s back before me; his soles were
all that I could see, the rest of him lying head-downwards beyond the
steel door-sill.

Drenched in seas of lugubrious reverie I sat, till, with a shuddering
start, I awoke, paddled back to the _Boreal_, and, till sleep conquered
me, went on my way. At ten the next morning, coming on deck, I spied to
the west a group of craft, and turned my course upon them. They turned
out to be eight Shetland sixerns, which must have drifted north-eastward
hither. I examined them well, but they were as the long list of the
others: for all the men, and all the boys, and all the dogs on them were
dead.

* * * * *

I could have come to land a long time before I did: but I would not: I
was so afraid. For I was used to the silence of the ice: and I was used
to the silence of the sea: but, God knows it, I was afraid of the
silence of the land.

* * * * *

Once, on the 15th July, I had seen a whale, or thought I did, spouting
very remotely afar on the S.E. horizon; and on the 19th I distinctly saw
a shoal of porpoises vaulting the sea-surface, in their swift-successive
manner, northward: and seeing them, I had said pitifully to myself:
'Well, I am not quite alone in the world, then, my good God--not quite
alone.'

Moreover, some days later, the _Boreal_ had found herself in a bank of
cod making away northward, millions of fish, for I saw them, and one
afternoon caught three, hand-running, with the hook.

So the sea, at least, had its tribes to be my mates.

But if I should find the land as still as the sea, without even the
spouting whale, or school of tumbling sea-hogs--_if Paris were dumber
than the eternal ice_--what then, I asked myself, should I do?

* * * * *

I could have made short work, and landed at Shetland, for I found myself
as far westward as longitude 11 deg. 23' W.: but I would not: I was so
afraid. The shrinking within me to face that vague suspicion which I
had, turned me first to a foreign land.

I made for Norway, and on the first night of this definite intention, at
about nine o'clock, the weather being gusty, the sky lowering, the air
sombrous, and the sea hard-looking, dark, and ridged, I was steaming
along at a good rate, holding the wheel, my poor port and starboard
lights still burning there, when, without the least notice, I received
the roughest physical shock of my life, bein