h. They all appeared to have died very peacefully;
but whether from the want of food alone or, as I have since thought
possible, from want of air, being shut up in the heart of an
iceberg, I had no means of knowing.

I did not further continue my search of the vessel that night, but
went on board the Falcon, feeling sick and nervous. I could eat
nothing; but having taken a drink of hot coffee, I sat before a
good fire, thinking over what I had just seen, and planning what I
should do.

If any one of those poor men could, in his dire need, have had a
drink of my coffee, or a spoonful of the good porridge I had made
but could not myself eat, heavens! how he would have relished it!
Here was I, with a schooner well loaded with provisions. Some
strange fate had brought me to this ship. But all that I could have
supplied was useless to the sufferers now. They had perished of
starvation and cold, and my food and fire were of no avail, for I
had come thirteen years too late!

Chapter XXXII. The Last Of The "Pilgrim."

I could sleep but little during that long and wearying night.
Terrible thoughts haunted me--thoughts of my own peril and
loneliness, thoughts of the dead men that I had seen. Before
daybreak I was on deck, and in the dim light I noticed that the ice
which had been so scattered over the sea for the past few days had
almost disappeared.

At daylight, looking overboard at the hull of the dread ship
alongside, I observed two things. The first was that we were
drifting perceptibly southward; this was satisfactory. The second
was that the larger vessel had sunk at least a couple of inches
deeper in the water; this was alarming.

Now that it was daylight I was able to read the ship's name at her
stern, though I had first to knock away a quantity of ice and snow
from above the letters. I found that she was the Pilgrim of
Bristol. I had before perceived that she was not a whaler, nor did
she appear to have been fitted out for an Arctic voyage. I
marvelled much what had brought her to these seas, and whither she
had been bound, and what her cargo was.

More than all did I wonder what I was to do with her. Here was I,
placed by strange circumstances in command of two vessels, a
schooner and a barque, and without the power or skill to take
either of them into port--not knowing, indeed, where a port could
be found. Had Davie Flett, Peter, and Jerry still been with me on
the Falcon, we might have taken the Pilg