She was a mere smudge again—this time to leeward—in a few minutes. I could only stare at her. Our flag had blown away, I was without power to signal, and, even if I had been able to communicate our condition of distress, what help could she have offered? What could she have done for us in such a sea as was now running? Yet the mere sight of her had heartened me. She made me feel that help could never be wanting in an ocean so ploughed by keels as the Atlantic.

I crawled down on to the quarter-deck, and returned to the Captain's cabin. The poor man at once fell with feverish eagerness to questioning me. I told him honestly that the maintopgallant-mast had carried away while I was on deck, but that there was nothing else wrong that I could distinguish; that the barque was still making a noble fight, though there were times when the seas broke very fiercely and dangerously over the forecastle.

He wagged his head with a gesture of distress, crying: 'So it is! so it is! One spar after another, and thus may we go to pieces!'

I told him of the great steam frigate that had passed, but to this piece of news he listened with a vacant look, and apparently could think of nothing but his spars. He asked in a childish, fretful way how long Helga had been below, and I answered him stoutly, 'Not nearly long enough for sleep.'

'Ay,' cried he, 'but the barque needs to be pumped, sir.'

'Your daughter will work the better for rest,' said I; and then looking at my watch, I found it was time to give him his physic.

He exclaimed, looking at the wineglass, 'There is no virtue in this stuff! The sufferer can make but one use of it.' And, still preserving a manner of curious childishness, he emptied the contents of the glass over the edge of his cot on to the deck, and, as he swung, lay watching the mess of it on the floor with a smile. I guessed that expostulation would be fruitless, and, indeed, having but very little faith myself in any sort of physic, I secretly applauded his behaviour.

I sat down upon the locker, and leaning my back against the bulkhead, endeavoured, by conversation, to bring a cheerful look to his countenance; but his mood of depression was not to be conquered. At times he would ramble a little, quote passages from Danish plays in his native tongue, then pause with his head on one side, as though waiting for me to applaud what he forgot I did not understand.

'How fine is this from "Palnatoke"!' he would cry, or, 'Hark to this from that noble performance "Hacon Yarl"! Ah, it is England alone can match Oehlenschläger.'

I could only watch him mutely. Then he would break away to bewail his spars again, and to cry out that Helga would be left penniless, would be a poor beggar-girl, if his ship foundered.