'But something must be done,' shouted Mr. Owen from his corner. 'The ship will go to pieces if she's to be left to knock about in this hollow sea.'
Captain Burke took no more notice than had the doctor's voice been the creaking of a bulkhead.
It was quieter on that than on the preceding night. The wind, we learnt, was a scanty breeze out of the south; here and there the vapour had thinned, and a pale star shivered in the openings: our drift that day had lifted some northward point of ice, and the dim faintness of it was visible on the port beam, as the helpless hull lay; that was all the ice to be seen, and it was far enough off to keep us easy. A large black swell was flowing north and south, but the folds were wide and regular and the motion of the hull was almost easy upon it. These matters about that scene of night outside I got from the captain and steward.
The sailors remained forward. I understood they managed very well now they could keep the galley fire going. Once during this evening I asked Captain Burke, when he came below for a glass of hot grog and biscuit, why he did not burn a signal fire.
'And risk setting the hull in a blaze?' said he, 'with the chance of there being nothing within five hundred miles of us.'
'It might bring help, Edward,' said his wife.
He flung from us in a passion. It was a bad sign with him now, that the merest nothings, such as my question, put him into a rage. He swallowed his glass of grog and returned on deck, and when half-way up the companion ladder he paused to shout back, 'No use in making a flare unless there's something to signal to,' and then stepped into the blackness outside.
It was fine weather next day—fine for that part of the world, I mean; glimpses of watery blue, betwixt curtains of ashy yellow and brown vapour, some slanting pencils of dull sulphur in the north, striking the line of the horizon out of a long ragged edge of cloud. The wind was west, fresh enough to flash plumes of spray out of the running wrinkles; there was the head of an iceberg away north to the right of the weak shower of sunshine. This was all to be seen—saving always the hull with her deck of frozen snow, and her catheads barbed with ice, and her lines of rails bristling with daggers and small arms of frozen dew and brine—when I looked through the companion hatch after leaving my cabin.
Whilst Mrs. Burke, Mr. Owen and myself breakfasted, we heard the people on deck busy with another jury-mast. The captain's voice rang out again in loud eager shouts. Mrs. Burke sent the steward up to beg her husband come below and breakfast whilst the coffee was hot; he sent answer that he could not leave; but even whilst the steward was delivering the captain's reply, a long strange hallo was delivered by one of the men; the sounds of bustle ceased; in a minute or two we heard a rush of feet; Mr. Owen jumped from his chair and ran up the ladder, whence, after he had paused to stare round, he shouted down in a voice of ecstasy:—
'A sail, Mrs. Burke! There's a ship in sight, Miss Otway!'