gging, and spars had been shaken off. I had expected to see a
wonderful spectacle of havoc in the ice where the barrels of gunpowder
had been poised, but saving many scores of cracks where none was before,
and vast ragged gashes in the mouths of the crevices down which the
barrels had been lowered, the scene was much as heretofore.

The Frenchman stared and exclaimed, "What has the powder done? I see
only a few cracks."

"What it may have done, I don't know," I answered; "but depend on't such
heavy charges of powder must have burst to some purpose. The dislocation
will be below; and so much the better, for 'tis _there_ the ice must
come asunder if this block is to go free."

He gazed about him, and then rapping out a string of oaths, English,
Italian, and French, for he swore in all the languages he spoke, which,
he once told me, were five, he declared that for his part he considered
the powder wasted, that we'd have done as well to fling a hand-grenade
into a fissure, that a thousand barrels of powder would be but as a
popgun for rending the schooner's bed from the main, and in short, with
several insulting looks and a face black with rage and disappointment,
gave me very plainly to know that I had not only played the fool myself,
but had made a fool of him, and that he was heartily sorry he had ever
given himself any trouble to contrive the cursed mines or to assist me
in a ridiculous project that might have resulted in blowing the schooner
to pieces and ourselves with it.

I glanced at him with a sneer, but took no further notice of his
insolence. It was not only that he was so contemptible in all respects,
a liar, a rogue, a thief, a poltroon, hoary in twenty walks of vice,
there was something so unearthly about a creature that had been as good
as dead for eight-and-forty years, that it was impossible anything he
said could affect me as the rancorous tongue of another man would. I
feared and hated him because I knew that in intent he was already my
assassin; but the mere insolences of so incredible a creature could not
but find me imperturbable.

And perhaps in the present instance my own disappointment put me into
some small posture of sympathy with his passion. Had I been asked before
the explosions happened what I expected, I don't know that I should have
found any answer to make; and yet, though I could not have expressed my
expectations, which after all were but hopes, I was bitterly vexed when
I looked ov