Page:The Iron Pirate 1905.djvu/250

236 coming; and, when I did so, I gave a cry of horror and turned away my face, fearing to see again that most overwhelming spectacle. For blocks had been cut from the clear ice, and the dead seamen had been laid in the frozen mass just as they had died, without coffin or other covering than their clothes. There they lay, their faces upturned, many of them displaying all the placid peacefulness of death; but some grinned with horrible grimaces, and the eyes of some started from their heads, and there were teeth that seemed to be biting into the ice, and hands clenched as though the fierce activity of life pursued them beyond the veil. Yet the frightful mausoleum, the den of death, was pure in its atmosphere as a garden of snow, cool as grass after rain, silent as a tomb of the sea. Not a sound even of dripping water, not a motion of life without, not a sigh or dull echo disturbed its repose. Only the dead with hands uplifted, the dead in frozen rest, the dead with the smile of death, or the hate of death, or the terror of death written upon their faces, seemed to watch and to wait in the chamber of the sepulchre.

I have said that the sight terrified me; yet the whole of my fear I could not write, though the pen of Death himself were in my hands. So profoundly did the agony of it appeal to me that for many minutes together I dare not raise my eyes, could scarce restrain myself from flying,