ught at by the drowning man, so did the idea of my preservation come
into my head. I considered how much air so enormous an animal must
consume, and determined upon despatching him, that I might have more for
my own immediate wants. I took out my knife, and inserting it between
the vertebral bones that joined his head to his neck, divided the spinal
marrow, and he immediately expired.

When I found that he was quite dead, I crawled from his shoulders, and
took up a more convenient berth in that part of the cave which was
before his head, to which I had been afraid to venture while the animal
was alive, lest he should attack me with his enormous tusks. The air
soon became more pure, and I breathed freely. Your highness may be
surprised at the assertion; but, whether I obtained air from the ice
itself, or whether the ice was sufficiently porous to admit of it, I
know not; but from that time I had no difficulty of respiration. In our
country we have had instances of women and children, who have been
buried in the snow for two months, and yet have been taken out alive,
and have recovered, although they had little or no nourishment during
their inhumation. I recollected this, and aware that the carcase of the
animal would supply me for years, I began to indulge a hope that I might
yet be saved, if driven sufficiently to the southward to admit of my
being thawed out. I was convinced that the ice about me could not be
more than six or eight feet thick, as I had sufficient light to
distinguish the day from the night. Afterwards my eye-sight became so
much more acute, that I could see very well to every corner of the cave
in which I was embedded.

During the first month the calls of hunger obliged me to make frequent
attacks upon the carcase of the sea-horse; after that, my appetite
decreased, until at length I would not touch a mouthful of food in a
week,--I presume from the want of fresh air and exercise, neither of
which I could be said to enjoy. I had been about two months in this
hole, when a violent shock like that of an earthquake took place, and I
fell from the top of the cave to the bottom, and for a minute was
knocked about like a pea in a rattle. I had almost lost my senses
before it was over, and I found myself lying upon what was before the
top of the cave. From these circumstances I inferred that the iceberg
in which I was inclosed had come in contact with another, and that I had
been broken off from it