When the men had supped and cleared the table, they made as though to go. The captain told them to occupy the cabin for the night. They looked grateful at this, and then around them, as though considering where they should lie. Their awkward grins, queer swaying postures, backs curved, arms up and down, and fingers curled, their bearing, glances, and manners, which expressed but little reference to our lamentable and awful situation, gave me, I own, a sort of heart. They looked as though, but for the captain and us women, and the quarter-deck restraint of the cabin, they'd have gathered about the stove, and roared out hearty songs, drowning the fury without with hurricane lungs of music, and spun yarns, and smoked their pipes with as much thoughtless gaiety as they carried to their diversions ashore. The captain begged me to go to my cabin, and turn in and lie warm. 'Will you go to bed at all to-night?' his wife asked him. 'No,' he answered. 'I suppose you mean to do all the looking out yourself, and end in being found a frozen corpse, while Jack here is to sit by the stove?' said she in a low voice, but audible to him and me, glancing round her at the men. He peered at her with a scowl, and answered, 'I'm nearly crazy. Say nothing if I'm not to go raving mad.' 'May I not stop here?' said I. 'What, with these men, miss?' 'I like the company of sailors. The sight of these seamen keeps up my spirits.' 'My poor, dear Marie!' cried my nurse, putting the back of her hand against my cheek. 'You can't sit here. Your father would not thank us for throwing you into such company.' 'How can you talk so at such a time?' I exclaimed. 'I dread to be alone in my cabin. Where is this ship being hurled to? If she should be flung against an iceberg----' 'If _that_,' cried he, abruptly, and with temper, 'then as lief be in your cabin as here, as here as on the deck.' Then, softening his voice, he said some reassuring things--I forget them--I was crying with my face averted, that the men should not see me. Mrs. Burke took my arm, and we entered my berth. She called to the steward to light the lamp, and named some refreshments which he presently brought, but it was too bitterly cold to talk; nay, our voices here, right aft as my berth was, were almost inaudible for the thunderous wash of the sea along the slant of the side, with a lift of it, when the toppling, helpless hull tumbled my cabin window to the foam, that must again and again have soared high above the line of her bulwark rails. I would not undress, but after I had drunk some wine, I got into my bunk, where Mrs. Burke made a heap of me with bedclothes and furs; then, kissing me and promising to look in from time to time, she dimmed the lamp and went.