No wilder, drearier dawn ever broke over that cold, stormy, and desolate ocean. I guessed the wind about north; a strong wind, with a shriek as shrill as salt as it fled spray-charged past the ear, flaying as though it were a naked edge of sharp steel. A large squall was darkening the sea to leeward of the boat; when I was thrown up I saw the dim whiteness of ice in several places. I gazed slowly around in a broken way, for in every other breath there stood a wall of water betwixt me and the horizon. All on a sudden when my eyes went astern I saw, not above a mile distant, a dark object: it reared and sank, came and went; sometimes froth leapt in a light of snow about it. I stared, scarcely daring to hope as yet that it was more than an illusion of the vision, a reappearing shape of green surge, a hard reforming moulding of brine, looking like--looking like---- And then with a short choking cry of transport I recognised it. It was the dismasted hull: that wreck of the 'Lady Emma' we had been in search of. I watched her to make sure, dreading some cheat of delirious imagination--but it was the wreck; I marked her rise with the sea, a firm, defined, black shape against the root of the thick large squall that was blowing to leeward of her. A dim sheen of the gloomy day was in her wet side or sheathing as she soared, heeling not above a mile off and dead to leeward. The sight gave life to my dead limbs, as it put spirit into my dying heart. I got the use of my arms and hands with a sudden frenzy of resolution, like to the effect of the panic terror that will compel a bedridden man to rise, though till thus started he has lain helpless as the mattress he springs from. I went into the bows, and getting hold of the body of Friend turned it over the gunwale. The corpse as I have said was that of a stout burly man, yet I found it light as a baby. How was that? Unless it was that the strength of half a dozen had come into me with the passion of life and hope the sight of the wreck had inspired. I pulled in the pair of oars the boat had been riding to and took my chance of the broadside send of sea; the fierce sweep and sharp angle nearly flung me overboard, and thrice whilst I was clearing the oars which were heavy and difficult with ice, the boat was almost capsized. In a few minutes I got an oar over the stern and sculled the boat's head round for the wreck. She shot forward, and I sat square that my back might break any smaller sea which should foam tall and curl faster than the boat could rise. For the rest--for the peril of a great sea, for the swamping by seething waters uniting on either side the gunwale--I was in God's hands.