I took a big top-coat belonging to the captain and buttoned her up in it, and also tied his fur cap over her head, so that she would be well protected from the wind, whilst the coat would keep her dress close against her.
I then slipped on my oilskins, and taking a strong grip of her hand to steady her, led her up the companion ladder.
"Do not come any farther," said I.
"Wherever you go I will go," she answered, grasping my arm.
Admiring her courage and stirred by her words, which were as dear to me as a kiss from her lips would have been, I led her right on to the deck over to windward, and made her sit on a small coil of rope just under the rail.
The sea was no heavier than it had been since the early morning, and yet my short absence below had transformed it into a sublime and stupendous novelty.
You will remember that not only was the Grosvenor a small ship, but that she lay deep, with a free board lower by a foot and a half than she ought to have shown.
The height from the poop rail to the water was not above twelve feet; and it is therefore no exaggeration to say that the sea, running from fifteen to twenty feet high, stood like walls on either side of her.
To appreciate the effect of such a sea upon a ship like the Grosvenor, you must have crossed the Atlantic in a hurricane, not in an immense and powerful ocean steamer, but in a yacht.
But even this experience would not enable you to realise our danger; for the yacht would not be overloaded with cargo, she would probably be strong, supple, and light; whereas the Grosvenor was choked to the height of the hold with seven hundred and fifty tons of dead weight, and was a Nova Scotia soft wood ship, which means that she might start a butt at any moment and go to pieces in one of her frightful swoops downwards.