Captain Burke's manner of going persuaded me his mind was unhinged. He had talked with excitement, shouted at his wife, his eyes had been full of fire, and still it did not seem that he had fully grasped the whole dreadful meaning of the disaster.

After he had been gone a little while two men came into the cabin with fuel for the stove. One had a bloodstained bandage round his forehead under his sou'wester. The snow fell in pieces of white crust from the oilskins of the seamen as they reeled with their hands full to the stove. In the instant of their descent the sweep of the black gale followed, and filled the atmosphere with darting needles of stinging cold.

'Is any water coming into the ship?' cried Mrs. Burke.

'No, mum. The well's just been sounded. She's right enough in the hull,' answered the man with a bandage round his head.

'Aren't the decks being swept?'

'Now and again a spray,' answered the same man. 'She's a-jumping of it drily enough. She'll not hurt as she lies providing there's nothen knocking about to run foul of.'

'Is your head badly hurt?'

'Just a little bit of a cut. Nothen to take notice of, thankee,' answered the man, and he knelt down and lighted the fire, the other looking on and around him with a gleaming gaze of curiosity.

The lighting of that fire was a marvellous piece of rich deep colour as I see it now, though I had no thoughts that way, I assure you, as I sat watching the kneeling figure on that frightful night. He was in black oilskins bright with snow; the other in yellow, snowclad likewise, and as the kindling shavings spat out their yellow flames, the two men showed more like some wild startling imagination of a poet done into a grotesque glowing canvas, than a commonplace detail of shipboard life; their faces sharpened and shrank, grinned and grew grim with twenty shadowy expressions, their roaming seeking eyes burned like rubies under the pent-houses of their sea-helmets; add the convulsive motions of the dismasted hull, the ceaseless roar of seas pouring in mountains, the dizzy flight, the sickening fall, the wild play of the lamp, the deep, almost human groanings of the fabric with blows of the surge, like bolts from the sky, shocking to her heart in sounds of rending.

I hoped Mrs. Burke would ask questions of these men as to the safety of the vessel, what would be done, our chances for our lives, and the like, seeing that they were able seamen, mariners of experience with memories perhaps of such things as this too; but she was the captain's wife; so I held my peace and watched the men, clasping myself close in the furs I sat in.

Scarcely was the fire alight when again the cabin was made bitterly raw by an icy-shriek out of the blackness, and three men, one of them the steward, all clad in oilskins and hardly recognisable, descended. A couple bore some galley things, a coffee pot, a saucepan, a gridiron, some drinking mugs, and such matters. One of them said, 'By the captain's orders, ladies,' and put the utensils on the deck near the stove. Another exclaimed, 'We've been told to stop here. We can't get a fire to burn in the galley. The fok'sle's cruel cold.'

'Where's the cook?' said Mrs. Burke.

'Overboard, along with the mate and three others,' said one of the men.

Mrs. Burke tossed her hands and after a pause said:

'I'd cook a meal for you with pleasure, men, but I cannot bear this motion—I cannot stand. Steward, fetch a ham from the pantry; there's coffee there and biscuits. Get what's needed for a plentiful supper. Four overboard! How many are left?'

'Nine foremast hands, counting the bo'sun,' exclaimed the seaman with the blood-stained bandage, looking round from the stove.

Just then the rest of the seamen came below, a shaggy, snow-bleached huddle, the gale following in a howl, with the captain's voice in the frost-keen sling of it, shouting, 'Give them all they want to eat. Let them have plenty of hot coffee, and top the meal off with a dram of rum apiece.'

The companion doors were then closed, but in such wise as to be easily opened from within. After that moment's roar of ocean and volley of iron blast, the comparative calm in this interior seemed like peace itself.

'Isn't the captain coming down?' said Mrs. Burke in a voice something wild with anxiety.

'Presently, mum,' answered the boatswain, swaying easily from leg to leg, his huge form thickened out by an immensely stout pea-coat; he pulled his sou'-wester off as a mark of respect, and the snow on the hatch of it flew to the deck compact, and lay there like a white wreath on a grave.

'He'll be frozen,' cried Mrs. Burke.

'He's a-watching of an ice-mountain out over the bows,' said a man.

I clasped my hands, and felt the blood forsake my heart on hearing this. One of the men observed me, and in a voice that went through the straining noises, like the sound of the sawing of wood, cried:

'There's no call to frighten the ladies, Jim. That there block ain't agoing to hurt us, anyhow.'

They then settled who should cook; a man undertook the job; the steward cut the ham into rashers, and after a little the place was full of the smell of frying. They had their orders, and went to work. You would not have guessed from their behaviour that we were a dismasted hull, low down past the Horn, ice near us, ourselves rolling helpless on a mountainous sea, a hurricane blowing, often blind with snow, our situation so frightful that every next lurch, every next drive, might carry us headlong out of hand. They fried the bacon, they boiled plenty of coffee, they overhauled the pantry, and got out biscuit and jam and such things; but all very quietly; I saw respect in their behaviour; yet what I best remember was their easy, unconcerned way of going about this business of getting supper. Whilst one cooked and others prepared the table, others again rolled the wet carpet off the deck and stowed it away in a corner.

All this while poor Mrs. Burke kept straining her weak eyes at the companion way. At last she jumped up and shrieked out:

'Why doesn't the captain come down? He'll be frozen to death or washed overboard. Which of you'll go and tell him to come to me?'

The boatswain instantly went. He was absent five minutes, then returned followed by the captain, who merely saying in a voice I should not have known but for seeing him, 'Get on with your supper, my lads, get on with your supper. 'Tis a bad job,' came to the stove and stood before it warming his hands.

His wife began to reason with him in a crying appealing voice for remaining on deck: he looked at her and shook his head. She saw something in his face that arrested her speech, and when I glanced at the poor man I was thankful she ceased to worry him. He stood on wide straddled legs at the stove with his hands behind him, and the snow draining into a pool at each heel, watching the men eating and drinking.

I never should have imagined any ocean interior could make such a picture as this. The wonder came into it out of the contrast betwixt the rough coarse forecastle hands gathered around the table, with the sparkle of silver plate in their fists, and the comparative elegance of the state-room in which they sat, with its few looking-glasses and other odds and ends of decoration as before described; and always present was the overwhelming thought of the vessel's loneliness. I could not indeed then figure her in her wretched state, but with imagination's eye I saw the pale sweep of the decks glimmering with snow, the deserted wheel: with each heave and fall I figured the climb and plunge of the desolate mutilated craft upon the huge seas, black and roaring as thunder, with a hanging, steadfast faintness out upon the bow whenever the snow squall slackened and gave a view of a mile of the flashing froth breaking in sullen glares between the iceberg and the ship.

'Eat hearty, lads,' said the captain, 'eat hearty. There's nothing to be done with the ship till the dawn gives us a sight of her. Four of ye gone....' He gave a sort of gasp, and stared a moment or two at his wife, and then said to the boatswain, 'Wall, would she have righted, think you, if the masts had stood?'

The boatswain swallowed the contents of his mouth, and said emphatically, 'No, sir. That second bust-down must ha' done for her.'

A growl of assent ran round the table.

'Well,' said the captain, 'we all know what's to be done. We've to stick her northwards anyhow. Something may come along to give us a tow. Failing that, there's enough of foremast standing for a jury rig. The machinery of the helm's sound. We've to blow to the nor'rards, I say, edging that way for the crowded track.'

The men said nothing. I seemed to find something ominous in their silence. At the same time it rejoiced me to observe that the captain talked collectedly, as though he had rallied his wits, and had clear ideas and intentions.

When the men had supped and cleared the table, they made as though to go. The captain told them to occupy the cabin for the night. They looked grateful at this, and then around them, as though considering where they should lie. Their awkward grins, queer swaying postures, backs curved, arms up and down, and fingers curled, their bearing, glances, and manners, which expressed but little reference to our lamentable and awful situation, gave me, I own, a sort of heart. They looked as though, but for the captain and us women, and the quarter-deck restraint of the cabin, they'd have gathered about the stove, and roared out hearty songs, drowning the fury without with hurricane lungs of music, and spun yarns, and smoked their pipes with as much thoughtless gaiety as they carried to their diversions ashore.

The captain begged me to go to my cabin, and turn in and lie warm.

'Will you go to bed at all to-night?' his wife asked him.

'No,' he answered.

'I suppose you mean to do all the looking out yourself, and end in being found a frozen corpse, while Jack here is to sit by the stove?' said she in a low voice, but audible to him and me, glancing round her at the men.

He peered at her with a scowl, and answered, 'I'm nearly crazy. Say nothing if I'm not to go raving mad.'

'May I not stop here?' said I.

'What, with these men, miss?'

'I like the company of sailors. The sight of these seamen keeps up my spirits.'

'My poor, dear Marie!' cried my nurse, putting the back of her hand against my cheek. 'You can't sit here. Your father would not thank us for throwing you into such company.'

'How can you talk so at such a time?' I exclaimed. 'I dread to be alone in my cabin. Where is this ship being hurled to? If she should be flung against an iceberg——'

'If that,' cried he, abruptly, and with temper, 'then as lief be in your cabin as here, as here as on the deck.'

Then, softening his voice, he said some reassuring things—I forget them—I was crying with my face averted, that the men should not see me. Mrs. Burke took my arm, and we entered my berth. She called to the steward to light the lamp, and named some refreshments which he presently brought, but it was too bitterly cold to talk; nay, our voices here, right aft as my berth was, were almost inaudible for the thunderous wash of the sea along the slant of the side, with a lift of it, when the toppling, helpless hull tumbled my cabin window to the foam, that must again and again have soared high above the line of her bulwark rails.

I would not undress, but after I had drunk some wine, I got into my bunk, where Mrs. Burke made a heap of me with bedclothes and furs; then, kissing me and promising to look in from time to time, she dimmed the lamp and went.

I afterwards passed many terrible nights in this ship, but none worse than this—perhaps because it was the first of them. The noises of the sea and straining fabric drowned all sounds in the state-cabin. I could not hear if the men talked, nor tell what they were doing. I terrified myself by imagining that they would get at the spirits and make themselves drunk. Then there was always the haunting horror of ice near us. At any moment I might feel a rending shock of collision. I was sailor enough to know that if our ship was thrown against such a berg as we had sighted that day, nay, even against a piece of ice of her own bulk, she would be shivered into staves, and all before we could put up one prayer to God. And often did I pray that night, and with plenty of fervour of tongue, I don't doubt, but with little heart, I fear; I was too frightened to realise the meaning of the words I used. Twice Mrs. Burke visited me and said all was right; the sailors had been on deck to pump the ship out; the hull was dry and buoyant, and the gale abating. This news she gave me on her second visit. There was a vast deal of snow in the wind, and the blackness was so thickened by it there was no power in the rushing sea-flares to make a light for the eye beyond a pistol shot; but the captain believed, she said, there was no ice nearer to us than the cathedral island we had seen that afternoon.

Nature, however, was worn out at last and I fell asleep, and when I awoke it was daylight, by which I guessed it was not much earlier than noon; I looked through the porthole, a large lead-coloured, confused swell was running, but it was unwrinkled and frothless. The motions of the ship were extraordinarily wild and agitated; she was flung into twenty postures in a minute. When I got out of my bunk I found it impossible to stand without holding on. The water in the wash-stand was a solid block of ice, but the cold did not seem so piercing, nor of an edge so saw-like as I had found it yesterday. I contrived to wrap myself up, and went out and saw Mrs. Burke sitting alone near the stove. She sprang to help me, and said that a few minutes earlier she had looked in, and left on finding me asleep. A pot of coffee was beside the stove, and a breakfast of cold ham, tinned meat and other things on the table.

'Where are the crew?' I asked.

'On deck,' she answered, 'endeavouring to rig up a mast.'

'Is the captain hopeful?'

'He means to stick to the ship,' she answered. 'Some of the men talk as if there was nothing to be done with her, and spoke of going away in the long boat.'

'Is the vessel utterly dismasted?'

'She is in a terrible plight. But make a good breakfast, dear. It is quiet weather in spite of this horrible rolling. The hull is sound, and we are sure to be fallen in with by some vessel that will help us.'

As she spoke Mr. Owen came out of his cabin. His face was the pale shadow of the countenance he had brought on board. He blinked his eyes, and they were bloodshot; his very hair seemed to have been toned by emotion into a sort of ashen colour. He made a slight bow, and sat down at the table without speaking. Evidently he had breakfasted. Also, no doubt, he had previously met Mrs. Burke. I judged by his behaviour that the captain had talked to him; it was a mixture of sulkiness and dislike.

He had been kind and attentive to me on many occasions during the voyage, and, full of fear and other crowding passions as I myself was, I yet felt sorry for him. I bade him good morning and asked him if he had been on deck. On this he rose, and clawing his way round the table, so as to get near to me, he said:—

'I owe you an apology for my conduct last night. My indiscretion was not so much the result of cowardice as the state of my health. Much less than I took in the hope of obtaining a little warmth and spirit must have overcome me. I trust I have your forgiveness.'

'There is nothing to forgive, Mr. Owen, nor is this a time to talk of such things.'

'The captain was scarcely manly in his language,' said he, turning to Mrs. Burke. 'I am not an officer of the ship nor one of his crew. I am practically a passenger, and claim the privileges of a passenger.'

'Passengers are not allowed to take too much. All captains object to drinking in their ships, particularly in such dreadful times of excitement as last night,' said Mrs. Burke.

I lifted my finger to call attention to the cries of men and the tread of heavily shod feet overhead. Mr. Owen returned to his seat at the table. Soon after this the skylight that was thick with frozen snow whitened as to a watery beam of sunshine, or to some transient glance of clearer day in the sky. I asked Mrs. Burke to take me on deck. She seemed to shrink. I asked her if she had been on deck.

'Yes,' she answered.

'Then why should not I go?'

'Feel how dangerously the hull rolls,' said she. 'You might be thrown and break your neck.'

But I saw that her real objection did not lie so much in that as in her fear of the effect of the scene of the wreck upon me. Thus reading her mind, I exclaimed:

'I will go alone; but why will you not come?' and went to my cabin for more wraps.

She was ready before I was, and we clasped hands, and holding on carefully likewise, stopping always for that sudden recovery of the deck which would happen out of its slant with the rush of a cannon ball slung by a line and let go at an angle, so ungovernable were the motions of the dismasted hull, we gained the companion ladder, and crawled to the head of the steps, where we stood in the companion itself, with our heads above the hood.

I shrieked on looking! Let my imaginations have been what they would, here was the reality! I could not credit my sight. All three masts were gone! nothing of the lower-masts remained saving a height of two or three feet of jagged and splintered trunk-sheaves of barbed milk-white wood on the main and quarter decks, and about ten to fifteen feet of the foremast. On the right or starboard side, lengths of the bulwark were crushed flat. The decks were littered with gear, ropes' ends were swimming overboard in the leaden swell like huge eels and sea-snakes making from the wreck. On one side, dangling between the irons, was the keel of a quarter-boat—all that remained of her; the opposite davits were empty.

But what idea can such talk as this give you of that wonderful dismal picture of shipwreck, that spectacle of decks covered with snow, of rails like an armoury with their bristling pendants of bayonet-blue icicles? The galley was partly wrecked; the bowsprit stood soaring and sinking upon the leaping waters, but the jibbooms were gone. I did not know the hull. She looked shrunk to half her former size. The sky stooped to the sea with its burden of vapour, but a break right overhead hovered in a colour of sulphur. No wind stirred. Never was there a deader stagnation in the atmosphere under the height of the Line. Yet you were sensible of the presence of the spirit of this wild, desolate part of the world even in such pauses as this, when you watched the sullen motion of that troubled breast of deep, hurling its glassy folds in comminglings which ran in silent warring to the horizon. Far astern was a shape of white, a gleam in the sallow air there, like that of a sail; but my eye was now experienced, and since that dash of radiance was too big to be a ship, it must needs be ice. I saw a collection of white tips on the starboard quarter when the swell threw us high, and some points or shafts faint and bluish over the bows. Otherwise the ocean line swept clear.