g too heavily to starboard, whilst her
list corrected her larboard rolls. So as I sat below she seemed to me
to be making tolerably good weather of it. Not much water came aboard;
now and again I would hear the clatter of a fall forwards, but at
comfortably long intervals.

I sat against the dresser with my back upon it, and being dead tired
must have dropped asleep on a sudden--indeed, before I had half smoked
my pipe out, and I do not believe I gave a thought to my situation
before I slumbered, so wearied was I. The cold awoke me. The fire was
out and so was the candle in the lanthorn, and I was in coffin darkness.
This the tinder-box speedily remedied. I looked at my watch--seven
o'clock, as I was a sinner! so that my sleep had lasted between three
and four hours.

I went on deck and found the night still black upon the sea, the wind
the same brisk gale that was blowing when I quitted the helm, the sea no
heavier, and the schooner tumbling in true Dutch fashion upon it. I
looked very earnestly around but could see no signs of ice. There would
be daylight presently, so I went below, lighted the fire, and got my
breakfast, and when I returned the sun was up and the sea visible to its
furthest reaches.

It was a fine wintry piece; the sea green and running in ridges with
frothing heads, the sky very pale among the dark snow-laden clouds, the
sun darting a ray now and again, which was swung into the north by the
shadows of the clouds until they extinguished it. Remote in the
north-west hung the gleam of an iceberg; there was nothing else in
sight. Yes--something that comforted me exceedingly, though it was not
very many days ago that a like object had heavily scared me--an
albatross, a noble bird, sailing on the windward close enough to be
shot. The sight of this living thing was inexpressibly cheering; it put
into my head a fancy of ships being at hand, thoughts of help and of
human companions. In truth, my imagination was willing to accept it as
the same bird that I had frightened away when in the boat, now returned
to silently reproach me for my treatment of it. Nay, my lonely eye, my
subdued and suffering heart might even have witnessed the good angel of
my life in that solitary shape of ocean beauty, and have deemed that,
though unseen, it had been with me throughout, and was now made visible
to my gaze by the light of hope that had broken into the darkness of my
adventure.

Well, supposing it so, I should not