'It won't hurt you,' said I, and brought a coil of rope across the deck for her to stand on, that her feet might be clear of the water as it washed with the slant of the planks. We then went to work: the water bubbled, the clank of the brake ran a noise of life through the hulk; the exercise flushed the girl's face, and, in a pause for breath, I told her it would do her more good than sitting by the fire. In that same pause whilst she breathed quickly she glanced with a sudden look of pain and consternation in the direction of the galley, and exclaimed: 'The body of my poor old nurse lies there. I had forgotten her.' 'I buried her,' said I. 'Where?' I told her. She was shocked and her eyes filled, and she turned her head to hide her face. 'It was not a thing to keep,' said I. 'Oh no,' she cried, looking round at me, eagerly and yet piteously. 'I don't mean that. You threw her into the sea as she lay--without a prayer----' 'No,' said I, shortly. She viewed me a little gratefully. I grasped the brake: she put her hand upon it, and we fell to afresh. We worked in this fashion for above half an hour, and then Miss Otway, glowing with the labour and in no wise distressed by it, saving that her breathing was quick, went below. I fetched the telescope and stayed to carefully search the horizon before it fell dark. But point the tubes as I would they gave me nothing. The near sea-line tumbled dimly in long ragged wings of dark vapour, which as they lifted with the wind stretched overhead like lengths of smoke; and betwixt them I spied a higher platform of cloud, mouse-coloured here and there as though touched by some wild stormy light. I saw no ice, but the wind blew as though ice were close aboard: the sting of it was insufferable when you faced it standing. A noise of rattling sometimes came from the forecastle as though the spray froze in leaping, and fell with the weight of hail in the tropics, and already the pump we had been plying was as thick and hard bound as the other. And still I lingered, not indeed with the hope of sighting a sail before the blackness fell upon us, but with the idea of making some sort of blind guess at the drift of the hull. The strong breeze blew out of the north, and the tall coils of sea ran in wide flashings from that quarter, but the large ocean swell was about north-west. I was not very well acquainted with these waters and scarcely knew what to recollect of the currents hereabouts. I was aware that the set of the ice was to the northwards. But then the bergs struck deep root into motions of the sea which had no influence atop; so that there might be very well a surface-trend to the southward through wind and surge and swell, when, some fathoms under, the body of the water was slowly streaming in another direction.