When the fire was blazing I helped the young lady to sit close beside it, and went on deck for some life-lines for this cabin. I moved with less trouble above, for the life-lines I had before set up were still stretched along. Every rope that I handled was like bar iron, but with infinite trouble I succeeded in getting a length below and stretching it here and there, which done I was able to use my legs with some freedom.
The stove was violently aslant, but it was possible to boil a kettle, and whilst I waited for a hot drink I crouched beside the girl, grateful for the comforting heat of the flames. I told her plainly that we were stranded and ice-locked; that we must resolve to exert our patience and make the best of our deplorable situation. She cleared her head of the cover I had wrapped about her, and stared at me dumbly for a minute or two with a face as white as though moonlit, and her fair hair full of sparkles with the light of the lamp that still glowed hard-slanted against the upper deck.
'Do I understand,' she exclaimed in a low voice, painful to hear with the tremulous gasps that shook it, 'that we are to remain in this condition until—until——' She stopped, then added, 'but until when? We are stranded and hidden and must perish.'
'Listen to me,' said I, 'for this is our chance as I see it is as a sailor: suppose us beached for months as we now are—though who's to predict that?—for within twenty-four hours may come a gale out of another quarter that shall free us and drive us amongst the ice to our destruction—take it we are to be stranded here: I have read the ship's papers, know the contents of the hold, and promise you, though no chance of rescue should happen for a twelvemonth, nay, for a couple of years, help, when it comes, shall find us alive so far as life may be kept in us by food and drink and warmth.'
She buried her face: I think it nearly killed her to hear me talk of a twelvemonth or two years. Then, flashing upon me as it were with a sudden dropping of her hands and the stare of her desperate grief and horror, she cried:
'Is there no hope beyond the waiting for the deliverance which may never happen?' and without stopping for an answer she went on: 'How are we to live even for a week in a hull we cannot move about on?'
'That's the very least of our troubles,' said I. 'Come, you have spirit—the heart of an Englishwoman beats in you. You must put some face of courage and faith upon this business. We are alive. Keep on thinking of that. Consider what we have come through. We might have been thrown upon the ice without this shelter.'
'We have stranded on an island, you say?'
'I think so.'