‘It puts a new pulse into my heart to hear you talk so,’ said I. ‘I want to conduct you home to your mother’s side out of this wild adventure, with the same beauty and health that you brought away from England with you. It grieved me to the soul to see you refusing food, to watch your face growing hollow, to hear of your sleepless nights, and to witness in your eyes the misery that was consuming you. Pray keep this steadfastly in mind—that every day shortens our run to the South Pacific, and that every day this horrible experience is lessened by twenty-four hours. Whether there be gold in the island or not, whether the island have existence or not, the crew must still be dependent upon me to carry them to a port, and the port that is good for them will be good for us; for it will be strange if from it we are unable to proceed straight home. All along I have said it is but a question of patience and waiting, and God alone can tell how grateful I shall be to you if you will enable me to play the part that I know must be played if our safety is to be worth a rushlight.’
From this time she showed herself a thoroughly resolved woman. She ceased to tease me with regrets, to distress me with inquiries which I could not answer, to imply by her silence or her sighs or looks of reproach that I had it in my power by some other sort of policy than what I was pursuing, to get her safely away out of the barque. With this new mind in her came a subtle but appreciable change in her manner towards me. Heretofore her behaviour had been uniformly haunted by some small flavour more or less defined of her treatment of me, and indeed of all others, saving Mr. Colledge, aboard the Indiaman. She had suggested, though perhaps without intending it, a sort of condescension in our quiet hours, with a deal of haughtiness and almost contemptuous command in moments when she was wrought up by alarm and despair. I now found a kind of yielding in her, a compliance, a complaisance that was almost tender, a subdued form of expression, no matter what the mood might be which our conversation happened to excite in her. At times I would observe her watching me with an expression of sweetness in her fine eyes, though these sudden discoveries never betrayed her into the least air of confusion or embarrassment upon which I might found a hope that I was slowly making my way to her heart.
However, I consoled myself by thinking that our situation hung in too black a shadow over her mind to enable her to guess at what might be going on in it. Besides, never a word had I let fall that she could construe into a revelation of my passion for her. Had I loved her a thousandfold more than I did, my honour must have held my emotions dumb. It was not only that my pride determined me to keep silent until I might have good reason to believe that my love would not be declined by this high and mighty young lady of the Countess Ida, with hidden wonder at my impertinence in offering it; I also was sensible that I should be acting the meanest part in the world to let her guess my feelings—by my language, at least; my face I might not be always able to control—whilst she continued in this miserable condition, utterly dependent upon me for protection, and too helpless to avow any resentment, which she would be desperately quick to express and let me feel under other circumstances.
We should be entering the bitter climate of the Horn presently, and she was without warm apparel. Her dress, as you know, was the light tropical costume in which she had attired herself to visit the corvette. What was to be done?
‘You cannot face the weather of the Horn in that garb,’ said I on one occasion, lightly glancing at her dress, to which her noble and faultless figure communicated a grace that the wear and tear and soiling of the many days she had worn it could not rob it of. ‘Needs must, you know, when Old Nick drives. There is but one expedient; I hope you will not make a grimace at it.’
‘Tell it to me?’
‘There is a good, warm, long pilot coat in my cabin. I will borrow needles and thread, and you must go to work to make it fit you.’
She laughed with a slight blush. ‘I fear I shall not be able to manage it.’
‘Try. If you fail, fifty to one but that there is some man forward who will contrive it for you. Most sailors can sew and cut out after a fashion. But I would rather you should try your hand at it alone. If I employ a fellow forward he will have to come aft and measure you, and so on; all of which I don’t want.’
‘Nor I,’ she cried eagerly. ‘I will try the coat on now, Mr. Dugdale. I daresay I shall be able to fashion it into some sort of jacket,’ she added with another laugh that trembled with a sigh.