These were speculations not to be resolved by conjecture. On looking at the rock against which he leaned and observing its curvature, it seemed to me that it had formed part of a cave, or of some large, deep hole of ice; and this I was sure must have been the case, for it is certain that, had this body remained long unsheltered, it must have been hidden by the snow.
I concluded then that the unhappy man had been cast away upon this ice whilst it was under bleaker heights than these parallels, and that he had crawled into a hollow, and perished in that melancholic sitting posture. But in what year had his fate come upon him? I had made several voyages into distant places in my time and seen a great variety of people; but I had never met any man habited as that body. He had the appearance of a Spanish or French cut-throat of the middle of last century, and of earlier times yet; for it may be known to you that the buccaneers of the Spanish Main and the South Sea were great lovers of finery; they had a strange theatric taste in their choice of costumes, which, as you will suppose, they had abundant opportunities for gratifying out of the many rich and glittering wardrobes that fell into their hands; and this man, I say, with his large fine hat, handsome cloak and boots, coupled with the villainous cast of his countenance and the frightful appearance his long hair gave him, rendered him to my notions the completest figure that could be imagined of one of those rogues who earned their living as pirates.
Thinking I might find something on his person to acquaint me with his story or that would furnish me with some idea of the date of his being cast away, I pulled his cloak aside and searched his pockets. His legs were thickly cased in two or three pairs of breeches, the outer pair being of a dark green cloth. He also wore a handsome red waistcoat, laced, and a stout coat of a kind of frieze. In his coat pocket I found a silver tobacco-box, a small glass flask fitted with a silver band and half full of an amber-coloured liquor, hard froze; and in his waistcoat pocket a gold watch, shaped like an apple, the back curiously chased and inlaid with jewels of several kinds, forming a small letter M. The hands pointed to twenty minutes after three. A key of a strange shape and a number of seals, trinkets, and the like, were attached to the watch.
These things, together with a knife, a key, a thick plain silver ring, and some Spanish pieces in gold and silver were what I found on this man. There was nothing to tell me who he was nor how long he had been on the island.
The searching him was the most disagreeable job I ever undertook in my life. His iron-like rigidity made him seem to resist me, and the swaying of his back against the rock to the motions of my hand was so full of life that twice I quitted him, frightened by it. On touching his naked hand by accident I discovered that the flesh of it moved upon the bones as you pull a glove off and on. I had had enough of him, and walked away feeling sick. If he had companions, and they were like him, I did not want to see them, unless it was that I might satisfy my curiosity as to the time they had been here. I determined, however, on my way back to take his cloak, which would make me a comfortable rug in the boat, and also the watch, flask, and tobacco-box; for if I was drowned they could but go to the bottom of the sea, which was their certain destination if I left them in his pockets; and if I came off with them, then the money they would bring me must somewhat lighten the loss of my clothes and property in the brig.
I pushed onwards, stepping warily and probing cautiously at every step, and earnestly peering about me, for after such a sight as that dead man I was never to know what new wonder I might stumble upon. About a quarter of a mile on my left—that is, on my left whilst I kept my face to the slope—there was the appearance of a ravine not discernible from where the boat lay. When I was within twenty feet of the summit of the cliff, the acclivity continuing gentle to the very brow, but much broken, as I have said, I noticed this hollow, and more particularly a small collection of ice-forms, not nearly so large as the other groups of this kind, but most dainty and lovely nevertheless. They showed as the heads of trees might to my ascent, and when I had got a little higher I observed that they were formed upon the hither side of the hollow, as though the convulsion which had wrought that chasm had tossed up those exquisite caprices of ice. However, I was too eager to view the prospect from the top of the cliff to suffer my admiration to detain me; in a few minutes I had gained the brow, and, clambering on to a mass of rock, I sent my gaze around.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FROZEN SCHOONER.
I found myself on the summit of a kind of table-land; vast bodies of ice, every block weighing hundreds and perhaps thousands of tons lay scattered over it; yet for the space of a mile or so the character was that of flatness. Southwards the range went upwards to a coastal front of some hundred feet, with a huddle of peaks and strange configurations behind soaring to an elevation from the sea-line of two or three hundred feet. Northwards the range sloped gradually, with such a shelving of its hinder part that I could catch a glimpse of a little space of the blue sea that way. From this I perceived that whatever thickness and surface of ice lay southwards, in the north it was attenuated to the shape of a wedge, so that its extreme breadth where it projected its cape or extremity would not exceed a musket shot.