'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.