'She went with her husband to help him affix a lantern to the bowsprit. He slipped overboard with the light and was drowned. I waited for them here and went to find them, and saw Mrs. Burke lying on the deck. She had fallen and broken her leg. I was too weak to carry or drag her into this cabin and I pulled her into the galley for the shelter of it, and there she lay, and I could not help her,' she cried, clasping her hands with strange, piteous, involuntary motions of her head. 'I don't know whether she died of grief, or from the injury of her fall, or whether the cold killed her. It was black in the galley, and I could not see her. I often called her name, but she never answered me. Oh, what an awful time was that night! I stayed by her until long after I knew she was dead, and then came down here, and have remained in this place ever since--no, three times I have been on deck to look for a ship: it was always snowing--it has been enough to drive me mad,' said she, passing her hand with a wild gesture across her eyes. 'Mad indeed!' said I to myself, all thought of my own situation vanishing in the presence of the anguish of this poor gentle young woman: she had a sweet soft voice: I supposed she had been alone in this labouring hulk for hard upon a week. It was wonderful she should have kept her mind. Indeed it put a sort of craziness even into _my_ seasoned head when I paused in contemplation of her, and realised how it might have been with _me_ had I been alone in this straining, creaking, wallowing fabric with no one aboard beside myself but a dead woman, an atmosphere of stinging cold, nigh twenty hours of blackness every day. 'But you've not been starving all this while?' said I. 'When there was daylight,' she answered, 'I'd get some food and wine from yonder;' she pointed to the pantry. 'I took a little stock to my cabin. Where is your ship? Have you no companions? Take me on deck to see your boat and the vessel,' and she extended her hand. I saw she had not understood me, and I told her how it had come to pass that I was on board the hulk with her. She listened in silence, saying nothing when I spoke of the men who had been lifted aboard the 'Planter' out of the 'Lady Emma's' long-boat, frozen to death, and nothing whilst I described what I myself had undergone in the jolly-boat. She seemed slow to understand; but at last, when I was done, after continuing to stare at me, for our faces were a sort of glimmer one to the other in that gloom, she gave a shriek, and crying 'There is no hope for me, then! there is no hope for me, then!' buried her face and shook and swayed in a passion of weeping. CHAPTER XIV STILL ADRIFT