The Frozen Pirate | Page 9

the stores for the crew. I lifted
the hatch and listened, and could hear the water in the hold gurgling
and rushing with every lift of the brig's bows; and I could not question
from the volume of water which the sound indicated that the vessel was
steadily taking it in, but not rapidly. I swallowed half a pannikin of the
hollands for the sake of the warmth and life of the draught, and entering
my cabin, put on thick dry stockings, first, chafing my feet till I felt the
blood in them; and I then, with a seaman's dispatch, shifted the rest of
my apparel, and cannot express how greatly I was comforted by the
change, though the jacket and trousers I put on were still damp with the
soaking of previous days. To render myself as waterproof as
possible--for it was the wet clothes against the skin that made the cold
so cruel--I took from the captain's cabin a stout cloak and threw it over
me, enveloping my head, which I had cased in a warm fur cap, with the
hood of it; and thus equipped I lighted a small hand-lantern that was
used on dark nights for heaving the log, that is, for showing how the
sand runs in the glass, and carried it on deck.
The lantern made the scene a dead, grave-like black outside its little
circle of illumination; nevertheless its rays suffered me to guess at the
picture of ruin the decks offered. The main mast was snapped three or
four feet above the deck, and the stump of it showed as jagged and
barbed as a wild beast's teeth. But I now noticed that the weight of the
hamper being on the larboard side, balanced the list the vessel took
from her shifted ballast, and that she floated on a level keel with her

bows fair at the sea, whence I concluded that a sort of sea-anchor had
been formed ahead of her by the wreckage, and that it held her in that
posture, otherwise she must certainly have fallen into the trough.
I moved with extreme caution, casting the lantern light before me,
sometimes starting at a sound that resembled a groan, then stopping to
steady myself during some particular wild leap of the hull; until,
coming abreast of the main hatch, the rays of the lantern struck upon a
man's body, which, on my bringing the flame to his face, proved to be
Captain Rosy. There was a wound over his right brow; and as if that
had not sufficed to slay him, the fall of the masts had in some
wonderful manner whipped a rope several times round his body,
binding his arms and encircling his throat so tightly, that no executioner
could have gone more artistically to work to pinion and choke a man.
Under a mass of rigging in the larboard scuppers lay two bodies, as I
could just faintly discern; it was impossible to put the lantern close
enough to either one of them to distinguish his face, nor had I the
strength even if I had possessed the weapons to extricate them, for they
lay under a whole body of shrouds, complicated by a mass of other gear,
against which leaned a portion of the caboose. I viewed them long
enough to satisfy my mind that they were dead, and then with a heart of
lead turned away.
I crossed to the starboard side, where the deck was comparatively clear,
and found the body of a seaman named Abraham Wise near the
fore-hatch. This man had probably been stunned and drowned by the
sea that filled the deck after I loosed the staysail. These were all of our
people that I could find; the others I supposed had been washed by the
water or knocked by the falling spars overboard.
I returned to the quarter-deck, and sat down in the companion way for
the shelter of it and to think. No language that I have command of
could put before you the horror that possessed me as I sat meditating
upon my situation and recalling the faces of the dead. The wind was
rapidly falling, and with it the sea, but the motion of the brig continued
very heavy, a large swell having been set running by the long, fierce
gale that was gone; and there being no uproar of tempest in the sky to

confound the senses, I could hear a hundred harsh and melancholy
groaning and straining sounds rising from the hull, with now and again
a mighty blow as from some spar or lump of ice alongside, weighty
enough, you would have supposed, to stave the ship. But though the
Laughing Mary was not a new vessel, she was one of the stoutest of her