'I shall be happy,' said the captain, nervous and convulsive with temper, 'at least—you've got to remember the object you're here for.' He looked at me. 'Miss Otway is not likely to accompany you, and you'll be no gentleman if you desert her.'
'Miss Otway will accompany me if you give her an opportunity of leaving this wreck,' said Mr. Owen.
'This is no wreck, sir,' said the captain in a low-level voice of menace, stooping his head and looking at the doctor under crooked eyebrows.
Mr. Owen muttered that he intended to save his life if he could, and Miss Otway's too if he was allowed—the rest he mumbled: after ceasing to articulate his lips moved; then, with a sudden impassioned motion of despair and horror, he sprang from his chair and disappeared in his berth, having barely taken three bites.
'I fear his intellects have become disordered,' said Mrs. Burke.
'He'd like to drive me out of the ship. The lily liver would have me abandon a craft that's as staunch as the newest line-of-battle ship afloat. What would it signify to him that I left a couple of thousand pounds of my hard earnings to go to the bottom here, so long as his dingy skinful of bones and bobs of curls were safely landed?' exclaimed the captain in a low-pitched deliberate speech, that trembled nevertheless with emotion and temper.
His wife gave me a look as though she would entreat me not to talk to him. Now and again he lifted up his eyes to a tell-tale compass that hung exactly over his chair; almost as regular as the beat of a clock was the plunge of the ship from right to left, from left to right. The blinding green sense of one side and then the other of the cabin portholes, and a loud yearning thunder of water washing past.
After a little the captain went to his cabin. I said I would like to see the ship under sail, and when we had clothed ourselves for the deck Mrs. Burke and I went to the companion-steps.
A seaman, clad in oilskins and swathed about the neck till he showed nothing of his face but a pair of eyes, stood at the wheel. Some delicate stars and darts of snow were falling, but they did not cloud the view. The square of white canvas was stretched by a fresh following breeze of bitter coldness, beyond frost itself: the sea was feathering upon the swell, and a number of grey and white petrels skimmed the flashes as they moulded their flight to the wind-furrowed rounds. The white sail looked like a wild and sickly light when the hull swung it athwart the soot over the horizon, but there could be no doubt that the vessel was in motion. We durst not leave the holding place of the companion-hood to look over the taffrail or side, but you saw she had steerage way by the manner in which the fellow twirled the wheel.
A group of seamen with their hands deep buried, some of them sea-booted fisherman-like to their knees, trudged the white frozen deck opposite the galley. It was wonderful to see them keep their feet; the rumbling hum of their strong, lungs stole aft against the wind; they swayed in earnest talk, and minded us not when they faced our way, again and again staring round at the sea as though for a sail.