roken waters
increased the horrors of the scene. I firmly believed my time was come.
God had been merciful, but I was to die now. As to making any shift to
keep myself alive after the ship should be broken up, the thought never
entered my head. What could I do? There was no boat. I might have
contrived some arrangement of booms and casks to serve as a raft, but to
what purpose? How long would it take the wind and sea to freeze me?

I crouched in the companion-way hearkening to the uproar around, feeling
the convulsions of the schooner, fully prepared for death, dogged and
hopeless. No, I was not afraid. Suffering and expectation had brought me
to that pass that I did not care. "'Tis such an end as hundreds and
thousands of sailors have met," I remember thinking; "it is the fittest
exit for a mariner. I have sinned in my time, but the Almighty God knows
my heart." To this tune ran my thoughts. I held my arms tightly folded
upon my breast, and with set lips waited for the first of those crashing
and rending sounds which would betoken the ruin and destruction of the
schooner.

So passed half an hour; then, being half perished with the cold, I went
to the furnace, for when the vessel went to pieces it would matter
little in what part of her I was, and warmed myself and took a dram as a
felon swallows a draught on his way to the scaffold. Were I to attempt
to describe the character of the thunderous noises in the ship I should
not be believed. The seas raised a most deafening roaring as they boiled
over the ice and rolled their volumes against the vessel's sides. Every
curl swung a load of broken frozen pieces against the bows and bends,
and the shocks resounded through her like blows from cyclopean hammers.
It was as if I had been seated in the central stagnant heart of a small
revolving hurricane, feeling no faintest sigh of air upon my cheek,
whilst close around whirled the hellish tormenting conflict of white
waters and yelling blasts.

On a sudden--in a breath--I felt the vessel rise. She was swung up with
the giddy velocity of a hunter clearing a tall gate; she sank again,
and there was a mighty concussion forward, then a pause of steadiness
whilst you might have counted five, then a wild upward heave, a sort of
sharp floating fall, a harsh grating along her keel and sides, as though
she was being smartly warped over rocks, followed by an unmistakable
free pitching and rolling motion.

I had sprung to my feet and s