The depth was not great nor the declivity sharp; but the surface was formed of blocks of ice, like the collections of big stones you sometimes encounter on the sides of mountains near the base; and I had again and again to fetch a compass so as to gain a smaller block down which to drop, till I was close to the vessel, and here the snow had piled and frozen into a smooth face.
The ship lay with a list or inclination to larboard. I had come down to her on her starboard side. She had small channels with long plates, but her list, on my side, hove them somewhat high, beyond my reach, and I perceived that to get aboard I must seek an entrance on the larboard hand. This was not hard to arrive at; indeed, I had but to walk round her, under her bows. She was so coated with hard snow I could see nothing of her timbers, and was therefore unable to guess at the condition of the hull. She had a most absurd swelling bilge, and her buttocks, viewed on a line with her rudder, doubtless presented the exact appearance of an apple. She was sunk in snow to some planks above the garboard-streak, but her lines forward were fine, making her almost wedge-shaped, though the flair of her bows was great, so that she swelled up like a balloon to the catheads. She had something of the look of the barca-longas of half a century ago—that is, half a century ago from the date of my adventure; but that which, in sober truth, a man would have taken her to be was a vessel formed of snow, sparred and rigged with glass-like frosted ice, the artistic caprice of the genius or spirit of this white and melancholy scene, who, to complete the mocking illusion, had fashioned the figure of a man to stand on deck with a human face toughened into an idle eternal contemplation.
On the larboard hand the ice pressed close against the vessel's side, some pieces rising to the height of her wash-streak. The face of the hollow was precipitous here, full of cracks and flaws and sharp projections. Indeed, had the breadth of the island been as it was at the extremity I might have counted upon the first violent commotion of the sea snapping this part of the ice, and converting the northern part of the body into a separate berg.
I climbed without difficulty into the fore-chains, the snow being so hard that my feet and hands made not the least impression on it, and somewhat warily—feeling the government of a peculiar awe, mounting into a sort of terror indeed—stood awhile peering over the rail of the bulwarks; then entered the ship. I ran my eyes swiftly here and there, for indeed I did not know what might steal or leap into view. Let it be remembered that I was a sailor, with the superstitious feelings of my calling in me, and though I do not know that I actually believed in ghosts and apparitions and spectrums, yet I felt as if I did; particularly upon the deck of this silent ship, rendered spirit-like by the grave of ice in which she lay and by the long years (as I could not doubt) during which she had thus rested. Hence, when I slipped off the bulwark on to the deck and viewed the ghastly, white, lonely scene, I felt for the moment as if this strange discovery of mine was not to be exhausted of its wonders and terrors by the mere existence of the ship—in other words, that I must expect something of the supernatural to enter into this icy sepulchre, and be prepared for sights more marvellous and terrifying than frozen corpses.
So I stood looking forward and aft, very swiftly, and in a way I dare say that a spectator would have thought laughable enough; nor was my imagination soothed by the clear, harping, ringing sounds of the wind seething through the frozen rigging where the masts rose above the shelter of the sides of the hollow.
Presently, getting the better of my perturbation, I walked aft, and, stepping on to the poop-deck, fell to an examination of the companion or covering of the after-hatch, which, as I have elsewhere said, was covered with snow.
CHAPTER X.
ANOTHER STARTLING DISCOVERY.
This hatch formed the entrance to the cabin, and there was no other road to it that I could see. If I wanted to use it I must first scrape away the snow; but unhappily I had left my knife in the boat, and was without any instrument that would serve me to scrape with. I thought of breaking the beer-bottle that was in my pocket and scratching with a piece of the glass; but before doing this it occurred to me to search the body on the starboard side.