g me up, and give me life agen."

The softer speech availed the poor fellow as little as the other. I
felt then an exceeding pity for him, and I touched Black on the arm and
was about to plead with him; but at the sight of me he raised his fist,
and I moved away, seeing by the light of his eyes that he was as much a
madman in that moment as any maniac in Bedlam. For he stood foaming and
muttering, his hands clenched, his hat upon the snow, great drops of
sweat on his bronzed forehead. The haste of the men to get the picks
was not half haste enough for him; and when they began to dig he
hurried them the more, until a great pile of snow had been thrown out.

It was a weird scene--the most weird I have ever known. We stood in a
snow-pit amongst the hills, and above us rose in grandeur the great
pyramids of basalt and gneiss. There was no sign of living green thing,
even of lichens or of moss, in that elevated plain above the sea; and
the shrill call of the gulls was hushed in the greater stillness of the
night. The moon, high in the unclouded sky, gave light far down into
the crevasses--clear, silvered light that made a jewel of every higher
point, and sprinkled the crests of the breakers as with floss of fire.
Nor was there wind, even a breath of the night's breeze, but only the
melancholy silence of the omnivorous frost, the boom of falling
avalanche echoing in the ravines and the ice-caverns, the groans of the
doomed man--a very _Miserere_ amongst the hills, as down below amongst
the dead upon the shore.

In the snow-plain, which was the centre of this northern desolation,
they dug the grave of the living man. I watched from afar--held by what
hideous power I knew not--and I saw them roll him over into the trench
they had dug, and shovel the snow quickly upon him. He watched them,
silent in his terror; but when his head only was uncovered he gave a
shriek of agony, which rose like the great cry of a man going before
his God, and ceased not to echo from height to height until long
minutes had passed. Then all was hushed, for the cold mantle of death
fell upon him. Slowly those who had done their work took up their tools
and returned doggedly to the beach; but Captain Black was unable to
move from the man who had put that last great curse upon him not five
minutes gone. Bare-headed and alone, he stood at the snow-grave, and
looked down upon the mound now sparkling with the crystals of the frost
that bound it. And as he