When I got the wheel, with Moses Shoos forward and my uncle gone
asleep below, 'twas near dawn. We were under reasonable sail, running
blindly through the night: there were no heroics of carrying-on--my
uncle was not the man to bear them. But we were frozen stiff--every
block and rope of us. And 'twas then blowing up with angrier
intention; and 'twas dark and very cold, I recall--and the air was
thick with the dust of snow, so that 'twas hard to breathe. Congealing
drops of spray came like bullets: I recall that they hurt me. I
recall, too, that I was presently frozen to the deck, and that my
mitts were stuck to the wheel--that I became fixed and heavy. The old
craft had lost her buoyant will: she labored through the shadowy,
ghostly crested seas, in a fashion the most weary and hopeless. I
fancied I knew why: I fancied, indeed, that she had come close to her
last harbor. And of this I soon made sure: I felt of her, just before
the break of day, discovering, but with no selfish perturbation, that
she was exhausted. I felt of her tired plunges, of the stagger of
her, of her failing strength and will; and I perceived--by way of the
wheel in my understanding hands--that she would be glad to abandon
this unequal struggle of the eternal youth of the sea against her age
and mortality. And the day broke; and with the gray light came the
fool of Twist Tickle over the deck. 'Twas a sinister dawn: no land in
sight--but a waste of raging sea to view--and the ship laden forward
with a shameful burden of ice.
Moses spoke: I did not hear him in the wind, because, I fancy, of the
ice in my ear.
"Don't hear ye!" I shouted.
"She've begun t' leak!" he screamed.