Now it was surely day—day that showed itself in a gray sea leaping against a gray sky. A driving mist, too vaporous to be called rain, gave the same neutral tone to the vessel, which seemed to have lost her individuality overnight. She had the tired, lifeless look of the men on her deck; and as she groaned and whined along the watery road, her aspect was at once human and wholly sad. Though they were far to the south, the mist was cold upon their faces. Now and then a dash of spray flew across the quarter-deck, and its greater warmth was pleasant in comparison. By eight o'clock the water in the hold had gained six inches, and the crew were beginning to lose heart.
The group that gathered in the cabin that day had the restlessness of people waiting to start on a long journey. In her growing fear, Mrs. March hungered for companionship; she steadily kept to the cabin, refusing to go to her room, but half-sat, half-reclined upon the lounge, and watched the wooden walls reel about her. Whenever an unusually heavy sea rolled them down, she gripped the back of the lounge and prayed in silence; and when it passed she looked about her with a spent face. Hetty and Miss Stromberg sat in steamer-chairs, talked a little, and sometimes laughed without reason; from time to time they staggered to their room, never remaining long, or losing for a moment the aspect of being about to do something quite different. Drew tried to be cheerful, but felt that he was only inane; now and then he read in a book that at other times he held closed over his finger. All day Lieutenant Stromberg sat at the table and played solitaire, resolutely forbearing to cheat himself, being restrained by the thought that he might be near his last hour. At times he made jokes that no one seemed to understand, and then looked up wonderingly when he laughed alone.
It was afternoon when Hetty, unable longer to bear the thought of the dark, close cabin,—all the windows had now been battened down and the skylight covered,—made her way to the forward companionway, and, opening the doors, looked out upon the deck with eyes wide with wondering fear. The leeward rail was level with the sea, which boiled about it; the deck ran like a mill-race. The sky was lost in the driving mist, which closed about them in a gray wall that seemed like a barrier to hide the impending dangers beyond. Clinging to the door, she stepped out upon the deck and glanced aft. The wind beat her down like a flower-stalk, and she crouched upon the door-step. But Medbury had seen her, and hurried to her side.
"You mustn't stay here; you know you mustn't," he protested. "We may ship a sea at any time." He himself was dripping, and his face was rosy with the damp wind: he looked like Neptune's very brother.
"Yes," she cried; "yes; I'll go in a minute. I couldn't stand it down there another second." She lifted her face above the house for an instant, and nodded aft. "What is that for?"
Above the taffrail, from quarter to quarter, a stout piece of canvas had been stretched between two upright poles, shutting off the outlook astern. Medbury glanced toward it before he replied.
"That?" he said. "Oh, to keep the spray off the glass of the binnacle. It clouds it so the men can't read the compass." It did not seem to him wise to tell her that it was to keep the helmsmen from glancing over their shoulders at the following seas, and perhaps losing their nerve at a critical moment. "Please go down now; it makes me nervous to see you here."
She crouched down upon the door-step and looked up at him with a smile.
"I didn't suppose you were ever nervous," she told him.
"Well, I am, about you—any woman, in a sea like this."