The girl was standing beside the bunk or sleeping-shelf; her elbows were upon the edge of it, her cheeks in her hands, and she stood motionlessly gazing, as I might suppose, through the port-hole. She was robed as in the morning; that is to say, in a crimson dressing-gown, which, in that era of short skirts, clothed her to her heels. She was but a little above the average stature of woman, though she had looked far taller than she really was when she stood in the doorway grasping the knife, with her eyes upon the dead Spaniard.
Finding her unarmed, I entered, carefully sweeping the room as I did so with my eyes for any signs of a knife or other weapon. The four seamen stood in the doorway, and she did not turn her head. I approached her, keeping a distance of some two or three feet between us, and prepared, poor lady! for any act of violence. Still she continued to stare through the port-hole.
"Miss Noble," said I, "you smiled at me this morning. Look at me now. You will remember me as your friend."
She turned her head slowly; not more mechanical could have been that extraordinary movement had clock-work produced it. When her soft brown eyes—in which assuredly I witnessed nothing of that sparkle or fire of madness which is said to burn in the vision of the insane—were upon me, she frowned and bit her under lip, exposing her small white front teeth. I believed from her expression that she was struggling with her memory. She then suddenly turned fully round, as though sensible of being watched from the door, and the sailors, to the wild look she gave them, stirred and fell back with uneasy shuffling motions of their feet. She stared at them for a while, and afterward at me, preserving her frown, and holding her lip under her teeth; she was deadly white, but spite of her frown, which you would have thought must give an expression of disdain or anger or contempt to her brow, her face was meaningless. She eyed me fixedly for some moments, then, with the former slow motion of her head, resumed her first posture. I stepped to the door.
"What is to be done?" said I.
"It's a cruel business. The Spaniard's been rightly sarved out," exclaimed one of the sailors.
"What is to be done?" I repeated; for here, to be sure, was a condition of ocean life that had never before been encountered by my experience.
The men gazed at the girl in silence. I mused, and presently said, "One of you keep this door; the rest of us must turn to and search the cabin, to make sure there is nothing in it with which she can hurt herself."
There were four of us, and there being little to examine, we had soon satisfied ourselves that there was no weapon anywhere hidden. She took not the least notice of us; but when I explored her sleeping-berth, upon whose edge, as I have told you, her elbows reposed, she fell back a step or two, and then, going to the arm-chair, seated herself, clasping her knees and rooting her eyes to the deck.