His leer at this sally was terribly expressive, and I showed all the contempt I felt for him, turning away to the sea fondly, as the hope of my liberty, since thence only should it come. He read my thoughts, perhaps, taking me by the arm with unsought pretence of kindness, and he said—
"Don't let's dissect each other's morals; we have the place to see, and you must be getting hungry. I will show you only one thing before we go—it is our cemetery."
It was not a fascinating prospect, yet I followed him across the high plateau to the creek wherein the rock-house was, but to the side which was opposite to my bedroom window. There he descended the face of the cliff by rough steps; and entered one of the passages which I had observed from my chamber. The passage was long and low, lighted by ships' lanterns at intervals, and I discovered that it led to a great cavern which opened to the face of one of the glaciers going down to the sea on the farther side. Nor have I entered a sepulchre which ever gave me such an infinite horror of death, or such a realisation of its terrors.
The end of the cavern was nothing but a wall of ice, clear as glass, admitting a soft light which illuminated the whole place with dim rays, making it a place of mystery and awe. Yet I had not noticed its more dreadful aspect at the first coming; and, when I did so, I gave a cry of horror and turned away my face, fearing to see again that most overwhelming spectacle. For blocks had been cut from the clear ice, and the dead seamen had been laid in the frozen mass just as they had died, without coffin or other covering than their clothes. There they lay, their faces upturned, many of them displaying all the placid peacefulness of death; but some grinned with horrible grimaces, and the eyes of some started from their heads, and there were teeth that seemed to be biting into the ice, and hands clenched as though the fierce activity of life pursued them beyond the veil. Yet the frightful mausoleum, the den of death, was pure in its atmosphere as a garden of snow, cool as grass after rain, silent as a tomb of the sea. Not a sound even of dripping water, not a motion of life without, not a sigh or dull echo disturbed its repose. Only the dead with hands uplifted, the dead in frozen rest, the dead with the smile of death, or the hate of death, or the terror of death written upon their faces, seemed to watch and to wait in the chamber of the sepulchre.
I have said that the sight terrified me; yet the whole of my fear I could not write, though the pen of Death himself were in my hands. So profoundly did the agony of it appeal to me that for many minutes together I dare not raise my eyes, could scarce restrain myself from flying, leaving the dreadful picture to those that should care to gaze upon it. Yet its spell was too terrible, the morbid magnetism of it too potent; and I looked again and again, and turned away, and looked yet once more; and went to the ice to gaze more closely at the dead faces, and was so carried away with the trance of it that I seemed to forget the dead men, and thought that they lived. When I recalled myself, I observed Doctor Osbart watching me intently.
"A strange place, isn't it?" he said. "Observe it closely, for some day you will be here with the others."
I shuddered at his thought, and muttered, "God forbid!"
"Why?" he asked, hearing it. "It's not a very fearful thing to contemplate. I would sooner lie in ice than in earth—and that ice is not part of the glacier; it never moves. It is bound by the rock there which cuts it off from the main mass."
"It's a horrible sight!" I exclaimed, shivering.
"Not at all," he said. "These men have been our friends. I like to see them, and in a way one can talk to them. Who can be sure that they do not hear?"