Hillhouse’s Judgment.

It has become necessary to advance the season to the beginning of the month of October, which corresponds to our own April.  In a temperate climate, this would mark the opening of spring; and the reviving hopes of a new and genial season would find a place in every bosom.  Not so at Sealer’s Land.  So long as the winter was at its height, and the clear, steady cold continued, by falling into a system so prepared as to meet the wants of such a region, matters had gone on regularly, if not with comfort; and, as yet, the personal disasters were confined to a few frozen cheeks and noses, the results of carelessness and wanton exposure, rather than of absolute necessity.  But one who had seen the place in July, and who examined it now, would find many marks of change, not to say of deterioration.

In the first place, a vast deal of snow had fallen; fallen, indeed, to such a degree, as even to cover the terrace, block up the path that communicated with the wreck, and nearly to smother the house and all around it.  The winds were high and piercing, rendering the cold doubly penetrating.  The thermometer now varied essentially, sometimes rising considerably above zero, though oftener falling far below it.  There had been many storms in September, and October was opening with a most blustering and wintry aspect.  In one sense, however, the character of the season had changed; the dry, equal cold, that was generally supportable, having been succeeded by tempests that were sometimes a little moist, but oftener of intense frigidity.  Of course the equinox was past, and there were more than twelve hours of sun.  The great luminary showed himself well above the northern horizon; and though his circuit described an arch that did not promise soon to bring him near the zenith at meridian, it was a circuit that seemed about to enclose Sealer’s Land, by carrying the orb of day so far south, morning and evening, as to give it an air of travelling round the spot.

These changes had not occurred without suffering and danger.  Enormous icicles were suspended from the roof of the house, reaching to the ground, the third and fourth successions of these signs of heat and cold united, the earlier formations having been knocked down and thrown away.  Mountains of drifted snow were to be seen in places, all along the shore; and wreaths that threatened fearful avalanches were suspended from the cliffs, waiting only for the increase of the warmth, to come down upon the rocks beneath.  Once already had one of these masses fallen on the wreck; and the Oyster Pond men had been busy for a week digging into the pile, in order to go to the rescue of the Vineyarders.  There was much generosity and charitable feeling displayed in this act; for, owing to the obstinate adherence of Daggett and his people to what they deemed their rights, Roswell had finally been compelled to cut to pieces the upper works of his own schooner to obtain fuel that might prevent his own party from freezing to death.  The position of the Sea Lion of Oyster Pond was to be traced only by a high mound of snow, which had been arrested by the obstacle she presented to its drift; but her bulwarks, planks, deck, top-timbers, stern-frame—­in short, nearly all of the vessel above water, had actually been taken to pieces, and carried within the covering of the verandah mentioned, in readiness for the stoves!