The Frozen Pirate

by William Clark Russell

I speedily found, however, that there was no danger of my being buried by stepping into a hollow full of snow; for the same hardness was everywhere, the snow, whether one or twenty feet deep, offering as solid a surface as the bare ice. This encouraged me to step out, and I began to move with some spirit; the exercise was as good as a fire, and before I was half-way up I was as warm as ever I had been in my life.

I had come to a stand to fetch a breath, and was moving on afresh, when, having taken not half a dozen steps, I spied the figure of a man. He was in a sitting posture, his back against a rock that had concealed him. His head was bowed, and his knees drawn up to a level with his chin, and his naked hands were clasped upon his legs. His attitude was that of a person lost in thought, very easy and calm.

I stopped as if I had been shot through the heart. Had it been a bear, or a sea-lion, or any creature which my mind could instantly have associated with this white and stirless desolation, I might have been startled indeed; but no such amazement could have possessed me as I now felt. It never entered into my head to doubt that he was alive, so natural was his attitude, as of one lost in a mood of tender melancholy.

I stood staring at him, myself motionless, for some minutes, too greatly astonished and thunder-struck to note more than that he was a man. Then I looked about me to see if he had companions or for some signs of a habitation, but the ice was everywhere naked. I fixed my eyes on him again. His hair was above a foot long, black as ink, and the blacker maybe for the contrast of the snow. His beard and mustachios, which were also of this raven hue, fell to his girdle. He wore a great yellow flapping hat, such as was in fashion among the Spaniards and buccaneers of the South Sea; but over his ears, for the warmth of the protection, were squares of flannel, secured by a very fine red silk handkerchief knotted under his beard, and this, with his hair and pale cheeks and black shaggy eyebrows, gave him a terrible and ghastly appearance. From his shoulders hung a rich thick cloak lined with red, and the legs to the height of the knees were encased in large boots.

I continued surveying him with my heart beating fast. Every instant I expected to see him turn his head and start to behold me. My emotions were too tumultuous to analyze, yet I believe I was more frightened than gladdened by the sight of a fellow-creature, though not long before I had sighed bitterly for some one to speak to. I looked around again, prepared to find another one like him taking stock of me from behind a rock, and then ventured to approach him by a few steps the better to see him. He had certainly a frightful face. It was not only the length of his coal-black hair and beard; it was the hue of his skin, a greenish ashen colour, an unspeakably hideous complexion, sharpened on the one hand by the red handkerchief over his ears and on the other by the dazzle of the snow. Then, again, there was the extreme strangeness of his costume.

I coughed loudly, holding my pole in readiness for whatever might befall, but he did not stir; I then holloaed, and was answered by the echoes of my own voice among the rocks. His stillness persuaded me he was in one of those deep slumbers which fall upon a man in frozen places, for I could not persuade myself he was dead, so living was his posture.

This will not do, thought I; so I went close to him and peered into his face.

His eyes were fixed; they resembled glass painted as eyes, the colours faded. He had a broad belt round his waist, and the hilt of a kind of cutlass peeped from under his cloak. Otherwise he was unarmed. I thought he breathed, and seemed to see a movement in his breast, and I took him by the shoulder; but in the hurry of my feelings I exerted more strength than I was sensible of. I pushed him with the violence of sudden trepidation; my hand slipped off his shoulder, and he fell on his side, exactly as a statue would, preserving his posture as though, like a statue, he had been chiselled out of marble or stone.

I started back frightened by his fall, in which my fears found a sort of life; but it was soon clear to me his rigidity was that of a man frozen to death. His very hair and beard stood stiff, as before, as though they were some exquisite counterfeit in ebony. Perfectly satisfied that he was dead, I stepped round to the other side of him, and set him up as I had found him. He was as heavy as if he had been alive, and when I put his back to the rock his posture was exactly as it had been, that of one deeply meditating.

Who had this man been in life? How had he fallen into this pass? How long had he been dead there, seated as I saw him?