Stephen got man after man out of his berth, by doses of the steaming coffee; and the blood being thus stimulated, by the aid of friction, everybody was soon up and stirring.  It was found, on inquiry, that all three of the blacks had toes or ears frozen, and with them the usual application of snow became necessary; but the temperature of the house soon got to be so high as to render the place quite comfortable.  Warm food being deemed very essential, Stephen had put a supply of beans and pork into his coppers; and the frost having been extracted from a quantity of the bread by soaking it in cold water, a hearty meal of good, hot, and most nourishing food, was made by all hands.  This set our sealers up, no more complaints of the frost being heard.

It was, indeed, no longer very cold.  The thermometer was up to twenty-six above zero in the house when Roswell turned out; and the cooking process, together with Stephen’s fires and the shift of wind, soon brought the mercury up to forty.  This was a cheering temperature for those who had been breathing the polar air; and the influence of the north-east gale continued to increase.  The rain and thaw produced another deluge; and the cliffs presented, for several hours, a sight that might have caused Niagara to hide her head in mortification.  These sublime scenes are of frequent occurrence amid the solitudes of the earth; the occasional phenomena of nature often surpassing in sublimity and beauty her rarest continued efforts.

The succeeding day the rain ceased, and summer appeared to have come in reality.  It is true that at mid-day the thermometer in the shade stood at only forty-eight; but in the sun it actually rose to seventy.  Let those who have ever experienced the extremes of heat and cold imagine the delight with which our sealers moved about under such a sun!  All excess of clothing was thrown aside; and many of the men actually pursued their work in their shirt-sleeves.

As the snow had vanished quite as suddenly as it came, everything and everybody was now in active motion.  Not a man of the crew was disposed to run the risk of encountering any more cold on Sealer’s Land.  Roswell himself was of opinion that the late severe weather was the dying effort of the winter, and that no more cold was to be expected; and Stimson agreed with him in this notion.  The sails were taken down from around the house, and those articles it was intended to carry away were transferred to the schooner as fast as the difficulties of the road would allow.  While his mates were carrying on this duty, our young master took an early occasion to examine the state of matters generally on the island.  With this view he ascended to the plain, and went half-way up the mountain, desiring to get a good look into the offing.

It was soon ascertained that the recent deluge had swept all the ice and every trace of the dead into the sea.  The body of Daggett had disappeared, with the snow-bank in which it had been buried; and all the carcases of the seals had been washed away.  In a word, the rocks were as naked and as clean as if man’s foot had never passed over them.  From the facts that skeletons of seals had been found strewed along the north shore, and the present void, Roswell was led to infer that the late storm had been one of unusual intensity, and most probably of a character to occur only at long intervals.