The time passed. I looked at my watch after we had been sitting a little, and found it six o’clock. The sun would be setting in something more than an hour, and a bitter black night was bound to follow if the vapour had not cleared when daylight ended. There was now a smart sea running, but the swell had flattened something, I thought. The hull was horribly frisky, leaning at desperate angles from side to side, and often recovering herself with a jerk that must have flung us to the deck had we not been seated. But she was extraordinarily light, and floated very tall, and though there would sometimes come a blow of salt water against the bow that flashed across the deck in a mass of foam and green crystals, yet she soared so nimbly to the height of every surge that she took in amazingly little water. Indeed, it was not long before I felt myself infinitely comforted by her behaviour, convinced that it would have to breeze up with much more spite than the wind now had to put us in jeopardy from a filling hold.
Shortly before the hour of sundown, I induced Miss Temple to occupy the deck-house. She entered with a great deal of reluctance, and seated herself in a corner that was the furthest away from where the body had been. It had not been very easy to converse outside. The ceaseless roaring and washing noises of the water, with the alarming thumps and leapings of froth at the bow, and the sounds of the rushing wind sweeping in gusty cries over the mutilated rails of the hull as she was hove up full into it, and then sinking into a sort of humming moaning as the wreck drove down the liquid acclivity into the swift comparative stillness of the trough: all this was distracting and terrifying, and speech had been difficult. But the interior of the deck-house was a shelter to the ear and voice. I seated myself opposite the girl, giving her as wide, respectful a berth as the narrow cabin permitted. The shadow of the evening lay already sullen in the white mist that seemed to boil upon the wind, though at that hour it was not so thick but that the gaze might be able to penetrate a distance of a quarter of a mile. Miss Temple was deadly pale. Even her lips had lost their delicate rosy tint, and sat blanched in their compression. Her eyes looked preternaturally large, and there was an expression of passionate desperation in them, as one might figure of some proud, high-spirited creature driven at bay, and rounding upon the pursuer with a gaze charged with despair and wrath and the misery of some heart-breaking resolution.
‘I believe I shall go mad,’ she said, ‘if this fog does not cease. I feel as though I were now insane, and that what we are suffering is the imagination of madness.’
‘It is a frightful time of suspense,’ I answered; ‘we must have patience: there is no other medicine for this sort of affliction.’
‘I could stab myself,’ she cried, ‘for being in this position. There is the Indiaman close at hand; I see her saloon cheerful with lamplight, the tables glittering, the passengers seated, talking and laughing, without a thought of us by this time.’ I shook my head. She continued: ‘I think of the security, the comfort of that ship, which I never once reflected on when in her. And now contrast this!’
She rolled her wonderful eyes over the narrow compartment in a shuddering way that was eloquent with abhorrence.
‘Why am I here? It is my own fault. I could stab myself for my folly.’
It made one think of some beautiful wild creature newly caged to watch her.
‘It is bad enough,’ said I; ‘but it might be much worse. Think of yourself in that open boat—on this high sea, and amidst this blinding vapour: no water, no food, the blackness of the night coming down, and a thousand leagues of ocean all around you.’
‘Is not the cutter safer than this horrible wreck?’ she cried. ‘If the morning exposes the ships to the people in her, they can row; but what can we do?’