nine o'clock in the
morning
For seven days the gale raged with uncommon violence : it then broke , and this brought us into the first week of August . The wind fell in the night , and I was awakened by the silence , which you will not think strange if you consider how used were my ears to the fierce seething and strong bellowing of the blast . I lay listening , believing that it had only veered , and that it would come on again in gusts and guns ; but the stillness continued , and there was no sound whatever , saving the noises of the ice , which broke upon the air like slow answers from batteries near and distant , half whose cannons have been silenced . I slept again , and when I awoke it was half-past nine o'clock in the morning . The Frenchman was snoring lustily . I went on deck before entering the cook-house , and had like to have been blinded by the astonishing brilliance of the sunshine upon the ice and snow . All the wind was gone .