I have already described the unnatural
curiosity which had taken the place of my original terrors. It
appeared to grow upon me as I drew nearer and nearer to my dreadful
doom. I now began to watch, with a strange interest, the numerous
things that floated in our company. I _must_ have been delirious--for
I even sought _amusement_ in speculating upon the relative velocities
of their several descents toward the foam below. 'This fir tree,' I
found myself at one time saying, 'will certainly be the next thing
that takes the awful plunge and disappears,'--and then I was
disappointed to find that the wreck of a Dutch merchant ship overtook
it and went down before. At length, after making several guesses of
this nature, and being deceived in all--this fact--the fact of my
invariable miscalculation, set me upon a train of reflection that made
my limbs again tremble, and my heart beat heavily once more.
"It was not a new terror that thus affected me, but the dawn of a more
exciting _hope_. This hope arose partly from memory, and partly from
present observation. I called to mind the great variety of buoyant
matter that strewed the coast of Lofoden, having been absorbed and
then thrown forth by the Moskoe-str?¶m. By far the greater number of
the articles were shattered in the most extraordinary way--so chafed
and roughened as to have the appearance of being stuck full of
splinters--but then I distinctly recollected that there were _some_ of
them which were not disfigured at all.
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