Chapter 28 - Page 2

manner, six-and-thirty hours were
passed, not a man of them all having the courage to rise from his lair,
and encounter the severity of the climate, now unrelieved by anything like
a fire.

Roswell had slept most of the time, during the last ten hours, and in this
he was much like all around him. A general feeling of drowsiness had come
over the men, and the legs and feet of many among them, notwithstanding
the quantity of bed-clothes that were, in particular, piled on that part
of their person, were sensitively alive to the cold. No one ever knew how
low the thermometer went that fearful night; but a sort of common
consciousness prevailed, that nothing the men had yet seen, or felt,
equalled its chill horrors. The cold had got into the house, converting
every article it contained into a mass of frost, The berths ceased to be
warm, and the smallest exposure of a shoulder, hand, or ears, soon
produced pain. The heads of very many of the party were affected, and
breathing became difficult and troubled. A numbness began to steal over
the lower limbs; and this was the last unpleasant sensation remembered by
Roswell, when he fell into another short and disturbed slumber. The
propensity to sleep was very general now, though many struggled against
it, knowing it was the usual precursor of death by freezing.

Our hero never knew how long he slept in the last nap he took on that
memorable occasion. When he awoke, he found a bright light blazing in the
hut, and heard some one moving about the camboose. Then his thoughts
reverted to himself, and to the condition of his limbs. On trying to rub
his feet together, he found them so nearly without sensation as to make
the consciousness of their touching each other almost out of the question.
Taking the alarm at once, he commenced a violent friction, until by slow
degrees he could feel that the nearly stagnant blood was getting again
into motion. So great had been Roswell's alarm, and so intent his
occupation, that he took no heed of the person who was busy at the
camboose, until the man appeared at the side of his berth, holding a tin
pot in his hand. It was Stimson, up and dressed, without his skins, and
seemingly in perfect preservation.

"Here's some hot coffee, Captain Gar'ner," said the provident
boat-steerer, "and then turn out. The wind has shifted, by the marcy of
God, and it has begun to rain. _Now_, I think we may have summer in
'arnest, as summer comes among these sealin' islands."

Roswell took six or eight swallows of the coffee, which was smoking hot,
and instantly felt the genial influence diffused over his whole frame.
Sending Stephen to the other berths with this timely beverage, he now sat
up in his berth, and rubbed his feet