She slightly shook her head and sighed, then remained silent for a minute or two, and said: ‘How small and contemptible my spirit shows itself when I am tested! Do you recollect when this wretched brig was lying near us, how I took a parasol from my aunt and levelled it at this vessel and talked of wishing to see a sea fight and of shooting a man? How brave I was when there was nothing particularly to be afraid of, and how cowardly I have shown myself here.’
‘I should have scarcely believed,’ said I, ‘that you were sensible of my presence at the time you speak of.’
‘Why?’ she asked.
‘Indeed,’ I continued, ‘I should have scarcely believed that you were sensible that I was on board the ship.’
‘Mr. Dugdale, if my manner did not please you, this is no time to reproach me with it.’ Her eyes sparkled and her lip curled peevishly.
‘Hark!’ I exclaimed; ‘I hear a rippling noise as of approaching wind.’ I passed round the table, gained the door, and looked out. The atmosphere was still motionless, but the sounds of rippling drew near, and presently I felt a pleasant little air blowing over the stern of the hull, accompanied with the tinkling and lipping noises of water set in motion trembling to the brig’s side. But it was still pitch dark, and search the sky where I would, I could observe no break of faintness, no leanest vision of star, no vaguest outline of cloud in the impenetrable obscurity.
I returned to the table, this time seating myself opposite to Miss Temple. It was easily seen in her face that she was sensible I did this consciously. Indeed, the gaze she rested upon me was a look of inquiry as though she would discover whether this holding aloof on my part was due to respect or to dislike. Then, as though she suddenly sickened to such idle considerations, she exclaimed with an eager awakening of her in her whole manner, ‘Does this breeze come from the direction where the ships are, or where you may suppose them to be, Mr. Dugdale?’
‘For the life of me I could not tell you,’ I responded; ‘there are no quarters of the compass for human senses on such a night as this, in a hull that may be headed on all sorts of courses by the set of the swell; but the dawn will be here anon, and if this draught hold, we shall be able to find out whence it proceeds.’
It was still blowing the same light breeze when day broke, and I then knew that the wind sat about north-west. Miss Temple and I stepped on to the deck, where we stood in an agony of impatience awaiting the full revelation of the sea. One saw why it should have been so pitch dark throughout the night; the sky was overcast from horizon to horizon by a sheet of sallowish leaden-hued vapour. Yet the atmosphere had cleared so as to enable the sight to penetrate to the verge of the normal sea-line, where the ocean stood in a firm rim of the darkness of indigo in the east against the grey of the morning that was spreading out behind it. I took a long and steady view of the circle; my companion’s eyes were riveted upon me as I did so; she had rather trust my sight than hers, and her gaze glowed with an inexpressible eagerness to witness in my face an expression that should inform her I beheld a sail.
‘It is the same inhuman abominable blankness as that of yesterday,’ said I, fetching a deep breath of rage and grief; then shocked by the air of horror and despair in Miss Temple, I added: ‘Yet this gives us a view of but little more than seven miles. Here is an air, surely, to whip something along. The ships of this ocean cannot all have rotted in yesterday’s pestilential calm. Oh for such another telescope as Mr. Prance’s!’ and so saying I trudged forwards, and in a few minutes was sweeping the horizon from the elevation of the foretop.