He smoked meditatively.
'Helga,' said I, 'you look tired. Would you like to go to your cabin?'
'I should, Hugh.'
'Well, I shall be glad to turn in myself, Captain. Will you forgive our early retreat?'
'By all means,' he exclaimed. 'Let me show you the cabins.'
He went to the cuddy door and bawled for Punmeamootty. 'Light a lantern,' I heard him say, 'and bring it aft!'
After a minute or two the steward made his appearance with a lantern swinging in his hand. The Captain took it from him, and we passed out on to the quarter-deck where the hatch lay. After the warmth of the cuddy interior, the wind, chilled as it had been with the damp of the squall, seemed to blow with an edge of frost. The rays of the lantern danced in the blackness of the wet planks. The vessel was rolling slowly and plunging heavily, and there were many heavy, complaining, straining noises aloft amid the invisible spaces of canvas swinging through the starless gloom. The cold, bleak roar of seething waters alongside recalled the raft, and there was a sort of sobbing all along the dusk close under either line of bulwarks.
'Let me help you through this little hatch, Miss Nielsen,' said the Captain, dangling the lantern over it that we might see the aperture.
If she answered him, I did not hear her; she peered a moment, then put her foot over and vanished. The steps were perpendicular—pieces of wood nailed to the bulkhead—yet she had descended this up-and-down ladder in an instant, and almost as she vanished was calling to me from below to say that she was safe.
'What extraordinary nimbleness in a young lady!' cried the Captain, in a voice of unaffected admiration. 'What an exquisite sailor! Now, Mr. Tregarthen!'