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I pushed on further yet, going down the ravine, as I have called it, until I came to the edge; and here I looked down from a height of some twelve or fourteen feet so greatly had the ice sunk or been changed by the weather upon the ocean. I called to Tassard. He approached warily. I believe he feared I might be tempted to give him a friendly shove over the edge.
Tassard," said I, colouring in spite of myself, though he could not witness the change in such a light as that, "I felt this, that if I left the watch in the captain's pocket it was bound to go to the bottom ultimately, and " "Bah!" he interrupted, with a violent flourish of the hand.
However, it was his doing, not mine; and I confess the removal of those silent witnesses was a very great relief to me, albeit when I considered how Tassard had been awakened, and how both the mate and the boatswain might have been brought to by treatment, I felt as though, after a manner, the Frenchman had committed a murder by burying them so.
By the time we had reached the bottom of the hollow Tassard was blowing like a bellows with the uncommon exertion; and swearing that he felt the cold penetrating his bones, and that he should be stupefied again if he did not mind, he climbed into the ship and disappeared.
For eight-and-forty years she had been high and dry; never a caulker's hammer had rung upon her in all that time. Tassard had spoken of her as a stout ship, and so she was, I did not doubt; but the old rogue talked as if she had been stranded six months only!
Tassard, you should doubt my assurance that this is the year eighteen hundred and one." He stared, grinned, and said, "Do you think so?" "Well," said I, "perhaps it is not so odd after all; but you should suffer me to have as good an idea of the passage of time as yourself. You cannot tell me how long your stupor lasted." "Two days if you like!" he interrupted vehemently. "Why more?
I returned to the cook-room and went about the old business of lighting the fire and preparing the breakfast this job by an understanding between the Frenchman and me, falling to him who was first out of bed and in about twenty minutes Tassard arrived. "The wind is gone," said he. "Yes," I replied, "it is a bright still morning. I have been on deck. There has been a great fall of ice close to."
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