eight o'clock
Those figures in the cabin were dismal warnings and assurances ; they had been men perhaps stouter and heartier in their day than ever I was , but they had been frozen into stony images nevertheless , under cover too , with the materials to make a fire , and as much strong waters in their lazarette as would serve their schooner to float in . Well , thought I , after a spell of melancholy thinking , if I _ am _ to perish of cold , there 's an end ; it is preordained , and it is as easy as drowning , anyhow , and better than hanging ; and with that I pulled out the ham and found it soft enough to cut , finding philosophy -LRB- which , as the French cynic says , triumphs over past and future ills -RRB- not so hard because somehow I did not myself then particularly feel the cold -- I mean , I was not certainly suffering here from that pain of frost which I had felt in the open boat . Having heartily supped , I brewed a pint of punch , and , charging my pipe , sat smoking with my feet against the furnace . It was after eight o'clock by the watch I was wearing . I knew by the humming noise that it was blowing a gale of wind outside , and from time to time the decks rattled to a heavy discharge of hail . All sounds were naturally much subdued to my ear by the ship lying in a hollow , and I being in her with the hatches closed ; but this very faintness of uproar formed of itself a quality of mystery very pat to the ghastliness of my surroundings . It was like the notes of an elfin storm of necromantic imagination ; it was hollow , weak , and terrifying ; and it and the thunder of the seas commingling , together with the rumbling blasts and shocks of splitting ice , disjointed as by an earthquake , loaded the inward silence with unearthly tones , which my lonely and quickened imagination readily furnished with syllables .