I sat a good time that afternoon in one of her
steely port main-deck casemates on a gun-carriage, my head sunken on my
breast, furtively eyeing the bluish turned-up feet, all shrunk,
exsanguined, of a sailor who lay on his back before me; his soles were
all that I could see, the rest of him lying head-downwards beyond the
steel door-sill.
Drenched in seas of lugubrious reverie I sat, till, with a shuddering
start, I awoke, paddled back to the _Boreal_, and, till sleep conquered
me, went on my way. At ten the next morning, coming on deck, I spied to
the west a group of craft, and turned my course upon them. They turned
out to be eight Shetland sixerns, which must have drifted north-eastward
hither. I examined them well, but they were as the long list of the
others: for all the men, and all the boys, and all the dogs on them were
dead.
* * * * *
I could have come to land a long time before I did: but I would not: I
was so afraid. For I was used to the silence of the ice: and I was used
to the silence of the sea: but, God knows it, I was afraid of the
silence of the land.
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