I told her that might happen even though we both kept watch all night in the cabin. How, down here, should we hear a hail from the water? We'd need to keep a look-out on deck, which would kill her quickly and me soon after.
'Pray go and rest,' said I, 'and trust me to see anything that may come along and to hear anything that may hail.'
She looked reluctant, very white, her eyes dim and large with tragic expectancy as though she never knew but that in the next minute something frightful would happen.
I picked the rat up by the tail. 'Is this your friend?' said I.
She shrieked, believing it alive; then, shuddering and shuddering, staggered somewhat blindly in the direction of the cabin.
I jumped up and supported her, encouraging her by every promise and hope my brain could frame.
'You have not slept for nights,' said I, pausing at her door. 'Best now that I am here, if only that you may have strength enough to leave the hull and health enough to carry you to your home.'
She had removed her gloves: I grasped her ice-cold hand and returned to my couch.
The night crept away. I dozed at intervals, visiting the deck perhaps half a dozen times. In the morning watch I slept soundly upon the couch by the stove, and when I awoke it was nine by the clock under the skylight, still black as thunder, and the hull rolling heavily. I was cold to the heart, and before quitting the cabin kindled a fire to boil some water for a hot drink, then went up the steps to take a look.
It was still blowing fresh, but the wind had shifted north-west, and the sky was a clear, sparkling heaven of stars from sea-line to sea-line, the sea running in steady hills of ink to where you saw the horizon throbbing close under the pale lights of the night low down, so clear was the gale. The mast-head lamp burned dimly; but it would be daybreak shortly. I stared around the sea, and saw nothing north and west and east, but my sight going south was arrested by a low, irregular, dim line: it rose with the heave of the hull, and it was as far off as the horizon. It looked like the sheen of a long face of coast covered with snow: it was a mere attenuated film of faintness stretched where sky and water met, and I looked and looked, believing it a bank of cloud that would dissolve whilst I watched; but it hung steady, and still it was so elusive that sometimes I saw it, and when the hull sprang from the trough again it was gone; and yet again, when she roared to the height of a surge, it was there.