'You have not slept for nights,' said I, pausing at her door. 'Best now that I am here, if only that you may have strength enough to leave the hull and health enough to carry you to your home.' She had removed her gloves: I grasped her ice-cold hand and returned to my couch. The night crept away. I dozed at intervals, visiting the deck perhaps half a dozen times. In the morning watch I slept soundly upon the couch by the stove, and when I awoke it was nine by the clock under the skylight, still black as thunder, and the hull rolling heavily. I was cold to the heart, and before quitting the cabin kindled a fire to boil some water for a hot drink, then went up the steps to take a look. It was still blowing fresh, but the wind had shifted north-west, and the sky was a clear, sparkling heaven of stars from sea-line to sea-line, the sea running in steady hills of ink to where you saw the horizon throbbing close under the pale lights of the night low down, so clear was the gale. The mast-head lamp burned dimly; but it would be daybreak shortly. I stared around the sea, and saw nothing north and west and east, but my sight going south was arrested by a low, irregular, dim line: it rose with the heave of the hull, and it was as far off as the horizon. It looked like the sheen of a long face of coast covered with snow: it was a mere attenuated film of faintness stretched where sky and water met, and I looked and looked, believing it a bank of cloud that would dissolve whilst I watched; but it hung steady, and still it was so elusive that sometimes I saw it, and when the hull sprang from the trough again it was gone; and yet again, when she roared to the height of a surge, it was there. Well, daylight was at hand to resolve it. For my part I had no doubt it was ice; indeed it had astonished me to find these seas so open at this time of the year; only, if that sheen out in the morning darkness under the stars was ice, the drift had been ours to carry us to a sight of it: which signified a slide of keel running into knots: for that steamlike hovering down there had not been in sight two or three hours earlier, when my eye, as now, followed the hard curls of sea working into distance, though the sky was not starry. I went below, trimmed the lamp, and prepared the table for breakfast. Whilst I was thus occupied, Miss Otway appeared. She came straight to the stove and held her hands to the blaze, and asked me when it would be daylight. I answered, 'Within an hour.' 'This almost perpetual darkness,' she exclaimed, 'is one of the most awful parts of this dreadful time.' 'I hope you slept well?' 'Yes, I slept soundly, and awoke only about a quarter of an hour ago. What is the time?' I named the hour. 'You've seen no signs of a ship during the night, I fear?'