Black moss at his feet, there lay
a grey deal coffin falling almost to pieces with age;
the lid was gone - blown off probably by the wind - and
within were stretched the bleaching bones of a human
skeleton. A rude cross at the head of the grave still
stood partially upright, and a half obliterated Dutch
inscription preserved a record of the dead man's name
and age.
.....VANDER SCHELLING....
COMMAN....JACOB MOOR....
OB 2 JUNE 1758 AET 44.
[Figure: fig-p174.gif]
It was evidently some poor whaler of the last century to
whom his companions had given the only burial possible
in this frost-hardened earth, which even the summer sun
has no force to penetrate beyond a couple of inches, and
which will not afford to man the shallowest grave. A
bleak resting-place for that hundred years' slumber, I
thought, as I gazed on the dead mariner's remains! -
"I was snowed over with snow,
And beaten with rains,
And drenched with the dews;
Dead have I long been," -
- murmured the Vala to Odin in Nifelheim, - and whispers
of a similar import seemed to rise up from the lidless
coffin before us. It was no brother mortal that lay at
our feet, softly folded in the embraces of "Mother Earth,"
but a poor scarecrow, gibbeted for ages on this bare
rock, like a dead Prometheus; the vulture, frost, gnawing
for ever on his bleaching relics, and yet eternally
preserving them!
