CHAPTER VII.
I AM STARTLED BY A DISCOVERY.
In this uneasy posture, despite the intense cold, I continued to sleepsoundly during the greater part of the night. I was awakened by a horriddream of some giant shape stalking down the slope of ice to seize anddevour me, and sat up trembling with horror that was not a littleincreased by my inability to recollect myself, and by my thereforeconceiving the canvas that covered me to be the groping of the ogre'shand over my face.
I pushed the sail away and stood up, but had instantly to sit again, mylegs being terribly cramped. A drink of spirits helped me; my bloodpresently flowed with briskness.
The moon was in the west; she hung large, red, and distorted, and shedno light save her reflection that waved in the sea under her likeseveral lengths of undulating red-hot wire. My haven was still verytranquil--the boat lay calm; but there was a deeper tone in the boomingsound of the distant surf, and a more menacing note in the echoing ofthe blows of the swell along this side of the coast, whence I concludedthat, despite the fairness of the weather, the heave of the deep had,whilst I slept, gathered a greater weight, which might signify stormywinds not very many leagues away.
The pale stare of the heights of ice at that red and shapeless disc wasshocking. "Oh," I cried aloud, as I had once cried before, "but for one,even but for one, companion to speak to!"
I had no mind to lie down again. The cold indeed was cruelly sharp, andthe smoke sped from my mouth with every breath as though I held atobacco pipe betwixt my teeth. I got upon the ice and stepped about itquickly, darting searching glances into the gloom to left and right ofthe setting moon; but all lay bare, bleak, and black. I pulled off mystout gloves with the hope of getting my fingers to tingle by handlingthe snow; but it was frozen so hard I could not scrape up with my nailsas much as a half-dozen of flakes would make. What I got I dissolved inmy mouth and found it brackish; however, I suspected it would be sweeterand perhaps not so stonily frozen higher up, where there was less chanceof the salt spray mingling with it, and I resolved when the light cameto fill my empty beer-bottles as with salt or pounded sugar for usehereafter--that is, if it should prove sweet; as to melting it, I hadindeed a tinder-box and the means of obtaining fire, but no fuel.
It seemed as if the night had only just descended, so tardy was thedawn. Outside the slanting wall of ice that made my haven the swellswept past in a gurgling, bubbling, drowning sound, dismal and ghastly,as though in truth some such ogre as the monster I had dreamt of laysuffocating there. I welcomed the cold colouring of the east as if ithad been a ship, and watched the stars dying and the frozen shoredarkening to the dim and sifting dawn behind it, against which theoutline of the cliffs ran in a broken streak of ink. The rising of thesun gave me fresh life. The ice flashed out of its slatish hue into aradiant white, the ocean changed into a rich blue that seemed as violetunder the paler azure of the heavens; but I could now see that theswell was heavier than I had suspected from the echo of its remoteroaring in the north. It ran steadily out of the north-east. This wasmiserable to see, for the line of its running was directly my course,and if I committed myself to it in that little boat, the impulse of thelong and swinging folds could not but set me steadily southwards, unlessa breeze sprang up in that quarter to blow me towards the sun. There wasa small current of air stirring, a mere trickle of wind from thenorth-west.
I made up my mind to climb as high as I could, taking the oar with me toserve as a pole, that I might view the ice and the ocean round about andform a judgment of the weather by the aspect of the sky, of which onlythe western part was visible from my low strand. But first I must breakmy fast. I remember bitterly lamenting the lack of means to make a fire,that I might obtain a warm meal and a hot drink and dry my gloves, coat,and breeches, to which the damp of the salt clung tenaciously. Had thisice been land, though the most desolate, gloomy, repulsive spot in theworld, I had surely found something that would burn.
I sat in the boat to eat, and whilst thus occupied pondered over thisgreat field of ice, and wondered how so mighty a berg should travel insuch compacted bulk so far north--that is, so far north from the seat ofits creation. Now leisurely and curiously observing it, it seemed to methat the north part of it, from much about the spot where my boat lay,was formed of a chain of icebergs knitted one to another in aconsolidated range of irregular low steeps. The beautiful appearances ofspires, towers, and the like seemed as if they had been formed by anupheaval, as of an earthquake, of splinters and bodies of the frozenstuff; for, so far as it was possible for me to see from the low shore,wherever these radiant and lovely figures were assembled I noticed greatrents, spacious chasms, narrow and tortuous ravines. Certainappearances, however, caused me to suspect that this island was steadilydecaying, and that, large as it still was, it had been many times vasterwhen it broke away from the continent about the Pole. Naturally, as itprogressed northwards it would dissolve, and the cracking and thunderousnoises I had heard in the night, sounds very audible now when I gavethem my attention--sometimes a hollow distant rumbling as of some greatbody dislodged and set rolling far off, sometimes an inwards roaringcrack or blast of noise like the report of a cannon fired deepdown--advised me that the work of dissolution was perpetuallyprogressing, and that this prodigious island which appeared to barricadethe horizon might in a few months be dwindled into half a score ofrapidly dissolving bergs.
My slender repast ended, I pulled the oar out of the crevice, and foundit would make me a good pole to probe my way with and support myself byup the slope. The boat was now held by the mast, which I shook and foundvery firm. I put an empty beer-bottle in my pocket, meaning to see if Icould fill it, if the snow above was sweet enough to be well-tasted, andthen with a final look at the boat I started.
The slope was extremely craggy. Blocks of ice lay about, some on top ofthe others, like the stones of which the pyramids are built; the whiteglare of the snow caused these stones at a little distance to appearflat--that is, by merging them into and blending them with the softbrilliance of the background; and I had sometimes to warily walk fiftyor sixty paces round these blocks to come at a part of the slope thatwas smooth.
I speedily found, however, that there was no danger of my being buriedby stepping into a hollow full of snow; for the same hardness waseverywhere, the snow, whether one or twenty feet deep, offering as solida surface as the bare ice. This encouraged me to step out, and I beganto move with some spirit; the exercise was as good as a fire, and beforeI was half-way up I was as warm as ever I had been in my life.
I had come to a stand to fetch a breath, and was moving on afresh, when,having taken not half a dozen steps, I spied the figure of a man. He wasin a sitting posture, his back against a rock that had concealed him.His head was bowed, and his knees drawn up to a level with his chin, andhis naked hands were clasped upon his legs. His attitude was that of aperson lost in thought, very easy and calm.
I stopped as if I had been shot through the heart. Had it been a bear,or a sea-lion, or any creature which my mind could instantly haveassociated with this white and stirless desolation, I might have beenstartled indeed; but no such amazement could have possessed me as I nowfelt. It never entered into my head to doubt that he was alive, sonatural was his attitude, as of one lost in a mood of tender melancholy.
I stood staring at him, myself motionless, for some minutes, too greatlyastonished and thunder-struck to note more than that he was a man. ThenI looked about me to see if he had companions or for some signs of ahabitation, but the ice was everywhere naked. I fixed my eyes on himagain. His hair was above a foot long, black as ink, and the blackermaybe for the contrast of the snow. His beard and mustachios, which werealso of this raven hue, fell to his girdle. He wore a great yellowflapping hat, such as was in fashion among the Spaniards and buccaneersof the South Sea; but over his ears, for the warmth of the protection,were squares of flannel, secured by a very fine red silk handkerchiefknotted under his beard, and this, with his hair and pale cheeks andblack shaggy eyebro
ws, gave him a terrible and ghastly appearance. Fromhis shoulders hung a rich thick cloak lined with red, and the legs tothe height of the knees were encased in large boots.
I continued surveying him with my heart beating fast. Every instant Iexpected to see him turn his head and start to behold me. My emotionswere too tumultuous to analyze, yet I believe I was more frightened thangladdened by the sight of a fellow-creature, though not long before Ihad sighed bitterly for some one to speak to. I looked around again,prepared to find another one like him taking stock of me from behind arock, and then ventured to approach him by a few steps the better to seehim. He had certainly a frightful face. It was not only the length ofhis coal-black hair and beard; it was the hue of his skin, a greenishashen colour, an unspeakably hideous complexion, sharpened on the onehand by the red handkerchief over his ears and on the other by thedazzle of the snow. Then, again, there was the extreme strangeness ofhis costume.
I coughed loudly, holding my pole in readiness for whatever mightbefall, but he did not stir; I then holloaed, and was answered by theechoes of my own voice among the rocks. His stillness persuaded me hewas in one of those deep slumbers which fall upon a man in frozenplaces, for I could not persuade myself he was dead, so living was hisposture.
This will not do, thought I; so I went close to him and peered into hisface.
His eyes were fixed; they resembled glass painted as eyes, the coloursfaded. He had a broad belt round his waist, and the hilt of a kind ofcutlass peeped from under his cloak. Otherwise he was unarmed. I thoughthe breathed, and seemed to see a movement in his breast, and I took himby the shoulder; but in the hurry of my feelings I exerted more strengththan I was sensible of. I pushed him with the violence of suddentrepidation; my hand slipped off his shoulder, and he fell on his side,exactly as a statue would, preserving his posture as though, like astatue, he had been chiselled out of marble or stone.
I started back frightened by his fall, in which my fears found a sort oflife; but it was soon clear to me his rigidity was that of a man frozento death. His very hair and beard stood stiff, as before, as though theywere some exquisite counterfeit in ebony. Perfectly satisfied that hewas dead, I stepped round to the other side of him, and set him up as Ihad found him. He was as heavy as if he had been alive, and when I puthis back to the rock his posture was exactly as it had been, that of onedeeply meditating.
Who had this man been in life? How had he fallen into this pass? Howlong had he been dead there, seated as I saw him?
These were speculations not to be resolved by conjecture. On looking atthe rock against which he leaned and observing its curvature, it seemedto me that it had formed part of a cave, or of some large, deep hole ofice; and this I was sure must have been the case, for it is certainthat, had this body remained long unsheltered, it must have been hiddenby the snow.
I concluded then that the unhappy man had been cast away upon this icewhilst it was under bleaker heights than these parallels, and that hehad crawled into a hollow, and perished in that melancholic sittingposture. But in what year had his fate come upon him? I had madeseveral voyages into distant places in my time and seen a great varietyof people; but I had never met any man habited as that body. He had theappearance of a Spanish or French cut-throat of the middle of lastcentury, and of earlier times yet; for it may be known to you that thebuccaneers of the Spanish Main and the South Sea were great lovers offinery; they had a strange theatric taste in their choice of costumes,which, as you will suppose, they had abundant opportunities forgratifying out of the many rich and glittering wardrobes that fell intotheir hands; and this man, I say, with his large fine hat, handsomecloak and boots, coupled with the villainous cast of his countenance andthe frightful appearance his long hair gave him, rendered him to mynotions the completest figure that could be imagined of one of thoserogues who earned their living as pirates.
Thinking I might find something on his person to acquaint me with hisstory or that would furnish me with some idea of the date of his beingcast away, I pulled his cloak aside and searched his pockets. His legswere thickly cased in two or three pairs of breeches, the outer pairbeing of a dark green cloth. He also wore a handsome red waistcoat,laced, and a stout coat of a kind of frieze. In his coat pocket I founda silver tobacco-box, a small glass flask fitted with a silver band andhalf full of an amber-coloured liquor, hard froze; and in his waistcoatpocket a gold watch, shaped like an apple, the back curiously chased andinlaid with jewels of several kinds, forming a small letter M. Thehands pointed to twenty minutes after three. A key of a strange shapeand a number of seals, trinkets, and the like, were attached to thewatch.
These things, together with a knife, a key, a thick plain silver ring,and some Spanish pieces in gold and silver were what I found on thisman. There was nothing to tell me who he was nor how long he had been onthe island.
The searching him was the most disagreeable job I ever undertook in mylife. His iron-like rigidity made him seem to resist me, and the swayingof his back against the rock to the motions of my hand was so full oflife that twice I quitted him, frightened by it. On touching his nakedhand by accident I discovered that the flesh of it moved upon the bonesas you pull a glove off and on. I had had enough of him, and walked awayfeeling sick. If he had companions, and they were like him, I did notwant to see them, unless it was that I might satisfy my curiosity as tothe time they had been here. I determined, however, on my way back totake his cloak, which would make me a comfortable rug in the boat, andalso the watch, flask, and tobacco-box; for if I was drowned they couldbut go to the bottom of the sea, which was their certain destination ifI left them in his pockets; and if I came off with them, then the moneythey would bring me must somewhat lighten the loss of my clothes andproperty in the brig.
I pushed onwards, stepping warily and probing cautiously at every step,and earnestly peering about me, for after such a sight as that dead manI was never to know what new wonder I might stumble upon. About aquarter of a mile on my left--that is, on my left whilst I kept my faceto the slope--there was the appearance of a ravine not discernible fromwhere the boat lay. When I was within twenty feet of the summit of thecliff, the acclivity continuing gentle to the very brow, but muchbroken, as I have said, I noticed this hollow, and more particularly asmall collection of ice-forms, not nearly so large as the other groupsof this kind, but most dainty and lovely nevertheless. They showed asthe heads of trees might to my ascent, and when I had got a littlehigher I observed that they were formed upon the hither side of thehollow, as though the convulsion which had wrought that chasm had tossedup those exquisite caprices of ice. However, I was too eager to view theprospect from the top of the cliff to suffer my admiration to detain me;in a few minutes I had gained the brow, and, clambering on to a mass ofrock, I sent my gaze around.