, comforted me, namely,
that this petrifaction by freezing had kept the victuals sweet. I was
sure there was little here that might not be thawed into relishable and
nourishing food and drink by a good fire. The sight of these stores took
such a weight off my mind that no felon reprieved from death could feel
more elated than I. My forebodings had come to nought in this regard,
and here for the moment my grateful spirits were content to stop.

CHAPTER XI.

I MAKE FURTHER DISCOVERIES.

So long as I moved about and worked I did not feel the cold; but if I
stood or sat for a couple of minutes I felt the nip of it in my very
marrow. Yet, fierce as the cold was here, it was impossible it could be
comparable with the rigours of the parts in which this schooner had
originally got locked up in the ice. No doubt if I died on deck my body
would be frozen as stiff as the figure on the rocks; but, though it was
very conceivable that I might perish of cold in the cabin by sitting
still, I was sure the temperature below had not the severity to stonify
me to the granite of the men at the table.

Still, though a greater degree of cold--cold as killing as if the world
had fallen sunless--did unquestionably exist in those latitudes whence
this ice with the schooner in its hug had floated, it was so bitterly
bleak in this interior that 'twas scarce imaginable it could be colder
elsewhere; and as I rose from the cask shuddering to the heart with the
frosty motionless atmosphere, my mind naturally went to the
consideration of a fire by which I might sit and toast myself.

I put a bunch of candles in my pocket--they were as hard as a parcel of
marline-spikes--and took the lanthorn into the passage and inspected the
next room. Here was a cot hung up by hooks, and a large black chest
stood in cleats upon the deck; some clothes dangled from pins in the
bulkhead, and upon a kind of tray fixed upon short legs and serving as a
shelf were a miscellaneous bundle of boots, laced waistcoats,
three-corner hats, a couple of swords, three or four pistols, and other
objects not very readily distinguishable by the candle-light. There was
a port which I tried to open, but found it so hard frozen I should need
a handspike to start it. There were three cabins besides this; the last
cabin, that is the one in the stern, being the biggest of the lot. Each
had its cot, and each also had its own special muddle and litter of
boxes, clothes, firearms, s