elusive glimpse was
to be had.

Feeling as though the very marrow in my bones were frozen, I crawled to
the companion and, pulling open the door, descended. The lamp in the
companion burnt faintly. There was a clock fixed to a beam over the
table; my eyes directly sought it, and found the time twenty minutes
after ten. This signified that I had ten or eleven hours of darkness
before me!

I took down the lamp, trimmed it, and went to the lazarette hatch at the
after end of the cabin. Here were kept the stores for the crew. I lifted
the hatch and listened, and could hear the water in the hold gurgling
and rushing with every lift of the brig's bows; and I could not question
from the volume of water which the sound indicated that the vessel was
steadily taking it in, but not rapidly. I swallowed half a pannikin of
the hollands for the sake of the warmth and life of the draught, and
entering my cabin, put on thick dry stockings, first, chafing my feet
till I felt the blood in them; and I then, with a seaman's dispatch,
shifted the rest of my apparel, and cannot express how greatly I was
comforted by the change, though the jacket and trousers I put on were
still damp with the soaking of previous days. To render myself as
waterproof as possible--for it was the wet clothes against the skin that
made the cold so cruel--I took from the captain's cabin a stout cloak
and threw it over me, enveloping my head, which I had cased in a warm
fur cap, with the hood of it; and thus equipped I lighted a small
hand-lantern that was used on dark nights for heaving the log, that is,
for showing how the sand runs in the glass, and carried it on deck.

The lantern made the scene a dead, grave-like black outside its little
circle of illumination; nevertheless its rays suffered me to guess at
the picture of ruin the decks offered. The main mast was snapped three
or four feet above the deck, and the stump of it showed as jagged and
barbed as a wild beast's teeth. But I now noticed that the weight of the
hamper being on the larboard side, balanced the list the vessel took
from her shifted ballast, and that she floated on a level keel with her
bows fair at the sea, whence I concluded that a sort of sea-anchor had
been formed ahead of her by the wreckage, and that it held her in that
posture, otherwise she must certainly have fallen into the trough.

I moved with extreme caution, casting the lantern light before me,
sometimes starting at a sound