When the night descended it was moonless, and through the pleasant blowing of the wind, of a singular sweetness and freshness such as I could not imagine of darkness in any other ocean. The water was now streaming in a line of whiteness along either side, and the murmur under the counter was as constant as the voice of a running brook heard amid the stillness of a summer night. The carpenter had the watch from eight to twelve; but for my part I could not find it in me to go to my cabin. Such was my feverishly restless condition, that I knew I should close my eyes in vain, and that the inactivity of a recumbent posture would speedily grow irksome and intolerable. Miss Temple entreated me to lie down upon the locker in the cabin. I answered that I should be unable to sleep, and that without sleep the mere resting of my limbs would be of no service to me.
‘But you will have to watch from twelve to four,’ she exclaimed, ‘and at this rate you will get no sleep to-night.’
I smiled, and answered that Braine and the carpenter between them had murdered sleep; and then took her on deck, where we walked and conversed till the hour of eleven—six bells. I then returned with her to the cabin. She declined to enter her berth; she begged me, and her eyes pleaded with her voice, to suffer her to remain at my side throughout the night. But this I would not hear of; I told her that such a vigil would exhaust her, that her utmost strength might have to be taxed sooner than either of us could imagine; that she must endeavour to obtain some repose upon the locker, and that if anything resembling land showed during my watch, I would call her. I saw a look of reproachful remonstrance in her face; but compliance was now a habit with her, and in silence she allowed me to arrange a pillow and to throw a light blanket, that I fetched from her bed, over her feet. I sat near her at the table, leaning my cheek on my elbow, and from time to time exchanged a few words with her. There was hardly any movement in the sea. The wind held the canvas motionless. The seething alongside was too delicate to penetrate, and the silence in the little cuddy was unbroken save by the ticking of a small brass clock under the skylight, and by the measured tramp of the carpenter overhead.
A little before twelve I looked at my companion, and perceived that she was asleep. On the eve, as I believed we were, of God alone knew what sort of events, the spectacle of the slumbering unconscious girl, whose beauty was never so affecting as when softened, and I may say spiritualised by the expression of placid repose, moved me to the heart. What a strange association had been ours! How intimate had we become! what confidences had our common suffering caused us to exchange! what condition of shoregoing life was there that could have brought this girl and me together as we had been and still were? How I loved her, I was now knowing; I could dwell upon my passion with delight as I looked at her, though on the threshold of a future that might prove terrible and destructive to us both. What was the secret of her heart, so far as I was concerned? I gazed at her lips with some unintelligible hope of witnessing them shape the syllables of my name; then the clear chimes of eight bells floated aft. With a sigh and a prayer, I dimmed the cabin lamp and went softly to the companion steps.
On my emerging, the carpenter came up to me.
‘It’s been blowing a steady air o’ wind,’ said he; ‘allowing for this here improvement in our pace, what time d’ye reckon the island’ll take to show itself?’
‘If it exists,’ I answered, ‘it might be in sight now. The captain’s description showed that there was no height of side to make a loom of. If you’re going forward, see that a couple of hands are stationed on the forecastle, and tell them to keep a bright lookout. We don’t want to run the reef down, if it’s there.’
‘Ay, ay, sir,’ he exclaimed in the rough off-hand voice of a sailor receiving an order, and left the poop.
The time crept away. There was a light burning in the galley; and the shapes that flitted in and out through the open door, throwing giant shadows upon the hazy square of illumination on the bulwark abreast of the galley entrance, satisfied me that most if not all of the men were awake and on the lookout. Several figures, never less than two, paced against the stars over the bows with the regular tread of sentinels, clear on the forecastle under the forecourse by the spaces of the spangled sky they blotted out as they moved. The breeze continued a pleasant air, and all about the gliding barque were the summer tinkling sounds of water gently broken. Occasionally, I would go forward, and taking my stand on the rise of the cathead where it sloped to the rail, strain my eyes into the elusive starry dusk where sea and sky seemed to melt into liquid gloom. No one accosted me as I passed to and fro. Once I heard the tones of the carpenter in the galley warm in argument. The fellows pacing the forecastle would come to a halt whenever I went forward, and stand looking at me in silence, full of expectation, no doubt, of my being able to see more than they. The very barque herself seemed to participate in the emotions, the breathless curiosity, the avid yearnings of the men who awaited the appearance of the island with restless motions and voices subdued into low growling notes: the ship herself, I say, seemed governed by the impassioned expectation of the hour, so tremulously breathless was she aloft, so still and subtle was her movement through the water, so hearkening the aspect of her forward, as though the stirless curve of her jibs were ears which she eagerly projected that she might catch the first sound of the wash of surf.
All this while Miss Temple lay soundly sleeping below.