Page:Enterprise and Adventure.djvu/205

Rh They first came to the apartment, which Captain Warrens viewed through the port-hole. A tremor seized him as he entered it. Its inmate retained his former position, and seemed to be insensible to strangers. He was found to be a corpse, and a green damp mould had covered his cheeks and forehead, and veiled his open eyeballs. He had a pen in his hand, and a log-book lay before him, the last sentence in whose unfinished page ran thus:—"Nov. 14, 1762. We have now been enclosed in the ice seventeen days. The fire went out yesterday, and our master has been trying ever since to kindle it again, without success. His wife died this morning. There is no relief."

Captain Warrens and his seamen hurried from the spot, without uttering a word. On entering the principal cabin the first object that attracted their attention was the dead body of a female, reclining on a bed in an attitude of deep interest and attention. Her countenance retained the freshness of life, and a contraction of the limbs showed that her form was inanimate. Seated on the floor was the corpse of an apparently young man, holding a steel in one hand and a flint in the other, as if in the act of striking fire upon some tinder which lay beside him. In the fore part of the vessel several sailors were found lying dead in their berths, and the body of a boy was seen crouched at the bottom of the gangway stairs. Neither provisions nor fuel could be discovered anywhere; but Captain Warrens was prevented, by the superstitious prejudices of his seamen, from examining the vessel as minutely as he wished to have done. He therefore carried away the log-book already mentioned, returned to his own