I brought the schooner close in to the stranger’s side until we touched, and then I got the large boat hook out and fixed it in her chains.  None of the ship’s crew appeared to have remarked my approach.  What could they be doing?  Perhaps, I thought, they were all below decks.

I climbed upon the Falcon’s gunwale and looked through an open porthole into the vessel’s after cabin.  I saw there a man seated at a table, with his back towards me, apparently writing.

“Hello in there!  D’ye keep no watch aboard?” I cried.

He appeared not to hear me, but held the pen in his hand as though in deep meditation.

I clambered up the vessel’s side and got over the quarter rail, taking with me the end of a stout rope with which to secure the two ships together.  The snow was deep on the stranger’s decks, and bore no trace of footsteps.  All was quiet. .

I crossed over to the companion ladder, and found my way down to the door of the cabin.  I knocked with my knuckles, but no voice answered, and I went within.  The man still sat at the table, without turning at my entrance.  The atmosphere was cold and musty; there was no fire in the stove, although yet another man sat crouched before it.  I went behind the man at the table and touched him on the shoulder.

“D’ye not hear me, sir?” I said.  “Are ye deaf? or what has gone wrong?”

He did not move.

I looked down into his face.

“Heavens!” I exclaimed, drawing back in horror at the grim sight.

What did it mean?  I made bold to look again, though I felt myself trembling.  A green damp mould covered his cheek and forehead, and hung in a ghastly fringe over his open eyes.  The man was a frozen corpse!

Terrified at the sight, I fled up the stairs with my heart wildly beating.  Regaining the deck I looked about me, but there was no sign of life anywhere on the ship.  Afraid to make any further search, I clambered down into the Falcon and rushed below.  I cast myself before the fire, trembling and unable to realize anything for the mortal fear that was upon me.  I tried to forget the sight of that face of death, with its horribly grim and mouldy features, but it haunted me with terrible clearness.

I roused up my fire and made some strong tea, and, drinking it, I wondered why I had not thought of pushing off the schooner from this death ship.  It was now growing dark, and the thought of spending a whole night alone in the near presence of dead men, whose ghosts, for all I knew, might visit me, filled my mind with strange and awful fancies.  Even the sound of the wind whispering in the ropes struck me with nervous fear.  But the drink of tea and what little I ate helped to revive my spirits, and gradually my sense of awe was overcome by a curiosity that came upon me—­a curiosity to go aboard the vessel again and discover something more of her singular condition.

It was now wearing on towards night and I trimmed my lamps.  Lighting a small lantern, I carried it with me on deck.  I made the two vessels still more secure by means of a hawser rope, and then went aboard the barque.  As I began to climb up her side I was conscious that she seemed to be deeper in the water than she had been when I came alongside of her, but the discovery did not at the moment trouble me.