ry one or more casks called
scuttlebutts on deck, into which fresh water is pumped for the use of
the crew. I stepped along looking earnestly at the several shapes of
guns, coils of rigging, hatchways, and the like, upon which the snow lay
thick and solid, sometimes preserving the mould of the object it
covered, sometimes distorting and exaggerating it into an unrecognizable
outline, but perceived nothing that answered to the shape of a cask. At
last I came to the well in the head, passed the forecastle deck, and on
looking down spied among other shapes three bulged and bulky forms. I
seemed by instinct to know that these were the scuttlebutts and went
for the chopper, with which I returned and got into this hollow, that
was four or five feet deep. The snow had the hardness of iron; it took
me a quarter of an hour of severe labour to make sure of the character
of the bulky thing I wrought at, and then it proved to be a cask.
Whatever might be its contents it was not empty, but I was pretty nigh
spent by the time I had knocked off the iron bands and beaten out staves
enough to enable me to get at the frozen body within. There were
three-quarters of a cask full. It was sparkling clear ice, and chipping
off a piece and sucking it, I found it to be very sweet fresh water.
Thus was my labour rewarded.

I cut off as much as, when dissolved, would make a couple of gallons,
but stayed a minute to regain my breath and take a view of this well or
hollow before going aft. It was formed of the great open head-timbers of
the schooner curving up to the stem, and by the forecastle deck ending
like a cuddy front. I scraped at this front and removed enough snow to
exhibit a portion of a window. It was by this window I supposed that the
forecastle was lighted. Out of this well forked the bowsprit, with the
spritsail yard braced fore and aft. The whole fabric close to looked
more like glass than at a distance, owing to the million crystalline
sparkles of the ice-like snow that coated the structure from the vane at
the masthead to the keel.

Well, I clambered on to the forecastle deck and returned to the
cook-room with my piece of ice, struck as I went along by the sudden
comfortable quality of life the gushing of the black smoke out of the
chimney put into the ship, and how, indeed, it seemed to soften as if by
magic the savage wildness and haggard austerity and gale-swept
loneliness of the white rocks and peaks. It was extremely disagre