countenances and iron silent lips. I thrust back another sliding door and entered the ship's forecastle. The ceiling, as I choose to call the upper deck, was lined with hammocks, and the floor was covered with chests, bedding, clothes, and I know not what else. The ringing of the wind on high did not disturb the stillness, and I cannot convey the impression produced on my mind by this extraordinary scene of confusion beheld amid the silence of that tomblike interior. I stood in the doorway, not having the courage to venture further. For all I knew many of those hammocks might be tenanted; for as this kind of bed expresses by its curvature the rounded shape of a seaman, whether it be empty or not, so it is impossible by merely looking to know whether it is occupied or vacant. The dismalness of the prospect was of course vastly exaggerated by the feeble light of the candle, which, swaying in my hand, flung a swarming of shadows upon the scene, through which the hammocks glimmered wan and melancholy. I came away in a fright, sliding the door to in my hurry with a bang that fetched a groaning echo out of the hold. If this ship were haunted, the forecastle would be the abode of the spirits! Before I could make a fire the chimney must be cleared. Among the furniture in the arms-room were a number of spade-headed spears; the spade as wide as the length of a man's thumb, and about a foot long, mounted on light thin wood. Armed with one of these weapons, the like of which is to be met with among certain South American tribes, I passed into the cabin to proceed on deck; but though I knew the two figures were there, the coming upon them afresh struck me with as much astonishment and alarm as if I had not before seen them. The man starting from the table confronted me on this entrance, and I stopped dead to that astounding living posture of terror, even recoiling, as though he were alive indeed, and was jumping up from the table in his amazement at my apparition. The brilliance of the snow was very striking after the dusk of the interiors I had been penetrating. The glare seemed like a blaze of white sunshine; yet it was the dazzle of the ice and nothing more for the sun was hidden; the fairness of the morning was passed; the sky was lead-coloured down to the ocean line, with a quantity of smoke-brown scud flying along it. The change had been rapid, as it always is hereabouts. The wind screamed with a piercing whistling sound through the frozen rigging, splitting in wails and bounding in a roar upon the adamantine peaks and rocks; the cracking of the ice was loud, continuous, and mighty startling; and these sounds, combined with the thundering of the sea and the fierce hissing of its rushing yeast, gave the weather the character of a storm, though as yet it was no more than a fresh gale.