RELICS OF POPULAR SUPERSTITIONS. 



105 



above the water, and follow his murderer erect till both were out 

 of sight.'^ 



Sturm, framed for desperate efforts, and not yet subdued by 

 hunger, soon released his arras and eyes from their covering, and 

 found his little bark speeding towards an object dimly seen 

 through the haze of those northern regions. When the distant 

 object revealed itself more distinctly, Sturm perceived a ship whose 

 bare masts seemed whitened by the frost of this dismal climate. 

 Neither sails nor tackle were discernible, but a few human figures 

 were ranged on the forecastle, stiffening and bleaching in the wind. 

 Whether it moved by the force of the current, or from the steer- 

 age of invisible hands, Sturm dared not guess ; and perhaps the 

 dizziness of hunger increased the seeming motion of the object he 

 gazed on. He saw, as he believed, the Ship of Death^ which 

 every seaman of the Baltic and Atlantic expects to behold when 

 his death doom is certain. Suddenly it appeared to remain fixed, 

 and Sturm felt his own boat drawn towards it with such hopeless 

 horror as the Belgian culprit feels when he approaches, step by 

 step, the deadly embrace of his executioner. Sturm's iron heart 

 sunk under this slow and freezing summons to death, and shroud- 

 ing himself in the sail meant for his winding-sheet, he laid his 

 head on the breast of the sleeping child, as if in a sanctuary, and 

 closed his eyes. A violent concussion broke his trance, and the 

 last instinct of nature enabled him to grasp firmly the substance 

 on which he was thrown. It was ice, but the strong agony of 

 struggling life gave his hands sufficient power ; and a few mo- 

 ments restored his intellect enough to direct him into a hollow or 

 cove made by fragments of a broken glacier. There lay a human 

 skeleton white and almost crystaUized ; but beside it was a shape 

 which, notwithstanding its crust of congealed snow, resembled a 

 seaman's bottle. Sturm broke it eagerly, and in the centre of a 

 mass of ice, found about a cupfull of such potent s])irits as recalled 

 almost all the vigour and warmth of his heart. The child, muf- 

 fled in the same sail-cloth which wrapped him, had shared his es- 

 cape, and was soon made to partake the cordial he had found. 

 His boat lay shattered into splinters among the spikes of ice which 

 had entangled it ; and Sturm, ascending one, perceived that the 



* This circumstance often occurs when a drowned body has reached a 

 state of putrefaction. 



