanish pieces ingold, handkerchiefs of fine silk, and other articles, as if indeed thesefellows had been overhauling a parcel of booty, and then carelesslyreturned the contents to their pockets.
But what I needed was the means of obtaining a light, so, after castingabout, I thought I would search the body on deck, and went to it, and tomy great satisfaction discovered what I wanted in the first pocket Idipped my hand into, though I had to rip open the mouth of it away fromthe snow with the hanger.
I returned to the cabin and lighted the candle, and carried the lanthorninto the black passage or corridor. There were four small doors,belonging to as many berths; I opened the first, and entered acompartment that smelt so intolerably stale and fusty that I had to comeinto the passage again and fetch a few breaths to humour my nose to theodour. As in the cabin, however, so here I found this noxiousness of airwas not caused by putrefaction or any tainting qualities of a vegetableor animal kind, but by the deadness of the pent-up air itself, as thefoulness of bilge-water is owing to its being imprisoned from air in thebottom of the hold.
I held up the lanthorn and looked about me. A glance or two satisfied methat I was in a room that had been appropriated to the steward and hismates. A number of dark objects, which on inspection I found to be hams,were stowed snugly away in battens under the ceiling or upper-deck; acask half full of flour stood in a corner; near it lay a large coarsesack in which was a quantity of biscuit, a piece of which I bit andfound it as hard as flint and tasteless, but not in the least degreemouldy. There were four shelves running athwartships full of glass,knives and forks, dishes, and so forth, some of the glass very choiceand elegant, and many of the dishes and plates also very fine, fit forthe greatest nobleman's table. Under the lower shelf, on the deck, lay asack of what I believed to be black stones until, after turning one ortwo of them about, it came upon me that they were, or had been, I shouldsay, potatoes.
Not to tease you with too many particulars under this head, let mebriefly say that in this larder or steward's room I found among otherthings several cheeses, a quantity of candles, a great earthenware potfull of pease, several pounds of tobacco, about thirty lemons, alongwith two small casks and three or four jars, manifestly of spirits, butof what kind I could not tell. I took a stout sharp knife from one ofthe shelves, and pulling down one of the hams tried to cut it, but Imight as well have striven to slice a piece of marble. I attempted nextto cut a cheese, but this was frozen as hard as the ham. The lemons,candles, and tobacco had the same astonishing quality of stoniness, andnothing yielded to the touch but the flour. I laid hold of one of thejars, and thought to pull the stopper out, but it was frozen hard in thehole it fitted, and I was five minutes hammering it loose. When it wasout I inserted a steel--used for the sharpening of knives--and found thecontents solid ice, nor was there the faintest smell to tell me what thespirit or wine was.
Never before did plenty offer itself in so mocking a shape. It was thevery irony of abundance--substantial ghostliness and a Barmecide's feastto my aching stomach.
But there was biscuit not unconquerable by teeth used to the fare of thesea life, and picking up a whole one, I sat me down on the edge of acask and fell a-munching. One reflection, however, comforted me
, namely,that this petrifaction by freezing had kept the victuals sweet. I wassure there was little here that might not be thawed into relishable andnourishing food and drink by a good fire. The sight of these stores tooksuch a weight off my mind that no felon reprieved from death could feelmore elated than I. My forebodings had come to nought in this regard,and here for the moment my grateful spirits were content to stop.