On this she raised her head and viewed me a little while steadily, as one who stares critically to make sure of another.
I took the pot of coffee from her and we seated ourselves. She had suffered so long from what I may truly call a very anguish of loneliness—and, indeed, one had need to be locked up in that same rolling hull, in the blackness and the cold, with the seas roaring outside, and within always the same soul-maddening noise of creaking bulkheads and harshly strained fastenings, to realise what this poor, gentle, delicate lady had endured—that I was sure she'd find a wonderful ease in talking freely. I therefore questioned her whilst we sat eating, and she told me who she was, where she lived, how the wife of the master of the vessel had been her old nurse, with other matters which she herself relates.
She warmed up in talking. I think she found a sort of hope in merely speaking of her father and her home and the gentleman, Mr. Archibald Moore, to whom, but for her health, so she told me, she would have been married some months before the date of her sailing. I so questioned her that the early despair in her manner died out when she talked of her father and sweetheart. I took care to converse as though they were within reach, and the meeting a matter of a little waiting only. In short, my resolution to cheer her mastered her fears and perhaps her convictions; and even whilst we sat I beheld a new life stealing into her, speaking in her raised, hopeful, more eager voice, and softening the haggard, wild look in her eyes.
Presently she put some question which I had to fence with.
'My dread,' she said, 'all the while I was alone here, was ice; the ship lies helpless; I never knew but that an iceberg was close to, and that every next hurl of the sea would dash the wreck against some frozen cliff. Is there any ice in sight?'
'Yes,' I answered, 'but a good way off.'
'Suppose we drift towards an iceberg, what shall we do?'
'No good in supposing at sea,' I said. 'Time enough to deal with a difficulty when it's within hail.'
'Does the hull remain in one place? Or are we being driven by the seas and the wind?'
'If the sun will put his nose out,' said I, with a glance at the thickly snow-coated skylight, 'I'll find out where we are.'