"Ay, sir, and alive, too! Do you hear that?" added old Hans Peterkin, in terror.
It was a strange, croaking sound; and then, as we approached the half-open hatch of the forehold, we heard the flapping of large wings.
Though almost paralysed by hearing such an unwonted sound in such a place, one of our seal-fishers fired his gun in his confusion. I crept forward and peeped fearfully down, but could not distinguish anything amid the gloom below.
Then we heard another croak, which sounded so loud and so dreadful to our over-strained organs of hearing that it nearly made us all scamper over the side; when suddenly two giant ravens, who had doubtless long made the empty wreck their home, rose through the fore-hatchway on their black booming pinions, and soaring high into the clear air, winged their way directly to the east, and so swiftly that they soon disappeared.
"The land lies where they are flying to," said Reeves.
"And it is not far off, as their presence here would indicate," added a seaman.
This idea encouraged us all very much, as we forgot that they might have floated with the ice-field for years. We were about to descend into the forehold, but on lifting the other half of the decayed hatch, we found the frozen remains of a man hanging there by the neck, and half devoured by those obscene birds. A capstan-bar had been placed athwart the combing, and to this he had suspended himself by a well-greased rope.
Was this unfortunate the last survivor, who, in desperation, had thus awfully ended his misery?
His situation seemed to say so.