bility of
our being able to make a start to-morrow morning. They will think I
am inventing when I tell them at home all the strange things that have
befallen me.

12 P.M.--I have been a good deal startled, though I feel steadier now,
thanks to a stiff glass of brandy. I am hardly myself yet, however, as
this handwriting will testify. The fact is, that I have gone through
a very strange experience, and am beginning to doubt whether I was
justified in branding every one on board as madmen because they
professed to have seen things which did not seem reasonable to my
understanding. Pshaw! I am a fool to let such a trifle unnerve me; and
yet, coming as it does after all these alarms, it has an additional
significance, for I cannot doubt either Mr. Manson's story or that of
the mate, now that I have experienced that which I used formerly to
scoff at.

After all it was nothing very alarming--a mere sound, and that was all.
I cannot expect that any one reading this, if any one ever should read
it, will sympathise with my feelings, or realise the effect which it
produced upon me at the time. Supper was over, and I had gone on deck
to have a quiet pipe before turning in. The night was very dark--so dark
that, standing under the quarter-boat, I was unable to see the officer
upon the bridge. I think I have already mentioned the extraordinary
silence which prevails in these frozen seas. In other parts of the
world, be they ever so barren, there is some slight vibration of the
air--some faint hum, be it from the distant haunts of men, or from the
leaves of the trees, or the wings of the birds, or even the faint rustle
of the grass that covers the ground. One may not actively perceive the
sound, and yet if it were withdrawn it would be missed. It is only here
in these Arctic seas that stark, unfathomable stillness obtrudes itself
upon you in all its gruesome reality. You find your tympanum straining
to catch some little murmur, and dwelling eagerly upon every accidental
sound within the vessel. In this state I was leaning against the
bulwarks when there arose from the ice almost directly underneath me a
cry, sharp and shrill, upon the silent air of the night, beginning,
as it seemed to me, at a note such as prima donna never reached, and
mounting from that ever higher and higher until it culminated in a long
wail of agony, which might have been the last cry of a lost soul. The
ghastly scream is still ringing in my ears. Grief, unut