looking afar into the boundless space, he only got up in order to lend a hand to some manoeuvre, and without any of his former vigilance or zeal. Not that he had ceased to believe that his comrade of the Jane was still living—that thought never even came into his mind! But he felt by instinct that the traces of poor Pym were not to be recovered by following this course.
"Sir," he would have said to me, "this is not the way! No, this is not the way!" And how could I have answered him?
Towards seven o'clock in the evening a rather thick mist arose; this would tend to make the navigation of the schooner difficult and dangerous.
The day, with its emotions of anxiety and alternatives, had worn me out. So I returned to my cabin, where I threw myself on my bunk in my clothes.
But sleep did not come to me, owing to my besetting thoughts. I willingly admit that the constant reading of Edgar Poe's works, and reading them in this place in which his heroes delighted, had exercised an influence on me which I did not fully recognize.
To-morrow, the forty-eight hours would be up, the last concession which the crew had made to my entreaties.
"Things are not going as you wish?" the boatswain said to me just as I was leaving the deck.
No, certainly not, since land was not to be seen behind the fleet of icebergs. If no sign of a coast appeared between these moving masses. Captain Len Guy would steer north to-morrow.
Ah! were I only master of the schooner! If I could have bought it even at the price of all my fortune, if these men had been my slaves to drive by the lash, the Halbrane
