The Frozen Pirate

ng this icy and tempestuous tract of waters but knows that here he must expect to find Nature in her most violent moods, crueller and more unreckonable than a ma

ood or obtain a warm drink. The cold was beyond language severe. The rigging was glazed with ice, and great pendants of the silvery brilliance of crystal hung from the yards, bowsprit, and catheads, whilst the sails were frozen to the hardness of granite, and lay like sheets of iron rolled up in gaskets of steel. We had no means of drying our clothes, nor were we able so to move as by exercise we might keep ourselves warm. Never once did the sun shine to give us the e

d, steadily trending with the send of each giant surge further and deeper

watch could be kept, if it were not in the companion hatch. Such was the violence with which the seas broke over the brig that it was at the risk of his life a man crawled the dista

ous turmoil, so illusive and indefinable were the shadows of the storm-tormented night-one block of blackness melting into another, with sometimes an extraordinary faintness of light speeding along the dark sky like to the dim reflection of a lanthorn flinging its radiance from afar, which no doubt must have been the reflection of some par

f supper, the hour being eight bells in the second dog watch as we say, that is, eight o'clock in the evening. The captain and ca

, I suppose, Rodney

he looks well up, and tha

the carpenter, "but never through so long a stretch. I doubt if you'l

f the globe. When bad sailors die they're sent here, I reckon. The worst nautical sinner can't be hove to long

the carpenter. "The place it comes from must give out soon, unless

rift will be giving us, captain?"

y, and since you're a scholar, Rodney, I'll leave you to describe what's inside of it, though boil me if I don't have the naming of the tall

sed by his jocosity that he had already been making somewhat free; for although I love a bold face

above the sweeping and seething of the wind and the hissing of the lashed waters, and

!" bawled the carpenter

the cry that persuaded me it was not as the carpenter said; and in

ry rang down along the wind from some man forward:

or as to my own and the sight of Captain Rosy and the carpenter, why, it was like b

the brig's head into a sea, which furiously flooded her forecastle and

uddenly roared

where?" bawle

ould have told in that black thickness. It stood against the darkness and hung out a dim complexion of light, or rather of pallidness, that was not light-not to be d

houted to

onsternation he was under had settled the fumes of the spir

and seen the berg, they had tumbled up as sailors will when they jump for their lives; and now they came staggering, splashin

t lively! Cast the helm adrift!" (we steered by a tiller). "Two hands stand by

it still had to bear the weight of the heavy spritsail yard, and the drag of the staysail might carry the spar overboard with the men upon it. Yet it was our b

"Great thunder! 'tis close aboard! You'll leave m

ried out; "and others sta

full fierceness the wildness of my feelings did not suffer me to be sensible; it was the pouring of volumes of water upon me from over the rail, often tumbling upon my head with such weight as nearly to beat the breath out of my body and sink me to the deck; it was the frenzy excited in me by the tremendous obligation of despatch and my retardment by the washing seas, the violent motions of the brig, the encumbrance of gear and deck f

nd every moment I was prepared to be torn from my hold. It was a fearful time; the falling off of the brig into the trough-and never was I in a hollower and more swelling sea-her falling off, I say, in the act of veering might end us out of hand by the rolling of a surge over us big enough to cru

ly my arms. In a flash the gale, whipping into a liberated fold of the canvas, blew the whole sail out; the bowsprit reeled and quivered under me; I danced off it with incredible despatch, shouting to the me

wn, for I could not see. "Get a drag upon the sh

shrouds, I was holding on with both hands to the topsail halliards whilst calling to the men, so that being under the rail, which broke the blow of the sea, and holding on too, no mischief befell me, only that for about twenty seconds I stood in a horrible fury and smot

force to it, drove it up to windward and secured it by a turn of its own rope; for ice or no ice-and for the moment I was so blinded by the wet that I could not see the berg-my madness now was to get the brig

the blackness on the

said he. It w

nsw

ried he. "I think I have

aft. Then two more. They were

s at the helm when t

ed, "Me, Tho

seemed to me that I was the only ma

orward along wit

as to the others, the captain, with a scream like an epilep

the night would suffer us to distinguish. In a time like this at sea events throng so fast they come in a heap, and even if the intelligence were not conf

was reverberated in a dull hollow tremble back to the ear through the hissing flight of the gale. The frozen body was not taller than our mastheads, yet it showed like a mountain hanging over us as the brig was flung swirling into the deep Pacific hollow, leaving us staring upwards out of the instant's stagnation of the trough with lips set breathlessly and with dying eyes

ing overhead-the crash and blows of spars and yards torn down and striking the hull; above all the grating of the vessel, that was now head on to the sea and swept by the billows, broadside on, along the sharp and murderous projections. Two monster seas tumbled over the b

of it and were to leeward; but what was our condition? I tried to shout again, but to no purpose; and was in the act of quitting the