The wind blew hard, and the vapour swept past in a horizontal pouring, masses of it coming on a sudden in a blinding thickness till you could not see half the wreck’s length; then the silver-tinted volumes would brighten for a breath or two, and show the steel-coloured sea heaving its freckled and foamless folds into the vaporous faintness a few hundred feet off; then the mist would boil down and over us once more until it was like being in a room filled with steam.
‘The cabin is empty,’ said I—the girl being on the port side, I had taken care to drag the body to starboard—‘there are seats, and you will be sheltered there. This is damping stuff.’
‘Not yet,’ she answered. ‘I am as safe here. I hate the thought of having anything to screen the sea from me. I want to look—at any moment the Indiaman or the man-of-war may come close to us.’
‘Be it so,’ said I. ‘Heavens, how rapidly has all this happened! One of the cutter’s men shouted to me that the Indiaman had fired two guns. Why did they not report this to us? Did they believe the swell would not let them get aboard? They saw—of course they saw—this fog bearing down; why did not the madmen let us know of it?’
‘What will my aunt think?’
‘Why, she will be in a terrible fright. But it will not last. We shall be picked up presently. I would rather be here than in the cutter. If they are wise, they will ride to their oars; if they row or allow the wind and seas to drive them, they are bound to lose both ships, the night being at hand; and then God help them!’
‘Oh, it was an evil moment,’ she cried, ‘when we sighted the corvette!’
‘It was an evil moment,’ I exclaimed bitterly and wrathfully, ‘when Mr. Colledge, who had undoubtedly taken too much wine on board the Magicienne, suggested that we should kill an hour on this hull. Where,’ I cried passionately, ‘could the unhappy lieutenant’s wits have been? He laughed at me for indicating the appearance I witnessed in the north-west. Was there nothing in the weight of this swell to convince him that there must be mischief not far off?’
‘What will my aunt think?’ she repeated, as though she scarcely heeded my words, whilst she brought her hands, brilliant with rings, together and stared into the thickness with her eyes on fire with fear and amazement and the score of wild emotions which filled her.
Though I held my peace on the subject, the wind, that was blowing with the spite of an ugly squall, was exciting an alarm in me that rose above all other considerations of our situation. The hatches lay open and there was nothing to be seen of their covers about the decks. If this weather continued, a high sea must presently follow, in which case there could be nothing to save the wreck from filling and foundering. The lieutenant had assured us that she was dry; but it was certain that she had been badly wrenched by the lightning stroke that had dismasted and apparently set her on fire forward, and by the furious gale that had chased her afterwards; and though she may have been tight when the lieutenant overhauled her, this constant working in the strong swell might at any instant cause her to start a butt or open a seam, and then what should I be able to do? Both pumps were smashed level to the deck; there was no boat; there was nothing discoverable fore and aft which I could launch and secure my companion and myself to. It was with inexpressible anxiety, therefore, that I would send my gaze from time to time to windward, in the hope of observing a thinning in the thickness there, or any the faintest imaginable sign to elate me with the belief that the worst of the fog was on us, that we were now feeling the worst of the wind, and that the ocean would be clearing soon.