I dreamed, it seemed to me, all night long. Sometimes I was at home with my father and mother and sweet sisters, and they were all laughing and talking, while we stood at the window of the dining-hall and looked out at the beautiful and familiar prospect before it. Someone was describing to them some adventures very similar to mine; but I felt that I could have nothing to do with them, for I was still, I knew, on an iceberg in the Northern Ocean, likely any moment to be overwhelmed beneath it. Then I thought a ship appeared, and Captain Dean was at the helm, and that sweet Mary, dressed in white, and looking like a seraph, stood on the forecastle waving to me to come off to them. I, of course, could not move, for my feet were jammed into a hole in the ice, and I struggled in vain to drag them out. On a sudden a storm arose, and Mary shrieked; and even her father turned pale, as the ship rose on the tops of the angry billows, and rolled over and over, bow foremost, till she was lost to my sight in the distance. I cried out with terror, and my own voice awoke me, when I found that my feet were projecting beyond the shelter of the sail, and were bitterly cold. I got up to warm them by stamping them up and down, and the noise awoke my companions. They naturally told me to lie down and be quiet; but the night was so fine and calm, that I said I would go a little way from them not to disturb them, and would walk up and down for an hour or so. I had no fancy for any more of those dreadful dreams, and I felt that the exercise would do me good. As I looked out on the tranquil, dark-shining sea, in which the glittering stars floating, so it seemed, in the blue ether above me were reflected as in a mirror, all sorts of strange fancies came into my head. I remembered all I had read or heard of mermen and mermaids, of ocean monsters and sea-spirits, and I could scarcely persuade myself that I did not see some gliding before me. Certainly I could hear them: now there was a distant roar, now a loud snorting noise near me; there were voices wandering through the air, and strains of sweet music seemed to come up from the deep. I was almost positive I could hear music: sweet and faint and soft as a seraph's sigh, it came down to my ear on the gentle wind. I would on no account have missed listening to that enchanting melody. For a long time I continued gazing on the sea without feeling any inclination to sleep, when I fancied that I saw the dark sails of a ship about a mile off, and directly to windward of us. I peered into the darkness to assure myself, for I did not like causelessly to arouse my companions. How eagerly I looked may be supposed. If there was a ship where I supposed, the music I had heard must have come from her. At last I was almost confident that there was a ship; but as I had my doubts, I went back to Andrew and touched his arm.