‘My mind is hopelessly dark and silent. I have been all this evening trying to think, and the struggle has made me ill.’
‘I will fetch you some brandy and water.’
‘No, thank you. What you gave me half an hour ago is sufficient. It is not that—I dread the darkness of the long night—the fearful solitude—oh, the fearful solitude! Will not Captain Regnier permit me to burn a light.’
‘He is timid, and very properly timid,’ answered Alphonse. ‘Conceive a fire breaking out. A fire at sea, and on such a night as this!’ He shuddered, and then looked up at the strange globular lamp that depended from the centre of the ceiling of my cabin. We conversed with the door open, and the lamp that burned in the living room shed a faint light upon the interior of my berth. ‘But it is lonely,’ the young Frenchman continued in a voice of pity. ‘I dare say my uncle will not mind—at all events he need not know.’ He raised his hand to the lamp, and with a twist removed the metal bowl or compartment for the oil and mesh out of the globe. ‘I will fill this, and bring it back to you,’ said he.
He returned after a short absence, lighted the wick, and turned it down that it might burn dimly, then screwed it into the globe. I felt deeply grateful, and took his hand and held it whilst I thanked him. He left me, and putting on mate Hénin’s cloak to keep me warm, I got into my miserable little sleeping shelf and lay down, grateful for, and feeling even soothed by, being able to see.
CHAPTER VI
A TERRIBLE NIGHT
I may have slept for an hour or two; but for the light of the lamp, I believe, I should not have closed my eyes in rest, so unendurable would my spirits have found the heavy burthen of the darkness of the night. I opened my eyes. The lamp burned dimly. The vessel was rolling somewhat briskly, and I seemed to hear a louder noise of wind than I had noticed before falling asleep. The creaking throughout the cabin was ceaseless and distracting. The rudder jarred heavily upon its hinges, and every time a billow smote it I felt a shock as though the brig had struck on a rock.